The new wave of progressive death metal

It was 2020, COVID was still a novelty, a few months into quarantine, and the limbo that all of society found itself in persisted as days and months went by. For those of us who had freelance or salaried work and had no children or responsibilities beyond ourselves or our pets, everything was starting to feel like an intermediate state between work and vacation, never tipping one way or the other.

In that context, my regular visits to my great friend Augusto Jorge, aka "el Negro", were the only time I left my house and the only slice of social life that remained standing. El Negro and I had lived together in 2009-2010, during those wild, wild years of youth I wrote about in my novel 3220. Well, by 2020 we were in our 30s, settled professionally and living a much more orderly life than before. Just orderly enough not to die.

El Negro was always a music lover. A guy with a vast musical knowledge that ranges from the latest grindcore band to the trendiest minimal techno track. It so happened that we had both had a great marijuana harvest. I had grown a Tangie and a Blue Cheese, and he had Girl Scout Cookies, Gorilla Glue, and I think Amnesia Haze.

The pandemic routine, then, consisted of waking up more or less early, seeing off my wife as she left for work -- she had to work at full throttle during the pandemic -- grabbing my bicycle and pedaling to el Negro's place amid the semi-apocalyptic atmospheres the quarantine created. Nearly deserted streets, few cars, almost no human beings walking around.

In the middle of a Tuesday afternoon, with no obligation other than to keep smoking weed, el Negro played a killer track on YouTube. The video had a sort of parodic feel, reminiscent of what '70s bands' videos might have looked like performing in some television studio. And it oscillated between a progressive rock foundation and a death metal tendency. That is: distortion, blast beats, and putrid vocals.

Rivers of Nihil, the first awakening

After watching it several times and laughing at some things in the video (the singer's height, the monster that appears behind an amplifier, the chosen wardrobe), it was clear this was an incredible track. Particularly because it incorporated into the extreme genre some very progressive elements, including a saxophone.

Once the fascination with the video subsided, I had no choice but to listen to the entire album. That's how I arrived at one of the records that has been a staple ever since and that opened the door to a crop of bands I didn't know existed, which inevitably destroyed my brain (once again). The track was "Where Owls Know my Name," from the eponymous album by Rivers of Nihil.

If I go by the metal encyclopedia's description, Nihil are a technical death metal band, that is, metal performed with an extremely high level of precision and complexity. I was never good at defining or describing bands, mainly due to a total absence of critical apparatus to do so. But I think I have a good ear, meaning, let's say, the ability to detect when something musically "is happening."

I think I finally understood the definition of technical death metal after listening 400 times to my favorite track on the album, "The Silent Life." There you can appreciate the band's "technical" display. Highly recommended. And if we add "A Home," we have the album's perfect trifecta.

Rivers of Nihil left me no choice but to listen to them obsessively and repeatedly. To the point of exhaustion. But that wasn't all, not by a long shot. The obsession with them led me to other bands that shared some of these characteristics: death metal, technicality, and progressive elements. That's how I landed on three more that became permanent additions to my personal roster.

Blood Incantation: Anunnaki and spatial dark ambient

Without a doubt, the one I appreciate and enjoy listening to the most is Blood Incantation. And in particular their standout album, Hidden History of the Human Race, a masterpiece both musically and conceptually. The album takes as its concept the writings of Zecharia Sitchin and his entire theory of ancient aliens, essentially the Anunnaki. It may be a very poor scientific interpretation of the cuneiform writing tablets of Sumerian civilization, but it makes for an excellent interpretation in science fiction terms, a theme they would return to on their most recent album, Absolute Elsewhere, released in October.

From there, the band deploys its entire anti-human imaginary, one of the typical motifs of death metal, but instead of expressing them in the genre's more classic terms (death, dismemberment, war, satanism), they take it to the realm of science fiction and aliens, the universe, and human history as a puppet show.

All of this while a blast beat at 200 bpm hammers your brain, killer riffs that won't leave your head, and guttural screams (growl) that split you in two. Amid that ensemble of canonical genre elements, the progressive spice appears: three minutes of spatial dark ambient. That's when you say: "These guys are geniuses, you have to shut down the stadium." Four tracks make up Hidden History of the Human Race. Four. And one is 18 minutes long.

