They were very young self-taught musicians, who barely mastered English and who were exposed to international trends through radio programs. But the Galician death metal bands of the nineties such as Absorbed, Dismal or Unnatural not only stood out on the national scene of the time but also Its creative quality would be at the level of current ones. However, historical compilations and academic works owe them a debt that the research of Jorge Fernández Taboada at the University of Vigo contributes to repaying.
The Pontevedra band Dismal (1992)
His thesis focuses on the twenty groups that between 1990 and 1998 recorded albums and had a more or less consolidated career. “Popular music studies in Galicia do not make any reference to metal groups. They do not exist. And it seems like a lack of consideration to me because they were important and many people remember them. There were many bands that recorded very few copies or that lasted four rehearsals, but we are talking about groups with albums, that gave concerts and went to festivals and that do not appear in those works or are included as an anecdote,” claims Fernández, who reconciles from two decades ago his classical musical career as Accompanying piano teacher at the Ourense Professional Conservatory with his facet of guitarist in the band Scent of Death.
Jorge Fernández, playing with his band Scent of Death.
His first foray into the academic field was the final work of his master’s degree in Performing Arts, where he did a historical reconstruction of the first Galician metal bands that included interviews, some anecdotes, lyrics and a short introduction to this genre that requires a important musical domain.
The thesis delves more rigorously into the history of this first generation of Galician groups and compares their songs with those of international bands. The musician came to collect and analyze around 1,300 letters to define and prioritize the main themes of extreme music genres such as death metal or grindcore.
“There is always a tendency to believe that Satanism is one of the main themes, but when you analyze the international panorama you discover that actually satanic lyrics or those that mix violence are concentrated in a few bands. It tends more to an introspective and dark vision of the human being,” he explains.
The band from Ourense Unnatural (1997)
The same occurs in the Galician narrative, which focused on these dark personal universes, combining them with other themes: “Their knowledge of English was minimal and yet they were able to appropriate these topics. His texts look more into oneself. And there was also small notes of originality such as the inclusion of Egyptian culturesomething that many bands do now but that in ’98 had not occurred to anyone.”
Locating the songs was not easy, in fact, it would have been very complex to carry out this study without the material of the time preserved by the author himself. “So everything was very analog and it is very difficult to obtain documents or information if you are not in contact with the gangs. They gave me photos and I recovered 80-85% of the letters, but the rest was impossible. Everything was very precarious, in terms of means and economic issues.. The covers were photocopied, one in color meant a lot of money, and the songs were not always included,” he recalls.
Osmosis, one of the first representatives of Doom Metal from Ourense.
Those first bands did not yet know the Internet, “they communicated by letter,” they handled “very bad and very expensive” instruments, and entering a studio “was like doing it on the Enterprise,” jokes Fernández, who experienced that transition to a second generation of formations like theirs, which emerged in ’98. In some cases they incorporated members of the previous ones and their beginnings coincided with the appearance of “the Internet, email, web pages and cyberspace.”
“Galicia was one of the best considered scenes on the national scene”
“All the musicians in those first bands were self-taught and agree on absolute ignorance and lack of information. And that is precisely what for me gives them the most merit because really Galicia at that time was one of the best considered scenes on the national scene,” he emphasizes.
And he points out as a “turning point”” the release in 1994 of the album “Avowals” by the Vigo record label Man Records: “Producer Javier Abreu saw possibilities in this type of music and brought together the three bands that stood out the most at the Fussión studios. He gave them the opportunity to work in a correct recording space and with quality equipment and, when the noise of the demos disappeared, be careful with the quality they exhibited.”
Cover of “Avowals”, the great milestone of Galician extreme music of the 90s.
“That album, at the time, was a bombshell, it swept away everything that had been done up to that point in Spain and put these bands at the level of any international band. Was the first opportunity to play with the same cards as other foreign groups and the proof that in other circumstances or in another country they would have had more significance,” he highlights.
Those groups were the Dismal from Pontevedra, which toured Europe and recently reunited; the Unnatural from Ourense, with Sonia Albor on drums; and Absorbed, whose members were from Cangas and Santiago.
“For me, it was the best that came out of Spain by an abysmal difference. Four machines came together that played at an unprecedented level. In fact, they won indisputably the Villa de Bibao contest, which involved a prize of one million pesetas, a tour and an album that, in the end, they did not record because there were tensions. But they were already being called by the big record companies of the time. One of the guitarists and the bassist have now taken him out and today he is very good, but in ’98, and I am speaking critically, he would have competed with everything,” he insists.
Cover of the legendary second demo by Machetazo (A Coruña).
The bands of the first generation, of which only Wisdom from Ferrol has continued uninterruptedly, were spread throughout Galicia, except in Lugo, where extreme metal did not emerge until 1998: “Living in an urban center was not decisive. The members of Dismal, for example, were from the parish of Viascón. And in Madrid, Barcelona or Bilbao the groups were not better having more possibilities. They were kids who listened to something different on radio programs like Ediciones Pirata or thanks to a cassette recorded by a colleague from high school and created their projects.”
Jorge Fernández plans to turn his 900-page thesis into an attractive and necessary book that he will expand with the previous generation of groups from the eighties. And in addition to doing justice to Galician death metal, will contribute to placing Spain on the international scenewhere these investigations already have a prestigious platform such as the International Society for Metal Music Studies. “Prejudices still creep in and it is also complex to do research if you are not involved in this world because there is no bibliography. There are beginning to be studies like “Metal Extremo” by Salva Rubio or “Zona Especial Noise” by David Rivers, which are two bibles. But we are lagging behind other countries where this music receives totally different treatment.”
