Another thing I glossed over was that after Euronymous, we saw the rise of triggered drums, which enabled drummers to play even faster. Some embraced it, like Hellhammer, some hated it, like my former bandmate (He was trying to beat Hellhammer’s world record in blastbeating with double bass-drums and no triggering, so I guess that has something to do with it).
First, there’s a bunch of distinct types of vocals. The most prominent is known as CMVs: cookie monster vocals. Hopefully that’s self-explanatory. Then we’ve got high pitched demons, low pitched demons, demon frog, demon pig, demon goat, etc. But CMVs are the basic death metal vocal technique.
So go all the way back to, oh, the early 1970s. Janis Joplin was wailing her fucking her heart out. Iggy Stooge was screaming into the mic for a few years at that point. Lots of rock music featured various screams, wails, shrieks and general cries of agony, anger and/or ecstasy. Punk rock came along and since many of it’s practitioners were possessed of an arguable abundance of natural talents, screaming and shouting (tunefully) became even more of a thing within that genre. Rap came along at the same time and helped remove the necessity of being able to carry a melody for someone that wanted to be a star.
Meanwhile, heavy metal loved the raspy, brutish sound of a whiskey-soaked brawler-type voice. AC/DC alone would have been enough to show that this kind of voice could totally fucking rock, but I think Lemmy’s voice sealed the deal. So soon we had people adding MORE bite, more growl, more grit to their vocals. Eventually, someone figured out that shouting louder and louder was gonna hurt eventually, so they started experimenting with how to get that kind of voice without it coming naturally: they growled or shrieked.
In time, this just evolved (or de-volved) into the CMVs that we know today.
I know that they can be hard to deal with; let me tell you how I approached it.
First, I like shouted vocals. I like old blues songs where there’s call and response stuff and I like when a singer’s passion overwhelms them and they let loose and overdrive the mic and sound console a little bit. I like gang choruses. I like the shouting in punk rock.
But I also like other, affected vocals. I like it when Ministry sings thru a small bullhorn (or Butthole Surfers, etc.). I like it when they record the vocals as played thru a shitty old radio. I love when there’s tons of reverb and delay and it all runs together into a mush. One of my favorite songs is Steve Reich’s Come Out.
And I don’t need to understand the words to enjoy a song. I can listen to songs in other languages and enjoy the hell out of them even tho I have no idea what the lyrics are about. And even some songs sung in English are so over-wrought that it can be hard to understand what Mariah Carey or Whitney Houston or whoever is actually singing.
That last bit is really key: I don’t need to understand the words being sung as long as I enjoy the vocal performance and how it fits within the song.
So the thing I most had to overcome was just the repulsion and weirdness of it. Shouting is something that most of us can do. It happens naturally when we try and speak very loudly. But CMVs are so deliberate, I wasn’t sure how to take them. FFS, it actually sounded like the godddamned Cookie Monster was trying to sing on some of the old stuff! It was ridiculous! How could I take it seriously when a muppet was providing vocals about death and dismemberment?
So it occurred to me to look at where they really first took hold: black metal. Black metal is huge on theatrics. It’s the only surviving genre of metal that still uses makeup regularly; heck it even has it’s own name: corpsepaint. The studded leather is still a huge part of the ‘look’ of black metal. And the CMVs are their way of bringing some theatrics to the music, IMO. The whole point of black metal is to out-Satanic or out-despair everything that ever came before, and one way to do this is to stop having people sing about demons and just let the demons sing the songs themselves.
I started to listen to them as tho the singer were playing the part of a demon, and they suddenly made lots more sense to me artistically. I wouldn’t argue that’s the case in their minds, you understand, but as a way for me to make sense of what was happening on an artistic level, as a stylistic choice and not just acceding to their limitations, it helped me get over the hump to where I could appreciate it for what it brought to the music and for the individual performances themselves to know that singing the lyrics is also about performing as the singer of the lyrics.
