Disma is a death metal band from the United States and they just released their first full-length album, Towards The Megalith. This album has to be one of the heaviest, darkest and most grimey albums I have heard this year. They definitely have an older death metal vibe with their songwriting and production, which is kind of nice to hear and also probably due to the fact that the members are long-time death metal musicians. Towards The Megalith could be one of my favorite death metal albums this year. Thoughts?

Should be getting their split with Winterwolf later this week.

Just try sounds pretty old school to me, good DM

Written by Bad English on 01.08.2011 at 14:40

Just try sounds pretty old school to me, good DM

Yeah, it's a very welcome sound in a world of bands that are over produced and write metal by the numbers songs.

Going by the descriptions this isn't a band I'd usually check out but they're on Profound Lore and they haven't taken a step wrong in a long time so I'll investigate them soon.

Written by Guest on 02.08.2011 at 05:34

Going by the descriptions this isn't a band I'd usually check out but they're on Profound Lore and they haven't taken a step wrong in a long time so I'll investigate them soon.

Once again NPR for the win with a full stream of the album. http://www.npr.org/2011/07/18/137709531/first-listen-disma-towards-the-megalith

Oh, hell yes. Thanks for the NPR link. I've recently been getting a little into death metal, through bands like Sonne Adam, Necros Christos, Portal, Autopsy, Asphyx and Incantation. The one track I heard from Disma sounded really good, so it's time to see if the rest of it meets the hype.

Hmm? NPR is streaming a death metal album? Just another sign that 2012 is steadily approaching. Either way, they're a good band. They sound like a mixture of incantation and Funebrarum to me, mainly because they are made up of members of those bands. The guitar tone sounds similar to early Autopsy, and being a fan of Autopsy, sounds good to my ears. Their album isn't a masterpiece or anything, but it's solid, enjoyable old school death metal.

What I've heard so far is a little boring. I'd easily prefer a new Funebrarum album over this

Written by Dangerboner on 10.08.2011 at 00:14

I'd easily prefer a new Funebrarum album over this

Talk about boring.

Extremely boring, another overhyped old school death band. Shame on you Profound Lore.

Written by Guest on 12.08.2011 at 21:30

Extremely boring, another overhyped old school death band. Shame on you Profound Lore.

Disma's split 7" is great fun but nothing for people like you who don't appreciated great old school death metal
But then again you consider all old school death metal overhyped, which it isn't btw

Written by Marcel Hubregtse on 12.08.2011 at 21:45

Written by Guest on 12.08.2011 at 21:30

Extremely boring, another overhyped old school death band. Shame on you Profound Lore.

Disma's split 7" is great fun but nothing for people like you who don't appreciated great old school death metal
But then again you consider all old school death metal overhyped, which it isn't btw

Nope there's lots of old school death out there which I don't consider overhyped (but usually equally crap and irrelevant) but Disma I've seen pop up on a number of sources and considering it's their debut album and it's being touted as amazing, even though it's been done to absolutely death and beyond (there's nothing new or interesting here I haven't heard a million times before), it's definitely overrated. This and Krallice are Profound Lore's only real errors though. Once again I'd take Owl, and even Mitochondrion over this as they're trying a different angle. Funebrarum are much better than this, so I agree with Dangerboner there, much more interesting music. If you enjoy it then that's great but I was expecting more coming from the record label they're on, I wouldn't have touched this with a barge pole if not for the label.

Written by Guest on 12.08.2011 at 21:30
Extremely boring, another overhyped old school death band. Shame on you Profound Lore.

Agreed. A lot of these new old school bands don't really deserve the attention they're getting, similar to the thrash revivalist scene, and I'm a big fan of old school metal.

Some people call Disma boring. As for me, I get a raging boner every time I listen to their full-length debut.

Written by Troy Killjoy on 12.08.2011 at 22:35

Written by Guest on 12.08.2011 at 21:30
Extremely boring, another overhyped old school death band. Shame on you Profound Lore.

Agreed. A lot of these new old school bands don't really deserve the attention they're getting, similar to the thrash revivalist scene, and I'm a big fan of old school metal.

