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Black metal and death metal legend Quorthon of Bathory took some time to answer our questions while he was busy recording the Nordland series of albums. Among all the interviews we've done, this may be the most focused and articulate, with one of the most passionately intelligent figures black metal has ever produced.
1. the dominant influences on the earlier bathory work appear to be venom and slayer. were you listening to other music at the time, including hardcore punk like discharge?
I think it is very easy for people to be making that kind of connotation, simply because those two acts in particular are perhaps among the first ones that comes to mind when the roots of extreme metal is being discussed. But actually, I have never owned a Venom or Slayer album. And I don't give a fuck if people believe that or not.
I know some people believe the change of style for BATHORY, in terms of the music and lyrics around 1988-1990, happened because we must have got turned on from Manowar. That's another total misconception. I have never owned a Manowar record. And I don't give a fuck if people believe that either. Not that it matters though.
I have of course heard Slayer (an act, which by the way does have all my respect for being original and for sticking to their roots in much of what they do). And I have heard a handful of tracks by Venom.
 In 1986-1988, BATHORY had a drummer who was heavily influenced by Manowar. He didn't enjoy any other type of metal, but he was somehow sold on Manowar. It wasn't like we decided to copy what they were doing. However, the typical heavy Manowar beat seemed to perfectly suit my new ideas for lyrics at the time. The way it came about was this; in an effort to get away from the whole "are they true satanists or not"-discussions that went on in the media at the time (sort of drawing the attention away from what was truly important, the music), I felt I wanted to replace the whole demonic & satanic bag with something that was pure from christian and satanic bullshit.
The pre-christian Scandinavian Viking and vendel era seemed perfect for lyrics and arrangements. Had BATHORY been a japanese act, we might as well have picked up the Samurai culture. Had we been an Italian act, it could easily have been the Roman empire era. Now, we happened to be a Swedish act and the Viking and Vendel era seemed exciting in terms of writing music and lyrics. The heavy Manowar beat that this one-time BATHORY drummer came up with one day in the rehearsal place, is a Manowar contribution. But I wonder if that's enough to be called a source of inspiration or influence.
My personal reason for forming BATHORY was I wanted to create a mix of the atmosphere of early Black Sabbath, the energy of early Motörhead and the pace of early GBH. We were just three shit kids coming out of school at the time, with absolutely no knowledge at all about any other acts. Remember, Metallica released their first album around the time we entered the studio for the first time. Slayer too released their first album at the same time. We were totally in the dark about any underground movement in Europe. It wasn't until way after we had already released our first album that we learned about tons of others acts in Europe and elsewhere playing basically the same type of primitive and dark extreme metal that we were making.
Around the time I formed BATHORY, I was listening a lot to an album by early GBH I believe was called "City baby in attack of the rats". We based half of BATHORY's initial sound and style on that GBH album. I may have listened to some Discharge, but I don't remember any of their songs or any of their titles anymore. The "Ace of Spades" and "Iron Fist" Motörhead albums also meant very much when we formed BATHORY. So did the first handful of Black Sabbath albums.
bathory has always stood above other bands by having a melody connected firmly to a rhythm in the anthemic style of most great metal bands. how did you learn to play guitar, and what methods do you have for conceptualizing the songwriting process?
on "blood, fire, death" an epic sound is present through the use of longer songs with greater symbolic significance to their movements and motifs. what inspired this change from the dark, heavy and primitively simple music of "under the sign of the black mark"?
"Thus if being-toward-death is not meant as an "actualization" of death, neither can it mean to dwell near the end in its possibility. This kind of behavior would amount to "thinking about death," thinking about this possibility, how and when it might be actualized. Brooding over death does not completely take away from it its character of possibility. It is always brooded over as something coming, but we weaken it by calculating how to have it at our disposal. As something possible, death is supposed to show as little as possible of its possibility. On the contrary, if being-toward-death has to disclose understandingly the possibility which we have characterized as such, then in such being-toward-death, this possibility must not be weakened, it must be understood as possibility, cultivated as possibility, and endured as possibility in our relation to it." -- M. Heidegger, "Being and Time"
do you think later bathory was aiming more toward being a progressive or epic heavy metal band, where early bathory had a good deal more punk/venom-style metal influence on it?
