Heavy Metal Music, Culture and Philosophy FAQ (Metal as Concept 1/3 )
The Hessian Studies Center
Posting-frequency: semimonthly
Last-Modified: 16-Mar-2006
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Part II :: Metal as concept
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Summary:
- Metal music arose from a fusion of jazz and rock with influences
from classical theory, producing a music which gradually evolved
into several complex postmodern styles which emphasizing an
existential but nihilistic view of reality, civilization, and the
"limits" of human consciousness.
- Metal culture is a process of distancing oneself from the basic
perceptual errors inherent to the thinking that has produced human
history and society, implementing self-reliance, a self-awareness,
and consciousness of the values of enjoyment and even hedonism as a
mode of expressing oneself in being.
- Metal formed from a basic idea of a straightforward disbelief in
inherent value to existence or society, and from there examined
taboos of thought throughout history as a method of exploring fear
and despair, leading to an adoption of nihilism as an intellectual
technique for clear perception, and from there creating an ability
to understand structure independent from its
circumstance/appearance which eventually developed into a method of
understanding the motion of information and chaos around us as a
method of understanding mysticism.
- The musical influence of metal, and the influence of metal
culture on aesthetics, are indicators of an injection of idea into
the mainstream of world culture at least on a subconscious level,
where the symbology, aesthetic and communicative nature of
structure as metaphor of metal as art take effect.
{ II. Metal as concept
I. Music
II. Culture
III. Ideas
IV. Applicability }
2.1 What is metal music?
Metal music comes from a world-wide subculture which values
nihilistic post-moral orders as a way for humans to approach
understanding our existence as independent thinking beings
constrained by reality. Metal as a collective system of thought
believes in the individual, the inherent worthlessness of material
things, the value and inspiration of fantasy and imagination, the
intensity of creation, the power of destruction, and the
soul-sickening descent of value that is sensuality and hedonism.
It is what one might call a dentological decision tree, in that all
motivations are driven by existential value to the experience in
the context of the existence, and so absolutes are generated on
several levels by shared intelligence.
Over three decades and four generations of world marketplace
culture metal music - from heavy metal to the intermediate states
of speed metal, early hardcore-deathmetal, and an early evolution
of heavy-metal-based blackmetal, to the moderns, such as the
abstract incarnations of death metal and black metal, ambient
metal, and progressive chromatic death metal alongside ambient
grindcore - metal music has held forth a philosophy of parallel
human interpretations of reality which involves no authority or
control for a variety of fundamental reasons:
1 authority does not carry interpretation or question (boring)
2 chaos is a sensible, perpetuative state for carrier of the
metal virus;
3 metal fosters creation and recreation in a world which will
always tend toward stagnation if direction is not taken;
4 it will free us from the barriers we rapidly create to
insulate ourselves from the fear of decision;
5 it demystifies decision into a logical system of understanding
and contributing to natural process and growth.
6 metal as a culture provides an understanding for many of the
existential questions, and an expression for romanticism in a
world afraid of it, which is beautiful for what it is: the quest
for beauty, sometimes the quest for purity. (SODOMIZE VIRGIN)
Metal is a genre of music which refuses to compromise the inherent
nihilism of life as it seeks more romanticist outpourings of
emotion and ideal. Coming from the underground the music is
closely joined to intensely alienated social values but translates
this dissent into a non-political yet unwaveringly steadfast
metaphorical resistance to mainstream thought process.
A form of music based in the theory of classical music and the
instrumental format of folk/blues (rock), heavy metal emerged as a
form of popular music in 1969 and has undergone various changes
since, mutating as it evolves into what it always has been. With
its extremist minimalism supported by its aesthetic of violence and
destruction metal loses many popular music fans, which contributes
alternatively to its evolution in minimalist rawness and to its
progressive nature bringing forth more complex structures.
Metal culture, or Hessian culture, involves loud heavy metal music
made in the postmodern interpretation of classical music and rock n
roll arrangement, creating a disturbing noise and profound motion
in its practice and social implications. Author Kurt Vonnegut
likens the role of an artist to society as the role of the canaries
miners brought into the coal tunnels to warn for the presence of
gas: when the birdsong changes or stops, death is near. At the end
of the twentieth century, as we suffocate in the meaninglessness of
the social machine we have made, metal and punk music are striking
alarms of misery and fear hidden beneath the commercially-viable
good assurances which have more than once prompted the adage, "Talk
is cheap."
