On the twenty second day of Christmas,
The bakery gave to us all:
Tom German’s music taste.
I know how much you all love death metal! So for my blog post today I thought I would put an excellent brutal technical death metal video, to get you into the Christmas spirit. The first track is by a band called Nile, who make death metal with an Egyptian theme. Please note the inability of metal bands, even when they are good, to make a decent video (Bakery opening possibly). There is more cheese in this one then in Cheddar Gorge! Please enjoy lyrics as well, reciting them to your grandmothers. So, I give you, Nile’s ‘Papyrus containing the spell to preserve its possessor from attacks from he who lives in the water’.
Amun
Lord of the Gods
Thou who art of the Four Rams Heads upon thy Neck
Thou standest upon the spine of the crocodile fiends
To thine sides are the Dog Headed apes
The Transformed spirits of the Dawn
Drive away from me the Lions of The Wastes
the Crocodiles which come forth from the River
the Bite Of Poisonous reptiles
which crawl forth from their holes
Be driven back crocodile thou spawn of Set
Move not by means of thy tail
Work not thy feet and legs
Open not thy mouth
Let the water which is before thee
Turn into a consuming fire
I possess the spell to
Preserve me from He Who is in the water
Thou whom the thirty seven Gods didst make
And whom the Serpent of Ra didst put in chains
Thou who wast fettered with links of iron
In the presence of Ra
Be driven back thou Spawn of Set
Drive away from me the Lions of the Wastes
The Crocodiles which come forth from the River
The bite of Poisonous reptiles
Which crawl forth from their holes
The Command to release the Seals to bind his tomb
I hope there weren’t ter maeeeny spolling morsterkes in this post, so that it gets posted on time!
Merry Christmas,
Tom
What’s ironic about this kind of metal, is that through a combination of attempting to be hard hitting and ‘hardcore’, but also have the lead singer’s croaking – and therefore quiet – voice heard over the rest of the mix, what you get in my opinion is a rather underwhelming backing track underpinning vocals that frankly have the potence of an old man’s smoker’s cough.
Mix this with the lack of dynamics (no quiet bits to show how the loud bits are) and seemingly no desire to stick to a tempo, what you get is 3 minutes of brown noise. Whatever happened to the good old days of proper metal with blistering solos and screaming that ripped your soul apart?
That said, I’ve just listened to it again, and I enjoy the chorus a little bit.
I often feel like that about so-called extreme metal. You lose the contrast when everything is 110% loud all the time, and so it’s less impactful.
If you wanted to make a metal video, I’m sure my band Sorcerer’s Spell would be very happy to be your guinea pigs for such a project.
Excellent and insightful comments guys. Actually that was quite a short Nile track, the longer ones do tend to have a bit more contrast within them. I picked that video because I felt it was quite funny. Check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gG13hWknobU. This even incorporates the Muslim call to prayer in it. My view of death metal is always that I couldnt listen to a whole album of it, but individual tracks are good. I know what you mean ‘Arts Council’ about the vocals. If you listen to Death Metal vocals on there own they sound pathetic. Sorcerers Spell is an awesome name for a band. What kind of metal do they make?
It’s power metal in the vein of Sonata Arctica, Kamelot, Nightwish, Edguy, that sort of thing. Light-hearted but taken seriously. You can hear bits of it here: http://www.myspace.com/sorcerersspell. Our most popular track is called Jagermeister Metal.