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Underground Metal Interviews
The best way to explore metal beyond the music is to ask the people involved some questions about their participation. The anus.com interviews section goes into further detail with several accomplished members of the scene to determine their viewpoints on life, metal and ideas.
Abhorrent
An instrumental technical death metal band from San Antonio, just starting out, gives some opinions on art and music.
Acerbus
Guitarist Cory answers questions about the essential knowledge of the minds behind the progressive, anti-aesthetic, circuitous yet eminently logical technical deathgrind band Acerbus.
Adversary (Ray Miller)
The man behind death metal band Adversary, metal label and distro Cursed Productions, and the infamous and ecclectic Metal Curse 'zine takes us on a mental journey through the land of the disturbed.
Autopsy (Chris Reifert)
A founding member of Autopsy, Chris Reifert has providing percussion and guidance for many fundamental bands in the scene and now hangs his hat with Abscess, a grind/metal project with a mortal fecal obsession.
Averse Sefira
The legends of Texas black metal in the oldest school of epic art, vocalist/guitarists Sanguine A. Nocturne and Wrath Satariel Diabolus gave us a piece of their collective and individual minds.
Bane
Underground metal warriors from Los Angeles speak their minds about Nietzsche, black metal, pornography, and Christianity in addition to chronicling their own endurance and accomplishment in the "scene."
Bathory (Quorthon)
Mainman of the original black metal band Bathory speaks to us about the origins of his music, its significance, and where he's going in the future.
Mr Blaash
The iconoclastic creator of Where's My Skin? zine speaks his mind on black metal, life in Houston, Texas, and the need for insurrection in daily life through violence, self-mutilation and appreciation of loud noise or music.
Lori Bravo
Best known for her work with Nuclear Death, she now fronts a new project called Raped.
Cadaver (Anders Odden)
A founding member of Cadaver, Odden now works in the proto-grind band Cadaver, Inc. and shares some of his insights and inspiration from more than a decade of metal musicianship.
Cryptic Slaughter (Les Evans)
When thrash meant blazing fast crossover, Les was at the guitar helm in Cryptic Slaughter, one of the bands that captured both the abundant spirit of hardcore and its metallic counterpoint.
Ildjarn 
One of the forerunners of the ambient black metal movement, Ildjarn makes microsymphonies in tribute to nature with misanthropic and feral spirit. This band remains controversial for many because of their music alone, yet Ildjarn was kind enough to share some insights on his motivations and vision.
Jon Konrath
Many of us remember Jon Konrath from his zine, "Air in the Paragraph Line," which like some web sites we know (?) blended literature, pop science and metal. Now Jon is in the midst of his second book, but was bribed with free Pabst blue ribbon(tm) to get some words on paper about his career and literary ambitions.
Krieg (Lord Imperial)
Demonic vocals and impassioned composer from Krieg and Weltmacht, Lord Imperial has been a stalwart of the New World black metal movement since its disturbed beginnings but now is spreading hatred and blasphemy worldwide with a proficient but chaotic style.
Nuclear Cath
Guerrilla leader of Leather'n'Spikes zine, and general inspiration to the Québec metal scene, Nuclear Cath took some time to reveal a few thoughts on her zine, its purpose and context.
Dan Lilker
Has played with metal bands from Nuclear Assault to Brutal Truth and speaks his mind on metal genres, attitudes and lifestyles.
Rigor Mortis
Years after this band first broke ground and established new standards in metal music, vocalist Bruce Corbitt talks about the band that influenced many and created an important step on the way to death and black metal.
Mike Riddick/Metalhit.com
Experienced underground metal guru Mike Riddick (Yamatu, Equimanthorn, The Soil Bleeds Black) has launched a for-profit MP3-based label that sells MP3s, and sends promotional MP3s to zines and radio shows -- but somehow, he's not worried about MP3s "ruining the music business."
Brian Russ
An early pioneer in net-based metal information, Brian Russ has faithfully maintained the BNR Metal pages over the years, contributing careful and efficient criticism of the esoteric metal genre.
Salem
Ze'ev from long-running Israeli metal band Salem was kind enough to give us a few moments of his thoughts on being caught up in a misanthropic genre, yet being from the holy land itself. His answers may surprise many.
