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HeavenDuff
Metal freak

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PostPosted: Wed May 06, 2020 9:50 pm 
 

With both Katatonia and Paradise Lost releasing albums pretty much at the same time, and considering how these four bands all seem to have accomplished a somewhat similar feat by contributing to the evolution of death/doom in the 90's to later evolve (rather succesfuly so) into a more alternative rock/gothic and somewhat progressive version of themselves, the comparison between the four became pretty much inevitable.

Now I wanted to have a space to discuss these bands (and maybe others similar to them) in a wider perspective without forcing a very narrow angle. However, to get the thread going and get people's opinions on these bands and their discography, here are questions I wanted to ask to people who, maybe might know more about these bands than myself, starting with: Which of these bands do you consider to have the more succesfuly artistically transitioned from death/doom to the genre of music they are playing nowadays and why? I'm also interested in knowing which of these bands, according to you, had the best output in the 90's and early 2000's during their death/doom metal era, and who has the best output now after their transition. All around, which is your favorite out of the four bands?

Personnally, Katatonia is my favorite, or at least the one that I've managed to really get into up to now. I've been enjoying The Great Cold Distance a lot these last few weeks, and I've always had a soft spot for Brave Murder Day.


Last edited by HeavenDuff on Thu May 07, 2020 12:50 am, edited 1 time in total.
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eViLbOrIs
Metal newbie

Joined: Thu Jun 03, 2004 9:15 am
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Location: United States
PostPosted: Wed May 06, 2020 10:45 pm 
 

Ya realize it is possible that Anathema will release a new album this year, too? This is basically Peaceville's prime all over again!

If I had to choose a favorite, it would be Katatonia. But each band has an album or three that I've spun dozens of times and mean a lot to me.

With Katatonia...well, it's the entire discography. With a few slight exceptions, my favorite is usually the one I am currently listening to. But, gun to my head, Last Fair Deal Gone Down is the encompassing masterpiece. The new one is a little bit of a nut to crack, but so far I think it has some of their best songs, with some incredible subtle earworms that dig into your brain slowly but permanently once they get there, and a very strong unique identity.

With Paradise Lost, well, there's Gothic. I think it far surpasses what came before it, and then everything after it until In Requiem, which to me is their second masterpiece. I enjoy almost everything they've done to some extent, but, Gothic aside, I actually find their latter era stronger than the earlier. Draconian Times is a bit cheesy, I think. The songwriting is great, but some of the melodies and lyrics don't float my boat.. The last two have been killer. Basically, I think these guys are underappreciated as superlative writers of doomy rock songs.

Anathema is hard for me. I love them. I love Danny Cavanaugh's voice like few others. The early stuff is excellent, but Judgement, Alternative 4 and Eternity are sublime for me. The problem is, they are so so sad, and I heard them first in a very sad time in my life. Sometimes they take me back in a bad way. By the same token, that resonance is part of what makes them so special to me. One of my favorite all time bands, and very few bands I've ever heard convey such genuine and raw emotion in their music and lyrics. With the exception of The Silent Enigma, which I think was a little too affectatiously melodramatic to take seriously, they are so real it hurts.

My Dying Bride...I differ with a lot of people on this band, it seems. While I agree with the general consensus that Turn Loose The Swans is their (and the genres) masterpiece, I usually prefer their more swinging stuff to their dirgy stuff --and I love it when they mix it up! As such, the often forgotten/maligned/meh'd Lies I Sire is one of my favorite albums of theirs. Basically, I love it when they do the Shakespearean Tragedy Iron Maiden thing. Aaron is a great storyteller. I'm a sucker for well done theatricality in a vocalist (another favorite is Warrel Dane). His emotional range is very entertaining and engaging; from fragility to raging anger to everywhere in between. The violin thing is old hat these days, but it bears mentioning that they were one of the first, and that they still do it very very well. It's not a gimmick --MDB would not be MDB without it, I think. The new one is an enjoyable listen, although a couple of sections drag on too long for my liking, which is a problem I also have with The Angel and the Dark River. Every riff, harmony, melody is great, but sometimes they stop being great after hearing the same thing or a slight variation thereof for 2-3 minutes straight.
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eViLbOrIs
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PostPosted: Wed May 06, 2020 10:47 pm 
 

Oh, and wouldn't it be great if they all toured together? In the USA? Or maybe even if just MDB came to the USA. With Madder Mortem, another band that sort of fits this bill. They occupy much of the same emotional territory, if not sonic territory.
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true_death
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PostPosted: Wed May 06, 2020 11:18 pm 
 

Katatonia's early death-doom stuff is great, and outside of the incredible Dance of December Souls, their best work in my eyes was the "bad singing era", namely Discouraged Ones, Tonight's Decision, and Last Fair Deal.... Really unique mix of goth, shoegaze, doom, and grunge. People make fun of Renske's vocals during that period but I absolutely love it, he conveyed a really palpable sense of dread and desperation, like he's got a gun to his head. I can appreciate the alternative metal sound they took on Viva Emptiness and The Great Cold Distance but after that I lose interest, their recent proggier stuff doesn't really appeal to me at all...wish they'd just focus on Bloodbath these days :P.

Paradise Lost actually has a fairly solid body of work...Gothic and Draconian Times are among my all-time favorites, two absolutely perfect albums without even one weak track. That said, I'm one of the few who seems to enjoy pretty much all their stuff - from the early demos all the way to their latest stuff, though I do think the stuff they did after the magnificent Host and their return to form In Requiem was pretty spotty with only a few great songs per release. Not sure how people feel about Nick's vocals but I've always been a huge fan of him...his death growls, Hetfield-esque barks, and especially the cleaner stuf during the "goth" era, people say Peter Steele had a sexy voice but for me, it's all about Nick Holmes.