2.1.1 Sound of metal?
Metal music may utilize any collection of aspects including
but not limited to the selection below.
Downtuned - quite often, lower or more dissonant tunings and
fingerings are used for a physical presence to the music.
Convergent rhythms - metal bands tend to use rhythmic
structures which target themselves for reduction by
deconstruction of similar patterns to dominant themes.
Tone centric - as part of the directedness and rootedness
that makes music "heavy" in one school of the idea, a
coherent and direct identification of a root tone is present
in music that often refuses to change keys in the rock sense,
moving tones in a referentialism closer to
"classical" music than popular tunes.
Abstract - because its nature is tone-heavy its expression
is an extremist structuralism, where the relevance of a
sequence of melodies and polyrhythmic constructions defines
part of an inner structure with relevance to an external
meaning.
Minimalist - as the industrial age expanded itself into a
flattening, technological existence took over and prompted
a simplicity expressed in rock n roll which attempts to
remove paradox from the communication.
Reactions many people have: angry, scary, depressing,
violent, upsetting, disturbing, morbid, sadistic.
2.1.2 Theory
Music "theory" is a language of describing the shared
process of the communication that is art and how we as
individuals are able to speak to the whole of intelligent
beings by addressing the common interpretations we must
make, as thinking machines, to inference our own existence
in a chaotic world. In metal, there are numerous instances
of theory, many of which are expressions of an underlying
philosophical evolution.
Technique --> Structure
Technique, which normally serves to embellish, became
under metal the science of structure, with any number
of strumming and picking techniques developed by metal
musicians. Heavy metal worked through the austerity of
power chords and a jazzlike rhythm to a deeply chaotic and
abstract blues. Speed metal used muted-palm picking to
create a mechanical, grinding sound, where death metal
bands began to use a flutterstrum which would turn a chord
into a stream of undulating sound with a massive tremelo
effect, building a powerful tool for ambient melody.
Melody --> Harmony
Harmony in metal is used to unify a number of melodies
to a sequence of tone centers which represent the parts of
the idea being manipulated by the song. The riffs which
metal bands use are structuralistic in that they describe
rather than categorize, by the nature of their wandering
phrases which use structural similarity for coherence
rather than tonal unison. Where harmony serves to
preformat a range of emotions for rock bands, in metal,
melody drives harmony, letting the composer take the music
into whatever direction he/she desires by dynamically
associating tone centers with contrapuntal arrangements,
layering strips of reference to narrative and joining them
with harmonies.
Tonality --> Dynamicism
The major element of metal's evolution is a progression in
tonality from the blues-rock extrapolationist grab bag to
the chromatic, dark and almost mystically nihilistic tone
patterns of death and black metal. The ability to change
from a fixed-tonal system to a system which, like the
Doppler effect, is based on proximity and speed to
establish a current point of reference, provides for a
basis of composition which is more specialized for
systemic expression than for linear expression. This is
similar to the postmodern novels of James Joyce and
William S Burroughs, where a series of divergent threads
unified unspoken topics indicated by metaphorical
assonance with consensual reality experience.
Chaotic music
Many will say metal is "chaotic" meaning "there's a
lot of noise," but to others this indicates that its
composition involves specialized structures for what
the song is trying to express, instead of variants
on working general-purpose structures (Verse/Chorus).
Heisenbergian Chaos
The discoveries of Heisenberg indicated that
one could not observe a wave/particle
interaction without influencing its outcome
by presence as a chaotic attractor. This in
turn indicates a systemic awareness, in that
if moving elements closer together means they
reflect an attraction, the grouping of items
in life itself suggests a series of attractors
extending beyond the organism to its
environment. If there is a level at which
we are contrainfluential, as Heisenberg
suggests, then there is some level of
abstraction in which every particle is
connected to every other, and thus that the
thing that is life works as a whole, as a large
system of connected orders.
Relativism --> Dynamicism
In metal, relativism (or: the state of
assessing relevance of events based on
their current context and not an
absolute) is used as a method of
defining objectivism; it is a strategy
of finding local relevances to compare
in order to project a placement in a
larger, complete order. As this
translates into music it becomes a more
ordered use of chaotic composition, in
which notes are picked arbitrarily and
used as the foundations of specialized
melodic systems, custom-created to express
the significance of the whole in what is
only an example.
