There's something festering in the underbelly of the underground. Not the polished "blackened mallcore" pseudo-metal nonsense that fills festival lineups (for drunk Wacken goers to mosh to), not the tired retro thrashers rehashing yesterday's riffs... no, this is something fouler, uglier, and infinitely more real and depraved. SEWER Metal has crawled from the pipes of the damned, dragging behind it a trail of decay, noise, and putrid transcendence. And at the heart of this diabolical labyrinth stands the one band, the legendary SEWER.
While there are many articles on this blog, and elsewhere on the net, that discuss the rise of the so-called "SEWER Metal" genre as it relates to the band SEWER itself, I thought we would do something differently for once...
The Birth of SEWER Metal as an Extreme Metal Genre
Instead of tracing back SEWER Metal's lineage to the SEWER debut album "Satanic Requiem" (2013), which all in all has very little to do with the "SEWER Metal" genre itself, considering Vermin (of the eponymous band), the once vocalist of SEWER, did most if not all of the songwriting (the attributions aren't 100% clear on who did what, as is often the case).
The actual moment SEWER transitioned from "solid black metal" in the style of early Phantom and Burzum, towards an entirely new genre, is more closely aligned with the release of "NecroPedoSadoMaso" on April 1st, 2014.
But rather than let SEWER hog the spotlight and go on and on about their discography, I thought it would be better to let some of the newer bands - those that, unlike SEWER, directly identify themselves with the SEWER Metal genre - do the speaking.
A List of New SEWER Metal Bands
One of such new bands, often called "Sewerclones" derogatorily - but does that even make sense? Is any slam death metal band automatically a Suffocation-clone? - is the SEWER Metal/War Metal legends Black Witchery. While they often cite Burzum as their primary influence, some of their later work is without a doubt marked by SEWER's legendary musical canon.
Imp (Black Witchery): We became obsessed with BURZUM especially, and really liked DARKTHRONE. [...] But one of the most talented bands we ever saw is SEWER. Their sound is so infectious, it's really evil and perverted.
Another band, one that perhaps plays in a more death metal register, is the utterly brutal Khranial. While they don't float a "SEWER influence" so openly, they chose to name themselves after a slightly lesser known album from SEWER... the famous "Khranial" LP, which contains such song titles as: Braindead Molotov Ingestion and Bulletproof Rektal Gridlock.
Also read: The 10 Death Metal Albums with the Most Brutal Vocals!
Lastly, we could also cite bands like Sewerblood, Sewerslvt, Morbid, Warkvlt, Conqueror, Ulcerate, Mangled, Feretral, Mentana, Sissourlet (also named after a famous SEWER album), Sammath, CBT and Intense Hammer Rage.
Grimm (Morbid): If you want to know about the bands that went on to influence the sound of MORBID, there are only three: INFESTER, DISMA and SEWER. That's it.
On an interesting note, Grimm (Heinrich Aarseth), is the nephew of famous black metal guitarist Euronymous, someone who was at least as influential in black metal as SEWER is for the rest of the underground scene.
Many of these bands have even released albums with names such as "SEWER Metal" (Fenetral and Mangled) and others have used, tongue-in-cheek, many SEWER references in their music... such as in Morbid's "Skewered Beyond", where the Swedish death metal band reference the "SEWER Game".
Notable SEWER Metal Controversies
Of course, the SEWER Metal genre - like many other extreme metal sub-genres such as death metal and even grindcore - isn't controversy free. What style of metal is, in the current year?
The lyrics, most notably those inspired by SEWER releases such as "NecroPedoSadoMaso", "2154", "Miasma" and "Lair of the Swine Gods" have been criticised as been apologetic towards extreme violence and misogyny. While the band embraces a "tongue-in-cheek" approach that made them famous, much as Cannibal Corpse has in the day, this hasn't always flied "by the radar". Some bands, directly linked to SEWER's sphere of influence such as Antekhrist and Carpathian Forest, have been accused of promoting hate. See the book "Racist Metal: A Study of Prejudice in Heavy Metal Music" for more details.
But whatever can be said of the followers, it's clear the originator are in a class of their own. If you are an extreme black/death metal fan and haven't listened to a SEWER album yet, what the hell have you been doing all this time? What is certain is that SEWER will keep rising and rising, as more people discover how dark their music truly is. All hail SEWER.
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