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That early death metal vibe that is completely unattainable these days


Dead1

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There's just something about that early 1980s and early 1990s death metal that can't be replicated today.  Be it Autopsy or early Death or Gorefest or Entombed or Morbid Angel or whatever, there is just something about it that pops out and draws one in.  Even the most generic early 1990s Deicide clone has this undefinable vibe that will set it apart from modern DM post 2000 (or even arguably the "better" produced bands from 1992 onwards).

Sure there's new cavernous and OSDM bands but they still somehow don't have that 1980s/early 1990s X factor those old releases have.

I have tried to define it but can't.  It certainly has got something to do with production - it's more primitive but in a non-contrived manner.  It's also more juvenile sounding.  There's also a largeness to the sound - think early Autopsy - absolutely fucking huge despite being dragged through a swamp.

This is the album that made me think about this - it encapsulates this vibe perfectly:

 

 

 

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Does part of it has to do with the fact that the kids back then had a really weak grasp on what the hell they were doing? Like, they were flying by the seat of their pants both abilitywise and how to compose or get the sound they wanted. Musicians now are much more skilled and proficient thanks to YouTube and internet communities.

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17 hours ago, Dead1 said:

There's just something about that early 1980s and early 1990s death metal that can't be replicated today.  Be it Autopsy or early Death or Gorefest or Entombed or Morbid Angel or whatever, there is just something about it that pops out and draws one in.  Even the most generic early 1990s Deicide clone has this undefinable vibe that will set it apart from modern DM post 2000 (or even arguably the "better" produced bands from 1992 onwards).

Sure there's new cavernous and OSDM bands but they still somehow don't have that 1980s/early 1990s X factor those old releases have.

I have tried to define it but can't.  It certainly has got something to do with production - it's more primitive but in a non-contrived manner.  It's also more juvenile sounding.  There's also a largeness to the sound - think early Autopsy - absolutely fucking huge despite being dragged through a swamp.

This is the album that made me think about this - it encapsulates this vibe perfectly:

 

That Abhorrence comp is cool, definitely one of the more overlooked of the early 90's Finndeath bands. But that's not surprising given their limited 8 song discography.

I definitely think it's a good thing that each era of music has their own unique sound that when you hear it will immediately and unmistakably date things to that era. I think most of us here can appreciate the old early 90's death metal (and/or black metal, or substitute the sub-genre of your choice) for what it was, including both its strengths and its flaws. At the same time we can also appreciate the newer stuff for what it is, both in the ways it has improved upon the older stuff and the ways in which it clearly hasn't. I like both the new and the old, I couldn't really say either one is better than the other they're just different, with their own separate identities and I believe it's fair to say both things are very good in their own ways. 

I don't think even if they were able to faithfully replicate 1991 era death metal to the level where you honestly couldn't tell it apart from the original 30 year old stuff, that that would necessarily be a good thing. I like the fact that newer death metal that gets the 'old school' tag has taken massive influence from the originators, keeping the sub-genre alive for a new generation of fans and preventing it from fading away into obscurity, but yet it still retains its own unique identity as 2000's or 2010's death metal. I think this holds true for nearly any kind of music as well as for things like fashion/clothing, hairstyles, architecture, film, automobiles or nearly anything that has a 'style.'  This makes the older stuff "special" in that it will always be unique or one of a kind. 30 year old music or art can always be copied, but it can never truly be duplicated.

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11 hours ago, Sheol said:

Does part of it has to do with the fact that the kids back then had a really weak grasp on what the hell they were doing? Like, they were flying by the seat of their pants both abilitywise and how to compose or get the sound they wanted. Musicians now are much more skilled and proficient thanks to YouTube and internet communities.

Quite possibly.  This in itself might have resulted in less conventional approaches than today.

 

Musical proficiency doesn't equate to better music.  Indeed Sex Pistols, Venom and pretty much all the young 1980s thrash/death etc bands weren't necessarily proficient but wrote some incredible stuff.  Even early Black Sabbath was like this.    Proficiency might result in a more conservative approach.

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3 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

 

That Abhorrence comp is cool, definitely one of the more overlooked of the early 90's Finndeath bands. But that's not surprising given their limited 8 song discography.

I definitely think it's a good thing that each era of music has their own unique sound that when you hear it will immediately and unmistakably date things to that era. I think most of us here can appreciate the old early 90's death metal (and/or black metal, or substitute the sub-genre of your choice) for what it was, including both its strengths and its flaws. At the same time we can also appreciate the newer stuff for what it is, both in the ways it has improved upon the older stuff and the ways in which it clearly hasn't. I like both the new and the old, I couldn't really say either one is better than the other they're just different, with their own separate identities and I believe it's fair to say both things are very good in their own ways. 

