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Death metal: a gestalt of suck

I’m a fan of metal and hard core. Except, I don’t like death metal. It’s a gestalt of suck, wherein the sum of it’s parts is actually greater than the whole. I guess that’s an anti-gestalt. And they do this in one of three ways:

Someone starts singing.

The individual parts may be impressive but all together, it sounds like noise.

Or they just make noise.

To illustrate, here’s the instrumental version of Between the Buried and Me’s tune Alaska:

Starts off really good. And then the main riff kicks in at about 40 seconds. And it gives me a headache. Then, here’s the version with vocals:

Which gives me a headache even faster.

That said, their cover album is pretty good.

10 Responses to “Death metal: a gestalt of suck”

  1. Sigivald Says:

    Much death metal is suck.

    (But then again, I think that’s true of hardcore… and then again, it’s true of every genre of metal and indeed every genre of music; see Sturgeon’s Law.)

    But the good stuff shines out beyond that – the first Darkthrone album (before they went black metal), for instance.

    Or later Immortal (after they stopped being black metal), some early Carcass or Bolt Thrower…

  2. Rich Says:

    My God! The cookie monster sings!

  3. Ted N Says:

    A lot of mud, a few gems, just like other genres, IMO.

  4. ern Says:

    There are cool moments, but it’s hardly worth wading through the crap to get to them. And the vocals are just … gah. Horrible.

  5. James Says:

    I think death metal is akin to a bunch of teenagers stuck in a infinite loop of “new band syndrome”.

    You have some people who are playing/screaming their heads off because, individually, they sound okay.
    Then they all play together, and they can’t hear how terrible it sounds over how awesome they are.
    There’s just no harmony between the instruments, and the vocals sound like a dump truck dragging a piano down a gravel road.

  6. Baz Says:

    SMH. You love to misuse 8 buck words.

  7. UNHchabo Says:

    For what it’s worth, I do enjoy their album “Colors” overall, even if there are some parts that grate with me.

    I also enjoy the version of “Aspirations” that they did on the “Colors Live” DVD; the song is overall much more melodic than much of their other material. I don’t like the studio version as much though, but I think that’s largely due to the production.

  8. John Says:

    What about baby metal?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cK3NMZAUKGw

    Because Japan.

  9. Sadler Says:

    BTBAM’s instrumentals are more prog metal than death metal. The varying rhythm is what throws people off, but I happen to love it. There’s a lot better prog metal out there than BTBAM though.

    Sithu Aye is a really good example of prog metal at its best: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1XgvsbtCaA

  10. Skeptical_Realist Says:

    I’ve not found American Death Metal to be worth a damn. They tend to leave out all the good aspects, and it’s just screaming over incomprehensible thrash metal.

    Try listening to some of the Scandanavian bands. That’s where the roots are, anyway.

Remember, I do this to entertain me, not you.

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