Anathema's early death-doom stuff is great but I've never really paid attention to their later material so I can't comment.

My Dying Bride is a bit of an outlier because while they definitely changed styles, they never really abandoned their roots...they've always been doom metal and have continued to incorporate death metal intermittently throughout their career. Of all the above bands, they're by far my favorite - really the gold standard for doom metal in general, in my opinion. Their whole body of work is incredible, and my favorites are a three-way tie between As the Flower Withers, Turn Loose the Swans, and The Dreadful Hours, but A Map of All Our Failures is slowly creeping up.

Another band to mention is Tiamat...amazing death metal debut with Sumerian Cry - really gritty & nasty stuff, then two 10/10 death-doom masterpieces back-to-back with The Astral Sleep and Clouds. Then they turned weird on the unique and experimental Wildhoney and finally completed the transition into goth with A Deeper Kind of Slumber - which while different, was still pretty good, but after that it just seems like they gave up and turned into a very boring, safe, bland example of goth music. Really a sad fate for what used to be one of the best bands in this general style. I saw them live in 2017 and Johan Edlund threw a massive temper tantrum onstage, it was pretty funny but really the only entertaining thing about the performance.
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Subrick
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PostPosted: Wed May 06, 2020 11:38 pm 
 

We musn't forget Theatre of Tragedy. Essentially the creators of the male growling/female cleans vocal dynamic, they were one of the most unique bands of 90s death/doom. Very Victorian aesthetic musically and image wise, and they were never really crushingly heavy the way the Peaceville Three were. They started the Norwegian gothic metal scene pretty much by themselves, with Tristania, The Sins of thy Beloved, and Trail of Tears to follow. They did three albums in this style, although the third album, Aegis, pretty much entirely dispenses with the death/doom of the self-titled debut and Velvet Darkness They Fear outside of a few growls here and there, becoming somehow even sparser gothic metal than what the first two albums contained.

Then Musique happened and they pretty much completely changed their sound, image, and entire ethos as a band by switching to an industrial/electrometal style. Now the songs were about more vapid topics such as car racing and nightclub partying. They'd continue this direction on Assembly, which had even less of the faint gothic trappings that Musique had. I call this their "Eurotrash" period, as that term perfectly describes the superficial trashiness of the music. It's very much "futurism as viewed in the early 2000s" in musical form. Think the old PS2 racing game Kinetica for a similar vibe. They switched back to gothic metal after Assembly, but it was a more straightforward, less ornamental style of gothic metal compared to the first three albums.
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LithoJazzoSphere
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PostPosted: Thu May 07, 2020 12:20 am 
 

I'll have more time tomorrow to write something more substantial, but five other artists that come to mind that are relevant to this discussion are The Gathering, Sentenced, Amorphis, Nightingale, and Beyond Dawn. Or even Moonspell, from a different direction. You could also theoretically include ones like Within Temptation and Lacuna Coil, but that's almost another topic entirely.


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Metantoine
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PostPosted: Thu May 07, 2020 12:26 am 
 

Despite my obvious love for Opeth, I was never that super fond of Katatonia's early days, even Brave Murder Day and I have yet to fully embrace all their albums. I certainly like The Great Cold Distance, The Fall of Hearts or Last Fair Deal Gone Down but the albums between TGCD and TFOH are somewhat weaker. They're a band that kept a pretty solid identity throughout their career and the days after BMD with twists and turns that never really deviated from their formula. There's certainly ups and downs but I feel that they're somewhat less obvious than a band like Paradise Lost who completely changed their sound several times.

I won't talk about Paradise Lost much since they're a band that I barely heard except some few selections that seemed to fit what I like more. Gothic, Icon and Draconian Times are all pretty damn solid albums. I personally love Nick Holmes as a gothic James Hetfield. I'm pretty sure I've heard One Second and Host back as a young Antoine and well, it wasn't bad but it wasn't metal and I wasn't expecting such music. I should perhaps revisit 'em now. They've been back at a metal sound for more than a decade and it's been passable? Nothing outstanding. I'll check the new album this week as it's on my list and I liked the really goth rock single "Ghosts". I think Holmes should collaborate on something else than the mediocre albums he's been doing with Renske and Nystrom in Bloodbath though!
(shit I guess did a decent paragraph anyway...)

Anathema weren't a really good nor impressive metal band. Their albums are passable, The Silent Enigma being my favorite but they're better at alternative rock. "We're Here Because We're Here" and "A Natural Disaster" are pretty great. Superb live band though, seen 'em with Alcest some years and they're the type of bands that transcends their albums live.

My Dying Bride now. For me, they're the clear gods of that scene. Not only they released the best album with Turn Loose the Swans, they were the most consistent. I admit I haven't fully focused on all their albums but I'm a big fan of the 1-2 punch of " The Light at the End of the World" and "The Dreadful Hours". Too monumental pieces of sad doom. Their newest album is quite good too, makes me want to check out the releases I missed from 'em.