Well I'm glad an old-school fan agrees. It just seems that a new band of this type pops up every 5 minutes and if they conform to the right formula they get a "Well Done!" badge slapped on them. I don't get what makes a "bad" old school death metal band in some people's eyes.

It's Craig fucking Pillard and therefore awesome in my books. As for Profound Lore, Chris is a very big fan of this style of music, so no wonder why he released it (and has released a few other albums with, at the least, some old-school death metal influence). Disma don't need to come from a different angle, in my opinion, and in fact that's not at all why they are making music. The music is meant to, plain and simply, be crushing and evil-sounding. What can you honestly expect from the former vocalist of Incantation? He experimented enough with Methadrone. Just my opinion though.

Written by Guest on 12.08.2011 at 22:40

Written by Troy Killjoy on 12.08.2011 at 22:35

Written by Guest on 12.08.2011 at 21:30
Extremely boring, another overhyped old school death band. Shame on you Profound Lore.

Agreed. A lot of these new old school bands don't really deserve the attention they're getting, similar to the thrash revivalist scene, and I'm a big fan of old school metal.

Well I'm glad an old-school fan agrees. It just seems that a new band of this type pops up every 5 minutes and if they conform to the right formula they get a "Well Done!" badge slapped on them. I don't get what makes a "bad" old school death metal band in some people's eyes.

Except this band isn't a bunch of noobs in their teens. Disma is make up of members of Funebrarum and ex members of Assuck, Carnage, Incantation, Goreaphobia and Evoken. Do your homework before calling them some revival band...

Written by Guest on 13.08.2011 at 06:49
Except this band isn't a bunch of noobs in their teens. Disma is make up of members of Funebrarum and ex members of Assuck, Carnage, Incantation, Goreaphobia and Evoken. Do your homework before calling them some revival band...

Anyone with internet access can list what bands Disma members have been with, but the point still stands that new bands (not necessarily new musicians) don't always instantly deserve the praise they're given for simply sounding old school.

At the end of the day it's all a matter of opinion - some people fall for revivalist bands like this and some don't.

Written by Guest on 13.08.2011 at 06:49



Except this band isn't a bunch of noobs in their teens. Disma is make up of members of Funebrarum and ex members of Assuck, Carnage, Incantation, Goreaphobia and Evoken. Do your homework before calling them some revival band...

What Troy said. New band; revivalist sound. The only relevance the fact it has members of old death metal bands is that it makes this band extra poor as they haven't used their experience to come up with something new or interesting and can't blame it on them being "noobs". In my opinion.

Disma is indeed a revivalist band not arguing about that fact there. Doesn't matter that they have people in the band that have played in toehr bands for years. Disma goes for the ancient old school sound as a "new" and hence are revivalist and tbh very good at what they do.

Written by Guest on 13.08.2011 at 12:38

Written by Guest on 13.08.2011 at 06:49



Except this band isn't a bunch of noobs in their teens. Disma is make up of members of Funebrarum and ex members of Assuck, Carnage, Incantation, Goreaphobia and Evoken. Do your homework before calling them some revival band...

What Troy said. New band; revivalist sound. The only relevance the fact it has members of old death metal bands is that it makes this band extra poor as they haven't used their experience to come up with something new or interesting and can't blame it on them being "noobs". In my opinion.

Not to deviate too much from the topic of the band, but I consider a revivalist band to be one whose members never took part in the original scene. If Fenriz started a new old-school black metal band with ...I don't know...Varg Vikernes (unlikely I know), would you call them revivalists? I don't think people who have been with a genre since its early days deserve that term. They're just doing what they've been doing for the past 20 years. The term revival is often overused in metal. There was never a time in the past 20 years when there weren't new bands playing thrash and old-school death or black metal. However, there were times where those genres were not marketed by corporate record labels. So when you say revival, you are saying a period when record labels marketed bands, promoters put them on tours and you discovered them not due to your own research and knowledge of metal undercurrents, but do to labels and promoters wanting you to. Do you think the likes of bands like Warbringer, Lazerus AD, Evile and Municipal Waste would have been linked to a Thrash metal revival if it weren't heavily promoted as such? I think not. They are just bands in an oversaturated market that labels decided to support because interest was falling in the metalcore trend of the 90s. I would hate to be a 40-year-old, who has played death metal since the 80s, literally before members of some current bands were born and be called a "revivalist" for doing what I've always done.


