All That Remains now endorsing Jackson & Charvel guitars

[xenophobe]

If "Heartwork" isn't a melodic Death Metal album i don't know what is. In addition to that, it's an amazing album and i'm the kind of guy who thinks the term 'Melodic Death Metal' is an oxymoron. Plus, how can you say "Necroticism..." is a Grindcore album? It has some Grinding bits but it's a far cry from "Reek of Putrefaction".

Heartwork is a good album, but when I think Carcass I think Symphonies of Sickness, Reek of Putrifaction and Discanting the Insalubrious. Those aren't even close to Gothenburg.

When i think of old-school Death Metal i think of Possessed, Death, Obituary, Morbid Angel, Nihilist/Entombed, Dismember, Deicide, etc..

Possessed isn't death metal. The first time I saw them play was in a garage party before they got signed. They sounded absolutely horrible. But I do love Seven Churches. You can add those bands I didn't delete to my list of "old school that I like" as well. Most of us locally considered them Black Metal.

I would hardly call Iniquity, Cryptopsy, Gorguts or Disgorge 'old-school'...

Because you don't know shit about death metal?

All 5 of those bands were around in the late 80's/early 90s and I listened to them concurrently with many of the other bands as they all released albums.

[xenophobe]

The irony of being told I don't have reading comprehension by someone who uses "like" in a written sentance!

Umm... Yes, you don't have reading comprehension. I add in "like", like, a lot. Comprehend my location. California.

Anything after this is just a combination of all of the above. There are of course bands that transcend styles and excpetions to the rule, but these are the local scenes that emerged by the end of the 80's with their own distinctive styles.

Brutal Death and Technical Death are two sub-genres that don't fall under those labels.

What makes Carcass an interesting case is that Mike Amott came over to UK from Carnage in Sweeden. Thus changing the sound and direction of the band (and arguably the whole scene), this was a deliberate move by the other 3 members of the band to try and move the genre on. Hence Necroticism is a straight up death metal album, Heartwork is Melodic Death and Swansong is Rot n Roll.

And I don't agree that Descanting is straight up death metal. It's in a fucked up genre of it's own, IMO. Heartwork is melodic. I never argued that.

The other chicken and egg case is did Bolt Thrower start writing more melodic sequences before the prevelance of the Scandinavian stuff and thus influence the sound of Melodic Death, or did they change their sound as a result of the Melodic scene?

Back then there wasn't this extensive labeling. We're now trying to fit them into labels, but pre AOL-internet or pre-WWW internet, there wasn't a whole bunch of labels like there are now and trying to pigenhole all these bands that existed before this is kinda stupid, IMO.

The Gothenberg scene was secondary to the original sound in Scandinavia, Bands like At the Gates were really second generation and Arch Enemy is third gen. Although many of the original bands came from Gothenberg (Grave etc) the "Gothenberg Sound" was a distinctive break from the earlier stuff.

The US death metal scene could only get more extreme, in the 90's it factioned into 2 main groups. Those that wanted to grow the base and expand the horizon of the sound (Death etc) and those that wanted to stay true to the cause and get more brutal (Cannibal Corpse etc).

These days it's pretty hard to find any band that is still true to old school, everyone has heard too much other stuff and it will forever change the way we think about metal.

I don't disagree with most of that.

Death is a band that pre-existed the label of "death metal". There are a lot of 80's bands that were pushing the thrash/death metal genre before that label existed.

You might as well add bands like Venom, Motorhead, Possessed, Kreator, Hirax, etc... because they all crossed various genre lines that didn't exist when they crossed them.

[straycat]

This band is just another growling WTF band IMO who cares?
Great that Jackson landed them but this chunka chunka shit is getting old as dried donkey piss.
This band sounds like all the other ones out there right now so I'll pass.
I would love to see a metal band do some thing new for a change.

[horns666]

I'm, almost impressed with the amount of metal knowledge goin' on...my kid knows more than this y'know. Anyone reading 100's of Terrorizer or a BW&BK while taking a dump can, ans exploring..always have always will. Well, the kid was weened with a 5150 up his ass, and a tit in his mouth. I am...POPPA CHUBBY!!!..No Not my tit..my wife's you dicks!


He actually got "let go" from work today because he doesn't know any other genre but metal. duh. He works at a CD/record/Game store chain. He was to assist ALL the customers. He sells a shit-ton of metal tho...at least they had a good metahead in the store...ehhh fuggums. I blame Romney..no I do..His co aquired the store, and most entertainment shops, and Guitar Center.and um...including Netflix. I believe Blockbuster ..AKA Romneyvion..or R-Vid,, will be ginormous again. Mittens needs more hair dye. That fuckity fuckstick!!

