Author: J

J is a DJ at WKNC and a staunch enjoyer of dark and moody music.

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Music Education

The Metal Minute: Death Metal

Cover for "Violence Unimagined" by Cannibal Corpse

Do you hear it? Just over the horizon, clanging and rattling like a thousand empty soup cans?

It’s the Metal Minute. Last time, we discussed doom metal, a slow and more articulate version of metal. For this installment, things are getting grotesque and growly as we explore the world’s most brutal musical genre: death metal.

What is it?

Death metal can trace its roots to the 80’s, with major stylistic influences derived from early black metal bands like Venom and thrash bands like Slayer and Hellhammer.

Cover for “Realm of Chaos” by Bolt Thrower

Early death metal bands were inspired by these sounds, but wanted to create something harsher — more deathlike — and began to experiment with heavier instrumentation, more abrasive vocals and increasingly grotesque subject matter (see: “Frantic Disembowelment” by Cannibal Corpse).

What’s it Sound Like?

According to Chris Krovatin of Kerrang! magazine, “When a non-metal person describes metal by making a growling noise, they’re thinking of death metal.”

Cover for “The Enduring Spirit” by Tomb Mold

The genre features fast-paced tempos, overdriven guitar, blast beats on double-bass drums and abrupt changes to tempo and time signature. The resulting sound is heavy, distorted and aggressive. Combined with guttural, often inhuman-sounding vocals, the genre presents an intense and expansive listening experience.

Subgenres Within Subgenres

Like many other subgenres, death metal has several sub-subgenres. They include:

  • Brutal death metal

Pretty self-explanatory, brutal death metal favors faster, heavier and more brutal playing styles. The death metal nesting doll continues, as a sub-sub-subgenre called slam death metal has emerged from brutal death metal, infusing hardcore punk and even hip-hop elements into its sound.

  • Deathcore

The “deathification” of metalcore. I.e., the collision of hardcore punk, metal, and death metal. Like metalcore, deathcore is a label often rejected by metal dudebros who see the subgenre as “inauthentic.”

  • Death doom

The marriage of doom metal with death metal. Slower tempos and a more broody atmosphere with the growls and blast beats of death metal.

  • Melodic death metal

Pioneered in Sweden, leaning closer towards mainstream metal with a more melodic style.

  • Technical death metal

Also known as tech-death or prog-death, presents progressive metal with a death metal slant. Time signatures, rhythms and instrumentation becomes more complex — or, some would say, progressive — within this sub-sub-genre.

Who Makes it?

The death metal scene is robust. Here are several genre heavy-hitters:

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Concert Review

Kyoto Punk Quartet Otoboke Beaver Rocks Cat’s Cradle

Otoboke Beaver at The Crocodile in Seattle by David Lee. Licensed CC BY 2.0 DEED https://tinyurl.com/yc64f3y4

Japanese garage punk band Otoboke Beaver melted faces and absolutely blew my mind at their March 26 performance at Cat’s Cradle.

If you’re unfamiliar with Otoboke Beaver, I cover them in this recent post. Here’s the rundown of their show:

The Openers

The first act of the night was NC-based riot grrrl band Babe Haven. Fueled by “rage ‘n’ Slim Jims,” this all-girl queer quartet threatened to blow the roof off the place with their vicious musical energy.

Cover for “Uppercut” by Babe Haven

Playing tracks from their most recent album, “Uppercut,” lead vocalist Lillie riveted the audience with her aggressively gritty screams and contagious vigor. Partway through the set, she passed the mic to guitarist Naomi for “Kung Pow,” a rallying cry against orientalism and fetishization that got everyone in the room thrashing.

For more info about Babe Haven’s “Uppercut,” check out “Babe Haven: NC Queer Punk” by Ben.

Following Babe Haven was the Drinking Boys and Girls Choir, a three-piece punk group hailing from Daegu, South Korea. The band’s name comes from its earliest members, who bonded over their shared love of drinking and singing.

Cover for “Linda Linda” by Drinking Boys and Girls Choir

Drinking Boys and Girls Choir presents an upbeat, summery take on punk, with airy beats and an absolutely sublime guitar. The band’s sound moves seamlessly along a spectrum from gritty skate punk to harmonic indie rock.

I’ve never heard anything like it. Myeong-jin Kim’s expert drumwork and Megan Nisbet’s entrancing guitar solos made my skin erupt in gooseflesh.

