In the realms of metal, and extreme metal in particular intensity is a key element, and as the success of (good) science fiction writing and film making has shown us that scientific concepts of future, time and space when meddled with can be the most intensely horrific ideas.
The Impetus For A Rather Obscure Niche
This music reflects the hopeless, remorseless and hostile nature of outer space and encapsulates the horror of a future so interwoven with mechanical evil and mutated species - A forsaken dystopia where playing God and aiming at perfection through technology has led to a scorched and black earth filled with failed experiments and remnants of civilization.
A school of bands in the extreme metal spectrum, in several ways, have portrayed these notions with heavy and bleak music that through their artistic twists and turns convey the dark and evil concepts of science fiction.
How The Sound Is Found
Each band in this school has a sound, a vibe that is reminiscent of futuristic scenarios. Usually created by pummelling double bass drums and emotionally driving riffs. In the case of Sirius, The Amenta and Limbonic Art, keyboards are used to construct a chilly post-human atmosphere. Other bands tend to use electronically generated beats to emboss their punishing metallic onslaught to achieve similar effects, perfect examples would be early Zkylon, Aborym and Mysticum.
Keep of Kalessin use distant and echo-like sound in their music (only referring here to the Reclaim EP) and create a lifeless vacuous atmosphere perfect for nailing home the creepy ambience of the subject matter. The intro track ‘Traveller’ and the adjacent ‘IX’ display this perfectly.
Onset of Armageddon and the aftermath are key themes also, staying with Keep of Kalessin’s Reclaim EP the song “Obliterator” (which also appears on the Through Times of War Album) embraces this theme, with the prominent lyric ‘this is the last day/of the human race’ opening up the chorus.
Both Human And Inhuman
Aborym capture both the organic and the mechanical sides of post-apocalyptic imagination with cold black metal and computer generated trance beats. The cyber-industrial connotations run deep. As well as having Atilla Cshiar of Mayhem fame (also did the vocals on the Keep of Kalessin Reclaim EP) on the key albums who’s inhuman vocal talent is perfect for this context.
With Ultimate Death Worship and Ad Noctum: Dynasty Of Death Limbonic Art upped the intensity and morphed from pompous folked-up black metal to abyssal and epic space black mental. Demonstrating well the futility of mankind in the face of time and space and the destructive power therein.
In summary it is best to simply list the essential albums in this sphere of metal. If readers are compelled to do so, please suggest more albums that would fit in here that have not been mentioned as certainly there are more out there.
In alphabetical order:
Aborym - Fire Walk With Us! (1999)
Aborym - With No Human Intervention (2002)
Dodheimsgard - 666 International (1999)
Keep of Kalessin - Reclaim (2003)
Limbonic Art - The Ultimate Death Worship (2002)
Limbonic Art - Ad Noctum: Dynasty of Death (1999)
Lunaris - Cyclic (2004)
Mysticum – In The Streams of Inferno (1996)
Origin - Echoes of Decimation (2005)
Origin - Antithesis (2008)
Red Harvest - Cold Dark Matter (2000)
Red Harvest - Sic Gloria Transit Mundi (2002)
Sirius - Spectal Transition (2001)
The Amenta - Occasus (2004)
Zyklon - World ov Worms (2001)
Zyklon - Aeon (2003)
As all of these albums have demonstrated, the ideas of a bleak future or oncoming armageddon are met well with relentless blast beats and riffs that strike a chord deep inside the listener and eerie keyboards and electronic samples can galvinise this sound.
Tom Findlay - Tom Findlay: Young freelance writer, articulate and humorous in style. Writes what he sees; no obesquious pandering and no unnecessary ...