Some other mentions of bands that I'd like to talk about:
- Mourning Beloveth. They came a bit after but the Irish lads are a superb band, especially "The Sullen Sulcus" from 2002.
- Cathedral's debut album "Forest of Equilibrium" is better than the whole scene combined but that's another debate. It was their sole real forray into death-ish doom and it stands as a monument for slow metal almost 30 years after its release.
-Again from Ireland, Primordial, to my eyes, achieved the sorrowfulness and sadness better than most bands ever did. While not related genre wise to those bands, they're certainly tied in spirit. While they're from a black metal background, gothic and doom definitely influenced the particular genre they crafted.
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Subrick
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PostPosted: Thu May 07, 2020 12:39 am 
 

Of all of Katatonia's records, Dance of December Souls was ironically the one that took me the longest to get into. I started off on them with Brave Murder Day and Tonight's Decision and went from there, so the chunkiness, sparseness, and heavily extended nature of DoDS was quite different from what I had been conditioned to expect from Katatonia. Funny I say that now considering that Dance is very much just a Peaceville Three-style death/doom album, but way more bleak and dark than even the darkest stuff on the first Paradise Lost album. I think having two 13+ minute songs on it was a bit of a barrier for me on that one as well at first.
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colin040
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PostPosted: Thu May 07, 2020 4:48 am 
 

Katatonia's Dance of December Souls is the best doom/death metal album of all time and puts every other album of the style to shame. Oddly enough, it's also the only album of them that's my thing, really, unless you count that mini EP they did after - Brave Murder Day is such a terrible followup otherwise :(

In all seriousness, plenty of those doom/death metal bands were pretty cool in their early years but just changed into something over time that's not for me.
Even the band's that didn't exactly change that much, were best in their early years - I like Morgion's debut and the first Novembers Doom demo quite a bit...but the things they afterwards...whatever!

I think Paradise Lost were the best at switching styles because they had the most talented songwriter (Greg Macintosh) to rely on, but even when he became less dominant in the music (around One Second) their music became rather bland. Fortunately the band is back on track since 2009 or so, even if they haven't quite released as many masterpieces again as some claim. :p

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Helvede
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PostPosted: Thu May 07, 2020 6:34 am 
 

Katatonia - The had a decent run of bleak doom/death with Brave Murder Day and the EP that followed. Best Åkerfeldt vocals of all times. Then the bleakness stayed with their transitional albums Discouraged Ones and Tonight... They were excellent at that time. Everything before, time hasn't been kind to, and everything after is meh and just repeating itself. Viva Emptiness might be the best post 2000 album. It still had some bite at least.

Same goes for Paradise Lost. They are a cornerstone of this style, Gothic is one of those classics every other album in this genre can get measured up against, and an album even new doom bands still can get inspiration from. They peaked with Draconian Times, even One Second is really good. The albums after, up until their recent attempts to rerurn to form, are a band struggeling to find identity and relevance. I can't really make any difference on several of their return to metal-albums, and the late 90's early 00's albums are straight up awful. Not sure what I feel about their two latest doom albums. They got the sound, but still struggling with lack of really interesting songwriting.

Anathema. A guilty pleasure of mine (thoughout their entire time span). Many will say they were better as metal, but at least they progressed away from it with every album, never fooling anyone or half-assed attempts at returning to it. They took at good 8 years break or something, which was probably a good move to make the 'rebirth', that resulted in the excellent We're Here-album. Not all their recent albums are good, though. Some of their choices I don't agree with, and some of their most popular recent songs like Untouchable are not Anathema to me. If I was looking for that style, Anathema would not be my go-to band. But tracks like Universal, The Storm Before The Calm - that's what I'm talking about. The Optimist was really good, reintroducing some level of heaviness again. I hope they'll stay on that path.

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Metallic Shock
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PostPosted: Thu May 07, 2020 8:22 am 
 

I'm fond of all these bands but I do tend to gravitate more towards their later era material. Katatonia is an exception because DODS is a masterpiece that strikes an unusually strong balance between black, death, and doom but I do enjoy their modern albums decently too. Tonight's Decision and Last Fair Deal Gone Down don't do much for me and most of the albums after The Great Cold Distance tend to have strong highlights and a decent bit of filler. Still, Viva Emptiness, TGCD, and incidentally The Fall of Hearts too stand out as strong later albums for them.

My Dying Bride don't really fit this category as well because while As the Flower Withers is certainly more death metal than the later albums they never left the metal scene. Heroin Chic is an exception but much of the rest of that album is still gothic doom. Very consistent discography overall, but I gotta give it to Turn Loose the Swans as my favorite followed by Songs of Darkness and Like Gods of the Sun.

Paradise Lost tend to write a bit too simply for me (song structures and tempos get a bit predictable) but I still find myself revisiting them fairly frequently. Very much a song by song band more than an album band but I do dig Gothic, Host, Draconian Times, and Medusa more or less as full album experiences.

Anathema on the other hand, are really the best of the lot to me except that it's entirely because of their non-metal albums. I've always found them interesting in that while there is a niche group of people who swear by those early albums and wish they'd go back to that sound, most of their fanbase is built around their alt rock explorations and oh boy what great alt rock explorations they are! Judgement and Alternative 4 are stone cold classics of melancholic rock songwriting. They've had some slip ups after their reunion and can now get weighed down by overwrought melodrama to a degree they weren't before but I can't deny that the highlights soar unbelievably high on some of those new albums. As far as how they compare as a metal band to the others, they were kinda interesting in their more pronounced The Cure influences and subdued heaviness but it's telling that the best they did as a metal band was on an album that's already moving away from the genre (The Silent Enigma). I like what they did with that sound, but MDB win out as far as these four bands and the metal parts of their discographies go.
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LithoJazzoSphere
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PostPosted: Thu May 07, 2020 8:23 am 
 

Katatonia - Easily my favorite of the lot. Though I'm most partial to their middle era, even their rawest earlier material seems to gain more excitement over time to me, and the various windings of their career have all deeply resonated with me in different ways.

Paradise Lost - I must say that I'm not nearly as familiar with their work as I'd like to be. I've heard enough of their albums to be intrigued by the many different directions they've gone in, but I'm not familiar enough with most of them to say anything particularly noteworthy. It seems that whenever I'm in the mood for them I tend to put on Draconian Times, which feels so safe, and yet also just right, as it's the perfect bridge between the worlds of black album-era Metallica and more somber gothic rock ensembles.

