genres: melodic death metal + everything
Melodic death metal is a tough genre to standout in. If we’re talking about saturation, there’s few genres that have been more thoroughly explored than this one. Even the gimmicky extensions have been saturated. Pirate metal? Everyone’s done that by now. Viking metal? Endless. Space wizards? Werewolf priests? Yup and yup. Even more shocking? All of those are really, really good musically. So how does Aether Realm manage to break through this saturation to make something worth talking about? By doing absolutely everything at once!
Although just about every sound has been tried in fusion with melodeath, most bands pick a particular theme or sound to focus on, while Aether Realm is a band that feels free to play around with various tricks only when they fit a particular track. The opening one-two punch on Redneck Vikings from Hell is tough to match. The title track kicks things off with a mashup of bluegrass, country, and viking metal. It’s a fun song that simultaneously celebrates and pokes fun at the various cultural moments that have brought the genre to where it currently is. “Goodbye” switches things up radically, adopting 70s/80s disco sounds into a metal track. And yet, it feels like a cohesive transition. The rest of the album hops around nonstop to various genre experiments, fusing melodeath with black metal, hardcore, ballads (the surprisingly tender “Guardian”), and classic metal.
If there’s any unifying theme, it’s drawing on classic rock influences. Sometimes this is in the atmospheric texturing, while others it is in the songwriting itself. While the guitar players are remarkably talented even within a highly skilled genre (just listen to “Slave to the Riff”), there’s a consistent focus on guitar solos that have melody and emotion, rather than being pure technical performance. The band also manages to strike a fun balance lyrically, that is both lighthearted and sincere. As many bands adopt fantastic themes, this sort of grounded emotion is more than welcome.
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