Magma's Vander or Death's Schuldiner?

 

You don't have an elitist attitude?

 

You haven't been listening to Prog long enough - and if the attitude puts you off, wait until you hear the music!

 

 

Uroboros wrote:    (...) Of course you're not really able to explain exactly why Magma is so great and terribly avantgarde, but you are a "specialist" in your field so you're in the position to throw condescendent smiles at the underinformed, confused youth and their recent reference points.

 

Micky may not be able to really explain it, but I can - so it makes no difference - he speaks the truth - listen to him.

 

*Condescending smirk*

 

Let me quote your strong arguments on the previous page:

Death Metal is confined to quiet/loud metal arrangements and simple song structures
Death Metal is but a small corner of the bigger metal genre, with simple and logical constructs - no matter what scales or time signatures have been used.

 

To begin with, the topic was not about death metal in general, but about a certain band. I do admit that a lot of calssic death metal is confined to some formulas, but that's definitely not the case of the band in question (and many others). And what on Earth are "quiet/loud metal arrangements"? As far as I know, any type of music uses the sound frequency spectrum to certain extents depending on its premises and purposes. What does that have to do with any judgement of value?

Simple strong structures? simple and logical constructs? What kind of arguments are those? You're not explaining anything, you're merely stating an opinion that is obviously biased. Frankly, neither Magma or Death sound incredibly illogical or hard to decipher to me. Magma's influences were arguably more uncommon for a rock band, but I think their power of creating new shapes was comparable. And, if I wanted to look for flaws, the vocal styles of both bands are equally forced and ridiculous to the casual observer.

 

 

 

It was the b*****d son of heavy metal, Bay Area thrash and punk. It had the rawness and sloppiness of punk, it had the lightspeed drumming typical of the thrash scene (which was already churning out some of the best drummers in the world at that time) and later it afforded to incorporate more melody and diversify. The first impulse was to take every influence to the extreme - downtuned guitars, bleak lyrics, guttural voice, strident and vaguely melodic guitar solos, a heavy bass, double bass drum excesses etc. - it was definitely original and it took a few years to develop and discover the possibilities provided by its own formula. 

Indeed, Death weren't necessarily the first to play that way. They formed in '84 so they were one of the pioneers, but there was also Possessed and Master... not mentioning the influence of Celtic Frost (and particularly their offshoot Hellhammer) which came at aboutthe same time or even earlier. The thrash scene itself was actually somewhat of a novelty still and many things evolved in parallel. The first Death album ('87) was probably the first one to be fully classifiable as death metal proper. The name of the genre was probably given in retrospect, base on a number of factors (the Possessed song, Death's band name, maybe even that famous compilation entitled "Death Metal" which was released sometime in '83 I think and had no connection whatsoever with death metal as such, featuring bands like Helloween and other future rising stars in the heavy/power area).

The interesting thing is that, towards the end of the nineties, the genre underwent a huge diversification. Schuldiner played a leading role in this transformation. As he improved his guitar technique, he began incorporating various influences, at first mainly from 80's classic heavy metal in its various forms, as well as being more selective in recruiting his bandmates. This is evident for the first time on Spiritual Healing, which ('90) features two guitarists (he and James Murphy, already a very busy session man for very diverse projects) trading solos in a fine classic metal tradition. Of course, the aggressiveness and general morbid feel were preserved, but lyrics were more subtle, the playing much precise, virtuosity displays and also highly melodic guitars were aprt of the picture. A lot of bands in the scene adopted these new tendencies and quickly expanded upon them. However, again, at the same time other bands were doing amazing things, like Atheist releasing their debut in '89 which was already an insane take on modern jazz while bearing all attributes of a brutal death metal outfit, or Obituary who quickly evolved into an intelligent, if somewhat more conservative, ensemble featuring once again mind-boggling guitar playing as a trademark.

In '91, once again, Schuldiner released a totally different album with Human, probably the first example of full-blown progressive death metal, and a standard to this day. Dominated again by highly melodic guitar solos, Human shows a huge progress towards unpredictable song structures, more introspective, psychological lyrics (other bands in the genre took longer to understand that evil zombies weren't the only thing they could talk about), everything ornated with great drumming and an extravagant fretless bass handled by Steve DiGiorgio soloing on top of everything else. If a comparison has to be squeezed out of it, the album was drawing influences more from jazz and especially the techno thrash scene of the late eighties (Watchtower et al.). There had never been an album like that before and this was still 100% death metal, albeit light years away from Scream Bloody Gore four years earlier.

And again, although Death were leading the way, highly experimental bands were doing their own thing: Atheist's Unquestionable Presence was an instant cult classic celebrating the full-fledged communion between death metal and jazz, a thing that never got to happen with classic metal or thrash in the eighties. Nocturnus were doing expriments of their own, and of course the beginning of the nineties saw the branching off of European bands, forming new scenes: Pestilence and Morgoth in the Netherlands, Bolt Thrower and Benediction in the UK, and most notably the first wave of Swedish death metal (Entombed/Dismember/At the Gates). I'm not giving an exhaustive picture here, but anyway... Out of these, the Dutch scene was heavily influenced by Death as far as I can tell (and followed their progressive incursions), the British scene proved to be more conservative in that bands generally exhibited only one or two of the main, initial characteristics of the genre, plus in the UK there was already grindcore, with Napalm Death and the likes, who stuck closer to the punk influence and spirit that marked the beginnings of death metal. The Swedish were by far the most innovative, adding a particular touch and creating a distinctive branch (Swedish/melodic death metal), later pursued by Dark Tranquillity or In Flames and still quite popular today, in its various forms, probably more popular than conservative death metal bands in the UK or USA.

