Black Metal vs Death Metal

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNQve866m0g

I can't fathom the cross-licensing meeting that took place behind this (but I am picturing Stan Lee there gesticulating wildly)

great album

It's definitely more compelling than the Wolverine movie.

alright, voting death metal. but stipulating that i mean pre-BR00TAL DM for the most part, because i am old and becoming a traditionalist. in my straw hat, on the porch, listening to "severed survival" and "grey misery."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jy1KDPt-h3E

this made me drool uncontrollably. want...all...these...rekkerdsssssss...................

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVEc99zizK0

i don't really have a preference, tbh

the mythology and imagery of BM is more compelling to me (as cliched as it's become) but musically, it just depends on the individual band whatever the genre.

hey, it's no fair classifying Venom and CF as black metal.

i grew up listening to death metal and going to death metal shows. I like the scene and aesthetic a lot better than black metal's, which when you really get down to it is only a few degrees of separation from emo. i love all kinds of metal, but if i had to choose between DM and BM, it's definitely DM. and i'd take it over Doom, too, as I did in that last big metal subgenre poll.

voted "Avant Garde" out of habit, before reading any posts in the thread ...

i REALLY wish more people had heard the last Necrodemon album. I love that album in a way that I never love most new black metal albums. so great.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKbC-FmfA7w

and their older stuff is cool too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hC964f6RqK8

Scott were you ever in a dm or bm band?

me! oh god no. i don't know how to do anything. except eat pie and sleep.

in a car: Black Metal

in my room, alone: Black Metal

at a live show: Death Metal

on headphones while working out: Death Metal

so, I guess DM is yang and BM is yin.

Obvious point but raging, technical, fist-pumping Death metal makes me feel "powerful" and "alive" while
needling, monotonous, jaw-clenching Black Metal makes me feel "powerless" and "dead". Both psychic states are worth cultivating in my opinion.

While I'm spitting out bullshit binarisms . . .

Death Metal = sadism
Black Metal = masochism

which might also explain the kind of jock-y, bro-esque vibe to death metal fans and the indie crossover appeal of BM to lol indie types (the jump from Xasthur to Smog/Cat Power/Palace is shorter than you think). If you identify with the torturer and aggressor, you're going to get off on the scenarios in Obituary and Cannibal Corpse lyrics; conversely, it's no accident that there are actual black metal bands called Weakling and Mark of the Masochist, as the basic emphasis upon misery is key to the genre.

death metal sounds like it's made by monsters and when i listen to it i feel like someone is sticking a powerdrill inside of my ear, so naturally it gets my vote. i don't even listen to any black metal anyways, so maybe i shouldn't be voting. also i only own like three dm albums but oh boy ain't it just fine when i do put them on.

When on ILM someone says they listen to DM, I automatically think they're talking about Depeche Mode.

I wonder how many people in the USA got into black metal via Phil Anselmo, he was the first big metal star to embrace BM. I dont recall Slayer or anyone bigging it up. Am i wrong here?

A lot of what is being said here about Black Metal - introverted, masochistic, 'emo', made by shut-ins, attracting interest from outside of the metal ghetto (pandering sell-outs!) - seems to be a caricature of latter-day Depressive BM acts (and specifically Xasthur). It doesn't have much to do with the first or second waves of BM, or the majority of what's going on out there now.

Neotropical's post feels pretty OTM tho

it certainly doesnt describe children of bodom or cradle of pish

not real sure about the identify-with-the-aggressor aspect - I don't know that the I-am-the-vocalist dynamic of identifying with the lyrics is as operative in death metal as it is in general rock music

not to say that for example t-shirts at the deathfest don't generally suggest that yeah there's a fair amount of id'ing-as-torturer in the audience

i am a disinterested third party, merely observing the interaction between torturer and victim without judgement.

The stereotypical rationalization for death/gore performers and audiences seems to be "It's like a horror movie." I'm comfortable buying that, though there are instances (in metal and in movies) where revulsion at creepiness or sadism exceeds my enjoyment and I decide I do not want.

The black metal stereotype seems to be that the performers and audience experience lyrics and imagery as more expressive of their own beliefs and emotions. To me this doesn't imply identification with a torturer or victim, but more of a personal engagement with the feelings and ideas of black metal. I admire the risks taken by artists who aren't afraid of making themselves look ridiculous (whether by wearing corpsepaint or by wrestling with theology). A camp or ironic approach to black metal usually ruins it for me.

I tend to listen to death metal in a variety of situations and moods (driving around, exercising, with friends) and to black metal when I'm mopey and vant to be alone.

