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Metal Q&A
Q: Why does metal music sound demonic?
A: In order to warn of a demon, one either states facts as they are or attempts to show people what will happen if things do not change. In theatre, in literature and in music, we act out what we fear or desire, and in the case of metal, we both act like monsters to show us the daily monster of modern society, a truth which is denied because it is offensive, and we become demonic to show that the way past this denial is to throw out all of our shackles -- morality, money, popularity, illusion -- so we can grasp reality once again and act with a reasonable response. Society is illusion. Metal is reality. To a world of illusion, reality is demonic. To a realist, illusion is terrifying. To escape illusion, one must "go under" by reducing values to their nihilistic minimum, and rebuilding outside the comforting walls of illusion.
Q: Why is metal considered Nietzschean?
A: Nietzsche, among the modern philosophers, made clear the division between value systems that find direction -- what "ought we to do" in other words. Moral systems try to filter out bad impulses, and assume the rest is good; the system Nietzsche advocated worshipped power, and by finding what was powerful in life, translated that into values that shaped humanity toward a higher level. It did not hope to "rise above" the nature "red in tooth and claw." It wanted to accept life, and that life is suffering, and then use life like colors on the canvas of experience. Moral systems, on the other hand, seek to limit suffering and if not, to deny it. Our modern society is a moral system; metal is a will-based system like that of Nietzsche. For this reason, Nietzsche is supposed to be the philosopher of metal, but it's worth pointing out that Nietzsche considered himself started on the path he followed by Schopenhauer, and that Schopenhauer's idealistic philosophy forms a groundwork for both metal-ish worship of power and Nietzsche's formulation of "the will to power," which is a more specific, Darwinistic definition of Schopenhauer's "Will."
Q: Why does metal embrace all of this dark imagery, death and sodomy and destruction and disease and misery and abuse and subjugation?
A: This is the dark underside of reality most do not want to see. They prefer to live in their quiet homes, go to their boring jobs, buy their repetitive products and hope to ignore mortality and all the things that give life meaning. In running away from death, they have also run away from life. Metal reminds them of their mortality, and also shows the power and beauty inherent in destruction, thus channeling their death-fear into life-worship, including worship of death and destruction. Our modern society tries to avoid suffering and thus commits sins of omission; metal embraces all of life and thus acknowledges that murder is necessary, that we're heading to the apocalypse through our passive society, that ethnic groups do not get along, that the stronger force in nature is better off than the "moral" one, that most people are stupid and thus democracy is doomed to failure, that to some degree hedonism is beautiful, that life can be romantic if one does not cheapen it -- all the things that modern society would rather we not think.
Q: Why is metal so turbulent in sound?
A: Metal music is an affirmation of the power inherent in nature and its amoral, antisocial aspects, and through viewing the associated aspects of what society fears -- death, disease, horror, terror and war -- it brings to light that which society suppresses in an attempt to find a truth beyond social mechanisms that for metalheads have proven futile.
The sound of metal more than lyrics affirms this tendency. Using power chords, formed from the first and fifth notes of the diatonic scale (with optional octave doubling of the first note), metal songs are created without an inherent major or minor harmony, which leaves only rhythm and melody. This is perfect for making explosive songs in a narrative format, where the band goes beyond verse/chorus to use motifs that evolve over the course of a song, taking the listener on an existential journey in which learning occurs, much as happens in a Wagnerian opera or church hymn.
Where most music represents a deviation from harmony and then a return to it by the same mechanism by which it was escaped, metal -- with its harmony built in through the inherent fullness of a I-V chord -- goes beyond a simple pattern of loss and recovery to take alternate routes from disharmony to unity. Its thunderous power chords, containing both I and V, are the alpha and omega of the conventional I-IV-V pattern and thus require a different determiner of direction, which encourages the type of phrasal riffing originally used by Black Sabbath as well as the riff codices of death metal bands.