Objectivism --> Melodic structure
Where harmonic interplay is specific to
the juncture of notes, melody allows a
structuring first by leading the music
through tonal changes and second by
gesturing toward a larger structure that
unifies the disparate changes in melody
as narrative. Metal is more melodic in
overall structure than any mainstream
music, a tradition it inherited through
speed metal's covert obsession with 70's
prog rock bands and neoclassicism. In the
era of death and black metal, this allowed
bands to dynamically allocate needed
musical structures for integration into a
narrative suggested by a metacontextual
interpretation of melody, removing the
barriers for progressivism (romantic
rationalism) and minimalism (nihilistic
structuralism) to join.
2.1.3 Genre
2.1.3.1 Proto-metal
Heavy metal arose from loud simple blues and is defined by
its primary progenitors: Black Sabbath.
Taking the rhythm of blues and jazz and using it to
underlay minimalist epic power-chord riffs, Black
Sabbath took the blues to the next step of insidious
artful subversion and glorification of the
anarchistic freedom of demonic lust. Alongside hard
rock originators Led Zeppelin the blues raised its
twisted and morally dubious head again in mainstream
rock; where Led Zeppelin augmented rock's knowledge of
harmonic structure Black Sabbath reinvented it
altogether, being in the mind of one prominent
critic "the second most important rock band to the
Beatles."
2.1.3.2 heavy metal
Some will doubt this distinction and classify Led
Zeppelin and their family of blues-form hard rock as
similarly heavy metal, but this makes no sense given
the clear compositional direction within Black
Sabbath's music: 1) more ambient beat structures
focusing less on phrase than granular looping
repetition, 2) dissonant elemental riffs with abrupt
cycles, 3) bizarre song structures and experimental
elements.
During their reign Black Sabbath built the foundation
for the harmonic essence of grunge, created a rhythmic
synchronicity in punk and rock, and opened experi-
mentation in noise music, ambient beat-music, and
progressive minimalism. The period from 1969-1977 bore
the most influence of their work, a morose conclusion to
the hippie rock of the middle sixties.
Other influential music from this period: The 13th
Floor Elevators, MC5, Jimi Hendrix, Blue Cheer, the
Doors, Dick Dale, The Rolling Stones, King Crimson.
It is worth noting that a primary influence on Black
Sabbath was the guitar work of Django Reinhart, a jazz
player in the 1930s, who like Black Sabbath guitarist
Toni Iommi had lost the practical use of several
fingers, compensating through a reductivist attitude
toward harmony.
Heavy metal continues to this day as an artform, in
practice by endlessly recombinant commercial bands and a
series of artists who spend their time exploring new
paths for a vitally organic, earthy and yet tech-aware
genre. There are two or three major threads:
"Black Metal"(1)
Starting with British middle-fingered madmen
VENOM in the late 1970s, this style of heavy
metal used punk work ethic to make a simple but
surprisingly dark and expressive form of
anti-life art. At first humorous, it grew toward
illustrating the obsession with
negativity that is a hallmark of postmodern
consciousness, paranoia, and drone existence in
western nations.
"Doom metal"
Slow and painful, often gothic in its
suicidal "desires", mournful music, much of which
is based in the musicality of heavy metal, will
deliver a grinding and also almost ecclesiastical
experience of morbid anarchy.
"Power metal"
The marketing department came up with this
tasty term for hopped-up heavy metal that is at
musical essence a cross between speed metal and
funk or reggae, with bouncy rhythms and
jazz-inspired double-hit percussion. Pantera,
...can someone fill in these terrible bands. The
music of power metal is based in the work of
decent heavy metal musicians as well as
atmospheric speed metal bands like Prong or
Powermad.
2.1.3.3 speed metal
As the seventies waned metal faded into a sad repetition
of the image of its glory. Excess and a lack of musical
innovation lead metal to still waters, where it drifted
into either the hair-and-makeup wailing guitar tradition
of stadium metal or the rising punk movement.
Exceptions were Iron Maiden, who brought melody and
narrative tempos to heavy metal, and Motorhead, whose
proto-punk progressive metal grated against tradition
and sensibilities with its biker graffitti narrative of
nihilism in modern culture.
