Born of Osiris: "Follow the Signs"

If you've been following this blog for any length of time - and chances are you probably haven't - you'll know that I'm all about the technical death metal.  There are so many splintered off-shoots of the traditional death metal sound these days that I almost can't be bothered with the unadulterated, 90's-based form unless you throw some ridiculous shredding into the mix.

Blotted Science: "Ingesting Blattaria"

Blotted Science are the latest brainchild from Ron Jarzombek, tech-metal virtuoso and sought after studio gunslinger extraordinaire.  Jarzombek got bored playing in traditional speed metal variants of tech-prog, so he hired Alex Webster (Cannibal Corpse) and Hannes Grossmann (Obscura) to explore more of a technical death metal direction.  Truthfully, the guitars on "Ingesting Blattaria" still err on the side of speed metal but it's interesting to watch an old dog try to learn new tricks, though, and the chops are top notch by whatever standards you want to employ.

Revocation: "No Funeral"

One of the saving graces, I think, for death metal in this era - a full 20 years after its initial ascent - is a renewed focus on technicality.  The race to see who can be the fastest or most brutal had already long ago been subsumed by black metal, which frees death metal up to return to its role as thrash successor: riff-based, catchy, instrumentally competent.  Revocation is all these things, which is why they're one of the more popular bands to emerge from death metal in the last few years.

Big End Bolt: "Grip Vice Torture"

Technical death metal from Russia!  How do they manage to get in sufficient practice time when they spend all of their days on the bread line?  It's because metal is food too, people.

Uh, so, not really much to talk about here.  Big End Bolt's first album, Mechanical Race Creation, just came out in September on something called Coyote Records... this video is the first I've ever heard of them... mmm, they're Russian, did I already say that?... fuck it, I'm just going to link to their Facebook page and pretend I did somebody a service somewhere.

1990: "Defensive Personalities", Death

Back from a long hiatus, the holidays have wrung all the wholesome, life affirming essence out of me. What better way to get back into the swing of things, then, than with a series of entries on the burgeoning death metal movement at the turn of the 90s?

Probably seems kind of lame/obvious starting off with the actual band Death, but unsurprisingly the Chuck Schuldiner-led ensemble was one of the seminal acts in creating the death metal template as an extreme spin off of thrash. The genre itself was inadvertently christened in 1985 by Bay Area band Possessed, on a song by the same name off of their Seven Churches album, but at the time Possessed were seen less as a pioneering new influence and more of a traditional, sloppy thrash group a la contemporary Celtic Frost and early Venom. Like many pioneers, Possessed would have to wait until their field was a little more crowded before fans retroactively began to realize that they were on to something new, instead of just peddling a particularly virulent strain of thrash.

Death was the band that served notice that a new form of metal was here to stay. 1987's Scream Bloody Gore set the bar immediately for those who wished to consider themselves on the cutting edge of extremity, the stomach churning lyrics, guttural vocals and darker, more sinister riffs establishing a prototype for all death metal bands to come (a fact not lost on burgeoning thrash bands in Florida, which would become geographically to death metal as the Bay Area was to thrash).

By 1990, however, Schuldiner was on album number three, and had already lightened up the pace somewhat in favor of more technical musicianship. Spiritual Healing largely retreated back toward thrash, save for the guttural vocals - Schuldiner could sing no other way - and wasn't particularly well received at the time. In hindsight, it's an essential stepping stone in the evolution that would lead to the band's late period masterpieces Symbolic and The Sound of Perserverance. Schuldiner himself would eventually downplay his role in the rise of death metal, proclaiming "I don’t think I should take credit for this death metal stuff. I’m just a guy from a band, and I think Death is a metal band".

Nonetheless, though he would never again write an album with the visceral brutality of Scream Bloody Gore, Schuldiner retained sufficient respect and a large enough fanbase that Spiritual Healing and - in particular - later efforts would make him an influential figure in the technical death metal movement, which would peak in popularity in the mid-to-late 90s.