Otoboke Beaver

Otoboke Beaver’s performance was everything I’d hoped for. With an aces setlist, commanding stage presence and dazzling visual effects, Otoboke Beaver delivered one of the best concert experiences I’ve ever had.

Drawing both from their 2022 album “Super Champon” and the iconic 2019 “Itekoma Hits,” the group had everyone in the room at their command.

Cover for “Super Champon” by Otoboke Beaver

When lead vocalist Accorinrin — clad in a 60’s-style pink dress and matching eyeliner — raised a silencing hand, everyone clammed up immediately (except for one man whose incessant “whooping” earned him a scolding “shut the f–k up, man!” from a peeved concertgoer). Later, the audience erupted with delight as she brandished us a manicured middle finger.

Conversely, guitarist Yoyoyoshie’s ebullient orange pallette and cartoonishly cheery demeanor whipped the audience into a frenzy, her high-pitched screams and seemingly elastic facial expressions paired with an aggressive rapid-fire guitar.

Otoboke Beaver at The Crocodile in Seattle – Posted by David Lee, licensed CC BY 2.0 DEED.

Her penchant for audience engagement — compelling us to clap in time with the beat for “Don’t Call Me Mojo” — blurred the hard-set line between stage and audience. This effect reached its ultimate climax when she dove into the audience at the end of the set, crowdsurfing on a giant beaver-themed pool floatie.

Final Thoughts

Sometimes shows with multiple openers can drag, especially when they differ stylistically. However, Babe Haven and Drinking Boys and Girls Choir presented such powerful energy that watching their performances felt like shows in and of themselves rather than a preface to the “main event.”

Ultimately, the night was a showcase of several different faces of female-fronted punk music, and it was absolutely riotous in all the best ways.

Categories
Band/Artist Profile Classic Album Review

If You Don’t Like Snakes, This Band Doesn’t Like You

Cover for "Venom" by Awesome Snakes

Awesome Snakes was the tongue-in-cheek side project of Annie Holoien and Danny Henry of The Soviettes, a Minneapolis pop-punk outfit from the early 2000s.

Described by Holoien as a “f–k-around band,” the group’s iconic sound landed them not just critical reception, but a feature in the 2009 game Skate 2.

“[We] just needed to be a little more free and loose than the Soviettes could be,” Henry said in a 2006 interview with Silver Magazine. “So, we started Awesome Snakes, the idea being that we’d make a sort of jokey-mixed tape only we’d find funny. But we’d have total control.”

Photo by john crozier on Unsplash

The band’s first release, “Awesome Snakes,” came out through the cassette-only label Home Taping Is Killing the Record Industry in 2004. Two years later, the band put out “Venom,” their first and only LP, with Crustacean Records.

Despite the release’s highly focused subject matter, (centering pretty exclusively on “snakes” and/or “things that are awesome”) it was listed in the A.V. Club’s Minneapolis edition of “Best Music of 2006.”

In 2021, the band put out an expanded edition of “Venom” through Stand Up! Records as well as several vinyl pressings.

“At first, we approached them but they said they did only spoken word comedy,” Henry said. “But after seeing our show, they wanted to make a deal.”

“Venom”

Though certainly an accidental success, “Venom” is an objectively good album. Its pop-adjacent, lo-fi take on punk rock is interpersed with improv-like lyrics and incongruous soundbytes from random cassettes, giving it an uncanny multi-dimensionality that calls to mind the romantic eccentricity of 2000s indie films.

“It’s not a conscious way of entertainment,” said Henry. “We just do what we think is funny and good and if other people like it, great.”

Photo by Jan Kopřiva on Unsplash

Perhaps it’s this instinctual quality that makes “Venom” such a great release. The album feels like an expertly-executed comedic bit from the punkishly fab cover art to the discography itself, which features song titles like “I Want a Snake,” “Snakes Vs. Jerks,” “1950s UFO Vs. Snakes,” “The Future of the Snake Industry” and several others.

It’s clear from the album’s first track that Holoien and Henry are having an absolute blast.

It’s authentically fun and unintentionally genius. The cheery ebullience of Holoien’s vocals — at times reminiscent of 80s pop — contrast with Henry’s improvisationally unhinged and borderline inebriated spoken word. The lack of diegetic context — the question of why snakes? is never answered — only compounds the album’s bizarro humor.

