EVERY GENRE PROJECT - October 14 - War Metal
Genre of the Day - War Metal
Album of the Day - Vengeance of Eternal Fire by Antichrist Siege Machine (2024)
The adage that war is hell has echoed around my head recently; from the news to a class that I’m taking right now on the progression of science and warfare, mankind's most horrific spectacle is fundamentally unsettling and impossible to grasp. Though it doesn’t protest war, per se, what better musical medium to sonically capture the intensity and dread of warfare than metal as gritty, unrelenting, and industrial-grade as weaponry? There is certainly a subset of people whose hobby is learning about war; whether they would also be inclined towards war metal is unclear, but through an extremely sleep deprived state I tried my best to strap in and observe the battle from above.
The intersection of metal and war makes sense against the cultural and political background of when metal and hardcore arose. Metal and hardcore punk both arose in the decades after the Vietnam War, when unanimous public support for the US’ overseas warfaring goals eroded amidst the horrific scenes of civilian violence and drafted soldiers’ suffering. For a large part of a new generation of young men (though metal is enjoyed and played by all, it seems safe to say its early years were pretty male centric), the military no longer seemed the honorable institution to aspire to join; it seems there could be some correlation with the rise of genres that evoked martial darkness and the nuclear specter.
War metal as a specific genre arose in the ‘90s as a form of blackened death metal, the subset of metal associated with rabidly fast and distorted melodies and drum blasts and abject, grave themes. War metal suspends these attributes in an environment of even greater chaos, marked by unpredictable shifts and solos, downtuned chords and bass-heaviness that obscure much melodic semblance and beastly growls. Chaos obscures a certain level of nuance, so the devil’s in the details, so to incorrectly speak; its imagery often envisions the end of times brought about from warfare, medieval or fantastical visions of war, or scenes akin to Dante’s innermost circles of Inferno.
One Bandcamp user sunnily quips “pure evil and destructive! a must have for war metal fans!” in the comments of today’s album, a recent release by Antichrist Siege Machine, as the image of a man being consumed by a demon hovers overhead. In the thick of no-holds-barred musical warfare, the drumming stands out the most in its machine gun-imitation, brandishing itself into your brain with blinding force on “Son of Man,” its tempo dynamics allowing rhythmic launches back into ambush to hit even harder. The vocal texture is fascinating; listening closely, the duos’ guttural roars as in “Prey Upon Them” obscure the shell of a human voice within in the same way war blurs the lines of humanity. “Lysergic War Psychosis” feels as fluid as the rivers of fire and blood on the cover, a psychedelic descent into madness that truly astounds you; how human music can convey such inhumanity and intensity is a question not unlike how humans can bring about such destruction unto ourselves.