Death Will Tremble | Departures
Family Average: 3/7
I hope you are all shaking out there! Me? I am shaking more than a washing machine with a brick thrown inside of it. See the video below for context.
The reason for all this spastic movement is none other than Texas's own Death Will Tremble. They are a Metal band who kindly showed us the gaping lack of metal in our blog. I (Sean) being someone who particularly enjoys a salty metal tune, obliged them and here we are today.
But I am just one member of the family. Lets look below and see what the rest of them had to say!
Death will Tremble gives a whole new meaning to the word lament.
To say their song “Departures” song grinds on does not do it justice; it is this unrelenting force of slow destruction. Imagine recording a video of your favorite childhood restaurant exploding, slowing it down immensely and then sitting there and watching it for three days. Yeah, that would about capture the feelings I am feeling right now.
There is a special kind of beauty that comes from stretching, and slowing something down. When the process is applied to music all of these spaces appear that would have otherwise gone unnoticed. Instruments seem to take on a whole new sound. The once choppy quick guitar now is now a droning wave. Heck, there is a video of the windows startup sound slowed down to twenty-four hours, and it is gorgeous. I imagine that even someone who does not enjoy metal would agree that the deterioration that takes place at the five-minute mark is gorgeous.
The structure of the song is impressive. Using its scale appropriately it is broken up into different segments. Each of the segments brings a whole new mood to the tune, and keeps it feeling funky fresh. Please make more loud sounds for me to put into my ears.
5/7
Death Will Tremble sparks no joy. None.
This is that sludgy, heavy kind of metal that always gets describes as post-something or other. I'd classify it as some kind of downtempo metal doom, and equate it to nails dragging across a chalkboard. Ambitious in its length and the immense amount of layers, it's a dense track that creates a sonic, distorted atmosphere.
While I've never been into those screamo (is that the right term?) kind of vocals, I find the tempered instrumentals most impressive. The twinkly, slowed riff guitar with the paced, sonic percussion was actually really nice. I could listen to a whole album of that sort of ambient distortion. Nevertheless, it feels completely bleak and devoid of any happiness.
Surprisingly, the lengthy piece didn't get monotonous. The transitions are clean, so even though I didn't necessarily enjoy it, I appreciated the deft skill and manipulation of it all. It's music meant to evoke a visceral response; to really immerse you in the process and emotion. It's relentless and an impressive effort; it's just not my cup of tea.
3/7
Scroll back up and press play on this song. Go do it. I’ll wait.
Listening? Okay cool. Now imagine me sitting in my sunny little Jersey City Apartment. I’m still sleepy on a Saturday morning sipping a hot chocolate and listening to birds in the garden. Imagine me, sitting in this situation, and pressing play on this. And I’m just staring blankly out the window for 13 minutes, confused. Not upset, just confused. Why? Why did Sean make me listen to this? Why.
*Momentary pause to head bang alone*
I don’t hate it. Just goes on a bit too long for me. And my little bird chirping happy Saturday.
2/7
“Won’t you stay a little longer?” 13 minutes of slow screamo is enough for me thank you Death Will Tremble.
So death metal isn’t normally my forte, but there are some songs I’ve heard that I can get into, like I can understand the appeal of it. This one missed the mark for me though. Usually when I hear death metal it’s like, pulsing and energetic. But this one was a weird combination of slow alt-rock with a screamo singer. In other death metal I’ve heard there’s a certain technique to the vocals. It’s hard to replicate or describe, but it’s almost demonic or monstrous in nature and sounds pretty cool. This guy is kinda just shouting. The music itself was repetitive and insubstantial, your typical fare of guitars and drums. It seems to shift genres halfway through when the vocals drop out and the instruments become more tame, but then the singing starts up again with the somewhat slower tempo. The singer is coherent enough though that you can make out the lyrics, but there pretty middle of the road too.
It was too calm to jam to but too abrasive to use for background noise. Again, death metal isn’t my usual genre so I might be missing the mark, but to me everything about the song just seems to come off as uninspired.
3/7