Believe it or not, death metal and hardcore did NOT mix in the 90s. I know I’ve mentioned this many times before, but it’s critical to understanding why the awesome bands of the time were awesome. For the weird kids like me and the handful of people I knew scattered across the country who loved Merauder and Malevolent Creation in equal amounts, one of the best (yet sadly forgotten) bands of the late 90s was DAY OF SUFFERING.
I’m not going to try to write some comprehensive history of the band, because I didn’t know them personally and I’d probably get it wrong, so I’ll just go over the highlights as I remember them.
The Malcolm X sample at the beginning of this still makes my heart beat a little faster when I hear it! I have to contain myself from yelling “THE FETUS IS A LIFE!!” and slapping the yogurt out of my azn’s hands in the name of VEGAN JIHAD.
DoS were a vegan sxe/semi-Hardline band from North Carolina who never really toured, barely did any interviews, weren’t friends with any of the cool bands, yet somehow managed to be 10,000 better than just about any other band playing this style in 1998. I only saw them once, at a fest in Indianapolis with Hatebreed and Charles Bronson, and it totally blew me away to see these skinny little kids in Metallica shirts with purple Ibanezes playing what was basically early 90s death metal with hardcore vocals and lyrics about X VEGAN JUSTICE X– couldn’t be more relevant to my 19 year-old interests!!
This is probably my second favorite song on the record– I wish they made “controversial slogans in Impact” merch back then because “VISUALIZE INDUSTRIAL COLLAPSE” would have made a sweet shirt :(
The coolest thing was how this record just came out of nowhere and completely blew everybody away with how brutal and polished it was. Back then digital recording technology was in its infancy and most hardcore bands still had horrible production unless they were on a big label like Revelation or Victory, so the fact that this record sounded so good was kind of amazing, and definitely set it apart from the pack. For example, I love Abnegation more than life itself, but compare how shitty their production was compared to DoS’.
This song is probably about twice as long as it needs to be but DAT INTRO RIFF
As far as I know, they just put out this one album, never toured, and broke up a year or two later. I heard rumors that they were going in a more black metal-style direction at that point, and while I hate black metal, it would be pretty next-level for a hardcore band to be jocking BM in the late 90s. I know they played a reunion show in 2009 but that’s about it– maybe someone else can give us a “where are they now” on DAY OF SUFFERING??
Not sure if this will sound good to anyone under 25ish since it’s fairly primitive compared to Suiside Silence or whatever, but I thought I’d share it here because I am old and I like talking about stuff I liked when I was a stupid teenager. Keep in mind this came out a good 5-7 years before the term “deathcore” was invented, so it was pretty amazing to find a vegan sxe hardcore band who named themselves after a Morbid Angel song!
I’m 20, but this sounds pretty sick!
Wish they were named Suffer The Day.
steve hart the guitar player plays in a band from wilmington nc called no tomorrow.
steve hart is now a fat old dude in a really good band called no tomorrow. day of suffering did a reunion show with pulling teeth about a year ago, it was pretty awesome to see them. i didn’t really know anything about them at the time but they are from the 90s so that makes them cool
Mind = blown! I know some of the dudes in No Tomorrow (I live an hour and half away from Wilmington), but I had no clue Steve was in this sweet band beforehand. I like the guy, but he seemed to get a little butthurt when I told him on Facebook that the lyrics to the song “Into Another” were like the kind of stuff Metallica wrote on their St. Anger album. :/
Derp. That’s the song “Herbivore” by the BAND “Into Another”. Particularly, that part where they talk about lifestyles and deathstyles and such.
lolololol amazing!!
Eh, def respect them for being something cool from NC (though I’m sure they’re probably from Winston Salem or some place in the Piedmont, which is the only place any of our hardcore comes from, but whatever) but needs more bass drops and to tune down AT LEAST 2 more whole steps before a 20 year old like me to have any real interest.
Lol, so does this mean you are not enjoying Raleigh’s bustling neo-powerviolence scene?
I live in Western North Carolina. This is what’s considered original and fresh here. We’re maybe one step above eastern Europe.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlGZ43bA7mg
We do have asheville though, if you’re into insufferable faggots who jock Bane and independent vinyl stores/vegan bakeries.
LOLOLOLOLOLOL
For those of you who don’t know, according to some study or something that I heard about a couple years ago, Asheville is also the number 1 city in the United States in terms of harboring adolescents running away from home.
God, I fucking believe it. I visited that place once, and between the constant racket of moustached/beardo street bands playing over each other and the glut of “free thinking individuals” clogging up the streets (either painting, performing, or just standing about, playing hacky sack or some bullshit), it lines up with a personal conception I have of hell that is only rivaled by Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
I could see it being an okay place if nobody lived there or expressed themselves, though.
sounds like portland, but in the south. DO NOT WANT
Asheville is basically this, only IRL. Not even joking:(
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=669jCS0zqs0
I am from Seattle. I know your pain :( #myparentshaveaprius #srs
It’s a shame, though, because the city is located in a pleasant little mountainous area and has some cool stuff like the Biltmore Estate.
I’ll attest to this. I live about 30 minutes away from asheville and whenever some 17 y. o. assclown realizes he doesn’t believe in the bible anymore and hates his family for being close minded bigots, he leaves home to live in asheville and get a job at urban outfitters, grow an ironic handlebar mustache and have a short-lived gay phase that they “don’t want to talk about”.
