Into Darkness has a lot of moments that are proto funeral doom at points though with far less melody and comparatively faster pacing but their influence can't be denied. The first Fleshcrawl album also touches on quite a bit of similar ground; I've always said ot sounded like a doomier scandinavian death metal influenced take on Incantation. Demigod's Slumber of Sullen Eyes also has lots of lengthy hypnotic tremolo phrases and even though there's quite a bit of prominent lead work it cones off as eerie and alien as opposed to gaudy and excessive.
edited 30th Apr '17 9:07:51 AM by StillbornMachine
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Oh, I can definitely buy that. But it is interesting how several very different sorts of bands can wind up coming to similar conclusions from opposite ends of the post-thrash diaspora simply by taking particular sets of musical ideas to their logical extremes. It's a bit like how Stockhausen and Boulez came to free improvisation through serial and aleatoric techniques where it evolved out of collective celebratory and virtuosic impulses in jazz and a sort of primal scream mentality in experimental noise and electronic music. All of these are intertwined in complex ways—Stockhausen himself, Milton Babbit, Anthony Braxton, Borbetomagus, Ascension, and so forth—but they come out of different impulses to similar ends.
In any case, I really appreciate the recommendations.
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Oh, hey, the one-album wonders! Except their members are apparently going strong under another name? Can't remember what they're called.
...wait, no, that's Disembowelment I think. I know one of them essentially still exists.
On that note, Autopsy are honestly probably my favourite early-ish death metal band that I've heard thus far. There's a certain monotony to a lot of older acts in the genre in terms of production, tempo, timbre and drumming (god, the drumming) which kind of kills a lot of the structural dynamism in the music, and by introducing those doomy sections and touches of hardcore into the mix—quite seamlessly, seeing as they already have kind of a coarse, unpolished style—Autopsy manage to sidestep that issue quite nicely. And their drumming is actually interesting.
That said, possibly to my shame, I also like what I've heard of Cannibal Corpse, although apparently they repeat themselves a lot as their career wears on? Which sounds like a mixed blessing, seeing as their early work is great stupid fun, but I can see the diminishing returns. Suffocation are also neat, but exhausting at album length. (See also: Every good deathcore or BDM band that followed their lead.)
EDIT: Yup, Disembowelment. Apparently half of the band now constitutes Inverloch, while one of that pair plus another member constituted Trial of the Bow. Interesting.
edited 30th Apr '17 1:41:12 PM by JHM
I'll hide your name inside a word and paint your eyes with false perception.Cannibal Corpse has maintained a largely uniform standard of quality since they got Fisher with occasional peaks (Vile, The Wretched Spawn, A Skeletal Domain) and valleys (Galley of Suicide, Gore Obsessed). You know what you're getting when you grab a Cannibal album. As for Suffocation, Pierced from Within is practically flawless from start to finish thanks to far more varied and memorable songwriting; while I am a massive Suffocation fanboy, I will be the first to admit that Effigy gets a bit monotonous at times, and even if you overlook the production on Breeding the Spawn, that also has the same issue.
Pretty much every metal genre is full of bands that came to the same idea but otherwise weren't necessarily aware of or influenced by one another. If a lot of people have a similar overarching concept they want to grasp, it's inevitable they're going to take different paths to arrive there. The classic example I use is how Imprecation and Incantation both were doing grimy, blackened, doomy death metal and Imprecation were aware of Incantation. However, Imprecation's ideas are influenced moreso by earlier Finnish death metal and Profanatica-esque black metal, even what sounds like early Suffocation at points while Incantation were this chaotic whirlwind of Necrovore, Hellhammer, Autopsy, Blasphemy, Sarcofago, and other kinds of formative, frothing madness that comprised late 80's to early 90's extreme metal.
Autopsy are/were pretty great, at least for the first two albums anyways. While they're associated with caveman primitivity their sound was actually pretty eclectic for its time especially compared to Pestilence, Massacre, Morgoth, early Death, Obituary and other early bands that had just stepped out of thrash's shadow and were working with extremely basic forms of death metal before blastbeats and chug-thuggery became the norm. They helped figure out how to work doom metal back into the genre seamlessly as well as capturing a mixture of nascent death feral hunger and punkish abandon, albeit in distinctly metallic structures. Mental Funeral is a rare feat of a band managing to take then supposedly "dated" sounding NWOBHM/doom technique and inverting it for a more funereal endeavour.
Cannibal Corpse always sounded like the sloppy seconds of the classic USDM scene congealed into a single band to me.
I dig Suffocation up to 1998. It's definitely not very easy music to listen to with how much is going on in a single track but I can think of few others who could write as many tight, brain-bending, and schizophrenic tracks that encompass as much raw precision percussion-bashing as they do eerie, twisting landscapes of eldritch riffing.
