Anyone glancing at this thread, metal inclined or not, owes it to themselves to explore this band as much as possible. Chuck Schuldiner, whether he wants to own up to it or not, invented an entire genre by pushing Thrash over the cliff musically, and stripping the veneer and pretense off of other forms of metal that were extant, giving us *DEATH* Metal. Sure, Possessed and Celtic Frost were important, but these guys gave what was happening a name.
Schuldiner then found a few other musicians he could stand for ten minutes and recorded Spiritual Healing. It's on this album he abandones the gory lyrics and imagery for deeper stuff in religion, societal inequities, crime, war, why people harm one another, and yeah, some more blood and guts. He starts to really spread his wings here as a guitarist, but this album's totally transitional. Not bad, don't get me wrong, but he'd dwarf it with later efforts. This kicks off a whirlwind of fuck-yes awesome greatness that didn't end until his tragic demise.
Individual Thought Patterns is one of my favorites. By this point, his session guys could keep up with everything he wanted to do, and the results really crystalize into masterpieces of heavy metal. This is right there as the high water mark for musicianship within the scope of heavy metal. More from ITP:
They then got even better, and released Symbolic in 1995. He was starting to change up his vocal style just a little at this point, and was perfecting the sound he was fleshing out on Individual Thought Patterns. Results:
The Sound of Perseverance featured Schuldiner trying something new vocally that didn't sit well with some listeners, but on guitar, he continued the 75 degree upward angle his talent arc was travelling. This album, overall, might be Death's only (ever so slight) step backwards, but it's still full of kickass. I actually really like his vocal style on this one. It's unique! Snarly, with some highs.
Oh, this one has their cover of Judas Priest's "Painkiller": Death - Painkiller
The solos. WHEW.
Sadly, a few years after this came out, Schuldiner started having pains in his neck and shoulder that he figured was just muscle strain or a pinched nerve. As it persistently got worse, he got checked out by a few doctors that found an inoperable brain tumor at the base of his brain. He underwent treatment and all that shit, but got pneumonia and had to go to the hospital. He was released from the hospital in December of 2001 and was stone dead in an hour. Of all the "celebrity" deaths, this one gets to me the most because he didn't OD or whatever where a person knows what kind of shit they're getting into. He was just an incredibly talented and influential musician that caught a really horrible and unfair disease. Sucks. RIP Chuck Schuldiner, and I don't say that shit about anybody.
Death is my third favorite metal band, period. Really, for all intents and purposes that would make them my third favorite band period, as my I hold my favorite metal bands more near and dear than my favorite non-metal bands. They were the first death metal band I got into when I finally opened myself up to harsh-vocal metal, back in early 2000. The brutality of the older material and the prog-iness of the later material both grabbed me and helped change my metal taste for the better.
Unfortunately I only got to know the band for a relatively brief time while Chuck was still alive. Similar to Agent, his death hit me fairly hard for a celebrity that I'd never met, and I generally don't get that way at all. I can still remember reading the news, as he died only a couple days after I moved back from Minnesota to Kansas to return to school. That first semester back I even wrote a speech about him for my Speech 101 class. I got an "A" on that one and even impressed some of my classmates with it.
Random notes:
* I believe "Lack of Comprehension" (off Human) was the first ever (and only one of a few) death metal video to air on Headbanger's Ball. Even on HBB, death metal largely existed outside of MTV's universe, so that was quite a coup for this band.
* A good portion of my Top 10 All Time Metal Albums list is seemingly evermoving due to changing tastes and new finds, but Symbolic and Human have easily been on there for this entire decade.
* TSOP has always been a sticking point for me. Musically it's some of the best work Chuck has ever done, but I absolutely loathe the vocal style on that album.
* Broaching into the realm of hokey social commentary, one interesting thing about "1000 Eyes" to me is how I remember first listening to it earlier this decade and understanding Chuck's lyrics about a society where cameras are everywhere, watching everything you do. At the time he wrote it he was likely talking about a 1984-type government watching, but as it turns out nowadays the greatest enemy to ourselves is, well, ourselves.
Also, a funny bridge between one of Agent's most beloved bands and (until recently) his most despised bands is that long-time King Diamond guitarist Andy LaRocque played on Individual Thought Patterns.
You can make out his distinctive playing style in some of the song solos, especially on "Jealousy" and "Trapped in a Corner"
His whole band (all 100 members he went through) are a real who's-who of heavy metal. Gene Hoaglan went on to SYL, for example, I mentioned the two guys from Cynic, and Slayer pointed out LaRocque, just to name a few.
