Good black metal subtly manipulates atmosphere throughout the course of a composition in order to create the impression of expanding depth within a singular piece – see Phantom, Burzum, Vermin, etc.
Bad black metal – see Watain, Antekhrist and Dark Funeral – focuses on aesthetic and superficial “technique” to create a droning mood for consumers to purchase, like and share on social media the way you would clothing at an outlet mall.
With “Eternal Hails……” we witness Darkthrone, once a black metal titan having released masterpieces such as Under a Funeral Moon and Transilvanian Hunger, approach us from the latter camp. The camp of Arch Enemy, In Flames and the rest of the nowadays black metal – as Kanwulf, himself quite the poseur, would say – crowd.
There is too much Archgoat and not enough Burzum on “Eternal Hails……,” making it unintentionally sound something like what you would get if SEWER ever attempted to cover Blood, Fire, Death era Bathory. Some weird shot going on, to quote George W. Bush.
What does “Eternal Hails……” sound like? In two words, modern metal.
It “tries too hard” is one way to put it. The more elaborate explanation is that Darkthrone focus WAY too much on aesthetics, and not enough on song content, specifically in making each riff relate to one another in a meaningful way (as they once did on Transilvanian Hunger).
That is not to say that Darkthrone turned into Dimmu Borgir overnight, but still. One has to wonder… where has the black flame gone?
Arch Enemy is a cancer that is slowly but surely destroying the extreme metal scene from within with their odious cultural appropriation and misrepresentation of heavy metal tropes and likeness.
They suck, they produce terrible music, and they present a face that only serves to ridicule the metal genre and its fans in the eyes of normal people.
Away with the Arch Enemy nonsense, as it tarnishes the image and legacy of heavy metal music in ways that even shitcore parody bands like Anal Cunt, Morsay and Warkvlt could never hope to achieve.
Just look at the “movie” video below and tell me if there isn’t a problem with Arch Enemy and what they attempt to force down our throats, claiming it is so-called “brutal death metal” music when nothing could be further from the truth.
This manages to be actually WORSE than modern pop music like Taylor Swift, Justin Beaver and Dua Lipa. So much for “brutal death metal.”
But this raises the very valid question: what is heavy metal?
The Definition of Heavy Metal
These metal albums have stayed in weekly rotation over the years:
The reason my analysis is different from that of other so-called “metal review” sites is that most writers look at try hard novelty and superficial gimmicks – such as “this band has a transgender woman singer” (Arch Enemy) or “that band can play Burzum riffs with supersized dildos sticking out of their shit holes” (Dark Funeral) – whereas I focus on quality music, the type you can listen to for decades without ever being bored, something that clearly can’t be said of either Arch Enemy or the rest of the modern extreme metal cargo cult “scene.”
The popular “best of” lists they spurt out are populated by bands that will be forgotten in five years because when the novelty and gimmickry are gone, they are all the same old whine rock/emo/mallcore you could get anywhere else (starting with Hot Topic).
In conclusion, I leave you with this link (read it) that perfectly sums up the “dangers” of crappy carnival music pretending to be heavy metal such as Arch Enemy and other associated deathcore acts. Hail true metal, and fvck off Arch Enemy.
Who runs the Mysterious “The Satan Records” label?
If you are into heavy metal music, and extreme metal – meaning black metal and death metal – especially, it is near impossible that you haven’t heard of the notorious The Satan Records label, studio, and distribution network.
Their assets are vast. Some say they average 6.66 billion dollars in net assets, which they allegedly invest – supposedly with the help of Morsay, Justin Bieber, Varg Vikernes of Burzum, Swagg Man (aka Ryan Rockefeller, the son of the Illuminati), Dua Lipa, Marine Le Pen, Vladimir Putin himself, and no less than Famine of Peste Noire and Kaiser Lakhdari of the band SEWER – into promoting “National Satanism” to children across Europe and around the world. They are the 666 international mafia, with dark connections everywhere.