Now, after decades of listening to it, it not only seems normal to me, I’m disappointed in vocalists who have no growl in their voice. I’m not alone in my tastes; there’s a terrific website called No Clean Singing. They’re one of my regular places to read about and hear new metal.
So now let me mention that link at the top of this post.
I hear Ne Obliviscaris as a grand theatrical band. I hear a man singing and a demon who is also narrating and interacting with the man; they are point & counterpoint to the musical vignette being presented. One is as important as the other in their music.
So hopefully that makes sense. Maybe it’ll help you to intellectualize it like it helped me get over that last little hump from “this is ridiculous” to “ohhhh I see what they’re doing now”.
[/shrug]
Let’s try something a little less-CMV and more whiskey-soaked bellow, but with clean singing providing a contrast for both musical and lyrical purposes. This band is, to be fair, one of the leading progressive death metal bands. They are my go-to whenever I need to convince someone that death metal isn’t just and just isn’t what they think it is (I play them the Damnation album, in case anyone is wondering). Check out Opeth - Master’s Apprentices. I found a video with lyrics so you can see more easily why two different voices are used in this particular song.
And I only do that to remind you that CMVs, etc. are all deliberate stylistic choices, made in furtherance of the goal to make a particular kind of music. I can’t understand opera singers, but I can appreciate their talent. I can’t understand Japanese, but I love to listen to Bo Ningen (awesome Japanese psych-rock/jazz band that is somehow based in the UK). And I can’t understand lots of metal vocals, but I still rock the fuck out to the music anyway (and now actively like the harsh vocals, too; grindcore ftw!).
Florida deathmetal was mentioned earlier - there can’t be mention of it without referencing Morbid Angel, formed in 1983, who gained a loyal following, recording tape demos and trading with everyone.
And the Florida deathmetal scene in general - in the 80’s it was a truly burgeoning scene, with Scott Burns’ Morrisound Studios as the recording epicentre for many great DM bands.
(Someone correct me if I wrong, but I don’t think MA actually ever recorded with Scott - but he seemed to do everyone else)
If you think you’re ready, Morbid Angel’s 1989 Altars of Madness is widely considered to be one of the seminal deathmetal albums.
Another crucial deathmetal album from this scene was Terrorizer’s World Downfall LP. ('89)
I used them when I was playing. The trigger pads can be adjusted for variance in attack (how hard the pedal is struck). I could program my Alessis D-5 for a light attack, which means you can lightly strike the pedal and you’ll hear a good, loud kick sound though the PA. This was necessary if I was to achieve double kick beats at roughly 150 - 175 bpm (beats per minute).
You will find the vast majority of metal drummers using triggers.
Totally agreed. I can’t believe how many stupid arguments I used to get in with nobs who’d insist that a song can’t be appreciated properly if one can’t hear all the words. And I couldn’t care less what the lyrics are as long as there’s no sexism, homophobia, or racism, even if the vocals are incoherently growled - if I simply know of such questionable lyrics, (without ever being able to actually discern what they’re saying), I’ll still take issue with that.
NAF - heh, if you think you’re ready for grindcore at some point…
They are still playing physically, it’s just that a recorded sample is being triggered by the hit instead of producing an acoustic sound into a microphone. That means the drummer can play faster because of less physical exertion. It also means less variation in the sound, which can work for some genres like industrial metal, but not with others like thrash.
I am going to come back to Morbid Angel. I gave “Alters of Madness” a shot last week and found it, well I didn’t not like it but I absolutely didn’t get it. And I can’t just keep saying that everything I don’t connect with its because it’s less good than Slayer. They are doing a different thing and I need to wrap my head around it enough to at least, if I still decide I don’t like it, have a better explanation than that. So I will absolutely come back, but that is the album that made me decide I needed a break from trying to figure out extreme metal. Too much too fast maybe.
Ok thanks for that explanation guys, that gives me helpful context. I’m going to put drum triggers into the same mental category as something like a delay or chorus effect on guitar. Just a tool to give you a sound that would otherwise be more or less physically impossible, but still a tool that needs to be used thoughtfully. I just didn’t know this existed.
