Figured I'd do a 1997 highlight post for Australian metal parallel to the 1997 game. These are some tunes from some of the albums, demos and EPs that I personally like (didn't include anything too obvious like Sadistik Exekution, Alchemist, Destroyer 666, Spear of Longinus etc):
Mix the goofy grinding Macabre style with the groovy sleaze of Dead and you pretty much have Filth. Unfortunately they never really made it out of the demo/splits stage.
Not as good as their debut album, some thrashy/shouty elements are starting to become more dominant than compared to older material (getting into brocore/bogancore territory) but still good and still brings the blasting pummeling grindcore madness.
Epic, powerful, passionate, true metal! Not reinventing the wheel here but these guys worked their asses off in the 90's to keep classic metal sounds alive in Australia, when everybody else was either making black/thrash or brocore Metallica rip-off chug metal.
Nothing mindblowing but this is some decent and charming Norwegian black metal worship, especially influenced by Darkthrone. Back in the days when Aussies were sitting around sweating with shorts on writing songs about how their soul was feeling the cold freezing moon or whatever.
Crazy band with a weird mixture of influences, from industrial, experimental, death metal, thrash metal and synth music. They also did
this hilarious video clip. Just an all around pretty bizarre band that really grew on me and now I love the album.
Definitely not as good as
A Necessary Evil but still pretty brutal shit. Some good bass and songwriting, interesting tempos and shit.
Astennu was in this band and recorded this album before he moved to Norway and joined Dimmu Borgir in 1997. Given that it's what you might expect, thin dynamic black metal with symphonic elements etc.
The final demo from progressive black/folk metal local legends (they operated near me in the 90's) and it might contain some of the coolest drumming on any black metal demo I've ever heard. Shame we didn't get to see where they were taking the band's sound after this. This demo contains some killer paganistic savagery.
Formed by two of the guys who went on to create
Mhorgl so the savagery is really no surprise here.
Black metal ist krieg!
Ultra-raw debut demo that borders on unlistenable territory but if you give it time to acclimate itself the black/thrash mania comes through nicely.
Debut demo from another band local to me. This is a little grubby and I think I prefer their
1998 demo a bit more but these guys put out some pretty mindbending black/death that follows in the great Australian tradition of bands like that. The drumming is like a fucking jackhammer.
Death/doom legends' EP with 3 brand new tracks on it and some re-recorded older tracks. For die-hards of the genre but nothing mindblowing I guess. I like it.