The Batlord |
03-28-2017 01:21 PM |
Quote:
Originally Posted by The Identity Matrix
(Post 1817338)
Thanks man. You and a bunch of other guys on the metal threads introduced me to quite a few of these. Generally speaking these albums made an immediate impression on me and continued to get better with each subsequent listen. I think I may have put colors a little low though. I also wanted to ask you about your thoughts on Slaughter of the Soul. I have recently been seeing major criticism of the record for it being too poppy or over polished. I am assuming you do not share these thoughts?
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It gets a lot of hate because of all the ****ty metalcore and melodic death metal bands that were somewhere down the road influenced by it. It was a watershed album for a dubious subgenre or two and gets treated unfairly by many as a result.
But as for actual criticisms of the album, I mean yeah it's more polished than a lot of metal, with slicker production than is the norm for many bands, and the songwriting has been pretty streamlined from their beginnings as a death metal band, but those are its strengths. The production is oppressive and mechanical, making it even more nihilistic than it would have been with a more straightforward production job; and the songwriting is pretty brilliant as it takes the aesthetics of extreme metal and arrives somewhere near thrash, except whereas thrash going for death metal generally tries to sound extra raw and obnoxious, At the Gates going from extremeness to melodicism gives them sort of an interesting assbackwards approach which achieves brutality while accentuating the more accessible aspects of metal. But god forbid extreme metal not sound like back alley chainsaw surgery.
And regardless of what people may think of the aesthetics of the album, the songs are simply top notch. So **** all that ****.
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