I think I mentioned it previously (maybe on the old board), but when we went to see Death on the ITP tour, we made a cake and decorated it with the logo and everything. We didn't get to meet Chuck, since he wasl always really introverted, but we talked to Steve DiGiorgio and Gene Hoglan for a while outside after the show, and gave them the cake. A few years later, one of my friends was interviewing Steve for his 'zine, and mentioned the cake, and Steve went off talking about how awesome it was, and how much they all loved it, especially Chuck.
That made my day.
Spiritual Healing has always been and will always be my favorite Death album. Too many memories, etc.
and now my contributions, I'm actually pulling a two-fer today, but after the amount of work put into these I'm going back to one per thread after this. I had to go with a two-fer because two of my favorite bands (aside from the thread starter) begin with "D", and not only that, they share the same initials of DT. Amazingly, neither one of them is Dream Theater, who I do like, but the other two warranted articles more, plus I know most people here don't like Dream Theater anyway
"But Slayer, you wrote that article about Blind Guardian."
True, but the other two bands were still more deserving of articles.
First up is Dark Tranquillity who, along with At the Gates and In Flames, is considered one of the original Big Three of Gothenburg-style death metal, which built upon the foundations set by Carcass' Heartwork (the Seven Churches of melodeath, if you will). Melodeath metal eschewed the death metal standards largely established at that point by the famous Florida DM bands and original Swedish DM bands (Entombed, Dismember and Unleashed) in favor of melodic riffs that drew influence from both the early 80's British scene and the late 80's German scene, while still utilizing harsh vocals.
Dark Tranquillity's first release, Skydancer 1993, was more straightforward death with Swedish folk influences, similar to In Flames Lunar Strain. Skydancer was a decent album, but because of the stylistic difference I'm not going to post a song here and just mention it as a note. Funny enough, both DT and IF's original works would feature the vocalist that would go on to make their name in the other band, as Mikael Stanne would leave IF to join DT, switching places with Anders Friden. Two years later, DT would release The Gallery which, along with At the Gates' Slaugher of the Soul (both released within a two week span in Nov '95), were the two original melodeath albums.
As DT has largely kept the same main members and style with only some minor changes here and there*, I won't go through album by album to review the member and style changes. Considering that their contemporaries such as In Flames and Soilwork abandoned melodic death in favor of (really fucking bad) nu-style metal, DT has easily taken the throne as king of the melodeath bands.
The four albums they've so far released this decade are all favorites of mine, with Damage Done being on my Top 10 for this decade list.
* the exception to this is Projector, which featured some slower songs and clean sung passages. I enjoyed it, but it was not warmly received and so DT returned back to form on their following album, not utilizing clean vocals again until their most recent work.
The next band with initials DT is not really a band but a man, by the name of Devin Townsend. This will also serve as the bio for his other band, Strapping Young Lad (SYL), although songs from that band will have to wait until we get to the 'S' thread (if we should make it that far!).
Devin Townsend was very talented musician in high school, playing in several bands while growing up in Vancouver. At the age of 20 he caught the eye of music executives and was offered the vocalist position for Steve Vai's band, appearing on Vai's 1993 album Sex and Religion.
Unfortunately his rather off-beat personality and stage antics earned him a bad reputation in the music industry. After leaving Vai's band, Devin toured with some other musicians while trying to shop around his brand of extreme metal, but couldn't find any takers for his material. Eventually he signed a deal with Century Media and produced his music under the name "Strapping Young Lad" to achieve a fresh start from his previous experiences. SYL released Heavy as a Really Heavy Thing (1995) and then two years later released City, a classic album in extreme metal circles. After producing City, he undertook a different project under the name "Ocean Machine", which aimed for a more reflective and ambient style metal. The s/t OM was released in the summer of '97 on Devin's own label, HevyDevy Records.
After OM, Devin suffered a mental breakdown and checked himself into a mental hospital. He was diagnosed with bi-polar disorder, which helped to explain the dichotomy between his angry speed-based work on SYL and the more contemplative music he released under his own name. Devin decided to put SYL on hold and wrote his second solo album Infinity, publishing it under his own name and then relabeling the OM album with his name and OM as the title. Although there were some songs on Infinity similar to OM, there was also an offbeat nature to it as well that helped to show Devin's humorous side, but I'm not posting any of those songs.
(Christeen) - from Infinity (actual video)
(War) - from Infinity
Althouugh Devin has decided to put originally SYL on hold, he decided to reform the SYL band together and released an album of SYL-like music under his own name, entitled Physicist (2000). It is really SYL material under the DT name, and the production wasn't the greatest either, but there are still some enjoyable songs on it though. Devin does consider it to be his worst album, however.
