What Death Metal Were They Referencing in 'Horizon Zero Dawn'?
"It's DEATH METAL, girl! Classical music!"
Nocturnus time machine art (that I ruthlessly butchered in Paint) by Dan Seagrave
This intro contains spoilers for the 2017 Guerrilla Games RPG Horizon Zero Dawn. Its sequel, Horizon Forbidden West, is out now.
Travis Tate just wants to listen to death metal. That’s what he says, anyway.
The HADES programmer has been a thorn in the side of the other Alpha developers since getting pinched by government agents and onboarded to the team. That team’s mission is a worthy one: defeat the Faro Plague “glitch,” a coding oversight that has unleashed Faro Automated Solutions’ Chariot line of peacekeeping robots upon an unsuspecting and unprepared populous. Spoiler: the peacekeeping robots aren’t all that peaceful, burninating through any Asimovian shyness about murderating mammals. In other words, prepare your butt for a total extinction event unless Alpha succeeds. Big stakes, so you can understand if everyone’s patience is already thinner than 200 Stab Wounds’ discography. Ah, but Travis Tate is burdened with that classic personality flaw: he needs to shock to feel seen. His tool? Obliterating social boundaries.
So, given his propensity for pushing buttons, it probably shouldn’t be a surprise that Travis Tate has received another complaint. But…for noise? And they said the noise he was listening to “bashcore”? Bashcore! Really! No, not bashcore. Absolutely not. In his best Dennis-Miller-trying-to-impress-Old-Furry voice, Tate pushes back in an email to Zero Dawn Alpha Prime Elisabeth Sobeck, Ph.D.
FROM: Travis Tate
TO: Elisabet Sobeck
SUBJECT: "Noise Complaints"Color me confounded, Lizzy. Bashcore? Anyone who says the ol' TT codes to bashcore is straight-up lyin', and you know it! Ol' Trav don't have no truck with commercialized razzle-dazz, nuh uh! Heck, I'd rather guzzle a liter of Citarum runoff than listen to Grey Swarm for thirty seconds! Hand to God and swear on my momma's grave - and she was religious!
Naw, that ain't bashcore blastin the HADES lab, shaking the walls, rattling folks' teeth... it's DEATH METAL, girl! Classical music! 80s and 90s mostly. Got me some dutch deathcore, some japanese goregrind, some swedish cannibal-themed stuff, too. Stop by if you want a listen. Or heck, just come within 50 meters of the lab. Ain't no bashcore, you'll see. Or HEAR, rather - in the screech that rends the air! And FEEL - in the throbbing pulse of the floor and walls and ceiling swallowing you up like you was Jonah trapped in the gullet of gothic deathfish! Hellalujah!
As for those requests to "turn it down"? No can do, Lizzy. THIS IS HOW I CODE! Turn down my death metal? Might as well give up stimulants, chocolate malts, and industrial accident vids! Last I heard, we was supposed to be coding HADES down here. Am I REALLY supposed to code an extinction protocol WITHOUT DEATH METAL to inspire me? Naw, naw, I don't think so.
Stay cool,
Trav
This is but a tiny snippet of the expansive lore you can uncover in Horizon Zero Dawn, a post-post-apocalyptic video game that weaves a few different timelines into an engaging storyline. As an example of the multi-century sprawling story, Tate belongs to the Old Ones, a bygone culture that left behind beguiling artifacts and decaying architecture. You never see the Old Ones outside of holograms, but their presence continues to reverberate, forcing the living to make tough choices based on their past mistakes.
This will probably get me crucified by gamers, but I found HZD’s lore far more interesting than the repetitive gameplay. At least, the hard sci-fi story has a lot of fun ideas to mull over. And, the one I mulled over the most was, of course, posed in Travis Tate’s email: What death metal, deathcore, goregrind, and “cannibal-themed” stuff was he listening to? Sounds like it’s time for an investigation.
Let’s begin by finding Tate’s favored death metal since that will take the longest. (I reached out to Guerrilla Games for an interview request. It didn’t respond.) A reminder of what we’re looking for via the man himself:
“It's DEATH METAL, girl!”
“80s and 90s mostly.”
“Ain't no bashcore, you'll see.”
Those guidelines give us a lot to work off of, but to truly crack this nut, we have to take a spin through Travis Tate’s backstory to try to pin down his motivations. Per the in-game lore, Tate was raised by his mother, a “devout Pentecostal.” Accordingly, Tate was schooled on Revelations. When he rebelled, he rebelled hard, taking to a life of edgelord art patronages such as amassing a ‘Library of Congress but for smut’-sized collection of torture films and porn. Presumably, Tate bankrolled these obsessions by sharpening his programming skills as a black hat hacker. Once recruited by Sobeck, he spent his non-work hours just generally being an asshole. It’s like the classic Gen X stereotype transported to the mid-21st century. Right, mid-21st century. When Tate writes “classical music,” he means that literally. It’s likely late 2065 when he’s writing his “naw bashcore” defense. Left Hand Path celebrated its 75th anniversary earlier that year.