There were a lot of interchanging ideas between different braches, local scenes etc. - bands influenced one another, musicians permutating between bands. The mighty Cynic, who released Focus in '93 (a generally acknowledged prog masterpiece, as much as any of the CttE's of the world, but definitely more groundbreaking), was composed of musicians who had already been trained by playing in Death on Human - Schuldiner played a major role in their development in those years before Focus was released, as can be observed by chronologically listening to their four demo tapes released from '88 to '91 I think (I did and was thrilled to hear how they evolved), so there was an undeniable influence there as well. Anyway, by the time Focus was out, Schuldiner was already headed in another direction, recording Individual Thought Patterns with a new line-up (Gene Hoglan, Andy LaRocque and DiGiorgio) and practically raising the bar ten times higher, at least from the playing perspective. The display of instrumental brilliance and precision on that album is probably the most painfully difficult stuff you'll hear in all metal music ever. Personally, I've never heard something so impressive (besides the bands' own subsequent works). It's the ultimate statement at the confluence of death metal and techno thrash/prog metal, a highly cerebral form of music, difficult to play, subtle and aggressive at the same time, unpredictable and defying reasonable classification. From that point, I think it's safe to say death metal has become a formative pool for some of the most talented young musicians today, and it still sets the standard generally for a lot of metal music today when it comes to instrumental prowess. Pretty far from where it began, huh?

I could go on talking about the next two Death offerings (Vander pun intended), which are actually my favourite (Symbolic and The Sound of Perseverance - the latter being their magnum opus, as they say - in my opinion, of course), but essentially I think I've made my point. Schuldiner may have not been the sole inventor of the whole death metal phenomenon, but he was incredibly influent on others and flexible in his own approach. He moved on constantly at a speed that other bands could barely follow. He perfected the initial formula, he brought it to a new level, then altered it by gradually combining it with other aesthetics. None of the band's albums sounds the same as the other. Practically, with every new album they put out, the standard was pushed further and afterwards others would go even further with the experimentation. No other character in the death metal story has been so flexible or has manifested their ideas in such a visionary way. He was always a step ahead and I find that rather amazing.

One other thing is Schuldiner's guitar playing. He had a very distinctive guitar style that he polished throughout the years, and his tone is instantly recognizable. It's really hard for me to talk about it, because I honestly can't think of any guitarist before him who played in a similar fashion (well, Maiden and Priest influences were definitely there, but that's just a small piece). He was highly proficient (not exactly the easiest thing to learn playing guitar to), but his solos tended to be emotionally charged to sometimes ridiculous degrees, especially considering how well they fit in the aggressive musical context. His guitar playing had a voice of its own and lended the group a cohesive element through constantly changing line-ups and radical shifts in style.

Big post, long time spent writing it, maybe someone will find it helpful. Any inexactities are probably due to the fact that I didn't take time to verify some information, and I might have omitted important aspects. But I hope I've explained the things that made death metal an important contribution to recent music history, as well as those that I think make Chuck Schuldiner and his band the most significant figures in the death metal's (ever changing) equation.

 

 

I don't have the secret definition of prog, sorry.  

Actually, why would I try to figure out the "meaning" of an abstract notion? The meaning is what we understand. If you think prog is restricted to symph bands in the seventies, it's fine. If you think Iron Maiden is prog, go on. If death metal sounds prog to you, why not think of it as prog? That doesn't change anything, for instance it doesn't change the fact that Death was a groundbreaking band. I didn't use the word "prog" in my post above (I hope), but I did use "progressive". Now, that one is in the dictionary, so it's safer.

The statement that metal is played out has been disproved so many thousand times only in recent years that it's hard to take that seriously... Most probably you don't either, despite your personal preferences.

 

Have you listened to Apocalyptic Raids by Hellhammer? Or the first Possessed album? They are pretty far from the shape proposed by the first Death album in '87, as sloppy and childish as it was at the time. However, yes, it was obviously a thing that happened in a temporal and social context like everything in this world, and drew strength from certain influences. Nobody created a genre by themselves from scratch, that's an absurd statement.

A friend of mine, much more knowledgeable in musical matters than myself, once told me something along the lines of "well, you know, it's funny that these classic prog bands of yours are considered revolutionary simply because, instead of stealing from blues and jazz like everyone else, they stole from Bartok/Stravinsky/Schoenberg/Stockhausen so the public had no idea where those ideas came from and thought they were new", after which he probably uttered a LOL. I really wish I had some viable knowledge of twentieth century classical so that I can give some good arguments for these things. For now, let me just express my doubt in Vander's demiurgic capacities.