These acts brought to a close the fading image of
blues-oriented rock ("heavy metal") and the rise of the
inherent progressive anti-aesthetic minimalism in bands
such as Black Sabbath, spawning separate tendencies at
once.
In reciprocation to the decay, a furious tendency toward
hardcore punk use of strumming rhythm over driving
percussion simultaneously developed alongside the melodic
and progressive intentions of the more
advanced bands of previous generations. The
counterpoint of punk -- whose violent rhythms and
anti-consonant phrasing were vanguard of
the new deconstruction of pessimism -- was the
glitter-ladencomplexity of heavy metal, complete with
classical melodies and rock virtuosity; the fusion of
these two begat speed metal, racing tempo music using
the muffled strum to form hard-edged and precision riffs
with embedded melody, emphasing _structure_ where
traditional heavy metal used shorter phrasing to
emphasize _placement_ and _tone_.
Of these rising acts Metallica (1982), sister act
Megadeth (1984), and northern cousins Exodus (1984) were
the primary disseminators of groundbreaking material.
Metallica, of special note for their use of open chords,
complex harmonics and melodic composition, began their
career in emulation of faster versions of older metal
bands. Soon acquiring musical skills and theoretical
counseling in the dual virtuoso team of Kirk Hammet (lead
guitar) and Cliff Burton (bass), Metallica grew in renown
and peaked in musical development with _Master of
Puppets_, combining the complex composition of 1970s
progressive rock bands with the thundering domination of
violent hardcore.
Burton died soon after in a tour bus accident and the band
never recovered, but soon they had spawned 1) groups of
emulators and innovators in the style of muffled-strum
epileptic-tempo speed metal and 2) other groups interested
in the possibilities of metal/hardcore fusion, so that by
1987 when they retired the metal scene had become more
extreme and more erudite almost overnight.
2.1.3.4 thrash
Before the peak of speed metal had even begun Alief, TX,
hardcore crossover band Dirty Rotten Imbeciles were busy
inventing the Sabbathified hyper-punk fusion that would
project their extreme views and emotions upon a fragile
audience.
Deliberately low-fi and abrasive, DRI's first two albums
featured an unheard of brevity (18-25 second songs) and
trenchant criticisms of modern society. This earned them
fame in both metal and hardcore scenes as they injected
needed energy into both genres.
Also of note were micro-riffing shredthrashers Corrosion
of Conformity, who blasted out several albums of curt
songs destroying social control with metaphorically
divisive structural deconstruction in a musical
inheritance from hardcore and early death metal.
Cryptic Slaughter and MDC (an acronym of varying
significances) followed with even more acerbic anthems
of distrust and anarchy; Cryptic Slaughter are
especially interesting for their basic death metal on
the latter side of 1985's _Convicted_.
Despite innovation in both genres, speed metal was
destined to collide with corporate megaculture and
thrash was to burn out its intensity as audiences
moved away from the extreme to the more commercial in both
hardcore and metal genres.
The fomenting anger of the metal scene, as well as the
increasing destruction of the planet and world
superpower fascism, prompted retaliation with the
negation of speed metal's "heavy metal" vocabulary of
consonance through the most nihilistic form of musical
expression to date: DEATH METAL.
2.1.3.5 death metal
When society seemed even more hopelessly fallen into
acceptance and worship of its own collapse, the
conventional tonality and "save the world" messages of
speed metal and its ancestor, heavy metal, became too
trite and ridiculous for the newest generations of
alienated youth.
Discarding harmony and nihilistically embracing the
chromatic scale as law, early death metal bands espoused
beliefs in the evil and orderless, the chaotic and the
painful. Their rhythmic violence and insistence upon
wildly-constructed and atonal guitar solos made them an
instant target of both critique and shameless ripoff.
The first wave of this technique, from Slayer (1982),
had its roots in the old-style metal of Judas Priest
evolved to become faster, ripping-strum styled
metal that shifted with muscle over rigid, ambient
repetitive beats.
However the second wave -- Possessed (1985), Morbid Angel
(1986), Deathstrike (1985), Rigor Mortis (1988) -- were
more obscurely and bizarrely formed from raw innovation
and chromatic scales. (It is worthy to note that Slayer's
"Reign in Blood," of 1987, is an impressive musical
definition of death metal that is often overlooked for its
lack of "growly" vocals.)