I don't think even if they were able to faithfully replicate 1991 era death metal to the level where you honestly couldn't tell it apart from the original 30 year old stuff, that that would necessarily be a good thing. I like the fact that newer death metal that gets the 'old school' tag has taken massive influence from the originators, keeping the sub-genre alive for a new generation of fans and preventing it from fading away into obscurity, but yet it still retains its own unique identity as 2000's or 2010's death metal. I think this holds true for nearly any kind of music as well as for things like fashion/clothing, hairstyles, architecture, film, automobiles or nearly anything that has a 'style.'  This makes the older stuff "special" in that it will always be unique or one of a kind. 30 year old music or art can always be copied, but it can never truly be duplicated.

 

 

Funny thing is I find a lot of modern death metal boring.  Too often it's overpolished, the drumming is to pronounced in the mix.  Even the rawer production is often too dense.

More critically it lacks vibe.  I think music needs to take you somewhere emotionally.  Indeed your favourite genre, black metal, is very good at this with it's icincess, Scandinavian vibes, and sense of malevolent evil.

But thrash and death can do it too - as said early Autopsy is this immense sound dragged through a swamp.  Early DM really is the soundtrack to a 1980s horror movie!  

I think modern production values including modern attempts at "raw" production which are still piped through Pro-tools and virtual instruments programs like Drum Kit From Hell are responsible here.  Indeed new Massacre is good musically but it's production is too polished, too modern and as such defangs the impact.

 

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One other thing is just the sheer amount of metal along these lines that's been produced over the past few decades. It's kind of hard to capture the spirit of early explorations when every riff and every sound you come up with can be heard as a reference to something else. The more you know, the more pressure you're under to differentiate yourself, even if you're playing self-consciously retro stuff. I can't tell you how many times I've come up with some cool idea only to find (or hear from a bandmate) that it was "too close" to something else.

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2 hours ago, Dead1 said:

 

 

Funny thing is I find a lot of modern death metal boring.  Too often it's overpolished, the drumming is to pronounced in the mix.  Even the rawer production is often too dense.

More critically it lacks vibe.  I think music needs to take you somewhere emotionally.  Indeed your favourite genre, black metal, is very good at this with it's icincess, Scandinavian vibes, and sense of malevolent evil.

But thrash and death can do it too - as said early Autopsy is this immense sound dragged through a swamp.  Early DM really is the soundtrack to a 1980s horror movie!  

I think modern production values including modern attempts at "raw" production which are still piped through Pro-tools and virtual instruments programs like Drum Kit From Hell are responsible here.  Indeed new Massacre is good musically but it's production is too polished, too modern and as such defangs the impact.

 

I agree with you for the most part man, so much of the modern death metal I hear from the last 20 years bores me and holds no appeal to me whatsoever. As you might have noticed, I can really almost only manage to get excited about death metal that's been blackened to some extent, or has some amount of punk influence. Your run of the mill Deicide clones do nothing for me. I'd say 99% of the major label death metal I come across is either lacklustre, boring or straight up trash. It's almost all been overproduced and mixed badly which is why I only bother to hunt for the more underground and independent smaller label stuff which is far more likely to have escaped most or at least some of the modern production pitfalls.

Which is not to say that I think all the small time stuff is good, because a very large portion of that stuff is no good either. The rawer more minimal production isn't always ideal either, it's such an easy thing to get wrong. But I do tend to be more tolerant of flawed production than most I think. As long as it's not overproduced. I wouldn't say that 99% of the smaller label stuff is rubbish, maybe I only discard 85% of it. But with so many hundreds of death metal albums coming out each year, even with only the smallest percentage sounding good to me and making the cut I do still manage to come up with a couple of dozen keepers each year, and I can live with that ratio. 

But the thing is I feel basically the same way about much of the early 90's stuff as well. It wasn't all of the highest quality imo, a lot of it was forgettable and mediocre at best and there were some absolute shit production jobs back then too. I personally can't stand a lot of the older "classic" death metal bands that many other death metal fanatics seem to think are the unfuckwithable masters. I just can't say I think that all the old stuff was better to me than all the newer stuff because I don't believe that to be true. Early Autopsy is killer though you'll get no argument from me there, but I also think later Autopsy is fantastic too.

I agree with you about the vibe thing as well, and that music absolutely needs to take you somewhere emotionally. I guess that's where the blackened thing comes into play for me, the blackening providing some much needed atmosphere and malevolence which can often inspire feeling & emotion, or at least it can for me. Obviously almost any kind of music can and will inspire emotion in somebody somewhere. That's a very subjective thing though, different people are going to react to the same music differently. One man's album with a cool vibe is another man's snooze fest.

And btw I'll have you know my favorite sub-genre is actually not black metal but blackened death metal. I feel that the mixture of the two can often be much greater than the sum of the parts. When done just right there is nothing better imo. Problem is it's mostly not done just right and I just don't find nearly as many black/death albums that I find to be truly worth my time as I do black metal albums. So not being a musician myself, I kinda have to go with what's available to be found out there in the metalverse. And mostly what I find that floats my boat on the regular is shit tons of black metal. So I'm the black metal guy now. But blackened death is my true love. 

