“Cavemen have become popular again, and this time they’re not trying to sell you insurance. No, a wave of bands are doing something I appreciate and embracing the simpler elements of death metal. Bands like Frozen Soul, Sanguisugabogg, Celestial Sanctuary, and Gutless are associated with our cave-dwelling ancestors and they have one important thing in common: big, dumb riffs. What type of big dumb riffs? Mortician ones.” Welcome to Club Dead.
If you’re about my age, you probably remember being a teenager and being rather surprised by Arch Enemy’s “Nemesis” video. For those unfamiliar, a speedy melo-death riff kicks the song off and we see a girl dressed like a Hot Topic version of Britney Spears in the “Oops, I Did it Again” video. She lets out a scream, and everyone watching goes “whoa, I can’t believe a girl can make those sounds!” The novelty wore off quickly despite my efforts to like the band because I liked Michael Amott’s work in Carcass. The Angela Gossow version Arch Enemy was inoffensively boring, and the band has since deteriorated into being offensively boring in the current Alissa White-Gluz iteration. The takeaway here is that Arch Enemy at their most popular is bland and uninspiring, and I’m lost as to who would take musical inspiration from that sound. Enter French death metal band Akiavel.” Archetypes.
“I said it in 2017 and I’ll say it again: I fucking love Cannibal Corpse. This is a band that almost infamously represents death metal in its purist form. Opaque riffs, furious vocals and a trajectory more certain than cradle to grave. Their discography contains many a predatory précis on a genre they helped define. Yet, all too often, their name is accompanied by inexplicable eye-rolling. It is forever beyond me how any death metal aficionado can turn their nose up at an act as effective as Cannibal Corpse.” Esprit de Corpse.
“Technical death metal is one of those “hit or miss” genres for me. While I find the intricate rhythms and minigun note delivery intoxicating at times, I still require the style’s purveyors to provide that thing for which I look in all of my metal endeavors: the almighty riff. Genre legends Cryptopsy shred like no other, but they undergird their sound with a buttload of groove, and modern technical titans Archspire and Cytotoxin make sure to riff just as hard as they noodle. While I generally don’t love overly gore-themed releases due to the nature of my work, the pickings were fairly slim for this week. So I took a chance and picked up Despondent, the debut release from India’s Dead Exaltation, nasty artwork and all.” Technical butchery.
“We all know how pivotal that second album can be. Time after time, history has made an example of the all-important sophomore sway. When an inaugural record successfully seduces the masses, all eyes immediately turn to what comes next. In 2018, Australia’s Depravity took great pleasure in repeatedly slamming my face into the wall with their brilliant debut Evil Upheaval. The fact that it did so with such aplomb in a year dominated by death metal ensured its place on my end of year list. Now, follow-up Grand Malevolence arrives with something to prove.” Prove you harmed.
“As I mentioned when I wrote 2017’s Extinction review, Harlott isn’t afraid to show love to their influences. Some might say Harlott isn’t afraid of reaching into that box of thrash classics and taking what they like, as well. At any given time, the riffs transition from Exodus to Slayer to Testament, and the vocals mimic Araya, Petrozza, and Dukes/Souza. The guitars can be acoustic at times but prefer to be heavy. The drums blast and fill with no regard for concrete floors, and the bass rattles hardware off the garage door. Harlott may not have a whole lot in the way of originality, but that doesn’t make their fourth album, Detritus of the Final Age, any less solid and nothing short of nostalgic.” Ramming speed.
“Man, I was stoked to cover this record until this very moment. 2020 has been a tremendous year for death metal (if little else), and Undeath’s Lesions of a Different Kind is one of my most anticipated records in the genre. And much to my surprise, it took only a minimal amount of pleas and poisoning to secure reviewing rights from the established death metal experts on staff. But… now what? How does one even sell a record like this, which so brashly speaks for itself? Not to mention one which has enough hype surrounding it that almost anyone with a reasonable interest in death metal has long since had their eyes on it.” Unbuzz.
“Traditional death metal has, to my ears, endured more strongly than the base forms of other metal subgenres. Second wave idolizers have me regularly convinced that options for tremolo riffs dried up around the time Darkthrone released Panzerfaust, while modern practitioners of power metal infinitely scrawl tally marks on the tomb of Helloween’s “Eagle Fly Free.” But something about classic death metal has proven impossibly recyclable; from Blood Incantation to Necrot, many of the best bands keep the style fresh by doing hardly anything new at all. Enter Scordatura, who do little to break this trend.” Failure is not an option.
“They say the best things in life are free. They also say honesty is free, but it’s not. In fact, it usually comes attached to a very high price. That moment you have a few too many and tell your partner what you really think of their mum. Explaining to your brother that you sold his son’s spleen on the black market just so you could buy more vinyl. Or the crushing fact that not all death metal is created equal. The genre’s favorite whipping boys Six Feet Under are living proof of this.” Six Feet Underwhelming.
“This Belgian troupe make nothing original. They make nothing challenging. They make nothing to push their chosen genre to the next stage of evolution. Yet, they are an inspiring testimonial to the effectiveness of a tried-and-true formula perfected. The formula for Carnation comes from old school death metal, with the same vitriol and verve first put forth by early Entombed, Cannibal Corpse, and to some extent, the less progressive half of Death.” Instant deathfest.