Sammath (Jan Kruitwagen)
The songwriter and creator of the black metal band Sammath shares with our readers some of his thoughts on creativity, motivation, and art in the context of a decaying and chaotic postmodern era.
Sedition
Turner Scott van Blarcum of Texas bands Sedition, Talon and Pump'n Ethyl gets his day in the sun via an in-depth interview from Texas metal writer Bruce Corbitt.
Summoning/Ice Ages (Protector)
Protector of Summoning, Ice Ages and Die Verbannten Kinder Eva's gives us his thoughts on art, the compositional process, the state of metal and future directions in music.
Spear of Longinus
Australian black/speed metal band of longstanding underground status takes a few moments to have words with our roving reporter, and in doing so, unites politics, occultism and the raison d'etre of metal music and its ever-present withdrawl from socialization.
Xasthur
A one-man battering ram for an aural decimation of any complacency in the subconscious mind, Xasthur spreads unrest in the style of European psychedelic anti-humanist black metal with a honed detachment from socialization.
Bill Zebub
As editor and lead writer, Bill Zebub made The Grimoire of Exalted Deeds from a tiny metal 'zine into an empire with a large circulation and semi-fanatical following with his use of humor and literalism to slice through pretense.
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Thursday 17 July 2008 at 10:45 am
Akhenaton - Divine Symphonies
I like this: it's martial ambient in the style of Lord Wind with distorted bass. But, it is very predictable. So very predictable. As a result, it is pleasant to listen to as background music. About track seven, it starts becoming gothic with guitars and lush keyboards and Sisters of Mercy vocals. I think they need to go back to the drawing board and put more music into this, because their heavy repetition (a) isn't layered and (b) does not consist of melodies that are all that exciting.
Ancestral - Avowed
Varg, this is your fault. Yours. These people are following your lead. You made it look so simple and now, it is. Trudge beat, open strumming while power chords undulate, and you can trick out a pop song into being like Burzum. The underlying writing on this demo is a lot like later Krieg, but even more poppy, and so it seems very emo when it emerges in quasi-metallized form. Again, like all covertly negative reviews, this one must contain the words "not badly executed, but lacking direction." This demo sodomizes a Macintosh.
Chronic Torment - Doomed
This isn't A+ material, but it's a solid B. Sounding like a cross between Merciless and Fester, it's heavy-metal and hardcore-tinged death metal in the Swedish style, with an affinity for fast riffs. You will hear nothing new on this CD, but unlike most of these discs, it has an attention span long enough to bond together simple songs over the course of a few riff changes and a verse-chorus devolution. It's not like the best of Swedish metal, which leaves the stupid rock'n'rollisms behind, but it's quite solid, with the same aggression appeal that made Verminous fun until it gave you a headache.
Chronic Torment - Dream of the Dead
Gosh, does everyone need to follow Immolation and Hail of Bullets? There's some completely great stuff on this album, but it gets ruined by the nu-MTVcore/metalcore trend of ranting, dead-on-the-beat chanting verses. These sound like a braindead zombie attempting to sodomize an iron lung, and have about as much musical importance to the listener as well. I think it's good if you want something angry-sounding in the background, like in a movie. They're very catchy, but mind-numbing. This CD reminds me of Comecon in that way: their heavy metal has blended into their hardcore, with no emo, but it's so bouncy and simple that I don't want to ever put it in again. That's said because some of the Bolt Thrower-style speed riffs, with two chords strummed fast in the background and melodic rhythm patterns picked over them, are great. Still a Merciless comparison, if Merciless listened to a lot of later Malevolent Creation and The Haunted. What a promising work, but awash in stuff designed to pander to blockheads.
Wednesday 16 July 2008 at 6:05 pm
People Can't Tell Surface From Essence
So as I travel the internet on random errands, I hear people talking about the new "underground" bands, which all sound like Blink 182 making atmospheric black metal. It's pretty sad, but these bands insist they're not retro while tossing together bits and pieces of the past, wrapping them around standard pop-punk, adding some emo and crust and a pinch of necro, and then thrusting it all forward with that bedroom blackmetal "truly too authentic to care" aesthetic. I've listened to well over a hundred such bands in the last week, and on every level -- musically, aesthetically, artistically -- they're close enough to identical. Even more, they have nothing of distinction about them, so why bother? "Metal for metal's sake" is a path to mediocrity.
