Brutal death metal is a 50/50 proposition for me most of the time. There are several bands in death metal’s nastiest of branches (Wormed, Devourment, Disentomb, Aborted, and Defeated Sanity, for example) that push the boundaries of what the most authoritative sounds in death metal can and should be. However,…
Tech death is a weird branch of the metal tree. Focused primarily on performative fireworks as opposed to standard songwriting structures, the music can at times come across as highly robotic. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but for me as a listener there’s only so many insane guitar passages…
Music has a lot to do with willpower. That first album might roll off your tongue but carving the rest of the path forward, towards being a musician for an extended period of time, that’s harder. To borrow a turn of phrase from writing, it’s the music you make when…
You may be shocked to learn that this episode being late isn’t actually my fault. Anyway, regular co-host Cody joins me this week to discuss literally nothing. Memes are real: Weezer covered Toto’s “Africa”. New stuff from Chthe’ilist, Defeated Sanity, Obscura and Hoth. Then we do a cool people section on Cody starting to play bass (plus some useless tips for me about learning bass), Hereditary, Hollow Knight, God of War (extended spoilery discussion) and Ocean’s 8. Enjoy!
Ever heard of Scholomance? Their tenure lasted between 1995 and 2003, and they were way ahead of their time. Helmed by keyboard player extraordinaire Jimmy Pitts (Eternity’s End, Equipoise, NYN), their brand of progressive death metal was fantastic. Unfortunately, they broke up, but that never stopped Jimmy. He’s been working with a host of talented musicians, including Hannes Grossmann and Danny Tunker of Alkaloid, Carl August Tidemann (ex-Arcturus), Tom “Fountainhead” Geldschläger (Defeated Sanity, ex-Obscura), Ron Jarzombek (Watchtower, Blotted Science), Vishal J Singh (Amogh Symphony), Phil Tougas (First Fragment), Jerry Twyford (Scholomance, Pitts Minnemann Project) and more! Does that line-up make you dizzy? If so, check out the song below the jump, and contribute to their crowd-funder here! Be quick, as there’s only a few days left!
Sometimes you just need a straight banger to get through the day. Sure, Portal’s winding, insanity-inducing escapades are valuable and enjoyable in their own way, but it’s not necessarily music to punch a hole in the wall to. Thankfully, Pestilent Reign is here to bring us all the neck-snapping, gut-churning…
Hello and welcome once more to Death’s Door. You know the drill. The month of August was an absolute monster in the world of metal, but especially so in death metal. Good lord of darkness, just LOOK at the amount of music being covered this month! We’ve thrown guidelines out…
In case the title wasn’t clue enough, this week we have Max Phelps of Exist, Defeated Sanity and Death to All (also ex-Cynic) as our guest! We discuss his creative process, touring with Gorguts, and of course, the upcoming Exist album So True, So Bound, which comes out this week! We also discuss new music from Origin, Bloodshot Dawn, Rings of Saturn, Vintersorg and more! We also discuss Fredrik Thordendal’s hiatus(?) from Meshuggah and Per Nilsson of Scar Symmetry replacing him. Finally, we talk about how Spotify artist payments have been decreasing despite their financial growth. Enjoy!
Brutal death metal has the rare benefit of being exactly what it sounds like. The differences one would expect between “regular death metal” and “brutal death metal” are manifold and, by and large, pretty predictable: guitars are more downtuned; riffs are chunkier and more visceral; vocals are far deeper and even less intelligible; the whole nine yards. As far as subgenres go, it doesn’t exactly shake up its progenitor’s foundations by a relatively large amount, choosing instead to just take everything that makes death metal an already pretty brutal genre and crank that bad boy up to 11. To the surprise of absolutely nobody, the ensuing auditory carnage is not for the faint of heart, but it is for anybody that feels like extreme metal just isn’t extreme enough yet. If you’ve ever felt that way—the grooves could be groovier, the riffs could be riffier, the blasts could be blastier, the gutturals could be gutturalier—then brutal death metal is the answer to all your prayers. So without further ado, let’s dive in to what our staff considers to the be the Best Of – Brutal Death Metal!
For those who missed our last installment, We post biweekly updates covering what the staff at Heavy Blog have been spinning. Given the amount of time we spend on the site telling you about music that does not fall neatly into the confines of conventional “metal,” it should come as no surprise that many of us on staff have pretty eclectic tastes that range far outside of metal and heavy things. We can’t post about all of them at length here, but we can at least let you know what we’re actually listening to. For those that would like to participate as well (and please do) can drop a 3X3 in the comments, which can be made with tapmusic.net through your last.fm account, or create it manually with topsters.net. Also, consider these posts open threads to talk about pretty much anything music-related. We love hearing all of your thoughts on this stuff and love being able to nerd out along with all of you.
