TOMAS BORSA
Opinions Editor

Perhaps owing to the reputation developed through the often comically elaborate stage shows by bands such as Gorgoroth or Dimmu Borgir involving goat’s heads, pentagrams and heaps of black face paint, metal music can be a very tricky sell indeed.

Certainly, the increasing brutality of the more extreme forms of metal has not helped. Even to the most loyal metalheads, subgenres like grindcore can come across sounding a bit like a low-quality recording of a high speed collision between an elephant and a train.

But one thing remains universal across all genres: talent — heaps of it — is instantly recognizable.

By combining the technical ferocity of death metal with the gloomy undertones of melodic metal, local quintet Requiem of Existence (formerly known as Uninvited Burial) have raised the bar for home-grown metal acts. Founded from the ashes of drummer Alex Bent’s former band Rising Forward, the band have played with big names like Blind Witness, Gravemaker, Today I Caught the Plague and Dreadnaught.

And they have financed all of their recordings through odd jobs, paying the $300 per song right out of their own pockets.

But what’s truly impressive about Requiem of Existence is how quickly they’ve mastered a genre notorious for its precision and unforgiving speed — after all, they aren’t even high school seniors yet.

Jonathan Kraemer, lead songwriter and guitarist of the band, is only entering his grade 11 year at Marion M. Graham Collegiate. Kraemer’s father toured for a large part of the ’80s with a successful metal band of his own and encouraged his son to play guitar. Jonathan’s mother, on the other hand, felt that one metalhead in the family was enough, going so far as to throw away her son’s Judas Priest tapes.

After his mother passed away while he was in the eighth grade, Kraemer was able to pursue his passion for guitar in earnest, a habit he quickly became obsessed with. Within two years of picking up his first guitar, he had begun composing his own songs, all of which he continues to do by ear rather than from formal training.

“I actually don’t know how to read music,” he said. “I’ve never taken a guitar lesson.”

In a genre defined by super-fast picking, complex key changes and multiple competing rhythms, this is nothing short of remarkable.

The band’s most recent work reflects a significant change in style with gloomy, morbid song-writing, down-tempo introductions and heavily down-tuned guitars sharply contrasted by blast beats and pitch squeals. Think Whitechapel, The Faceless or Despised Icon — and then remember that those terrifyingly fast riffs and barbaric vocals are coming from a group of man-boys who barely have their licences.

Lately, Requiem of Existence has been focusing on recording and writing new songs, rather than performing live shows; in the past, the band performed upwards of four times per month, including a performance at last year’s Mazzfest, a heavy metal and hardcore festival held at the Odeon. Following the release of a full-length album, the band will return to playing live shows.

Seriously though — if these kids aren’t signed within a year I’ll eat my own arm. Come to think of it, that would be such a cool album cover.

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