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Not all the old stuff was good, a lot of it is shit.  But due to the production differences, I can enjoy generic 1990s death metal a lot easier than generic 2000s death metal (modern sound compression doesn't help).

 

I think a lot of modern "raw" production is deliberate which means it's actually all rather fake as it's all done via computer,  It ends up in generic sounds and it's not really imperfect which means it reduces the vibe of it.  It was different back in the old days where everything from type of equipment to recording skills to size and shape of room to how you miked the drums contributed to sound.

 

It's not all bad today - bands like Midnight, Enforcer, Blood Incantation, Toxic Holocaust and Cerebral Rot all managed to get some great vibes on their music thanks to production. 

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I certainly have my gripes with contemporary death metal. Go back four years ago and I likely would've told you death metal was my favourite genre but I've had a slight falling out with it in recent years. And would certainly agree that most modern death metal, particularly modern "OSDM", doesn't have that same "it" factor.

For me it mainly comes down to the fact the OSDM revival has gotten way too oversaturated and the genre as a whole seems to revel too much in celebrating it's past. It feels like roughly 8 out of every 10 DM albums that've been released in the last 4-5 years are some form of OSDM. Be it old-school but slower (very common these days), old-school with some prog mixed in (Blood Incantation and the like), Incantation worship, Swedeath worship, Autopsy worship, you-name-it worship. Sure, many bands will sprinkle in some different influences, tweak the formula somewhat, but the formula has largely remained the same and you can only re-write the same riff so many times so it's no surprise that most of these newer acts simply don't hit as hard as the OG late 80's/early 90's acts. Overfamiliarity is a bitch, ain't it?

Another thing I can't help but notice is that Death Metal has gotten a lot slower over the years, especially the last decade or so. I mean, there were definitely bands in the early days mixing in some doomy riffs, but I don't feel it was anywhere near as common as today. Death/doom is has got to be more popular than it's ever been, which by it's very nature is a far less aggressive and abrasive take on the genre. That and there's a plethora of newer bands who seem to focus more on "filth" and "caveman riffs" than writing an engaging or memorable song.

This thread actually reminds me of a post @Dead1 made back on Metal-fi about how he thought most modern death metal was way less extreme and abrasive than it once was. I'm pretty sure I disagreed with him at the time but if he still feels that way I would have to agree with him now (with some exceptions of course haha).

 

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That's because at its core, it essentially is the same post

Now, I'm just throwing a crazy idea out there, but has it occurred to anyone that maybe this isn't a death metal issue? Maybe, just maybe, this is a (generalized) "you" issue?

Current death metal bands don't give the same "vibe" as the bands you heard from the 80's and 90's? Why is that surprising? Why would anyone expect to get that same feeling now, from bands you have no emotional connection with, that you got from the bands you heard when you were younger, and just discovering death metal for the very first time?

Why is anyone shocked that after immersing yourself into a genre for years, you start to find that it's blending together and nothing really stands out or excites you anymore?

That's burnout...that's what it means to BE burnt out on something...Familiarity breeds contempt, and it comes for us all eventually

...and I'm not even saying this as someone who's still in love with death metal. Honestly, I find very few death metal bands are grabbing my interest these days, and if I never heard another hm-2, Swedeath worship, buzzsaw band again, it would be too soon. All I'm saying is that it isn't death metal that changed, it's the person who's listening to it

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Sure, I fully admit to being burnt out on death metal. But that doesn't mean the genre isn't stagnant, oversaturated and for the most part, derivative.

49 minutes ago, SurgicalBrute said:

it isn't death metal that changed, it's the person who's listening to it

No disagreements from me here. 

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10 minutes ago, SurgicalBrute said:

...and you believe everyone who listens to death metal would say the same?

No need for loaded questions my dude. Do you disagree that death metal is derivative and stagnant? Is your whole point that the only reason for one to feel that death metal is oversaturated is because they've heard too much of it? I think both things can be true at the same time.

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31 minutes ago, zackflag said:

No need for loaded questions my dude. Do you disagree that death metal is derivative and stagnant? Is your whole point that the only reason for one to feel that death metal is oversaturated is because they've heard too much of it? I think both things can be true at the same time.

Wasn't meant to be a loaded question, just emphasizing my point, that this is all in the eye of the beholder. As I said, I've gotten to the point myself where I don't get very excited about a lot of death metal releases. I find a great deal of it boring and repetitive, but yes...I absolutely think that feeling comes from overexposure to the genre. How could it not? If someone listens to death metal and they're still enjoying a large number of the releases (a sentiment I think a lot of us saw last year, with constant comments around the web expressing what a great year it was for death metal), then I don't think it's likely they feel the genre is over saturated, derivative or stagnant

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