Devin then went back to the more ambient stylings of OM, producing the album Terria in 2001. I can easily cite Terria and Ocean Machine to be my personal favorite works of his.
In the wake of 9/11, Devin decided to reform SYL for real in 2002, figuring that he might as well write "the soundtrack to the end of the world." The result was 2003's self-titled SYL and then 2004's Alien. At the same time, Devin wanted a full time band on-par with SYL, as his earlier solo albums featured a largely rotating cast. The result was The Devin Townsend Band, which had two releases in Accelerated Evolution (2003) and Synchestra (2006). These two albums incorporated a wider variety of styles and were well received in the metal community.
After releasing Synchestra and SYL's final album The New Black (which, similar to Physicist, was more of a DT-solo work under the SYL name), Devin took some time off to rest after years of continual production and touring, as well as to spend time with his wife and new son. After a short time off, he decided to completely self-produce an album called Ziltoid (aka Does Humor Belong in Metal?). Ziltoid is a fun rock opera dealing with an alien invading Earth with the demand of "the perfect cup of coffee" and then declaring war on mankind because we couldn't produce it. As it turns out
It was all just the daydream of a Starbucks employee
It is a very tongue-in-cheek production with very good music that works well with the theme.
After taking more time off and finally giving up alcohol and smoking (plus cutting off his trademark skullet he'd sported for most of this decade), last year Devin wrote upwards of sixty different songs. He decided to group them together by theme into four different albums which he would intend to release over the next year under the title of "The Devin Townsend Project". The first album, Ki, came out in May and I reviewed it at the time. The second album, Addicted, is supposed to be "heavy yet commercial" material, so probably similar to Accelerated Evolution. The third, Deconstruction, is SYL-like material, and the fourth currently untitled album will be ambient metal.
His whole band (all 100 members he went through) are a real who's-who of heavy metal. Gene Hoaglan went on to SYL, for example, I mentioned the two guys from Cynic, and Slayer pointed out LaRocque, just to name a few.
In the theme of the thread, Hoglan was in Dark Angel before Chuck called him. He wrote most of the lyrics in Dark Angel, too, which makes him the thrash equivalent of Tomas Haake.
I always considered Human To be the best Death album, but oh well.
I'm going to go with Ukranian Black Metal band Drudkh. Comprised of members of Hate Forest and Astrofaes, and refusing to do gigs, release photos, interviews, etc., Drudkh are one of the few bands left in the genre whose each album is awaited in eager anticipation, and for good reason: Most of their albums are great. Recommended to fans of Burzum (I've come around on the third and fourth albums I will admit), Agalloch, Wolves in the Throne Room, Primordial and Bergtatt era Ulver.
Their first album was 2003's Forgotten Legends, a raw, repetitive, but also catchy and impressive debut that put every basement dwelling homosexual who thinks that self mutilation and shitty production is the way to go.
Their second album, 2004's Autumn Aurora added acoustic guitars and synths to the equitation, creating what I think is their best album. A rich, atmospheric and all around great album.
2006's Blood In Our Wells is a really close second best, which sees guitar solos coming to play, as well as the folk influence makng an even greater presence, as well as the lyrical influence from Ukrainian poets.
That year also saw Songs Of Grief & Solitude, which wasn't a Metal album at all. It was an instrumental folk album with alternate versions of older sons. Most fans didn't like it, but I tend to enjoy it.
Fortunately, the band made up for it the same year with Estrangement. While the metallic snare can get annoying, this sees a return to form for the band.
DAMMIT. I had planned on doing a short piece on Dio actually, but totally forgot about it
Anyways, no long biography or history of Dio here, as we all know damn well who he is. I may have a number of bands I prefer to his, but he is definitely my favorite metal vocalist ever (that's including his work with BS and Rainbow as well)
As you all are no doubt familiar with his famous works (and accompanying videos) like "Holy Diver", "Rainbow in the Dark" and "Last in Line", I'm just going to cover two of his lesser appreciated albums, Dream Evil (1987) and Magica (2000).
Alright, been away for a little bit, but this should take it up.
Band: Demolition Hammer Style: Brutal Thrash Metal (early), Groove Metal (later) Years Active: 1986-1995 Area of Origin: New York City, NY
No band has produced thrash metal that has made me step back and take notice like Demolition Hammer has. The very first track I heard, ".44 Calibre Brain Surgery," was a kick in the teeth of great riffs, solid drumming, and fitting vocals stuck somewhere between early Chuck Schuldiner and mid-era Tom Araya. The band is Tomb of the Mutilated meets Reign in Blood. The band released three full-length albums, three demo's, and an unreleased demo from 2 years before disbanding.