Anathema - I was really late to the party with them, but they are now one of my favorites. The songs and albums I heard a decade or two ago didn't connect with me at the time, but after hearing Weather Systems I absolutely adored it, and it impelled me to explore the rest of their catalog, which I find nearly all of quite splendid, from the earliest doom/death to the dark alternative rock to the epic progressive post-rock-ish last few albums. The latter interest me the most at this time due to the majestic vocal interplay of Daniel and Lee.

My Dying Bride - They are a band I like on paper much more than in practice, for several reasons. Aaron's voice I think is an acquired taste, and I haven't developed it yet. The application of softer elements like violin, keyboards and female vocals was relatively novel at the time, but it mostly makes me want to listen to other bands like Draconian or Sins of Thy Beloved. Additionally, the type of guitar tone they fairly consistently use doesn't work for me, it just feels too thin and insubstantial. I still feel there is a lot of unactualized potentiality in their music, so I continue to listen from time to time in hope that I eventually find more comportment with it.

The Gathering - Possibly the most dramatic leap in quality of any of these artists. The first two albums are not particularly great, and then magically Anneke appears and a masterpiece arises in the form of Mandylion. Their experiments in trip-hop, art rock and other genres are all rapturous in their own right, and Silje, while not being quite at Anneke's level, has continued to hold the torch well.

Sentenced - It is truly a shame that they didn't continue onward after their final album, which unfortunately did have the finality to it that many other similarly-titled albums or films tend to eventually defy. Though I quite enjoy their earliest material, the penultimate The Cold White Light is quite extraordinary in synthesizing a simple but powerful sound with melancholic despair at a nearly unparalleled tier.

Amorphis - Another favorite of the group. Their earliest work has such a unique atmosphere, gradually blending a crushing sound with enthralling progressive and melodic elements, leading to a middle period that I don't mind as much as some others, but culminating in the strongest mid-career revitalization of any of these. Tomi Joutsen was such a gem of a find, and though their work now at times seems formulaic, they are great enough at it and push slightly at the boundaries such that it continues to work.

Nightingale/Dan Swano - not commonly included in this group because Dan's origins are more dispersed throughout many other projects, but the spirit of evolution is there. If you look at his work with Edge of Sanity and Godsend, for example, and trace the throughline, we have the same death/doom/melodic beginnings, incorporating more gothic influences in how Nightingale started as more of a solo Sisters of Mercy-esque tribute, eventually turning into a full on progressive rock/metal project, and Dan's unique vision makes all of it enthralling to hear.

A more general thought. I think it's a little too facile to be cynical and assume the worst about many of these artists' middle periods in terms of commercial appeal. This happens in many genres, but I think it's ultimately quite natural to, after a period of finding a particular niche in an emerging scene, to eventually grow weary of the unidimensionality of it. This leads to desire for experimentation with nascent, novel flavors which gradually or suddenly change the sound of the band, and with any such efforts, there is risk and the results are mixed.

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tomcat_ha
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PostPosted: Thu May 07, 2020 9:21 am 
 

I like the early peaceville albums but to my they were all mostly massively overshadowed by other doom/death bands(Winter and Disembowelment for example). I don't like anything what Paradise Lost or My Dying Bride has done since but I really like the 1995-2003 era of Anathema. Way better than anything else that came out of the peaceville 3 in my opinion.

At first I only liked The Gathering post Mandylion but since then I've grown to like the debut quite a bit. I went to the 25th anniversary shows and damn that was definitely spectacular. That said I'd like to point out that they never went goth so the comparison with the other bands is kind of silly but you know if a metalhead sees a female vocalist the first thought they have is that its goth even if its musically more influenced by Spiritualized etc than The Cure.

I used to dig Katatonia but its been so long I don't know anymore.

I like the first Amorphis quite a bit but always found Tales very boring. Elegy and Tuonela are my favourite, however of course neither are very goth with much more of a psy/space/alt/shoegaze thing going on. That Hawkwind cover they did is p good imo. I liked Eclipse at first but have been turned off when they proceeded to remake that album idk how many times now.

I don't care for anything Sentenced did after the first 2 but goddamn those first 2 albums are spectacular pieces of melodic death metal.

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LithoJazzoSphere
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PostPosted: Thu May 07, 2020 9:57 am 
 

Well, not all of these bands had quite the same trajectory. Some went gothic, some went various flavors of electronic, some went progressive, etc. The "gothic" label isn't usually applied to just bands with female vocalists, there's generally some dark visual aesthetic that tends to provoke the sometimes misapplication of it, plus the fact that it has multiple independent senses in which it's used.

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eViLbOrIs
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PostPosted: Thu May 07, 2020 3:46 pm 
 

One of my favorite things about Anathema is how you can trace their personal headspace parallel to their musical trajectory. From their earlier music, they seemed like absolutely miserable, sad people, writing such classic lines as "We are just a moment in time, a blink of an eye, a dream for the blind. Visions from a dying brain. I hope you don't understand.' The music, although perhaps 'rock' more than doom, was similarly downbeat and depressive. Later, I think on We're Here Because We're Here, they revisit that line with the alteration of 'We're not just a moment in time' and the change of lyrical perspective from negativity to positivity is reflected in the music as well. It's very honest, and honesty has always been a poignant piece of the band's sound. I sometimes wonder if many of these bands who make a career out of writing doomy or depressing music still feel that 'doom' or if they are just making it up, telling stories, because it's what their band is about --even if they have moved on personally.
I give major credit to Anathema for leaving the gloom in their music behind when they left it behind in themselves. Probably much more psychologically healthy than the alternative...but that's a topic I'll be making a little later.
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LithoJazzoSphere
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PostPosted: Thu May 07, 2020 4:16 pm 
 

The interesting thing about that is that their music is still fairly melancholy and moody. Less so than the first decade, but far more so than your average rock, pop, or even a lot of metal bands.