Final Thoughts

Awesome Snakes is a great band for people who don’t take themselves too seriously.

Their work reminds me of the egg punk genre, though their sound is considerably less distorted or DEVO-esque. The staunch DIY quality of “Venom” is a refreshing return to what makes punk fun: f–ing around until something feels good, and chasing that feeling as far as it will go.

My personal favorite track, “I Want a Snake,” (featured in Skate 2) will live in my brain for years.

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Music Education

The Metal Minute: Doom Metal

Cover for "Psalm 9" by Trouble

We’re back this week with another installment of the Metal Minute. Many moons ago, I covered progressive metal, an artsy and psychedelic interpretation of the genre.

This week, we’re exploring the despairing world of doom metal.

What is it?

Doom metal is a subgenre of heavy metal that casts a gloomy, despondent shadow. If Edgar Allan Poe was a metalhead, this would be his genre of choice.

Cover for “Dehumanizer” by Black Sabbath

The genre can be traced back to the 1980s influence of Black Sabbath, a band that’s blues-infused style laid the groundwork for what would eventually develop into its own scene.

What’s it Sound Like?

The subgenre features slow, almost laborious tempos that compound an overarching tone of dread, despair and neurosis.

It’s common practice for guitarists and bassists to detune their instruments in order to achieve maximum heaviness. This effect leads many to describe the genre as “sludgy.”

Cover for “Epicus Doomicus Metallicus” by Candlemass

The lyrical content of doom metal songs tends to center around several core themes: depression, paranoia, despair and occasionally the occult. While other subgenres, such as black metal, lend themselves towards extreme vocal distortion, most doom metal vocalists sing in a clear fashion.

Thus, it’s all the easier to pick out a song’s bleak themes. For example, “Solitude” by Candlemass represents clear doom metal ethos in its lyricism.

I’m sitting here alone in darkness
Waiting to be free,
Lonely and forlorn I am crying
I long for my time to come
Death means just life
Please let me die in solitude

“Solitude” – Candlemass

Subgenres Within Subgenres

Not only is doom metal a heavy metal subgenre, but is possesses several subgenres itself. Sub-subgenres, if you will.

Doom metal subgenres include drone metal, epic doom metal, gothic doom metal, sludge metal (also known as sludgecore), progressive doom, and many others.

Cover for “When the Kite String Pops” by Acid Bath

Each subgenre retains the core elements of doom metal but with the integration of qualities from other styles. For example, sludge metal is a combination of doom metal and hardcore punk.

Songs like “Finger Painting of the Insane” by Acid Bath feature the loping guitar rhythms characteristic of doom metal with the screaming vocals and “punch” of hardcore.

Who makes it?

There are numerous bands operating in the doom metal scene. Several major players include Type O Negative, Trouble, My Dying Bride and Candlemass.

Cover for “Bloody Kisses” by Type O Negative

Some of my favorite doom metal tracks are:

  • “Christian Woman” by Type O Negative
  • “Tripping a Blind Man” by Type O Negative
  • “Bewitched” by Candlemass
  • “Plague Bird” by Novembers Doom
  • “Nightfall” by Isole
Categories
Band/Artist Profile Concert Preview

Unwound Returns to Cat’s Cradle After Over Two Decades

Cover for "Repetition" by Unwound

After over 20 years of stasis, post-hardcore band Unwound is back from the dead with a 2024 tour.

The band will touch down in Carrboro, North Carolina March 22 at the legendary Cat’s Cradle alongside noise rock band Cherubs.

Unwound went on indefinite hiatus after their 2001 release “Leaves Turn Inside You,” the “Unwound album that ended all Unwound albums.”

Cover for “Leaves Turn Inside You” by Unwound

The band announced their reunion in 2022 following the 2020 death of bassist Vern Rumsey. Jared Warren of Melvins, Karp and Big Business stepped in to take over Rumsey’s role.

In February 2023, the band played their first show in over two decades at Seattle’s Showbox.

In November of the same year, they announced a 2024 tour featuring five cities on the east coast.

The tour kicks off March 20 in Atlanta before stopping in Knoxville for the city’s annual Big Ears Festival March 21. Unwound will perform in Carrboro March 22 before moving on to D.C. and Jersey City.

