https://www.metal-archives.com/bands/St ... 3540362870

EDIT: I've been into metal for a pretty long time and understand the majority of subgenres/what makes them unique, but the realm of grindcore has recently gotten me confused. I get that grindcore is essentially death metal + hard core punk, but when you start splicing grind down into separate sub sub genres, things get sketchy.

Take the distinction between death grind and gore grind. What makes these two separate entities, if they truly are? From all I've heard what Carcass started could be aptly called gore grind or death grind, as to me the gore label speaks more to the themes and artwork and the death part speaks more to the even more brutal, chaotic sound. To anyone with more in depth knowledge of the grind world, lemme know what's up here.

tonight, for the first time ever, I heard something referred to as "Razor Metal".

Torrent site getmetal.club posted the Gama Bomb discography and listed the genre as: Thrash Metal / Razor Metal / Hardcore / Crossover

Has anyone else heard this before? Like, I understand the sentiment of it, but does anyone know how or when this started?

I'm assuming they got that genre (which I've never heard dropped before) because they're thrash and so is Razor? I don't know where else it would come from. I don't think I've heard their music before, but does it sound like Razor more than any other thrash act or something?

Some of the grind sub/related genres can blend together, particularly on the punk side (fastcore vs. speedcore vs. powerviolence, etc.), but deathgrind and goregrind are pretty distinctly different beyond just aesthetics (although goregrind does have a large aesthetic component for sure). Obviously, there are exceptions that blend this together (like Fluids) while a band like Carcass (who was very early in the genre so the full distinctions weren't as prevalent) has a bunch of different "eras" that influence one another so is a more difficult example.

Deathgrind is exactly what it sounds like: heavily death metal influenced grindcore. Something like this for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVBBA9S92ZA

Or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uG6e26u-xv0

Goregrind is much different. It's muddier production, but also includes more "straightforward" riffs and drum patterns that help play into that muddier production, giving it a slightly more wall of noise style, more confusing feel (best way I can describe it). It also tends to include different vocal styles from death grind which has the classic death metal growls, barks, etc. Goregrind is often more "wet" or gurgled gutturals or froggy / toilet bowl-y. Here are a few:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bdzj60zN240
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68VUrXL0uqs (Also a strong example of the very tight "ping"-y snare drum that is often prominent in goregrind).

Pornogrind often takes goregrind and gives the aesthertics a sexual tinge, but will often take the stripped down, more simplistic style and make it even more dramatic while also including some riffs and fills that can be said to have a little more of a "groove" and include highly pitch-shifted vocals alongside the gurgles and croaks.

Thanks for such an in depth orientation on all this, I'll get listening. I know and like quite a few grind artists, but mainly stick to the most famous originators (Terrorizer, Carcass, Repulsion and Napalm Death). Your mention of power violence brings me to another question: is power violence essentially what happens when the hardcore punk elements of grind outweigh any metal elements present?

Yeah, I think that’s fair. I’m not a big PV fan because most bands do the hardcore grunt-y shout vocal that I don’t like so I’m no expert but that’s always the vibe I got from it. This old grind blog called Grind and Punishment (which got me really into the genre) has a good article about PV, its origins, and its hallmarks. Some of the embedded YouTube links are dead, but he lists enough names (old school and modern) for you to do some digging into. http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/ ... n.html?m=1

I do like Robocop to a degree along with Detroit. Column of Heaven is good and weird. I can never land on how I feel about them. Then the classics I know about are Man is the Bastard and The Endless Blockade (which I believe shares members with Column of Heaven).

grindcore is more complex in terms of different elements. Theres crust,hardcore, industrial, no wave, death metal etc etc.
Powerviolence is more of a straight forward evolution of 80s hardcore punk towards increased extremity.

there has been some cross pollination especially later on some bands are basically just called powerviolence because they play grindcore with slow/hardcore breakdowns these days.

That’s a good point about grind that I glossed over. I think those additional textures and influences are important because they help grind and PV “feel” different, which is something I’ve always noticed when listening to the two. Interestingly though, Column of Heaven definitely “feels” like PV to me but is much more experimental and grindcore-esque in its incorporation of outside genre influences.

yeah there have been a few powerviolence bands that are p out there but it tends to happen in a different fashion Bastard Noise being the prime example.