As the decade waned and humanity seemed further flung
into the pit of materialism, death metal reached toward
the progressive and explored the extremes of melody (At
the Gates), ambience (Obituary), percussion
(Suffocation), atonality (Deicide), and microtonal music
(Atheist). Simultaneously however the bulk of death metal
shifted toward a more percussive and chromatic style,
composing their material visually from power chord forms
along the bottom three strings of the guitar.
By 1992 the peak had been reached, and afterwards
soundalikeness pervaded all but the most
individually-conceived bands. The overuse of death
metal's nihilistic inventions -- chromatic open phrasing
and chaotic soloing -- had made that genre, like hardcore
punk a decade before, the anti-commercial musical
breakdown that in the end made it easier for ripoffs to
dress up rock n roll in new production values to create a
new product flow to meet a genre-identified need.
In addition, a horrible trendy underground had developed
around the idea of righteousness and moral good;
consequently, they bankrupted death metal's ideals by
conforming to mainstream expectations, and their music led
itself back toward the dogmatic, tendentious, and most of
all judgmental system of scales and harmonies.
Back into the blues, there was suddenly a clear peak --
significance and value -- arbitrarily imposed by scale
structures that truncated the value of the music and made
its ability for chaos limited to aesthetics only. A
fatalism had invaded metal, once again; that which plays
with the aesthetic of power must serve its time in the
hell of that paradox.
2.1.3.6 black metal(2)
As if to rectify this stagnation another form of metal
arising through the same channels of heritage began to
spread its wings and develop its raw essence --
ambience, melody, and stark nihilistic structuralism -- as
it came closer to underground consciousness. The first of
these bands were Hellhammer (1984) and Bathory (1985),
with the former playing slower sensually rhythmic
material while the latter banged out mutating riffs over
strict simplistic ambient drum-machine percussion.
Where death metal went for logical appeals black metal
presupposed the end of the world and celebrated
decadence, destruction, agony and morbid emotion as a
means of exploiting the social climate to its own
revelation. The melodramatic, overstaged and ludicrous
"evil" presence of these figures drew attention to their
mythological interpretation of the coming -- or perhaps
ongoing -- apocalypse.
2.1.3.7 grindcore
An important genetic component of death metal, grindcore
arose from the ashes of hardcore and thrash as the
alienated punk-rockers and sociopathic metalheads of the
world sought something more extreme, more evocative of the
discompatibility they felt as a process of soul.
With the rise of Napalm Death (1985) and Carcass (1987) in
England the genre was well-founded as an
alternatingly slower or faster version of punk, with bar
chords colliding at high speed outside of the blasting
furnace of rhythm. Deliberately dissynchronized timing,
detuned instruments and guttural distorted howls of vocal
brought this genre to the attention of death metal heads
who appropriated vocal and tuning habits, and to
the innovative mind of Napalm Death-founder Justin
Broadrick who made "industrial grindcore" with 1988's
_Streetcleaner_ and immediately created a detour
for angry metalheads and industrialites and punkers to
make crossover music that was as unfriendly as
industrial sounds like it should be.
In 1994, Napalm Death's "Fear, Emptiness, Despair"
sounded almost the last note for grindcore as its course
of innovation started to veer from the minimalistic to
abrasively coarse and simple, death metal-like music with
complex jazz-y rhythms.
Grindcore, like hardcore, thrash, speed metal and early
forms of death metal, continues to this day, but most
innovation remains at the aesthetic level and the
original thrust has been lost.
2.1.3.8 ambient metal
2.1.3.8.1 question of existence
The question with ambient metal whether it is a
style or a subgenre rests in the conclusion to the
query: does the music employ a new form of composition?
Technique is not entirely new, but in new places,
and the new way of writing music is so desolate and
empty yet beautiful for that same ultimate potential
that one is inspired to say: yes, it is a
differentiation of the form of art.
2.1.3.8.2 members of genre
There is overlap with other genres but suggested
acts to check out are: Gorguts, Burzum, Graveland,
Immortal, Demilich, Slayer, Behemoth, Hellhammer,
Darkthrone and Cadaver for an understanding of how
this tradition manifests itself in metal.
