A Different Kind of Black Metal
Featuring Pallbearer, Zeal & Ardor, Phoebe Bridgers, clipping. and more...
Last week was a certified good week. The music bumped, there was a killer doom metal album and doom metal is just, so so so so so so so good when it’s done well. The Dodgers also won the World Series, and while this isn’t a sports newsletter, I am a Dodgers fan, and am only a human, so it’s going to get mentioned at some point. I look forward to screaming scoreboard at anyone who even slightly disagrees with an opinion of mine for the next month, especially when that opinion has nothing to do with sports.
Next week could be a bad week though. I have no idea how the music scene will go, but people tell me something is happening. Whatever it is I suggest you don’t mind it and instead just read this newsletter loudly to yourself, like Victorian era aristocrats used to do to entertain family members. If that fails, just play the music we talk about and drown out the world.
A side note, there’s no label highlight this week because I wanted to make sure that this week’s essay got my maximum focus and attention. Don’t worry though, the label highlight will be returning next week.
AOTW
Pallbearer - Forgotten Days
It only takes about twenty-seconds for Pallbearer’s Forgotten Days to establish itself as one of the best metal albums of the year. Brilliantly updating the sounds of classic Sabbath, Pallbearer shows that the founding influence of metal can still crush the opposition. It’s also their most accessible album to date. With only one song tilting past the 10-minute mark, the album moves briskly, for doom metal at least.
The increased pace doesn’t distract from the heft of each song though. Opening track “Forgotten Days” is one of the heaviest things that Pallbearer has released. Even the ballad-like “Riverbed” drowns any positivity with its grumbling guitars and clattering drums. It’s a sneaky little trick that Pallbearer lifts from groups like Opeth, who blended accessible vocals and song structures in order to sneak the more objectionable elements of metal into the ears of unsuspecting listeners.
But this isn’t to say that Pallbearer is shifting towards pop-metal. Anything but. What they are doing is “playing the hits.” Some people may balk at this approach to music, but that’s silly. We all agree that Jaws is a stellar film, and one of the best of the 70s, but it plays the hits. Forgotten Days is a love letter to classic doom and the early weed and LSD tinged metal of the 70’s. For every ounce of sludge and death hidden in each note, there is a deeper and fuller well of reverence that Pallbearer is able to dip into. When viewed as a whole, it’s difficult to argue against Forgotten Days as the best doom metal offering this year.
Great Metal from this Week
While this week didn’t deliver a bunch of quantity, it delivered enough quality that it inspired the entire essay later in this newsletter. That said, there was definitely an upswing in quality from last week, which is more than enough to keep me happy, and we even got an 8/10+ album, which you can see in bold.
If albums feel like a harrowing undertaking, we’ve got you covered. Follow it on Spotify by clicking the player below. People say that it’s great at drowning out the cacophony of election night twitter.
Metal Merch
The aesthetic of metal is not an enviable one. Those who don’t care for the genre with all their heart have no reason to endorse the zombie strewn gorefests that most band merchandise depicts. If the relentless hell of guts and ghouls doesn’t appeal to you, then Titans and Tachyons, a recent highlight in our best of August, might have something more up your alley.
Each of these pieces of merch is a one of a kind custom painting by artist Sally Gates. Depicting planets and galaxies, the subject matter is more Holst than heavy metal, but it works with the band’s bombastic style. If you’re looking for something cool to put on your wall, these original artworks might be just the thing.
A Brief History of Black Influence in Metal and the Current State of Black Metal Musicians
When most people think of the words “black” and “metal” slammed together, the image that appears in their head looks less like Jimi Hendrix and more like a ghost. When this phenomenon is pointed out to people in the metal world, the responses can be pretty appalling. The laziest and most common refrain is that “Black people just don’t like metal.” Honestly, that’s bullshit. Likes and dislikes aren’t consistent across skin colors, anyone who truly believes otherwise doesn’t have enough brain cells to save.
