Death Metal

Dityn DJ James said:
I'm probably going to kick the year off with Possessed's Seven Churches.
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You thought I was messing around?

Well I've done it. I've heard Seven Churches. Going into timeless albums has been hard for me. It's hard for me in the sense that I usually end up leaving just slightly disappointed by the album itself. I spent a lot of time beforehand reading these overwhelming positive and gushing reviews of the album; then when I head into the album, it ends up not being this huge metal masterpiece I made it out to be in my mind. Some of you are probably sitting here thinking, it's 2016 and this dude hasn't heard Seven Churches????. Yes, I am 31 years late to the party.

Getting into any genre (or sub-genre) is a daunting task. Because once you announce yourself a fan of that genre or sub-genre, there's an assumed list of albums that people expect you to have heard. In my lifetime, I really don't expect to come across any self identifying metalhead who hasn't heard Master of Puppets or Black Sabbath. Those albums and bands are just too big. The difficulty of the being a fan of genre or subgenre manifests itself in the task of actually hearing the albums. Yes, you can spend every waking moment researching albums/release dates/band members/singles/EPs/demos/band history of any given genre or sub-genre, but without actually listening to the music it produced, can you consider yourself a fan? The simple answer is: no. And that's where I stand, I haven't heard a lot of death metal albums yet.

Yeah I can probably sit here and name off dozens of death metal bands, but I haven't actually listened to music by the bunch of them. So when am I going to talk about Seven Churches? Right about now. The album was good, with a lot of weak spots. Larry LaDonde pulls out some great riffs, but they get kind of samey at time. The drums on here are awesome. A nice, muddy production encompasses the whole thing. Really evil stuff. I wish the songs were short bursts of thrashing energy a la Slowly We Rot. All in all, calling this the first death metal album isn't quite as far fetched as calling Black Metal the first black metal album. It did a lot things for the sub-genre (Seven Churches that is), but this definitely comes off more as a thrash metal release.
 
The reason many of these early albums are popular is not because they are the best Death Metal albums but because of the influence. You're listening to a stepping stone in what would become the Death Metal we know today. One of the reasons Possessed is so well known is that they coined the phrase "Death Metal" when they named their first EP/demo in 1984 and also as a song on the Seven Churches album. Similar to what Venom did with Black Metal. Musically it's also very similar, metal trying to push boundaries at the time and trying to come up with a more extreme aesthetic and approach. But you can't compare this to the best albums Death Metal has to offer... When Seven Churches was released Death Metal was still around 4-5 years away from really picking up steam....But of course Seven Churches is at the front of this development :)
 
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Whispered is a Finnish band that plays melodeath with Japanese folk influences :D Interesting combo IMO:



I'd describe them as Victory Songs-era Ensiferum with Japanese instead of Finnish folk :)
 
That album is so amazing. Could very well be my favorite metal album with an orchestra.

This song is my fav:

 
I prefer Communion as an album, but Titan has better orchestral arrangements. And it's no wonder that they (probably) have best orchestra usage in metal:

Christos Antoniou (guitarist and orchestral composer for the band) studied composition at the London College of Music under the guidance of Martin Ellerby, head of the composition department. He acquired his Bachelor of Music in 1999 and one year later, he continued his studies in composition/orchestration and earned his Master's Degree in concert music. Among his tutors was Adam Gorb, head of composition at the Royal Northern College of Music. Christos has worked with Orchestras from Greece, London, Slovakia and the Filmharmonic Orchestra and Choir of Prague.
 
That makes sense. Usually the orchestral elements in Metal are just there to beef up the sound, but there isn't a lot of interesting things happening within those arrangements. Nightwish and Symphony X (to a lesser extent) come to mind with a lot of their material. With the Septicflesh stuff you could remove everything else and it'll still mostly work, although the combination with death metal makes it special ofc.
 
When Darkthrone was Death Metal before they went Black Metal a year later with A Blaze In the Northern Sky..

This album, however, is still one of their best!

 
Can't deny that! We had some strong bands in the scene.

That Doomed song has unexpected changes. From classic album "Cross the Styx". Will check out A the Absu within the hour! BRB.
 
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