Dey took his jerb...!!!! DEY TOOK ..JERB!..D' TOOK...JERB!..D' BERB!!!(><)..hhaaaaa my kid jobless. The day after Obama won..ain't that about a bitch!!!...TOOK...JERB!!!!

I feel bad for my kid really. That place is my home from home..he's been going there since he sat in a fuggin' baby stroller..These are facts....TOOK...JERB!!!!

Romney will buy out Fender..Gibson...prolly Sully Too. He'll make an offer they can't refuse..bastid!..HE TOOK DER JERBS!!!

Jackson..Charvel..Import...USA...whatever..Romney! Obama would not do this..he like Motown, and R&B..godammit! He hates guitar music..it makes him queasy. He told me!..JERB!!!

Oh, All That Remains..what label are they on...Romney. The plastic, jewel case, booklet all made with forbidden corruptiveness of a LDS / free mason...nicely packaged for 11.99!!!

Don't worry I think the Romney jokes will wear thin..what day is it...umm...Tomorrow. If there is a tommorow...ahhhhh D'Y T'K 'R JERB!!!

[Devotee]

Heartwork is a good album, but when I think Carcass I think Symphonies of Sickness, Reek of Putrifaction and Discanting the Insalubrious. Those aren't even close to Gothenburg.

Agreed!

Possessed isn't death metal. The first time I saw them play was in a garage party before they got signed. They sounded absolutely horrible. But I do love Seven Churches. You can add those bands I didn't delete to my list of "old school that I like" as well. Most of us locally considered them Black Metal.

Well the thing about Possessed is that with "Seven Churches" they crossed so many boundaries. That album is easily one of my top 10 albums of all time and for me, it's Thrash Metal, Black Metal and Death Metal all rolled into one horrific nightmare of an album. I consider Possessed Death Metal because they coined the term. Either way, i won't disagree if you call them Black Metal too.

Because you don't know shit about death metal?

All 5 of those bands were around in the late 80's/early 90s and I listened to them concurrently with many of the other bands as they all released albums.

I don't want to be pedantic or anything, i really don't care about genre classifications. All those bands were around in the early 90s and they may be old yes but it doesn't make the Death Metal they play 'old-school' in my opinion. For me, old-school Death Metal as a sound or style is quite distinctive - there's a different feeling; not much blasting, riffs are more Thrashy and there's a certain something that pushes it over the edge - you know, Massacre, early Sepultura, Protector and even later examples like Repugnant, Tribulation, Excoriate... That kinda thing.

[Devotee]

Well, I don't see how "darkness" and all that is somehow anti-melody. Melody is melody. Fruity melody is a melody written with fruity aesthetics. From what I've seen when metal is described as melodic, it comes down to average joe/mainstream music listener understanding of what melody is. Simple diatonic lines, perhaps some very simple lead guitar harmonies (usually in 3rds) etc.
We live in period where Schoenberg and Webern present very old music. We are in Post-Boulez era and it's still surprising how understanding of melody is still limited by vague definitions by not only the polloi but musicians too.
Let's take crème de la crème of western music, 19th century Romanticism, the chase for perfection, full of music described as immensely melodic and beautiful. The supreme form - opera, what do we have, Wagner, lead voicing full of chromaticism and music resolving to dissonant chords. Even in lighter pieces which even the average joe may know... like "Carmen" by Bizet or "Otello" by Verdi. Or if we take instrumental music, melody has had so many different forms and characteristics for ages but if we stick to the 19th century and go from Chopin's piano pieces to Dvořák to for example the well known "Prélude à l'Après-midi d'un Faune" by Debussy where beautiful melody doesn't fall into some vague pop music definitions.
Melody can be melancholic, dark, it can wonder around and not resolve into any tonic center. Melody can be anything you want it to be.

Try finding the cuteness and fruitiness in one of the most well known orchestral melodies from the 20th century (the signature theme starting at 0:29)

That was an incredible and sinister piece (even though i prefer more abstract shit like Ligeti and Penderecki), but what's your point dude? We're talking about DEATH METAL here. Don't get me wrong, i love plenty of melodic music, including melodic extreme Metal - Emperor, Rotting Christ, Necromantia and many more have heaps of melody... But Melodic Death Metal is basically Iron Maiden riffs played in B-standard. I kid, i kid. It's the term that annoys me more than anything else.

[bratfink]

Umm... Yes, you don't have reading comprehension. I add in "like", like, a lot. Comprehend my location. California.