We didn't have any ambitions at all to be any of that. About being progressive or epic, we weren't thinking in those terms. It was just a natural evolution, it wasn't planned or calculated. It just happened. It is so very easy for people in the year 2002 to sit back and name certain periods and labelling people and bands. When you have history and all facts at hand, people tend to file and classify past in a way we never did 20 or 15 years back in time. My recommendation to anybody who has problems getting a good view of all the styles and sounds out there is "- Don't bother - just enjoy. It's just fucking metal."
how have your tastes changed across the years of making music?
Probably in much the same way we all change as people. We develop as we widen our perspectives. This is true for music as well. I'll listen to everything from Glenn Miller to The Beatles, from Wagner to Sex Pistols, from Nick Drake to Beethoven. I hardly ever listen to metal. The only metal I will listen to, is vinyl that I bought 20 or 30 years ago like Mountain, early Kiss, early Saxon, early Motörhead or early Black Sabbath. I haven't bought a metal CD in ten years. The last metal CD must have been Motörhead's "Overkill". The last CD I bought of any kind was last summer, George Harrison's "All things must pass (1971).
I have personally never allowed for any personal ideologies to influence my music or lyrics. For some years German metal media would say BATHORY was glorifying war and the holocaust in the lyrics. This is not true. We were writing about war and the holocaust in the very same way we were writing about all the other things we have written about; incest, the nuclear arms race, the world wars, the environmental issue, female BATHORY fans, serial killers, religion and fuck knows what else. In other words, as facts, not glorifying. I am not religious and have no political ideals, so for myself personally, writing lyrics is just painting with words and creating a scene.
black metal today has gone through a shaping process of which bathory was part. what do you think are bathory's contributions to
the methodology of metal making?
from what i heard of your solo work (band named "quorthon") it seemed you were moving into a genre where you could use the broad
style of rock music to fit in a number of melodic but hookish pop songs. is this a return to your influences, or a changing of taste?
when you see bands today making black metal in the style of the nordic generation after 1987 (inspired by your "blood, fire, death" and sarcofago's "INRI" in my supposition) what do you see as the possible future directions for that style of music?
do you think the world is on the edge of great change? if so what will change, and what is forcing it to change (what needs to change)?
I really don't bother about the world or society at all. I'll be dead in 30-40 years and neither people, politics, religion or society interests me at all.
is the metal underground an effective way of distributing niche music according to its artistic integrity, or a justification for the kind of independent distribution needed to move relatively small numbers of CDs?
do you have any spiritual beliefs, or strong ideological concerns?
Nope, not a glimpse of spirit in me at all.
it seems to me that most metal musicians start their lives more antagonistic to society as a whole, and eventually as they age begin to acknowledge the need for a society but a dissatisfaction with its design. do you have any comments here as general observations?
I am sure a lot of people will mature with age and realise down the road the need for a functioning society. But that probably has less to do with social awareness or a philanthropic pathos. It will have a lot more to do with the fact they're beginning to pay taxes and want to see some results for their money paid.
how do you compose a song and, how integral are the lyrics?
I will just strike a guitar riff and continue from there. If it sounds good enough to work on further, I'll write a song in an hour or so. A day, a week or a month later I may listen back to it and just taste a few words and see what comes out of it all. I rarely plan before writing a song what it should be about. All that will come along the process. I'll say it again, I think the music and lyrics writes itself. I'm just a tool used by the demons of music.
is "twilight of the gods" a rock opera in the style of the who, progressive bands from the 70s, etc?
I don't know where that rock opera thing came from. I guess people had no idea what to call that kind of heavy bombastic arrangements 10 years ago. It wasn't Black or Death Metal, so some people felt compelled to come up with some label for it. But to call it a rock opera is laughable. "Twilight" is no mot a theme album in any way, no track two off "Twilight of the Gods" has got anything to do with eachother, they are all individual tracks with totally different stories. "Requeim" is more a theme album than "Twilight", because it contains with the subject of death in all forms may it be suicide, murder, culture death, genocide or death in war or by cult.
how do you unwind/relax, or, what do you do for recreational purposes? (what do you enjoy besides music)
is it possible to return to metal with a different style after one has become one of the founding names of a certain style?
the odin mythos present in "blood on ice", "blood, fire, death", and "twilight of the gods" seems to derive inspiration from the
nietzschean/jungian view of the human psyche and the culmination of some of its historical inabilities. do you think these ideas are gaining prevalence at this time, or becoming more obscure as society degenerates?
please insert any commentary on the questions, issues addressed, things missed in the interview, or general concluding remarks you may have.
