Archive-name: heavy-metal/metal-as-concept-1
Posting-frequency: semimonthly Last-Modified: 16-Mar-2006 See reader questions & answers on this topic! - Help others by sharing your knowledge ------- Part II :: Metal as concept ------- 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. - jmartin@zoomtel.com/m_c_vic@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_vic@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, rwtodd@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). ================================================================ (c) Copyright 1994-2006 Hessian Studies Center @ www.hessian.org User Contributions:
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