Metal Reviews

The influence of Swedish death metal is something many seasoned metalheads see in many facets of metaldom. Whether it's obvious spawning of metalcore in a brief flirtation with American hardcore, or the tinges of Grave-esque/Dismembe-esque riffs in early Marduk. What do you think the overall effect has been on modern metal, and do you seen the sound still playing out in future generations of bands? For the older metalheads how did the traditional Swedish dm bands react to the explosion of the Gothenburg sound, and do you see any younger bands reclaiming the style in a successful manner?

I don't see it going anywhere new. There's nothing new to be done with death metal or melodic death metal since slaughter of the soul was released if you ask me. Yeah you can throw some keyboards in their and make it more technical but I don't see there being any big wave of new death metal bands. Yeah you've had all the metalcore/deathcore bands in the past 5-6 years come out but I don't even like that shit and I don't like the vibe it gives me. Sucks for me because that's what everyone out here is into. I only know one person who's really into black metal and he's a wasted drunk and the rest of his black metal friends turned out to be drug addicts to apparently.

There's nothing left to be done in metal if you ask me. All you can hope for is good songwriting at this point.

Deicide's new song sucks by the way just for a new death metal example. Consider me a black metal musician though, tired of death metal, tired of thrash metal, into black metal. That's my opinion.

Even new metal bands like Watain who are really popular and winning grammy's in their home country aren't doing anything new. Yeah Lawless Darkness was a really good album but it was nothing extremely fresh, it was just a solid metal album.

Death metal in general is stale and stagnant and has been for years. Bands like Altar of Plagues and experimental metal bands that have post-rock influences are probably the next wave of metal if you ask me.

There's to many drug addicts and drunken posers in metal anyways. Stay the fuck away from my music. Metal in general is just full of bullshit, but isn't the world? I could rant on that aspect of shit for a while. I want to practice/play my drums with a serious guitarist for hours on end and create music for sole enjoyment of creating music and love of music.

My audio production teacher in my lab today said people start playing music for attention from the opposite sex today. I started playing music because my mother made me and it was always in me to want to play drums from a young age. Finally when I was 14 I got the chance to buy a drum set and have practiced pretty steadily since then because I love music and love playing the drums. I like how it makes me feel. I love music, that is why I am taking music classes, that is why I am practicing my instruments, is sometimes my mind clouded with other reasons as to why I'm doing what I'm doing, sure, everyone's mind has been somewhat toyed with by what they hear see and feel, and simple natural instincts.

Death metal is done unless the next Morbid Angel album is really something stellar, which judging by their last 3 albums is not going to happen.

in melodic death metal if someone could just take carcass's thrashiness on heartwork mix it with symbolic's proggressive elements and some control denied melody we could possibly have something fairly original and entertaining

Guys who do music for chicks are lame; my mom made me do it lol.

Ummm Hail of Bullets?

With most forms of newer extreme metal bands today I think you can definitely hear the influence of Swedish death metal. Unlike other regional sounds this one seems to have been influential across the board. I think even many thrash revival bands these days take influence from Stockholm death metal. I don't know if I can respond to the second question since I'm only in my mid-20s lol, but I'm not sure if I've seen any new blood take up the sound as well as the old bands as far as death metal.

Hail of Bullets and definitely the Dutch scene has some resonance from the Stockholm sound, but at the same time the Dutch scene grew up along side the Swedish scene so that's nothing new. Hail of Bullets even as a new band aren't exactly new to the scene since van Drunen's been there from the beginning and there are a lot of the old guard in the band.

The current Australian black/death/thrash scene has a few new bands that obviously take influence from Swedish death metal, but I can't think of straight up death metal examples at the moment. They mostly are death/thrash or black/death or combination of all three. That said, I think that maybe the Australian scene might be the way to go in extreme metal with that "old school feel" in the future. They've got some great bands both old and new.

...are you trolling? I hate all the talk about genres dying or having no more life in them. Music evolves yes but that doesn't mean genres die. Even jazz, which has died as much as a genre can, isn't dead. There's thousands of jazz albums that come out every year. Lots suck but a select few are stellar. The same thing will also be true for death metal.

I don't think melodeth had much influence at all except for metalcore. Fuck this genre.

no i'm not trolling. I haven't heard a good death metal album from a classic death metal band since deicide's the stench of redemption in 2006. I don't like most death metal though.

Am I doing it wrong if I think Grave when I hear the phrase swedish DM?

Not trying to praise the genre here or anything, but I'd say a lot of modern melodic/symphonic metal is heavily influenced by melodeath, along with quite a few folk metal bands, gothic metal bands and so on. It's not very unusual for modern metal bands (not talking metalcore here) to be influenced by melodeath.



Into the Grave is fucking classic...so no. Sure they went downhill afterwards, doesn't change that they wrote some awesome material in the early days.

Melodeth, Swedish death metal...whatever you want to call it, may have been good in the 90's, but it has sucked ever since then.

I blame the genre entirely for the existence of shit head acts like The Black Dhalia Murder. God are they awful. Screamo and mallcore are all products of melodeth, which is essentially the harsher more extreme forms of metal, but made for pussies (with the exception of At the Gates and bands of their caliber, which admittedly are few).

Black Dahlia Murder are fucking awesome. Sure they rip off that Swedish sound, but they do everything so much better.

Must be a different Black Dahlia Murder.

Screamo has nothing to do with melodic death metal... Black Dahlia Murder as horrible as they are, are not screamo (as horrible as screamo is) and screamo is not influenced by melodic death metal in the least. This is the kind of misidentification that makes arguments against modern "-core" bullshit look like they carry no water...too many people talking out of their arses.





Anyways, why the fuck are we talking about melodeath in a topic that is clearly about old school Swedish death metal à la Dismember and Entombed. Only time melodeath comes up in the OP is when he asks about Swedish death metal bands' reactions to Gothenburg.

Orchid and pageninetynine are awesome