I don't buy the sadism/masochism dichotomy. Old School-style BM tends to be relentlessly aggressive - I remember cracking up over the Nachtmystium vocalist solemnly informing me of his intention to invade my land, slaughter my cattle and burn my temples - the thing is, BM does other things as well.

Brad OTM on the point that BM performers are expected to commit a lot more of themselves into what they do.

"I wonder how many people in the USA got into black metal via Phil Anselmo..."

I dunno. I owned a Bathory cassette long before I ever heard of Pantera. Though I am not really the average listener.

I don't think I've heard of anything because of Phil Anselmo, but I'm definitely one of those people who heard about black metal from Aquarius lists.

What if you DO like the rest of BM?

Need to hear more DM before voting.

― You are Rebels! You are all yankees (country matters),

Okay, my current hypothesis is LJ does not like blast beats or aggressive, fast drumming ...which honestly breaks my heart ... kinda doubting he'd like death metal.

i think he has to justify listening to something, i just dont know who he has to justify it to.

If "avant garde black metal" means black metal with more minimal drums, then I'm pretty sure I voted for the wrong thing. I was imagining some theoretical thing that was like Xenakis + shreiking vocals + blastbeats.

> I remember cracking up over the Nachtmystium vocalist solemnly informing me of his intention to invade my land, slaughter my cattle and burn my temples

he was serious?

Well, he hasn't shown up yet. He's probably working his way through "Assassins" listeners in alphabetical order. That's a lot of cattle.

All I've seen mentioned on here for death metal are the really brutal bands, but are we counting the more melodic stuff like In Flames, Soilwork, Arch Enemy, Amon Amarth, Dark Tranquillity, etc. as death metal? Because in that case, death metal by a huge margin for me.

Although weirdly enough, I have trouble getting into Cannibal Corpse, Suffocation, and Morbid Angel-type head-clubbing brutality. So that's why I'm torn. Although really, the black metal bands that I love(like Satyricon and Dimmu Borgir) are not exactly the blackest of the black, either.

Sorry I didn't make a girly metal option, jeff.

;)

so, basically, you are just a little girl in a frilly pink dress and pigtails. is that correct?

girly x-post!

but anyway yeah melodic death is still death.

what about deathcore? what is that? (apart from awful awful shite)

Well, I'm such a paragon of masculinity in my everyday life that sometimes it's nice to go home, curl up, and listen to girly death metal.

I think all that stuff counts as death metal - the demise of In Flames from decent melodic death band to just plain crappy band (imo obv) was a big bummer for me but I dig amon amarth & dark tranquillity, shit didn't a.a. play deathfest this year? and deathfest is brootal in the EXTREEMZ

once sent from the golden hall is one of my favorite death metal albums. one of my favorite metal albums, period.

I consider them all death metal, but there are the Defenders of Brutality to say that Arch Enemy are thrash or that Children of Bodom are power metal (?!). I didn't want to get smacked down for not being troo enough.

http://cache.umusic.com/web_assets/merch/week7/gaga/300x250_price.gif

Avant Garde Black Metal (for louis Abbott)

That's really the only metal I listen to. That and BÖC and I'm not sure they count.

death for sonics, black for vibe.

for combination of death sonics and black vibe and absurd genre name--blackened death. new behemoth record slays (and is a billboard charter).

death all the way for me.

i don't honestly know if i could choose between "obscura"/"slaughter of the soul"/"heartwork" and "transylvanian hunger"/"nattens madrigal"/"obscuritatem advoco amplectere me" with gun to head.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I like a lot of bands in variants of both styles, and delete most of what I download in both styles. As least in terms of the subsets of these styles that I like, myself, it's kind of a flow. Early Death Metal was an attempt to push metal's center of gravity back towards aggression, away than theatricality, which seemed like a great idea to me (the theatricality also seemed like a great idea to me; plenty of room in the universe for contradictory styles...). As Death's tropes became codified, aggression gave way to the mannerisms of aggression, or maybe they were mannerisms all along, but they moved from being invented mannerisms to being imitated mannerisms. Anger kind of morphed into thuggishness, which is what happened to punk, too. Black Metal, then, took over as the next reversal, a way out of the constraints and associations built up around Death Metal, back to some nihilistic menace. And by now this, too, has been taken to its self-caricaturing extreme.

But of the last 10 new Death or Black metal bands I've discovered I like, I'm not sure any of them are clearly Death and not Black. And Funeral Mist will be on my top 10 for this year, at least. So Black, on current strength, given that I have to pick one...