The monster emerged from the mists of the moshpit.“Recently, we played a show in Cleveland, and some guy in a Godzilla costume showed up and started going nuts in the pit,” Lord Kaiju, the singer and guitarist for the death metal band Oxygen Destroyer, writes in an email.
“I nearly laughed my ass off during one of our songs because I couldn’t believe how awesome it was.” The awesomeness of kaiju movies, the Japanese-originated film genre mostly concerning giant monsters doing giant monster things, has been Oxygen Destroyer’s domain since forming in 2014.Once a solo project of Lord Kaiju’s, the band has grown into a quartet and steadily increased its potency.
Guardian Of The Universe, its newest album and the third of its reign, is a blitz of big-ass riffs born from the thrashy, full-tilt furiousness of Demolition Hammer, Morbid Saint, and other early pummelers.“Thrash metal and death metal bands are destructive as hell,” Lord Kaiju explains.
“It seemed like the perfect style of music to capture the power of giant, city-destroying monsters.” Oxygen Destroyer is not alone when it comes to fusing metal with metropolis-mashing monster mayhem.Heavy metal has a kaiju legacy, from the proto, such as Blue Öyster Cult’s all-timer groove stomper “Godzilla,” to the ’80s and ’90s antecedents.
“I know plenty of metal bands before us that had some songs based on Kaiju movies,” Lord Kaiju asserts.“Anvil wrote a kickass song about Mothra.
The Cianide song ‘Mountains in Thunder‘ is about Godzilla.And Hellwitch has a song about Godzilla as well, called ‘Mordirivial Dissemination.'” Not to mention, the debatably current biggest death metal band on the planet, Gojira, derives its name from Toho Studios’s most significant kaiju export.
However, Oxygen Destroyer feels like the start of something new, a distinct segment of metal fully dedicated to exploring the commonality between two oft-derided art forms with far more going ...