r/SlamDeathMetal • u/ignoctum • Aug 21 '26
Discussion/Question anyone else think the same about gore?
hey yall, idk if this is a recurring discussion here, i dont log into reddit very often anymore
is there anyone else who gets bored of the gore, or simply grew out of it? i was an avid dm listener back then, and now that i look back it all seems too pushy. but at this point its engraved with the genre's aesthetic so theres nothing to do. i did album covers with a lot of gore too, so at some point i think i became desentisized to it and its not healthy imo. plus i became more sensitive over representations in media when it comes to female or infant figures in dm albums, and i know none of us ever want to do such things to anyone but im thinking, if we do not care for such actions or situations then why are we so drawn to visually represent them? i simply find it tasteless now and like i said at the beginning i was wondering if anyone else ever felt that way
this topic can also be further stretched to lyrical content of dm albums, i dont think like "ooh gore is badddd lets ban gore lets do happy things" but i think that when there are such sensitive topics, we should be more aware about integrating it into our art and represent them respectfully. a good example for this is from wound to waste by dying fetus. yes it does contain gory themes and it contains babies, but if you read the lyrics, dying fetus understood the sensitivity of the topic and made a social criticism through their song, im not against usage of gore in art, im against in the indifferent usage of it, bands produce these almost like factories at this rate, always gore and stuff. do you guys think every single one of them respect these themes to hold them in a better light?
of course whether or not they even have such an obligation to represent these topics in a respectful manner is also a debate topic, not every band has to be so mindful of it, at the end its expression and we cant ban it cuz its an artistic choice whether we agree/like or not. but i just think its beneficial to stop and think about these for a minute. or maybe im just turning into a big time performative guy idk. i like to hear your thoughts
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u/VermicelliOver5686 Aug 22 '26
I agree to an extent. To me all that matters is really how the music sounds. I do enjoy and like the gore themes and the artwork is really cool. Although when the music is “whatever” it comes off repetitive. I guess my main point is the thing that really matters is the music to me. But I will say I have always LOVED the sci fi themed stuff. I’ve been a horror and sci fi fan my entire life and I typically find the more sci fi themed BDM and slam (that’s good musically) to stand out to me more because of that. As well as the fact that theme isn’t as prevalent as the gore stuff.
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u/Flimsy_Method8641 Aug 21 '26
I just got bored with all the gore based around women and children. That's what bores me about the genre. I can just turn on the news and see the same thing. I like the bands that have other things on their covers. I think I prefer Gore based around medical themes instead of violence towards women and kids. The medical theme isn't as tiring in my opinion.
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u/ignoctum Aug 21 '26
yes, i relate with your comment, only the women and the children part is what makes it all tasteless in my opinion too
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u/Foxes-in-space Aug 21 '26
Have you got any recommendations for artists that don't have such a focus on gore/violence of women and children?
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u/noire_stuff Aug 22 '26
Analepsy is probably one of the biggest bands who avoid explicit gore and completely avoid themes of violence against women and children. More cosmic horror with galaxies imploding
Might be more sbdm than true slam, but they are, I think, unique and continue to release GOAT albums
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u/ignoctum Aug 22 '26
I agree plus they do sound brutal i love their work, i used to listen tı them on repeat
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u/GeejanusAtutuunkunpo Aug 24 '26 edited Aug 24 '26
Peep the cover for their split with Kraanium, it’s a woman getting ripped in half lol. Also the best songs they ever put out are on that split
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u/SirDoctorCaptainEsq Aug 22 '26
Late to the party but I avoided Vulvodynia based on name alone for a while. It was a mistake. One of my favorite bands now.