And I think Disma sound awesome.

Written by Guest on 13.08.2011 at 17:11


Not to deviate too much from the topic of the band, but I consider a revivalist band to be one whose members never took part in the original scene. If Fenriz started a new old-school black metal band with ...I don't know...Varg Vikernes (unlikely I know), would you call them revivalists? I don't think people who have been with a genre since its early days deserve that term. They're just doing what they've been doing for the past 20 years. The term revival is often overused in metal. There was never a time in the past 20 years when there weren't new bands playing thrash and old-school death or black metal. However, there were times where those genres were not marketed by corporate record labels. So when you say revival, you are saying a period when record labels marketed bands, promoters put them on tours and you discovered them not due to your own research and knowledge of metal undercurrents, but do to labels and promoters wanting you to. Do you think the likes of bands like Warbringer, Lazerus AD, Evile and Municipal Waste would have been linked to a Thrash metal revival if it weren't heavily promoted as such? I think not. They are just bands in an oversaturated market that labels decided to support because interest was falling in the metalcore trend of the 90s. I would hate to be a 40-year-old, who has played death metal since the 80s, literally before members of some current bands were born and be called a "revivalist" for doing what I've always done.


And I think Disma sound awesome.

I think you're focusing on something which is entirley irrelevant at this point and playing around with semantics. Whether or not Disma fit with your personal definition of a revivalist death metal band the fact remains it's a brand new band playing a sound exactly the same as bands 20 something years ago. Exactly the same as them and exactly the same as the first bands in this "revival" and all bands doing that exact same sounds, same riffs, same dirty grimey aesthetic up until Disma. I always hear the same arguments from people "oh it doesn't matter if it's band number 1037 doing the same thing, they don't do it to be part of a scene, they do it because they want to and I love it blah blah blah." Just feels like one of those trends that are once again exempt because it's wrapped in a scene, in this case revivalist death metal, which like it or not Disma are identified with. As Troy said the trash scene is just as bad. I don't tend to stick my nose in this kind of music any more because it results in blind fans hearing stuff they don't want to hear. I'd piss over every new-formed Darkclone the same as I would every Disma-like.

And yeah, "revivalist" means to "revive" something. It doesn't matter who did it originally, if they do the same damn thing with a 20 year gap in between they're "reviving" a particular sound.

Written by Guest on 13.08.2011 at 19:17

Written by Guest on 13.08.2011 at 17:11


Not to deviate too much from the topic of the band, but I consider a revivalist band to be one whose members never took part in the original scene. If Fenriz started a new old-school black metal band with ...I don't know...Varg Vikernes (unlikely I know), would you call them revivalists? I don't think people who have been with a genre since its early days deserve that term. They're just doing what they've been doing for the past 20 years. The term revival is often overused in metal. There was never a time in the past 20 years when there weren't new bands playing thrash and old-school death or black metal. However, there were times where those genres were not marketed by corporate record labels. So when you say revival, you are saying a period when record labels marketed bands, promoters put them on tours and you discovered them not due to your own research and knowledge of metal undercurrents, but do to labels and promoters wanting you to. Do you think the likes of bands like Warbringer, Lazerus AD, Evile and Municipal Waste would have been linked to a Thrash metal revival if it weren't heavily promoted as such? I think not. They are just bands in an oversaturated market that labels decided to support because interest was falling in the metalcore trend of the 90s. I would hate to be a 40-year-old, who has played death metal since the 80s, literally before members of some current bands were born and be called a "revivalist" for doing what I've always done.


And I think Disma sound awesome.

I think you're focusing on something which is entirley irrelevant at this point and playing around with semantics. Whether or not Disma fit with your personal definition of a revivalist death metal band the fact remains it's a brand new band playing a sound exactly the same as bands 20 something years ago. Exactly the same as them and exactly the same as the first bands in this "revival" and all bands doing that exact same sounds, same riffs, same dirty grimey aesthetic up until Disma. I always hear the same arguments from people "oh it doesn't matter if it's band number 1037 doing the same thing, they don't do it to be part of a scene, they do it because they want to and I love it blah blah blah." Just feels like one of those trends that are once again exempt because it's wrapped in a scene, in this case revivalist death metal, which like it or not Disma are identified with. As Troy said the trash scene is just as bad. I don't tend to stick my nose in this kind of music any more because it results in blind fans hearing stuff they don't want to hear. I'd piss over every new-formed Darkclone the same as I would every Disma-like.

