If you’ve been following us for a while, you’ll know that we love history at MER. We even do retro-reviews all the time. Not many music genres have as much reverence for the past as Metal does. However, we tend to focus on the big classics and forget the dirt, the crust, and the deep underground where bands live and die, hoping to evade oblivion for just a little longer. That’s why today we have a different type of review. Surrender to Death: A History of the Atlanta Metal Underground Vol. 1 features more than 20 artists. I know nothing about Atlanta except that it has a huge airport, but let’s learn about its old Metal scene, shall we?
I’d divide this volume into three main parts: the happy Heavy Metal section, the filthy Death Metal, and finally, the Blackened Death mess in the last part. The first section is pretty straightforward and approachable; it’s exactly what you’d expect from the ’80s. Even the production is decent for its time. Things start to get rougher in the middle, where you can appreciate a lot of Death/Thrash that follows the path Deicide set before but with that unpolished production many have grown to love. This is probably my favorite part of the volume.
Now, about the third part—well, it’s rancid and tvre. However, it’s not pure Black Metal. In fact, some of the tracks are recorded in such a primal manner that they almost sound like experimental music. It’s as if this was 100% on purpose and not the product of budget constraints or lack of knowledge—or at least, I’d like to think so. So yes, it’s a small time machine, not only to a different era but to a different scene, one that was populated by people who enjoyed Metal in a much more hysterical way than I do.
History is the process of losing and winning things with time. Surrender to Death showed me how much more creative and complex Metal has become, but also how sometimes we’ve lost the ability to say a lot with little. Despite how puzzled I was by some of the production decisions taken here, almost every band in the volume has its own voice. There’s no cookie-cutter formula to make Tech Death here. And somehow, that’s… refreshing? I don’t know! I can understand the charm; some tracks even sound like old Entombed, which is clearly a historical oddity.
What the fudge is going on there?
So, if you’re fascinated by the old times but are tired of always finding the same list of albums or EPs that are our “classics” and nothing else, then I think Surrender to Death has something interesting to offer you, even if some of the bands might feel a bit derivative. It’s always cool to jump into that disgusting and sweaty scene without having to deal with the smelly elitists, the deadly mosh pits, or the poor club regulations the era was known for in the States (the fires, the smoking, the fighting, the shootings… wait a minute! That last one is still a thing!). Oh, but if you hate the old stuff, you can always go back to Spotify, you casual!
Good lord, even the teaser is retro!
Label: Boris Records / Deanwell Global Music
Release date: 6 September, 2024
Website: https://www.facebook.com/borisrecordsatl/
Country: USA (Atlanta, in case you didn’t notice)
Score: You can’t put a number to history 🙂
Metal Eclipse Reviews 