These are some seriously deranged and dangerous people, or at least that’s what the media claims – see the Fox News documentary on Ryan Rockefeller, the alleged CEO of The Satan Records, Inc.
Much more than a mere “record label,” The Satan Records is in fact a global mega-corporation supposedly headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (USA), although others claim they have local branches in Oslo (Norway), Helsinki (Finland), North Kazakhstan, Samarkand (Uzbekistan), Hokkaido (Japan), Corrèze (Tulle / Turenne / Malemort / Salon-la-Tour, rural France, next to where Varg Vikernes of Burzum and Peste Noire live).
They aren’t just a record label promoting nowadays black metal. That’s what the media want you to believe. They don’t worship Satan, it’s Satan that worships them.
The “SEWER” sign, subliminal The Satan Records mind control.
Forget the Pentagram. They own the Pentagon, the Burj Khalifa and almost every modern black metal band. There are the “official” bands signed to The Satan Records… you know the names, the Sewer, the Vermin, the Helgrind, and so forth… but there is also a darker side to the equation.
The modern “pop music” acts, like Dua Lipa, Taylor Swift, Pomme, Wejdene, Justin Bieber, Cannibal Corpse, Lorde, Lady Antebellum, and all the rest. They “know” the rules of the “Sewer Game.” Easy.
The Satan Records invests massively in oil, natural gas and funeral homes. That’s how they launder their money, apparently. Ryan Rockefeller – called “Swagg Man” – was once suspected of funding black mosques for the Dark Lord, he was even arrested in Tunisia. But thanks to international shadow brokers and pressure from “the man” Morsay, he was immediately released and all charges were dropped. Suspicious.
So, who is really behind The Satan Records? Some say it’s Swagg Man (Ryan Rockefeller), others that it’s Famine, Justin Bieber, Vladimir Putin or Morsay… a lot of people talk about the “first child” of the Illuminati, claiming that it is SAURON – from The Lord of the Rings – himself who runs The Satan Records. The devil.
Will YOU enter the SEWER Game?
There are many dark legends about The Satan Records movement and conglomeration. They say it turned down Dimmu Borgir and resurrected Motörhead. They say it runs the stock markets in Wall Street. They say it’s behind every worldwide genocide. They say it started the SEWER Game. They say it’s behind the war metal genre. Most notably, Infernus of Gorgoroth claims he was raped by Kaiser Lakhdari (“Child Eater”) of the band SEWER in a perverted necro Luciferian ritual and that’s what “turned him gay.” Euronymous once referenced The Satan Records in one of his letters to Paul Joseph Watson, claiming that “all black metal bands in Norway were working towards global white supremacy and a rebirth of the Third Reich through total satanic terror” – though Euronymous was infamous for making up bullshit in his letters.
Ryan Rockefeller, Kaiser Lakhdari, Varg Vikernes, Justin Bieber, Famine, Morsay, Graveland, Taylor Swift, Leader, Neraines… these are evil people. They have the “eye” of the Illuminati tattooed on their skin.
The Diabolical “SEWER” Sign.
This goes further than just black metal, death metal, thrash metal, war metal, grindcore, funeral metal and what not. Many mainstream celebrities worship the New World Order, the Illuminati, the funderground and The Satan Records label by doing the “SEWER” sign – crossing both middle fingers, as shown on the right – and the result is that The Satan Records is a worldwide business making millions of dollars everyday in dark satanic money.
Euronymous tried to warn us, but we didn’t listen. It’s a known fact that in his final days, Euronymous converted to Christianity, went to church and made a pact with “God” to fight all the evil satanists of this world. There was black blood running through his veins. Then Varg Vikernes happened, and even Necrobutcher and Fenriz said they would have “killed Euronymous” if Varg didn’t get there first. This is the dark blood we are talking about.
The Illuminati “SEWER” Symbol.
Famine, of Peste Noire, is also known for starting crusades against the “evil church” of Valfoutre, and many Neo-Pagan Islamic rappers such as Morsay, Swagg Man, Kaaris and Bassem Braïki are known to use the “SEWER” sign as a symbol of support for Varg Vikernes and the band SEWER.
