Opprobrium

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Opprobrium
General information
Genre (s) Death Metal , Thrash Metal , Christian Metal
founding 1986 as Incubus
Current occupation
Electric guitar , later also vocals , later also electric bass (studio)
 Francis M. Howard
Moyses M. Howard
former members
André Luiz
Electric guitar
 Luiz Carlos (†)
Electric bass, vocals
 Scot W. Latour
Electric guitar
 Jason
singing
 Brian Jeffrey
Electric bass, vocals
 Mark Lavenia
Electric guitar
 Pete Slate

Opprobrium is an American Christian death and thrash metal band from Metairie , Louisiana , which was founded in 1986 under the name Incubus . In the meantime, the group had also adopted the name Incubus Rage .

history

After the brothers Moyses M. Howard and Francis M. Howard decided in mid-1982 to move with their parents from Rio de Janeiro to New Orleans , Louisiana , Moyses became interested in music, especially playing the drums. His younger brother Francis began to learn to play the electric guitar a little later. From 1984 they founded various metal bands with school friends and musicians , with whom they performed several times.

In February 1986 Incubus was finally founded, the line-up was supplemented by the bassist and singer Scot W. Latour, with whom the siblings had already played in other bands. In May 1987 a first demo was recorded under the name Supernatural Death . After the release, performances were held before a few months later via Brutal Records in 1988 the debut album Serpent Temptation was released, which had been recorded in the studio Morrisound Recording . At the end of 1989 the search for a label began with which a second album should be released. During this phase Latour had to leave the band due to personal tension. He was replaced by bassist Mark Lavenia from Orlando , Florida . The group moved to Tampa , Florida that same year , and Francis M. Howard took over the vocals. In early 1990 the group was contacted by Nuclear Blast . The label signed her and released the album Beyond the Unknown in the middle of the year , which was again recorded by Morrisound Recording and produced by the band and Tom Morris. On the album the bass was recorded by Francis M. Howard. In 1991 the first European tour was carried out as a headliner with Disharmonic Orchestra . In the same year the group took part in the festival Monsters of Death . In February 1992 the band moved back to New Orleans, whereupon they separated from bassist Lavenia in the same year. In mid-1994, the Howard brothers recorded a remake of Serpent Temptation , which was released in 1996 through Radiation Records . In 1997 the brothers started writing new material. At the end of 1999, Nuclear Blast was able to submit ten finished songs. The recordings of the album Discerning Forces took place in Rio de Janeiro in October and November in the Discovery Digital Studio with producer Harris Johns , with Francis playing the electric guitar, bass and vocals and Moyses taking over the drums. Luiz Carlos was in the band as a guitarist, but he didn't have enough time to rehearse his part for the recordings. Only after the recordings did André Luiz join the line-up as bassist. Johns mixed the recordings in his Spider House studio in Berlin in February and March 2000. The album was released in the same year, although the group had adopted the name Opprobrium in 1999 to avoid confusion with the band of the same name from Calabasas , California . For a while, the group had given itself the name Incubus Rage. After the homes of the brothers and their families in Metairie were destroyed by Hurricane Katrina , they moved to Tampa, Florida in October 2005. In the fall of 2007, the brothers began planning for the next album, which was the first that Francis wrote single-handedly. In early 2008, both began rehearsing the new songs, with Moyses taxing arrangements and structuring the songs and changing the timing, as he had done since the 1988 album Serpent Temptation . In July and August 2008 the album was recorded and mixed in Tampa. Francis played the electric guitar, bass and vocals and Moyses played the drums. The album was released in 2008 under the name Mandatory Evac by Metal Mind Productions before the band went on tour in 2009. In 2019 the album The Fallen Entities was released .

style

According to Matthias Herr in Matthias Herr's Heavy Metal Lexicon , the band was "one of the first and most brutal bands to which metallic world events 3 years later owed a unique death metal boom" in their early days. The music has an "abnormally brutal intensity", he describes Supernatural Death as "ultra brutal ". Serpent Temptation is played very quickly and is loosened up again and again by breaks . The lyrics would consist of horror and horror lyrics. On Beyond the Unknown the vocals are less angry and vicious, but there is a playful improvement. On musicmight.com , Incubus is referred to as a thrash metal band, while the music of Opprobrium is described as Christian death metal. Robert Müller from Metal Hammer compared the music of Incubus with Death (also based in Tampa) and Slayer , the songs are straightforward and very fast. Thomas Strater from the same magazine wrote in his review of The Fallen Entities that “classic US Death Metal is combined with equally classic, slightly progressively oriented brutal Thrash, which the band is somewhere in the middle between Coroner , Malevolent Creation and ancient Brazilian manginess of the Sarcófago brand [...] located ”.

