Anhedonist (Washington state, U.S.A.)

This was the death doom of Washington state's Anhedonist. Metal Archives shows the dates 2008-2014 for the band's activities. Listen below to the band's 2012 album Netherwards. The record company described the sound this way: "Gripping, mesmerizing and flat-out massive; Seattle, Washington based Doom/Death Metal band Anhedonist's 2012 debut full-length Netherwards is an aural masterpiece. Spanning over 40 minutes spaced out across four songs, Anhedonist have created a mournful album which is sure to please even the harshest of critics. Their 2010 demo "The Drear" only touched on the capabilities of this band combining harrowing melodies, monolithic riffs and scathing vocals to create an extremely memorable and complete debut sure to leave definable marks on the listener's psyche."

A reviewer at Metal Archives said: "Anhedonist also purvey grotesque death, standing firmly in the Incantation-via-quivering-Disma-sludge lineage. The endeavor is undertaken with particular skill, producing a vortex of riffs that won’t soon leave your consciousness. The death and doom modes are fairly discrete, meeting and mixing at borders of ecstatic despondence. That gap is bridged by threads of miasmic melody, entirely memorable and hauntingly cathartic. Reverberant clean guitar lines bleed into rivers of molten magma and then rush into torrents of raging death. The guitars sprawl out across the stereo field, filling a cavernous soundscape with spine-chilling repartee. The drums are as judiciously dynamic as the songs, keeping modest time in moments of mire, stepping on the pedals for acceleration and bringing the animalistic fury when called upon. The unhinged vocals tie Netherwards together, securing its frayed ends of sanity with gutworthy growls and contemptuous expectorations. Blood curdling screams erupt over harrowing crescendos, reminding me of John Gossard’s superlative, inconsolable derangement on Weakling’s Dead as Dreams."

Another reviewer there gave it a perfect score: "It is exceptionally rare when an album like “Netherwards” is released upon this world. The seamless and extraordinary blend of doom and death metal is utterly intoxicating. Anhedonist have not only toppled just about every single “heavy” band that considers their current or upcoming releases to be some of the “heaviest” material out there, but they have unequivocally raised the bar for the rest of the groups that share one single iota of their style. These four Seattle-based souls studied their predecessors well and greatly expanded upon their work, as well as being able to give their own melancholic spin on things. ”Netherwards” has quickly shot itself up into my top five releases of this year, and I don’t see anything in the near future knocking it off of this exceptionally high pedestal."

A reviewer who did not like the album at all said: "No, what we have here instead in flavor of the month genre pandering at it's apex: the story of death metal in 2012. Netherwards has all the disparate elements that bring together the various aspects of music in the modern-age: all the Old-School credibility one could ask for, with the lovely cover-art and clearly displayed Old-School influences without any of the timeless aspects that made those classics so wonderful to begin with. Netherwards is an album designed specifically to sell lots of copies the moment it is released and generate lots of hype, but within two years be a completely forgotten piece of "oh yeah, I remember that album" trivia. This is not art: it's a product, tricking listeners into thinking it's more than the sum of it's parts by playing up how "true" it is. But by "true" what they mean is "genre re-hash money generator."

Now, I am not saying that the band Anhedonist themselves are in it for the money: this is Death Metal after all, and there is a good chance that Netherwards is not making the band a single dime because of how brutal label contracts can be. And I have no doubts that Anhedonist are making music they want to make because it's what they like and are passionate about: no doubt the guys in Anhedonist care about their music, because making Extreme Music of any kind is a labor of passion. I also have no doubts that there are a lot of people who genuinely like this album(in fact, I know for a fact their are). My point is that in today's modern scene, an album like Netherwards is the death metal equivalent of a movie like Transformers 2 or Avatar: digestible, simplistic, bland product that has all the parts of the real thing, designed to appeal to the masses, at the expense of more creative, inventive and challenging art that encompasses everything great about the medium. Before 2005, an album like Netherwards would have been totally ignored. Now, this is the Savior of the genre I love... apparently."

Netherwards by Anhedonist