The new wave of progressive death metal

It was 2020, COVID was still a novelty, a few months into the quarantine, and the limbo that the entire society found itself in persisted as days and months passed. For those of us who were freelancers or employed, and who didn't have children or any responsibilities other than ourselves or our pets, everything felt like a mid-life between work and vacation, with no clear direction.

In that context, my frequent visits to my good friend Augusto Jorge, were the only way out of my house and the only remaining sliver of social life. Augusto and I had lived together in 2009-2010, during those crazy, crazy years of youth I recounted in my novel 3220. Well, by 2020, we were already in our 30s, settled professionally, and living much more organized lives than before. Enough to keep us from dying.

Augusto was always a music lover. A guy with a vast musical knowledge that ranged from the latest grindcore band to the trendiest minimal techno. It just so happened that we'd both had a bumper marijuana harvest . I'd gotten a Tangie and a Blue Cheese, and he'd gotten Girl Scout Cookies, Gorilla Glue, and I think Amnesia Haze.

The pandemic routine, then, consisted of getting up fairly early, seeing my wife off as she was leaving for work—she had to work flat out during the pandemic—grabbing my bike and pedaling to Augusto's place amidst the semi-apocalyptic atmosphere generated by the quarantine. Nearly deserted streets, few cars, almost no human beings walking around.

In the middle of a Tuesday afternoon, with no compulsion other than to keep smoking weed, Augusto posted a great song on YouTube. The video had a sort of parody of what might have been videos of '70s bands playing in a television studio. And it oscillated between a progressive rock base and a death metal edge. In other words: distortion, blast beat, and putrid vocals.

Rivers of Nihil, the first awakening

After watching it several times and laughing at some of the things in the video (the singer's height, the monster behind an amplifier, the chosen wardrobe), it was clear that this was a great track. Especially because it incorporated some very progressive elements into the extreme genre, including a saxophone.

Once I'd gotten over the fascination with the video, I had no choice but to listen to the entire album. That's how I ended up with one of the albums that has become my favorite ever since, opening the door to a generation of bands I'd never heard of before, and which inevitably destroyed my brain (once again). The song was "Where Owls Know My Name," from Rivers of Nihil 's eponymous album.

If I go by the description in the metal encyclopedia , Nihil is a technical death metal band , that is, metal executed with an extremely high level of precision and complexity. I've never been good at defining or describing bands, mostly due to a complete lack of critical apparatus to do so. But I believe I have a good ear , that is, let's say, I can detect when musically "something is happening."

I think I finally understood the definition of technical death metal after listening to my favorite track on the album, "The Silent Life," 400 times. There you can appreciate the band's "technical" display. I use and recommend it. And if you add "A Home," you have the perfect trio of the album.

Rivers of Nihil left me no choice but to listen to them obsessively and repeatedly. To the point of exhaustion. But that wasn't all, not even close. My obsession with them led me to other bands that shared some of these characteristics: death metal, technicality, and progressive elements. That's how I ended up with three more that permanently joined my personal roster .

Blood Incantation: Anunnakis and dark space atmosphere

Without a doubt, the one I appreciate and enjoy listening to the most is Blood Incantation . And in particular their star album, Hidden History of the Human Race , a musical and conceptual masterpiece. The album takes as its concept the writings of Zacharias Zichtin and his entire theory of ancient extraterrestrials, basically the Anunnaki. Which may be a very poor scientific interpretation of the cuneiform writing tablets of the Sumerian civilization, but it turns out to be an excellent interpretation in terms of science fiction, which they would return to in their most recent album, Absolute Elsewhere , released in October .

From there, the band deploys all its anti-human imagery, one of the typical motifs of death metal, but instead of expressing them in the most classic terms of the genre (death, dismemberment, war, Satanism) it takes them to the plane of science fiction and extraterrestrials, the universe, and human history as a puppet show.

All this while a 200 bpm blast beat rips through your brain, killer riffs that won't leave your head, and guttural screams (growl) that split you open. Amidst this set of canonical elements of the genre, the progressive spice appears: three minutes of spacey dark ambient. That's when you say: "These guys are geniuses, you have to close the stadium." Four tracks make up Hidden History of the Human Race . Four. And one lasts 18 minutes.