Sidenote: it’s usually homeschool kids, and they are pretty fucked up in the first place.
homeschool kids are honestly some of the craziest, most fucked up people out there– dat isolation and lack of socialization with your peers!
nope. wilmington. there is plenty of hardcore through out the state you dummy
I got their album. Definitively one of my favorite band. Great mix of evil death, thrash and hardcore.
this is really ill.
This doesn’t really sound any different than H8000, right? Yet, you hate “vegan metal”?
i dunno, it sounds different to me or i obviously wouldn’t like it, right?
Isn’t it possible you dislike vegan metal for other (illogical) reasons?
I mean, stolen death metal/Slayer riffs played by vegan sxe hardcore dudes pretty much sums up both H8000 and Day of Suffering (and Morning Again etc.), musically and lyrically.
Or is it just that the euro version of something you like isn’t lulzier/more hamfisted than the u.s. version?
The euro version was more melodic, which i am not into. If you cant hear the difference between arkangel and abnegation i dont know what to tell you?
Abnegation and Arkangel are as different from each other as City Lights and Chunk! No, Captain Chunk…they’re both from another continent.
With all the “shitty” music you like (don’t worry, I like/hate almost everything you like/hate and I love this site), you really falling over “being more melodic”, yet almost everything other being the same?
I’m really the last person to argue about musical taste, but I hope you’ll get my point.
no i get it, but you are probably a recovering IMN so you’ll get what i mean when I say that DOS are more inspired by Malevolent Creation whereas Arkangel et al are more inspired by Dissection. Obviously the different is slight, but when you are talking about absurdly obscure sub-sub-subgenres, these things count!
just my $.02, i totally get why people like X euro edge metal X, it’s just not my thing, you know?
I’m everything but a (recovering) IMN, but to me it looks like you don’t like euro vegan metal just because they’re euro (via being really not so different from u.s. vegan metal).
You seem to have a hard time admitting just that and come up with these “melody”-arguments etc.
Even if you don’t like euro vegan metal just because it’s euro, I’m perfectly fine with that.
DoS is the best. But i love “vegan/edge metal” a la Arkangel, DoS, xCanaanx, Reprisal, Sentence, Liar, Congress, Morning Again, Culture, Green Rage, xCanonx etc.
Great band! Check out also Arkangel and Reprisal.They bring da hardest most evah
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7EUbLW1OR4&feature=related U’R MOSHIN’
Fucking christ, this is fucking amazing.
i think a big part of the “primitiveness” here is the drums.. i mean listen to the drums in that “pawn” song… sounds so soft compared to today’s standards.. the riffs aren’t half bad though.
Favorite vegan straight edge band ever, period.
Is the fact that a band called “Day of Suffering” gets a post during the holidays wry commentary on D’s part?
I believe this band was originally called Falling Down before they changed it to Day of Suffering. I am not sure if the name coincided with a change in sound as well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mnr0qAKuh4
yes, they were originally called Falling Down, I forgot to mention that. I think they had like 1 different member or something? The Falling Down 7″ was pretty sweet at the time too!
20 years old but this shit is fucking sweet. Forever love the ’90s vegan sxe mosh
I used to confuse this band with Day of Mourning.
This cd kicked the shit out of me when I first heard it in’98, and it still gets some regular listens now. I heard the unreleased song at some point over the years, and I remember it being really good.
Aren’t 2/5ths of Between the Buried and Me sxe vegan moshbros from Raleigh too? Was Waggoner ever in this band or was it Tommy?
Between The Buried And Me originally had most of the members from Prayer For Cleansing. The singer came from another band called From Here On.
im a vegetarian (fo real) , so music like this gives me the oppourtunity to mosh harder and somehow also mosh preachey and condescendierrrr (if thats a word) getting on my high (mosh) horse is fun to do.
hey, im extremely cynical and a poopy diapered 30 year old baby. any blog or attempt to puke harder than anyone else on the world through-my-gaze (that i can already see through cause im smarter than they are) makes my beautiful soul shine much brighter than the “no fun” genre of hardcore. i dont understand that im actually more sad than they were and will continue to resurrect memories of mistakes i made in life as that cynical teen who likes bands like Charles Bronson for the same reasons mentioned above (poopy pants beautiful soul cynicism). their Punk Tactics were hilariously apparent even in 1995 playing shows with them and all the fits they threw trying to moderately “look san diego” in the process just in case Justin Pearson wanted to be pals. please post more on the depressingly cynical characters of 90s hardcore who through the idealism of the No Fun scene out the window to take on the idealism of trying to have the Perfect Cynical Attitude to Puke that Punk Vomit all over the world.
good luck with your trying to zing me goals in 2012
Was totally going to submit a Day of Suffering post to SYWH. I missed this first time round. DAMN!
Best vegan edge band. One of them was wearing a Master of Puppets shirt on the inlay. Blew my 16 year old mind!
According to my bro, the “where are they now” on this band is something like this: They’re all still vegan, only 2 of them are still edge, and they played a reunion show at Breast Fest this year in North Carolina during which they played a fantastic set but most people didn’t give a shit, I was gonna drive down but it didn’t work out with my job :/ [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Q5u2qW9_SI&w=420&h=315
Nice job, it¡¯s a great post. The info is good to know!
Used to be a huge fan of all things Catalyst Records and this was BY FAR the best record the label ever released. It’s up there w/ the Canon 7″ as far as great militant vegan sxe.