"In a sequence of words, i.e. by a chain of symbols, something new and greater is to be represented: rhythm, dynamics and harmony again become necessary on this level of expression. This higher sphere now governs the more limited sphere of the individual word; it becomes necessary to select words, to put them in a new order; poetry begins. The spoken melody of a sentence is not just the sequence of the sounds of the words; for a word has only a quite relative sound, because its character, the content presented by the symbol, varies according to its position. In other words: the individual symbol of the word is constantly being re-defined by the higher unity of the sentence and the character this symbolizes. A chain of concepts is a thought; in other words, this is the higher unity of the accompanying representations. The essence of the thing is inacessible to thought; the fact that it has an effect on us as a motive, as a stimulant of the will, can be explained by the fact that the thought has already become a remembered symbol for a manifestation of the will, for a movement and a phenomenon of the will in one. But when it is spoken, i.e. with the symbolism of sound, its effect is incomparably more powerful and direct. When it is sung, when melody is the intelligible symbol of its will, it reaches the summit of its effect; if this is not the case, it is the sequence of sounds which affects us, and the sequence of words, the thought, remains something distant and indifferent." -- F.W. Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy
 Thanks to Black Mark Records.
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Tuesday 07 September 2010 at 09:42 am
A team of graduate students is working in an experimental science facility when the world goes silent. The people outside are either dead, or have vanished. The students and advisers have to figure out what's happening before it’s too late. The longer it takes, the worse things get. The students are safe for now. But that's about to change. Because something new has shown up, and it wants in.
http://www.kickstarter.com/profile/egg
Audrey and Aaron's collaborative videos and installations have shown in galleries and museums in New York, Tokyo, and Europe. Their award-winning documentary about the black metal underground, "Until the Light Takes Us," comes out on DVD this September:
http://www.blackmetalmovie.com/
Saturday 04 September 2010 at 11:03 am
Rice University plans to sell its radio station KTRU (91.7 FM). This would remove a rare source of local, independent, non-corporate radio programming. Secret negotiations excluded input from Rice students and alumni. KTRU, which was created independently of the university by students with alumni funding, was never funded by Rice and is only "owned" by the university through a technicality. Help us oppose this sale by following the simple steps on this page:
http://savektru.org/
Sunday 22 August 2010 at 7:11 pm
Some good stuff to chew over:
Lyrically, early black metal fused virulent anti-christian politics with Nietzschean-inspired satanism and ecological mysticism. As the scene grew into the 1990s, however, satanism became a problematic notion and several figures tried to find new ideological backing to their music. One solution, adopted by figures like Ihsahn, the vocalist for Emperor, was to treat satanism as merely a metaphor for Nietzschean individual freedom. Another far more problematic move was that taken by Varg Vikernes of Burzum, who dropped satanism in favor of nazism, and emphasized themes of mystical ecologism in opposition to the Judeo-Christian tradition. The third path was to reject satanism for a return to traditional Scandinavian paganism, a move made in the early years by Enslaved and one which has since spawned a new sub-genre: pagan metal.
What is fascinating here is the consistency with which black metal has pursued religious forms. Satanism is replaced, not by a basic materialist atheism but with almost anything else: Occultism, Nietzsche, paganism, mystical nazism. Such religious pluralism begs the question as to whether these are just new and interesting attempts at youth rebellion, or whether something more is playing itself out.
What if metal is drawn to the religious because it aspires towards a similar goal? What if it is not in opposition to religion, but in competition with it? In the 2005 documentary Metal: A head-banger’s journey, a fan is quoted as saying: ”Is heavy metal a sacrament? For some people it is. If it keeps kids alive, if it gives them hope, if it gives them a place to belong, if it gives them a sense of transcendence, then its a spiritual force and I believe it is a pipeline to God.”