The truth is that Black people have been a primary and driving force on metal since its earliest days. Need proof? Let’s fly over to the UK and have a look at Led Zeppelin. As one of the formative influences on heavy metal, Zeppelin pulled heavily from Black blues musicians to achieve their signature sound. Everything from Plant’s suggestive yelps to Page’s soulful guitar doesn’t exist without the blues. These same slow, anguished sounds also bled into the ears of a few Birmingham lads that would form a small group known as Black Sabbath.
So if the influence of musicians like Hendrix, Chuck Berry and B.B. King were so strongly felt in early metal, what happened? Look, I think you know what happened. These same sounds that the Black community created, once run through the filter of white faces and amplifiers, no longer had need of its original creators. Labels took the success of groups like Sabbath and Zeppelin as the green light to leave behind Black artists and shift to white rock stars.
For a while, that was it. Black metal musicians would pop up here and there, but it wasn’t until the 1980s when a new wave of influential metal musicians would emerge. This wave saw groups like Suffocation (Terrance Hobbs), Hirax (Katon W. De Pena), Living Colour and Black Death, the first all Black heavy metal band. While each of these groups are important, it was Living Colour that carved out a unique lane in the alt-metal world for Black voices. Combining elements of blues, funk, and metal, Living Colour was able to use fresh sounds to convey poignant messages about the Black experience in America. They also created a blueprint for metal that wouldn’t be picked up until nearly three decades later, but we’ll come back to that.
In the 90’s, gangster rap reigned supreme in America while metal bands like Metallica had to shift to an “adapt or die” mentality. But even still, we saw Black artists breaking into the scene and making waves. No groups did this more effectively than Body Count or Rage Against the Machine.
You are no doubt familiar with both of these bands, but their influence demands discussion. With tracks like “Cop Killer” Ice T and his bandmates explored the potential of metal as a tool of reckoning and unbridled rage. To this day, “Cop Killer” remains a controversial track, but the song’s true power lies in its willingness to embrace the camp of metal. Even a glancing analysis of the track will reveal that it’s no more controversial than any other metal album. The only elements of controversy were the level of popularity that the song achieved, and the color of Ice T’s skin. Rage Against the Machine, as you doubtlessly know, took all of this a step further. The group actively called out those in power, Bush, Clinton, Bush.0, no one escaped their vitriol. As a group they paved the way for popular bands like System of a Down, and encouraged metal musicians to put a little more thought into their lyrics, and to consider who should be put on the other end of their barrel.
Today, Black musicians still have a difficult time breaking into the metal scene. And not to make a social justice issue into a music issue, but excluding Black metal fans from the metal scene doesn’t just hurt them, it hurts the whole scene. Over the past 20 years, Black musicians have been at the forefront of musical exploration within the metal sphere. Don’t believe it? Turn around and check the scoreboard for just a few examples. Animals as Leaders, Sevendust, Zeal & Ardor, Duma, Killswitch Engage, God Forbid, Candiria and Dance Gavin Dance have pushed metal and its sister genres to new heights.
Of all these bands, three specifically stand out from the crowd, Duma, Zeal & Ardor, and Sevendust. Let’s kick it off with Sevendust. A fairly typical hard rock/alt-metal group at first glance, Sevendust is elevated beyond their contemporaries by lead singer Lajon Witherspoon’s immaculate vocals. For a test case, I can think of no better example than the group’s recent cover of Soundgarden’s “The Day I Tried to Live.” As much as I’ve tried to settle it in my head, it legitimately may be a better version of the track than Chris Cornell’s original masterpiece.
Zeal & Ardor and Duma take a different approach. Both groups root themselves firmly in the realm of avant-garde metal. Duma, hailing from Nairobi, blends the harsh noise that queer Black artists like Arca have pioneered in recent years with ferocious metal riffs, and African drum patterns. The resulting music is difficult and painful, but equally mind expanding. Zeal & Ardor on the other hand, pulls from the music of the African diaspora. By combining metal with the sounds and song constructions of spirituals, they essentially wrap metal back to the point where it should have begun. Even still, their music is positively mind expanding, challenging and thrilling all at once.