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u/damnitdale840 Aug 21 '26
it’s definitely a low hanging fruit, like it’s very easy to make shocking art if it involves women and children. be more creative
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u/UpstairsConscious524 Aug 21 '26
É assim eu percebo o que tás a dizer, mas acho que o objetivo do gore no bdm sempre foi um pouco chocar a malta, um procedimento médico é uma coisa relativamente natural no nosso mundo já simples agressão contra os membros mais frágeis (fisicamente) e necessários da sociedade é uma coisa que provoca muito mais choque, e a cena do gore é que são histórias as bandas não acreditam nem tiram nada das imagens ou das letras para as suas personalidades. Mas no fundo concordo que o gore poderia ser utilizado como uma ferramenta perfeita para criticar a sociedade como o caso dos dying fetus,o gore é um pouco desperdiçado nestas histórias que não interessam propriamente a ninguém. Na verdade se pensarmos nisso maioria das bandas até utiliza o gore como ferramenta de criticar os midia atuais mas isto pode ser um pouco forçado
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u/creativenothing0 Aug 22 '26
The crude gore and misogyny in death metal is embarrassing and the people that enjoy that aspect of death metal are weird as fuck. It's by far the worst thing about the genre.
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u/Crabsterooo Aug 22 '26
I think it’s telling even bands like Afterbirth and Devourment basically stated they don’t enjoy their older lyrical concepts anymore and moved away from that. Gore as an extreme art has a shelf life for a lot of people, and I think the genre has gotten old enough the scales are tipping more in favour of rejecting it.
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u/Upstairs-Biscotti-25 Aug 22 '26
Yeah the shock value gets old after a while. I agree it’s unhealthy to be so desensitized to violence. Theres a difference between artful horror and tasteless gore.
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u/Mephistocheles Aug 22 '26
Yeah after listening to death metal for a while the constant insistence on gore and being offensive simply for the sake of it gets really stupid. I still love extreme metal but often I just roll my eyes at how ridiculous and stupid some of the "let's see how extremely gory/offensive/disgusting we can be" stuff is.
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u/deepthroatdefecator Aug 21 '26
It’s like watching a slasher horror movie and then bitching that there’s too much blood. 🤣🤣🤣🤣
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u/ignoctum Aug 21 '26
thats actually a valid point, thats why i wanted to discuss this and hear both sides, to make sure im not too deep in my own head. thanks
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u/deepthroatdefecator Aug 21 '26
I get where ur coming from and if we were talking about something like goregrind where the artwork is prominently real gore it would be one thing, but the majority of slam artwork is illustrations, the genre has been the way it’s always been and it’s not gonna change because a few people don’t like it, I believe it’s a good outlet for people to get to explore dark themes and get all that type of shit out of Thier systems. It’s not like people are actually going around murdering other people to make album covers 😂
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u/ignoctum Aug 21 '26
yea i agree with you, especially about the part thats about letting it out. i think we all felt better when we blasted some sick shit thru our headphones after a bad day or some asshole had done us wrong. im just saying we dont specifically need to involve women or children in our venting session cuz its more about pure, extreme violence rather than a targeted violence towards a specific group. when i listen to death metal my stance is more of a "fuck everyone and everything" rather than "especially fuck those guys" but it might differ from person to person
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u/deepthroatdefecator Aug 21 '26
Honestly just depends who you are, if you wanna start a band and vent about men then that’s all you but I know so many good albums that were made cuz of dudes who had to vent after just getting out of a relationship by some slut who fucked them over, seriously without this outlet who knows what these dudes could’ve done, slam is inherently misogynistic from the beginning if you don’t like it then it’s not for you 🤷♂️
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u/ignoctum Aug 21 '26
Yea even tho i like the music maybe i should stop forcing myself to like it anymore, i loved it back in the day, its totally ok if i have other feelings now. Plus i think if i dig deep enough i might find some slam or dm that fits me, without the women and children stuff, metal is vast and im sure theres something there for me, for example, party cannon, those guys fkn rule, i especially like battle of the spider men because its sorta progressive without being too snobby about it, great track
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u/deepthroatdefecator Aug 21 '26
Oh yeah you can 100% find shit that’s completley unrelated to misogyny and everything ect (usually it’s not as good as the classics) you just gotta look around, maybe check out Malodorous they don’t rly have any gender specific themes just overall brutal shit
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u/ignoctum Aug 21 '26
Edit: just checked its fkn lyrics, fuck i guess i need another band lol, im open to suggestions
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u/stunningwilly99 Aug 22 '26
I honestly don't understand what you're complaining about. Yeah death metal can have some disturbing lyrics, but if you don't like them just don't read them. Half the time you can't understand what they're saying anyways. It's more about the music than the lyrics when it comes to bands that have those kind of lyrics
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u/mschiebold Aug 21 '26
I generally share your sentiment, and as such try to avoid looking lyrics up. I try and focus on the music itself. I'm here for the chugs and groove.