Telling a public (Re: Private) school educated Englishman that he has no reading comprehension is akin to telling a Grenadier Guard he can't march!

Brutal Death and Technical Death are two sub-genres that don't fall under those labels.

Both Brutal and Technical Death came later.

And I don't agree that Descanting is straight up death metal. It's in a fucked up genre of it's own, IMO. Heartwork is melodic. I never argued that.

There are passages on the album that are pure melodic, others would have fitted in Symphonies. It is a true crossover album. I can conceed that.

Back then there wasn't this extensive labeling. We're now trying to fit them into labels, but pre AOL-internet or pre-WWW internet, there wasn't a whole bunch of labels like there are now and trying to pigenhole all these bands that existed before this is kinda stupid, IMO.

Before the Internet there was the tape exchange. Labels have existed as long as humanity has been on the planet. in the 60's it was Mods vs Rockers, the Who were mod, the Troggs were rockers. In the 50's Teddy Boys vs everyone. It is a human condition to compartmentalise everything and everyone, makes you feel like you belong to something.

Death is a band that pre-existed the label of "death metal". There are a lot of 80's bands that were pushing the thrash/death metal genre before that label existed.

No, Death were the genre defining band. They and their other kin the Florida area were the nucleus that created the scene and the genre to follow. Much as Carcass, Napalm & Bolt Thrower did for Grindcore and Entombed and co did for Melodic. In order to have a genre you must first have a scene of like minded individuals. Without that you just have an excentric lunatic doing his own thing that no-one cares about.

These early entrepreneurs are the only ones capable of changing the shape of the genre they create, anyone coming to the party late who wants to change the sound in effect creates a new sub genre. Hence, Brutal Death, Tech Death etc. However, the genre out grows the father. If they try to change it too much and go against the will of the collective they will ostracise themselves, Carcass with the Rot n Roll experiment and Entombed with the Death n Roll experiement come to mind.

You might as well add bands like Venom, Motorhead, Possessed, Kreator, Hirax, etc... because they all crossed various genre lines that didn't exist when they crossed them.

We should talk of those, but not as being inside the genre. Megadeth were hugely influenced by King Diamond, but you would never call King Diamond Thrash. Vemon had many streaks that made them effectively a very early form of Death Metal. So early infact that both Black and Death could trace liniage back to them.

Either way if you are talking about late 80's and early 90's as being old school, you already missed the bus. By 1990 the second gen of bands was already becoming popular, the genres had changed and the sub genres were starting to appear. I stand by my original message, the 3 localised early extreme metal genres were Death (US), Grindcore (UK) and Melodic (Scandinavia). Everything else is a mixture in varying degrees of those 3.

[bratfink]

I for one, have exclusively been listening to Grave's Into the Grave for the past 5 years, so I think that gives me the credentials to speak to this point - Grave are in fact from Visby on the eastern Swedish island of Gotland. That means they feed into Stockholm. People from Stockholm dislike people from Gothenburg because, as one incredibly intoxicated Swede once told me on a train, "they talk funny."

The true Gothenburg sound, in my opinion at least, is a combination of pissed-off early morning joggers and ringing ears after having passed out in a park from a night of heavy drinking. Oh to brown out again with Norrlands Guld. Those are memories I'll never get back.

You are right, Grave are Stockholm. Perhaps you can answer this better than I then:

Was there a distinct difference in the scene in Stockholm to Gothenberg? And we are talking about in the early days.

I grouped together the early Scandinavian scene in one since Entombed were from Norway, Carnage from Sweeden and so on. But they all interlinked much as the UK and Florida scenes did. People in Birmingham hate people from Liverpool, yet Naplam was a combination from both cities (in the early days)

I could see the area's creating their own local scene's late on as the movement grew, but how did it work at the beginning?

[z1n]

I'm a big Killswitch Engage fan, which was my gateway drug to All That Remains

Man this is exactly what happened to me too! but yea I like KWE AND ATR

[VanHoosen]

You are right, Grave are Stockholm. Perhaps you can answer this better than I then:

Was there a distinct difference in the scene in Stockholm to Gothenberg? And we are talking about in the early days.

I grouped together the early Scandinavian scene in one since Entombed were from Norway, Carnage from Sweeden and so on. But they all interlinked much as the UK and Florida scenes did. People in Birmingham hate people from Liverpool, yet Naplam was a combination from both cities (in the early days)

I could see the area's creating their own local scene's late on as the movement grew, but how did it work at the beginning?