I'd like some clarification on this. Is there really a difference between "atmospheric sludge metal" and "post-metal" or both terms can be used interchangeably? I know what's sludge (eyehategod, crowbar) but all bands tagged as Post-Metal I've checked out sound like they could be described as Atmospheric Sludge as well. Currently I'm going through Cult of luna discography and IMO their music fits both tags. Only real difference I can't point out could be Pelican, which is completely instrumental, hence closely related to post rock, and since the main characteristic of sludge is the hardcore-y vocals, you can safely say they're a post-metal band, but musically they share all the common features o sludge but in a more atmospheric approach, so, not sure either.

BTW, this description automatically makes me think of The Angelic Process, which isn't really tagged as post-metal anywhere, and they aren't (at least from the best of my knowledge), they're somewhere between shoegaze and drone with some noise and ambient elements thrown in.

well post metal is also often called post sludge for a reason. Essentially first there was atmospheric sludge but later on around 2k bands start to incorporate post rock elements into atmospheric sludge. Just think of Neurosis on Souls at Zero, definitely not a normal sludge metal record with its focus on atmosphere etc. Compare it with something like Panopticon by Isis which has clear post rock influence. Atmospheric sludge pretty much completely disappeared and it never was as popular as post-sludge/post-metal got but there are still some bands playing in that style most notably Amenra.

Didn't want to start a new thread and since it's a new trend related to genres I'll just ask... Way are people calling black and death metal "voidgaze"? It's one of the most stupid things I've heard in a while and I honestly don't understand it. Also, why are people using ultra complex (and most of the time dumb) compossed genre tags like "Unorthodox Blackened Sludge Death Metal", "Technical Doom Deathgrind" and "Technical Brutal Blackened Death Metal"?

I haven't heard the first one going around, but sometimes lengthier tags like the later ones I think are fair. I don't necessarily think of them as genres so much as tags or descriptors. For example, I've been promoting Torchbearer a bit recently in a couple threads, and our genre entry for them is melodic thrash/death/black metal. Each of their albums has a different weight of each subgenre influence. You could call them any of those individually and not be completely wrong, but it would be only a partial picture of their sound, and compared to other bands in those subgenres, their sound would be a bit off. Some bands are even harder to classify succinctly and we just throw up our hands and dump them in the subgenre that's most known for having bands that sound nothing like each other. That's why Opeth is in "progressive metal" or "progressive death metal", and why Ram-Zet is usually in some variant of "avant-garde metal".

Yeah. sure, I get that and I completely agree. The thing is, the more complex the tags, the further from the truth they usually are in my experience. I'm not talking about just black/death/doom. For example, "Technical Brutal Blackened Death Metal" was used to describe Adversarial. They are clearly war metal, there's nothing technical or brutal about the brand of death metal they play. Why go for a super complex and dumb subgenre when you don't even know the kind of music they are playing? I see this kind of stuff more and more every day. It feels like people are just trying to cover the fact they enjoy stuff that has a clear label with something that seems way more obscure and complex than it really is.

I mean, look at this. https://rateyourmusic.com/list/Cletus77 ... %E2%97%84/

Most of the tags are wrong. I do understtand that this stuff is kind of subjective but a lot of them are objectively wrong and make no sense. Blood Incantation doesn't play Technical Progressive Doom Death Metal. A ton of bands are described as "dissonant" and most of them actually aren't. Then you have DsO that are the most predominant dissonant band around and they are described as "Avant-Garde Atmospheric Progressive Black Metal". Cephalic Carnage "Technical Doom Deathgrind"? They aren't even close to doom.

I promise I'm not making "voidgaze" up. Seems like "extreme metal" is not a term cool enough for some people.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1wks5 ... LHWbmqx7Qp

I'm just complaining because this seems like a growing trend that I tend to see around more and more and it actually makes trying to discuss music online a lot harder.