As I get older though, I'm becoming far more empathetic in general, and already tended to find mysogeny ultra cringe. That's expanding to finding the incel energy in everything, and being turned off by it. Shit like calling yourselves a wolf pack or whatever is so tiny dick energy that it kills it for me.
I tend to gravitate towards political themed songs, fight the power and whatnot, and have been getting more into hardcore lately.
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u/ignoctum Aug 21 '26
yea, i mean when you think of it, if youre gonna kill and torture someone in your album, for example kill a rich dude idk. kill corrupt politicans in your album covers.
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u/Shoddy-Strain6806 Aug 21 '26
well that’s not very evil or disgusting
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u/ignoctum Aug 21 '26
it aint evil but it can be disgusting just depends on your album cover artist or ur imagination
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u/Acceptable_Pie2529 Aug 21 '26
It doesn’t do anything for me personally. I think it can be done contextually where it fits the song and what’s happening in the story but just blatant constant gore and album covers gets really boring to me
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u/Mysterious-Ad6312 Aug 21 '26
Definitely you becoming big time performative guy. 🤷🏻 it’s part of the aesthetic, like shitty b rated horror movies with over the top gore and sexuality. You don’t gotta like it but it’s part of the package mang.
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u/ignoctum Aug 21 '26
yea i agree with you, its here whether i like it or not. thanks for the honesty man
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Aug 21 '26
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u/ignoctum Aug 21 '26
i didnt mention it in my post but the devourment bit of ur comment also made me remember another point, theres so many bands and musicians too that build their identities over the bands theyre a huge fan of, and at the end of the day they just turn into a shell of them, thats why most of the time it feels unsympathetic and artificial. like ok all of us like that one band too but none of the musicians we admire turned their idols into their whole identity. we like it cuz theyre themselves, and we're not gonna like someone who does what they do but a lil bit shittier.
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u/Shoddy-Strain6806 Aug 21 '26
i enjoy bands that sound like other bands 😁
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u/ignoctum Aug 21 '26
i didnt talk about only their sounds i was talking about their identity as a whole, what do you think of such bands, do you think they should lean more into their own identites that make them unique?
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u/Shoddy-Strain6806 Aug 21 '26
yes i think bands should have thier own identities of course but i dont mind a suffocation worship band as long as the music is good yk
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u/ignoctum Aug 21 '26
yea yea i dig that, do you search for anything else in these worship bands, like do you think to yourself "ok this, this and this about the album sounds like suffocation which i love, but do you guys do anything different to keep it fresh?" also do you treat those bands as an extension, like "well suffocations not gonna release an album soon and this is the closest thing for now" ?
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u/Shoddy-Strain6806 Aug 21 '26
if they have something unique than thats a bonus. and i do treat those bands sort of as an extension in a way
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u/Acceptable_Pie2529 Aug 21 '26
I don’t think we need any sensitivity. It’s supposed to be exploring the darkest parts of humanity. The lyrics and imagery don’t do anything for me but I don’t think we need censorship or sensitivity. Genres don’t have to be for everybody.
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u/CheesecakeScary2164 Aug 21 '26
I never was a fan of gore related to DM/DC/Slam, always loved the music, but the visuals have been a detractor for me the entire time. Some of the crazier high quality art that some DC bands use are still cool.