Well that makes a nice segue to Snowboarder Bo’s post:
First, I like that song. The vocals, are still a bit much for me, but not in an impossible way, just in a “need a second to adjust to this” sort of way. And I see what you mean about the deliberateness of the choice to sing clean or not. And your post did make me realize that some of this is me lacking context still. Because the thing is, I DON’T need good vocals, and in fact actively tend to prefer “bad” singers. Heck, cookie monsterness doesn’t’ even necessarily bug me. I like TomWaits, a lot.
I also dig weird. Idiot Flesh, Mr. Bungle, Primus. No problems.
So why did Hammer Smashed Face send me over the edge into “I just can’t even?” Some of it is clearly them being totally unintelligible. That’s something I am going to have to just adjust to. I’m used to vocals being very very important or non existent, this particular use of vocals is confusing on a gut reactions level. I think also maybe it is a bit of too much too fast. Too many things that are still new together too quickly? Blast beats, crazy vocals, musical idioms that are unfamiliar all together is too much. S.O.D. and Slayer work because there is a level of familiarity I can hook into with punk and even hip hop. NWOBHM works because it’s still guitar, drum and bass doing guitar drum and bass things that I’m used to. Death sort of works on that same level. But the real Death Metal stuff gets rid of most of what I find familiar on purpose and focuses on the stuff that is strange.
Interestingly the choice for Cannibal Corpse to sing like that makes more sense to me than for Ne Obliviscaris to use it, but maybe it’s time I go back and give that one another listen too, because honestly the Opeth track probably would not have made sense to me then either at that point. It still almost doesn’t but it kind of does. But Opeth’s music is something I can hook onto even when the vocals are surprising. I watched the video (lyrics helped, thanks for that) a couple of times and then found them performing the same song live (sometimes live performance helps too). They seem like cool dudes. Great musicians.
But back to things making more sense now than 3 weeks ago. I tried listening to Mastodon when it was first suggested back at the start of the thread and it made no sense to me. But I listened to The Leviathan 3 times in a row yesterday. Mastodon is a good band guys. Do people know this? People probably know this. Oh, they won a ton of awards and topped multiple best lists? Yeah, people know. They seemed like a logical progression for the Doom metal thing I was doing and…they were! Kinda, Doomy/Thrashy/Proggy. I liked it very much. Also, some of the stuff is becoming less alien, so time and listening to less extreme than Cannibal Corpse but more extreme than…Metallica? is probably where I should head.
I keep seeing Animals as Leaders, Killswitch Engage and Lamb of God on similar lists as the ones Mastodon are on, Opeth too, so I have some modern stuff to check out. But I do want to crack this Death metal thing. Oh, I also listened to Gojira “From Mars to Sirius” that was pretty cool. Not as good as Mastodon though, man I really liked that album.
It’s still crazy to me that there is this GIANT world of music that I more or less had no idea existed. From what I can tell this is a good time for new metal too.
Here is what is on my list of stuff I plan to listen to but have not yet listened to now (skipping past Helloween and the Doom Metal stuff I found which all seems self explanatory): I am not totally sure where I got all these from:
Death metal/Grindcore?
Sepultura - Chaos AD (Mahaloth already turned me onto Roots, which I did like,though again with the vocals)
Hatebreed - Satisfaction is the Death of Desire
Napalm Death - Fear Emptiness Despair
Pig Destroyer - Terrifyer
Cannibal Corpse - The Bleeding and Torture
Gorguts - From Wisdom to Hate
Nile - Those Whom the Gods Detest
At the Gates - Slaughter of the Soul
Hate Eternal - I Monarch
Entombed - Left Hand Path
Carcass - Heart Work
Autopsy - Mental Funeral
Black Metal:
Mayhem - A Grand Declaration of War
Satyricon - Dark Medieval Times
Khold - Hundre Ar Gammal
Gorgoroth - Pentagram
Summoning - Stronghold
Tiamat - The Astral Sleep
Other?:
Barroness: Yellow & Green
Mastodon: Once More Round the Sun
Opeth: It seems that their entire catalog is the general recommendation.