Aesthetically, this has been complemented by generations seeking greater extremity in vocal styles, distortion, bassiness, rhythm technique, imagery, costume and body modifications. Complemented by lyrics that at first simply warned of negative conclusions ("Satan laughing spreads his wings," from Black Sabbath's "War Pigs," unites mythical evil with actual, normalized evil inherent to the foundations of our mundane existence, "radical evil" as referred to by Kantian Paul Ricoeur) and later described them in full detail as a means of making real concepts denied by the mainstream press and socialized population, metal eventually diverged into advocacy of some of the most extreme forms of curtailing human denial and individual excess. Do metal bands wish evil? No, but they are beyond the denial of potentially evil consequences because simple people wish to entirely avoid the category of "evil," negative, bad, death, chaos, etc.
Q: What is amoralism as embraced by metal?
A: Amoralism is a philosophy that recognizes morality is based on the desires of individual humans and not reality. Moralism is unrealistic; for example, "Thou shalt not kill" must immediately be followed by a host of exceptions (except when threatened, except when done through due process, except when the illness is terminal). Moralism is designed to keep us from doing certain things, but it is inherently a negative philosophy, as it suggests nothing -- it only limits that which threatens the individual. Morality is passive because it acts against those who might kill (for example) for a good reason; instead of telling society, "We must achieve X" we say "We must avoid Y," as if limits on method could re-direct us toward a higher value. Amoralism is not passive. Its simple tenet is that morality is bunk and the individual is meaningless; what matters is Realism, or adapting to the one physical reality in which we find ourselves and turning it into something better, all the time. Moralism says we're all equal. Amoralism recognizes that some people are inherently stupid, or avaricious, or resentful, or ugly, and has no problem exterminating these people either when they get in the way or as a general principle. Moralism would have us believe that "every life is sacred" but amoralism says that "life is sacred," meaning the whole of life, which includes both death and life as well as natural selection. To an amoralist, one does what is realistic and does not concern oneself with the loss or suffering of individuals as such things are inevitable in any system.
Q: What is idealism as embraced by metal?
A: Idealism states simply that ideas are more important than tangible physicality. What this means is that one does not get caught up in materialism or symbolism, but focuses on the structure of reality: how will this action change the world around me and what will be its effects? Idealism recognizes that nature operates like a giant machine, and that we can alter parts of that machine, but if we do so unrealistically, we get horrible results, even if it takes a few thousand years. Seeing this mechanistic side to reality, idealism suggests that we triumph over it by instead selecting those values in which we believe and making them happen; in an idealistic view, all material objects are a means to an end, and that end is measured through the abstraction of structure perceivable by high-intelligence cases. Heroism is inherently idealistic because one does what is right regardless of living or dying; realism is bizarrely also idealistic because other humans do not recognize reality, but a realist acts on it even if it means censure or murder by other humans. Idealism is the ultimate transcendence of materialism because it relegates the material world as means to an end, and that end is not limited to the individual (moralism) but is holistic by the nature of all structures being interconnected as they are dependent upon the world as whole for their function. Metal music is idealistic because it recognizes the currency of the world as suffering and violence, but seeks to find meaning nonetheless and to use those mechanisms as conduits to some value higher than fearing suffering or trying to avoid death.
Q: What is the connection with Romanticism?
A: Romanticism was many things: not only was it a period in European literature and music and art, but it is also an attribute of any art of philosophy that adheres to its ideas. In essence, Romanticism is a naturalistic system of transcendence based on eternal values; a Romanticist would say that heroism, a life-bonding love, or artistic perception are the highest aspect of experience in any age (Romanticism is both a precursor to existentialism and the goal toward which many existentialists pointed at the end of their philosophical careers, including F.W. Nietzsche). Worship of the eternal requires that one see quality over quantity, e.g. the intense nature of a single passionate love dwarves a thousand lower-intensity lusts, or the clarity of a great artistic experience minimizes a thousand lesser arts. As such, Romanticists tend to respect the works of antiquity greatest and oppose modernity, which they see as a quantity over quality proposition.