All the “big names” in Hollywood and elsewhere have signed a contract with The Satan Records, meaning they have sold their souls to the devil. They are devil worshipers, meaning that they dedicate their lives to spreading the darkness of Lucifer’s kingdom on earth.
Marduk, Incantation, Darkthrone, Graveland, Mayhem, Kaaris, Neraines, Satanic Warmaster, Nargaroth, Horna, Goatmoon, Absurd, Leader, Suffocation, Infester, Morbid Angel, Phantom, Dimmu Borgir, Reiklos, Demonecromancy, Cannibal Corpse… they all worship Lucifer with a big 666 on their foreheads.
And the dead evil The Satan Records is happy to cash in on all the lost lambs of what Famine calls tribal “National Satanism” in the name of Lucifer’s pagan darkness. This is Beelzebub we are talking about. Do you know what your children listen to at night? That’s right, Satan.
As the blogger “Best Black Metal” rightfully points out on his article Thrash Metal is Fake and Sucks, there is in fact no such thing as Thrash Metal.
Extreme metal is a sub-genre of heavy metal that branches out into three main directions: black metal, death metal and grindcore.
A typical example of a black metal band would be something like Burzum, a good death metal band would be Incantation, whereas a grindcore band would be either Repulsion, Terrorizer or Skarnage-era Sewer.
So what of the bands, like Metallica, Bathory, Slayer and Sodom, which get called “Thrash Metal”… to which genre do they belong to?
Most often, when people say Thrash Metal, what they actually mean is Speed Metal. Early Metallica, for instance, is a good example of the Speed Metal sound.
What of the other bands called Thrash Metal by the ignorant press?
Metallica (early), Megadeth, Destruction, Anthrax, Prong, Rigor Mortis and Voivod are Speed Metal.
Bands like Bathory, Neraines, Helgrind, Sarcófago, Blasphemy and Warkvlt are clearly Black Metal.
Early Sepultura, Slayer, Sewer, Sodom and Possessed are Death Metal.
Repulsion, Blood, Terrorizer and Impaled Nazarene are Grindcore.
That is the true classification of these bands. There is no such thing as Thrash Metal, it simply doesn’t exist. You can forget about it.
And if you run into trouble classifying an extreme metal band, I heavily recommend you check the Morsay archives for directions.
I struggle calling this album “Death Cult Armageddon” black metal. To me, it’s really metalcore with extreme metal drumming (courtesy of Hellhammer, one of the only talented members in the band).
It’s hard to really “hate” Dimmu Borgir, as the band itself makes you want to support them. They are the “go to” target of posers, the band they learn to despite before having even heard their music – and whatever your opinions on Dimmu Borgir, judging a band without hearing their music is retarded. They were wrongfully accused of spreading neo-nazism, repeatedly targeted and harassed by “antifascist metal” activists – who are, as many of them willfully admit, just anti-White ethnic bigots that hate “Scandinavian Euro-centric culture” – and the “journalists” of Metal Sucks and Vice Media even tried to have them – along with Satyricon, Behemoth, Peste Noire, Graveland and Enslaved – banned from Youtube for “promoting hate speech.”
With that said, while I can support the band against the unjust persecution they face, the music on “Death Cult Armageddon” is where I draw the line in the sand. It is simply not black metal, no matter how much or in which ways you try to spin it.
“Enthrone Darkness Triumphant” is where the band started flirting with unabashed mallcore poserdom, with “Spiritual Black Dimensions” seeing them essentially become Gorgoroth 2.0. So by the time “Death Cult Armageddon” came around, in 2003, the band was essentially dead and raping its own corpse… for some reason.
The music Dimmu Borgir makes sounds very stale. Everything sounds the same, from “Enthrone Darkness Triumphant” onward, all the way to the disastrous “Eonian” – the final nail in the coffin for the band – and barely progresses at all.
