Hey kids, Uncle Jason here to tell you about the good old days of death metal yesteryear. In conjunction with the ‘Misery Index week’ here at The Number Of The Blog, I was asked to contribute some writings, one idea pitched by the crew was to “compare and contrast between the early 90′s death metal scene and today’s” – that immediately got my attention. I did live through those so-called golden-age years, and although I do not profess to be an expert, I can offer a few observations when it comes to just how much our beloved death metal scene has changed to arrive here in year 2010. As Frank Mullen says when he talks about Suffocation being around for “20 fucking years!,” I think back to seeing them in a small Maryland club in 1990, and wonder just where the hell those years went!? Or seeing Carcass on tour with Death in 1990, pimple-faced and awestruck – what became of that golden era of death metal? Is it better or worse today? Let’s dissect the recent history and draw some conclusions…

First, we always like to think things were better in the “glory days.” Primarily, when we were (are) young, and just getting into a music that we feel defines our lives, we think it’s somehow special, and that moment is when things start to really matter for you and your friends. This is a generational bias we are all guilty of, as I recall vividly in the late 80′s all the “old school” dudes raving about how the 70′s rock and metal scene was the height of perfection. We young thrashers and speed metal kids knew nothing of the glory of Thin Lizzy and UFO, and after that the death metal bands were laughed at in turn by the thrashers as cookie-monster infused nonsense. So here today, I can say, still being a part of the death metal scene, that although the music has exploded into sub-genres never before imagined, and the talent and musicianship has increased ten-fold, I am nevertheless sorry I have turned into a nostalgic curmudgeon who still thinks the glory days of death metal were the early nineties. I am not saying it was better overall- it was just better for me.

So why was it better? 5 points to ponder, ye internet hounds of hell!

1. The scene was incredibly tight knit and the friendships were earned. Why? You hand-wrote letters with dedication, paid to mail them all over the world, and sometimes waited weeks in anticipation to get a reply (and get your stamps back!). No internet – no superficial “friends” – you knew your real friends, you put time into getting to know them, know their bands, their zines, and their distros. This all ended about 1998/99 when the internet more or less replaced snail mail, yet still to this day I have life-long friends from numerous countries who I sealed a connection with 15-18 years ago by hand writing letters. A lost art indeed.

2. The MP3. With the introduction of the MP3, music became disposable. It was no longer a “thing” you could hold in your hand, it was something that could be made to disappear at the click of a mouse. It was not vinyl, it was not a cassette, it was not a CD even, with all those formats that you paid money for and actually “bought.” Sometimes you won and got a great record, sometimes you got a shitty one, yet you still put time into the record and reflected on it, as it sometimes takes weeks to fully get into an album. With the MP3 – it’s given about one or two listens – no like? Simply delete and move on. No investment, and no patience needed.

Dying Fetus, circa 1992.

3. The mainstream had yet to commercialize death metal. Sure, you can say the Columbia Records failed effort at bringing up Carcass and Warner Brothers with Morbid Angel etc., was the first (late) attempt to bring extreme music to the masses, but as history shows, the culture was not ready yet. The plot failed, and although the dedicated death metal legions (dwindling by the mid-nineties) still picked them up (well, maybe not Swansong), it was nowhere near enough to sustain a corporate niche-market for death metal. That aside, today we see bands with blast beats and guttural death growls semi-regularly cracking the Billboard top 100. This was unthinkable in the 90s, it looks like the culture caught up, and what was once too “extreme” is now accepted… and even that is debatable, because the bulk of the more marketable “extreme” metal today seems to be shoved into the alienated teenager’s face as something that will temporarily assuage their angst and piss off their parents (in its scene-tastic incarnation), more than being a viable contribution to the ever-developing death metal timeline.

4. The unity. The shows today remind me of the scene schism between the thrashers and the poseurs of the late 80s. On one hand, you have the “true” death and black metal kids, long-haired, dedicated, and living the music they adore – and on the other you have the classic scene kid with the teased hair, girl’s jeans, and the shirt with so many colors, he looks like he just vomited all over it. It’s history repeating itself, and it’s interesting how these two tribes clash in the same way that the kid in the Slayer shirt and jean jacket would pummel the kid in the Cinderella shirt and spandex outside the Iron Maiden show in 1988. The unity arrived for me in death metal – it was past all this nonsense and it was “our” scene. We ran it, we DIY’ed our own media for it, and we rejected all the hype and crap that was fed to us on Headbanger’s Ball, and worshiped at the alter of Morbid Angel, Death, Obituary, and Entombed (among dozens of other underground heros). Now death metal has no ‘central’ unity, as it has fractured extensively among competing genres (as was probably inevitable).

5. No one ever expected anything from being in a death metal band. We did it for the sake of it, we did it for the fun, and for the love of it (as should anyone playing music, right?). With the advent of what are essentially (in sound only) “death metal” bands playing everything from Warped Tour to opening for Slayer these days, it seems that there is the inevitable corporate hand in the mix, with management, and non-metal labels signing metal in order to find something hot the kids will pick up on, and make some loot at the same time. In 1991, when I and John Gallagher decided to form and call a band “Dying Fetus,” we obviously had no expectations (come on, with a name like that?). We played the music we wanted to hear, and we communed with our brothers and sisters around the world who felt the same. After 9 years of playing and releasing our own albums in the underground, the band finally got signed in 2000. Of course the recognition is great – but what I am missing here is the urgency that comes from when a scene is at its bare roots, where it’s also at its most creative and imaginative, and where the “fun” aspect is the driving factor.

These, by the way, are personal qualms. I fully enjoy the fact people like our music these days and hey, I am still having fun and there are tons of bands playing killer music that is just as good as (and even better than) anything before it. I know that somewhere out there (or at least I hope), the next great group of bands are about to unleash their new sounds on us and start the next tidal wave – in the meantime, I am now the curmudgeon I used to hear bickering about “how much better it used to be!” What can I say? It feels good vent! Here is to another 20 years…

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