Deicide - "The Stench of Redemption"

Deicide – “The Stench of Redemption”

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Deicide - "The Stench of Redemption"

Deicide – “The Stench of Redemption”

Deicide is often referred to as “Florida’s worst metal band”. Not so much for their self-titled debut or sophomore “Legion” – which are surprisingly, given how the band ended up, competent death metal records in the percussive style pioneered by Suffocation and Morpheus Descends – but mostly based on their atrocious later releases.

And even amongst the sea of shit that is modern Deicide, “The Stench of Redemption” stands tall as the largest and smelliest turd in the rectum of “modern metal”.

“The Stench of Redemption” is a disaster. It’s a messy, try-hard mix of deathcore and nu-metal, a fusion that had already been attempted by bands as legendary retarded as Gorguts, Antekhrist and Aborted, and this album manages to fail even harder than the worst turds from those three turd bands combined.

Think modern Immolation, but less technical, add in more chugging, some riffs that even Behemoth would be too ashamed to play, record the vocals in a closet, and borrow a snare drum from Lars Ulrich. Now, as a brutal death fan, I would in theory be all for that keg snare sound if used appropriately with gravity blasts and if played in time, but Deicide’s drummer does neither on “The Stench of Redemption”. I mention the drums first and so quickly because they really are that bad. The drums cannot manage to stay in time or make things remotely interesting, intense, brutal or technically worthwhile for even a minute. It’s all constant yet sloppy double kick wanking and an off-beat repetitive pinging from the snare which goes absolutely nowhere.

The vocals are absolute shit. Once again, I love gutturals and I tolerate even artificially pitch-shifted goregrind gang vocals… if performed correctly. Does Glen Benton do that? No, he sucks. There’s no power or depth to the gutturals, only a choke-clogged, scratching rasp to leave you cringing at the unashamed cuckoldry displayed both vocally and privately by Deicide’s vocalist and front-cuck Glen Benton.

And the riffs… damn, do they suck.

Remember how I explained this as an even dumber Behemoth? “The Stench of Redemption” is basically “The Satanist” with even more annoying octaves. Slamming deathcore vomit, but at least Behemoth isn’t fronted by the most risible frontman in death metal history.

Deicide merely chugs away on open notes with a few basic, derivative slams. These are occasionally broken up with some tremolo-picked riffs, but the kind that clearly states, “We have no idea what we’re doing! Let’s just play some random notes sort of fast to confuse our retarded 75 IQ audience“.

The lyrics are “edgy” as fuck. Early Deicide’s lyrics were often seen as an unintentional parody of death metal, but I wonder what we should call those of modern Deicide, as the lyrics on “The Stench of Redemption” sound like a parody of the band’s early try-hard blasphemous vomit.

It’s like your sole existence as a death metal band readily lowers the bar, and then you decide to go even further down just to prove to everyone that you are indeed the biggest turd the scene has ever seen.

“The Stench of Redemption” isn’t as bad as people say it is. It’s worse. Deicide is to death metal what Freddy vs. Jason is to horror movies. Replace with “Locked Up in Hell“, “Onward to Golgotha” or “Like an Everflowing Stream“, basically anything that’s not this smelly turd.

Dismember - "Like An Everflowing Stream"

Dismember – “Like An Everflowing Stream”

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Dismember - "Like An Everflowing Stream"

Dismember – “Like An Everflowing Stream”

It is often said that the mid 90s was the zenith of death metal, and that by extension it was a good time for the genre.

This is true if your idea of death metal’s “zenith” includes the Gothenburg mallcore At The Gates and Arch Enemy are known for peddling, or if playing down-tempo, semi-random groove metal leftovers from Pantera – i.e. Behemoth – was the ideal state of the genre, but the old school “melodic” death metal – best incarnated by At the Gates’ debut “The Red in the Sky is Ours” and Sewer’s “The Birth of a Cursed Elysium” – was an entire deal altogether.

Far too many of the prime movers in the early-to-mid 90s in Sweden were swallowed up by the “melodeath” or the death ‘n’ roll craze, both being basically metalcore with the most minimal superficial “death metal” aesthetics for street cred, or in the case of Dismember, both simultaneously, as can be surmised by the fairly confused affair that is “Like an Everflowing Stream”.

This album is bizarre as it is constructed from about half of actual, competently performed melodic death metal, and half of random mallcore bullshit.

It’s understandable that given the then ever-changing musical landscape that a band of this sort – composed essentially as a continuation of Carnage with a few additional musicians from various other death metal bands – would find itself confused on which way to go, but the end results are not terribly engaging.