Rewound

“When we put Unwound on the shelf in 2002, we never thought we’d return to the project,” said drummer Sara Lund in a 2022 press release.

Following the announcement of Unwound’s 2023 reunion tour, demand for ticket sales was so high that the band added 10 additional dates.

“Starting over again is a rebellious act against our failure,” said founder Justin Trosper.

Cover for “You Bite My Tongue” by Unwound

Unwound emerged as a stylistic diversion from the band’s original project, Giant Henry, formed in 1988 while the members were still in high school.

“The first era of Giant Henry was sillier — making fun of grunge music, but we actually sounded grungy,” said Trosper in an interview with Tobi Vail. Unwound, Trosper explained, drew inspiration from Melvins, Black Flag, Nirvana and Flipper.

For those unfamiliar with Unwound’s sound, it’s best described as the impact point between smoky atmosphere and punk angst. The virile edge of Black Flag meets the cigarette-tinged vapor of Nirvana.

Categories
Band/Artist Profile Concert Preview

All-Female Japanese Punk Band Coming to Cat’s Cradle

Cover for "Iketoma Hits" by Otoboke Beaver

Named after an Osaka love hotel, Otoboke Beaver is an exuberant four-piece punk band from Kyoto, Japan.

The band kicked off their 2024 North American tour back in February, and will perform at Carrboro’s legendary Cat’s Cradle March 26.

If you’re not familiar with Otoboke Beaver (a crime, honestly), there’s still time. This totally rocking band will make for an unforgettable concert experience.

Wild Garage Rock

Self-described as a “Japanese girls ‘knock out or pound cake’ band,” Otoboke Beaver formed in 2009 after the members met at a college music society.

They released their first demo album in 2011 and a live album in 2012, both of which gained traction among Japanese audiences.

Otoboke Beaver began touring internationally in 2016, and have since garnered critical acclaim from numerous sources, including Dave Grohl, Japanese actor Tadanobu Asano, Tom Moreno, and numerous others.

Cover for “SUPER CHAMPON ス​ー​パ​ー​チ​ャ​ン​ポ​ン” by Otoboke Beaver

Otoboke Beaver’s garage punk style regularly flirts with madness. However, amid discordant arrangements of guitar and vocals, there’s a perceptible grand design.

Spontaneity is controlled and masterfully cultivated to create a pervading sense of unity among the band’s members.

The band’s description of “knock out or pound cake” is surprisingly apt; their sound constantly alternates between vicious, unbridled energy and idyllic ebullience.

Cover for “Love Is Short” by Otoboke Beaver

Subject matter comes directly from the band members themselves, drawing from romantic misadventures, grievances with chauvinism, sexual desire and the monotony of the daily grind.

I have no time to spend for you
seeking for a one-night stand, old fart has come
abso-f–king-lutely you’re out of question
so full-of-yourself old dirty fart

shut up
shut up
shut up and Don’t look down on me!

“Dirty old fart is waiting for my reaction” – Otoboke Beaver
Cover for “‘yobantoite mojo​’​/​’don’t call me MOJO'” by Otoboke Beaver

While the band doesn’t consider themselves to be distinctly feminist, a group of Japanese women loudly and irreverently declaring their desires in a white and male-dominated genre is nothing short of groundbreaking.

Otoboke Beaver’s latest album, “Super Champon,” came out in 2022, and all I have to say is this: if the band’s setlist draws at all from this release, audiences are in for a riotous time.

Song Highlights

Categories
Band/Artist Profile Classic Album Review

High-Functioning Flesh: The Industrial Duo You Didn’t Know You Needed

Cover for "Human Remains" by High-Functioning Flesh

Darkness meets drum machine with Los Angeles electro-punk duo High-Functioning Flesh.

With a sound somewhere between DEVO, Molchat Doma and Portion Control, High-Functioning Flesh is an industrial hall essential.

Much like the word “flesh,” the band’s music is carnal, tactile and vivid.

And as per usual, I found them entirely by accident.

Expanses of “The Flesh”

Often abbreviated to HFF, the band emerged in Los Angeles after Susan Subtract and Gregory Vand attended a Youth Code show.

The band’s debut album, “A Unity of Miseries – A Misery of Unities” came out on DKA Records in 2014. The album struck a chord in the industry with its evocative style inspired by sci-fi, body horror and archetypal punk angst

According to the band, their work “seeks to revive us all from our spectacle-induced coma,” presenting a sobering sound to rend the veil of capitalist monotony.