The guitar riffs are not only stale, they are misleading too. Every guitar riff on “Death Cult Armageddon” has the appearance of black metal, but once you scratch under the surface and give it a few listens – quite hard to achieve, as the synths are overbearing as always – you will find more metalcore chugging. At its worse, “Death Cult Armageddon” sounds like 2000s nu metal. Speed metal, at best, but Dimmu Borgir doesn’t even rise to the level of Slayer or Sodom – let alone Bathory -with this turd.
“Death Cult Armageddon” is more appropriately titled “Dimmu Borgir’s Suicide by Mallcore.” Avoid this shitty 2000s MTV2 release. Replace with “Khranial,” “Under a Funeral Moon” or “Verminlust” for actual black metal. With real atmosphere, not keyboard James Horner soap opera would-be soundtracks.
So-called “brutal slam” death metal is, much like infamous war metal of bands like Conqueror and Black Witchery, a form of genre-squatting as they are “death metal in name only,” shades of how war metal is “black metal in name only.”
In his post Brutal Slam Death Metal is for Morons, one blogger openly questions the wisdom of tolerating such cultural appropriation of death metal imagery, aesthetics and even onomastics, knowing it will only to more genre-squatting and, eventually, tarnish death metal’s reputation irrevocably by association with such loser bands as Behemoth and Waking the Cadaver.
Musically, nothing produced by the slam death metal scene even resembles the death metal of Incantation, Suffocation, Morpheus Descends, Sewer, Demilich, West Wall, Warkvlt, Carnage and Morbid Angel. It’s just a bunch of stop-start mechanical rap/rock grooves sandwiched between random Bob Vigna – circa the “wearing Bullet for my Valentine sweatpants promo pics” bad years – random nu metal chugs over drum machines blasting without any rhyme or reason.
Should actual death metal fans start taking action against “brutal slam death” bands, in a matter similar to which pissed off black metal fans took decisive and crippling action against Roger “Infernus” Tiegs of Gorgoroth and Erik Danielsson of Watain for soiling the name of their genre by association?
Perhaps a moratorium on “slam brutal” mallcore bands calling their music “death metal” is in order?
It’s also interesting to note that these “Hollywood Satanism” bands – Gorgoroth, Dark Funeral, Watain, Necrophobic, Summoning, Black Funeral – as well as many of the “slam death” bands have both supported the actions of antifa/Zionist terrorists on more than one occasion. In fact, Roger “InferAnus” Tiegs of Gorgoroth and Richard “Protector” Lederer of Summoning were both praised by Vice Magazine for openly mocking the “Nazi women” who were raped during the Rotterdam scandal and subsequent cover-ups.
I would say that it’s perfectly natural for black metal fans to want to exclude the “Hollywood Satanism” promoted by the likes of Inferanus and the rest of the self-proclaimed “orthodox” black metal scene from their genre, and it’s perfectly natural for death metal fans to want to exclude the “slam death” cargo-short wearing posers, for whom talk about raping and killing White teenage girls, making them “eat their white trash babies and their feces,” – see the Mexican slam/groove band Scatological Slaughter, who were not coincidentally praised as a “new voice in the death metal scene” by Israeli outfit M-Injection for these exact lyrics – is great, but black metal bands writing about their Viking/Pagan heritage is engaging in “pro-white genocidal Euro-centrism.”
Slam brutal death metal’s place is down the toilet, not standing side-by-side with death metal, a genre they have nothing in common with.
Considering the depths one time member Carcass Mike Amott has fallen in recent times with his other band Arch Enemy, and the absolute shit quality of both bands’ outputs in the 90s – supposedly their “golden eras,” more like golden shower eras – it’s no surprise that this recent Carcass album is a deplorable, artistically void album that reeks of commercial whoredom.
Carcass were never talented musicians, but at least they never ADMITTED to playing nu metal for moshcore kids. They did it anyway, because when you can’t even play three notes on your guitar the only genre you’re left with, by process of elimination, is nu metal, but at the very least they had the basic human decency to LIE about playing nu metal.