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Subrick
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PostPosted: Thu May 07, 2020 4:46 pm 
 

As it pertains to Amorphis, what on earth would everyone call their current sound? The Archives describes it as "Melodic Heavy Metal/Rock", and that was probably more true on something like Am Universum or Far from the Sun, but I'd say that term hasn't been accurate for a long, long time now, especially now that growling has made up the bulk of the vocals on the last few albums. The most all encompassing term I can think of to describe modern Amorphis is progressive metal, with a whole hell of a lot of influences coming from traditional metal, folk music, melodic death metal, and doom metal.
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LithoJazzoSphere
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PostPosted: Thu May 07, 2020 4:51 pm 
 

I'd call them progressive/folk melodic death metal. The other elements are more traces than components that make them part of those genres.

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Damballah
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PostPosted: Thu May 07, 2020 4:56 pm 
 

All these bands have nothing to do with Goth music. Goth music is Deathrock, Darkwave, Coldwave, Postpunk.
Just because something is melancholic doesn't make it Goth. I would really call them a mix of doom and death Metal.

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LithoJazzoSphere
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PostPosted: Thu May 07, 2020 5:21 pm 
 

The terms "goth/gothic" weren't invented in the 70s when some of the more somber post-punk music was given that label. Some of those early bands even rejected the name outright. It's a word with a long, storied history, and though it's confusing, the more punk-derived bands don't have a monopoly on it. Many of these sorts of bands are given the gothic description for a much broader set of reasons, ranging from not just lachrymal music and romanticized lyrics, but the inspiration of particular horrific works of fiction, medieval architecture, Victorian fashion, etc. Various artists draw often from a mixture of the post-punk musical style and other wider influences. The specific "gothic metal" scene does come out of death/doom from England in the late 80s/early 90s, but those bands and others that arose later on had myriad musical and cultural influences.


Last edited by LithoJazzoSphere on Fri May 08, 2020 9:15 am, edited 1 time in total.
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HeavenDuff
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PostPosted: Thu May 07, 2020 7:30 pm 
 

Thanks for all the comments so far folks, this is exactly what I was hoping for. I actually read almost everything that was posted in this thread so far and I'm listening to Last Fair Deal Gone, and I have A Natural Disaster, and than As The Flowers Withers queued up. I'm taking all the comments into account as I'm trying to figure out how the puzzle pieces fit together for each of these bands.

colin040 wrote:
Katatonia's Dance of December Souls is the best doom/death metal album of all time and puts every other album of the style to shame. Oddly enough, it's also the only album of them that's my thing, really, unless you count that mini EP they did after - Brave Murder Day is such a terrible followup otherwise :(


I'll have to relisten to Dance of December Souls because out of the two, Brave Murder Day always stood out to me as the best one. It's a great album and features some of the very tracks I actually truly enjoy featuring Åkerfeldt.

Metantoine wrote:
Despite my obvious love for Opeth, I was never that super fond of Katatonia's early days, even Brave Murder Day and I have yet to fully embrace all their albums. I certainly like The Great Cold Distance, The Fall of Hearts or Last Fair Deal Gone Down but the albums between TGCD and TFOH are somewhat weaker. They're a band that kept a pretty solid identity throughout their career and the days after BMD with twists and turns that never really deviated from their formula. There's certainly ups and downs but I feel that they're somewhat less obvious than a band like Paradise Lost who completely changed their sound several times.

Anathema weren't a really good nor impressive metal band. Their albums are passable, The Silent Enigma being my favorite but they're better at alternative rock. "We're Here Because We're Here" and "A Natural Disaster" are pretty great. Superb live band though, seen 'em with Alcest some years and they're the type of bands that transcends their albums live.

My Dying Bride now. For me, they're the clear gods of that scene. Not only they released the best album with Turn Loose the Swans, they were the most consistent. I admit I haven't fully focused on all their albums but I'm a big fan of the 1-2 punch of " The Light at the End of the World" and "The Dreadful Hours". Too monumental pieces of sad doom. Their newest album is quite good too, makes me want to check out the releases I missed from 'em.

Some other mentions of bands that I'd like to talk about:
- Mourning Beloveth. They came a bit after but the Irish lads are a superb band, especially "The Sullen Sulcus" from 2002.
- Cathedral's debut album "Forest of Equilibrium" is better than the whole scene combined but that's another debate. It was their sole real forray into death-ish doom and it stands as a monument for slow metal almost 30 years after its release.
-Again from Ireland, Primordial, to my eyes, achieved the sorrowfulness and sadness better than most bands ever did. While not related genre wise to those bands, they're certainly tied in spirit. While they're from a black metal background, gothic and doom definitely influenced the particular genre they crafted.


I've never actually really managed to get into Opeth all that much. I don't hate their music or anything, but it just doesn't make a lasting impression on me. It's a little too close to the more melodic side of Swedish death metal for my personal tastes, although I really do enjoy the death/doom of Katatonia. I actually got into Brave Murder Day a while back when it was recommended to me because I was very much into Agalloch.

I'm also not really getting into Anathema right now. I treid Alternative 4, but the last few tracks really drag on too much for my taste and are a little too melodramatic and in your face with their sadness and melancholia. It doesn't resonate all that well with me.