Cover for “A Unity of Miseries – A Misery of Unities” by High-Functioning Flesh

HFF cites Cabaret Voltaire and Portion Control as major stylistic influences, though the duo certainly brings their own qualities to the craft through elaborate instrumentation and production effects.

“A Unity of Miseries – A Misery of Unities” is a dynamic album, highly tactile and hypnotically raucous through its sprawls of synth, drum and fried vocals. Its industrial quality is heavy-handed and walloping like metal slamming against metal.

HFF’s sophomore album, “Definite Structures,” came out in May 2016 through Dais Records. The album reflects the progression of the band’s electro-industrial style, leaning into further experimentation with sound layering and auditory effects. The album is a kaleidoscope, evoking the brutalist edge of Skinny Puppy.

Cover for “Definite Structures” by High-Functioning Flesh

Following this release, the band dropped the single “Human Remains” through the same label. The single features two tracks, “Human Remains” and “Heightened State.”

For this release, the band turned to mellower vocals with less distortion, leaning back into the style explored with their first album.

HFF’s most recent release, “Culture Cut,” came out in 2017. A blind comparison of “Culture Cut” against “Human Remains” would almost suggest the existence of two bands.

Cover for “Culture Cut” by High-Functioning Flesh

“Culture Cut” clearly draws more from the same inspirations as “Definite Structures.”

According to Dais Records, each new release highlights the band’s evoltion “from a handful of lo-fi flashback demos to aggressively realized synth-punk dance floor anthems.”

And Dais Records is wholly correct. The music of High-Functioning Flesh belongs on the dancefloor for leather and PVC-clad youths to gyrate to.

Song Highlights

Categories
New Album Review

Album Review: “II” By Theatre’s Kiss

This week, I’ve been playing the role of “consumptive wretch” as my COVID-wrecked immune system struggles to prevail over a particularly virulent cold. I’d probably be doing better if I could remember to keep drinking water.

Somewhere between all the langushing malaise, pneumatic wheezing and bodily agony, I managed to catch the latest drop by post-punk artist Theatre’s Kiss — one of my top artists of 2023, I might add — and I’ve dragged myself from my sickbed to talk about it.

“II”

“II,” released March 1, is the long-awaited sequel to the 2022 album “Leidensmelodien” (which I reviewed last year).

The mind behind Theatre’s Kiss, a mysterious corpse-painted individual known as “Fassse Lua,” explained to Post-Punk.com back in 2023 that “II” is part of what will become the “Solitude Chapter” of Theatre’s Kiss.

Cover for “II” by Theatre’s Kiss

The artist’s prior releases, “Self-Titled” and “Leidensmelodien,” are two halves of the “Grief” chapter. Apparently, the “Solitude Chapter” will be centered around two albums and one EP.

If Fassse Lua’s plans remain the same, then “II” is the project’s EP.

Consisting of three short tracks, “II” explores themes of addiction and dependence through the artist’s characteristic black metal-esque take on post-punk.

The EP

The first track on the EP, “Marie,” seems to capture the crux of the “Solitude Chapter.”

Opening with a sample from a newscast about drug use, the song is surprisingly upbeat. By Theatre’s Kiss standards, that is.

Based on the lyrics, “Marie” is about a young girl’s struggle with drug addiction. What’s particularly interesting about the song is how it serves as an introduction for the “Solitude Chapter” as a whole, reading as an opening narration to an unraveling story.

Photo by Raluca Enea on Unsplash

Wrenching, plaintive vocals and cold arrangements of guitar, bass and drums transport the listener into an arctic landscape.

There’s subtle drama in the growling voice that drops in to state “haunted by demons she lost her way/ chasing a high to numb the pain” and in the delicate staccato of a string instrument that emerges like a floating blossom from a bleak, dense fog.

“drogomanicus” presents a narrative more abstract, with lyrics like:

Fragments of joy

Shattered on the floor

Enveloped by cravings relentless scream

“drogomanicus” by Theatre’s Kiss

While it’s clear that the song’s references to “cravings relentless” signal to the addiction of “Marie,” I’m not wholly sure what “drogomanicus” is meant to signify.