Then there are people who love to bloviate on about the "undiscovered" past gems, which almost universally are third-stringers with no distinction. Their goal is to make you think they know something you don't. They think they get ahead in life by pushing others down, and not simply by achieving more, because the two aren't the same, even in a relative universe. One of these so-called gems is Fester - Winter of Sin, which I threw on a week ago and had to laugh at how consistent judgment can be. For a smart person, whether in 1995 or in 2008, this CD is crap.
It starts with heavy metal riffs done up like black metal, and gets worse from there. It's a salad of pieces from here and there with no real direction except vague Venom worship. Every bad cliche of heavy metal and death metal is in here, and there's no melody or structure to recommend it. What does it have going for it? To weak people, it seems like a good way to be important, knowing about this undiscovered masterpiece etc. Avoid.
Monday 14 July 2008 at 4:58 pm
Stentorian - Gentle Push to Paradise
The best comparison I can make with this is Sentenced's "North From Here" hybridized with Malevolent Creation. It's big, dumb heavy metal riffs and some guitar noodling that goes nowhere, so much so that you forget you're listening to something and it's not a flaky engine idling in the background.
Sulphur - Cursed Madness
We want to be Immolation, but we want black metal cliche too. Yet life goes on, far away from the speakers and, ...what was I saying? Oh, don't buy this CD.
Troglodytic - Promo 2004
Hi, we've collected a ton of cliches and roped them together with Garage Band. Worse than shit, because at least you can plant shit in your backyard and grow flowers. This CD made me want to kill myself... but I threw it away instead.
Utgard - Thrones and Dominions
Dark Funeral and Watain are sitting on a bus while Darkthrone's "Transilvanian Hunger" is playing, and it runs into the back of a garbage truck. Nice speed, good aesthetic, good mastery of Darkthrone through "Total Death," but end result is totally pointless. What's wrong with listening to the original albums that do this better?
Walknut - Graveforests and Their Shadows
Why does all of this stuff sound the same? Drudkh, Nokturnal Mortum and every NSBM band from eastern europe do this slow melody of three or four notes that's half-lullabye and half-affirming, aerobic exercise music. It's not bad; this is one of the better things to arrive lately, but it's completely without character, which makes it unlikely I'd listen to this again. Vaguely reminiscent of Gehenna's first album.
Wrath of the Weak - Alogon
This album was named after "a logon," because it's clearly destined for MySpace fame. These simple songs rely on a burly version of Burzum technique where layers of guitar and bass overwash, but unlike in Burzum, they're not playing anything inspiring. The result is droning dischord that neither enlightens, clarifies or distorts the senses in any interesting way. If you can play drums while listening to a jet engine, the result is the same.
Aäkon Këëtrëh - Journey into the Depths of Night
Some people always thought black metal should sound like Abruptum, which to me sounds like art school rejects taking on John Cage under the influence of cheap drugs, maybe mixed with Bondo or Killz for added kick. Lots of theatrical stuff, really simple music, goes absolutely nowhere and seems to think it's making a big splash by being anti-music. Well, if you're trapped in Guantanamo Bay, maybe this would be acceptable listening but everyone else has something better to do. A boy's choir from a home for the chronically retarded could do better.
Hail of Bullets - Of Frost and War
Do you like Verminous and Repugnant? This is similar: it claims to be old school death metal but it has more in common with metalcore tricked out with an extra dose of bad heavy metal riffs. High-intensity production and relentless attack makes this seem like it might be interesting, but then you realize that it goes nowhere when you subtract the effect these riffs had on you when the original artists played them, and that the constant drive/bouncy drums of a metalcore band make it both exhausting and tedious. Vocals are good, but CD is pointless.
Heresi - Psalm II - Infusco Ignis
They probably play this for suicide bombers. I could see blowing myself up to make this end. These guys can play their instruments, and production is good, and they've mastered the basic songwriting to make it seem good, but... and again, but... they pick very obvious patterns and then songs undergo no change except the basic demands of manipulating consciousness to make something sound good. "Now an uplifting part, then back to minor!" Just when you think we're going black metal, suddenly the bouncy heavy metal riff off a KISS album appears, and then more parts barf up, regurgitated from metal genres past in no particular order... OK, please no. I would rather listen to the soccer moms of America trying to cover songs from the first two Destruction LPs than this vomitous horror of good-but-not-good-at-all. Nilla, please.
