The first releases of 2014 are already hitting hard-drives, yet the dust of 2013 is only just settling. As always, the rock rolls forever on but just what did 2013 mean for metal? Finally a new band stepped up to head the crowd and be accepted as a festival headliner (though that won’t happen until later this year), but looking at each sub-genre of the great expansive ocean of metal, what is the state of the play?
Power/Heavy Metal: Whereas 2012 brought to the table 3 true gems of the genre (Dragonforce ‘Power Within’, Sabaton ‘Carolus Rex’ and Luca Turilli’s Rhapsody and the spectacular ‘Ascending To Infinity’) as a genre it all but spluttered and died like the exhaust of a battered and unloved Ford Capri this year. Powerwolf failed to hit previous heights, Wintersun’s comeback was nearly as embarrassing an anti-climax as Prince Naseem’s, Avantasia continued to climb further inside Tobias Sammat pipe and moved further away from the joyously cheesy epics of Metal Opera I & II, Gloryhammer were just too ironic for their own good and left the songs behind while Rhapsody of Fire saw Luca’s gauntlet and turned tail and ran home to mummy with nary a thought of picking it up. Only Hell and Helloween brought worthwhile offerings to table of a genre that is a true (non)guilty pleasure of mine. Several offered up and praised Atlantean Kodex but its ploddy meanderings turned me to a conscientious objector rather than a soldier ready for war. That said, 2014 looks set to kick off with a plethora of true metal with Iced Earth’s powerful ‘Plagues of Babylon’ looking to head a pack of first-quarter releases including Within Temptation and Dark Forest, while the aforementioned Dragonforce, Sabaton and Luca are working on much anticipated follow-ups as you read this.
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Rock/Mainstream Metal: Volbeat, Alice In Chains, Motorhead, Ghost, Alter Bridge amongst others proved that you don’t have to be metal to induce the claw while Avenged Sevenfold claimed top spot in the charts around the world (with an album that’s better than you think it is), Five Finger Death Punch spat out 2 albums’ worth of headbanging Neanderthal anthems, Killswitch Engage lit a fire up their own arses and Trivium released a career defining opus. Closer to home Bring Me The Horizon continued to clean up their act, and the plaudits, with a very credible release. Meanwhile, on the fringes of my radar The Defiled impressed with ‘Daggers’ and Crossfaith with their ‘Zion’ EP, while Asking Alexandria inexplicably sold a lot of records too despite producing one of the most vanilla metalcore albums since, well, their last one. In 2013 mainstream metal put itself back on the map.
Pink is the new black…
Black Metal: Deafheaven and Fen aside, were there any black metal offerings of note? If there were, none made any lasting impression. Indeed, strictly speaking, should either or both be classed as black metal these days with musical aesthetics more in line with indie and shoegaze than Bathory, Darkthrone or Mayhem? Whereas the only other offering to impress, Skeletonwitch, sit firmly in the blackened thrash camp for me. The further down the line we get, the more the classics of the genre stand head-and-shoulders above their inferior (and usually derivative) successors, and even those former champs still hanging on, Gehenna and Satyricon for example, are worthy purchases for insomniacs only. Black metal was NEVER supposed to be boring. So, what next, or is Black metal on its Death bed, croaking like Abbath after 666 woodbines, like Death metal had been for the last 15 years+? Black Metal truly needs something dynamic to reinvent and reinvigorate a dying and stale genre.
Post-Metal: Some great stuff out there this year. Many were turned on by The Ocean’s ‘Pelagial’, Storm of Light and Correction House’s ‘Last City Zero’ and I can respect that even if they didn’t float my personal boat, but these ears were massaged by the brooding aggression of Light Bearer and Cult of Luna in particular, the discovery of the latter (with thanks to @rafadavies) was of particular delight to me.
Prog/Experimental: I’m not the world’s biggest lover of prog, finding a lot of it twee, and a lot of the experimentation and extended musical breaks for the sake of it, but even then several proggy releases made an impression this year. Of the more straight-forward, Dream Theater’s self-titled was strong and Haken interesting, while TesseracT impressed from the prog-metal field. But the leading lights were Steven Wilson and Ihsahn, both of whom who took progressive and experimental approaches and delivered complex and interesting, challenging yet welcoming albums of high quality prog-influenced experimentation (if you ignore/skip Tacit2 on ‘Das Seelenbrechen’… I do). @whiterhinotea may be able to provide you with details of more from 2013’s prog-attack.
Death Metal: When all is said and done (there’s No Love Lost…), be it more melodic DM, brutal, experimental, discordant, Lovecraftian/“cavern-core” or straight-up, 2013 belonged to Death Metal and was the year that Death Metal emerged from the depths, like a Gargantuan Horror spewing vile, bilious high-quality releases. Classics aside, I’m no great lover of death metal, but in every way, as a genre, Death Metal donned its’ shorts and light blue shirts, came back off strike and fucking delivered. From the old guard we had Suffocation, Immolation, Autopsy, Pestilence and Deicide bringing top quality albums to the table; from the new “Squidy” lot (I hate the term “cavern-core” but that seems to be what’s sticking in the tentacles) Portal, Antediluvian, AEvangelist, Grave Upheaval and Abyssal took Death Metal in interesting, atmospheric and new directions; technical (or post-Death metal, if you like?) got discordant and upped the quality levels with Gorguts and Ulcerate producing masterpieces from the bowels of hades, and of the more melodic, Fleshgod Apocalypse upped the ante of their chaotic, symphonic battery while Amon Amarth and Carcass rode high on horses made of decaying flesh that dine on riffs and songs. As a sub-genre, Death Metal had a spectacular year and set a high benchmark for 2014 to match.
And, lo, thus, it all begins again. Except it doesn’t. It just continues like it always does while we use preset markers to draw a line at certain points, which, considering metal doesn’t have a season or term-time, seems and odd thing to do. But still, it helps us have a point at which to take stock, if nothing else…
Comments, complaints, discussion all welcome, either below or on Twitter
Steve Tovey
Follow @steevXIII
File XIII (Metal Branch) 