However, this Friday a group of southern metal bands are performing at Sammy's under that very banner.
One of the bands on the bill is Black Mesa, whose front-man Tom Jensen (23) hit the headlines recently as he is in line to compose for the NZSO.
The genres of death metal and orchestral composition could seem worlds apart, but not according to Jensen.
"I try to write and play all styles of music but it seems that the orchestral and death metal sides of my writing have attracted more attention recently.
"Musically, death metal and orchestral are the same thing; both use interweaving musical lines to create an overall effect, and both genres must use dynamics (the interplay of loud and quiet) and structure to hold the listener's attention. In the death metal I write, I tend to take an orchestral approach to structure.
"Your average death metal song tends to follow the age-old pop song structure: intro-verse-chorus-verse-chorus-etc. If you listen to an orchestral piece, you will find that they usually flow from start to finish seamlessly, often without repetition.
"This is how we write music in Black Mesa. The difference between the two genres, apart from the instrumentation, is how they achieve the overall goal - provoking a response in the listener. Orchestral music usually uses beauty to do this ... death metal uses brutality to get a response.
"I didn't understand this for years until I heard a band called Nile. Listening to their music and reading the lyrics at the same time I saw that the brutality in their lyrics - which are extensively researched essays in ancient Egyptian torture and religious rituals - matched perfectly to the brutality in the music.
"Suddenly I was hooked. I wanted to hear insanely fast guitars, screaming and blast beats all at the same time. The effect of this music, I found, was that it was so intense that it simply washed over you and created a very calming, cathartic effect.
"Of course the two genres often mix it up. Stravinsky's Rite of Spring uses brutality to great effect when the subject matter is a young girl dancing herself to death, and many death metal bands use beauty as an antithesis to the brutality in their music. Opeth are a good example of this.
"One death metal band in particular, The Black Dahlia Murder, have guitar parts written in the exact style of a classical string quartet. The parts are simply distorted and backed up by blast beats and screaming so that it is still 'brutal'. If one was to arrange a Black Dahlia song for orchestra, your average orchestral fan would be delighted!
"Black Mesa plays brutal music with a linear structure. We start at point A and work our way to point B, usually without repetition ... We try to use dynamics to great effect, as many death metal bands are unable to do this ...
"We use clean guitar sounds and light drumming to counter the brutal parts. It's the combination of different dynamics that really makes a piece effective. For example: going from complete silence to absolute brutality in an instant, that can really scare people! Or the opposite, going from the craziest, most intense parts into dead silence.
"I love the sound of a completely silent venue in the moments after a song finishes, and before the audience starts cheering. We always endeavour to end our songs on the dot, so that after the final note, there is absolute silence.
"We have a policy that the music must reflect the lyrics or the subject matter ... we are often forced to represent chaos or disorder in the music. We use irregular time signatures and dissonance to do this."
He says similar factors attract him to each style of music.
"I simply love writing music and both styles allow me to be very expressive and to experiment with composition. Both death metal and orchestral music let me get down and dirty into the human psyche and attempt to show the chaos and beauty of life, and both styles are very receptive to careful composition."
Jensen is doing a bachelor of music degree, majoring in composition.
The band is a three-piece, comprising Jensen on guitar and vocals, Kyle Barnett on drums, and Andy Aitken on drums.
See them
Black Mesa play with Injection of Death, Synesthesia, Ashes of Eden, Into Avernus, Twist of Fate, Mirikachinist, and Brüer Grinder at Sammy's on Friday July 2.