2.1.3.8.3 related genres
Electroacoustic/Noise - K.K. Null, Tangerine Dream
Hardcore - Discharge, the Exploited, Black Flag
Prog/Psychedelic - King Crimson, Camel, 13th Floor
Elevators
Classical/Neoclassical - Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner
Jazz - Django Rheinart, Ornette Coleman
2.1.3.9 styles and crossovers
2.1.3.9.1 doom
"Doom metal" does not merit a separate genre because it
is one of two things: 1) very slow heavy metal or 2)
very slow death metal. Although its ideology is more
gothic and its aesthetic morbid, no significant changes
have been wrought from inventors Black Sabbath (1969)
and the doom work on Morbid Angel's _Blessed Are the
Sick_ 1991.
Of note: St. Vitus, Winter, Cianide, Skepticism, early
Cathedral.
2.1.3.9.2 industrial
"Industrial" as used in the record industry denotes a
reliance on electronic beat equipment and often digital
sounds. However, it does not govern the music
underneath, which is almost always rock or heavy metal
in essence.
The exception being Godflesh, whose innovation prompted
mainstream acts Ministry (1989) and Nine Inch Nails
(1991) toward their more commercial rock-industrial
terror dance music.
2.1.3.9.3 black metal (1)
"Black metal" as a term was invented by Venom, who with
simpler but more violent and "evil" melodramatic
versions of the heavy metal radio hits they heard,
crafted an image which would be filled in the next
generation with bands like Hellhammer, Bathory, Celtic
Frost and Sepultura.
2.1.3.9.4 power metal
Heavy metal stadium rock dramatic extravagance coupled
with the bouncier, violent rhythms of speed metal and
especially speed/funk hybrids Suicidal Tendencies and
the Infectious Grooves, together with a more
testosterone attitude, makes a commercially viable
genre: power metal. The Pantera variant described
above is the main divergence from the pure hybrid,
which is often in the form of technically-powerful and
rhythmically precise heavy metal, in a style opened up
perhaps by Helstar or Psychotic Waltz or Mekong Delta
while most other bands were getting into the decon-
structed aesthetic of death metal.
2.1.3.9.5 speed/death crossover
After the appearance in 1985 of Slayer's "Hell Awaits,"
Possessed's "Seven Churches," Sepultura's "Morbid
Visions," Deathstrike's "Fuckin' Death" and the second
round of Morbid Angel demos, death metal had
established itself as the next most extreme translation
of the metal idea.
Simultaneously in Germany, a movement to combine
speed metal ideals with a more abstract and logical,
dark sequence of tones took hold in the form of bands
such as Kreator and Destruction, who put together
deathy speed metal, or intense hardcore-inspired
extremists like Sodom who built three-chord high-speed
songs to accustom an audience to enjoying a fast and
violent melody.
2.1.4 Research List
The following lists present a perpetually incomplete listing
of important metal, added as we become aware of it.
Suggestions always welcome, but it's only fair to warn you
that our mailer filters from our secret list, "The Most Banal
Pointless Metal Music To Outsell Everything Else By Year."
2.1.4.1 historically important albums
Heavy metal
Black Sabbath - Vol. IV
Judas Priest - Sad Wings of Destiny
Iron Maiden - Piece of Mind
Angel Witch - Angel Witch
Heavy metal/punk hybrid
Motorhead - Orgasmatron
Speed Metal
Metallica - Ride the Lightning, Master of Puppets
Megadeth - Rust in Peace, Peace Sells...But Who's
Buying?
