BUSINESS CLIMATE CHANGE ANXIETY ETCHED IN METAL
CLIMATE change refers to the long-term change in weather patterns around the world that’s predicted to bring drought, increased heat and rising sea levels in the coming decades. Heightened global attention about the issue started in the early ‘90s with the signing of international pacts to reduce greenhouse gases, a major contributor to global warming.
If the 2020s were a much earlier time, we’d be in for at least an album from an all-star collation of musicians voicing their individual protest in sound and lyrics on the outrageous destruction of Mother Nature. It would be this decade’s counterpart to No Nukes to oppose the hazards of nuclear power or We Are The World to bring to light the famine in Africa.
That was then and the climate change of our time is a much bigger, most serious threat to humanity. For example, Super typhoon Yolanda aka Haiyan that killed 6,300 people and left billions of pesos in damages offered a front-row preview to the adverse effects of climate change.
My petty bourgeois tendency thinks such the severe consequence of climate change would have awakened a sense of urgency to produce an album of music about the global issue on the scale of say, We Are The World. This late day, about a decade away before the predicted first blows of climate change impacts, what we have are singles from the likes of Billie Ellish (“All Good Girls Go To Hell”),
Childish Gambino (Feels Like Summer”) and The 1975 song titled “The 1975” featuring 16-year old Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg.
Then early this month, my love for loud rock introduced me to a new album that from start to finish spewed despair and venom on the ill impacts of climate change. It got me searching for more recent metal albums that reeled against climate change.
Here’s how these three releases stack up against the current unease about a coming catastrophe (which can still be prevented if every nation gets its act together starting now!)
ARCHITECTS, For Those That Wish to Exist (2021)
THE ninth album from these Brit metalcore behemoths ventures into environmental concerns and new musical ideas taking their latest release to the top of the UK album charts. Lyrically, they focus on climate change issues while the music shuttles seamlessly from straight-up heavy metal to dream pop and robust synth-driven rockers.
In an interview, the band said the concern for climate change has to happen somehow or it’ll end in catastrophe. It’s a global issue being talked about in all manner by all sorts of people and it just happened the band has taken it up at the 11th hour equating their smart move to Icarus falling closer and closer to the sun until it’s late.
Actually, it’s never too late to act on climate change when the fate of humanity is at stake. Kudos to Architects for upping the ante on the gravest threat to life on Earth (besides nuclear weapons) as we know it.
Killer tracks: ”Do You Dream of Armageddon?”; “Black Lungs”; “An Ordinary Extinction”; ”Discourse Is Dead”
CATTLE DECAPITATION, Death Atlas (2019)
TRUE to their death metal roots, Cattle Decapitation continues to plug their thrashing metal to the disintegration happening around them. On this album, the band looks closer at the cattle industry as a microcosm of climate change impacts. In various technical studies, cattle raising is among the five top 5 contributors to escalating greenhouse gas emissions.
In a press release, band vocalist said, “The core concept of this record is humanity’s insignificance despite what we’ve convinced ourselves. In the grand scheme of things, our species is merely a fleeting thought.”
He added that the universe will always find its way “to purge” insinuating that the lyrics depict the destruction of “worthless caretakers of the planet” brought on climate change. It turns “Death Atlas” into a bleak album on man’s dimming prospect to survive an impending apocalypse.
Killer tracks: ‘The Genocide”; “Bring Back The Plague”; “The Great Dying”; Death Atlas; “The Unerasable Past”
GODEATER, All Flesh Is Grass (2019)
THE Scottish technical death metal band produced the album because they believe “we are apparently in a climate crisis.” The 9-track release revolves thematically around the adverse impacts of the meat processing industry on climate change. All five members are vegan so they must have gotten the idea from trusted research studies.
The music is topnotch tech-death metal anchored on guitar wizardry once described as “John Mclaughlin on a heavy prog-rock tip.’the slick riffage nicely rounds off the coarse growls and shrieks. Anyone who’s listened to Willowtip label acts will be thrilled on the aural joyride even if climate change is foremost in the band’s agenda.
Killer tracks: “Anoxia”; “Blood Moon”; “Mental Haze”; “Silent Spring”
It makes sense that there was no climate change themed album last year when everyone’s attention was focused on surviving the scourge of the Covid-19 pandemic.
(Listen to the featured albums on most digital music platforms especially bandcamp.)