Not content with that, the band's next release, Timewave Zero, would be an entire album of spatial dark ambient. The rest of their discography is also highly recommended, but this one is an absolute gem, a kind of atmospheric symphony in which tension is the constant element. It's an album without a shred of distortion or a single growl, but where you're always waiting for everything to erupt at any moment. The thematization of the non-human as the primordial force in space is the band's hallmark.

Tomb Mold: mold grows in the tombs of forgotten planets

Of these four bands, Tomb Mold is the one that explores the incorporation of unorthodox elements into their music the least: they're the only ones that didn't add a saxophone. That doesn't diminish their capacity to go progressive, but within the genre's recognizable frameworks: blast beats, technicality, and guttural vocals. In fact, they're one of the bands that places the most emphasis on technical, complex, and virtuosic guitar progressions, as if it were an experimental Steve Vai album.

That same exploration with the guitar is what introduces the "progressive" element that at this point we need to define beyond the label. Progressive can take many forms, but we generally use it to refer to passages or tracks within a musical work where a composition shifts into longer, more "spacey" sequences that deviate from the typical "song" structure and drift toward sequences closer to improvisation, without abandoning virtuosity.

Tomb Mold also belongs to this strain of technical death metal with a spatial-organic theme. Their name highlights two characteristics of the human condition: death and the passage of time. The first thing I heard from them was Planetary Clairvoyance, a more orthodox technical death metal album: quasi-mathematical guitar progressions, lots of blast beats, and guttural vocals. In 2023 the band released The Enduring Spirit, deepened their thematic exploration of all things spatial, and added many progressive elements to the record. Spacey sequences, longer tracks, Floydian moments. In my opinion, all gains.

White Ward: Ukrainian indie black metal

Of these four bands, White Ward is the strangest and at the same time one of the best. Behind a cover that could pass for an indie band's record, the group delivers in False Light a brutal album that blends very high doses of black metal and progressive rock. In fact, I think it's the most progressive, alongside The Silent Life, by Rivers of Nihil.

It's worth reminding readers not versed in the genre that black metal and death metal share many elements, but the main distinction lies in the vocals. While in death metal the voice is deep and guttural (growl), in black metal the style leans toward high-pitched shrieks (shriek).

False Light came out in June 2022, months after Russia invaded Ukraine, the band's country of origin. It's a bit heavier than the predecessor, Love Exchange Failure, where you could already see the crossover the band was building. By False Light, the saxophone's presence is quite significant. As you can see, it's a near-ubiquitous instrument across the albums selected. In fact, this piece could be titled "How the saxophone infiltrated extreme metal."

It's worth highlighting, again, the band's aesthetic and thematic intent, which is very far from genre conventions. For starters, their logo is perfectly legible. Secondly, their album artwork and overall aesthetic point more to an indie band than a metal one. Finally, the novel elements introduced in the band's music (listen to "Phoenix," from False Light) led the metal encyclopedia to categorize them as "post-black metal". Fair enough.

This is the end, my friend (but there's a bonus track)

As was only natural, I expressed all my fascination and musical explorations to the person who opened the door to this micro-world that once again filled with novelty a personal music catalog that had been stuck on repeat with the classics. But since el Negro's musical knowledge is vast and quasi-infinite, he gifted me one more gem.

All these elements that I, a neophyte, considered novel and avant-garde were already present in an album by a band from 2008. It was Assassins: Black Meddle, Pt. I by the now-defunct band Nachtmystium. An album I use and recommend, of course.

With this selection of five incredible bands, I come to the conclusion that, on one hand, I feel a small nostalgia for that pandemic atmosphere, composed of a blend of excesses (marijuana, music, and free time) with fine herbs of irresponsibility. And on the other hand, it satisfies me to write and share this with you, given that the songs, albums, and bands in this guide are of superlative quality.

Which makes me wonder whether we might be living through a small golden age of extreme metal, or if it's simply that I rediscovered a genre that has always had a musical quality above the rest.