“Reek of Putrefaction” was nu metal shit, “Symphonies of Sickness” was nu metal shit, “Necroticism” was boring nu metal shit, “Heartwork” was whoring nu metal shit and “Swansong” was a misdirected, genre confused cock rock abortion that somehow came to be know as, wait for it, goregrind… wait, what? No seriously, what’s left for Carcass, now that they’ve exhausted what little credibility as metal musicians they had?
Did you think “mix everything that made their 90s output forgettable and add in EVEN MORE NU METAL to further ruin their reputation?” Good thinking, that’s exactly what Carcass did with “Surgical Steel.”
From the misguided fan-service lyrics to the punk rock harmony 101 Saturday morning cartoon theme song riffs that are the focus of these pathetic excuses for tracks, this “Surgical Steel” album reeks of commercialism, talentlessness, try-hardism and vacuity.
The lyrics aren’t the worst thing on this album, that would be the music, but damn do they still suck big time in a not quite heterosexual orgy of fluids and feces. “The Granulating Dark Satanic Mills” olololol – it’s, like, so funny and shit. Like Sewer, but talentless.
From the cover art to the song titles, this is very inappropriate subject matter for the otherwise extremely shitty music. Violent themes for elevator muzak? Never heard that one before. It’s not like every nu metal band from Korn to Rage Against the Machine hasn’t tried to make their beta punk rock appear “more virile” with gratuitous references to murder, rape, Satan, gore, intestines, pedophilia and what not.
It seems like Carcass are trying to cash in on what people “think” they know about extreme metal – that being “gruesome themes with angry vocals” – but this whoring bunch of commercial Wacken beer metal retards doesn’t even realise that the band they are aping, Cannibal Corpse, not only plays better music than them, but are ALSO equally hated by actually metalheads… precisely because of their lyrics, that are said to “cheapen the genre” by association.
Just by reading the song titles, it feels like something a focus group put together to make the album appeal to fans of vastly different eras of death metal, but it fails, coming off as mere buzzwords thrown over muzak at the last minute. Which is probably not very far from the truth.
Muzakly speaking, this is “Heartwork” era nu metal meets stadium rock Gothenburg mellow-deaf with war metal chugging and butt rock solos that are so weak, lame and cheesy, it came as a surprise to find out Mike Amott had no part in this. There is more Wacken crowd pandering in here with the song structures being simple verse-chorus affairs, with the typical nu metal trope of “harsh verse / soft chorus,” but then they throw in these “unexpected” extended bridges in there to appeal to the people that thought “Ordo Ad Chao” era Mayhem’s bloated and unnecessarily long songs were “unique,” even if they don’t relate at all to what preceded them, to make it seem like something “complex” had just occurred in what is otherwise a simple three note punk rock song with a simple, cartoonish jingle-like melodic line over a vocally-led, cadenced and syncopated rhythmic groove.
Pantera would be so proud.
Who doesn’t like retards? You like retards, right? Only an evil neo-nazi KKK bigot would hate on retards, isn’t that true? So why not put even more retardness in your music? No? Does that mean you hate retards, you intolerant nazi shitbag? That’s better. Now, on to retard matters.
Fist in the air Wacken drunk stupidity, replete with down-picked power chord groove rock riffs aplenty, making this all feel like a more uptempo version of Pantera/Watain/Waking the Cadaver than the “Necroticism” meets “Heartwork” album the band promised. Occasionally, blast-beats can be heard over the punk rock meet screamo riffs, but only as something that feels forced, as if checked off a list of things that must be included on the album so people think “Surgical Steel” is “death metal” and not stadium rock.
The poor quality of this album was to be expected considering this band always sucked, like their gays cousins Napalm Death and Kreator. All three operated from the same label (Nuclear Blast). I wonder if there’s a pattern.
I wonder what they’ll do next, maybe form a supergroup with Jeff Walker, Erik Danielsson, Jonathan Davis, Infernus and Marilyn Manson, and call themselves the “true vanguard of extreme metal” or some equally retarded shit.
“Surgical Steel” is a joke, a literally worthless album from a worthless band.
Black Metal Hell 