Metal’s obsession with religion is part of its obsession with living at the limit. The goal of metal is extremity—to push music to the boundaries of noise without concern for the comprehensibility of the final product. Black and death metal groups in particular manipulate time structure, tonality, tempo and production quality to ensure that anything resembling a traditional rock, jazz or classical sound is deformed beyond recognition. Of central importance to this manipulation is the need to be heavier, faster, more technical, more “brutal” or more “true” than the past generation. - James Robertson, "Death Metal: A Pipeline to God?" Social Sciences Research Council blog "The Immanent Frame"
While I agree with much of this, I think metal's conception goes back to the word heavy, the idea of horror movies, and a rebellion against the counterculture.
Metal sprung from the counterculture... but in opposition to the peace and light, it was the dark and heavy. It wasn't music for taking life non-seriously or coming up with with trivial answers like "love will save the world" (you truly have to be fucking stupid, delusional or corrupt to believe that).
Metal's message can be found in the song "War Pigs":
Now in darkness world stops turning,
ashes where the bodies burning.
No more War Pigs have the power,
Hand of God has struck the hour.
Day of judgement, God is calling,
on their knees the war pigs crawling.
Begging mercies for their sins,
Satan, laughing, spreads his wings.
Oh lord, yeah!
While humans distract themselves with trivial shit, including the hippie con about love and light, the cruel manipulators are profiting behind the scenes and laying the seed of mythological levels of destruction.
While every popular music act except metal is espousing the "it's all about you, have some fun, we're all important, it's about humans being individuals" karmic snake oil, metal was telling you to look at history, look at bigger patterns, realize that technology and "good intentions" were not going to save the day. We are insignificant, it said. What matters is not that we're alive, but what we do with the time.
In other words, metal is an entirely different existential coping strategy than Christianity (an inherent God judges you based on your deeds) or hippies (if you just make happy socially, you'll be OK and part of the group). Metal's idea is this: the world is out there and it's very real, which makes life very intense, so make sure you have an intense life, in part by not doing the stupid self-defeating shit that has dogged humanity like an expert parasite through the modern time.
It was only when black metal came around that this got fully Nietzschean, and people started talking about how equality was bunk, how most people are too oblivious/distracted to have any competence in making political or social decisions, and how we'd be better off if we slashed down the weaker/stupider and handed glorious victory to the strong, rising above the herd and exterminating them so humanity would evolve to a new level. Eugenics, Social Darwinism and natural selection as a purification of the artificial, sterile, "everyone wins" equality-based world of both the Church and the liberals (1789: "liberty, equality, fraternity").
But this is an extension of the horror movie theme, which in turn derives itself entirely from the work of Mary Shelley, Jules Verne, and H.G. Wells. Here's the basic plot: something from a foreign culture or undiscovered part of our world emerges and starts wreaking havoc. People panic and the dumb sheep screw it all up by not only failing to respond to it with any intelligence, but also by shouting down anyone who tries to deal with it as a real, functional question instead of an emotional/technological one. Finally, the loners re-invent technologies to defeat it -- or not -- and the few beat the threat, so that the many live. But it's not democratic. The point of horror movies is mainly to make you hate your own species as you see that all but a few cannot discipline their minds to respond to new stimulus. They panic, they make excuses, they steal now-worthless cash, they get drunk, they run away, they flake out. What they don't do is achieve any effective action at all.
If you want the origins of metal, I think that's it -- modern society grips our society like a plague, and as years go by and the decay gets more advanced, people are still unable to do anything about it because they're caught up in their own emotions and drama. But that point is far too realistic for any academic.
Sunday 22 August 2010 at 08:03 am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVeBys6_TOA
Amazing, and better than 99.9% of all metal bands since. Something to think about.