My Dying Bride I'm enjoy quite a bit right now. Turn Loose the Swans is good, so I'll add the other two you mentioned to my playlist and figure out if they're my cup of tea.

I also remember listening to Primordial a while back and Cathedral too. I'll definitely give a spin to that Cathedral album you mentioned.

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Metal_On_The_Ascendant
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PostPosted: Thu May 07, 2020 8:26 pm 
 

My Dying Bride is the most consistent of the bunch and Paradise Lost the edgiest haha. Seriously though, those two are my favourites and I've played ALL their records. I fanboy hard for Katatonia's first two forays into the niche and for Tonight's Decision, Viva Emptiness and the recent three (including City Burials).

Gothic as far as metal goes is a weird term for me. I feel it's more of a quality than a stylistic descriptor. Virgin Steele's Visions of Eden and Kamelot's The Black Halo have this quality, for instance, without being Gothic bands. Type O Negative, the foremost so-called Gothic metal band was rather filthy and blue collar with their approach than a lot of the fanciful connotations attached to the style would call for.
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LithoJazzoSphere
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PostPosted: Thu May 07, 2020 8:38 pm 
 

I suppose I should say a few words about Opeth as well, since their tenor is somewhat different than most of the others, but they do fit that similar mold of making many significant changes to their sound over time, starting from doomy/death origins, and winding up with more than a handful of progressive trappings by the end (some would even say "regressive", but I'm quite fond of their nods to Camel and the like). If I have a favorite band, they probably compete with Katatonia for it, though with a pack of others not too far behind. Unlike some of the other discussed artists, even in any given period you could never quite pin down what their sound was. Death metal? Yes, that's a given. Progressive rock? Clearly so. But also doom, also black, also folk, their own spin on melodic death, and many other things.

I am generally a fair of polished, slick album mixes, often to a fault. But there is a certain inimitable charm to their earliest albums, at times when Dan Swano and Frederik Nordstrom didn't quite have metal production down to a science yet. As much as I've come to appreciate Mendez' subtle contributions to Opeth's metallic potpourri, I miss the fretless stylings of DeFarfalla on their early work. Axenrot is an astoundingly deft drummer, but Lopez channeled a certain energy and vibe which you just don't hear on too many recordings. Akesson was an upgrade on all fronts from Lindgren, conjuring up a modern reimagining of John McLaughlin at certain points, but starting with WS, their music just didn't have the same legendary aura of their prior work, though I still like it quite a lot.

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Pitiless Wanderer
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PostPosted: Thu May 07, 2020 8:46 pm 
 

Lots of long posts and I can't be bothered to read them right now.

I will say that Anathema has, sadly, turned into an utterly horrible band. It's such a shame because the guys are so nice, and honest, and what they do comes from the heart. But after Weather Systems, they just totally lost me. I don't think I like a single song they've made since that album. Actually, I like Distant Satellites a bit, but that is literally it. Their last album doesn't even have a single 3 second span that captures my attention.

Katatonia is an amazing band. They've managed to not only transition and survive, but thrive. I know ppl prefer their old albums, but I'm actually in the minority that much prefers their newer stuff. The Great Cold Distance and Night is the New Day are two of my favorite albums of all time. Renkse has an absolutely amazing voice.

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LithoJazzoSphere
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PostPosted: Thu May 07, 2020 8:54 pm 
 

It's amusing to think of TGCD as a "newer" album, given that it's now 14 years old.

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TheUnhinged
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PostPosted: Fri May 08, 2020 3:04 am 
 

This here is my bread and butter we're talking about. These are the bands I grew up on, and really built my interests in both doom and gothic metal around.

Katatonia - Favorite band of all time, hands down. Their first four albums are brilliant, with Brave Murder Day being the album that ultimately changed my life as a teenager. Everything after Tonight's Decision ranges from decent to bland. Night is the New Day is the last album from them that really grabbed me. I appreciate them having a constant evolution and trying to work a more progressive, intricate style into their sound with the last several albums, but it fails to really grab me. Ultimately, the really monotonous and dissonant sound of Brave Murder Day and Discouraged Ones were what made the band stand out for me.

Paradise Lost - A pretty consistent band who have successfully done a full 360 in their overall style. I never took the time to really listen to their goth rock/synthpop era, but their heavy material is some of the best in the genre. Their first five albums are the strongest for me, with Gothic, Icon, and Draconian Times being their crowning achievements. Everything since their self-titled 2005 album has just gotten better and better, and I appreciated how gracefully they worked themselves back into their death/doom roots into the 2010's. Faith Divides Us - Death Unites Us and The Plague Within in particular are two of their best since the mid-90's.

Anathema - Out of all the bands who fit into this niche, Anathema were always the one that I liked the least. The Crestfallen, Serenades, and Pentecost III are all solid death/doom efforts. The Silent Enigma has moments of brilliance in the mix with lengthy periods of boring atmospheric meandering. Eternity and Alternative 4 are alright, but a bit cheesy for me. I've struggled to get into anything beyond that. Overall, I have never enjoyed Vincent Cavanagh's vocals whatsoever. His singing is very melodramatic and weepy, in my opinion. I gave Weather Systems and Distant Satellites a few listens, and I can at least say I enjoy Lee Douglas as a vocalist and some of the songs featuring her are actually pretty damn good. Other than that though, just never quite clicked with me.

My Dying Bride - Much like Paradise Lost, a very consistent band and one of the best in the genre. They have stayed true to their sound and managed to keep their fans happy, and while they really haven't taken any major risks or done anything new since the mid-90's, they're still solid and put out enjoyable doom albums. As the Flower Withers and Turn Loose the Swans are both insanely good, suspenseful, creepy sounding death/doom albums, while The Angel and the Dark River is essentially a pinnacle album of prime gothic doom. My interest weaves in and out of their discography, with some of the albums kind of blurring together a bit towards the mid-2000's. A Map of All Our Failures would easily be my favorite post-2000's release from them.

