Grave Miasma - Rogyapa (Patreon Request) [Reaction/Review] 

Grave Miasma is one of my favorite "mature" sounding death metal bands. This album took me multiple spins to get, but now I really dig it. Their whole catalog stands out - but yeah, the vocals are always going to be divisive but I've come to like where they sit.

I liked it !!! It got me thinking if it was actually from the 90s, and it felt looong like played twice..the video.. everything! and the second version included a solo. I thought it was going to be a black metal band, based on their name... the skulls reminded me of belphegor.

They play death metal just like death metal should be played. The energy of tunes touches my soul, just like middle / last 80's bands used to do.

Check out Bloodywood their new song called Aaj!

Sounds a bit like early Death plus the intro sounded a bit like "Lucifer's light" from Moon. Whal also makes me wonder about this is how YT algortm didn't put any restrictions on this video yet. Batmetal for example is age restricted already.

Agree with the analysis on this song, but I get the feeling, without knowing this band, that there is better stuff in this bands catalog and it makes me want to check them out. Seem to have potential to be in my wheelhouse,

"Slaughter to Prevail - Baba Yaga" next reaction please)

Well you can't win them all I guess, haha. I was definitely curious as to how you'd take this request of mine. Thanks for checking it out, regardless if you liked it or not. I can only suggest stuff I like in the hopes that you might enjoy it, so I'm happy that you at least gave it a shot. Everyone has their own tastes and I understand where you're coming from in terms of the things you mentioned, but I figured I might as well give my takes on those points and why I don't see them as issues: 1. I have no problem with the song being 6+ minutes long because it's never really static, and the band go through a variety of riffs and tempos and introduce a bunch of different elements (like that sitar part) to keep it interesting throughout. They could have trimmed it down, but that's kind of a double edged sword because cutting stuff out might have made it less engaging (for me at least). The song for me is actually very hypnotic at times, which is kind of weird to say about a death metal band. They're influenced by Indian/Tibetan music as well as prog to a certain extent though, so it makes sense. When I listen to the song I actually appreciate that they didn't cut it down to 3 minutes or something because I feel like I'm being taken on a journey and every step of that journey is equally interesting in different ways. In general that's kind of how the band operates. Most of their music is very intricate and winding, they generally don't write short songs, and they don't really stick to a standard verse-chorus-verse structure all the time. Sometimes it almost feels like they're some sort of death metal jam band, but for me they generally do enough interesting stuff to justify it and I like the detours they take within songs because they go to interesting places. 2. I don't think you really need 2 minute or minute + long solos here. There are actually three solos in the song (the beginning "solo" is actually two different solos, one from each guitarist), two at the beginning and one in the middle. The soloing style Grave Miasma generally employ is chaotic and dissonant with bits of melody here and there, similar to Slayer or Morbid Angel and that's not really something that lends itself to really long epic solos, at least IMO. The focus for them is more on the riffs than the solos (not that their solos aren't good IMO at least) in the sense that the solos are usually used in transitions and generally to change things up and move the song in another direction. That's pretty much what the last solo does, and for me it works really well in that position. It's a question of personal taste I guess, some people want longer, more drawn out solos (which I like too, but I don't need every solo to be that) in songs like this. For me, given the style of the band and what they're mainly going for it makes sense for the solos to be what they are. They're not a tech death band and their focus is more on creating this occult atmosphere with the solos being the chaotic bits that hit you out of nowhere and then disappear back into the background while changing the direction of the song. 3. I figured the vocals might actually be the most divisive aspect of the song, so not surprised that you brought them up. I find the vocals to be really easy to understand honestly, more than most death metal vocals to the point that I could pretty much pick up most of the lyrics without needing to check Metal-Archives after the first couple of listens. I like the vocals because they're actually very different from what most bands do, being relatively higher pitched (sort of like David Vincent on Morbid Angel's Altars of Madness album). The one thing that's very noticeable with Grave Miasma, listening to all of their albums, is that they intentionally use a lot of reverb on the vocals so you get this echo effect. Considering that they're mainly known for playing a very cavernous style of old school death metal I think it fits. As you mentioned it's primarily intended to enhance the atmosphere, and in general they're a band that goes for occult and mystical themes in terms of what they write about lyrically (a lot of Tibetan, Indian occult/left hand path stuff for lack of a better description) so the vocals go hand in hand with that idea. I think they actually work better than standard death metal vocals from that perspective since I kind of imagine them as this eerie chorus of multiple voices coming from some dark cavern underneath the earth. Or something akin to the voice of Sauron from the LOTR films.