Dødheimsgard started as a standard black metal outfit (1996’s Monumental Possession stands out), then threw fans a major curve ball with 1999’s 666 International. The album was, frankly, a friggin’ mess. Blastbeats and industrial hip hop and classical piano interludes made for an occasionally interesting but wildly scattershot listen. A name contraction in 2000 to DHG was probably warranted, but created further brand confusion.
The Snuff Dreams Are Made ofGhostforce Soul Constrictor
Years have passed, and the time off has evidently done good for the band. Supervillain Outcast (Moonfog, 2007) is much more coherent than its predecessor, pulling back slightly on experimentation while returning to the band’s black metal roots. The production is also much more sophisticated now. Thus, surprises like the strange horn samples in “The Snuff Dreams Are Made Of” or the wacky techno noises in “Ghostforce Soul Constrictor” actually work this time.
Ephel Duath comes to mind, not in complexity, but in menacing emotional detachment, if that makes any sense. Mr. Bungle gone black metal (which would be Ephel Duath’s first album, actually) is also another possible reference point. I’m not sure what this album says, if it’s saying anything; then again, I’m not sure if Mr. Bungle ever said anything, and they were similarly fascinating.
The mix is a bit clean and light for me (Abigor’s recent Fractal Possession has similar sound); for industrial black metal, I prefer more dirt and malice a la Anaal Nathrakh. But while this record doesn’t really hit me viscerally, it’s satisfying cerebrally, offering lots of layers and details. Of note is the band’s stunning MySpace, designed by Justin Bartlett. It’s near impossible to make a MySpace page look good, but Bartlett has done it. Supervillain Outcast is available from Moonfog in Europe and The End in the US.
I know you refrain from talking about what the music means to leave that up to anyone’s personal interpretation, but this album is ridiculous. If somebody feels comfortable listening to their metal be as stupid as this:
“Sucking the dust from the cage
Varicose veins and mind games
Guzzling barrels of skin-stripping shit
A festering drink of face-breaking cocksucker”
then I don’t know what to say. This has been hyped to high heavens, ands it’s just redundant, soddily made (production is attended to, as you say) and ultimately irrelevant.
Heh, I laughed at some of the lyrics, too. However, there’s virtually zero value in Cannibal Corpse’s lyrics, and I find that band quite relevant and enjoyable musically. Their art is inferior to a band that has the “total package” – but it still works on certain levels.
Actually I contest that claim. Let’s look at the first song from the first Cannibal Corpse record.
Shredded Humans
Early hours, open road, family of five – on their way home
Having enjoyed a day in the sun, their encounter with gore has just begun
A homicidal fool not knowing left from right, now has the family in his sight
Trying to perceive if he’s blind or insane,
he steers his car into the other lane
Both of them collide, expressions horrified
Head on at full speed, the vultures will soon feed
The father of three was impaled on the wheel,
as his skull became a part of the dash
His eyeballs ejected his sight uneffected, he saw his own organs collapse
His seatbelt was useless for holding him back, it simply cut him in two
Legs were crushed, out leaked pus as his spinal cord took off and flew
The mother took flight through the glass, and ended up impaled on a sign
Her intestines stretched from the car down the road for a quarter of a mile
Absurdist reminder of mortality. Naturalist underlining that Anatomy is Destiny. Life through the lens of senselessness, no purpose, life starts in agony and ends in agony and nobody understands the stuff in between. Black humour as the cure for this exact theater of the absurd.
A lot of people knock Cannibal Corpse lyrics without having thought what use they are. The subject matter is purposefully grotesque, but they’re well written and with literary merit. I can see some of you in the back rolling your eyes, yes I said LITERARY MERIT.
Dodheimsgard aren’t even trying to write in proper english. I call that BULLSHIT and nobody should pay money for it. Go back and listen to Fleurety, idiots.
Ha, I’ve never seen Chris Barnes and “literary merit” mentioned together before. Not bad.
I know you’ve thought about what effects extreme metal can have (I think we discussed it on the ex-Khanate project write-up comment space) so is it really fair to say ‘Cannibal Corpse are just silly entertainment, their lyrics suck’ and variations of this so easily? I know it’s probably a good reflex to want to distance oneself from what by most accounts is a very tasteless sort of imagery, but let’s give some credit where credit’s due: extreme metal for all its pancreatic hematomas and dead raped babies is one of the few sorts of music where the existentialist charges of mortality are brought to the forefront and prodded with an almost morbid fascination. That’s a good thing. Let’s not neuter them because dead babies are icky.
