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Sredni Vashtar Explores Metal
Self-explanatory. I came to metal through noise rock, industrial music and drone, with some grounding in the British and American New Waves and thrash through my friends, so my perspective tends to be skewed, moving from the outside in. I'm trying to educate myself. It's a fun process.
Right now I'm listening to Blasphemy's Fallen Angel Of Doom...., an album which, well, speaks for itself:
Recommendations and suggestions go here.
Already on the list:
Right now I'm listening to Blasphemy's Fallen Angel Of Doom...., an album which, well, speaks for itself:
Recommendations and suggestions go here.
Already on the list:
- Behemoth (cursory knowledge)
- Cannibal Corpse (negligible knowledge)
- Death (ibid)
- Emperor (ibid)
- Gorgoroth (ibid)
- Gorguts (passing acquaintance)
- Manilla Road (no substantive acquaintance)
- Mayhem (some familiarity with their earliest work)
- Morbid Angel (next to no knowledge)
- Pig Destroyer (some dim familiarity with their output)
- Sarcófago (near-zero practical familiarity)
- Sepultura (ibid)
- Sodom (ibid)
- Suffocation (ibid)
- Ulver (minimal familiarity)
- Venom (ibid)
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Comments
Side-note: I made the mistake earlier of comparing them to the more straightforward metalcore act Every Time I Die earlier in a way that implied that they predated them when the reverse is true, albeit only by a few years. That said, the analogy still holds here: Both draw on the post-hardcore tradition, but what sources within it are... distinctly different. It's also worth noting that the relationship of stuff like this with later deathcore does remind me a little of, say, Converge's relationship with more recent metalcore acts; that both kind of get lumped into the "mathcore" category with the likes of Dillinger Escape Plan makes a fair amount of sense, both in that light and given their respective approaches, although they are *very* different bands.
Oh, and now I'm on the last track, which I've seen compared to the much maligned "groove metal" phenomenon, and... I dunno, it's more like one of those long post-rock-inflected screamo tracks that a band like Envy or Suffocate for Fuck Sake would release, but through a metal lens with noisier guitar work and heavier drums. I guess there are grooves here and they do ride them, but it's more like Isis or the aforementioned non-metal bands or even Bastard Noise than Pantera or Gojira or whatever. Probably one of the best things here, if I'm being honest.
with Sodom you want Agent Orange and Persecution Mania. If you like those, you oughta try the other two major German thrash bands, Kreator and Destruction.
Any Death is good but their later albums are more technically sophisticated and finely produced.
other bands I feel compelled to mention: Atheist, Cynic, Testament, Sadus, High on Fire, Suffocation, Exodus
Another odd thing: Most of the slams themselves, when they appear, are in 3/4 or some form of waltz time. It's like the whole song suddenly shifts down a gear and goes into three for a while before the sudden atonal solosplosion after the doubled kicks come back in. And speaking of which, it almost sounds like they have two drummers at points, à la Swans, although I'm unclear on the line-up details beyond "there are two actual black dudes in this tech-death band."
And maybe that's why I've been listening to bands like this in the first place: In the hope that I will find a deathcore band that sounds like what I imagined that deathcore logically ought to sound like. Luckily, these guys are even better! :D This is at least partly because they embrace all the weird experimental touches you get on early screamo records and such, and overall seem to have a distinct sense of humour in their compositions—definitely getting some Mike Patton vibes from the bouncy grooves suddenly imploding and the wild vocal antics, although the latter are also very Bastard Noise in execution.
My sole reservation is that the vocalist/lyricist, who became a police officer in 2013, appears to be some degree of conservative wingnut. Thankfully, he keeps this out of his lyrics for the most part (they skew oblique and personal), and otherwise seems like a reasonably thoughtful dude; plus, the rest of the band are apparently on quite a different page politically speaking, so I guess he's not totally insufferable about it. Either way, it's ultimately ignorable in a way that, say, Dave Mustaine's politics aren't.
Gonna second Imi's recommendations for Sepultura, but add Chaos AD and Roots as well. Sadus is another good band to check out, especially the album Illusions, which is also known as Chemical Exposure because of record label reasons. For Gorguts, Obscura is a good starting point and then working forward to From Wisdom to Hate and Colored Sands is recommended. I haven't listened to their first two albums, so I can't offer an opinion there. For Pig Destroyer, their Natasha EP is fantasic. It's completely different from their normal stuff, but it's a great Doom/Sludge Metal album. Speaking of Doom and Sludge, Trouble's Psalm 9 and Grief's Come to Grief are both great albums in their repsective genres.