The Gathering - I'm all about that Mandylion. I do enjoy Always, but as far as 90's European death/doom goes, it pales in comparison to the aforementioned. Almost a Dance has some good riffs but the Mike Patton-esque vocals really killed the vibe and did no favors for their sound. So, when Anneke van Giersbergen came into the picture and the band worked some of that Cocteau Twins-sounding ethereal magic into their doomy riffage, they really whipped up something special. Mandylion and Nighttime Birds are both beautiful albums, with the former of the two being the stronger. When they dropped the atmo-doom sound and went into that weird artsy rock style, my interest drifted out. I remember listening to Souvenirs and enjoying it, but it not really sticking with me. Silje Wergeland is also a wonderful singer, and I saw her as being a perfectly suitable replacement for Anneke, though the more recent albums have still failed to grab me.

Tiamat - The Astral Sleep was actually one of the first "extreme metal" albums I ever listened to, going as far back as when I was only eight or nine years old. That and Clouds are both excellent death/doom albums, and Sumerian Cry is decently nasty death metal. I honestly find their first three far exceed Wildhoney, which I think is an enjoyable album but suffers from too much psychedelic, atmospheric meandering. I've checked in and out of their later gothic material and felt pretty underwhelmed with it. Amanethes and The Scarred People are decent, but overall forgettable at best.

Theatre of Tragedy - I feel as if folks tend to skip over ToT when discussing the whole "90's death/doom turned gothic" movement because they're more commonly associated with the more symphonic sounding gothic metal stuff that followed, but I've always felt they deserve a mention in the romantic death/doom camp as well. I really love their first two albums, and would honestly go as far as to say I enjoy their self-titled as much as I enjoy Paradise Lost's Gothic. Aegis is a beautiful gothic rock album, and while I couldn't be bothered with the band's more electronic material, I think their material with Nell Sigland is a worthy follow-up to that particular era.

A few other bands worth mentioning would include The 3rd and the Mortal, Lake of Tears, Cemetary, Beseech, On Thorns I Lay, Pyogenesis, Lacrimas Profundere, the list goes on and on. Quite a few of these bands either returned to some of their heavier roots, or started new projects that expanded upon their old material.

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colin040
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PostPosted: Fri May 08, 2020 4:16 am 
 

TheUnhinged wrote:

Tiamat - The Astral Sleep was actually one of the first "extreme metal" albums I ever listened to, going as far back as when I was only eight or nine years old.


That's a great album, but truth to be told I think it's far more diverse in the guitar department to be called a doom/death metal record. Its haunting aura is quite something though...and Edlund sounds fantastic on that record. I'd have liked Clouds if it weren't for the goofy vocals. :p

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Gravetemplar
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PostPosted: Fri May 08, 2020 6:47 am 
 

I used to be a huge fan of Katatonia, Anathema and My Dying Bride when I started listening to metal. I've stopped listening to this kind of stuff though but it was my gateway to more extreme stuff back in the day.

-My Dying Bride: I can still appreciate albums like The Dreadful Hours and Songs of Darkness, Words of Light. It's not that I dislike it but I don't find any enjoyment on the over the top gothic imagery and themes anymore. Their later stuff is pretty weak though imho.

-Anathema: I have to say their doom years are pretty inconsistent. Pentecost would be my pick if I had to choose their best. Serenades isn't that great and The Silent Enigma is good but not impressive. I used to be a lot more into their gothic rock/prog rock era. A Fine Day to Exit and A Natural Disaster were my favourite albums of them back in the day, kind of like a more modern take on late Pink Floyd with a more melancholic/goth vibe. We're Here Because We're Here was their last album I enjoyed.

-Katatonia: Brave Murder Day is great but I could never get into Dance of December Souls. Oddly enough their stuff I enjoy nowadays is The Great Cold Distance and Viva Emptiness, both albums have aged well.

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Pitiless Wanderer
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PostPosted: Fri May 08, 2020 9:24 am 
 

LithoJazzoSphere wrote:
It's amusing to think of TGCD as a "newer" album, given that it's now 14 years old.


ha I know right?

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jimbies
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PostPosted: Fri May 08, 2020 10:15 am 
 

Personally, Anathema is, and always have been my favourite. My Dying Bride is a close second in the mid-era. For one reason or another, I never truly got into the other two bands. I think in the early 2000's I heard some of Katatonia's newer (at the time) records, and they didn't grab me at all. I've since worked my way backwards on them and found I like their early stuff the most. As for Paradise Lost, again, I started with the late 90's/early 2000's (that was the period of time, so these records were new releases) and I didn't like them.

Anathema has had a couple late career misses (the last record was downright bad), but I still consider them one of my top 5 favourite bands of all time (any genre). The run of Alternative 4, Judgement, A Fine Day To Exit, A Natural Disaster and then one album later, Weather Systems is stunning to me.

I sure do hope they put something new out this year, but I haven't heard Daniel talk about any new material, and with some of the members living in different places, I can't see it happening due to the pandemic. Would have been cool to have new music from all 4 in one calendar year though.

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gasmask_colostomy
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PostPosted: Fri May 08, 2020 11:52 am 
 

People have said plenty already about the changes made by all these bands, but I'm interested to note that they've all dropped death metal from their sound. Even though some are still heavy (MDB, PL), they have only kept death growls, but barely any death metal riffs or pacing.
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colin040
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PostPosted: Fri May 08, 2020 12:27 pm 
 

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that to me, My Dying Bride were the only one who were actually good at having their death metal influences upfront. By no means is As the Flower Withers a masterpiece, but it definitely beats Lost Paradise or any of those other doom/death's death metal demos.

