Full Metal Racket: An introduction to Scottish metal, part two
[Bonesaw]
Jodi Mullen returns with the second installment of his introductory guide to the more extreme forms of rock music in Scotland, from folk/battle to drone/doom, with a few choice recommendations thrown in.
Warning: if you think Muse are too 'rawk', you may want to go away until normal indie-centric programming is resumed tomorrow. Feeling brave? Read on...
Somehow, in spite of all the apathy and adversity, metal in Scotland has not only survived and endured, it has thrived. Each of our major cities has a rich and vibrant metal underground, focused around a handful of venues and extremely dedicated fan communities. Glasgow is the undisputed jewel in Scottish metal's spiked crown, being the home of perhaps our most successful metal act, Man Must Die (more below) and a regular stop-over for the metal world's biggest touring acts. The city is also home to bands that span the full spectrum of subgenres: death metallers Madman is Absolute, folk/battle metal outfit Alba Gu Brath and black metal titans Daemonolith are just a few acts out of dozens.
Play: Madman is Absolute - Resolution
As well as a plethora of rock and metal bars, Glasgow plays host to a number of small to medium-sized venues that specialise in the most extreme forms of music. Ivory Blacks, The Cathouse, Captain's Rest and Maggie May's form the backbone of the city's gigging circuit for metal acts, though many more venues feature prominently too.
The metal scene in Edinburgh perhaps isn't quite as vibrant, particularly with the announcement last month that popular rock and metal club Studio 24 was set to lose its license. Bannerman's remains a favourite for extreme acts and regularly hosts shows with some of the most interesting and varied lineups around. While the capital may not have quite the same number of metal bands as Glasgow, it is home to some of the more eclectic bands in the Scottish underground, including drone/doom instrumental act Jackal-Headed Guard of the Dead.
Proving perhaps that there is something about the frozen north that brings out the metal spirit, Aberdeen has one of Scotland's longest established scenes, with venues like The Moorings becoming institutions in their own right alongside the likes of Moshulu and The Tunnels. Local favourites Black Atom seem to have been on the verge of becoming the next big thing for well over half a decade while death metal outfit Bonesaw are one of the country's most brutal acts. Meanwhile, Ascension, one of Scotland's finest power metal acts split their time between Aberdeen and Glasgow.
Play: Bonesaw - Necrosexual
Outside the big three cities, smaller scenes exist in Dundee - home to traditional metallers Swordmaster - Perth and Inverness with various other acts coming from small towns all over the country, including What The Blood Revealed, a post-metal act who call Irvine, Ayrshire their home.
Over the next few months, Under the Radar will be examining Scotland's emerging metal scene in detail, starting out with a look at the country's ferocious death metal community next month. In the meantime though, we introduce two of the very best homegrown acts who are currently flying the flag for Scottish metal around Europe...
Alestorm
With the release of their second album, Black Sails at Midnight, Perth's Alestorm look set to become the latest Scottish act to make it big on the international metal scene. Branding themselves "True Scottish Pirate Metal", the four-piece play upbeat, traditional heavy metal with strong influences from the worlds of power metal and folk music. Alestorm revel in their ludicrously over-the-top buccaneer image; band members take to the stage dressed as pirates and song titles like 'Wenches and Mead' and 'Keelhauled' are the order of the day, though a reworking of 'Flower of Scotland' has been known to creep onto live setlists every now and then. Signed to Austrian independent metal label Napalm Records, Alestorm will join legendary Finnish folk-metallers Korpiklaani on the Paganfest tour of Europe this autumn.Man Must Die
Four young men from Glasgow with a penchant for loud noise and violence? Who would have thought it? Man Must Die's star has been in the ascendancy for several years now, during which time the band has landed much coveted support slots with the likes of Kataklysm and Aborted but forthcoming album No Tolerance For Imperfection will hopefully see them becoming one of death metal's leading lights in their own right. Driven by crushing riffs, Man Must Die's brand of death metal is unrelentingly brutal and aggressive and frequently delves into the kind of grisly lyrical subject matter for which the genre has become infamous. Matters of taste aside though, one can't help but admire some of the virtuoso musicianship on display as the band push their instruments and themselves to new heights of extremity.Words: Jodi Mullen
Metal: music to your ears or unbearable racket? Discuss...
Labels: Alba Gu Brath, Alestorm, ascension, black atom, bonesaw, daemonolith, Full Metal Racket, jackal-headed guard of the dead, Jodi Mullen, madman is absolute, man must die, swordmaster
2 Comments:
Jodi, here's my problem with more extreme metal. I appreciate the musicianship and the hardness of it, but I just can't deal with the way they 'sing'. It's like they're trying to impersonate a slobbering pitbull. Can you shed some light on why they do this?
It's probably the reason I actually love Lightning Bolt - extreme rock but the vocals are so muffled they're more of an instrument.
Hah, that's quite a valid question actually. I think there's a number of things going on here and while the cynic in me would like to suggest that growling or screaming is often a screen bad vocalists can hide behind, I'm not sure that's always the case.
There's the extremity angle to consider - vocals that are as harsh and unforgiving as the music is. Given that growling vocals became commonplace with the emergence of death metal in the late 80s and screaming slightly before with black metal, I think there's some truth in that. There's no denying that a really good vocalist can take something to the next level in the right situation.
Unfortunately, by now harsh vocals have become something of a cliche and are actually the greatest obstacle to thousands of curious music lovers - like yourself - getting into extreme metal. There's no denying that they're an acquired taste and that lack of accessibility as much as anything else turns many people away. Certainly for me, it took quite a while after I started listening to extreme metal - power, folk and progressive mostly - to acclimatise myself before I could really fathom death metal, black metal etc.
That said though, there are plenty of extreme bands out there who do interesting and exciting things with their harsh vocals. Lots of the second generation black metal bands - I'm thinking early Darkthrone here - used vocals more to lend atmosphere in a way that comes across as another aspect of the instrumentation - see the chanting on A Blaze In The Northern Sky. To take a more recent example, can anyone remember the last time they paid close attention to the vocals in a Meshuggah track? Again, it's subsumed by the other instruments.
Starting with Death, from the Human and Individual thought pattern albums, there's been a succession of bands who have used both clean and dirty vocals in the same songs to great effect: Cynic, Opeth, Neurosis and the last few Enslaved records are all great examples. Mikael Akerfeldt of Opeth has one of the most impressive vocals ranges in music, never mind metal, and is criminally ignored outside metal circles.
There's also a number of bands, particularly in grindcore, of all places, who use dual vocalists to great effect. Then you have the sadly now defunct Strapping Young Lad who used growls, screams, cleans and everything in between to maximum effect and are of the heaviest and most interesting bands you'll hear.
Unfortunately there's an element in the metal community who are inherently conservative and for all the wonderful innovation I mention in the intro articles, there are those who constantly hark back to an imagined glory day when the scene was in its infancy and men were men, metal was metal and vocals were indecipherable and about doing rude things to corpses. Within that sub-community there's those who actively shun the mainstream and see any concessions to accessibility as selling out at best and anathema at worst. While this is a strong force in the metal underground, I wouldn't expect the really extreme bands to become more accessible any time soon!
My own personal take is that I'd like to see a bit more variation in vocal styles rather than the same standard array of grunts and screams. I think there's a lot of ways of potential expression being ignored in metal because they're seen as being out of step with tradition.
Either way, I think we may revisit this topic in our upcoming Full Metal Racket: Death Metal feature.
We'd especially love to hear from other metal fans and metal musicians about how they feel about extreme vocals.
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