Martin Popoff described Serpent Temptation as extremely sounding in his book The Collector's Guide of Heavy Metal Volume 2: The Eighties . He also said that the album is comparable to the proto black metal of Possessed or Bathory , or at least Death or Dark Angel . The singing sounds incomprehensible, playing the electric guitar is demanding.

Wolfgang Schäfer from Rock Hard wrote in his review of Serpent Temptation that the music has a noisy character, sounds closer to Black Metal and evokes memories of Morsure . The songs are usually played quickly and you try to change the song structure by varying the song structure. In a later issue, Frank Albrecht reviewed Beyond the Unknown and found that good approaches from the predecessor had been developed further. On the album you can hear “demanding, well-crafted, complex, but still straight Thrash grenades”. In places you would be reminiscent of Dark Angel, the electric guitar would sound like Death in places. In his review of Discerning Forces , Albrecht stated that the band continues to play a mixture of death and thrash metal as if they were still in 1991. That affects the guitar sound, the riffs , style, production and “even not exactly perfect playing technique ”. Furthermore, the album is "a nasty bastard of fast Thrash and early Death Metal" and thus "a mixture of old Sepultura and even older Celtic Frost , combined with a light pinch of Slayer and trace elements from Malevolent Creation ". Andreas Stappert from the same magazine said about Mandatory Evac that the group will continue to play a mixture of Death and Thrash Metal - as it did in the early days - that oscillates between "old Celtic Frost and raw Proto-Death Metal". In addition, the songs are a “mix of mangy charm and technically simple game”. Jan Jaedike found that the group on The Fallen Entities "is still in a gray area of ​​technical demands, groove and banging in the face", which has aged surprisingly well. The band is "neither predictable nor overly cerebral" in the songs.

Markus Müller found the lyrics of the debut in Rock Hard as not fully developed. The successor, as the brothers had explained to him, was about splatter and psi issues as well as environmental destruction and big city crime. When asked about their influences, the brothers stated that they were not influenced by any speed , thrash or death metal band, but rather they grew up with Rush , Black Sabbath and Yngwie Malmsteen .

Discography

as an incubus

as opprobrium

  • 2000: Discerning Forces (album, Nuclear Blast)
  • 2008: Beyond the Unknown (Album, Metal Mind Productions )
  • 2008: Serpent Temptation (Album, Metal Mind Productions)
  • 2008: Mandatory Evac (Album, Metal Mind Productions)
  • 2016: Serpent Temptation (Album, Nuclear Blast)
  • 2017: Massacre of the Unborn (single, self-published)
  • 2019: The Fallen Entities (Album, High Roller Records )

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Steve Huey: Opprobrium. Allmusic , accessed November 17, 2019 .
  2. ↑ a b c d e Biography. musicmight.com, archived from the original on March 5, 2016 ; accessed on November 23, 2019 .
  3. ↑ a b Markus Müller: Incubus . In: Rock Hard . No. 45 , December 1990, p. 80 .
  4. ↑ a b c d e Info. Facebook , accessed November 17, 2019 .
  5. ↑ a b c Robert Müller: Monsters of Death . Vienna Rockhaus. In: Metal Hammer . August 1991, p. 148 f .
  6. ^ Joel McIver: Extreme Metal II . Omnibus Press, 2005, ISBN 1-84449-097-1 , pp. 133 .
  7. ↑ a b Biography. musicmight.com, archived from the original on March 3, 2016 ; accessed on November 23, 2019 .
  8. ^ Matthias Herr: Matthias Herr's Heavy Metal Lexicon . tape 1 . Verlag Matthias Herr, 1993, p. 73 .
  9. ↑ Thomas Strater: Opprobrium . The Fallen Entities. In: Metal Hammer . March 2019, p. 94 .
  10. ↑ Martin Popoff : The Collector's Guide of Heavy Metal Volume 2: The Eighties . Collectors Guide Ltd, Burlington, Ontario, Canada 2005, ISBN 978-1-894959-31-5 , pp. 169 .
  11. ^ Wolfgang Schäfer: Incubus . Serpent Temptation. In: Rock Hard . January 30 / February 1989, pp. 71 .
  12. ^ Frank Albrecht: Incubus . Beyond the Unknown. In: Rock Hard . No. 43 , October 1990, p. 56 .
  13. ↑ Frank Albrecht: opprobrium . Discerning Forces. In: Rock Hard . No. 157 , June 2000, p. 97 .
  14. ↑ Andreas Stappert: opprobrium . Mandatory Evac. In: Rock Hard . No. 261 , February 2009.
  15. ↑ Jan Jaedike: Opprobrium . The Fallen Entities. In: Rock Hard . No. 382 , March 2019, p. 99 .