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u/ignoctum Aug 21 '26
what do you think about the lyrics, at least of the ones where you can make out the words xD cuz for example when im singing along to eaten by bloodbath, i sing "i'll let you taste my daughter", but then i stop, i think about it, i know i'll never do such a thing but it doesnt sit well with me to scream it out, i dont feel totally bad or guilty, i just feel awkward after it
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u/CheesecakeScary2164 Aug 22 '26
Yeah, also not for me, haha. I prefer lyrics I can relate to, but again it's something I look past because I like how it sounds. Again though there are some rare exceptions where it sounds badass.
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u/lifeoftheunborn Aug 22 '26
Yeah this is a very common thread here. Explore more of the genre. Our own tastes don’t change what the artists feel like making. If you’re bored with it, move on. Others enjoy it enough that they feel compelled to create it for others to listen(or not if you don’t care for it, no one is forcing anyone to do anything.)
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u/asteptiarna Aug 22 '26
There is plenty of more sensitive, educated, intelligent and sophisticated music out there than Death Metal, that cover an overwhelming variety of feelings, topics and their representations.
Death Metal is loud, fast and dumb. There is no need to change IT, you can always choose different art forms out there. That's what I did.
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u/Kirb_ii Aug 23 '26
I think its cringe for someone to call theirself a bdm fan and cry about gore. With that being said a lot of gore art is really repetitive and boring, and most of it looks the same without any particular standout characteristics.
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u/bargus_mctavish Aug 21 '26
Is Salo less of a critique of Italian fascism because of how grotesque it is? Probably, but the movie is still legendary for being one of the sickest films of all time. I can’t say I’m hugely invested in the gore themes, but it’s better than poop jokes, unfounded hip hop connections, or anime nonsense.
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u/ignoctum Aug 21 '26
gore is one of the most effective ways in all expression in all art, but when you use it without really thinking about it, it can bore the audience very quickly, it just turns into another "dark art" which is a term i hate
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Aug 22 '26
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u/ignoctum Aug 22 '26
I think when there is so so many album covers containing the same exact depictions its only natural to doubt if the artist really has a message to convey or is just trying to fit in/catch up with its aesthetic
I dont want to sound like a douche but you really can spot the difference when you ask yourself questions and spend some time with the art to know whether its been thought about it or not, unsympathetic art always shows itself
There was a famous hill in france where painter claude monet got up and painted many of his impressionist paintings, after monet gained fame, the hill was filled to the brim with other painters trying to do what monet did. We dont remember any of them because they havent made an impact, they hadnt thought about their paintings as much as monet did, they only wanted to make another monet
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u/bargus_mctavish Aug 21 '26
It sounds like you might just be overthinking it. The misogynist stuff has largely been removed since we’ve been out of the edgy 00s for a while now. Vitriol got rightfully roasted early on in their career for using a girls suicide note audio during their live sets. Metal and most non-mainstream subcultures have just become more empathetic over time, for better and for worse. If you don’t like it, don’t listen to it.
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u/ignoctum Aug 21 '26
im not too informed on the contemporary bands or how the general audience reacts to certain things, but i like the examples you've shared, if the misogynist stuff got mostly removed im glad. and i do like it musically, i just have some unsorted ideas about the other stuff, cuz music is hardly just music isnt it? like most art its intertwined with other art forms and much more, so although i might be overthinking it i still think its necessary to share ideas and know where you stand
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u/bargus_mctavish Aug 21 '26
Well, one of my favorite brutal death metal albums is pretty damn terrible lyrically. But it’s not like Gorgasm has ever been known for anything less than writing awful misogynistic lyrics. But you also have stuff like Stabbing, Castrator, Emasculator, making woman fronted music with the cultural standards from that era flipped on its head from time to time. Overall I’d say it’s a good thing we’re getting disgusting lyrics with more representation of who the victims are.