Not content with that, the band's next release, Timewave Zero , was a full-length album of dark, spacey ambient. The rest of their discography is also highly recommended, but this one is a complete and absolute gem, a kind of atmospheric symphony in which tension is the constant element. It's an album without a hint of distortion or a single growl, but where you're always waiting for it to go rotten at any moment. The thematization of the non-human as the primordial force in space is the band's trademark.

Tomb Mold, mold grows in tombs on forgotten planets

Of these four bands, Tomb Mold is the one that explores the least the incorporation of unorthodox elements into its music: it's the only one that didn't add a saxophone. This doesn't detract from its ability to move toward the progressive, but within the genre's recognizable framework: the blast beat, the technique, and the guttural screams. In fact, it's one of the bands that places the greatest emphasis on technical, complex, and virtuoso guitar progressions, as if it were an experimental Steve Vai album.

This same exploration with the guitar introduces the "progressive" element, which at this point we need to define beyond the label. Progressive can take many forms, but we generally use it to refer to passages or themes within a musical work in which a composition begins to have longer, more "hanging" sequences that deviate from the typical "song" structure and move toward sequences more similar to improvisation, without neglecting virtuosity.

Tomb Mold also falls into this category of technical death metal with a spatial-organic theme. Its name, in Spanish, would be Moho de Tumba, thus highlighting two characteristics of the human: death and the passage of time. The first of theirs I heard was Planetary Clairvoyance , a more orthodox technical death metal album: quasi-mathematical guitar progressions, a lot of blast beat, and guttural singing. In 2023, the band released The Enduring Spirit , which delved thematically into the spatial theme and added a lot of progressive elements to the album. Hanging sequences, longer tracks, Floyd-esque moments. In my opinion, it's all a win-win.

White Ward: Ukrainian indie black metal

Of these four bands, White Ward is the strangest and at the same time one of the best. Behind a cover that might seem like an indie band's album, the group delivers on False Light a brutal album that combines very high doses of black metal and progressive rock. In fact, I think it's the most progressive, along with The Silent Life by Rivers of Nihil .

It's worth reminding uninitiated readers that black metal and death metal share many elements, but the main distinction lies in the vocals used. While in death metal the vocals are guttural and deep (growl), in black metal the style is more of a high-pitched shriek (shriek).

False Light was released in June 2022, months after Russia invaded Ukraine, the band's home country. It's a bit heavier than their previous album, Love Exchange Failure , which also showed the crossover the band was building to. Already on False Light, the saxophone's presence is quite significant. As you can see, it's a quasi-ubiquitous instrument on the selected albums. In fact, this piece could be titled "How the Saxophone Was Introduced into Extreme Metal."

It's worth highlighting, once again, the band's aesthetic and thematic intentions, which are far removed from the genre's conventions. For starters, their logo is perfectly legible. Secondly, their album covers and aesthetics are more reminiscent of an indie band than a band of the genre. Finally, the innovative elements introduced into the band's music (listen to "Phoenix" by False Light ) have led the metal encyclopedia to classify them as "post-black metal ." Bank.

This is the end, my friend (but it has a bonus track)

Naturally, I expressed all my fascination and musical explorations to the man who opened the door to this microcosm, replenishing a personal musical catalog that had already stagnated in the repetition of classics with newness. But since El Negro's musical knowledge is vast and almost infinite, he gave me another gem.

All these elements, which I, as a neophyte, considered novel and avant-garde, were already present on a 2008 album by a band. It was Assasins: Black Meddle, Pt. I by the now-defunct band Nachtmystium . An album I use and recommend, of course.

With this selection of five incredible bands, I've come to the conclusion that, on the one hand, I'm slightly nostalgic for that pandemic atmosphere, composed of a combination of excesses (marijuana, music, and free time) with a touch of irresponsibility. And, on the other hand, I'm pleased to write and share this with you, given that the songs, albums, and bands that make up this guide are of superlative quality.

Which makes me wonder if we're not living in a small golden age of extreme metal, or if I've simply rediscovered a genre that always had a musical quality above the rest.