Dodheimsgard achieve absolutely nothing aesthetically with their new record. It should be put on the ’shit’ pile, whereas a band that waves a dead baby around with a clear intent and purpose should be put in the ‘promising’ pile.
(oh I should mention I’ve not heard any Cannibal Corpse post-Barnes, so I don’t know if they’re now total self-parody or anything)
Well, one Carcass is great and plenty. Dead babies, whatever, but once you start cutting up women, that’s a bit more problematic.
Cannibal Corpse post-Barnes is when they came into their own as a solid, fairly technical death metal band. The most recent album is shockingly good, and the one before that is pretty darn tasty, too. Corpsegrinder Fisher is better for the Corpse; Barnes is better for Six Feet Under.
“Dead babies, whatever, but once you start cutting up women, that’s a bit more problematic.”
That really blows my mind. Dead babies, whatever?!
I think you should keep in mind that a lot of metal bands don’t have English as their first language, let alone that they were taught to speak it properly. DHG are Norwegian, and even though Scandinavians often do speak their languages better than other Europeans it is still a problem. It is one reason why a lot of the Norwegian bands sing in their native tongue in the first place.
Its not an excuse but it does not make bands worse than others. Just look up lyrics by Immortal and Emperor and notice the weird grammar and childish rhymes; they DID make awesome records though!
I guess what Im really trying to say is; bands like DHG (and Ephel Duath too by the way) make awesome music, you just have to be lenient about their sloppy English, they spend their time practicing guitar licks in stead of studying the English language.
With kind regards,
a (Dutch) non-native speaker of English
I’m a non-native speaker too (greek). I don’t mind ‘bad’ english in metal just because it’s bad. I mind lack of effort. If you want to write this sort of dystopian meta-cynical type of lyric that Dodheimsgard are going for, that takes a lot of skill, a lot of effort. If you don’t have the skill, if you respect your work you get an outside contributor to translate your lyrics from your language to english. The way Amorphis did it in Tuonela.
The meaning – if there ever was any invested in these lyrics, and I propose there wasn’t any particular one – is lost. It feels ‘written in the studio’. Cool words in a row. Even if it wasn’t, that it feels like this is a failure. Either they can’t see how ridiculous what they’re singing about is, or they see this and can’t be bothered to do better.
About Immortal or Emperor, I don’t know much about the latter, but at least with Immortal I could follow what each song was about quite clearly.
By the ‘native language’ thing, you hit on a good point in my opinion: I’d much rather listen to a band sing in their own language than in badly written and vacant english. Also I think there was a matter of nationalist pride when bands in the second wave sang in their native tongues.
Interview with Kvohst of DodheimsGard 2007
By Bradley Smith:
"The lyrical side of Supervillain Outcast corresponds to a comic book theme and Supervillains in general. Can you expand upon what the relationship is between your lyrics and that realm and how also that relates to the members of DHG within the context of the band and in your normal life?(at least as normal as possible, heh heh)
-It's not necessarily true that the lyrics correspond to a comic book theme in general. That's not what the title is all about.
I think the Marvel and comic book influences are just part of it. To make people understand certain things and concepts you have to package them in a way that appeals to their experiences. There are a lot of people into this music, who, like me, as a child read a lot of comic books and graphic novels about supervillains and superheroes. I was always fascinated about the line between good and evil. The villains in the Marvel and comic book world were not always definable black and white heroes or villains. Often these characters are torn between good and evil and I think that is what drew me to them initially. I used the comic book associations to really help people digest that whole dichotomy between good and evil. So the lyrical themes are not exclusively tethered in this comic book world. They are all separate dialogues or visual narrative snapshots of the world we encounter every day, but I like to focus on this struggle between good and evil, between our moral selves and the more degraded and deranged parts of our psyche. The title of the album just encapsulates what the lyrics deal with – but it doesn't have to be about supervillains literally, if you don't want it to be – it could just be another word for Satan. Satan as the ultimate ?supervillain outcast?. I think most of the lyrics are quite realistic and deal with real images from pretty frank and explicit viewpoint. In that respect they relate entirely to our lives in reality and aren't really fictional works in the way bands talk about primordial snakes or the fires of hell, or Satan as a horned devil. We are a Satanic band and each of us follows our own occult/Satanic path and I think the way I view the world as such has to be reflected in the lyrics. You can read a lot more into our lyrics than you would a band that deals with mythological themes, Lord Of The Rings inspired lyrics and role-playing fantasy games because these worlds exist."