This is Part 12 of our list of the year’s most infectious extreme metal songs. Each day (almost) until the list is finished, I’m posting at least two songs that made the cut. For more details about what this list is all about and how it was compiled, read the introductory post via this link. To see the selections that preceded the two I’m announcing today, click here.
We’re wading into death metal waters today and I plan to be here for the next few days. With these next two songs from two of my favorite 2012 albums, we’re not tip-toeing in either. We’re taking a deep dive into turbulent rapids.
AEON
I reviewed this Swedish band’s fourth album Aeons Black here, naming it one of the year’s top five death metal releases — without figuring out what the other four might be. It’s premium face-melting death metal, a 51-minute collection of mainly superheated songs spewing hellfire, with big, hook-filled, piston-driven rhythms that hammer and pummel and blast like heavy-caliber weaponry.
Yet there’s more to the album than a whirlwind of decimation, and the song I picked for this list is a good example of what I mean.
Make no mistake: “Die By My Hands” offers a whole lot of explosive fury and a great example of Tommy Dahlström’s utterly ferocious vocals. But what makes the song so distinctive, and what has planted it firmly in my head, are the layering of choral voices along with Dahlström’s vocal wreckage and a guitar lead in the chorus that sounds like the fanfare of trumpets announcing an infernal procession. Definitely one of my favorite songs of the year, in addition to being infectious as the plague.
“DIE BY MY HANDS”
[audio:https://www.nocleansinging.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Aeon-Die-By-My-Hands.mp3|titles=Aeon – Die By My Hands]
HOUR OF PENANCE
Listening to this Italian band’s 2012 album Sedition is like being hooked up to a big fuckin’ generator and taking about 2,500 volts through your system for 30 minutes. It will light you right up and leave your head smoking like a burned out transformer. It’s a relentless, malefic whirlwind of really well-played, high-intensity riffs and stop-start rhythms, burnished to a sheen by polished production.
In addition to delivering a merciless beatdown, however, the album is also surprisingly catchy, thanks in part to melodic guitar leads that seem to swim languidly through the high-speed maelstrom. You’ll hear what I mean on my favorite track from the album, which is the next addition to this list:
“DECIMATE THE ANCESTRY OF THE ONLY GOD”
[audio:https://www.nocleansinging.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/03-DECIMATE-THE-ANCESTRY-OF-THE-ONLY-GOD.mp3|titles=Hour of Penance – Decimate the Ancestry of the Only God]6 Responses to “OUR LIST OF 2012’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS: PART 12”
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i was hoping hour of penance’s ‘ascension’ would make it through
Nothing against these particular tunes (I’m quite partial to Hour Of Penance, especially), but if Napalm Death’s ‘The Wolf I Feed’ doesn’t show up on one of these lists, I’m going to be quite tempted to burn this place down.
(gulp) . . . I should note . . . (gasp) . . . that our list . . . (guck) . . . still has three . . . uh, maybe four . . . installments left to go.
Why not burn it down anyway, and rebuild with aluminum? Temperature regulation by a solar powered oil cooling system, with the oil having been extracted from… uh… Coming to think of it, there are a lot of potential sources from which one could extract hydrophobic organic liquids — too many to list.
No psycroptic song?
Clearly not in this edition, no. I can’t claim to know what’s in the unpublished ones yet, but you do realise these are just 2, and not ALL, the most infectious songs Islander has selected from this year, right? He even mentions that he’s going to be sticking with Death Metal for a few more of these columns!