Mass Burial: The Black Dahlia Murder, Deflorate

The fourth record by The Black Dahlia Murder, and another time where the same words and descriptions filter through my mind. Melodic Death metal. Gothenburg. Competent. I feel like this reminds me of X from year Y.

I kind of feel that I’m doing the band a disservice.

But Deflorate is different, somehow. Deflorate offers some type of . . . difference.

The album will still provide all the same Swedeath touchstones that have been brought up in three other write ups, but this time, things seem a little . . . different. Fourth track “Denounced, Disgraced” has almost an Amon Amarth kind of vibe to it, in terms of the slower numbers that band has produced over the years, or half of the songs on The Avenger. The guitar solos seem to pop up in every other song at this point, and thus they are more memorable, and often serve a more atmospheric purpose, as opposed to the solos of the previous albums, which often feel like solos because a solo needs to go here. The general quality of the songwriting, and the general direction the band seems to be taking on this album, is a continuation of Nocturnal. Things sound exceptionally lively, far less clinical than either Miasma or Nocturnal, but lively in that Slaughter of the Soul way, which, I’ve no doubt, the band was aiming for. That At the Gates album is the total cornerstone of this genre, and all manner of bands have been trying to rip it off for two decades now.

I am not sure how I feel about that effort to recreate Slaughter of the Soul, in a general sense. There is nothing wrong with paying homage to your idols, and nothing wrong with trying to emulate them. But the Gothenburg scene has always been plagued by that one record, from which all others seem to stem, and I find that on one hand real unfair, yet totally accurate on the other. But there comes a point in a band’s career where they need to either step out from the shadow of their influences and become their own entity, or resign themselves to the idea that they will never accomplish that, and be forever a copy.

On Nocturnal, The Black Dahlia Murder began to step out of the At the Gates clone shadow, and on Deflorate, they seem to be comfortable in what they as a band are. And that is a good thing. Nocturnal is the album that always gets name dropped as being the high point for the band, but I’d actually argue that Deflorate is the superior listen. It has that visceral and alive quality that is not as prevalent on the preceding album, and is another collection of top notch songs. The drumming, at times, seems a bit standard, in the sense that “this type of music requires constant double bass, so this song has constant double bass” way. Drum tempos and such do change up over the course of songs, which has been a constant for that instrument in this band, unlike a lot of the other, disposable Gothenburg bands from the early 2000’s, and that helps immensely in retaining interest in the listening. In my personal estimate, the one instrumental quality that separates good extreme music from meh extreme music ends up being the drumming, and the presence or lack of any diversity. I am not trying to imply that it is easy, or that I could do it, but I imagine that if you are a drummer and you play this style of music, you would know how to manipulate your instrument enough to reliably and regularly produce blast beats. But three or four minutes of the same drum pattern gets noticeably dull pretty fast. How many records have we all heard over the years that sound like one continuous song because the drummer sat down and never stopped double kicking at the same tempo for the duration? Some variety goes a very long way.

The guitar work on the album is, by now, what you’d expect from the band, or the genre on the whole. Again, the solos here are better largely because they are more purposeful in the songs themselves. The first half trio of “A Selection Unnatural,” “Denounced, Disgraced,” and “Christ Deformed” set a tone for the rest of the record that doesn’t get any better until the closer “I Will Return” comes along. “I Will Return” is also the longest song the band has produced thus far, clocking in at five and a half minutes. It feels odd to make it seem that a five-and-a-half-minute song is some kind of accomplishment, but the band has made a career, to this point, of short blasts of very effective music, and to see them doing something different, or, may I call it “ambitious,” like this is a positive sign of growth.

While I’ve yet to mention anything about the band lyrically, it’s not for lack of anything to say. The Black Dahlia Murder writes songs about the standard metal topics, and so we get songs about religion and war and evil and the occult and stuff. But The Black Dahlia Murder seems to do these things without much in the way of cheese, and nothing seems uneducated or sophomoric, which I think is noteworthy. A band that hit the scene in their late teens should almost be expected to crank out genre tunes: you know, “god is bad and Satan is cool,” “evil evil evil evil evil is great” kinds of things, showing the immaturity and youthful fascination with such forbidden topics being given air by the forbidden underground medium of Heavy Metal. But the band does a really solid job with their lyrics. Now often referenced “Denounced, Disgraced” presents a pretty intelligent and reasonable story of someone being rejected as a traitor to a cause; “I Will Return” deals with being cryogenically frozen, “Necropolis” takes a solid stab at something that seems like a zombie movie. It is always nice to have some brains behind your metal brawn, and consistently The Black Dahlia Murder has done well lyrically while still dealing with the more or less standard topical fare.

Overall, if I have to pick a favorite from the band thus far, I’d go with Deflorate. Nocturnal was the one everyone told me I’d like, and I did, but it was more in the sense of my discovering why everyone else says they like Nocturnal so much. Miasma was initially the record that I thought would end up in my replay list for the longest, but it was essentially replaced by this album. Like my previous favorite though, Deflorate doesn’t seem to get a lot of attention or recognition, and I’m not sure why. This is like Nocturnal II but doesn’t get the kind of love that the original does. But I really, really like this album, and I’d probably choose it over Nocturnal. I also think that this is the record where the band sheds that “party band” label, and becomes something more of an active listen. Deflorate would still be good at a party, but it absolutely deserves your full attention on its own.