The Howling Void - Megaliths of the Abyss
Neat, a Skepticism clone. But without anything really unique going on. It moves forward so glacially that you forget what just happened, so all you hear is the simultaneous ringing of keyboards and guitar drone, with a snare-bass plodding in the background. Unfortunately, it is also all too predictable even if you speed it up. And it takes forever to end. Forever, forever. This CD is better than most but still unremarkable.
Thursday 10 July 2008 at 10:17 am
Classical music offers what everyone secretly wishes metal would: an unbroken cultural tradition untamed by the modern whore, untouchable by the mediocre tools who seem to thrive in our industrial cities.
Here's a few favorites:
1. Brahms, Johannes - Get your Romanticism on. Flowing, diving, surging passages which storm through tyrannical opposition to reach some of the most Zen states ever put to music. 4 Symph. (2CD)
2. Respighi, Ottorino - Italian music is normally inconsequential. This has an ancient feeling, a sense of weight that can only be borne out in an urge to reconquest the present with the past. Pines, Birds, Fountains of Rome
3. Saint-Saens, Camille - Like DeBussy, but with a much wider range, this modernist Romantic rediscovers all that is worth living in the most warlike and bleak of circumstances. Symph. 3
4. Bruckner, Anton - Writing symphonic music in the spirit of Wagner, Bruckner makes colossal caverns of sound which evolve to a sense of great spiritual contemplation, the first "heaviness" on record. Romantic Symphony
5. Schubert, Franz - A sense of power emerging from darkness, and a clarity coming from looking into the halls of eternity, as translated by the facile hand of a composer who wrote many great pieces before dying young. Symph. 8 & 9
6. Paganini, Niccolo - Perhaps the original Hessian, this long-haired virtuoso wore white face paint, had a rumored deal with the devil, and made short often violent pieces that made people question their lives and their churches. 24 Caprices
Sunday 06 July 2008 at 2:14 pm
Saturday, September 6, 2008
AVERSE SEFIRA (http://www.aversesefira.com/)
Necrite (http://www.myspace.com/necrite)
Blashyrkh (http://www.myspace.com/blashyrkhofficial)
Ancient Grave (http://www.myspace.com/ancientgrave)
@ The Black Castle / 855 W. Manchester / LA, CA 90044 (http://www.myspace.com/theblackcastleusa)
Sunday 06 July 2008 at 10:13 am
In 1992 Vikernes under the artist name Burzum released his first album. Now he has plans to release his seventh. The last album came in 1999. In addition, he finished writing the script for his autobiography. "It will work out a few new details about the killings," he said, "which were never focused on before. But I will wait to tell the story in completion."
Seventh Burzum Album in the Works
Friday 04 July 2008 at 5:43 pm
MP3s are an invitation to try before you buy. If you're like me, and everyone I deem to be a good person and so desire as a friend, you listen for months or years and then you buy the CD when you can -- if it's available, which in metal is far from guaranteed.
Periodically, on a rainy afternoon, I go through the music as I do mindless tasks like fixing scripts and HTML. These mindless tasks are perfect because they put me in an ornery mood, at which point I have no tolerance for music that is more annoyance than beauty. Even ugliness can be beautiful in the hands of an artist -- watch Apocalypse Now if you don't believe me, or listen to the "defeat" sections of Beethoven's third symphony. I'm not responsible for your tears that make you look like a girly man.
But it's the right mood to consider something you might listen to for years in the context of a high annoyance situation like mindless tasks. It's like being tired at the end of a day: you say exactly what you mean, uncensored. With music, you get in touch with exactly how little you care about stuff far from what you want, even if normally you'd be feeling obligated to listen to it because it's musically advanced, some critic likes it, all your friends like it, etc.
I've been rooting out some turds. I take no joy in this, but I take great joy in having them gone. That's less of my time thrown down a black hole of dysfunction and disorganization, the two creators of really bad music or worse -- music that is halfway to bad, so completely ambiguous in its presentation. Most people are so cowed by the social factors mentioned above that they keep listening, bovine erotic, and never manage to articulate their own voice or even a moment's sense and say, "Actually, this doesn't suck, but it's not good enough to fascinate me, so why not throw it out, with last year's failed relationship and my old textbooks from classes I hated and my tax documents?" Get the crap out of your life and you have space for new things to do.