For Emperor, every one of their albums are good, but I'd recommend either their first In the Nightside Eclipse or their last Prometheus: The Discipline of Fire & Demise as a good starting point. Also, If you like Emperor's stuff you should check out Ihsahn's solo work. It's not super out there, but it's definitely willing to experiment more than a lot of other Black Metal. Peccatum is another good band to check out, which is the brainchild of Ihsahn, his wife Ihriel and his brother in law. For other Emperor related bands, Green Carnation and In the Woods... are both good bands. Green Carnation is kinda interesting in that each record gets less and less heavy. Their first EP was straight up Death Metal, their next two albums were Prog-doom and then ther last two albums were just Hard rock and an acoustic album, respectively. Definitely recommend Light of Day, Day of Darkness, as a starting point, which does the whole one 60+ minute long song album thing. In Woods... was formed by a bunch of former members from Green Carnation, after Tchort left to focus on Emperor and are as far as I can tell, one of the first Black Metal bands to really flirt with songwriting that gets called Avant-garde Metal. Omnio and Strange in Stereo are both solid albums, as is their live album, which has a great cover of Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit".
I have more recommendations, but this is getting pretty long, so I'll hold off for now.
Now, onto expanding that list:
- Acid Bath
- Alcest
- Arsis
- Atheist
- At the Gates
- Bathory
- Botch
- Candiria
- Coalesce
- Converge
- Cryptopsy
- Cynic
- Darkthrone
- Deathspell Omega
- Demilich
- Destruction
- Dillinger Escape Plan
- Dodecahedron
- Entombed
- Exodus
- Goatwhore
- Green Carnation
- Grief
- High On Fire
- Ihsahn
- In the Woods...
- Incantation
- Kreator
- Kyuss
- Peccatum
- Periphery
- Sadus
- Testament
- Trouble
- Ulcerate
I have actually listened to Grief's Torso and something or other by DSO, but that was quite a while ago, in both cases.On a barely related note, I'm watching these two dudes talk about groove metal (because why not), and about half an hour in Prong comes up and I just smile at the bizarre realisation that a former Swans drummer was partly responsible for the existence of Lamb of God.
(Jesu is, too, but you already know them.)
I'm not in much of a position to judge anyway.
^ Kylesa did a split with Cream Abdul Babar, who are pretty sweet.
listen to Incantation
Really, most of my early positive experiences with metal were with the more out-there members of the doom/sludge family, coming out of listening to a lot of Swans, so riding on a single riff for a long time is far from anathema to me. But I feel like I wasn't as sold on thrash or its progeny at the time because I felt like the speed and the lack of emphasis on the low end took away from what I wanted out of metal at the time, which was sheer crushing immensity and evil. Had I heard Indian's From All Purity at that age, I think I would have become a full-on metalhead overnight. Records that abominably heavy do not come out very often. But I have come to appreciate fast bands much more, although I don't think that part of my taste has changed so much as it has become more eclectic and less rigid. Why I'm drawn to certain schools of black metal, for instance, is that sense of pure evil and utter foreboding. It's just a faster-paced sense of pure evil and utter foreboding.
and Voivod, of course!!!
I think this here may be the most crushing, immense doom metal album I ever bought
*...*
I must have it all.
I know a few I should listen to already, but I'm curious if there are more.
I already asked Edlyn privately, and will keep the other people you mentioned in mind, too.
Have fun with your quest.
The second thing I thought of, however, was Ehnahre, and man, stylistically, they're pretty different, but the atmosphere, the production, the use of classical instruments, the sinister quiet sections, the Viennese serialist chord structures, the slow builds in and out of total chaos—so very, very Ehnahre. But also very much their own thing, which is great.
I'm quite liking this.
Speaking of which, I need to listen to more Goslings.
It's good stuff, fam.
and the singer is such a whiny-voiced geek
Also, that guitar soloing is extraordinary.
Jennifer says hi. ovvvvvvvvo
On that note: Funeral doom. Somebody tell me more.