Listening to Oranssi Pazuzu's Värähtelijä right now. I feel like my sensibilities are being pandered to in exactly the right way and I love it. God, progressive metal music with real teeth. It gives me life.
I'll hide your name inside a word and paint your eyes with false perception.Stillborn Continues to Not Believe in "Fun." News at 11.
I'll hide your name inside a word and paint your eyes with false perception.On a more crowd-pleasing note, Demilich's Nespithe is fucking excellent and I'm sad it's their only real LP. That said... I honestly feel like playing some of those screaming guitar motifs on equally distorted sax (cf. Painkiller) would have taken this album from "amazing" to "actual God Tier" for me. Not for the sake of a gimmick, but for the sake of variety: These guys were amazing players, but I feel like their ambition would have been even better served with a broader sonic palette. That said, it's '90s tech-death, so I'm happy with what we've got.
I'll hide your name inside a word and paint your eyes with false perception.They had a three song EP in 2006 that I don't think ever actually was released but the tracks appear on the 2014 compilation (tracks 12, 13, and 14 here
). While they're active, I don't know if they have any plans of continuing to make new music but if they, they probably would've continued in this relatively less avant-garde and more straightforward death metal direction. IIRC one of the songs is actually from the pre-Nespithe demo days.
edited 10th May '17 12:39:49 PM by StillbornMachine
Stillborn, given that you appear to have enjoyed the last Unfathomable Ruination, have you listened to the new Hideous Divinity? It's thematically rather similar, albeit far more straightforward, but it's still cut from the same mold: forward-thinking brutal death that borrows from post/dissonant black/death just enough to add a new dimension to their sound.
I was giving them a listen a few weeks back and that actually prompted me to check out some older Hour of Penance. It's not generally what I listen to but it's a great example of how to do "brutech" with distinguishable riffing and relatively easy to follow structure. Now that you do mention it I do get a bit of an Unfathomable Ruination vibe with the newest album although not as suffocating and proggy.
So, I've spent last couple of months plowing through the discographies of some of the bands you guys recommended me earlier, and want to share my impressions on that. The bands I've listened to, in alphabetical order:
Aesma Daeva, per Stillborn's suggestion. I've listened through their entire official discography, and have to say that they've started out good, and went progressively better with each installment. It was clear that at the beginning they were in experimental phase, trying out if their ideas of how they should make their sound work. I'm not the one to judge, but their debut album, Here Lies One Whose Name Was Written In Water, doesn't even sound like a heavy metal derivative. At times it felt like I was listening to Dark Wave or something. Most of The Eros Of Frigid Beauty felt like it's an embellishment of the 18+ minute long, mostly instrumental, title track, which I really enjoyed. The point when the band found their thing was The New Athens Ethos, I think. Their style became more polished, the composition of their songs became more interesting, Lori Lewis' gorgeous operatic vocals became more prominent. The next album, Dawn of the New Athens, capitalized on that.
Amorphis, per Hastur's suggestion, listened through two of their albums of the Jousten-era: Eclipse and Circle. Compared to Aesma Daeva, their songs are infinitely merrier, mood-wise, and catchier, for a lack of better word (that goddamn hook from "Stone Woman" is still stuck in my head). But the composition of their songs is a bit formulaic and simplistic. On the other hand, I liked the harsh/clean male vocals contrast in their songs and was a bit surprised that Tomi Jousten does both types.
Cult of Luna, per JHM's suggestion. Listened through the Somewhere Along the Highway album. Enjoyed their slow tempo, 8-9 minutes songs, and the depressingly ethereal mood they create. Harsh vocals were a bit off-putting initially, but I grew accustomed to them.
Kayo Dot, also per JHM's suggestion. Got my hands on two of their albums, Choirs of the Eye and Hubardo. After listening through the former I'm a bit reluctant to try out the latter, as they're a bit too experimental for my taste. It felt like some sort of ambient music with heavy guitar sound and harsh vocals thrown in, and I had trouble of getting into it. I assume one must be in a specific mood to enjoy their songs, but I haven't figured out what kind of mood that is.
Primordial, per Hastur's suggestion. Listened through their To the Nameless Dead album. Their sound is more intense than the previous bands, while keeping the melodiousness, and I really enjoyed that. Alan Averill has interesting singing technique, as he seems to switch between clean and harsh vocals as he sings.
I have a question regarding Lori Lewis. I've read that she collaborated with Therion. What can be said about their sound in general and their time with Lewis in particular?