Despite there being way more intel on a relatively minor NPC than most games would devote to anyone other than the protagonist, I have to say that HZD’s Tate bio is still pretty one-note. The person it paints is like a sentient copy of ANSWER Me! that eventually finds redemption through the selfless actions of a colleague. It’s like a Hallmark movie for people who read Peter Sotos and pretend they’re libertines while wearing utility kilts. (The Horizon wiki cites the Horizon Zero Dawn Collector’s Edition Guide when offering the fun fact that Tate’s “character was loosely inspired by science fiction author Bruce Sterling,” and it’s like…does Bruce Sterling’s lawyer know about this?) Sure, something there feels familiar and broadly representative of this specific species of guy, the cringe-contrarian who has a do what thou wilt approach to practical jokes. You know this guy. I know this guy. At least, we remember a neckbeardy interaction with a guy of this ilk. But does that guy actually exist? Eh. That is why I feel compelled to flesh this dumb essay out by inferring two additional character traits based on Tate-esque assholes I’ve run into in real life. These projections will help us choose our death metal.
1. Tate is the kind of person who cares if music they love is mislabeled.
“Naw, that ain’t bashcore blastin….” Getting heated over music taxonomy abuse is something you either learn to let slide or spend the rest of your life being miserable. (See: my fruitless quest to get mainstream style guides such as the one employed by the New York Times to stop hyphenating “death-metal.” Is it worth it? No. Does it call into question the veracity of the Times reporting on the whole? Absolutely.) Look, I sympathize with Tate on this one! A large percentage of my published work is me dunking on clueless shorthairs for crimes against metal.
However, if trying to function in this type A society as a social creature who favors job security has taught me anything, it’s this: While it’s supremely irritating when a know-nothing tries to explain your thing with unwavering confidence, it’s usually not worth correcting the record if the record your correcting pertains to something low stakes like a form of entertainment. (Like, if it’s some “lol sportsball” nerd being willfully obtuse about baseball, let it slide. If it’s some hardened racist being racist about racist shit, correct it with your fists.) Trust the divorcé on this one. At best, everyone will think you’re a pedant and never want to talk to you about the thing you desperately wish they’d talk to you about. At worst, you’re immediately conscripted into the Well, Actually Army as a high-ranking asshole. Also, you know, why would we assume that Travis Tate was really listening to death metal?
Quick digression! It galls me to write this as someone who went to school for human resources and hated every second of it, but let’s think about things from the noise complainer’s side momentarily: What if Tate’s playlist could be reasonably mistaken for bashcore?
Ah, slight problem. In 2022, bashcore doesn’t exist. There are no albums tagged with “bashcore” on Bandcamp. The “top bashcore” artists on Last.fm are the Polish trap producer Senn, Russian fastcore band УДАР, and something named Венер Камалов. That’s quite the sonic spread of obscure artists falling under the minuscule bashcore umbrella. Therefore, I’m going to say that we’re still taking applications for the foundational bashcore artist. (Could it be you? In this 14-part college course offered exclusively through the mail, Plague Rages University, accredited by the National Not Accredited Colleges Association, will teach you how to bash the core and….)
With that, I’m going to score this one for Tate and say he was listening to death metal. It also gives us some leeway in interpreting “bashcore” and how it relates to the type of death metal that Tate was listening to. Let’s say bashcore is anything that a non-metaller would find chaotic, which, let me check my notes here, is everything.
2. Travis Tate wants you to know that he’s listening to the best death metal, but it can’t be death metal that’s well-known.
You could also file this under “pedant,” but this type of elitism signaling is its own kind of mania. Tate strikes me as a worthy descendent of the hyper-annoying poster that used to run wild on metal forums. He cares about obscurity. He cares about mythologized timelines. That is to say, if there was some hidden log to be found in HZD where Tate complains about death metal dying in the late ’90s and sinking to a nadir in the “embarrassing 2000s” like the dumbest trver-than-thou idiots on the Hells Headbangers or Nuclear War Now! message boards used to, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least.
Anyway, given the lore we’ve explored and the baggage I’ve unfairly dropped on Tate, I can assume that our irritating friend was listening to…drumroll, please…
Infester’s To the Depths, in Degradation. Of course he was. I think the Meat Shits connection, the loathsome “brown metal” idiocy that Infester members backed for concerts, is probably a selling point to ol’ TT, some of that classic “bad people make great metal” logic that pervaded the scene circa 2002. Yeah. Travis Tate is extremely Infester’s To the Depths, in Degradation, and he 100 percent followed that up with Abruptum’s In Umbra Malitiae Ambulabo, in Aeternum in Triumpho Tenebraum despite that not being death metal. Nothing matters when you’re a contrarian. In his most Euronymous zine voice, you know he argued with anyone in earshot that it was, in fact, metal of death because it was suitably obsessed with death unlike those poseurs in *insert band here*.
Does that settle it? Yes. Yes it does. Be that as it may, this is a Wolf Rambatz blog so I have to take it to the max. Let’s have some fun and grow our own Travis Tate playlist. Want to play the What Was Travis Tate Jamming game? Here are some rules to narrow down ol’ Trav’s haul:
Whatever death metal Tate was listening to should have lyrical themes in Encyclopaedia Metallum of at least one of the following: anti-Christianity, blasphemy, death, drugs, evil, gore, horror, porn, sex, torture, or violence. Since Metallum has generally spotty lyrical themes data, I’ll make some exceptions when I know the content is a fit.
Because Tate is a dork for dates, records can’t have been released after 1997.
Because Tate is an oaf for the obscure, records must have fewer than 250 ratings on RateYourMusic.
Bonus points will be given to “chaotic”-sounding records. (There is no formal point system.)
As I surmised above, I don’t think Tate gives a shit about sketchiness, but I do. I’ll point it out where it’s applicable.
Here we go. Consider this is the lost datapoint of HZD. I imagine Aloy would immediately delete all of this, but maybe Sylens would get something out of it.