So, if you want to add to the list or have a place on the list you think I should go first, have at it.
My favorite metal band continues to be Nevermore, with “This Godless Endeavor” my favorite album by them. But lately I’ve been listening to a lot of YOB and VHOL, and some female fronted bands like Stolen Babies, Draconian, One Eyed Doll and Chelsea Wolfe.
Ah, of course. Some guys I knew had a device that just recorded a kick there and then. They’d kick a bit until they were satisfied, then saved it and triggered it for every kick.
In one of my bands now we use an electronic one. In fact I play “drums” in another band: it’s just a pure-data sample-player patch I trigger with a silicone keyboard. Much easier for me to blast with my fingers!
For Khold, I’d check out the album Mørke Gravers Kammer. This is more down-tempo black metal, and not as “extreme” as some of the other stuff I’ve linked to.
I’d also recommend you to go back to Deathcrush at some point, now that you’ve been exposed to more stuff.
Mastodon is great. Really enjoy their shows. They warmed up for Slayer back in the day on Slayers Europe tour. Bought Leviathan and Blood Mountain straight away.
Oh I am all over that. It was an excellent recommendation! Thanks. It did make me think of NIN a lot, and I see they were kind of contemporary bit also Ministry was a little earlier. Very much up my alley.
Glad this wasn’t so harsh that it put you off. And yeah, as I mentioned, Opeth are pretty much the top of the progressive death metal pyramid. They bring in a lot of acoustic elements and facets of rock, jazz and even childhood lullabies into their music, mostly because Mickael Akerfeldt is a freaking genius but also because his bandmates are at least his match as far as technical ability; their help in bringing his ideas to our ears is actually invaluable. So I’m glad this didn’t put you off from CMVs and that you liked the song; I would definitely encourage you to listen to Opeth. They are a unique band, much like Pink Floyd was unique to rock music back in the 1970s.
Yep; that last sentence is some good insight. Just as punk rock is often misanthropic music made by misanthropes, so too is heavy metal. That whole “fuck you I won’t do what you tell me” thing looms large over the genre.
Metalheads, both fans and artists, kind of like all the things about good songs that make most other people go “well it would have been great except for ----” and just insert “yelling instead of singing” or “the really loud guitars” or “the long crazy solos in every song” or “the way the drums just felt like they were pounding me in the chest”, etc.
So yeah, there’s a lot of working with those palettes, those sounds, those images in their lyrics, etc. And yes, ultimately there are genres that are pretty much just about being misanthropic.
So why did Hammer Smashed Face cause you so much trouble, invoke so much instant repulsion? Prolly because it’s designed to do just that.
Cannibal Corpse always has been and still is today one of the most extreme metal bands around. The whole purpose of the music is to invoke feelings of rage, disgust, repulsion, anger, and squeamishness. From the unsettling drums to the skwonky guitar sounds to the guttural vocals to the album cover art to the lyrics, this is music that is supposed to cause that gut-level, instinctual turning away.
I’ll level with everyone: I didn’t even bother trying to listen to this band for the first 17 or 18 years they were around. They were just too much. I couldn’t make sense of the vocals, not even after I was listening to CMVs regularly. Their songs seemed half-assed, like bad attempts to play Slayer but with poorly constructed lyrics that read like something a 14 year old would write.
Then Kill came out and I picked up a copy for less than $10. And it worked. Good songs; the vocals were excellent. Harsh, guttural, brutal- but they worked for the songs. Loved the drumming. Loved the guitar parts. It just worked for me, ya know? Anyway, now I own their catalog and while I don’t like every song, every album does have some good songs, just like lots of other bands. And I find that I like them better with eery new album. They’ve improved at being Cannibal Corpse, and I continue to educate my ears, eh.
