Sanders’ more precise, death metal indebted style brought a bizarrely satisfying rigidity to O’Malley’s free-flowing drones and Ambarchi’s unnerving digital bass clicks, hinting at great things to come from the group. That record’s percussive element was further expanded on 2008’s Ambient / Ruin demo, with Ambarchi passing the sticks to Australian drummer Matt Sanders (Blood Duster, Sadistik Exekution). Originally splintering off from Sunn O))) as a way for Stephen O’Malley, Attila Csihar and Oren Ambarchi to tour Israel in 2006, the outbreak of the second Lebanon war shortly beforehand did little to deter them, perhaps only adding to the bristling tension and overt, claustrophobic darkness of live debut The Holy Down. This feels like it’s been a long time coming. June in particular has belched forth an alarming amount of decent metal, and death metal in particular, so let’s get stuck in… Recently, however, something’s changed whatever identity crisis death metal was going through seems to have resolved itself, as bands like Morbus Chron, Blood Incantation and Venenum have captured that old school sound without just ripping it off, instead remaking classic death metal styles in their own image, whilst bands like Artificial Brain, Chthe’ilist and the absurdly named Eximperituserqethhzebibšiptugakkathšulweliarzaxułum have been flying the flag for tech-death without descending into mindless shred, keeping engaging song-writing and infectious riffs at the fore.
Is it just me, or has there been a lot of great death metal released recently? This subset was basically my bread and butter when I discovered the wonderful world of extreme metal as a pimply teen, but I drifted away from it as time went on, growing increasingly disinterested as the genre seemed flooded with second-rate Entombed clones, overly clinical technical wankery and the empty, soulless machismo of the whole “deathcore” thing.ĭon’t get me wrong, there have always been great death metal bands making great death metal records, even during that dark period at the turn of the 2000s, but they seemed to be the exception to the rule back then whilst most other metal subgenres were flourishing and venturing out in all kinds of bizarre new directions, death metal seemed, well… dead.
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