***
TEXT DATAPOINT #69
Abhorer - Zygotical Sabbatory Anabapt
Lyrical themes: “Evil, Occultism, Blasphemy”
Year: 1996
Ratings: 229
Chaos Bonus: Yes.
Tate’s log: “AN ODE TO PURE EVILLLLllllll. This hateful n’ rageful rotter was skulking ‘round the darkest corners of the deep web archives when I spied a dusty torrent titled BEFORE IT WAS EMBARRASSIN’. Oh, baby, baby. Lo, what is this? A blackened death/thrash beastfucker from Singapore that ain’t Impiety? INTEREST PIQUED. For those classical heshers, this must’ve been the battle vest choice for those who graduated beyond Archgoat patches. Still buzzing from my battering, I went down to get a bite and couldn’t help myself, proselyting to the first unfortunate I encountered. ‘Like a second-wave Sarcófago,’ I screamed to Samina Ebadji in the canteen. She just said ‘no’ and turned around. No? NO? Naw.”
Afterbirth - Psychopathic Embryotomy
Lyrical themes: “Gore, Death (early); Space, Science fiction, Abstract (later)”
Year: 1994
Ratings: 245
Chaos Bonus: Yes.
Tate’s log: “After birth, there is rebirth. Afterbirth’s rebirth was as a prog death star-screamer. The archives are still splattered with the gooey passion skeeted out by hardcore fans after its hotly anticipated third album released in [redacted] became a classic of the [redacted] style. That mega-shift in the extreme landscape was due solely to these phoenixes. They brought that form into existence, tearing it out of death metal’s womb with the ferocity of a midwife with a dinner reservation. But, again, that was album número tres, the one we all remember that was fittingly titled [redacted]. IN THE BEGINNING, though, and yes, that line needs to be read with the booming voice of a pissed Brian Blessed, the space-faring Afterbirth was more connected to the Long Island loam, dealing with gruesome and wetter (read: human) concerns as a blood-red slammer. Yes, listen close and you can hear some progressiveness tucked into the fundament, but this is more about wearing your still-breathing lungs as a hat than tickling your brainstem and making you stroke your goatee. I accidentally left this on to take a piss and the Zero Dawn Project Facility medical team ran into my lab because they thought I was choking on a sandwich. Quality confirmed.”
Cyclo Proganigma - Playboys from Hell (Musektion)
Lyrical themes: “N/A”
Year: 1994
Ratings: N/A
Chaos Bonus: In a fun, early tech way.
Tate’s log: “Despite the persistent nattering of some long-dead death metal scribe known as Wolf Rambatz, this German band is so unknown it didn’t even have an RYM page for me to find in the Way Wayback Machine. What’s left in the historical record of steel is its claim to fame, if you can claim fame when you’re this subterranean: some of its members landed in Japanische Kampfhörspiele and some of that grinder’s many spinoffs. Does that sum up Cyclo Proganigma’s shreddy contents? Lord no. Think Death done by Dream Theater. There’s a song titled ‘Hectic Hemogurgle,’ which just happens to be the name of my favorite throwback grindhouse schlocker about a school for horny phlebotomists. Truly a classic of 2032 post-doomer cinema. Did that masterpiece make the cut when I submitted it for preservation? NO! THWARTED AGAIN. GADZOOKS, WE PRESERVED EVERY EPISODE OF NBC’S CANCELLED HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL HULL HIGH, THOUGH. ENJOY THAT, FUTURE GENERATIONS.”
Disastrous Murmur - Rhapsodies in Red
Lyrical themes: “Gore, Sickness, Death, Torture”
Year: 1992
Ratings: 249
Chaos Bonus: Hm. Yeah, sure.
Tate’s log: “In my quiet, less frantic, and more chaffed hours, when I have porned all of the porn that can be porned and slipped into the kind of post-nut clarity only experienced by a monk with an allergy to peanuts, I’ve realized that I am the last living and breathing soul on this rock who is still shaking a room with death metal now that most of the planet has been turned into robot mulch. That means my frenzied quest to venerate the obscure is ultimately meaningless, because what is obscure when there’s an audience of one? Still, if for some reason my logs are found, I feel compelled to note that, yes, I recognize this barely made the obscurity cut. A monster, am I. Forgive me. Whatever. Hell of a band name. What is a Disastrous Murmur, exactly? Saying your crush’s name while you nap next to your spouse? R.E.M.’s full-length debut soaked in battery acid? Quite the koan, really. Austria’s Disastrous Murmur peaked early with Rhapsodies In Red, a seemingly straight-ahead record in the vein of, say, an unkempt Altars of Madness by way of Mental Funeral that manages to slather on some bizarre strains of near-melody. Let’s say…Altars of Madness riddled with lice. Sure. Why not. Nothing matters.”
Dissonance - Look to Forget
Lyrical themes: “N/A”
Year: 1994
Ratings: 40
Chaos Bonus: See Cyclo Proganigma.
Tate’s log: “While devoted incanters of plasma think they done did a thing in the 2020s, the archeological record proves otherwise. By 1994, death metal was already asking, ‘What if Death had more Demilich?’ The answer was this Slovakian band that probably didn’t do itself any favors with its album title. But a self-fulfilling prophecy is why I’m alive and coding, right? Dissonance would reappear in 2014 with its follow-up, The Intricacies Of Nothingness. 20 years. Some real The Prestige shit. That one sounds like tech made in a clean room, and I kind of love it for it, the sort of ultra tidy production you’d expect from the lone album made by your ponytailed jazz teacher. While most of the death metal I listen to in the lab is, in the words of Indonesian death metal band Disinfected, “reek shit on a tomb,” I certainly don’t mind the odd clarifying effect that spiky tech has on the thinky parts. That’s my kinda duality, the smarts with the smut. You can real Karl Popper while doing poppers. In fact, sounds like a date.”
