Yngwe

The Human Abstract – Digital Veil Review

The Human Abstract – Digital Veil Review

One of the things that I consistently tell people when they give me shit (which they inevitably do) about my taste in music is that you should call a spade a spade and like what you like without apologies. That doesn’t mean that I don’t have biases, however, and one of those biases that I have is against things that can be labelled as “metalcore” or “deathcore.” Since the early aughts we’ve been plagued by shitty record after shitty record from post-hardcore entities that have been passed off on us as the next big thing and that have ultimately felt sad and tired and not good. I recently ripped into Architects, for example, for being billed as ‘reinventing metalcore and themselves,’ only to produce an epic fail of a record.

Sigh – Scenes From Hell Review

Sigh – Scenes From Hell Review

Let me start with the a territory that isn’t very comfortable for many in heavy metal: orchestrations. Heavy metal has seen many variations on the classical orchestration in many different subgenres. Neo-classical metal, like the wanky stuff with Yngwe or Symphony X, has long bragged about the influence of baroque and classical music. Bands like Rhapsody of Fire and Epica do things that sound like they should be straight out of a movie score and black metal even has a symphonic sub-genre, most notably filled by Dimmu Borgir, whose symphonics have gone over the top in the last few years with the addition of Mustis (though we’ll see what happens now that he’s gone). Never before in my tenure of heavy metal listening have I heard orchestrations used in a black metal record to such effect as they have been used on Sigh’s new record Scenes from Hell.