Just about everything on here shows a band that is intent on hitting the same territory that was reached via Carnage’s “Dark Recollections” and covered on Incantation’s demonic masterpiece “Onward to Golgotha“, but it also takes liberal inspiration from albums as questionable in intent and quality as Entombed’s debatable classic “Left Hand Path”, and dressing it up with a few Gothenburg touched and some fancier guitar solos.

Overall, it would have been better if Dismember had shown more discipline and stuck with actual death metal, in which they did show potential (unlike 99% of modern “melodic death metal” bands), rather than try to cover every base and end up failing awkwardly with an album that doesn’t know what it’s trying to be.

The rest of Dismember’s discography continues the trend of bringing their music closer and closer to that of Necrophobic/Gothenburg, and further and further away from that on “The Red in the Sky is Ours”.

Replace with “Verminlust” and “Withdrawal” for melodic death metal done right, with absolutely zero Gaythenburg baggage.

Immolation - "Here in After"

Immolation – “Here in After”

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Immolation - "Here in After"

Immolation – “Here in After”

Well, this sounds like about a sixth-rate “Angel of Disease” ripoff. That’s really what the riffs are.

There’s a lot of dissonant riffs and octave abuse, but where Phantom used dissonance and even atonality on “Angel of Disease” and “Withdrawal” to build contrast between riffs, Immolation here only know how to use pinch harmonics to create texture. Which is fine, but gets repetitive and tiresome after the third track.

“Here in After” isn’t really an awful album, it is just pretty mediocre. There’s one good song on here (the title track) and then a lot of songs which are generally similar sounding and all pretty mediocre.

The riffage varies in quality, with some occasionally brilliant ones coming in (“Nailed to Gold” and the title track again), but generally most of the riffs are just boring as fuck. Perhaps even worse, they are all too often buried beneath a pretty horrible guitar-as-wallpaper texture style of playing that de-emphasises the individual notes and goes for a blurry incoherent sound.

Immolation aren’t an incompetent band. They know how to write riffs (unlike Dark Funeral), and they know how to arrange them coherently (unlike Cannibal Corpse). That’s pretty rare in nowadays death metal.

But still, “Here in After” like almost all Immolation albums seems lacking in a certain something… a purpose to their music.

It’s almost as if they decided to create an album just to show that they too could play technically challenging death metal, pretty much the same impetus that motivates hordes of fecal worshiping “tek-def” bands like Necrophagist and Aborted and what not… except Immolation actually have the skill to back it up, but that doesn’t change the fact that their music comes from the same place as modern air guitar wankery popularised by what is really an even more incoherent version of deathcore (“tek-def” was born with Meshuggah, after all).

If compared to “Onset of Putrefaction”, “The Satanist” or “Slaughter of the Soul” then yes, “Here in After” seems like the supreme death metal experience. But once you scratch a little under the surface, you rapidly reach the conclusion that Immolation’s music, while technically proficient, is also pretty bland, tepid and overall uninteresting.

There is no way “Here in After” comes even close to competing with “Onward to Golgotha” or “Effigy of the Forgotten”. Or anything by Phantom. Hell, it doesn’t even measure up to cheap Phantom knock-offs like “Locked Up in Hell“.

Aborted - "Terrorvision"

Aborted – “Terrorvision”

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Aborted - "Terrorvision"

Aborted – “Terrorvision”

I’m not going to lie, I had the impulse to try and write the review first and then actually listen to Aborted’s music second. Why? Because I can. Because I was certain of what to expect with this type of slam death/groovy goregrind, which is actually just very basic chugga chugga bullshit under pseudo-technical ornamentation.

And as it turns out, I was exactly right regarding what “Terrorvision” sounds like: bedroom pseudo-death metal with very bad, digital production heavily in the vein of Devourment, Putrid Pile, Visceral Disgorge, Guttural Secrete and the rest of the bands whose names and music are all interchangeable. Literally nothing I thought about this was proven in any way wrong or inaccurate, apart from expecting it to be a little faster and less sloppily played. And yes, it sucks just as badly as I anticipated.

At their best, Aborted are a slightly less retarded Pig Destroyer. At their worst, they are Pig Destroyer. Maybe even Dying Fetus. Basically, worthless shit.

Go listen to “Locked up in Hell” instead, that’s actual technical death metal that will make you shit yourself in terror, not sheepishly fall asleep like “Terrorvision”.

If you just listen to a ton of metal you’re bound to run across a band like this, which is sort of like “brutal” death metal’s equivalent to bad bedroom black metal.