Some of that just seems like a handful of individual people who have quirky ideas about subgenres. The descriptions for Blood Incantation and Cephalic Carnage sound fine except for including "doom". He may just have a misunderstanding of what doom is, heard a slower section or two somewhere in their music and slapped that tag onto them. Some of the others are probably just more overzealous ignorance. The voidgaze playlist is probably just some taste maker's fun idea to create a new aesthetic signifier. You're probably more familiar with a lot of those bands than I am, but from what I am it looks like some kind of esoteric, atmospheric black metal-leaning grouping, maybe something of a black metal response to the cavernous death metal trend. This kind of stuff is probably always going to be around. Heck, there are people outside of this site, and even a few in it who think we're crazy for attempting to classify and split up metal as much as we do, the "it's all just rock and roll" sort of folks.

RE the voidgaze thing, it doesn't mean anything other than "I don't want to admit that I listen to metal".

This is probably a dumb question but what even is post-metal? I've never really understood the genre. Like what makes it post-metal and not just regular metal.

It's post-rock plus metal riffs. So it borrows elements from post-rock like long buildups, unconventional instruments, large changes in dynamics, etc.

I can't believe what I read on this thread, it's like almost each new message is a joke.

Does anyone know anything about this weird subgenre called "Dark Metal" that gets attached to certain bands on here? Every band in the genre seems to be broken up, and I can't exactly find any releases so it makes me think that the genre doesn't exist.

I think there was a thread about "dark metal" not long ago. Most seemed to agree it's an arbitrary tag rather than a genre/scene.

It’s discussed in the first post in this thread and a few other places in here but it’s basically agreed that it’s generally not the best/sole descriptor but can work sometimes. It’s like black metal and doom kinda?

This is a legit serious question, but it's so out there I figured this is a perfect place to ask.

I assume most of us are familiar with Dissonant Black Metal, Dissonant Death Metal, and Dissonant Blackened Death Metal by now. I also know about Ehnahre, who are known for playing Dissonant Death Doom- and I think their recent album might veer towards Drone Metal but I haven't listened to it yet. Do you know of any Dissonant bands in other genres? Anything Dissonant in other sections of Doom Metal, any Dissonant Thrash, Dissonant Grindcore/Deathgrind/Goregrind, Dissonant Power Metal, Dissonant Traditional Heavy Metal, Dissonant Stoner, Dissonant Sludge, Dissonant Industrial, DIssonant Groove, Dissonant Electronic, Dissonant Folk, Dissonant Gothic, Dissonant Symphonic, Dissonant Speed, Dissonant Progressive, Dissonant Metalcore and/or Deathcore, Dissonant Drone Bands, and any other Dissonant Metal you know of?

By dissonance you mean heavy dissonance, with all kinds of diminished chords, tritones.. and such?

If you mean this Voivod were pretty much the first metal band doing this, and they can be framed in the thrash/prog scene. They then inspired bands like Obliveon, GBC..




grindcore and metalcore have plenty of this, with bands like Botch, Discordance Axis.. there is also the whole subgenre mathcore that is pretty much based only around heavy dissonance and odd meters, most famous band being Dillinger Escape Plan.

In drone metal there is hardly any consonance if the band is inspired by Sunn0))) instead of Earth and in industrial metal there are Godflesh and the bands inspired by them

Some genres you mentioned have in their very own core a high melodic component that would clash with heavy dissonance: a power or traditional metal band using mostly DSO inspired chords would probably be hardly recognized as such. For example a band like Desultor has some clean, power-metallish vocals, but the instrumental parts are pretty much dissonant tech death, and the band is often classified like that

I'd add that it's not 100% about the chords per se, but also about chord progressions.
...There are people on these boards who argue there's no chord progressions in metal, but this is obviously a misinformed stance. Any sequence of chords is a chord progression by definition. We can also use the term "harmonic motion".
Now, in "melodic" metal chords usually change less often and when they do change, they primarily change according to certain rules built around the so-called "common-practice harmony". "Melodic" metal can use "dissonant" seventh chords, for example, but they will resolve into major or minor.
In "dissonant" metal, chords tend to change more often and the rules are different. Chords don't resolve the way it's generally expected.

I would not describe Desultor as particularly dissonant. There are moments of it, but there's too much traditionally diatonic/modal/scalar melodicism in that track for it to qualify.

It's the closest music i could find to dissonant power metal, i'm only human