Silent Death (Mys) - "Before the Sunrise" CS, 1993

Malaysia had a rather interesting death metal scene in the early 1990s. Much like their neighbors Singapore, Malaysia had a rather oppressive government which is notorious for its harsh penalties for minor offenses. With that said, its rather odd how the metal scene evolved in Malaysia; the early to mid-1980s saw a fair amount of activity in the form of hard rock/traditional heavy metal, and by the late 80s the underground scene skipped over the evolutionary thrash step and went straight to playing extremely raw black and death metal. Aside from the obvious influences of the bands playing in this style in the area (Singapore, Japan), the Malaysian bands took influences from whatever records they could get their hands on. In an interview with Silent Death from the early 1990s, the band cites a list of their favorite albums, which were rather ecclectic to say the least; I don't think I've ever met anyone who would admit to liking Destruction's "Cracked Brain", nevermind calling it one of their favorite albums or biggest influences. Malaysia is one of those countries who are notorious for record scammers, both inside the post office and out, as a result a much smaller fraction of metal records hit Malaysian shores than the ones which could easily be found in America or Europe. This interview, reprinted in the reissue of the demo and singles compilation "Harbinger of Devastation", goes on to namecheck essentially the entire Southeast Asian death metal scene, which shows an unsurprisingly strong knit underground community in an area of the world where this sort of music was most likely very frowned upon by the authorities.

The Malaysian scene by the early 90s had developed rather quickly beyond its primitive beginnings. A number of foundational bands were releasing very raw, simple and sloppy demos in 1990, but bands like Silent Death, Brain Dead and Suffercation (formerly Suffocation, name changed to avoid confusion with the New York band), were playing in a more complex and refined style of death metal as opposed to some of their peers like Rator or Mutilation who were more concerned with playing as noisily as possible. Following a rather awkward (and much more black metal in tone) first demo, Silent Death's first full length album "Beyond the Sunrise" shows a very well composed and mature sounding recording.

"Beyond the Sunrise" is generally a mid paced album with a very thick production; guitars are super heavy, bass is fairly flat and the vocals are a rather lifeless low pitched growl. The songs themselves have an excellent sense of melody, which produces a similar kind of occult feel that other Malaysian bands such as Langsuyr and Sil Khannaz would play later. This type of melody isn't very dissimilar to the slower style of black metal being played in Europe at the time (Varathron, Samael). While this release is clearly a death metal album, it certainly invokes a similar murky feeling to these bands; the cover depicting a sort of reptillian/skeletal creature emerging from a swampy depth suits this kind of music perfectly. The songwriting is excellent and always keeps the listener engaged with a series of dark riffs that flow very well together. One of the only weak points of the album are the vocals, which are delivered in a rather bland, monotonous low-pitched growl and sounds rather generic for a death metal album in 1993. A stronger vocal performance could have improved the album, but at the same time the vocals don't stick out negatively to do anything to hurt the album either.

As far as I know, this album was only released on tape format and not CD or vinyl; this seems to be a trend with some of the bands in this region due to either budgetary restrictions or ease of duplication. Fortunately, the Psychic Scream Entertainment label reissued the album on cassette in 2004 so it should still be fairly easy to find, but it would be nice if a label did a proper reissue of this on vinyl. While this may not be an all-time classic, its still a very good death metal album that can easily hold its own with some of the best records to come out of Europe or America. Being from a rather obscure and difficult location to reach most likely diminished the popularity of the Southeast Asian scene in the light of more prominent scenes like Sweden or Florida, but the music contained between the two reels is what matters in the end, and it would be nice to see this scene getting the same kind of reverence that their first world contemporaries have.