Q: Why have fascists embraced metal?
A: Metal is post-moral, and thus has no problem recognizing several truths, one of which being that most people are so clueless about politics/philosophy that they need to be commanded by others; another is that ethnic groups cannot coexist without losing each what makes them unique. Metallians are divided on the fascist issue. While any sane person will agree with fascists on many truths, including the failure of democracy, it is unclear whether fascism is an ideal replacement -- and thus it coexists but does not conflate with metal.
Q: Is metal contra-liberal?
A: If one defines liberalism as "liberation of the individual to the pursuit of happiness" then metal is opposed to it, but it's worth noting that in liberal democracies such as the United States, _every_ political party endorses some form of liberalism, even the conservative and neo-Nazi parties. Liberalism is moralism: importance of individual minimizing all other factors, including realism and holism, and metal finds that to be insane. It is worth noting that all liberal states collapse into fascist ones, at least so far as history is concerned; a metallian would say that because most people prefer to avoid the truth, they elect manipulators and thus transition seamlessly into oppression.
Q: Why is metal music so anti-beauty?
A: It's not. The goal of metal is to find beauty in anti-beauty, much as it finds life in death. Transcendence means rising above the fact that life is suffering and death rules supreme; transcendence is finding things to live for that are untouched by the mechanisms and methods of life itself. Beauty in the truest sense is not merely a physical harmony of form and function, but a position in a cosmic order over time, and thus beauty both contains ugliness and can be found within ugliness. The nuclear blasts over Nagasaki and Hiroshima were beautiful, as was the firebombing of Dresden and the destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 -- visually. Since we are freed from morality, we can appreciate beauty even where "morally" we seek to condemn.
Q: Where does ANUS fit in?
A: A.N.U.S. exists to provoke the thoughts that hide
in the boundaries of our everyday mental files in which
perceptions are hidden behind symbol. This intellectual
terrorism aims to destabilize the crumbling postmodernist
social dogma of the current time, while suggesting new
possible directions.
A.N.U.S. exists to provoke the thoughts that hide
in the boundaries of our everyday mental files in which
perceptions are hidden behind symbol. This intellectual
terrorism aims to destabilize the crumbling postmodernist
social dogma of the current time, while suggesting new
possible directions.
This site is wholly nonprofit and represents an organization that has
been publishing in metal since 1988. Our professional approach to
writing and plentiful contextual information give you a place to
direct your own learning or examination of the metal genre.
Q: Why did you start the site and when?
A: The idea really goes back to 1988, when I first noticed there
was a total lack of credible information on metal. The problem hasn't
change much although we have so many more resources today it's embar-
rassing. We first went online in the current form in late 1995.
Q: What motivates you to write about metal?
A: My life fully satisfies me in every way, but metal and philosophy
are my two "loves" in the abstract realm. I enjoy writing about inter-
esting metal in the same way I like hearing it, as the passion eats my
soul and replaces it with a coldness, a logicality and determination to
take life by storm. This is the music of red-blooded eccentrics every-
where.
Q: Why did you make the recent changes to the site?
A: It was stagnating after I had lost interest in most of black metal
starting about 1997. I wanted to ramp it up to a level of professional
writing that we have always shown on our most valued reviews, but had
not made it to all levels of the site. Our style, often imitated,
needed a clean-up and some editing so that more people could see that
metal has its minds and we are not giving up on the genre.
It kills me that there is no central resource for metalheads. You can
find 10,000 webzines with part of the information, but nothing complete
and barely anything organized. Few things are written to professional
standards and most sites get abandoned after six months. For this
update I put together all of the metal information a devout headbanger
could desire and matched it with extremist writings that reflect the
spirit of metal. It's my way of keeping the church burning, so to
speak.
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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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