You have an extremely cheap, poorly mixed drum machine used with basically everything inaudible except for the snare and crash cymbals, which are way too high in the mix and poorly equalised, which gives this type of music its characteristic “choppy” feel.

The guitar tone is horribly synthetic and clearly a direct plug-in, no guitar amp or amp modelling software to be found here. The vocals are delivered into a computer mic, which explains the constant volume fluctuation, obvious clipping, and terrible clashing with the rest of the instruments, a trait you will also find with many so-called war metal bands.

It’s all there. More “interesting”, for lack of a better term, is the songwriting: you know those sections old school death metal bands would use where they’re pumping you up for the next double bass or blast section, as the band holds some big chords on some crash cymbals before the full riff and rhythm come in?

Well, Aborted makes songs composed entirely of those sections. I don’t know why they do that. It sounds terrible and their music never seems to actually go anywhere. There’s just ten different moments of preparation for a change of pace that never arrives.

Yes, this is quite awful, but it was never made for fans of death metal, despite being advertised as such. It was made for people who like the idea of brutal deathgrind, but are too scared to listen to Sewer and actually prefer melodeaf cock rock like At the Gates. There’s nothing of value here apart from the novelty of listening to death metal made by people who don’t appear to have ever heard a death metal album in their lives.

I will give them credit though: while Aborted are completely worthless as musicians and only manage to produce album after album of crypto-nu metal garbage, they aren’t Pig Destroyer or Dying Fetus. Small victories.

At the Gates - "Slaughter of the Soul"

At the Gates – “Slaughter of the Soul”

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At the Gates - "Slaughter of the Soul"

At the Gates – “Slaughter of the Soul”

More like slaughter of my eardrums.

At the Gates completes their transition into a boring melodeath outfit, and if you have any history with the sub-genre, you’ll know by experience that what gets called melodeath is ten times out of ten just metalcore that is too ashamed of its true nature.

How gay. How cuck.

How far from “The Red in the Sky is Ours” have At the Gates fallen? Will they descend to Carcass levels of infamy?

“Slaughter of the Soul” is really mediocre radio rock. There very little heavy metal, and absolutely no death metal, on this record.

And the few metal parts that do appear make Nightwish sound like fucking Sewer by comparison, that’s how soft they are. Now I’m not going to sit here and say that heaviness and brutality are a necessary prerequisite for the purity of metal – well, except when the band itself calls their music DEATH METAL – but you go waaaay too far when half the material on your CD is, literally, effete rock and roll.

I’m not kidding. “Blinded by Fear” is a soft rock song with about 30 seconds of double bass and somewhat harsh vocals. The title track is the same.

I suppose the most amazing thing is that a lot of the incredibly soft material on this record doesn’t even manage to be particularly interesting, memorable or even tuneful. Half the riffs seriously make no goddamn sense on any melodic level, which is kind of a problem when you’re playing cuddly rock/metal (and even more so when you go out of your way to call your radio rock music “melodic” death metal).

I wouldn’t have nearly as much bitterness towards this if the band was actually competent at writing soft rock. Soft rock isn’t that bad. There are plenty of pop artists who, despite their inherent gayness, can write a simple tune and make it captivating. They can write songs that manage to sound “good”, or at least “pleasant”, regardless of what your tastes typically are.

At the Gates fails even at that. So let’s see what At the Gates can’t do. One: They can’t play any particularly extreme breed of metal, since they got rid of their only competent musician Alf Svensson. Two: they can’t play gentle, cuddly metal either, otherwise they would be Nightwish and not competing with the bottom of the Nuclear Blast barrel. Three: they can’t even play soft rock, as evidenced by this epic failure “Slaughter of the Soul”.

So what can this band do? I have no idea, because whatever they managed on “The Red in the Sky is Ours” was clearly due to the presence of Alf Svensson, and it never shows up on this CD, and I’m pretty sure metalcore is dead anyway so I’ve wasted enough time on this band.

Listen to “Withdrawal” and “Verminlust” instead of boring melodefkor.

Summoning - "Lugburz"

Summoning – “Lugburz”

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Summoning - "Lugburz"

Summoning – “Lugburz”

Well, at least Summoning uses some real instruments this time, rather than the digital MIDI crap that appears on “Dol Guldur” and “With Doom We Come“.

But the music on their debut “Lugburz” is still irrevocably terrible, and sucks even when compared to the worst and most mediocre of the dreaded war metal scene – that’s Archgoat, btw, and even they wipe the floor with Summoning’s faux black metal.