Tuesday 17 August 2010 at 09:07 am
I want to say that I will start with the year 1984. Death metal had been around since 1984/1985 depending on who you ask. Mantas, Genocide, Deathstrike, Possessed, Slaughter and others had started years earlier and wanted to make music that made Slayer sound like Wham. “Black metal” had already started with Venom and Mercyful Fate. Then Bathory and Hellhammer came along. The term “death metal” was more widely used back then. Hell, there was even a compilation called “Death Metal” that had Running Wild and Helloween on it! Although I do dig both of those bands, they are hardly death metal! But the comp did have Hellhammer as well. So there was a back and forth there for a while. Even Sodom came along and called themselves “witching metal” to start off with! hahaha. But bands jumped back and forth and it was common for bands to be called both at times. Once Massacre, Repulsion, Death, and later Xecutioner, R.A.V.A.G.E., Morbid Angel and others started getting going with demo tapes flooding the underground, death metal was really starting to spawn. My comment about Slayer was a joke. Slayer upped the ante, so to speak, on playing faster and more aggressive. Slayer was influenced by D.R.I., Cryptic Slaughter and the fast hardcore punk that was coming out. Just like those hardcore bands became influenced by Slayer and other metal bands later on. So these death metal bands took the Slayer formula and made it even more aggressive and even faster and heavier than ever before. Black metal was kind of regulated to the same bands for a while. Possessed had the imagery of a black metal band, but were total death metal/thrash. Mercyful Fate broke up and Venom and Bathory started getting a little different in their musical direction.
Flash forward to 1989. I was already a couple years deep in the metal underground, but this is when I really got into the DEEP underground scene with the tape trading and fanzines and all of that. ALL KINDS of underground bands, that played different “styles” were all in the same fanzines and on the same compilation tapes. The black metal of Samael, Beherit and Blasphemy was featured right next to the death metal of Autopsy and Nihilist. The thrash of Merciless and Sindrome was right next to the grind of Agathocles and Anarchus. Everyone seemed to get along in one, big happy underground metal family! Then over the next few years, death metal then broke as a worldwide phenomenon. Everything either had a Swedish guitar sound or was recorded at Morrisound Studios with Scott Burns producing it. And had Dan Seagrave doing the artwork on the cover. Morbid Angel became mainstream, Carcass and Obituary started getting play on MTV more often. It seemed EVERYONE was familiar with “death metal”! But then weird stuff started happening with these bands. In Sweden and Finland, some of the old death metal bands started getting more rock or gothic (or both) with their music. Opeth and Katatonia followed suit with a progressive rock or gothic rock sound. Entombed did a horrible mix of death metal and rock and roll. Therion got weirder, then went all show-tunes. In Finland Abhorrence became Amorphis and ended up having more in common with classic rock. Disgrace went punk rock. Xysma went hippie. Convulse went “death and roll” (PUKE!) There was a disconnect that started and some bands and members of the scene felt slighted. But it was felt that death metal went cheesy as fuck. Some people grew tired of all of this, and decided to form a new thing. And the leader of this new movement was Euronymous of Mayhem.
Flamingly interesting post, on Metal Maniacs of all places.
Sunday 08 August 2010 at 5:48 pm
This amusing list has been making the rounds:
One of the real delights of listening to truly great music is the capacity it has to continuously surprise an attentive listener. Great music makes itself known, in part, by the ways in which it yields up its secrets: slowly. In a sense, great music never "gets old" because each experience of it reveals new insight, allowing us to approach it as if for the first time.
The corollary to this, of course, is that while genius manifests itself in infinitely variable ways, all bad music is pretty much bad in the same predictable ways. Error was always thus: it cannot grow, it cannot meaningfully change, it can only, like a virus, reproduce itself in hosts who have not previously been exposed (which is why, to the experienced and attentive listener, each new iteration of bad music becomes more easily identified symptomatically while the inexperienced and/or stupid listener is likely to fall for FAILS that their more competent brethren spot from a mile away).
A Taxonomy of FAIL
Carnival Music
Symptoms: Like a carny barker or a snake oil salesman, many bands try to distract listeners with novelty or wild stylistic gesticulations designed to steer attention away from the underlying emptiness of what is being offered. Often, this will take the form of superficially "innovative" gestures like adding flutes, "technicality," exaggerated, cartoonishly executed additions from "surprising" outside influences, or maybe just really long songs.
