Your One Stop Guide To Death MetalMar 06 '04 Write an essay on this topic.The Bottom Line This is the only guide you'll ever need.. Ah yes the illustrious genre of death metal. Among all the genres of music available Death metal stands as possibly the most hardest to get into for the uninitiated. This is mainly due to its obscure nature of music it is. I have this guide here for the music enthusiast looking for perhaps an interest in the more brutal palette of music and a starting point for anyone else interested in this form of music which is up there as my favourite type of music. I personally love death metal because it’s the type of music that will always remain pure. Nothing is going to change about death metal. It’s the type of music that will never ever be played on the radio or will really ever be adopted by a mainstream audience. But at its core what is exactly death metal? What can you expect when you pop on a Morbid Angel or Cannibal Corpse album? For the first timers, the most strikingly different thing about this type of music is firstly going to be the drums. And in particular the kick drum. How can it be played at such fast speeds one might ask? This is due to the drummer using a double pedal for the kick drum. A double pedal as the name implies is a drum accessory attached to the bass drum. The double pedal has the one pedal aligned with the bass drum like it would a single pedal, but then has a bar attached to it which is connected to another pedal that is at the drummers other foot next to the high hat. Another variation of this (and is used just as much) is to have two bass drums with a pedal on each to achieve the same effect. It allows the drummer to play at incredible speeds because he can use both feet to create a ‘drum roll’ of sorts on the bass drum. It gives the music, on first impression a brutal and unrelenting nature to it and is a staple sound in death metal. On a side note, if you ever hear the term “Jackhammer” used in reference to death metal drumming, its when the drummer is constantly playing the double pedal at incredibly fast speeds, as a jackhammer would when used. If it’s not the drums that catch your attention then the one thing that will most definitely is the vocals. Easily the hardest part to adjust to, the vocals is the main reason why Death metal, for one wont ever be heard on the radio and two, isn’t a widely mainstream genre of music. Most singing you would have heard up to the point before you ever heard a death metal vocalist probably would have been cleanly sung, and at the same time easy to understand. Death metal is the exact opposite of all the above. Instead of singing, a death metal vocalist uses a deep throat growl. Its also known as a “cookie monster” growl. It’s generally very deep and because of this, most times the lyrics become undecipherable. Upon first impression it’s easy to shun away the vocals and claim its incredibly untalented to growl or that “I could do that too” sort of thing. It’s the vocals to death metal that is the main big hurdle for anyone interested in this type of music. If you can overcome the different vocal approach your on your way. Then of course there’s the guitars. Ah yes. For the first timers to death metal, the guitars are also a very different type compared to what you might be use to. Often very down-tuned and highly distorted, it gives the guitars a deep end crunch that isn’t like most music. Depending on what facit you are listening to of death metal, the guitars can also be extremely dirty in sound, to give it that overall death sound. With the guitars as well, a strikingly different thing about them is how they are played and particularly with two guitarists, how they are utilised. A lot of the song breakdowns alternate from one guitarist to another, and if you listen to a cd with this you will notice the isolation go into one side before resuming both. It’s a type of element that is fairly unique to death metal mainly because of the tuning of the guitars and how they are played. And then of course we come to the lyrics. What are the lyrics generally about in death metal? You guessed it…….death. They are at most extremely descriptive and details all sorts of variations of death. A lot of the time the lyrics to certain bands are based on serial killers or even at times, the lyrics are written from a first person perspective of a killer. I wont give any examples or passages here for obvious reasons but if you are one to get offended by gruelling accounts of death or squeamish to the concept of death, then this might not be the genre of music for you. It is unfortunate because of this staple, it can allow many bands be childish and shocking in its lyrical content, at times making the music take a back seat. Death metal always gets a bad wrap by parents and the like too. You will always hear that story of that one kid who did what the Cannibal Corpse lyrics told him to do. It is a shame though because while this might be an abstract claim, the subject of death in lyrics can be taken as an art form. Even intelligently. If you want to see what I mean, I suggest you check out the lyrics to Cryptopsy’s ‘None So Vile’ album, as they are probably the most sophisticated and intelligent take of death metal lyrics I’ve managed to come across. That’s essentially the core to death metal and its main differences to metal, and all music in general. But you still might be asking, “ok sounds good, what’s a few songs or albums to start off with?” as I mentioned earlier there’s not easy way to start off. You can never do wrong with the classics. For a general spectrum of death metal Morbid Angels album ‘Altars Of Madness’ is a good starting point or a more recent release, Decapitated’s ‘Nihility’. If you don’t seem to find solace in them you might want to move onto Swedish death metal and you cant go wrong with Entombed and their first two albums ‘Left Hand Path’ and ‘Clandestine’. (You can check out my review of left hand path if you interested.) If it’s the more brutal kinds of death metal that might interest you (although I don’t think it’s a good starting point) you can try Nile’s ‘Black Seeds Of Vengeance’ or as I mentioned earlier, Cryptopsy’s ‘None So Vile’. There you have it. A general guide to death metal. I hope in reading this I have given you some light on the genre of death metal and hopefully you can make an informed decision of weather or not this could be the type of music for you to get into. It’s a different world of music to most, but can be an enjoyable one if you give it a chance.  |
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