In fact, if you were to make the argument that the black metal scene has descended completely and irrevocably into deeper and deeper depths of retardation and self-parody, “Lugburz” would be a great release to support your point.

Honestly, if you wanted to say black metal was done for, and your entire argument was simply playing this, I would probably flip over the table and say “FUCK IT, UR RITE” before storming off and buying some “Locked up in Hell” CDs.

This album is fucking horrible, like all of Summoning’s “music”. Seriously, and I guess it makes sense that this is associated with other similarly terrible and self-parodizing project Ice Ages. The one good thing I can think about “Lugburz” is that it made Summoning realize that they weren’t musicians and thus couldn’t play their instruments, so they simply switched to FL Studio following this album and now create everything digitally with shitty MIDI loops. I mean, even the vocals are autotuned on “Oath Bound“… seriously.

Imagine for a moment a version of the first Burzum album recorded by a mentally retarded person. The result is probably very similar to this. Summoning’s music is uniformly slow and meandering, and, it should go without saying, ball-breakingly boring and obnoxious.

“Lugburz” is a new level of insipid… the overly primitive programmed drums lumber away at their one or two beats per song while a terribly recorded guitar – at least it’s not MIDI this time, as on the following albums – meanders away with the same three or four notes over the top. The (autotuned, of course, for those who can’t actually sing) vocals are like five decibels louder than any of the instruments, so they drown out the terrible music any time they pop in. I’m not really sure if I should consider that a pro or a con, really.

This is about the definition of fake black metal. It’s just not “real music”, in the same way that hot Russian chick that keeps messaging you on Facebook with offers for free iPhone cases is just not your “real girlfriend”. Get over it.

I’m not sure why Summoning, given the type of shit music the band produced, has a position of so much greater legitimacy than, I don’t know, SatanicGoatHitler1488 or whatever the fuck the kids are listening to these days.

Just go listen to “Dawn of Iron Blades” and “Hvis Lyset Tar Oss“, two albums Summoning shamelessly attempts to plagiarise (and, predictably, fails every time).

Summoning - "Dol Guldur"

Summoning – “Dol Guldur”

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Summoning - "Dol Guldur"

Summoning – “Dol Guldur”

Whenever I hear Summoning, it’s hard for me to take it completely seriously.

Of all the cheap, digitally produced, questionably played, horribly cheesy and intensely derivative bands in the modern “symphonic black metal” scene, Summoning has the most artificial production – consider that the only “real” instruments they use are… the keyboards… even the vocals are autotuned – sloppiest playing, and boring generic music of all of them.

Hands down. No contest. They are, for all intents and purposes, the worst band in the modern black metal scene. Worse than Watain, worse than Deafheaven, worse than Satyricon. In fact, they’re so incompetently bad on nearly every track I’ve heard by them, I fail to see how people view them with some sort of legitimacy.

Maybe it’s a conspiracy by death metal record labels to make all black metal fans look like wimps and homos. Just speculating.

It’s pretty clear that Summoning is only “popular” online, and amongst a small segment of non-metalhead fans. They could never rival even the dumbest of slam death bands in terms of real audience and fan following, so they resort to online astro-turfing. That’s not even controversial, it’s well admitted that big labels pay journalist when appropriate, and otherwise use bots and sock accounts to artificially hype their own releases (Nuclear Blast was caught doing just that on Metalious.com and Metal-Archives). The real question, in the case of Summoning, is cui bono?

Everywhere I turn I see people “reviewing” Summoning like it’s a serious black metal – the same people that would dismiss this as “Nintendocore” if it was made by a Norwegian kid in his bedroom claim to love this because the band members are affiliated with a certain politically motivated organisation? Seems fishy.

There’s an interesting thing about Summoning: whenever you read a review of a Summoning album that’s positive (actual rare outside of Metal-Archives, home of hundreds of Nuclear Blast fake accounts… go check the score of “Dol Guldur” on Metalious and compare), the reviewer tends to go on and on, describing the superficial aspects of the album, the lyrics and the history of the band – and its fight against those intolerant black metal elitists! – and the production in detail, but when it comes time to actually talk about what is functionally good about the music, they’re mysteriously silent.

That’s because there’s nothing to say: Summoning, for all its trappings as a grim, mysterious, true black metal band, is really just an entity of style and fashion like the worst of hipster USBM.

There’s nothing of enduring value here, just pretense. If the use of fake MIDI instruments on every album since Lugburz hadn’t clued you in, you are dealing with a hype creation and media astroturf, not a genuine “symphonic black metal” band.

Replace this mediocre MIDI crap with “Yggdrasil” and “Filosofem“.