Classic FAIL Archetypes: Opeth, Dimmu Borgir, Deathspell Omega, Necrophagist, Cynic, later Therion
Sonic Wallpaper
Symptoms: Most often associated with black metal, this FAIL is typified by a failure to grasp the dramatic, narrative aspects of metal. As a result, these bands make music that is often pleasant, inoffensive and even impressive in its constituent parts, but devoid of meaning, spirit, passion or lucid organization. It may work as background music, but it cannot stand on its own merits when listeners pay close attention. Basically, when you find yourself hitting the snooze button four minutes in, you've stumbled on this brand of FAIL.
Classic FAIL Archetypes: Ulver, Drudkh, Negative Plane, pretty much anything involving Stephen O'Malley
Metal as Mainstream Pander
Symptoms: Most often spotted in the wild among established bands who have depleted their creative fire and genre tourists with no established connection to metal, this FAIL can be easily spotted by the way it apes mainstream music while superficially applying metal technique. Often includes elements of either Sonic Wallpaper, Carnival Music or both. Comes in both "high brow" and "low brow" versions.
Classic FAIL Archetypes: later Metallica, later Enslaved, Wolves in the Throne Room, post-Hell Bent For Leather Judas Priest
Angst for Autistics
Symptoms: FAILS of this sort reveal themselves by an emphasis on dumbed down rhythm to the near total exclusion of all other traits, usually accompanied by some sort of superficially "shocking" or simply mind-numbingly aggro lyrical content. Basically, they exist to mollify the angry impulses of speds, emotionally crippled jocks, JNCO-sporting malltwats, meathead bigots and assorted other human defectives.
Classic FAIL Archetypes: Pantera, Cannibal Corpse Origin, later Deicide, pretty much all metalcore, deathcore and NSBM
From a user named Dylar114.
Friday 06 August 2010 at 10:47 pm
"Glorious Times: A Pictorial of the Death Metal Scene (1984-1991)" is a retrospective of the early death metal scene, written by the bands themselves, and edited by Alan Moses (Buttface Zine) and Brian Pattison (Chainsaw Abortions Zine). If you want to see what the early bands were thinking, doing and how they helped invent death metal, this original book gives you a window into the past and future of death metal.
Glorious Times: A Pictorial of the Death Metal Scene (1984-1991), interview with Alan Moses and Brian Pattison, and review of the book
Sunday 01 August 2010 at 08:21 am
Someone finally explained heavy metal in terms simple enough for the nodding nobodies to comprehend:
Biff Byford, lead singer of 1980s heavy metal behemoths Saxon, is preaching to convert the non- ferrous among us to his cause. "Heavy metal is a tribal music and everyone is a member of the tribe," he explains.
A wistful look passes across the features of a man memorably described by one critic as "the dray horse of heavy metal". "The music's not about love," he adds, warming to his theme. "Our songs are more about Richard the Lionheart, steel trains and thunder. But when you do click with a big audience, it can be quite an experience, a massive connection… I suppose you could say it is a religious experience in a way." - The Independent
As some people have been saying for years, metal is the one true alternative in pop culture -- most of pop culture is about the individual and its desires, and the ethic of convenience that accompanies them. Don't do the right thing -- do what feels good! Ignore history, we're inventing a new regime! One for the people, by the people, about the people. And when we gain power, and throw out those bad old fuddies with their social standards, everything will be totally awesome!
Heavy metal is the opposite. It minimizes the individual, and reduces you to the role of one in a tribe. It de-emphasizes the now, and replaces it with a broader view of history. It makes desires secondary to quests, goals and heroic struggles. It's the anti-pop-culture, or the counter-counterculture. It's a war against all of the illusions that allow our modern time to be corrupt. You can't fight a corrupt society with flower power, pacifism and universal tolerance.
You can fight it by taking a look at reality for once, which is what heavy metal does. And because we're the oddballs, we are the tribe of those who drop out of the "consensual reality" created by media, social pressures, advertising, government propaganda and what the crowd is talking about. We look at hard reality, fire and iron and blood, instead. While we may look like the other drop-outs, space-outs and individualists from the outside, we are in fact made of different stuff.
Wednesday 28 July 2010 at 8:37 pm
Hayaino Daisuki - The Invincible Gate Mind of the Infernal Fire Hell, or Did You Mean Hawaii Daisuki?