D.V.C. - Descendant Upheaval
Lyrical themes: “Science fiction, Violence, Drugs, Silliness”
Year: 1989
Ratings: 99
Chaos Bonus: Not by today’s standards, but yes according to weaklings. This will be referred to as the “DVC clause” henceforth.
Tate’s log: “DARTH. VADER’S. CHURCH. You miss the reference? I did, too. Apparently, some ultra-popular space opera that peaked last century. Maybe ‘Cranium Overture’ will tickle some vestigial, inherited nostalgia since it marches forth with a metalized version of the ‘Imperial March.’ In my pursuit of finishing HADES and/or DPing the hole in my soul with death metal, porn, and drugs, not sure I have time for Star Wars, let alone a singular star war. We are, of course, currently at war, as everyone reminds me when I punch the clock for a smoke break to five-finger-discount my nethers. I’m trying to save the world here. Let. Me. Wank. OFF-TOPIC. MOVING BACK ON TOPIC. These Floridians actually whip mondo ass, nailing that first-wave sound when thrash was still an essential component of baby death. The story goes that at least one member ended up in Spirex, the DIY-instrument weirdos who never formally released anything but are the stuff of metal legends, at least per my readings. Ah yes, those readings. If only Wolf Rambatz lived to see his work’s effect on a highly horny idiot coding an extinction protocol. Instead, they died horribly in 2022. Truly grisly stuff. Can’t believe a rogue lawnmower was even capable of that. Won’t even mention it here it’s so dry-heavin’ disgusting. If only Wolf Rambatz had known that, too, I guess.”
Embalmer - There Was Blood Everywhere
Lyrical themes: “Gore, Death, Horror, Torture”
Year: 1995
Ratings: 87
Chaos Bonus: Yeah.
Tate’s log: “Thar be blasts everywhere. It’s hard to believe it now, especially when picking through archived torrents, but Relapse was once a death and grind label. RIGHT??? Yes, the label that gorged itself with cash by shamelessly hocking stoner sludge and stoner shoegaze and stoner stoner. And then it moved into the metaverse and starting selling Seth Putnam NFTs. Twisted. But that was then, this is way back when. Get this: Ordered by Catalog ID, There Was Blood Everywhere sits between Mortician’s House by the Cemetery and Hypocrisy’s Carved Up. Embalmer has more in common with the former from a gross-to-the-touch standpoint. It’s way more interesting, though, just by dint of being Not Mortician. Snark aside, it adds all kinds of weird rhythms and weird textural guitar elements…all of which may be less of a product of compositional intent and more that the players are trying to finish the songs as quickly as possible. We can’t be playing the metals forever when thar be bongs to toke. While the abstractions and distractions of country borders and state lines have been dissolved during this time of total biological genocide — a killer bot cares not if it’s smoking a preschool in Calabasas or Kalamazoo — there are those death metal bands that you can immediately peg are from Cleveland. This be one.”
Embrionic Death - Regurgitated Stream of Rot
Lyrical themes: “Gore, Existentialism”
Year: 2011*
Ratings: 55
Chaos Bonus: The prog death stuff, definitely.
Tate’s log: “Don’t think ol’ TT (titters? Trav’s big naturals?) is cheating, tossing a spit-soaked 21st-century fastball at your dome. This compilation collects every Embrionic Death track from 1991 to 1993. It closes with ’93’s Stream of Solidarity..., an absolutely bonkers bit of Cynic worship, if Cynic were in a horrific bus accident that sent it straight to Beetlejuice hell. Before that, these Long Islanders were a dead-baby-joke-punchline BDM/slam outfit. That’s a Shamgod-level crossover, really. Snatching ankles with a slam to prog headfake. I tried relating this to one of the techs here, that Embrionic Death’s lifecycle was insane. I played them both eras, back-to-back, like Jennifer Connelly in Requiem for a Dream. The tech said it all sounds the same. No emotion. No joy. Nothing. About as much recognition as telling a corpse that it looks nice. I’m gonna die alone, aren’t I?”
Evilution - Shrine of Desecration
Lyrical themes: “Death, Satan, Evil”
Year: 1997
Ratings: 17
Chaos Bonus: Yes.
Tate’s log: “Released on Pure Death Records, the death metal imprint of Stillborn Records, which was owned by one…Jamey Jasta. That name mean anything to you? I had to dig it up using Deep Google, and it only reconstructed two results from the waypast. One was just the word “BLECH!” and the other was a parody c&p file for something called “Hatebread” that was festooned with out-of-context poems like “Burn the ryes/ Their grains of ignorance/ Shove them back/ Back down their throats/ All that I baked for you I ate.” Curious. Facts: Pure Death released two records, this one and a CD pressing of Jungle Rot’s Skin the Living demo. Evilution is obviously the “one” of the two, a primordial stew of sickness that just got hit by a lightning bolt. Somehow, there were five other bands named Evilution. Metal distilled to a sentence.”
Gorbage - Controlled Self
Lyrical themes: “Death, Gore, Splatter”
Year: 1994
Ratings: 4
Chaos Bonus: DVC clause.
