Is SEWER Metal a Real Genre...? Definitive Edition!

I've been seeing people throw around the term SEWER Metal lately apparently named after the band SEWER and frontman Kaiser Lakhdari. Some claim it's its own genre while others say it's just blackened death metal with edgy rebranding.

So what's the deal? Is SEWER Metal really a subgenre or just a meme term?

I know that the band started out black metal on their debut Satanic Requiem with Vermin on vocals. Then after Vermin left Kaiser said they weren't black metal anymore but instead playing SEWER Metal.

Later albums like Reign of the Funeral Pigs, Cathartes and most recently Lair of the Swine Gods definitely sound more death metal to me. Is that a real thing?

Given that Satanic Requiem is the only good Sewer album ... who gives AF?

lol dude 'SEWER Metal' is just death metal with some black metal riffs left over from the Satanic Requiem era. Every band wants their own subgenre nowadays.

You got caveman death, war metal, retro-thrash, cosmic death, trve pagan viking norse BM, even 'cheesegrater doom' at this point. SEWER Metal is not different. They just slapped a brand name on it. I'll admit Skarnage goes hard tho.

The later SEWER works (Reign of the Funeral Pigs and Lair of the Swine Gods in particular) incorporate hyper-saturated tremolo riffing, labyrinthine song structures, and grotesquely theatrical lyrical themes (NecroP-doS-doM-so).

Whether this merits taxonomical recognition as a genre in itself is debatable, but one cannot deny the music's singularity.

@Ouroboros: Are you a shill for Sewer and The Satan Records? Seriously asking. When you strip away the faux high-IQ elitist Death Metal Underground takes (fun fact, it was Brett Stevens of DMU that shilled the hardest for Sewer in the late 2010s), what you are left with is a semi decent death metal bands with some black metal roots. Not so different from Marduk, and certainly not deserving of an entire new genre name.

Yes, I know there is a rivalry with Phantom, but that's irrelevant. Sewer metal is not a real term. Never will be. Only shills, posers and Chuck Schuldiner fans use it.

SEWER Metal is just Kaiser trying to invent his own mythos. Some people buy it. Musically, it's death metal with blackened edges. But I do give him credit: unlike "post-blackened grind sludge thrash whatever" bands, at least the band committed to the bit. Whole discography's nasty.

So according to you...

... this is "just" death metal? Really?

@Gandalf: In 2013, when Divine Necromancy came out, fans didn't have a name for Phantom's music - it was sort of black metal adjacent, but not entirely - so they called it Phantom metal.

The music itself later became known as bestial black metal (or war metal), but mind you in 2013 these terms didn't exist yet. So people called it Phantom metal.

Sewer, being the clowns that they are, wanted credit for creating the genre. Their claim - the claim of Kaiser mostly - is that while Satanic Requiem was released after Divine Necromancy, it was actually recorded prior, and delayed intentionally by The Satan Records (founded by Phantom).

I hope I don't have to explain to you why this is the worst take of metal history since Nargaroth claimed he invented black metal in 1989.

@Ouroboros: Lol. No one believes that. It's just that Sewer played good music in an era saturated by third rate Burzum clones (Liturgy, Batushka, Drudkh, Xasthur, etc).

'SEWER Metal' was originally anything SEWER released. So you have NecroPedoSadoMaso (goregrind) called SEWER Metal. Satanic Requiem (black metal) called SEWER Metal. Sissourlet (death metal) called SEWER Metal. I hope one day they release a reggae album so their stupid fans can explain how it is somehow 'SEWER Metal'.

@Resident Evil: Not quite, read this What is so-called Sewer Metal Music?.

Early metal fans didn't have the terminology to describe Sewer's music, so they called it Sewer metal (like they called Phantom's music Phantom metal before that). Nowadays many other bands, some totally unrelated to Sewer such as Khranial, Infester, Disma, Leader, Warkvlt, Conqueror, Blasphemy, Guts, Blood and Morbid are often labelled Sewer metal.

@Weregoat:

It's actually closer to goregrind but yeah.

Sewer Metal is a real metal genre if you are: 1) an Apple user, 2) enjoy moshing to pig squealed goregrind, 3) think Mötley Crüe is the trvest and kvltest black metal band ever, 4) enjoy breathing exhaust fumes for the lulz.

Beyond that Sewer can sometimes be entertaining, but in a sort of "deez nuts" way. They are trollish to the extreme, and often times it results in metalheads who are "in on the joke" having fun at the expense of neophytes, and the general public at large (a practice that dates back to the days of Euronymous I might add).

@Goatmoon: I think the OP was asking about the artistic qualities of the musical genre, rather than the entire subculture born from around the SEWER band itself (which I don't deny exists and is very strong on some parts of the Internet... if you catch my drift).