Although this band is hipster fodder because everything they do is ironic, and it's out-of-the-closet postmodern in that method of finding narratives in randomness that has been trendy since Joyce, I find it excusable because their music resembles the ranting of an abused child. No, in a good -- well, maybe not good but a mixed bag -- maybe in a way that's half good and half horrible.
I don't want to listen to it again because it's screeching and annoying, but I think it valid as music and art, and you shouldn't care what I think, anyway. The really good record reviewer is not a personality engine but as close to transparent as you can get, by using their own personality as an obvious, visible, repetitive filter and thus one you can Photoshop out of your mind to get the gist of what you want to see in each record.
But back to the record: on the surface this is blister speed grindcore with some of the comic circus of random influences that made bands like Mr Bungle and Fantomas so annoying, but here it's moderate. Most of this is straight ahead grindcore, or I should say, in grindcore format. Underneath it are nursery rhymes and children's songs, in this case hidden (think steganography) within the fertile ground of 1980s sentimental metal like Iron Maiden, Judas Priest or Queensryche. Except here, they're played at sixty times the speed.
That speed ruins drumming as an instrument, and backgrounds bass most of the time, and reduces vocals to a timekeeper with some nuance, which lets the guitars sing. And the guitars are singing a song of a child alone who has maybe thirty minutes a day when he listens to Iron Maiden and dreams of being on stage, or maybe of being a powerslave in Ancient Egypt or being a WWII flying ace. Escapism collides with an unyielding, high intensity, too-fast-to-be-anything-but oblivious reality here.
The riffs are good, by the way, like what a creative child might do; they're cut from archetypes you recognize, mostly NWOBHM and speed metal, but with enough of their own interpretation to be quality. They fit together. Songs masquerade as chromatic blasting chaos but underneath a melody sneaks out, like a fantasy you dare not name.
And as your civilization crumbles, as you go off today to another boring job and to spend time with insincere frenemies and business associates who wouldn't dust you off if you died, through streets of glowing neon hawking products for morons, you should think: is humanity the kicked child? How would its inner voice of clarity gain retribution, or breathing space, as the world presses on ever faster because it's in denial and never wants to slow down and face the obvious.
The kind of thing a child would see, a kicked child maybe. Maybe it's irrelevant in this case that hipsters like this band to be ironic; a big part of me thinks the joke is on them and big, ugly and mean in a way they will never understand. I hope they play more of this on the radio because it throws back at our time exactly the kind of crap it throws at us every day, except someone snuck in a counter-virus, and this one is the hope of a youngster for the moments of beauty and clarity found in the stadium heavy metal of years past.
Wednesday 28 July 2010 at 8:00 pm
Metalbolical Compilation Volume 1
1. Equinox - Night of Churchyard Watcher
Florida death metal with a tiny bit of groove, like a cross between Massacre and Cadaver, this track grows from a a verse/chorus loop with infectious chant-rhythm vocals into Exodus-style speed metal. The rather straightforward nature of these riffs may make it hard for this band to carve a niche for themselves.
2. Seeking Obscure - Battle of the Undead
Reminiscent of a slower and more brooding Deicide, this one-man band writes strong but non-distinctive riffs that would echo the infectious vocal rhythm, but this in turn reduces internal tension between instruments in the song and consequently, development of the song itself over time.
3. Waxen - I Claim Your Throne
This unabashedly sentimental heavy metal cloaks itself in death metal, then black metal, and finally brings out its true soul, a Dissection/Judas Priest style band with lots of lead rhythm guitar riffs showing off chops that get lost in a song that does not develop much beyond its initial ideas. Add to that the vocals that resemble a chihuahua with a head cold and you can see how confused this approach is.
4. Unburied - Domicile of flesh
Coming to us from the death metal styles of the mid-1990s, this song is half bouncing riffs reminiscent of a more organic version of what Six Feet Under does, and the other half is charging two-chord riffs. If you can imagine a sped up, groovier and more porn/gore-obsessed version of Mortician, the essence of this band takes form in your mind.
5. Archaic Winter - Colors of Despair
This band is at its peak when it sticks to fast death metal riffs that come in clusters of two complementary phrases and a melodic fill, and while the song structure doesn't evolve much, it varies just enough to bring the mood to a closure. This track suffers from some confusion as to how to stick to the style at which this band is best.