From some quick Googling, I’ve found that “Drogo” is a masculine name of German origin. (Which makes sense, since Theatre’s Kiss is based in Germany). The name means “To bear” or “To carry.”

Thus, one could speculate that “drogomanicus” is about bearing the burden of emotional turmoil wrought by addiction.

Thematic speculation aside, the song’s plain beautiful. The artist’s talent for instrumentation truly shines through in this ethereal, somber arrangement. I listen to this song and consider bittersweetness. I imagine fragments of sunlight punching through stormclouds.

Photo by Intricate Explorer on Unsplash

“Imprisoned,” the EP’s final track, is where things get dicey.

While “Marie” opens with clear references to a girl (presumably Marie) and “drogomanicus” is devoid of pronouns, “Imprisoned” refers directly to a male figure.

The song is harder-hitting than its two counterparts, with strong guitar and bass almost drowning out the vocalist. There’s clearly more emotional punch here, and the lyrical subtext has my queer English major brain on fire.

In “Imprisoned,” an unnamed male figure finds himself “bound by the grip of faith” and confined by “the fear of damnation,” leading him to “[suppress] his essence” and “[deny]” his gender.

Photo by Polina Kuzovkova on Unsplash

It doesn’t take a lot of hoop-jumping to piece together a queer narrative from that. But aside from the song’s lyrics and the very vague information provided by Post-Punk.com, there’s nothing yet available to contextualize that “Imprisoned” is meant to signify.

Is it a trans narrative? Are “Marie” and the unnamed man the same person? Will we ever find out?

Hopefully the continuation of the “Solitude Chapter” will shine some light upon this.

Final Thoughts

My only gripe with this release is how aggravatingly short it is.

I’m crossing my fingers that it won’t take another year for the chapter’s next two albums to come out. You can guarantee I’ll be hopping on here to wax poetic about them when they do.

Categories
Band/Artist Profile Classic Album Review

Artist Spotlight: Zulu

Cover for "A New Tomorrow" by Zulu

I love heavy music. And as someone who is far from a genre purist, I love heavy music that experiments with the “hardcore” label. Music that challenges what hardcore can be is extremely special to me.

I’ve talked about bands that subvert the archetype of “hardcore” before. In November of 2023, I covered Agabas, a band that blends the chaos of metal with jazz.

This week, I’m covering a band that not only fuses genres, but is doing groundbreaking work to elevate the Black community in the hardcore scene.

The Future of Hardcore

Zulu is a black-fronted hardcore punk band from Los Angeles. Formed by multi-instrumentalist Anaiah Lei, the band takes a leaf out of the powerviolence playbook, presenting a raw and aggressive distillation of hardcore punk.

What makes Zulu different from other hardcore acts, however, are the samples of funk, soul, reggae and spoken word woven into their music.

Cover for “Our Day Will Come” by Zulu

For example, the track “For Sista Humphrey” features a heavy guitar-drum duo and guttural vocals before abruptly transitioning into a soft soul melody. In “52 Fatal Strikes,” rage gives way to serenity as a brief classical instrumental jumps in.

While the contrast sounds jarring, it works.

By injecting black-pioneered genres into their music, Zulu imbues their sound with a distinct and unwavering identity. This is especially important when one considers that Zulu’s lyricism is all about elevating Blackness and empowering Black individuals.

You see tension, aggression

Only anger

I see peace

Community

Black joy is divinity

“Our Day is Now” – Zulu

However, as Lei said in an interview with Kerrang! in 2022, the band’s connection to Black culture shouldn’t stand as their only defining feature.

“…when it comes to bringing in a band where all of us are Black, that is an important thing but also people make it a lot bigger than it is,” Lei said. “I guess only because it’s not the norm, and that is what’s the issue. It should be very normal.”

Zulu’s central aim, according to Lei, is to experiment freely within the scene and create a space for others to do the same.

“The one thing I wanted to do with this project was be myself entirely,” Lei said.

Discography

Zulu released their first EP, “Our Day Will Come,” in 2019. The following year, they released “My People…Hold On.”

Both EPs feature a melange of rigorous hardcore interspersed with samples from speeches, spoken word, rap, soul music and other historically Black genres.

Zulu’s first full-length album, “A New Tomorrow,” came out in 2023. The album features several singles the band released in 2022 and early 2023.