Tate’s log: “Duking it out with Cyclo Proganigma for the most obscure thing I wish one of the other programmers would ask me about. (Maybe if I turn it up???) Gorbage was a demo band from Nova Scotia that had the chops to make it but got chopped before recording a full-length for reasons I’m sure barely even made sense at the time. Oh, the name is bad? Naw. Misantropical Painforest got signed. Don’t come at me with that name crap. Anyway, these bluenoses’ complete discography rips harder than a football team trapped for days in a baked bean factory. Here’s a line that only makes sense to me, the last man standing: ’94’s Controlled Self is like if Napalm Death circa Harmony Corruption tried to record Fear, Emptiness, Despair.”
Hadez - Aquelarre
Lyrical themes: “Evil, Darkness, Death”
Year: 1993
Ratings: 139
Chaos Bonus: Yes, in the sense that it sounds like a mess.
Sketch warning: While he’s not on this one, the band would later be fronted by a singer who did a stint in some NS garbage.
Tate’s log: “Blackened death puke from Peru that doesn’t let trivial, fleeting matters like tightness or timekeeping get in the way of being EVILLLLLLLLLL. One of the first extreme metal bands in the country. And we’re talkin’ real early. Released a year before Norwegian black metal’s coming out, Aquelarre is swimming in a similar fetid, uncomfortable atmosphere, like if Sodom was stuck in a Dalí painting. This is the kinda gunk you can only pull off once because tomorrow you’ll know better.”
Horror of Horrors - Blood of the Suspicious
Lyrical themes: “Death, Darkness, Ancient Evil”
Year: 1997
Ratings: 5
Chaos Bonus: DVC clause.
Tate’s log: “If Morpheus Descends descended into a crypt and prowled around for a date. Nasty, sternum-rattling stuff. Blood of the Suspicious is a repress of Horror of Horrors’ sophomore outing, 1996’s Fangs, Breaking the Skin. (If you can believe me, Blood’s art is far superior to the original version, which is saying something because Blood looks like a tired Zydrunas Ilgauskas bit his lip.) No one remembers that one…and no one really remembers this one, either. By most accounts, Sounds of Eerie, the band’s debut, is the classic, but I’m pretty charmed by this ‘un. 20 years later, two of the members would resurface with all-star hired gun Kevin Talley behind the kit and Pessimist’s Kelly Mclauchlin on lead guitar for Rust Flesh Dust, which is how I once opened an experimental poem to my favorite Fleshlight.”
Inquisitor - Walpurgis - Sabbath of Lust
Lyrical themes: “Anti-Christianity, Occultism, Blasphemy”
Year: 1996
Ratings: 139
Chaos Bonus: Yo, the vocals
Sketch warning: The guitarist is now in Ancient Rites, which is exactly the kind of “European heritage” chuddery you think it is.
Tate’s log: “Before Centurian, there was Inquisitor. Scorched black death/thrash that sounds like someone put The Crown in a toaster oven and fell asleep. The first thing you’re going to hear is Alex Wesdijk’s love-it/hate-it screeches, a real ‘cat that doesn’t wanna go to the vet’ howl, but, once you make your peace with ‘em, you gain access to a trove of raging riffs. Still, that vox. Margo dropped by the lab today and asked me if I was watching hyena piss films again. I mean, I was, but the sound was off. Margo, don’t do me like that.”
Judecca - Beyond, What the Eyes Can't See...
Lyrical themes: “Death, Gore, Anti-religion”
Year: 1995
Ratings: 75
Chaos Bonus: There’s a song titled “As We Fuck….”
Tate’s log: “Beyond what the eyes can’t see? So...a butthole? It’s wild how many perfectly cromulent death metal albums were released in the ’90s. Here’s Judecca, doing a slightly more brutal Autopsy in ’95. The weird thing? It doesn’t seem like this quartet did anything else. I don’t just mean with this band. I mean…in metal…in general. No other connections. Zip. This is it. What’s the story there? I brought this up to my counselor during a free association section, and they were confused. Wanted to talk about my feelings. FEELINGS? THERE’S DEATH METAL TO PONDER! I sent them ‘As We Fuck…’ as soon as the session was done, and HR immediately scheduled a meeting. What is it with this place? A come-on? More like c’mon, am I right? Wait, AITA? No. Naw.”
Lobotomy - When Death Draws Near
Lyrical themes: “Violence, Religion, Life's struggles and hardships”
Year: 1990
Ratings: 53
Chaos Bonus: Not even sure I can cite the DVC clause, but there are other reasons at play.
Tate’s log: “O’ Taters, you dumb betitted, big naturals idiot. It’s legendarily stupid to make a death metal playlist without a Swedeath band, so here’s this one. Later on, Lobotomy would jam an icepick in its head and devolve into something similar to Grave’s core-adjacent era when it released its first full-length in 1995. Not a slight. Underrated. On this 1990 demo, though, it’s pretty bare-bones death metal. That said, there’s something awesome about its unhurried delivery that makes it cooler than most in a scene stuffed with hormonal teenagers horny for speed. ‘Leffe’ Cuzner, pioneer of the dimed HM-2 buzzsaw, played bass in this band, but never on record. Travis Tate, pioneer of the dildo buzzsaw, played air-bass to this band, but fully clothed, for the record.”
Mass Psychosis - Necroporno
Lyrical themes: “N/A”
Year: 1996
Ratings: 33
Chaos Bonus: NECROPORNO.
