Loading ...Some years ago I read an article of the flagship of Finnish metal music, Amorphis. They started as a death metal band in 1990, and examples of their great early production are tracks like Karelia, Black Winter Day, Exile of the Sons of Uisliu, Sign from the North Side, Black Winter Day, In the Beginning and The Castaway.
The real success began when they released they masterpiece, Elegy. Awesome opening sounds of Better Unborn blasted out gazillion times from my ghetto blaster, continuing with the faster and furious Against Widows. On Rich And Poor opened my eyes to melodic death metal, while My Kantele forced me to sit down, close my eyes, enjoy a glass of whiskey and fly away with my dreams. Amorphis was in my head 5-7 hours a day during late 90’s. Then happened what?
Amorphis released Tuonela and Am Universum and turned to progressive and stoner metal. Even though I do enjoy tracks such as Divinity and Drifting Memories, but they dont’ give me such kicks as Drowned Maid. I realized I miss death metal grunts and doom sounds. When Amorphis released Far From The Sun, I quit buying new albums, but I kept on listening to old material. I think Pasi Koskinen (ex vocalist) felt the same as he left Amorphis. Amorphis had changed from melodic death metal to progressive and stoner. Latest albums of Amorphis contain again elements of death metal, which I find good, but the bands doesn’t still sound as great as in the early 1990’s.
Nowadays Amoprhis sounds pretty good and is getting better and better, but there are few things I cannot stand. Check the video below. I HATE that nu-metal jumping of Tomi Joutsen (vocalist)! And what the fuck are those 40 years old ladies with their cameras doing in the audience? Are they looking for death metal? I guess not. Come on! Where are good old moshers? With this kind of riffs and death metal grunts one NEEDS a moshing! Look at the audience at 1:07 minutes. Yes, I know we Finns are pretty quiet and shy, but this audience is just standing. I see no heads banging. I hate to see great bands playing their classic masterpieces to audience like this. This is waste or good music. No, fuck this is raping!
Now, let’s take a look at Satyricon, a Norwegian black metal band. Just like Amorphis, Satyricon was founded in 1990. They are known from their classic black metal album Bad Medieval Times which contains masterpieces such as Walk the Path of Sorrow, Dark Medieval Times and Min Hyllest Til Vinterland. Satyricon’s debut album is a great piece of Norwegian black metal, one of the classics.
In their next albums, The Shadowthrone, Satyricon continued with black metal, even though flutes did not appear in this album anymore. Third album of Satyricon was again one great metal album, even though I find it more furious. Nemesis Divina contains awesome tracks such as Mother North.
In 1999 Satyricon released Rebel Extravaganza, which is labeled as black metal, but it clearly contains elements of industrial metal. Satyricon started to explore different sounds. Latest two albums of Satyricon, called Volcano and Now Diabolica! are also black metal albums, but they sounds much more “rocking” than older material. Satyricon’s awesome guitars are still there, but the rhythm has changed and albums are much easier to understand. They are clearly targeted to bigger masses. For many old-school black metal fans this has been disappointing.
Why these great bands, Amorphis and Satyricon, together with many other big names change their genre or style? Reasons are probably many, but change is not always just bad. With Amorphis I feel it has been negative, but in case of Satyricon the change has been interesting and positive. Sure I still enjoy their old music, but I also find the new stuff interesting. I have always loved guitars of Satyricon and they are still there, and combination of those guitars and new rhythm sounds cool.
Many death metal bands change their style towards progressive or even rock in order to reach more fans. They make music for living and selling 10.000 records in five years does not bring money enough for living. Remember what happened with Metallica in middle of 1990’s? A great thrash metal band cut their hair and released Load and Reload albums. Was that disappointing? Oh yes, if you ask me, but with that move Metallica found lots of new fans. There are zillions of people who say Metallica’s best song is Enter Sandman just because they haven’t heard the albums before Black and they are not familiar with thrash metal.
Bands get older and artists get interested in various new things. Their lives usually stabilize and they don’t carry so much hate anymore. Hate works as the fuel of metal music and if you don’t hate anything, it is pretty difficult to create such music as Arch Enemy’s. Bands evolve and they want to experiments different sounds and themes. Even though I might feel disappointed with Amorphis, I find the evolution of bands great. I love discovering new music and every now and then old bands release interesting new but different music. One great example is Celtic Frost.
This post was written by Headbanger and its original location is in Metal-Music-Videos.Com blog. For more great metal music articles, please visit Metal-Music-Videos.Com!
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