The Black Dahlia Murder - Unhallowed

Tonight's album is going to hurt a little (assuming you actually go listen to it). That's because you don't like death metal. You don't think screaming and growling is an acceptable use of a vocalist's instrument. You think there are certain things no one should write songs about. So, tonight we'll turn the tables.

The Black Dahlia Murder's 2003 debut, Unhallowed. Cannibalism and death and demons and anything you can think of that might make Tipper Gore's skin crawl. But, as i've tried to teach my children, sticks and stones may break my bones, so please don't throw them at me.

It's just music. Yeah, if you forget that it's just music then you might turn into a psychopath, but the same can be said about two people fist fighting over the last bag of potato chips.

More to the point, i find sexism and racism and hypocrisy appalling, but that's all the last two firing brain cells of every 1 out of 3 people i see in a day (in real life or on TV or on the albums i've talked about) can seem to produce. I listen to it and think up clever ways to tell you it's garbage.

Don't think of it as screaming, think of it as a highly refined and methodically practiced vocal technique meant to convey anger and produce fear (you can't wing it if you want to talk to your friends tomorrow, or do 27 interviews to promote your concert that night). Some people are good at it, some people sound ridiculous. I consider this one pretty good, because Trevor Strnad is one of the very few people interested in bridging the Atlantic Ocean's distance between american death metal growls and scandanavian black metal shrieking. You're supposed to feel uncomfortable, or at least recognize that it's supposed to make you feel uncomfortable. It's art. Evaluate it. They work just as hard to do a good job as Twang Smackman and the Banjoettes, and i have no doubt you noticed that not once did i insult anyone from Seether's musicianship or personal life last night.

Next

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Welcome to my blog, and my record collection.

This is a blog about my love of listening to albums. It started off as a nightly perusal of my dad's record collection (which sadly became mine) on my personal facebook page. Over the last two months it has become quite an enjoyable process of simply ranting about what i think is a real art form, the album. It needs a more permanent home. Some of my reviews are positive, some negative. They might not be what you expect from album reviews, but i hope you at least find them entertaining. For the most part i do very little research, and they tend to be train of thought reactions rather than calculated essays. If nothing else, know that i'm really listening to them and whether they are amazing or abysmal i want you to go listen to them too.  I'll start migrating the 60+ i've written so far over here in the next few days, and hopefully get to the point where i just start writing them here. I'd probably even take suggestions if you're just dying to know my tho
Read more

My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult - Hit & Run Holiday

Image
I noticed today that the strange part of the world who actually knows about My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult has finally accepted that they are in fact "industrial disco." The history of Wax Trax and Chicago industrial music is a subject worthy of an entire library, but MLWTTK is my favorite band to emerge from those humble record store beginnings. They are an unpredictable band for sure, and i definitely don't like all of their albums, but Hit & Run Holiday is an album i think every human being on the planet should hear at least once. This album is simply impossible to describe, because it doesn't actually belong to a musical genre as we understand them. It's actually a movie. I know that sounds weird, but the band is actually a movie. My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult was the name of the movie they were trying to make, but composing the soundtrack led them so far afield that they just shrugged and kept going as a band instead. All of their albums come f
Read more

Eyrth - Meridian

Image
A terrible sadness accompanies the release of Meridian by Latvian Ambient Metal band EYRTH. Since their debut Fracture in early 2019 the band, and indeed the whole world has suffered a global pandemic, intense ideo-political turmoil, the death of friend and bandmate Igor Golovin, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.  The war in Ukraine still wages on, even though we in the Western hemisphere seem to have largely forgotten. These are turbulent times, and Alex and Andrey are rightfully entering an extended break. We may not see or hear new music from them for a while, if ever, and that is completely understandable. The music they've created, however, is truly breathtaking. Self-described as "Uranium wreckage in audio," the music of Eyrth is every bit as hauntingly beautiful as it is brutally crushing. Close your eyes and you'll quickly find yourself in the achingly cold and desolate wasteland of human technological atrophy. Slow, ponderously heavy, at times rabidly ragi
Read more