So don’t be frustrated if you don’t like or don’t get them. Just put them aside; there’s plenty of other stuff to listen to. And eventually, your ears may get educated enough that you’ll go back sometime and be like “oh hey; these guys are pretty good.”
Or not. /shrug
Animals As Leaders is Tosin Abasi’s band. IMO he may be the greatest guitarist alive today. I’ve seen them twice and I’d gladly go see them again and again. His bandmates are also awesomely talented (ffs they keep up with him), so the trio is able to make some truly jaw-dropping music.
Killswitch are great, but I can’t take too many songs in a row before I need something that doesn’t sound like Killswitch Engage.
Lamb of God are awesome, but of course I prefer their first Burn The Priest album and the first Lamb of God album (it’s the fucking bomb) to their newer stuff. They gained a lot of polish after New American Gospel and while they still write some kick-ass songs, they also started straying into much more mainstream type songs. Still, I’d happily go see them live anytime.
The past 12 or 13 years have been an extraordinary time for metalheads and there is no sign of things slowing down. Many of the most talented musicians are drawn to the genres because they can feel free to exploit their skills for all their worth; that just isn’t true in most other genres of music. No one in country music gives a shit about a drummer who can bang like Dave Lombardo, because there’s no place for those sounds or rhythms in the genre, for instance.
Looking at your lists, I would urge you to skip (or at least know that you prolly aren’t going to like) Pig Destroyer, Cannibal Corpse, Gorguts and Carcass. Autopsy too maybe, but honestly I find them bordering on cartoon-y some times. The rest are a bit less extreme and you should find elements in each that you know and like.
I’m not a huge fan of Baroness, although some of their songs are amazing instant-classic-earworm songs. Overall I find them much more of a progressive hard rock group than a metal group.
Mastodon was awesome on Leviathan and again on Blood Mountain, but after that they entered their own progressive hard rock phase and I stopped listening.
A band that has been mentioned already is one that I think you should check out, tho. They were one of the first to use that really low, really indistinct almost indecipherable growl. They were one of the first to down-tune their instruments as a matter of course and not just for a single song. Aaaaaaand they’re one of my own favorite bands. I managed to see them once, in Austin, at a cost of about $1400. It was worth it.
Bolt Thrower plays old school death metal. Very down-tuned. Very low growl vocals. ALL songs are about war.
So I’ll walk you through how I got into them. First, I heard World Eater. I was hooked by the opening riff. I loved the build. I loved the demonic growl of the song title that opened the lyrics. I never understood another word of the song until I actually had the lyrics in front of me, but I simply could not hear that riff enough.
I honestly wasn’t that enamored of anything else the band did on their next couple of albums, so I mostly forgot about them, even tho that one song would always get turned up when it started to play.
Then I picked up a copy of their 1998 album Mercenary, totally on a lark. IIRC, I found it used for like $4. I was hooked. I listened to that ddamned CD every day in my truck for like 2 years. I snowboarded to that album. I fucked to that album. I made dinner, ate desert, went kayaking, hiking, running at the track… I still couldn’t hardly understand a word that he was “singing”, but I couldn’t get enough of these riffs and these rhythms. I was in awe at the restraint the band showed in every song. Check out the title track: Mercenary.
It turns out that the band had been on a singular mission since their inception: to produce the most Bolt Thrower album possible. And by Og, they did it. Every album built on it’s predecessors in a way that few bands are able to do, keeping everything good and discarding anything that wasn’t an overwhelmingly positive addition to their music. They spent 20 years honing their craft and in 2005, they gave us Those Once Loyal and simply stopped writing new songs: this was as Bolt Thrower as Bolt Thrower could be; they had achieved their goal.
IMO, songs like The Killchain and Anti-Tank (Dead Armour) make a good case for that. The other 7 songs one the album are just more of that, too. I’ve never really been as proud of a band who stopped writing songs and recording as I was and am with Bolt Thrower.
