Mining Metal is a monthly column from Heavy Consequence contributing writers Langdon Hickman and Colin Dempsey. The focus is on noteworthy new music emerging from the non-mainstream metal scene, highlighting releases from small and independent labels — or even releases from unsigned acts.
If we look back at metal in 1995, we’d find one of its best years. Novelty and innovation were both in stock as death metal had only been around for less than a decade, black metal — as it came to be recognized — was still fresh, progressive metal was bleeding into extreme metal, and the heavy metal old guard had taken a backseat, clearing way for newer acts. Metallica, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, and even Slayer had all either pivoted away from their original sounds, swapped band members enough to disrupt their creation processes, or both. It’s also worth noting that progenitors in extreme metal like Death and Bathory had entered more expressive and less abrasive eras, so even the relatively “new guard” was exploring new fields.
A look at 1995’s highest-rated metal albums on various music websites reveals as much. Death’s Symbolic is at or near the top of all aggregates (“My favorite death metal records period.” — Langdon Hickman), as is Dissection’s Storm of the Light’s Bane and Suffocation’s Pierced from Within. Ulver, Blind Guardian, Gamma Ray, Down, and Dark Tranquility also consistently fill out most top 10s. Another record commonly crops up, one that you’re not doubt already thinking of, but that I’ll touch on in about 100 words.
Just beyond the typical top 10 lays an album that would shape metal more than anyone could’ve predicted at the time. Deadguy’s Fixation on a Coworker somehow came out in 1995, even though that feels incorrect. It feels like it was recorded decades after Earth Crisis’ Destroy the Machines (which also came out in 1995). For some reason, it’s as if it exists on a different timeline from the rest of the metal landscape, as if it couldn’t have released the same year as Deftones’ debut, but it must’ve, because it set the standard that American Nervoso, Petitioning the Empty Sky, and Calculating Infinity followed three to four years later, snowballing into the template for technical metallic hardcore.
But one cannot discuss the future of metal without arguably 1995’s most important metal record, Slaughter of the Soul. If Fixation on a Coworker taught metalheads about Drive Like Jehu and punks about Voivod, then At the Gates taught the rest of the world how to write riffs. It’d take a few years, but eventually, American metalcore would xerox Slaughter of the Soul ad nauseam, albeit with a more annoying flair via hair metal and pop punk influence. Even through those layers of cultural exchange, the riffs remained largely untouched. It goes beyond influence. By the mid-2000s, Slaughter of the Soul was being cosplayed on most new mainstream American metal albums, marking a turn away from thrash metal as the baseline.
Deadguy and At the Gates were both in the press this year, for entirely different reasons. The former released Near-Death Travel Services, their first album in 30 years, while Tomas “Tompa” Lindberg, the vocalist of At the Gates, passed away. It’s a coincidence that, three decades after both acts laid down the futures of what would dominate mainstream metal, their relevance would reignite simultaneously, but what is reflection if not drawing meaning from coincidences? At the Gates had a decent comeback run. Meanwhile, Deadguy’s return was praised pretty universally. There’s the nuance of comparing the quality of the records against each other, but the larger point is that in the new millennium of metal, At the Gates’ sound had been mass reproduced whereas Deadguy’s permeated deeper as a guiding mindset. Bands stole riffs from Slaughter of the Soul, but they took philosophy from Fixations on a Coworker.
How many of the albums highlighted below sound like Slaughter of the Soul or Fixation on a Coworker? None, but that’s because November spoiled us with forward-thinking metal. It was a stacked month, so much so that the albums that didn’t make the cut could’ve gotten a column of their own. But that just speaks to the quality of the bands we did write about.
— Colin Dempsey