The next time someone near you asks why there never seem to be Black people at metal shows, I hope you have a better answer than “I guess they just don’t like metal.” I also hope you take a moment to check out the artists that are pushing the genre forward with new ideas, themes and sound constructions. It’s the only way that this genre stays interesting, exciting and relevant. And most importantly, it crafts a more accepting space where everyone is free to exchange their ideas on what the future of the genre should look like.
Non-Metal AOTW
clipping. - Visions of Bodies Being Burned
With Halloween just having concluded, I couldn’t resist putting a little bit of spooky energy into this week’s newsletter. Visions of Bodies Being Burned, the latest entry from Oakland based avant-garde/harsh-noise hip-hop group .clipping, continues where their previous album There Existed an Addiction to Blood, left off. Maintaining the horrorcore tinged roots of their previous record, .clipping takes us down dark hallways, through graveyards, and into basements with image-rich lyrics and an unmatched ear for spooky noise beats. If that doesn’t sell you on the record, the rapper of the group (which has one rapper and two producers) is Daveed Diggs of Hamilton fame. Personally, I have no idea where he finds the time to do weird noise-rap, but I’m glad he does, because no one does it better than .clipping.
Non-Metal Merch Item
This week I’m playing fast and loose with the idea of non-metal merchandise. Those of us who were into the music world in 2013 may recall a time when the metal aesthetic was bleeding into hip-hop. While this period didn’t last long, mostly dying out with Kanye’s Yeezus era, it did bring the metal aesthetic to a wider group.
It only stands to reason then that the metal look would bleed into other places as well. Phoebe Bridgers, the artist behind one of 2020’s best albums, Punisher, took it upon herself to pull metal merch into the world of indie. To be fair, if anyone could pull it off it’d be her, and I can’t deny that her Black Metal logo hoodie is very cool. It’d be fun to get just for the looks it’d receive at a Defeated Sanity concert (whenever those start happening again).
Things to Look Forward to
Since we’ve decided that absolutely nothing of consequence is taking place anytime next week, we can dedicate our focus to upcoming releases. This week there are fewer non-metal releases that stand out, but there’s a few gems that are 100% going to be worth your time. And of course, the metal world is always bringing the heat. I’ve got a nagging feeling that there’s something next week that will result in more than a few surprise releases, so don’t treat this list like the bible I’d like it to be.
Metal Albums
Carcass - Despicable
Mr. Bungle - The Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny Demo
War on Women - Wonderful Hell
Emma Ruth Rundle & Thou - May Our Chambers Be Full
Fluisteraars - Relaas
Non-Metal Albums:
Oneohtrix Point Never - Magic Oneohtrix Point Never
Autechre - PLUS
Andrew Bird - HARK!
food house - food house
If there’s something you’re looking forward to that I didn’t cover, click the comment button below to holler about it. Word of warning, I’m a bit deaf in the right ear, so you might have to say it more than once.
Shrinekeeping
As always, if this newsletter introduced you to something cool, let us know! We spend a lot of time combing through literal hours of music so it’s always exciting to hear that it was a worthwhile exercise. If you found something of value in this letter, go ahead and share it with another metalhead or music fan.
If someone shared this letter with you, welcome! I hope that you found something that makes you want to stick around. If you did, click the subscribe button below. The newsletter comes each week, and there’s a special edition “Best Metal of October” letter already cooking.
That’s all for now. Hopefully the world is still floating in the endless void of space next week. If it’s not, then I guess that the status of the newsletter will be the least of your worries. As a cosmic entity myself, I think I’ll be okay, and I’ll see your spirit on another plane.
Till then, try your best to keep your insides on the inside, space can be cruel that way.