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Subrick
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PostPosted: Fri May 08, 2020 12:40 pm 
 

"Flesh From Bone" from The Plague Within is the one PL song post-Shades of God that has actual death metal in it. It was very interesting hearing that song for the first time, as I never would have expected Paradise Lost to do an even sort of death metal song ever again.
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true_death
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PostPosted: Fri May 08, 2020 6:55 pm 
 

gasmask_colostomy wrote:
People have said plenty already about the changes made by all these bands, but I'm interested to note that they've all dropped death metal from their sound. Even though some are still heavy (MDB, PL), they have only kept death growls, but barely any death metal riffs or pacing.


I still hear plenty of death metal in MDB's sound - especially the latest two. As for PL, I think Medusa was (for the most part) no less death metal than anything they've done since the debut. If you don't consider that death metal I don't see how Gothic or Shades of God are either.
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Subrick
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PostPosted: Fri May 08, 2020 8:58 pm 
 

We must not forget Pyogenesis in this discussion. From 1992 to 1997, they went from death/doom:



To Icon-esq gothic metal:



To alternative rock with minor gothic trappings:



To even lighter alternative rock:


Each successive album got softer and softer. Apparently their newer albums are heavy again, but I've never heard them.
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eViLbOrIs
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PostPosted: Fri May 08, 2020 9:16 pm 
 

Pitiless Wanderer wrote:
LithoJazzoSphere wrote:
It's amusing to think of TGCD as a "newer" album, given that it's now 14 years old.


ha I know right?


Oh geez, nail right on the head. To me, TGCD is still 'the new Katatonia.' Everything newer is just 'the newer Katatonia.' Maybe it's because of the long gap between Viva Emptiness and that one. Same thing with 'This Godless Endeavor' --it'll forever be The New Nevermore.
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HeavenDuff
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PostPosted: Fri May 08, 2020 10:45 pm 
 

colin040 wrote:
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that to me, My Dying Bride were the only one who were actually good at having their death metal influences upfront. By no means is As the Flower Withers a masterpiece, but it definitely beats Lost Paradise or any of those other doom/death's death metal demos.


This is something I agree with. Paradise Lost on some occasions let the death side take a step forward, but My Dying Bride definitely did let it take much more place. I was listening to As the Flower Withers yesterday and some of the sections had a faster pace and a strong focus on the death metal elements. I wasn't expecting this as I was going through the discography of these four bands, and I was more accustomed to their material from the late 90's. It's a good album though, and it has the merits of trying to integrate elements of a genre that is typically much faster paced and relying on riffing than atmosphere within a much slower genre that is also very focused on atmosphere.

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LithoJazzoSphere
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PostPosted: Sat May 09, 2020 1:10 am 
 

eViLbOrIs wrote:
Maybe it's because of the long gap between Viva Emptiness and that one.


It's not really that long though. It was longer between DEK and TFOH or from TFOH to CB. And understandably so, with lineup changes and a hiatus. But we were spoiled to get three albums in four years with DO-LFGD.

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colin040
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PostPosted: Sat May 09, 2020 4:58 am 
 

true_death wrote:
I still hear plenty of death metal in MDB's sound - especially the latest two. As for PL, I think Medusa was (for the most part) no less death metal than anything they've done since the debut. If you don't consider that death metal I don't see how Gothic or Shades of God are either.


Lost Paradise definitely has some straight up death metal riffing whereas Medusa to my idea, well, doesn't! Still, I'm very much interested in hearing your ideas on the latter, as on how it still has some death metal in it. Even Gothic is instrumentally quite different from its predecessor and while labeling some of these albums can definitely be a challenge, I think doom/death is just appropriate. Shades of God definitely has plenty of Trouble / Sabbath in its sound; just fronted with harsh vocals...it's not really death metal anymore at that point.

Subrick wrote:
We must not forget Pyogenesis in this discussion. From 1992 to 1997, they went from death/doom. Each successive album got softer and softer. Apparently their newer albums are heavy again, but I've never heard them.


Oh, I forgot to mention this band...never got into them really. Their new stuff isn't all that heavier from what I've sampled; they just brought some death growls back.

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gasmask_colostomy
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PostPosted: Sat May 09, 2020 4:21 pm 
 

colin040 wrote:
true_death wrote:
I still hear plenty of death metal in MDB's sound - especially the latest two. As for PL, I think Medusa was (for the most part) no less death metal than anything they've done since the debut. If you don't consider that death metal I don't see how Gothic or Shades of God are either.


Lost Paradise definitely has some straight up death metal riffing whereas Medusa to my idea, well, doesn't! Still, I'm very much interested in hearing your ideas on the latter, as on how it still has some death metal in it. Even Gothic is instrumentally quite different from its predecessor and while labeling some of these albums can definitely be a challenge, I think doom/death is just appropriate. Shades of God definitely has plenty of Trouble / Sabbath in its sound; just fronted with harsh vocals...it's not really death metal anymore at that point.

You're right that MDB has brought some death metal back to the margins, but it's very rarely the faster side, even though they heavied up the guitars and production on A Map of All Our Failures. I don't really call PL death metal beyond the debut: Gothic already had a lot of simplistic rock elements made darker by its production, while Shades of God…was compared to Metallica.

I think the last time any of the main bands in this thread actually used any real death metal was on MDB's The Thrash of Naked Limbs EP in 1992. I'm classifying "death metal" as something distinct from "death doom", which merely used death growls and the same kind of guitar tuning, not really the playing techniques.
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