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Does Black Metal have to have a "raw recording"?


DevourerMetal

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Doesn't the music take precedence over the production? Devourer's new album was rejected by the YouTube channel Black Metal Promotion for sounding too much like Death Metal, even though it's musically more Black than Death, at least in my opinion. I've put so many hours into producing the album as best as I can, and I think it's an improvement over our previous albums. The first comment on YouTube was "Amazing Black Metal sound! Great Guitars and imposing vocals! Hail Devourer 🤘😈". I decided to change the genre description to Blackened Extreme Metal because it seems to offend people to call it Black Metal. Now I feel like an outcast among outcasts..

 

 

Edited by FatherAlabaster
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Hey - you've gotta keep your own music in the Promote Yourself section, I moved your promo post there. I did listen to a little bit of it. Sounded fine to me. I suppose the drum mix and overall sound is a bit death-metally, but no more so than some other stuff that channel has posted, and they've got some stuff up that's way more polished. Maybe whoever runs the channel has an honest feeling that your album doesn't fit in, maybe they were just looking for an excuse. Seems subjective and inconsistent, like every other music opinion.

In principle, personally, no, I don't think black metal has to sound "raw"... I like a lot of stuff that does and I can see why some people might prefer that vibe above others. I think knee-jerk purism is dumb. Good luck, and I feel your frustration, getting turned down sucks even when it's just a YouTube stream.

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25 minutes ago, FatherAlabaster said:

Hey - you've gotta keep your own music in the Promote Yourself section, I moved your promo post there. I did listen to a little bit of it. Sounded fine to me. I suppose the drum mix and overall sound is a bit death-metally, but no more so than some other stuff that channel has posted, and they've got some stuff up that's way more polished. Maybe whoever runs the channel has an honest feeling that your album doesn't fit in, maybe they were just looking for an excuse. Seems subjective and inconsistent, like every other music opinion.

In principle, personally, no, I don't think black metal has to sound "raw"... I like a lot of stuff that does and I can see why some people might prefer that vibe above others. I think knee-jerk purism is dumb. Good luck, and I feel your frustration, getting turned down sucks even when it's just a YouTube stream.

Thanks for moving the post and giving your thoughts on the matter :)

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To answer the initial question...No, it doesn't need to have a raw sound. While I personally tend to prefer my black metal to have a rougher mix, I don't think it's necessarily required. Plenty of black metal bands get away with a cleaner sound just fine.

Specifically to your band Devourer, I pulled it up on Bandcamp and gave the new one a spin (good stuff, by the way), and while I'd say you guys might lean into the cleaner side of things, it's by no means overproduced or artificial sounding to my ears. From a production standpoint, I'd say bands like Uada and Stormkeep are arguably as clean, if not cleaner.

Musically, I can hear the death metal influences, but like Father A said above, I don't know that I'd say they dominate or that it's out of line with some of the stuff that channel has posted in the past.

I guess if enough people are giving you shit about it, you could always label yourselves blackened death...nothing wrong with that

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Black metal doesn´t need to have a raw production to qualify as black metal in my opinion. Sure, i prefer a more natural and rough sounding mix since it just adds to the listening experience in my opinion. I want a drums to sound like drums and not like perfectly programmed samples that could have been done with a drum computer. Call me crazy but i´d rather listen to Capricornus´ sloppy but natural sounding drumming on the early Graveland releases then Hellhammer´s perfect but clinical drumming on the last few Mayhem releases.

Keep in mind a raw mix doesn´t mean you can´t hear the individual instruments. There´s a big difference between a raw mix and shitty mix where everything sounds like a wall of white noise.

A lot of times when black metal bands rely on a polished and sterile production (Dark Funeral, Dimmu Borgir, late era Gorgoroth) you just lose some of that chaotic, raw magic that we know from the early 90´s albums. It just sounds soulless like it was produced by a computer instead of a bunch of musicians if that makes sense. I´m still able to enjoy those albums but whenever that dreaded Nuclear Blast-esque production pops up i instantly lose interest in the material.

I gave a few of your songs a spin and i kind of get what he means. The overall sound and tuning of the guitars sounds somewhat closer to death metal then black metal at times, although it´s still clearly rooted in black metal. My guess he was just being polite since there are clearly enough black metal elements present in your music. But at the end of the day who gives a fuck, you can´t please everyone right?!?

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11 minutes ago, Destructhor81 said:

Black metal doesn´t need to have a raw production to qualify as black metal in my opinion. Sure, i prefer a more natural and rough sounding mix since it just adds to the listening experience in my opinion. I want a drums to sound like drums and not like perfectly programmed samples that could have been done with a drum computer. Call me crazy but i´d rather listen to Capricornus´ sloppy but natural sounding drumming on the early Graveland releases then Hellhammer´s perfect but clinical drumming on the last few Mayhem releases.

Keep in mind a raw mix doesn´t mean you can´t hear the individual instruments. There´s a big difference between a raw mix and shitty mix where everything sounds like a wall of white noise.

A lot of times when black metal bands rely on a polished and sterile production (Dark Funeral, Dimmu Borgir, late era Gorgoroth) you just lose some of that chaotic, raw magic that we know from the early 90´s albums. It just sounds soulless like it was produced by a computer instead of a bunch of musicians if that makes sense. I´m still able to enjoy those albums but whenever that dreaded Nuclear Blast-esque production pops up i instantly lose interest in the material.

I gave a few of your songs a spin and i kind of get what he means. The overall sound and tuning of the guitars sounds somewhat closer to death metal then black metal at times, although it´s still clearly rooted in black metal. My guess he was just being polite since there are clearly enough black metal elements present in your music. But at the end of the day who gives a fuck, you can´t please everyone right?!?

Abbath's drumming on 'Battles in the North' are so chaotic and awesome at the same time. He can hardly play the double kick but it doesn't matter one bit. Hellhammer is an excellent drummer but the production takes away too much dynamics and character on some of the albums he's played on. Not on 'Wolf's Lair Abyss' though, perfect production and the song 'Ancient Skin' is an all-time favourite of mine.

It was too bad Black Metal Promotion didn't accept 'Raptus' because this is the first album I've tried to promote a bit more.  For all of our previous releases I just sent it to a couple of reviewers then let it go and went back to writing new songs instead.. Any help or PR tips would be greatly appreciated guys!

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Maybe try Order ov The Black Arts? Sending it to some underground labels like Repose, Urtod, etc.

As for production, I think black metal don't have to have a raw production, but the clean Dark Funeral/Nerophobic sound is harder to pull off. it needs the right kind of BM to feel balanced and not loose too much chaos.

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