No Spandex, no poodle hair, no Spinal Tapisms and most definitely no 15-minute drum solos. Yup, Scandinavian death metal is coming to town and if you have yet to acquaint yourself with its manifold delights, stay outside a two-mile radius of the venue in which this most grand guignol of performance "art" is being realised. This is the real deal: a Sturm und Drang rhythm section behind a Mach 3 guitar Blitzkrieg, vocals that have been expelled from Hades for bad behaviour, and lashings of dodgy Scandinavian mythology to fill out the lyrics (such as they are). It's going to be mosh pit-tastic.
The evocatively-titled Entombed, who hit Dublin on June 19th, emerged from the Swedish metal underground scene with a sound that fused the harsher elements of death metal with the more raucous moments of grunge. Connoisseurs know it as "Extreme rock'n'roll" but the band themselves call their sound "Rot'n'Roll". Aren't they a caution?
Entombed's 1997 breakthrough album, To Ride, Shoot Straight and Speak The Truth didn't exactly look to the Abba songbook for inspiration. It was just fast, hard and loud. Within its own genre, To Ride . . . was considered a benchmark, despite its musical elisions and its inchoate nature. Still, it remained a metal monograph - that is, until the band came back with an even heavier sound on Uprising (on the Music for Nations label), an album that had as much to do with neurology as soundscapes. The well-regarded metal magazine, Kerrang! noted of Uprising that "if ever there was an album that should come with a government health warning, this is it".
"Be prepared: the elephants of Rot'n'Roll are hungry," say the band of their forthcoming gig at the Temple Bar Music Centre on the 19th. If 99 per cent of the audience isn't made up of white, male, adolescents, be very surprised.
There's something of a mini-metal festival in Dublin this month, with One Minute Silence also bringing their jawjolting sound to the Temple Bar Music Centre, this time on June 15th. Fronted by Irishman Brian "Yap" Barry, they perhaps have more in common with the US "Jump up and down" bands like Korn and Limp Bizkit, due to their mixing and melding of orthodox metal with hip-hop stylings. Despite the fact that they regularly tour with bands like Sepultura, Biohazard and Anthrax and they share a producer with Nepalm Death, their two albums, Available In All Colours and Buy Now . . . Saved Later are a tad atypical, and you may need to read the following sentence twice when "Yap" Barry explains why: `We've wanted to incorporate melody into the music for a long time. I'm not your typical, traditional rock singer - our sound is more Irish ballad-based - and trying to incorporate that into the music was difficult." Indeed.
Oh look, there's some space left for this week's Top Five.
1. The Jayhawks Smile
2. Asian Dub Foundation Community Music
3. Entombed Uprising (oh yes)
4. Saville Is Anybody Happier Today?
5. Love Forever Changes (reissue)
