The Steel Mill

The Make-a-Band Foundation Presents:

Forming a Death Metal Band

It’s a fact: every boy, from the time he’s born to the time he’s a man, longs to perform in a death metal outfit. Why wouldn’t they? Death metal stardom brings power, respectability and, perhaps most of all, women to its possessor. While we’re discussing it, here’s another fact: women love death metal. They can’t help it. Take some bone-crushing, mind-melting guitar riffs, add some drumming that could induce a miscarriage in a virgin and top it all off with growling vocals that drive grizzly bears into the fetal position, and you’ve got the foundation of a solid eHarmony resume.

Consider this brand new feature a long-overdue service to the male gender. In fact, consider it a service to the human race. After the men who read this become death metal megastars, women all over will be after them like new shoes. The newfound pride among male youth in conjunction with the ecstasy overwhelming the world’s women will usher in a new emotional golden age. The world will truly know what love is and live in utter rapture forever. Of course, the divorce rate will plummet to near nonexistence. Boyfriends all over will finally say the words “sorry, dudes—I’m hangin’ out with the lady tonight,” while girlfriends will, at last, be able to sit through basketball games in silence.

Read on, and discover how you can use death metal to save the human race.

The Steel Mill: Part I

Step One: Determine your mindset

The first thing you have to do when you’re deciding on the brutal band name that best suits you is decide where you’re going. Will you and your buddies-in-brutality be taking yourselves seriously? If you will, then a number of avenues of thought are dedicated to your cause. If not, then your avenue options are a bit more limited, but they’ll still take you to the incubators of some of the ripest newborn brain children you’ll ever find.

But, before you make any crazy decisions regarding your direction as a metal band (“Metallica” or “Cannibal Corpse”), sit down, have a bottle of Jack Daniels and close your eyes. Still awake? Then your mind’s clear and you’re ready for a mental hurricane—forget brainstorming. I’m about to grant you access to the three main categories from which all metal bands draw their inspiration for their names, song titles, album titles and general life philosophies. Behold…


Step Two: Hold a mental name hurricane

Using the table above as an ideation tool, you’re sure to churn out some of the most spellbindingly offensive band names any mortal mind can imagine. I hear you: What about the immortal minds? They don’t care what you have to say, so you’ll have to make do with what you’ve got when you spread your seeds of corruption.

Here’s how it works: Gore and Sacrilege are what traditional death metal and his brother genres are all about. The difference between the two is that if you and your band won’t be taking yourselves seriously as death-mongering demon spawn from the abyss, you must confine your mental hurricane to the bounds of the Gore theme. Social themes, on the other hand, tend to turn up in the hardcore-punk-influenced forms of death metal. You’ll therefore need to be harboring tremendous amounts of anger and resentment if you wish to delve into the Social themes. Some real-life examples of this ideation tool in use follow.

V = Deicide
3+D = Cattle Decapitation
I = Judas Priest
3+A = Marilyn Manson
B = Shadows Fall
1 = 3 Inches of Blood
C = Pestilence

Many real-life death metal bands use only one theme when they choose their name. Dual-themed naming is most-frequent with song- and album titles—we’ll get to that later. You should also note that not all of the bands used as examples above are death metal acts. They do, however, share a similar mentality, so they’re legitimate for demonstration.

Step Three: Pick your name, already.

Remember why you’re doing this: to get women and plug some righteous social cause, right? If there’s one thing that women love and society respect, it’s things that offend their sensibilities. Let’s keep that in mind when we put our name together. In my example, which is included here free of charge, we’ll be taking our band seriously—if we’re going to offend people on a daily basis, we’ll earn much more street cred by acting like we know what we’re talking about. This also means we have free reign over our thematic direction. Since hardcore-punk-influenced metal is for principled sissies, let’s take some bits from Gore and Sacrilege.

The final question we must ask ourselves before we choose our name is based on the type of impact our name will have on all of those fortunate enough to feel the icy touch of its utterance on their souls. One school of thought says that a “thought-provoking” name will have the most impact. This school claim that for any death metal act to truly defile the moral and spiritual well-beings of its admirers, it must make them process their message at all points of interaction. This entails sporting a name that tells the audience exactly what we feel we should always be telling them. The second school of thought, on the other hand, propose that a death metal act’s success is measured in street riots, televangelist marathons and Oprah specials. They, therefore, claim that a band’s name must evoke mental imagery so horrific, so grotesque and so altogether unholy that its mere mention can bring about the falls of certain major societies. Here’s where you realize that you love me: we’re going to conjure up two band names so that we may explore both schools of thought.

