I think there's a lot of life in technical
Death Metal still, but I really
Wish it went away from the bullshit Necrophagist/Spawn of Possession/Obscura style that's currently all the rave.
The weirdest thing about those bands for me is that despite how technical and fast and unconventional, they come off as really unadventurous to me. Obviously, that style of music takes a LOT of skill to write and play, but a lot of it to me just doesn't do anything remotely special other than just existing. It doesn't
Evoke anything other than 'okay you're skilled'; it's not that atmospheric, a lot of those bands indulge in amazingly saccharine melodies (not to mention
Obscura the band pretty much rips off later Death and Fates Warning. As in, the intro to the new album is just about the same as the intro to Fates Warning's "In A Word").
Personally, i'm really liking what groups like
Ulcerate are bringing to the table: a band that uses unconventional melodic
Ideas and bizarre song
Structures to actually create dynamics, atmosphere, and interesting songs that actually go somewhere. Or
Anata, a band that usually gets lumped in with those three groups I was bitching about takes the tech-death formula and goes to some really interesting places with it, using unconventional harmonies. (see The Conductor's Departure) Of course there's also bands who've been taking huge amounts of influence from
Demilich and
Immolation as well, not to mention the latter band is still going pretty strong as of late. There's a lot of good things going on in tech-death if you dig, but i've gotten really
Sick of those three bands and what all of their copyists have been doing as of late in the metal scene.
(for what it's worth, I'd also really like to see Lykathea Aflame come back and refine the
Ideas they had on Elvenfris; I really like what the record tries to do, but I don't think they put everything together that well, and it's a shame because there's some fantastic moments on it. I've been wanting to look into !.T.O.O.H.! lately as well, that record sounds killer.)
Out of all those, I think that Hieronymus Bosch is the best