6. Toby Knapp - Polarizing Lines
If you took Joe Satriani and Dissection and put them together in a goofy, over-the-top package like Iron Maiden, you would see the essence of shredder Toby Knapp's style (he's also in Waxen). The entire song is like a solo divided into a series of motifs that evolve briefly and then repeat, leaving us without the sense of vast emotional conflict and resolution that made Satriani's solo albums reviewer favorites. Knapp might do best with some supporting musicians to help shape his raw energy with less musically precise riffing.
7. Dyngyr - Scourge
Reminiscent of other carnival metal bands like Tartaros, this raw black metal with keyboards band manages to keep a basic surging rhythm but throws in too many divergent impulses to tie them all together, creating a riff salad that because its riffs are so similar in rhythm, represents a rotation through different views of the same basic idea. The result is a fun roller coaster that is not particularly memorable afterwards.
8. Onward - Beyond the Strong
As if anticipating that only a few years later, men would stand on stage in tights with guitars and sing about Odin as part of the folk-metal movement that birthed out of black metal, Onward get out there with the old school NWOBHM and speed metal riffs and a soulful, bittersweet vocal track. This is well composed and unabashed in its worship of metal past, like a more hopeful version of In Battle but too pouring out its soul for most power metal listeners to take at face value.
9. Serpent Son - False Hope for Survival
This credible death metal offering aims to throw out many different riffs without them becoming divergent, in the style of bands like Demigod or Pestilence, and succeeds to a degree although many of its melodies use too many connecting notes to unleash their inner atmosphere and subtlety. Instead of throwing in everything but the kitchen sink, they need to refine what they have so its interplay keeps the song intense and growing throughout.
10. Fetid Zombie - Pleasures of the Scalpel
Reminiscent of where Deceased took their music, this band works hard to disguise old school British heavy metal as American guttural goregrind. It's pounding, chortling, gurgling, burping, crepitating madness until you realize the underpinning riffs are jaunty melodic middle fingers at common sense, similar to Gwar.
11. Nepente - Red Suns
Raw riffing meets interesting combinations of those riffs to make a dark atmosphere that submerges us in repetition made unexpected by changes in context. If you ever wondered what a hybrid of Von and Mortem might sound like, this is a good candidate.
12. Unearthed Corpse - Stench of your Decayed Blood
Ultra-basic death metal in the older style like Master meeting Malevolent Creation, this simple but catchy song uses a few riffs to good effect, pounding out a very similar verse/chorus pattern and then opening a sonorous transitional riff like a wormhole. Reminiscent of early Insidious Decrepancy.
13. Killing Addiction - Thresholds
This theatrical take on the mayhem of old school death metal combines slow necrotic riffing of the style Morpheus Descends made with the upbeat variations of post-Suffocation percussive death metal bands, challenging themselves with tempo changes that remind me of cats leaping between vehicles moving in different lanes of a superhighway. Like their undernoticed "Omega Factor" from 1993, this track has potential but suffers from dominating vocals and messy production.
14. Unit 100 - Bring Me the Circular Time Collapse
Of all the Toby Knapp projects in existence, this one provides the most interesting outlook because it mixes metal genres so fluidly, pacing Fallen Christ style chromatic riffing against avantgarde stylings reminiscent of Supuration. It's enjoyable to see how the band hold them together and then blend them, creating a confusing musical experience that lingers in the mind after it has passed by, even if aesthetically the mix of stadium rock, Iron Maiden, death metal, crossover and progressive rock is too much of a buffet and not enough of a main course.
You can get this comp for $2 from Metalbolic Records. This is an older compilation, and volumes 2-3 are now available as well for the same price.
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do you think that ideology changes the worldview of an artist, and
that this is reflected in their music?
The second solo album came about because people wrote me and said they were now very interested to see what I would come up with on a second solo record. So I wrote a lot of material, mixing The Beatles, Sex Pistols and Mountain plus punk. I have no plans for a third solo record, but having said that, I might just as well record a third solo album in future if I feel like it.
I'll read a book or stride my Harley-Davidson motorcycles and go for a ride. I used to build a lot of plastic models, paint a lot or collect war memorabilia in the past but not as much these days.
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