SALAZAR´S LAW (1)

In 1993, the members of Gorguts, a then little-known Canadian band, began writing what was to be their third album, "Obscura." During the first sessions, they did something very unusual: they decided to escape from the compositional foundations and traditional techniques common to the style when starting to write music for their new work.

Gorguts, "Obscura" (1998)

 As Druj establishes in the Corpus Mutatio: "Each musical style has a form at its origin, dominated by one or several primary symbols that make that style identifiable; essential elements that, when mutating and changing, give rise to a metamorphosis that ends in birth of a new style defined by its own new primary symbols." (Corpus Mutatio, cap. 1 "That fierce howl has always accompanied us").

Thus, Gorguts decided to dispense with two basic elements in extreme metal, in such a way that there was no group that did not use one of them continuously in their albums: tremolo or power chords. For an extreme metal group, limiting themselves in this way meant having to come up with a type of riffs and rhythmic patterns that moved away from the predominant aesthetics in Death Metal. The riffs and musical ideas that emerged were of an originality rarely seen. But the most important thing was that their use was not an exception or a specific decoration during any of the songs on the album, but rather they were the basis of each and every one of the new compositions. The listener was therefore faced with

"an alien music, extraordinarily demanding of the average listener, since the foundations and primary symbols on which the style was based had disappeared, opening a crack through which unknown territories, unexplored regions could be glimpsed." (Metallorum mutatio: Corpus theoreticum, cap. 2 "Historical pseudomorphoses", Relgneps Razalas)

Gorguts' composition of "Obscura" could be considered one of those interesting moments in the history of music and the arts where a stylistic revolution occurs; We enter a hybrid zone, that fascinating region where one style becomes another.

According to the Corpus Mutatio: "Salazar's Law allows us to analyze the transition zones in which a style mutates to re-emerge with a renewed aesthetic, so that we can understand the implications of this change. It is based on the exceptional as an element of development, in taking the exception as the rule."

Adolfo Salazar

Thus, this phenomenon has occurred on multiple occasions throughout the history of music and is applicable to the rest of the arts. Relgneps Razalas sets out some examples in the Liber Semitarum:

"Salazar's Law was fulfilled in the transition from monodic to polyphonic music in Europe in the early Middle Ages, in the birth of opera around 1600, or in the emergence of atonal music at the beginning of the 20th century. In all these cases, the compositional elements that are used exceptionally undergo a process of intensification, resulting in an exaggeration of these features, which will have the logical consequence of producing a displacement of the perspective axis." (Liber Semitarum, chap. 4, "The stages of Western music").

Thus, there will be a change in balance between the traditional compositional elements, with the exceptional being the basis of the composition. Although we start from the previous base, this leads us to an entirely new sound world (Salazar, "Conceptos fundamentales de la historia de la música", 2004:210).

“There are many paths that

lead to the heart of Metal...

none to leave.”

Inat-se-Ragen, Metallicum Proverbia (verse 12)