Arsis - A Diamond for Disease
Oh no, it's the whisper-voiced rushing death/black assault. After a promising intro, and forty seconds of two-chord jazz-inspired rhythm riffing, suddenly we get the synthesized whisper and a break to a guitar fill that sounds like it's from the book of minor pentatonic scale variations commonly used by jazz/fusion bands to distract audiences from that moment when an overblown, pretentious song really begins to fuckin' drag... and that's what this EP does, except at high speed. The problem is that there's no concentration on songs or ideas as a whole, so you get these budget riffs made all technical and then little diversions, but nothing ever comes into its own. Nice try guys, but next time, use notecards to organize and concentrate on having a song make a difference to the listener, not just teach them fret muting technique.
Friday 04 July 2008 at 5:30 pm
Aarni - Bathos
People can't stop trying to be clever in lieu of having actual content.
I can't repeat that enough, but it's the pattern for everything gone wrong in this world. If you have nothing actual to state, other than that you want to use your music to get ahead, dick around with the aesthetics until you can trick out the same drivel and claim it's unique.
Aarni tries to do a minimalist-progressive implementation of the kind of music somewhere between Dweezil Zappa and Supuration: prog-ish, rock-ish, but contemplative music. Only Aarni doesn't have anything to complement but its own fist-gripped penis. So we can get wank. Pretentious wank. Lots of demi-acoustic interludes sliding into bad jazz-influenced rhythm riffing, like Meshuggah meets Barry Manilow at a Spirogyra concert.
I have a new suggestion for all these people who live contentless lives: silence. Go to your job at a bank. Life is better that way for all of us.
Sunday 29 June 2008 at 12:00 pm
Experienced underground metal guru Mike Riddick (Yamatu, Equimanthorn, The Soil Bleeds Black) has launched a for-profit MP3-based label that sells MP3s, and sends promotional MP3s to zines and radio shows -- but somehow, he's not worried about MP3s "ruining the music business."
Mike Riddick Interview
Saturday 28 June 2008 at 3:57 pm
Ajattara - Itse, Aepere and Kalmanto: this is like metal bands who have failed since time immemorial (or 1970, take your pick). It's a bunch of well-known riff forms stitched together with rhythm, and skinned in lush layered vocals, keyboards and samples. Musically, indistinguishable from 1970s heavy metal, even if it has a black metal and doom aesthetic. Reminds me of later Cemetary. I can't listen to this shit.
Anti - The Insignificance of Life: Great name, great album name, more black metal/rock combo. They have Gorgoroth-ish technique, but all polished and bouncy like later Ancient. It's hard to argue against as music, but as art, no presence and no direction.
Bergraven - Dodsvisioner: It's like Comecon mixed with later Samael, lots of interesting background noises, and stompy riffs. It's catchy but it has no soul. I am worried that all the metal with balls has died. Take Vicodin, relax. Bergraven still sucks.
Fanisk - Noontide: These guys get the Hitler sample in early, so you might feel obligated to keep listening. Like Dimmu Borgir, the best part is the keyboards between black metal parts, which remind me of Gorgoroth's "Under the Sign of Hell" -- a lot of blatant chromatics and basic melodic minor noodling. Do I fucking care? delete, delete
Forefather - Steadfast: Vikingish metal that reveals its roots in power metal. Lots of cool guitar parts that don't add up to much, a very cheesy aesthetic, and a style of fast flexible lead rhythm shifts that reminds me of Enslaved, In Battle and Kvist. More organized than most, musically the most impressive thing I've heard recently, but it adds up to an aesthetic pile of confusion that narrates itself on a wander and then comes back to safe ground, only to effectively trail off.
Gorath - Misotheism: How do they keep coming up with these plastic bands? They have no souls. This is paint-by-numbers rock-blackmetal, with lots of frilly adornments and absolutely no direction. Also sounds very emo-influenced, musically. It's like a carnival of distraction with a plodding heartbeat and an IQ test with more red ink than black on it. Yuck.
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