Tate’s log: “I’m sorry, did you not see the title? NECRO. PORNO. [*cannons fire*] If Razorback Records released Morbid Angel. Same meth energy, but far more moist. This New Jersey collective was supposedly still active by at least 2022, but Necroporno — gods, why am I writing anything other than NECROPORNO [*lightning strikes*] — is its last breath. But, if this was it, what a fucking tombstone. Honestly, since I’ve utterly borked my brain with brutal death metal, this often sounds like pop to me since it has HOOKS and it’s THEATRICAL and it’s DYNAMIC and all of those good all-caps words that somehow are not NECROPORNO. I mean, there are like classy acoustic guitar passages. Christ. NECROPORNO. Lemme type that into the old Alpha Instant Messenger and…yep, banned again.”
Multiplex - World
Lyrical themes: “N/A”
Year: 1992
Ratings: 73
Chaos Bonus:
Tate’s log: “A secret garden of early ’90s death metal delights, cultivating acres of hungry Venus blerghtraps that are hankering to feast on ungainly caveman chuds who get tripped up by multifaceted death. When death metal was codified later in the ’90s, it lost access to whatever gate open up to the botanical bizarre that employed Multiplex as a landscaper. Sure, on its face, this ain’t weird. Early Brutal Truth plus some chonky death. You can wrap your gray matter around that. It’s not some kinda Countdown brainbuster. But then, World gets weird, taking the same pills that Disharmonic Orchestra scarfed. Speaking of pills, I took a handful of blues, but, alas, wrong blues. Had to attend a meeting in a vacuum suit. Only thing strong enough to suppress that priapic daymare. NRBs, friend.”
Necrony - Pathological Performances
Lyrical themes: “Gore, Blood, Death”
Year: 1993
Ratings: 176
Chaos Bonus: In an early Carcass sense, sure.
Tate’s log: “Poke around the metals long enough and you start to see glitches in reality. Timey-wimey bugs. Like, how is Necrony obscure enough to qualify for this playlist? Want data? BEHOLD. Engineer: Dan Swanö. Label: Poserslaughter Records. Guest vox: Johan Liiva. Members: Anders Jakobson and Rickard Alriksson, who formed Nasum as a side-project. NASUM! A SIDE-PROJECT! And it’s not like Pathological Performances is some kind of dud, remembered only because it clogged the bog. It ranks up there with General Surgery as primo scalpel-sharpening Swedish Carcass worship. CALL UP AGATHA C! THIS IS A MFING MYSTERY. I asked the doc on the base if these were actual medical procedures and now I’m on another watchlist. Look, why can’t we all loosen up and be pro rectal carnage?”
Odious Sanction - Punishment of Life
Lyrical themes: “Insanity, Depression, Mental illness”
Year: 1996
Ratings: 2
Chaos Bonus: In a ‘death metal didn’t travel down this path’ sense, sure.
Tate’s log: “Deathcore before deathcore, the delicious meal before the diarrhea. Punishment of Life is a literal interpretation of the now-maligned hybrid in that it is indeed death metal plus hardcore. In a way, that makes it way better than what deathcore would become as Odious Sanction’s debut EP treads the same ground as, say, Human Remains. Brutality of death, aggressiveness of core. In fact, think if you smushed Dying Fetus and Burnt By the Sun together. Perhaps literally. Lot of concussions and detached limbs, etc. So, where’d they go? Drummer Steve Shalaty became the backbone of later Immolation.”
Pathologist - Grinding Opus of Forensic Medical Problems
Lyrical themes: “Pathology, Gore, Disease, Perversion, Rape”
Year: 1993
Ratings: 197
Chaos Bonus: See Necrony.
Tate’s log: “Whew, like taking a hoot of toad dust that has been cut with formaldehyde. Symphonies of Sickness-era Carcass played by the kind of dirt-caked deadbeats who just knocked back shots of courage as the prologue to a b and e on a morgue. But that’s the thing: Where other bands would be content to push the gonzo elements of that caper, these Czech psychos play this stuff with planned precision. In other words, they care that the sounds are good, which makes their odes to medical atrocities even more unnerving. It’s like a sleepy coroner telling you about a bus fire while you wait at the bar at Margaritaville. Grim. Dark. But professional as shit.”
Scattered Remnants - Inherent Perversion
Lyrical themes: “Torture, Gore, Excrement”
Year: 1995
Ratings: 111
Chaos Bonus: To anyone not into BDM.
Tate’s log: “I like how ‘Vaginal Vomit’ is followed by ‘Inherent Perversion.’ Yeah, you think? Anyway, Scattered Remnants is embryonic BDM, the runt of the Suffocation litter that ripped out the throats of its siblings so it could drink deep of the milky technical juddering. Some of these riffs can still shake a room harder than Godzilla dry-humping a high-rise. In that fashion, something about it just ignites this piece of coal I call a heart. I heard ol’ Lis was heading to the lab, so I turned this up to 11 and put on tux and tails and offered her a dance. She said, ‘People are dying, Travis.’ Yeah, dying to have this first dance, m’lady.”
Skeleton of God - Urine Garden
Lyrical themes: “Death, Sex, Psychoses, Esotericism”
Year: 1993
Ratings: 161
Chaos Bonus: Def.
Tate’s log: “Sometimes I just dance around the lab screaming ‘urine garden’ in a Sousixe Sioux yelp. An invigorating way to start the day. In the realm of death metal and extreme metal at large, there are few things like this EP, before and since. From an elemental perspective, many bands have that sea-sick lurch, the kind of stumbling forward motion that’s like Michael Myers trying to calibrate for morning wood. Gonna plunk down a few chips and bet few have been as weird as Skeleton of God. ‘Urine Garden’ has it all, from weird spokels to tubro grind blasts to off-kilter solos. Lot of gnarly scents comingling, like a New York City alley in summertime.”
