Breakdown of the bands

There’s a lot of metal to be had at the Battle of the Bands Finals.

The Daily Lobo doesn’t want you to have to wander too far down the cavern to mine the good stuff, so we found the Launchpad’s poster for the show, fired up our Myspace (it still exists!) and listened to these bands. We’ve even picked our winner. You’re welcome.

Fatal Tribe
Our selection of bands starts out with some good-old, down-home classic death metal.

Pounding drums, thrashing guitars, unintelligible guttural screaming — all the hallmarks of the genre are present. Some of its guitar and bass lines, like the intro to the song “Skin Walker,” lean a little more toward hard rock than straight-up death metal, which is to say they’re more melodic and therefore more listenable for someone who’s not a connoisseur of this kind of music.

Since the lyrics are unintelligible, it’s impossible to say what the subject matter of the band’s songs is, but to quote its Myspace page: “F**k emo in the ear! F**K U!”

AoticEv
This band’s all about speed. No melodies to speak of, just pure unadulterated guitar attack, to produce an angry sound, an effect reinforced by song titles such as “With this Hate” and “War Torn.” Aside from the fact that the lyrics are impossible to understand, AoticEv has the advantage of a nonsensical name.

Bomb Black
This Taos band describes its sound as “death metal/fusion/healing & easy listening.” I don’t know about “easy listening,” but the group definitely plays death metal. There’s some definite motion in the band’s songs, with musical phrases switching in melody and intensity to pull the listener along.

There’s also a strange intro riff to the song “Traumatic Amputation,” which is a definite plus.

Officer Nasty
This band’s got a great name, and the songwriting chops to back it up. It might be a little too melodic for fans of straight death metal. The group is definitely influenced more by Avenged
Sevenfold than by, say, Cephalic Carnage. But if that doesn’t bother you, these are your guys.

LifesBlood
Very atmospheric music, falling perhaps more in the category of doom metal, instead of death like most of the bands represented here. Lifesblood is quite good, actually, with a sound that’s acceptable to metal fans and more traditional hard-rock types.

Goodbye, Goodnight
These guys score major points for having a song called “I went to 3rd base but left her at 2nd.” They lose points, though, for being from Texas. So in the end, it all comes down to the music, anyway — which is good, if unpolished.

The group actually sings sometimes, which the Daily Lobo personally likes, but knows feelings within the death metal scene are kind of mixed on this.

Also, the band sings kind of like Davey Havok from AFI, which is really going to piss some people off.

More TBA
Little information available about these guys — they don’t even have a Myspace page. Lords of mystery, they are.

And the Winner is…
Goodbye, Goodnight! And the Daily Lobo can already hear death metal fanatics screaming about how they’re emo, or a band of little girls, or something like that. But, in the end, its blend of actual rock-and-roll melodies, intelligible lyrics, and the occasional guttural grunt wins the day. Now go forth and rock!