Music review! The Metalhit Free Download Series:

Featuring:
Thrash Metal/Death Metal/Folk Metal/Gothic Metal/Doom Metal/Back Metal

I stumbled across the Metalhit Free Download Series late 2010 as they were being released on Amazon. What these are is sampler mp3 albums from www.metalhit.com, a gigantic on-line store for extreme metal artists that started about two and a half years ago. The Metalhit catalogue of obscure metal bands stretches all the way back to the mid-80's, when metal started to splinter into a bunch of little sub-genres, the definitions of which still somewhat escape me sometimes, and when things started to get truly abrasive and abusive. There are also more recent bands, bands of the last ten years on these collections. It was a wise marketing move on the part of Metalhit, because you get a sampling of a number of excellent bands that they carry, and then often the whole album by those bands on Metalhit is only five bucks. However, I think that if you went back and heard the whole album by many of these bands you’d probably be disappointed, and the compilation is free.
The six download albums are divided into six of the sub-genres of metal, (and I will have to admit sometimes the whole metal sub-genre thing gets a little bit hard for me to follow). They are Thrash Metal, Death Metal, Folk Metal, Gothic Metal, Doom Metal, and Black Metal respectively. In the words of Horna, "hail Satan!"
I think it is more then worth noting that this collection is so comprehensive and delves so far into the utter obscurity of metal that it includes "Raid the Convent" by Nunslaughter, a band that has the seemingly very specific gimmick of raping and killing nuns, has the line "avenging all the ghouls and wiches/raid the convent/condemned by these fucking bitches" is only one of the particularly memorably hilariously offensive lyrics. The other one I really like is "The black and white and puddles of red/ This flock of cunts is now fucking dead". A number of the bands on the Thrash Metal one are old bands from the 80's, the name Sacred Reich being one of the few I recognized. Hirax, Atomizer, and Sacrilege are also 80's bands. Other bands like Victimizer and Nocturnal are more recent bands from everywhere from Europe to Puerto Rico but have a very traditional sound not to different from 80's thrash metal. You got a nice little Atomizer track on there, a really amazing track, a really incredible band, Sacrilege from the U.K, early thrash metal with a female vocalist, how hot is that? Lynda Simpson's voice still betrays the immense sex appeal her presence must have had at the time of recording after all these years. Hirax was a bay area band around the same time as Metallica was playing around there that just never got big, their track "Eradicate the Mind" on this collection is nothing short of primal metal assault at it's finest. Even the bands that are more recent retain the very classic feel and sound of metal from the 80's. You get excellent tracks like "Morbid Scream" by Morbid Scream, a Texas band that apparently formed in 1986 when thrash metal was still but a few years old that just never got big. Fuck it, I like thrash metal, I like 80's metal.
The first band up on the Death Metal one is Abominable Putridity go straight for it with barely human sounding vocals. Asphyx contribute "Death, The Brutal Way", a savage piece of death metal as one could wish for, and we're back to the growling demon vocals that people make fun of for sounding like Cookie Monster with the track "Nullo (the Pleasure of Self-Mutilation)" from Avulsed. Wikipedia is telling me that Nullo may refer to a form of body modification, specifically total genital nullification. I'm not sure I want to find out though. I think I'll leave that for Avulsed to screw around with in their tour bus if that's their fetish kick.
Infinitum Obscure from Mexico contribute the excellent and more melodic "Messenger of Chaos, I" which shows of some truly skillful guitar works. Similarly technically awe-inspiring is "Defiled Autopsy Remains" by Pathology.
Folk metal I had at most only vaguely heard of before this collection came out. That's this stuff that originated in Europe where they throw in the recorders and fiddles, the stuff that really goes for a pagan European vibe. It didn't exist until the 90's apparently, so this collection doesn't have the real old 80's bands on it the way the thrash metal one does. Fferyllt are a recent band from Russia have the first track on this compilation that really grabs me. They have female vocals, I think the metal bands with female vocals thing can work real well, the woman in the band can come of as very sexy. Halgadom and Temnozor on here are good. I've seen the rumor on-line that they are a Nazi band. Velimor on this compilation make no bones about being that, but I don't care that much. Heorot is yet another excellent Finnish band on here. As with the demonic growl vocals on death metal, a level of my appreciation for this is ironic, because it's a very faux re-creation of pagan Europe, although some of these people might take the whole Pagan thing very seriously. They think they're Vikings. I'm not the world's expert on this folk metal thing which I'm very new to, so I can't speak to how this folk metal stalks up to other folk metal well, but just standing on its own the Metalhit Folk Metal collection is highly entertaining. The one track on the Folk Metal I have mixed feelings about is the Claim the Throne track, "Set Sail on Ale". It has a little too much of an "I'm an adult and I still play Dungeons and Dragons" vibe, but there is actually a video for that song that does show the woman in the band in revealing bar wench garb.
I really like the gothic metal one they put together. The obvious way to read the genre name "gothic metal’ is to assume that it is a fusion of metal and gothic music, such as the gothic part of the gothic/industrial section of many music stores. That would be part of the truth but not all of the truth. Gothic metal has elements to it that are very distinct from other kinds of metal and certainly from the gothic rock thing. A band that sounds more like what you would imagine a mix of gothic music and metal to sound like would be Celtic Frost. Gothic metal does draw on overwrought elements of both. Probably the best-known band of the genre are H.I.M. Gothic metal bands do that whole bit where they have the low, growling demon vocals you might here in death metal or black metal in contrast with high, clean female vocals. One of the reasons they can get away with being as overwrought as it is it is that the bands on this compilation have a great deal of technical skill (coming more out of the metal side of the equation) and are able to produce a very big sound. It is possible that the Metalhit Free Download series has a cover of a Joy Division song that surpasses the Joy Division original. It's a tall order for me to make this statement, Joy Division being one of the few bands I retain huge amounts of respect for musically. I do feel Joy Division's weaker moment was the single "Love Will Tear Us Apart" which in lyrical content and structure is the most so a pop song of anything they did. The track In Silentio Noctis have on here is literally awe-inspiring. All inspiring wall of precise and unrelenting metal contrasted with delicate female vocals. There's the Mirzadeh track after that about decomposing meat and infectious disease or whatever the fuck he's growling like a demon about. It gets pretty insane. These gothic metal bands get into the pipes or flutes or whatever. It rides the line as metal so often does of being genuinely good and being unintentionally funny. Or maybe it just reaches into an emotional place within myself that is so deeply buried that I am embarrassed by it.
Doom metal tends to be a lot slower then other extreme metal sub-genres on here, very eerie and foreboding. The doom metal bands have a real tendency to play the power chord progressions slowly and let the reverb hang there. As such they have probably a closer relationship with the very early metal of early Black Sabbath. Excellent bands like Cryptal Darkness appear on the Doom Metal compilation. The title of the track "The Primordial Gloom" by the Howling Void pretty much says it all. Doom Metal is there. I salute Doom Metal. A band like Revelations of Rain that's on there, they really get into the slow groove, and let the reverb hang, letting the dread float in the air.
The sixth and final installment of the Metalhit Free Download series is the black metal one, probably a must have for devoted fans of Scandinavian black metal. It includes Ugrehal from Norway, Avsky from Sweden. Behexen, Horna and Sacrilegious Impalement are from Finland. It has been my growing opinion that the better black metal bands actually were the well-known, very early ones that got in trouble for church burnings in Norway during the early 90’s-Burzum, Mayhem, Emperor, and Immortal. Those bands are not present on this collection, but for a collection of secondary bands and more recent black metal traditionalists, this is a likeable collection.