Shredded Corpse - Exhumed and Molested
Lyrical themes: “Death, Gore, Armageddon, Anti-Christianity”
Year: 1996
Ratings: 23
Chaos Bonus: Yes, provided you understand the context.
Tate’s log: “Speaking of lurches. This is a lurching mess of chugs from the unbaptized soul of Rocky Gray, best known to weaklings as the drummer on Evanescence’s The Open Door. (And to everyone else as the guitarist for the metalcore era of Living Sacrifice.) Hard to square that the guy drumming on ‘Call Me When You’re Sober’ is the same guy growling through ‘Death Brings Erection.’ Life is a funny thing, ain’t it? While underproduced and probably buried under a church so it’s never remastered, Exhumed and Molested is worth digging up because it has that authentic knuckleheadedness that later stompers could only method act. Certainly br00tles your noodle, this one.”
Swollen - The Breathless Waiting
Lyrical themes: “N/A”
Year: 1996
Ratings: 50
Chaos Bonus: One song has metal laughter, so it doesn’t matter.
Tate’s log: “1996 but sounds like 2006. Swollen’s history is a confusing one and requires a whiteboard to plot out. I’ll save the Dallas intrigue and just say that these three all did a stint with legendary Danish BDMers Iniquity and then, characteristically, weren’t in a band together ever again. Swollen is in that same realm, sounding like an earlier take on Five Across the Eyes. The cover art is a fit, all teeth and blood and ancient apex predator, dead-eyed malevolence. Has some grooves, too. Has some lyrics, too. ‘Dildoes into eyesockets, where eyeballs once belonged.’ lol. Aw, I also love Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Guitarist/vocalist Mads Haarløv went on to Undergang.”
Resurrection - Embalmed Existence
Lyrical themes: “Death, Gore, Anti-religion”
Year: 1993
Ratings: 243
Chaos Bonus: Nah, but it rules.
Tate’s log: “Released the same year as Disincarnate’s all-timer Dreams of the Carrion Kind. Resurrection is the dumber version, subbing out the shred for more deathly, thrash-derived riffment. If it were that alone, more people would recommend it to you. Narp. The thing that sinks this album in the minds of many is the ‘narration’ from Mark the Storyteller, who sounds like a D-rate Shakespeare character who took MDMA. I admit, that shit is awful, but it helps to weed out the weaklings. At least, it amplifies the extreme annoyance factor. I asked Samina to tell me which sonnet was getting audiobooked and spent a good five minutes dying of laughter as she listened close for a second. That was early on. Hasn’t trusted me since. Like Spielberg said, can’t show ‘em the shark too early.”
Regurgitation - Conceived Through Vomit
Lyrical themes: “Gore, Death, Perversion”
Year: 1996
Ratings: 30
Chaos Bonus: For 1996, yeah.
Tate’s log: “Regurgitation is, of course, known less for this solid demo and more for its sole full-length, 1999’s absolutely ripping Tales of Necrophilia that features some of the funniest Cannibal Corpse knock-off album art ever created. Holy shit. Kids, that’s how sausages are made. Admittedly, listing this is so I can flex and be like, ‘Well, I prefer Regurgitation in its fresh-babe phase. Also, not to be confused with the band that preceded O.L.D., natch.’ You ever see what someone’s face looks like when you drop a ‘natch’? Glorious. All respect punted out a window.”
Undertaker - Necro Thievery
Lyrical themes: “N/A”
Year: 1994
Ratings: 35
Chaos Bonus: DVC clause.
Tate’s log: “Not to be confused with the wrestler since this band was legit dead after two years. Maybe the members looked at the art for their demo and were like, ‘Yeah, we ain’t topping this.’ Shame, because it tops a lot that came after it. Undertaker hailed from Colorado and did more with a sound that I can only describe as ‘Americanized Demilich’ than future practitioners from that state. Perhaps our future selves, freed from this robotic nightmare, will do the same. A young huntress will enter my office, find these files, and…start her own Demilich worship band named Bunker Mold. Wait, a word is coming to me...Nora? Naw, nobody takes pictures of the drummer.”
Viogression - Expound and Exhort
Lyrical themes: “N/A”
Year: 1991
Ratings: 138
Chaos Bonus: DVC clause.
Tate’s log: “We’ve moved to GAIA Prime. God this sucks ass. I only had room on an SD card for one album to schlep to this frozen hellhole and it was this one. Viogression’s rep has always been ‘rawer Obituary,’ and I see no need to offer a corrective. Expound and Extort is it because it sounds better than the next one. The Milwaukee band’s follow up, 1992’s Passage, does some more exciting things, but is absolutely wrecked by one of the all-time lousy death metal production jobs. Not the band’s fault, either. Peep this note: ‘According to Brian DeNeffe, this album was released without the band’s knowledge or consent, with an unfinished mix and no mastering.’ Relate. Ol’ Trav’s whole life was an unfinished mix with no mastering. Wait, heard a ding. A warning? Nope! Hell yeah, the Bagel Bites are done. Starving. I’ll write more later after this meeting with Ted Faro. Stay cool.”
END DATAPOINT
***
So that’s the death metal. What of the “dutch deathcore, some japanese goregrind, some swedish cannibal-themed stuff”? Well, that’s trickier.
Per a Metallum advanced search, there are only 13 Dutch deathcore bands in the archives. As you’d expect, none of them were formed before 1997, let alone released anything in the “80s and 90s mostly.” But did Travis Tate mean to apply that filter to the three substyles he appended to his playlist? Hm. Enhance: “Got me some dutch deathcore, some japanese goregrind, some swedish cannibal-themed stuff, too.” In my eyes, the “too” is doing the lifting, suggesting that we’re now free of all restrictions.