Exodus - Bonded by Blood
Prong - Beg to Differ
Nuclear Assault - Game Over/The Plague
Thrash
Dirty Rotten Imbeciles - Dirty Rotten LP/CD, Dealing
With It
Cryptic Slaughter - Money Talks, Convicted
Corrosion of Conformity - Eye for an Eye
Suicidal Tendencies - Suicidal Tendencies
Fearless Iranians From Hell - Foolish Americans
dead horse - HORSECORE: An Unrelated Story That's
Time Consuming
Death Metal
Slayer - Hell Awaits, Reign in Blood
Possessed - Seven Churches
Master - Master, Deathstrike
Morbid Angel - Altars of Madness, Blessed Are the
Sick, Covenant
Suffocation - Effigy of the Forgotten
Cryptic Slaughter - Convicted
Sepultura - Morbid Visions/Bestial Devastation
Necrovore - Divus de Mortuus
Massacra - Final Holocaust
Black Metal
Hellhammer - Apocalyptic Raids
Bathory - The Return
Sarcofago - I.N.R.I. (spec "The Black Vomit")
Mayhem - De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas
Burzum - Feeble Screams, Det Som Engang Var
Immortal - Diabolical Full Moon Mysticism, Pure
Holocaust
Darkthrone - Under a Funeral Moon
Varathron - His Majesty in the Swamp
Gorgoroth - Pentagram, AntiChrist
Havohej - Dethrone the Son of God
Impaled Nazarene - Ugra-Karma
Sacramentum - Far Away From the Sun
Emperor - Wrath of the Tyrant (not CM version)
Summoning - Minas Morgul
Grindcore
Carcass - Symphonies of Sickness, Reek of
Putrefaction
Repulsion - Horrified
Carbonized - For the Security
Napalm Death - Scum
Blood - O Agios Pethane
2.1.4.2 essential picks
If you want to communicate the basic idea of a genre or
subgenre through a song, this list will help you
introduce these types of music to outsiders:
Heavy Metal
Black Sabbath - Paranoid
Iron Maiden - The Number of the Beast
St. Vitus - Mournful Cries
Judas Priest - Painkiller
"Doom metal"
St. Vitus - Mournful Cries (best old school)
Winter - Into Darkness (best death/doom)
Cathedral - Soul Sacrifice, Forest of Equilibrium
Speed Metal
Metallica - Master of Puppets
Prong - Beg to Differ
Testament - The New Order
Nuclear Assault - Game Over
"Speed/Death Crossover"
Rigor Mortis - Freaks
Kreator - Endless Pain, Pleasure to Kill
Destruction - Infernal Overkill, Eternal Devastation
Sepultura - Beneath the Remains
Death Metal
Morbid Angel - Blessed Are the Sick
Atheist - Unquestionable Presence
Entombed - Left Hand Path
Suffocation - Pierced From Within
Therion - Beyond Sanctorum
Death - Human
Dismember - Like an Ever-Flowing Stream...
Unleashed - Shadows in the Deep
Black Metal
Celtic Frost - To Mega Therion
Emperor - In the Nightside Eclipse
Graveland - The Celtic Winter
Burzum - Hvis Lyset Tar Oss
Mayhem - De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas
Gorgoroth's Antichrist
Varathron - His Majesty at the Swamp
Immortal - Battles in the North
Sacramentum - Finis Malorum
Emperor - Wrath of the Tyrant, Emperor
Enslaved - Frost, "Hordanes Land"
Ambient
Ildjarn - Forest Poetry
Immortal - Pure Holocaust
Burzum - Filosofem, Hlidskjalf
2.1.4.3 author's picks
Based on the personal preferences of the authors of this
FAQ and not necessarily historical value:
Heavy Metal
Black Sabbath - Sabotage
Judas Priest - Painkiller
Iron Maiden - Killers
Speed Metal
Metallica - Master of Puppets
Megadeth - Rust in Peace
Prong - Beg to Differ
Thrash
Dirty Rotten Imbeciles - Dealing With It
Cryptic Slaughter - Money Talks
Corrosion of Conforminty - Eye for An Eye
DBC - Universe
dead horse - HORSECORE: AN UNRELATED STORY THAT'S
TIME CONSUMING
Death Metal
Master - Master
Morbid Angel - Blessed Are the Sick
Suffocation - Pierced From Within
Atheist - Unquestionable Presence
Demilich - Nespithe
Amorphis - The Karelian Isthmus
Dismember - Like an Ever-Flowing Stream
Slayer - Reign In Blood
Pestilence - Spheres
Sinister - Hate
At the Gates - The Red in the Sky is Ours
Monstrosity - Imperial Doom
Sepultura - Morbid Visions/Bestial Devastation
Pestilence - Spheres
Cynic - Focus
Dismember - Like an Ever-Flowing Stream...