In the beginning the Swedish metal scene - the vast majority of it - was entirely in Stockholm. Bathory, Candlemass, Morbid, etc. There wasn't much extreme metal going on, but the stuff that was happening was largely centered around Stockholm and surrounding areas. And of course, the Swedish punk scene - which has always been legendary - was reigning strong in Stockholm as well. So, essentially you have these two forces, metal and punk, converging in then young East Sweden residents Nicke Andersson, David Blomqvist, Fred Estby, Michael Amott, Johnny Hedlund, and a few others. This gives birth to such bands as Nihilist and Carnage, who promptly break up and further give birth to Entombed, Dismember, Unleashed, etc - all of who share a love for the Boss HM-2 Heavy Metal pedal and get their albums recorded by Tomas Skogsberg at Sunlight Studios. Then, as Nicke Andersson has stated in interviews, it kind of blew up. I guess they used to have shows every weekend in an abandoned metro station, and attendance went from a few friends to a few hundred kids.

I'm less familiar with the Gothenburg thing, but I do know a lot of the early guys on the west side of Sweden used to hang out in Norway and had a lot of contacts there. Jon Nodtveidt and Tompa Lindberg of Dissection and At The Gates/Grotesque respectively, were pen pals with Metalion who used to run the Norwegian metal mag Slayer. I'm speculating, but that may be why some of the earlier Gothenburg bands lean more toward an almost black metal sound. A lot of the Gothenburg bands started forming in the early 90s, whereas the Stockholm thing got started in the late 80s. Then of course you have Michael Amott leaving Carcass and relocating to the west side of Sweden to form Arch Enemy. I don't know where the defining "melodic" sound in Gothenburg death metal originated, but if I were to guess I'd say a combination of black metal, post-hardcore, and the fact that all of those guys were basically raised on Iron Maiden.

So there it is. Basically two totally different scenes - kind of like LA and NY hardcore in the states.

[bratfink]

That expalains a lot to me.

The early Scandinavian stuff was so different in sound to the later "Gothenberg sound". But I would still decribe all of it as melodic in one way or another. One guy (who shall remain nameless, but has a big orange beard...) once described to me the melodic influence came from various Scandinavian folk music, and listening to some of the many guitar patterns would suggest some truth to that.

Thanks for setting me straight on Entombed as well, I had always thought they were from Oslo!

Awsome metal knowledge skills

Not old school in any form or function, but have you listened to much Insomnium? I have really been enjoying their sound!

[Endrik]

I'm less familiar with the Gothenburg thing, but I do know a lot of the early guys on the west side of Sweden used to hang out in Norway and had a lot of contacts there.

Makes sense since the music doesn't match the vibe of Götenborg at all.

[VanHoosen]

That expalains a lot to me.

The early Scandinavian stuff was so different in sound to the later "Gothenberg sound". But I would still decribe all of it as melodic in one way or another. One guy (who shall remain nameless, but has a big orange beard...) once described to me the melodic influence came from various Scandinavian folk music, and listening to some of the many guitar patterns would suggest some truth to that.

Thanks for setting me straight on Entombed as well, I had always thought they were from Oslo!

Awsome metal knowledge skills

Not old school in any form or function, but have you listened to much Insomnium? I have really been enjoying their sound!

Thanks man. Yeah, it seems like all of Scandinavian music is extremely melodic. Even the punk that comes from the region is saturated in melody (Wolfpack/Wolfbrigade, Skitsystem, Avskum, etc). This had a big influence on a lot of the modern punk bands from Portland as well.

The folk aspect is interesting, because I can obviously hear it in bits and pieces, but I just don't know how much of that was added later. I honestly hear more Maiden mixed with deliberate folk passages.

I haven't heard much Insomnium, but I see they're from Joensuu, which is an awesome town. I typically can't get into that super sugary melodic sound. Dissection's Storm of the Lights Bane has been and always will be the standard by which I judge melodic metal. Cold and powerful.

[VanHoosen]

Makes sense since the music doesn't match the vibe of Götenborg at all.

How so? Gothenburg is kind of depressing if you're not used to grey skies and rain I guess.

And by "early guys on the west side of Sweden" I particularly mean the dudes in Dissection and Grotesque. To my knowledge they were the earliest active bands on the Gothenburg side of things.

[Endrik]

How so? Gothenburg is kind of depressing if you're not used to grey skies and rain I guess.

No! Very chilled, hippie-ish and cool city. Not bleak at all, but then again I've lived most of my life in Northern Europe. This kind of metal doesn't make sense to me at all considering the local culture, vibe and many other things. Stockholm metal with is strong street punk roots makes total sense, hip Göteborg and this melodic metal thing doesn't make sense at all.