Death Metal Underground Newsletter 1/27-2/3
Death Metal Underground
Newsletter
1/27-2/3
Because Metal Is Art
Metallica brings metal and classical closer together
For their performance at the Grammy awards, Metallica paired up with Chinese pianist Lang Lang for a performance of their dramatic protest song “One” originally from …And Justice for All.
According to VH1, the bond was formed in just 45 minutes of practice time the day before the performance. As you can see below, the result was smoothly integrated despite this lack of extensive practice.
http://www.deathmetal.org/
An At the Gates career retrospective
At the Gates have announced their reformation as part of the 2013-inspired wave that saw Gorguts and Carcass return. Unlike the 2009-wave of returning bands, like Asphyx and Beherit, this retro-underground-revival has featured classic bands “modernizing” their sound. It also generally exhibits bands who had already cast aside their metal roots for musical reasons. Where the previous wave was more a sense of bands returning to pick up where they left off, the new wave seems to be about bands participating in the new metal scene and trying to siphon off some of that interest, newsworthiness and cash flow.
http://www.deathmetal.org/
“Metal and Marginalisation: Gender, Race, Class and Other Implications for Hard Rock and Metal Symposium” opens registration
On April 11th, in York, UK, a new conference will attempt to tackle the heady subject of “Metal and Marginalisation: Gender, Race, Class and Other Implications for Hard Rock and Metal.” Sponsored by the Centre for Women’s Studies at the University of York, the conference aims to explore these traditional academic concepts in the context of the newer forms of metal.
http://www.deathmetal.org/
A quick introduction to the Puerto Rican black metal scene
We offer reviews of Puerto Rican bands in preparation of the upcoming black metal conference.
http://www.deathmetal.org/
Demilich – 20th Adversary of Emptiness
When too many utterly mindless and pandering bands pile up in the review queue, even life seems washed out and hopeless. At that point, even death metal has lost its power and mystique. When that happens, I throw on Demilich Nespithe and my faith in the genre is restored. This album presents such a creative and yet meaningful interpretation of death metal that it restores faith in a lot more than the genre.
http://www.deathmetal.org/
Happy 50th birthday, Jeff Hanneman
Today, Jeff Hanneman would have been fifty years old. The man who helped invent the sound that underlies all of underground death metal did not, as the people around him in the LA suburbs tend to do, waste his life away in repetition. Instead, he forged his own path and we celebrate him for it and the results of it.
http://www.deathmetal.org/
Massacre announces Back From Beyond release on April 1, 2014
Crushing Tampa, FL football death metal band Massacre announce today their release of Back From Beyond, a new full-length album for 2014.
http://www.deathmetal.org/
When Bassnectar was a metalhead
Metal is not a job and will never pay the bills. Hence many metal musicians move on to other careers. Sometimes this includes other forms of music. Such is the case of Lorin Ashton, a/k/a Bassnectar, who previously was in a black/doom metal band called Pale Existence.
Correctly intuiting that metal would not pay the bills, and being from the already-undernoticed San Jose scene which got obscured by the greater prominence of nearby San Francisco, Ashton migrated from underground metal to playing multiple DJ sets a day in an effort to develop his hybrid style.
http://www.deathmetal.org/
Khand – The Fires of Celestial Ardour released on tape
The crossover between metal and keyboard music is vast and well-documented to the point that the well-dressed death metal site simply ignores instrumentation and picks the keyboard bands that sound as evil and nihilistic as death metal. Whether that’s works by Neptune Towers, Beherit, Jaaportit, Goatcraft, Burzum or Danzig, evil metal has crossed over to occult keyboards.
Another entry into this world is Khand, made by lifelong metalhead and now synthesizer jockey Arillius.
http://www.deathmetal.org/
Pentagram (CL) – The Malefice
Imagine you’ve returned to those magic years between 1985 and 1987. Thrash exploded, followed by speed metal and then the nascent proto-death/black bands are emerging. Almost everything is tinged with Metallica since they are looking like the first band of this ilk to make it out of the underground and into mainstream record stores.
Pentagram (CL) comes to us from those formative years but with two different versions of that time. The first is the second disc in the set, which re-records seven classic tracks using modern production and instrumental know-how. The second is the “first” disc in this set, which is thirteen new songs. While both derive from the fertile era of the middle 1980s, they each take different approaches, with the first disc actually showing more of what this band can do.
http://www.deathmetal.org/
Interview: Brian Kirkmeyer who teaches “Metal on Metal: Engineering and Globalization in Heavy Metal Music”
For some time we have delved into academia and its treatment of heavy metal. Today however we take another course, which is to look at the technology of heavy metal and its implications for both society and technology.
Aiding us in this quest is Dr. Brian Kirkmeyer, who teaches “Metal on Metal: Engineering and Globalization in Heavy Metal Music” at Miami University in Oxford, OH. He was good enough to gift us with some of this time explaining the class and his approach to the study of heavy metal.
http://www.deathmetal.org/
Headhunter D.C. – …In Unholy Mourning…
At a time when most crosshairs were aimed at Tampa, FL or Sweden as being “death metal capitals” some of us trained our sights further afield to places like Canada and Brazil which to their credit were home to a great number of pioneering bands. Headhunter D.C. are one such band who built a fanbase in their homeland of Brazil but are generally not known outside South America.
http://www.deathmetal.org/
Speed metal: the choice of royals
Many of those who are involved with music have spoken praise for the 1980s speed metal explosion, which offered a form of music with both intensity and integrity. Until the great wave of commercialization, it simply refused to join the social impulse to all get along and behave like everyone else.
But a recent interview with Dominic West, who accompanied the UK’s Prince Harry to the North Pole, confirms that speed metal may have more going for it than simply being aloof to the great herding instinct. It is the music not only of Royals, but of soldiers...
http://www.deathmetal.org/
Alex Hellid creates contest to re-mix Entombed
Alex Hellid of Entombed is offering a contest which puts a challenge to his listeners: make something of Entombed, and possibly win free stuff.
http://www.deathmetal.org/
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Subvert the dominant paradigm, don't be a solipsist.