Unleashed - Shadows in the Deep
Therion - Beyond Sanctorum
Unanimated - In The Forest of the Dreaming Dead
Black Metal
Hellhammer - Apocalyptic Raids
Darkthrone - Under a Funeral Moon
Bathory - Blood, Fire, Death
Blasphemy - Gods of War
Immortal - Pure Holocaust
Belial - Wisdom of Darkness
Beherit - Drawing Down the Moon
Mayhem - De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas
Havohej - Dethrone the Son of God
Burzum - Det Som Engang Var, Daudi Baldrs
Gorgoroth - Pentagram
Emperor/Enslaved - Hordanes Land
Enslaved - Vikinglr Veldi
Varathron/Necromantia split
Rotting Christ - Thy Mighty Contract
Ancient - Svartlvheim
Sacramentum - Far Away From the Sun
Dissection - The Somberlain
Ambient metal
Burzum - Hvis Lyset Tar Oss/Filosofem
Immortal - Pure Holocaust
Darkthrone - Transylvanian Hunger
2.1.5 Technique
2.1.5.1 Blast Beats
Blast beats are the torrents of alternating snare and
bass which increase the speed of death metal at the
point of retribution. Some words on blast beats:
Most drummers play blast beats as bass/snare/bass/snare
etc. really fast, while hitting a hi-hat or a ride on the
bass drum. From a blast beat "purist asshole" point of
view it should be done with one foot. If your right foot
isn't fast enough then keep practicing. Double bass should
only be used when the bass is supposed to go twice as fast
as the snare. If you are just alternating bass/snare
bass/snare it should be with one foot. If you can master
it with one foot it sounds way more brutal than with
double bass (I don't know why, but it does). It's
analogous to the way alternate-picking a 'chug' riff
sounds way weaker than all-downstrokes. That's just the
way metal is.
- jma...@zoomtel.com/m_c...@geocities.com
The snare usually came down on 2 and 4 or on all the
offbeats. I've read (I can't tell, it just feels
different) Pete Sandoval sometimes blasts leading with the
bass drum, but when he does it, the snare hits twice every
beat.
It's like this:
B = Bass
S = Snare
Dave:
1 2 3 4
BBSBBBSBBBSBBBSB
Pete (I think he does this):
1 2 3 4
BSBSBSBSBSBSBSBS
im pretty sure it's like this:
1 2 3 4
S S S S S S S S
BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB
Right. Most drummers blast on the downbeat. But sometimes
it sounds like Pete Sandoval leads with the bass.
- Lord Vic, m_c...@geocities.com
2.1.5.2 Fast Strum
This technique involving whipping your pick lightly across
the bottom three strings of the guitar (mostly) for power
chord tremelo action that, with the influence of the
distortion, creates enough tremelo for an
atmospheric/melodic effect.
Fast strumming was a technique innovated first by Slayer
and then perfected by Morbid Angel and others who made a
sizzling tremelo technique out of what once was just
playing faster. After a couple generations in the genre,
the style is advanced enough that it can be used to
carefully encode polyrhythmic data within a dominant
rhythm, and is often used as foreshadowing by metal
guitarists. Some ideas for how to do it:
- use the wrist, and not the forearm
- allow sparse motion in a whipping rhythm
- dip the pick lightly against strings
- move pick in circles for single-note strumming
"Everything just kind of flows along. Sure, they used a
lot of asymmetric time signatures (5/4, 7/4 etc.) but the
note values don't vary so you can have 20 seconds of
tremelo picked quarter- and half-notes at times."
- RWTodd, rwt...@aol.com
2.1.5.3 Double Bass
Death metal percussionists often add a strict machinism to
their work with the alternating full bass hits of
oppositional kick drums, creating an undulating wall of
sound that conditions listeners to act out the diabolical
bidding of the bands and their master, Satan.
"actually louie bellson is credited with being the first
drummer to put 2 basses togetther,his solo stuff is
awesome but his stuff with big band and jazz artists is
lame. and what I mean by that is him playing by himself no
other instrument. ginger baker from cream also used dbl
bass nick mason from pink floyd uses dbl bass lots of old
psychadelic bands used it. it's been around for quite a
while"
- Steven PATRICK
2.1.5.4 Harmonics
Pitch harmonics - playing a note that is one of the
integral harmonic properties of the string - create an
eerie unfinished yet definitive sound, producing a
disturbing morbidity to their use in death metal (see
Immolation, Morbid Angel, Incantation, Gorguts).
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