Be that as it may, I can’t imagine Tate wanting to listen to any Dutch deathcore. Even if we’re talking about the cream of the modern deathcore crop, that would still cause a terminal degree of heavy metal whiplash if played anywhere near ‘80s and ‘90s death metal. It would make a mess out of any playlist, like trying to push an apple into an orange. And, again, that’s even if the deathcore possibilities I found were good. Before reading this next sentence, please recognize that I am a hater: Most of the 13 bands at our disposal are awful, bolting on either a symphonic or melo component to already bad death metal.
If I’m still laboring under the belief that Tate is a man of taste and not indulging some bashcore guilty pleasure, that leaves me with two deathcore possibilities out of the 13. The first is Salute the Exiled, which not only has a djenty groove to it but also had the foresight to put killer robots on the cover art to its single “Drones.” I’m sure it would make Tate smile, at least.
Needless to say, that makes it the favorite. (I don’t hate it, for the record.) The dark horse, then, is Mellow Vocals, which I’m mainly mentioning because its 2021 full-length, Ultima Mortis, has…100 tracks. 100! The tracks aren’t short, either! Most are three minutes, and Ultima Mortis closes with a 13-minute, multi-singer epic. (Is it good? I don’t know. I’m never listening to it. Challenge: Can you listen to all five hours in one sitting? Lemme know how you do.)
But, if I’m honest, the more sensible choice here is a variant of the bashcore dilemma: Whatever Dutch deathcore Tate was listening to hasn’t formed yet. Maybe in 2064.
Moving on, Japanese goregrind is far easier to decipher since (a) there’s a lot more of it and (b) I like it. The hard part is demarcating goregrind. Metallum classes Clotted Symmetric Sexual Organ as grindcore. Discogs does the same with Bathtub Shitter. I’m not sure that Tate has enough context to argue with whatever the historical record presents him, so I guess those are out. Too bad.
Still, there’s a bunch of fun goregrind left. Since Tate is obsessed with annoying people, Gore Beyond Necropsy is probably the right pick, specifically the Rectal Anarchy collaboration with Merzbow. On the other hand, if we think Tate wants something suitably “classic,” both in the form and quality sense, Butcher ABC slides in because 2017’s North of Hell is just that good. Then, based on name recognition, Go-Zen and Catasexual Urge Motivation, both having released stuff on Bizarre Leprous Production, are possibilities. Finally, people will complain if I don’t mention Pharmacist, so here’s me mentioning Pharmacist.
However, when I think of “Japanese goregrind” and the death metal I laid out above, three additional, non-North of Hell choices come to mind. We’re talking goregrind with either a distinctly classic death metal feel or something super chaotic. First is the collected work of Hagamoto, the ceaselessly active underground grind shredder. Hard to pick one, but maybe Maggut is it. Groovy, grindy, total degeneracy.
Next are two related outfits. FesterDecay, which is still in its demo, singles, and splits era, does a killer Dead Infection. And one of the members in that band is in my surefire selection: Viscera Infest, the absolutely disgusting BDM band that takes its cues from Disgorge (Mex). Based on cover art choices alone, which I am not embedding here for severe ‘you’re never going to sleep again’ vibes, you know that’s the one. The ping simply puts it over the top.
All right, last box to check: Swedish cannibal stuff. Let me write up front that “cannibalism” as a Metallum lyrical theme is pretty rare, accounting for only 208 entries. (Again, as evidenced above, lyrical theme data is pretty spotty.) Filtering it down to Sweden leaves us with three bands, Carnalized, Intestinal, and Maggot Infested Ventriculus. Friends, I wish I liked the latter because of this story alone:
The band were mentioned in Swedish media when the members were nearly arrested after citizens called the sheriffs over to their practice space believing that their rehearsal was actually a violent fight. Police arrived to see the drunken band members dressed in masks and doctor's gowns. The tabloid that covered the story referred to the group as a “punk band.”
Sadly, Maggot Infested Ventriculus is the kind of inflated-rubber-dong, ‘Obscene Extreme afternoon set’ yucks that I can’t really stand. (It’s good for what it is. I’d listen to it over, like, Gutalax.) That leaves us with Carnalized and Intestinal. Carnalized never made it past a demo and that’s not streaming, so congratulations, Intestinal. Your award: Travis Tate will be listening to The Rottening while a giant peacekeeping robot incinerates your great-grandkids. What a legacy. And really, isn’t that all we can hope for in life?
BUT I GOT ONE THING LEFT TO SAY
Alright, I’ve had zero time to write lately, so that’s why this is just an intro. To that end, I might split up the components of the VaccZine in the future to make publishing easier/more frequent.
Another day, another no dollar. Another no dollar, another RYM list. This one is on reissues. Features a few of the above.
Welp, we finally talked about Grand Declaration of War. If you missed it, listen to it here.
Episode #7 has been recorded but I am turbo behind on everything and haven’t had a chance to edit. Episode #8 is being scripted. Hopefully that records in March. Episode #9 and #10 are in the works.
Yes, the full gameplay bonus EP for the Game of Metal is coming. I’m currently in production hell and, LOOK, I’VE BEEN SAD, OKAY?
I said I was going to put together a real zine after the tenth VaccZine. That is currently in the works. By the way, if you missed VaccZine #10, the year-end list that almost killed me, you can read that here.
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