dead on the inside

some of you may or may not have noticed that little lst.fm widget over there on the left…

you may also have noticed
that I’m doing a whole lot of…
(you can call it research )
listening in the death metal genre

technically speaking
based on sheer speed alone
it should not be capable of being played with non-demon powered hands
[or an egg beater with a guitar pick or drum sticks attached to it]
yet it is people
playing drums, guitars, cookie monster impersonating

there is a cohesion
a unification of perfectly timed percussion and the other distorted drop tuned things (mostly guitars)

you’d think this would be an easy thing to emulate with machines.
It’s not.

with most electronic music that attempts to be more “aggressive”
it ultimately winds up coming across more ambient to my ears
you know what im talking about¹
as they are just “joyful noise”, the drums cease to exist
I stop listening to the percussion and focus on my ears on the backdrop.

note to electronic producers:
just because your percussion is above the 168bpm mark does not mean you are angry. it just means you are probably a little more disorganized than you should be. Admittedly it takes great skill to write anything above your standard 4/4 at 144bpm that doesn’t suck I haven’t been able to sucessfully do it and probably won’t ever.

There is no denying the intent of a decently produced death metal track . it is here to kick you in your teeth and take body parts as trophies.

So the real question as a producer is:
Now that I’ve identified a problem what should/can be done about it? how do I translate this into something useful?

• add distorted guitar? no definately not
• point my research towards gabber? no,… well maybe.
• drop 80% of melody and focus more on harmonic structures? hmmm theres a brainstorm waiting to happen

anyway
I’ll quit with the rambling
and leave you instead with some death metal gems that i recommend

In order of significance

• cryptopsy
• suffocation
• dead horse
• Necrophagist
• bolt thrower
• cannibal corpse
• borhen and der club of gore former death metal band gone doom jazz

enjoy

¹ noisy random drums with some ambient noise that slips in and out of the mix

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• 2007-12-04

  Wolfslice

  I think you’re right, it’s very difficult to find fast, aggressive, off signature beats by electronic artists that maintain cohesion rather than descending into the realm of noise (not always a bad thing though- see Cap.IV by Autechre).

  And I’ve looked and looked. I think I was spoiled by drukQs, because it’s pretty much the only album I know that can bring that sort of heat. RDJ hit all the right places like the most percise musical sniper, really the rhythmic skill on that album has never been duplicated by an electronic artist… at least that I’ve heard.

  I guess Venetian Snares tries too, and maybe some Squarepusher, but most of the time they’re just shitting out breakcore nonsense that gets old after a few tracks.

  And personally, I’d love to hear you experiment more with harmonic structures, but don’t abandon the melody altogether! Your melodies are what keep me coming back again and again. AFX might be the rhythm wizard but honestly, I would hold songs like little a or da.vironment up against his best work any day of the week.

• 2007-12-17

  Bobbo

  I think Richard Devine’s “Cautella” is an excellent example of it, but to make it work, he does focus way more on soundscapes than melodies.

  And Autechre’s fastest release (Grantz Graf) is my least favourite by them.

  But your right, most people don’t attempt it, and most who do fall into the homogeneous “Breakcore” camp. In fact, I think Venetian Snares just did his best album by NOT making every song a breakcore track, so the ones that are, actually have a more substantial impact on me.

• 2008-01-27

  aram

  hi, I’ve got a couple proem questions. Is the black vinyl edition of socially inept legitimate? and given that the cover art for you shall have ever been and a permanent solution includes the numbers 5 and 6, respectively, which full length release are you ignoring from the list at proemland.com? or are you starting the count at zero? thanks

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