Heavy metal as it existed in the 1980s has vanished with nary a lipstick trace. Its ugly half-cousin, death metal, has come into maturity without the nurturing of the entertainment mainstream. Though occasionally represented on Billboard charts by Slayer and Pantera, more ferocious groups like Deicide [Real Audio or MPEG3 Sound Sample], Cannibal Corpse, Carcass, Entombed, and Morbid Angel sell hundreds of thousands of records in conspicuous silence to a community held together by wires and postage stamps.
Before the Web, there existed a worldwide network of metal tape-traders and fanzines, centered on early grindcore groups such as Death, Repulsion, and Hellhammer. Today, from Norway to Singapore, bedroom-based distributors serve a community occupied with spirituality, self-determination, and bizarre musical experiments. Their numbers add up: one major American mail-order catalog, Resound, assembles thousands of unknown bands into a seemingly impenetrable force.
Most of what resembled rock and roll in the proto-death metal of Black Sabbath and Motorhead has been erased by modern form. New York's ultra-fast grindcore act Brutal Truth, which once counted didgeridoos among its instruments, covers Sun Ra on Sounds of the Animal Kingdom (Relapse). Chicago's Flying Luttenbachers, co-founded by late jazz great Hal Russell, combine frantic sustained drum bursts with a terror-inducing horn section. Candiria, from Brooklyn, articulates metal as urban culture, like Napalm Death meets the Last Poets.
Metal's search for truth can often turn violent. Between 1992 and 1994, a dozen people were jailed in Norway for murder, rape, assault, and arson during a campaign to purge the country of Christianity. Three of the jailed were members of Emperor, a band that in 1991 received a government arts grant and recorded a majestic metal tribute to Norway's natural beauty, In the Nightside Eclipse (Century Black), in 1993.
Black metal can be extremely mellow, notably its "dark ambient" strain. The best-known artist here is former Emperor member Mortiis, who fled to Sweden and now plays 20-minute dungeon songs in faerie king persona complete with prosthetic nose and ears.
A variety of other soft-stepping side projects from metal players, including Scandinavia's Arcturus and Texas' Proscriptor, explore the unlikely crossover of metal and early medieval mood music. Japan's Gish and Sabbat often pose among bamboo stalks, wielding samurai swords and Asian-motif symbology. And Burzum's Daudi Baldrs (Misanthropy/Dutch East) is a Joseph Campbell-style romp through Norse ritual music [.ra or .mp3]
Stereotypes to the contrary, metal offers relief from the relentless sexism of pop music. Misanthropy, the UK indie that put out Daudi, is run by women. One of the US's most creative fanzines is Endemoniada, run by a group of women from New York's Spanish Harlem and the Bronx. Dwell Records compiled Awakenings - Females in Extreme Music from death metal bands with female members, including Noothgrush, Thorr's Hammer [.ra or .mp3], Demonic Christ, and Witches.
One theory is that women are attracted to the music's message of self-empowerment. Metal is against many things, but wrapped up in all the blood and guts is the belief, maybe nihilistic, that mundane individuals might aspire to immortality in some way. If mainstream social institutions were getting that idea across as powerfully, there would not be groups of teenagers in black T-shirts listening to Obituary on every street corner from Tampa to Calcutta.
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