In fact, back in 2016 they announced that they would no longer perform. Their long-time drummer passed away at just 38 years old in 2015 and a year later they announced that Bolt Thrower without Martin Kearns wouldn’t be Bolt Thrower; they were done. This is a band with goals and ideals and they. do. not. compromise themselves. I freaking love that.
Anyway, Bolt Thrower are an important early death metal band, playing a particular style that is echoed today in grindcore, brutal death metal, slam metal and metalcore, while reverberating keenly throughout other sub-genres. Karl Willets’ vocals helped lay down the template for CMVs, for instance.
So the best way to listen to Bolt Thrower, IMO, is to start with Mercenary, then listen to The IVth Crusade, then …For Victory followed by Honor Valour Pride and then with their crowning achievement Those Once Loyal.
The bands early albums and their Peel Sessions (John Peel was a huge supporter of them from their early days) are interesting, but frankly the recording technology and techniques of the time weren’t quite up to capturing the band properly and the poor presentation hurts the experience of their music quite a lot. I own them, I like several of the early songs, but overall they simply don’t compare to their later work IMO.
I forgot I was gonna give you another band to try.
So when you listen to this, and the video will help, picture that the singer IS a Viking warrior, hoarse after a lifetime (and perhaps a recent night) of bellowing cries as he attacks villages, kills rivals, drinks himself stupid, fucks, etc. Here’s Amon Amarth - Twilight Of The Thunder God.
I offer this because even tho the singer is growling like a motherfucker, he’s also nearly always intelligible. Oh, and because the band just kicks all kinds of ass, IMO.
Or, if you liked Kyuss but don’t want to be burdened with vocals, may I suggest Karma To Burn, who pretty much do all instrumentals: their songs have numbers, not names.
Whelp, I have a day of Bolt Thrower lined up for myself in that case.
If I get bored I have Opeth: My Arms, Your Hearse and the full Amon Amarth: Twilight of the Thunder Gods album lined up for change of pace. And if I need a serious change of pace, Electric Wizard.
I also added the Khold album that was suggested along with something from Emperor and Cradle of Filth because Black Metal is interesting and I do plan to come back to it.
Bolt Thrower might be my gateway band. Mercenary is a really fun album and the vocals are starting to work for me.
It also is getting me to understand something that is didn’t realize I had been having a problem with which is the double kick drums. The almost helicopter feel of the high bpm kick drums makes so much sense the way this drummer plays them that it made me realize it hadn’t quite been working for me with other songs.
See, that’s what I meant about the restraint the band shows. It’s their secret power: they never go full retard, if you get my meaning. They have harnessed the forces at their command and they control them, utterly.
Where Slayer shows their mastery of their instruments in being able to play with such seemingly wild abandon, Bolt Thrower’s goal seemed to have something to do with control and direction. It’s like Slayer needs to create chaos with their music and Bolt Thrower is trying to create order, maybe. Or Slayer is pointing out the chaos in what we think of as orderly and Bolt Thrower is pointing out the order that can exist within the chaos of war.
I think it’s awesome that what you noticed was the drums, because that was what I noticed most as well back when I first was listening to this album. The drummer is quite capable, but he’s playing in the pocket, which is highly unusual for a metal drummer. Turns out this is the only album with this drummer, a guy named Alex Thomas who now plays with Squarepusher, among other endeavors. (Don’t worry: like I said, this band built on their foundations like few others. When Kiddie came on board he developed a similar style.)
He holds that double kick back, not like a last resort, but as a burst of machine gun fire every so often, as if to remind us that as brutal as this is, it can get heavier: “you can’t afford to pop your head up and take look between rounds because sometimes there might be no safe gap, sucker!”
The guitars and vocals have this quality too, IMO. It’s not that they aren’t roaring; they clearly are. It’s that somehow, we can sense that while they are at 10 on volume and intent, they still have some reserve of berserker rage or strength to draw on if they feel we aren’t quite getting it. They are the power behind the fist instead of being the fist.