Cover for “My People…Hold On” by Zulu

The album’s opening track, “Africa,” features a bright classical arrangement before the proceeding track, “For Sista Humphrey,” fades in with a hellish guitar and vocals. A similar pattern continues throughout the album, with hardcore tracks contrasted with peaceful, slow-moving melodies.

Thematically, this poses an interesting narrative. As the band’s lyricism suggests, this contrast illustrates the dual narratives surrounding Blackness: the imposition of an aggressive, violent nature versus the reality of peace, community and creativity.

I’m looking forward to seeing the direction of Zulu’s future projects and seeing them live, since I missed their last live show.

Recommended Tracks

Categories
Music Education

Dub: The Genre That Built Goth

Black vinyl records
Photo by Miriana Dorobanțu on Unsplash

I’ve touched on the history of goth music on this platform before.

Considering the sheer volume of goth and goth-adjacent bands I cover on here, I think it’s safe to say that I’m fairly goth-focused. However, I’m far from an expert. When it comes to anything I’m passionate about, I consider myself perpetually learning and perpetually growing.

I’ve been long-familiar with the influence of punk music on the development of the goth subculture. Post-punk exists a staple of goth music (and my top genre of 2023).

Photo by blocks on Unsplash

What I wasn’t aware of, however, was the influence of black culture on early goth music. Once goth began to branch out from its deathrock roots, artists drew from numerous inspirations.

Among them, and arguably among the most important to the scene, was a genre I wasn’t even aware of until I started my research. This genre was not only important, but quite literally spearheaded the production of one of the most iconic goth songs of all time.

What is Dub?

Dub emerged from the reggae scene in the late ’60s and early ’70s. In its earliest iterations, dub tracks were simply instrumental versions of reggae songs.

According to an article by MasterClass, artists would strip a track — usually of the reggae, ska and rocksteady genres — of its leading vocals and highlight bass and drums, occasionally mixing in their own sound effects.

The “first” dub track was created in 1968 when the engineer for Treasure Isle studio accidentally pressed a copy of “On the Beach” by the Paragons without the accompanying vocal track. The mistake was a hit among Jamaican DJs, who improvisationally rapped (a practice called toasting) over the instrumentals.

Cover for “On the Beach” by The Paragons

Jamaican audio engineer Osbourne “King Tubby” Ruddock, roused by the track’s unexpected success, took to his mixing desk to experiment. Ruddock’s influence was instrumental in the growth of dub’s popularity and its spread overseas.

None of this would have been possible if not for the advent of multitrack recording, which allowed artists to strip down tracks in the first place. Other technological advancements in the recording industry would later prove instrumental in the development of the genre.

Cover of “Escape to the Asylum of Dub” by Mad Professor

In the 1980s, a dub scene emerged in the United Kingdom with artists such as Mad Professor, Scientist, Jah Shaka, Adrian Sherwood, UB40 and Mikey Dread, who inspired acts like the Clash and the Police.

This influence can be seen among tracks like “Police & Thieves” and “So Lonely.”

During this time, electronic elements also made their way into the scene, leading to subgenres like dubstep and dub techno. Contemporary dub is considered an electronic genre as a result, often played in clubs and dance halls.

What’s that got to do with goth music?

The list of genres influenced by dub is multitudinous, featuring rock, post-punk, pop, hip-hop, house, techno, edm and many others.

If you’ve made it this far, you might be thinking: oh, dub influenced the goth scene through its relationship to post-punk. And while you wouldn’t be wrong, there’s an even more overt example of dub’s impact on the goth scene.

“Bela Lugosi’s Dead,” the debut single of Bauhaus, is widely considered to be the first gothic rock record. Released on Aug. 6, 1979, the 9-minute track served as a tongue-in-cheek tribute to the late Bela Lugosi, star of the 1931 film “Dracula.”

Cover for “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” by Bauhaus

According to bassist David J in a 2018 interview with Post-Punk.com, dub and reggae were major influences in the song’s production.

“I mean, basically Bela was our interpretation of dub,” J said.

The sprawling instrumental beats and deep, preternatural bass of the song’s first half certainly echo dub’s style.

“It’s all very intuited,” frontman Peter Murphy said in a 2019 interview with Kerrang! magazine. “Very dub.”

Additional Reading

For some more info on reggae, check out “Chef’s Quick Bite of Reggae.”

For some additional reading on dub, check out “The Roots of Dub” by Kirt Degiorgio.