Spiral out, keep going.Therion started out as straightforward death metal on their earliest material, started experimenting with some operatic vocals and outside genre elements, then went full-blown symphonic metal circa 1996 with Theli, which had some thrashy riffs and harsh vocals but was mostly more melodic traditional metal with choirs and keyboards. Subsequent albums dropped the death and thrash bits completely and went more towards metallic hard rock with live orchestra, still mostly with choirs and operatic vocals but using metal singers on some songs. The albums Gothic Kabbalah and Sitra Ahra brought in some prog elements (the latter also bringing back harsh vocals and blast beats on one song) but otherwise were mostly similar to their other symphonic metal albums. Their most recent studio album, Les Fleurs du Mal, is a cover album of old French pop songs, which was pretty divisive among fans for obvious reasons. Apparently they're now working on a massive rock opera. Lori Lewis joined around 2006-07 IIRC (Gothic Kabbalah era), though their sound had pretty firmly cemented itself by then. If you liked Aesma Daeva, probably give them a listen. Vovin is their most popular album, though my starting point with them was the Lemuria/Sirius B double album. If you want material with Lori on it specifically, I suggest either Sitra Ahra or Live Gothic, though Snowy Shaw's vocal acrobatics on the latter are a bit overboard.
Somehow you know that the time is right.I dig Therion's Beyond Sanctorum a bunch which is one of the weirder, large scale death metal albums of its time; not a lot of bands in the genre can write songs in the double digit length and even less can implement symphonic elements (occasionally) without coming off as pointlessly tacked on.
edited 15th May '17 8:34:53 AM by StillbornMachine
Later Kayo Dot albums have fewer harsh vocals, although the music runs the gamut in a number of other areas. They are indeed very experimental and definitely best enjoyed in a certain sort of contemplative mood, but I find them quite rewarding when experienced in that frame of mind. Their latest two, Coffins on Io and Plastic House on the Base of the Sky, aren't really metal at all so much as synth-driven heavy progressive rock records, but they put the rest of the band's work in perspective really well, and have this kind of nocturnal phosphorescence to them that I find really engaging even when the chord progressions are inscrutably odd.
If you enjoyed Cult of Luna, it might be worth checking out The Slow Death's II and Ark as well as Isis' post-Panopticon discography, particularly Wavering Radiant. Both bands feature harsh vocals of different varieties—The Slow Death are old-school Aussie funeral doom of the first water, and Isis started out as a really odd industrial-tinged sludge band before going all post-rocky—but the actual music strikes me as something you'd really cotton to, and the clean vocal work on each will probably be to your liking.
I'll hide your name inside a word and paint your eyes with false perception.Yesterday I learned, to my surprise, that it is 90% certain that Mikko Aspa has been the vocalist of Deathspell Omega since 2002. To whit, he drums for Fleshpress and is literally the only member of Stabat Mater.
How did I not know this?
Seriously, I'm probably deeper into noise and industrial music than anyone who posts regularly on this forum, and while I've been hesitant to dive into Aspa's discography due to how uncomfortable his imagery and persona can be, I've always maintained a kind of distant respect for his work and his dedication to it. Yet somehow I had no idea that he had this entire second career of notoriety within extreme metal, let alone that he had been a key member of one of the biggest bands in black metal for about fifteen years.
I'll hide your name inside a word and paint your eyes with false perception.I've just been quietly in shock about *not* knowing this for the past few days. I'm usually pretty well-informed about these things.
I'll hide your name inside a word and paint your eyes with false perception.Finally got to cross Angelcorpse off on my live bucket list, and holy shit, for a band that only has a few shows left before they call it quits again, they brought it and also had one of the wildest crowds that I've seen in a while. Kerasphorus is apparently looking to play out more, however, so that will still kinda scratch that itch a little bit. Also, Pete is wicked short haha.

Portal's approach is fundamentally different though; the atmosphere they create is made in a much more refined and elaborate take on death metal that is at heart very different from a bunch of feral musicians fucking around with the raw barely pieced together fragments of rudimentary black metal. Hell, there's not really even much death metal in Blasphemy that isn't just grindcore a la Carcass made uglier and Beherit has even less or outright none of death metal's rigidity and riff architecture. By comparison, Portal down to their band imagery is extremely deliberate and they forgo a lot of death metal's carnage for more ambient, noisy, meditative textures that if anything are closer to black metal than they are death. We might say they were important for the so called caverncore movement in the same way Demoncy, Grave Miasma, and Incantation were. Like I was trying to get at earlier, Portal's kind of experimentation is later stage avant-garde that relies on breaking down established tropes rather than a near incidental outburst of wild energy for a then nascent one.
I don't know any cult Australian extreme metal bands that aren't aware of war metal. After all, Australia has had Bestial Warlust, Abominator, Martire, Slaughter Lord, and Sadistik Exekution so it's basically a part of their history.
Incantation, Imprecation, Infester, Decrepit (USA), Morpheus Descends, and a bunch of others I can't bring up on my phone currently were doing grimy blackened doomy death metal for a while before Portal came around. While they aren't as "weird" as them Portal work with a lot of ideas that were initially heard in this kind of dingy, primal US death metal simply taken to an ambient extreme.
edited 30th Apr '17 11:37:13 AM by StillbornMachine