At some point in the past, I forget when, one of my NCS comrades argued within our group that we should be more careful in our description of a certain sub-genre of death metal, to make clear that it’s really not a single monolithic sub-genre at all.
If memory serves, he contended that the term “tech-death” should be reserved for bands (many of whom are in vogue these days) who rely on blizzards of frantically discharged, maniacally veering notes and hyperventilating drum work, i.e., the kind of stuff that seems mainly designed to showcase speed and dexterity, everything dialed up to 11, without necessarily producing anything coherent — and sometimes forgetting the DEATH METAL part of the genre descriptor.
On the other hand, he argued, the term “technical death metal” — or as I might call it, technical DEATH METAL — should be reserved for bands who are really death metal groups at heart, with all the gruesome savagery that term usually connotes, but accent their barbarism with technically impressive accents, and do so in service to actual structured songs rather than just putting on chaotic displays of instrumental pyrotechnics.
Which brings us to Inhuman from Costa Rica. Continue reading »