School one: We want them to think. We want them to think so hard that the shock they experience when they finally decipher our “mission statement” gives them birth defects. So far, we know we’ll be playing with Sacrilege and Gore. So, what else do we need to know? We need to know our message. Let’s just say that we’re atheists on a mission to verbally sacrifice the notion of divinity in order to free our listeners from the mental chains of organized religion. Easy. Which subthemes below Sacrilege can help us capture the idea of divinity in general? “Blatant Anti-God” would be too easy and, in fact, a bit cliché. Let’s go with “Devil-Jesus Dichotomy.” If we can use the ideas of a religious good guy and a bad guy in harmony, we could probably convey the idea that we don’t believe in anything, right? Thinking in synonyms gives us Lucifer Christ. Okay—that’s a start. It’s not quite “atheist” enough, though. We still need to convey the idea of sacrifice for the good of humanity. The obvious solution here is “crucifixion,” so we can put them together and end up with The Crucifixion of Lucifer Christ. Bravo.

School two: You’ve always wanted to meet Johnny Cochran, so school “shock-and-awe” might be the perfect school for you. Remember, our goal here is to offend the will to live out of mass society, so always keep your eye on that Oprah special. Once again, we’ll be conveying the Gore and Sacrilege themes with our band name. Since two themes are involved and shock value is the key, pun and word combination are our two favorite devices here. Let’s try a few religious word permutations first—that’s the best way to highlight your sacrilegious lust for blasphemy.

Tabernacle => Stabernacle
Crucifix => Crucifixiation
Altar (pray) => Altar (sacrifice)
Televangelism => Hellevangelism

That’s a great start (if I do say so, myself). Now, we need to add a little gore. This part is so easy, it should be taught to kindergarteners. However, nobody’s immune to writer’s block, so if you need some inspiration, just turn on the news or watch an episode of South Park or something. I’m going to help us out by throwing in the first bit of gory imagery that comes to mind. For some reason, I feel like “self mutilation” will do the trick for this exercise, so we’ll use it. Our final step merely entails combining the notion of self mutilation with any of the sacrilegious concepts we listed in the first step. I like the Hellevangelist idea, so we can come up with Slit-Wrist Hellevangelist. That’s decent enough—it’s pretty shocking, and it doesn’t mean a thing. One word of warning for those who choose to attend this school of thought: so that your audience don’t get confused and start trying to decipher some stupid message from your band name, you’ll have to make sure that you constantly strive to make your audience sick with your lyrics, song titles and general stage presence. Everyone knows that a band that appears so obsessed with gore and controversy that it seems to pervade every facet of their existence is just in it for the ladies. And let’s face it—we are just in it for the ladies.

The Steel Mill: Part II

Instrumentation: How exactly can you wreak your own unholy brand of havoc?

In order to thrive as a soul-shatteringly offensive death metal band, you must be sure to brandish brutality against your listeners’ sensibilities on several fronts. That wussy folk layout with one guitarist/vocalist will do nothing more than broadcast your inadequacy as a man in a death metal band. Most of the great bands of old went with what’s called “standard 5-front instrumentation” in the death metal world. This means that bands like Slayer, Decapitated, Deicide, Cannibal Corpse, Obituary and Exodus obliterated their audiences on five fronts—two guitars, one vocalist, one drummer and one bass player. The truly great thing about this layout is that many of these bands’ songs only included one guitar part. This means that the second guitarist’s sole mission was “add volume.” That’s brutal.

The modern day has brought with it another relatively common band format—the 6-front melodic instrumentation. Bands who use this format—Children of Bodom and Strapping Young Lad, to name two—add a keyboardist to the 5-front format. A malevolent tool as versatile as a keyboard can do anything with settings from those which can sonically stomp out the listener’s colon to the dirge-like organ settings which can summon the Anti-Christ, himself.

Let’s Get Specific: Can we get a bit more exact?

Because The Steel Mill churns out only the highest quality metal, I’ll assume that you, unlike many unfortunate death metal startups, aren’t chained to those talentless hacks you’ve been calling “friends” for the past eight years. All too often a visionary in spiritual brutality finds himself morally forced into a pact with the finest insults to musicianship super stardom can find because they’re his “friends.” After all, they like death metal, so they can certainly play death metal. And who are you to deny them their two-day-old dream just as it falls into their laps simply because you don’t think they’re “talented enough,” or because all five of them play guitar and you need a drummer and bass player? Yeah—you’d be a real jerk to leave your friends out of your creative vision.

Sarcasm aside, I’m going back to my assumption that you’ll be enjoying complete control over your bandmate selection. You’re going to want to go with the standard 5 setup. This way, you won’t have a pesky showboat of a keyboardist trampling your vision with some tacky “melody” or “soloing.” Women hate that stuff, and let’s not forget why we’re in this business. Speaking of things women hate has brought me to this crucial point regarding the standard 5 setup: you’d better not be planning on using your second guitarist unless you know exactly how to use him. Just as they hate melody, women absolutely can’t stand any kind of harmony—especially the kind between two guitars. If you really need to write a second guitar part, make sure you make liberal use of the tritone while the first part plays low power chords. For those of my readers who are unfamiliar with the tritone and, therefore, shouldn’t waste the world’s time with the drivel they plan to release with their death metal band, the tritone exists between the fourth and fifth degrees of both the major and minor scales. The tritone is historically linked to Satanism. In fact, in the dark ages, the tone was banned from music entirely because it was believed to summon the Devil, himself. It’s the most evil, sinister, disrespectful tone you can use in your songwriting, so you absolutely must use it whenever you write any second guitar parts. And first guitar parts. And drum parts.