And yeah, "revivalist" means to "revive" something. It doesn't matter who did it originally, if they do the same damn thing with a 20 year gap in between they're "reviving" a particular sound.

You're missing the point. Who said anything about a 20-year gap? These guys have been playing death metal for 20 years. I think that gives them the right to play death metal now and not be called "revivalist." Band's playing old-school death have always been around and new ones have been popping up for the past 20 years, every year. My point is that, the that there is not some conspiratorial movement going on for people to start up old-school death metal bands. Labels are simply taking on these band's and marketing them because they see one trend dying and they are capitalizing on a new one. The revivalist part of it though is due to the fans. Their wouldn't be a "revival" in a scene if metal fans couldn't get enough of the certain "revival genre", so it's metalheads interested in the genres that are the revivalists. If no interest from the fan view-point existed there would be no revival. There's no melo-death revival right now but there are plenty of those bands right now and will be plenty created in the next 20 years. Those band's aren't revivalists, they're just playing the music they like. The revivalists will be the fans that start buying into those bands when whatever other revivalist movement fades out and the labels that market those bands to fans. "Revival" is a simple term used by labels/magazines/distros/ to sell product, bring in numbers, etc. Read various interviews with bands like Municipal Waste. They'll say they aren't part of some revival and that they are just playing the music they like. It's labels and fans that are revivalists not bands. It's just like in religious revivals - a renewal of interest in Christianity, etc. Christianity never went away, people's interest in their religion may have. My point is, yes there may be a few bands that form after a revival starts to cash in, but in reallity, the revival is due to fans and labels, not bands. Bands in every genre always exist. It's not like every thrash metal band that existed broke up before the thrash metal "revival." So, I'm just saying a bunch of dudes, who have been playing old-school death metal for 20+ years, been playing that throughout all those years and get together to form a band playing old-school death metal still today are just doing what they've always been doing. You are the one propagating the notion some revival exists by labeling a band as such, making you part of the so-called "old-school death metal revival" and not necessarily the band themselves.

Written by Guest on 13.08.2011 at 21:45

Stuff.

No, I get your point, I just don't care about it. I neither follow nor subscribe to group orientations (of that nature) because my point in all this is that whether or not Disma are part of such a identity or consist of members of established progenitors of a sound it doesn't, for a second, change the fact they're grinding away at an unoriginal, uninspired, rehash of a sound after a very long time. Doesn't matter whether or not they don't deserve to be called "revivalists" (I seriously think you're the only person who cares anyway) fact is they're still just ripping off other bands, even if it is there own. No creativity whatsoever. You make an interesting point but you should direct that at someone else who has an opinion on the matter. My concern (and issue) is with the creativity, not the cultural identity.

Towards The Megalith arrived in the mail today and its mire is filling my apartment right now!

Personally, I think some people here are a little too tough on 'revivalists'. Personally, originality is not all that important to me for the most part. I mean, if this albm was released in 1991, or 2011, does it matter? Either way, you are going to turn it on, and hear it at that time. Is it really THAT important, that when you are listening to an album, that it was made in the original wave of bands and albums for that scene?

I can understand not appreciating a band 'ripping off' other musicians, and just jumping on to a revivalist scene for popularity. However, these guys were all in that original scene. If this was an Incantation album, no one would expect it to be all that original (similar to Autopsy's newest), and certainly no one would label it revivalist. But, since a couple old school musicians, got with a couple other old school musicians, now they are trying to jump on a new wave? Despite the fact that they never stopped what they were doing in the first place?

To me, this seems like if the guys from Kreator and Sodom got together to form a supergroup of thrash, released what they do best, oldschool thrash metal, and then got thrown in the 'revivalist' scene with bands like Bonded By Blood. It just doesn't make sense to me.