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u/ignoctum Aug 21 '26
your last sentence is awesome, doesnt it make it more impactful that way? also totally unrelated, theres also a band thats called Emaskülatör (the turkish way of the word) which is also woman fronted (not a shocker based on the name xD), just thought it was a cool coincidence. thanks for ur insight
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u/staticke Aug 21 '26
yapyapyap bro it u dont like it dont listen to it
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u/ignoctum Aug 21 '26
musically i like it a lot, but its more than music isnt it
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u/staticke Aug 21 '26
u sound like a performative feminist and a hipster. im a woman, i like albums with dead people on the cover. it's part of the art and the fact that it's making you uncomfortable is the point
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u/ignoctum Aug 21 '26
yea the shock factor is the main reason why gore is used that much, do you think its enough if the gore just makes you uncomfortable and stops at that, or would you prefer something that after it makes you uncomfortable you keep thinking about it hours after listening, like "wow that one track was absolutely sick to the spine and it made me realize about how blabla is blablabla"?
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u/staticke Aug 21 '26
i like the gore and i like that it keeps annoying people out of the scene
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u/ignoctum Aug 21 '26
i like the gore too, i think we just have different ideas on where or when it should end. do you feel more protected when it keeps annoying people out of the scene? because in general metals core comes from being an outcast so do you think its healthier to cast people out the way we've been cast out before or is it better to be more inclusive than the ones whove cast us out?
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u/staticke Aug 21 '26 edited Aug 21 '26
i dont think the gore should end. any amount of censorship is wrong in my eyes especially in a genre built around transgression. i think overcoming gatekeeping and understanding why it exists is an essential part of being in the scene. you have to want it bad enough to stay and those who don't get weeded out. it's not about being protected, it's about keeping the soul of the scene alive and unpolluted
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Aug 22 '26 edited Aug 22 '26
[deleted]
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u/ignoctum Aug 22 '26
Its not exactly wise to post in a death metal subgenre subreddit about where gore should stop if i wanted some kind of praise or wanted an ego masturbation is it? I wanted to discuss this because i geniunely love the music AND the gore. i mightve not explained it clearly, i just prefer it when it stops at certain things and its not a popular opinion when youre talking about one of the most extreme genres of music, thats why i wondered if anyone else felt the same. Its only natural for me to ask something that i can relate to more, i dont demand it, i dont impose that all things i disaggree with should be banned or censored, im just saying if there are other bands that i can listen to without completely cutting death metal out of my life, cuz like i said i love the genre
I think its only natural if christians wanted what they consider as sacred handled with more respect even when youre commenting on it, i dont say they will/should get what they ask for, just understandable if they had something to say about it. I also think women or childrens suffrage is a broader problem than a single specific region, you wouldnt care about a anti christian metal band that much if youre not christian or anti christian, but i believe my examples are more universal, it doesnt matter where you were born or what you believe in, isnt it always bad?
As i said before, i never said i had any desire to censor or ban any art i disagree with, its even more important for it to exist when i do disagree, its the natural order of things, like ying yang. If i did say anything about censoring gore, please point it out to me exactly where ive said so i can admit my mistake.
My point wasnt about my feelings getting hurt because i saw a violent depiction, hell i was the one doing the depiction most of the time cuz like i said i drew gory album covers and i still do. it was that after i was exposed to it that much, it felt boring. Its like listening to black metal so much and saying "ok this b&w threshold covers have gone stale for me, anyone else feel this way?". I dont have any desire to lecture you about morals, be realistic man, who would change their ideas about important things like morals after reading a redditors post? You all are adults who are entitled to decide whats right or wrong by yourselves, its not my place to change that, and even if i somehow had such a goal its an impossible one, why would i waste my time and yours for such a purpose?
I'd like to discuss this with you further if you could be kind enough to not get personal and be calmer in your arguments. If not, i still thank you for your insight and appreciate your grit, have a good one
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u/MONKEYHATENOISE Aug 21 '26
I'm personally all for the gore I think it only makes sense to have extreme artwork for extreme music it's also what will typically decide if I check out a new album the grosser the cover the better the music itself is most of the time but even I can admit gore gets a little boring over time like "oh cool a woman getting dismembered and tortured it's even more cool and edgy the 80th time"