The Steel Mill: Part III

By now, you’re accustomed to reading. I’ve literally spelled the death metal band formation process out for you, and it’s been really, really good. However, album construction is likely the easiest step you’ll take before you make it to the right hand of Satan. Therefore, I’m about to show you how to create your first foray into filth, your first disc of demoralization, your first death metal album. You need only remember the three D’s of death metal album creation: 1) desensitize, 2) demoralize, 3) disgust. Remember them, and you’ll enjoy the reverence of a throng of disgusted fans weeping at your feet and begging for continued aural onslaught.

Front Cover:

Cover Art: Melodramatic Satan works well with “Hellevangelist” and emphasizes our band’s extremity. In fact, it almost looks like he’s singing into a mic, so some extraordinary rumors may develop regarding the ID of the band’s vocalist. Awesome.

Band Name: Our name makes the use of a bloody font appropriate. The red color highlights our link with the Devil and, by extension, impropriety.

Album Title: (Optional) If this album won’t be named after your band, try inventing a name based on the method used in your band name selection. Or, you could even use a band name reject here.

Back Cover:

Track Count: 10 tracks make great first album, especially considering that 8 is the norm.

Artwork: If you even use artwork (total blackness is fine for a death metal album for symbolic reasons), try to connect the back cover imagery with the main front cover artwork. It’s also a good idea to keep the imagery out of the way so that track names can be written as cleary and offensively as possible.

Track Listing: Again, red font highlights the evil. As you can see, song titles can be recycled from band name rejects (#1), they can be uncreative-offensive (#9), they can be graphically offensive (#5), they can involve seemingly harmless but retrospectively evil puns (#8), they can involve other forms of wordplay and rhyme (#4, #6), or they can be crafted using a number of other devices. Be Creative.

Track listing for the visually retarded:

1. The Crucifixion of Lucifer Christ

2. Abomination of God

3. Sanctuarium

4. Follow the Bleeder

5. Bludgeoned by a Human Skull

6. Two Deadings and a Funeral

7. (Fun)eral Pyre

8. Family Feast

9. Babies Taste Good

10. Soul Sandwich

Disturbed is to Heavy Metal as Miley Cyrus is to Heavy Metal

First of all: What the Hell is this supposed to be?

I'll think about that face in the toilet first. It's fucking everywhere, so the band definitely really, really want to be associated with it. Is that supposed to be their Eddy? I might have thought so, except that the basin monster pictured left never looms over Disturbed's members menacingly as they perform on stage. That means it's nowhere near as cool as Eddy. Maybe they're trying to pull a Mushroomhead--maybe they've created a branding symbol to make themselves more recognizable while helping them look "mean" or "evil." But, Mushroomhead put (or at least used to put) passion into their performances and about 6/8 of the band wore masks to match their insignia on stage. So, if they're taking a page out of Mushroomhead's book, it's one of the useless ones like the dedication page.

So what is it? I've been thinking about it since I saw their embarrassing performance at the Mayhem Festival in San Antonio a few weeks ago, and I finally think I understand. They put shit face everywhere because David Draiman is an overcompensating pussy. I suppose he feels that if he can't in any way resemble a man when he performs, then maybe he can hire a two-dimensional drawing to help him out. It's kind of like giving a politician a mohawk, if you ask me. If he bears any relationship to the Prince of Darkness like that menacing visage in the throne would attempt to indicate, then he's the Devil's 3-year-old Christian niece. If you're unfamiliar with Disturbed's vocalist Draiman, then scroll down a bit--I managed to find a shot of him in action after one of his recent performances.

Draiman holds a fan's bottle of beer while the starstruck man pays his respects.

Now, how about that lackluster subtitle (see that picture which opened the post)? "Ten Thousand Fists?" Sorry guys, I know a bondage-obsessed sorority whore who already used that title somewhere else. As far as their band goes, though, it's another amateur way to connect with the junior high school preconception of heavy metal culture. Little kids think heavy metal is all about pumping your fist and anticonformity. In reality though, we all know it's about getting drunk, headbutting a buddy or two in the face, and a little bit of middle finger trading every now and then. Coincidentally, that full-fledged salute to prepubescence would also likely make a great title for any sex tapes he may leak in the future.

Secondly: Disturbed are a four-piece testament to weakness and yeast infections. Listen to them on their records and they just sound like a meager version of what Jock Jams would sound like if it were a metal album. "Get up, come on, get down with the sickness. You mother get up, come on get down with the sickness. You fucker get up...[3 minutes later without any section changes]...come on get down with the sickness." Ok, Dave, we understand what it is you want us to do--give the motivational chant a rest. What's next? "Get, get, get...get psycho. Get, get, get, I wanna get psycho. Get, get, get, get...get psycho [x5 or a million]." Somebody go and get this guy a pair of basketball shorts and a mesh tank top before anyone else confuses his band for a metal act.