Infamous, Solitudo and Warnungstraum releasing Il Rifugio del Silenzio split

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Melodic primal black metal band Infamous, along with cohorts Solitudo and Warnungstraum, will release a three-way split on Eremita Productions in December 2015. The bands — each in a variant of the traditional black metal style — have contributed a total of 50 minutes of material.

Limited to 200 hand-numbered copies, the 6-panel digipak will feature the nature-oriented and feral artwork which customarily adorns Infamous releases. For those who have enjoyed this band’s evolution into more Ildjarn-styled territory, with the warmer melodies familiar to Southern European black metal, should anticipate this release with joy.

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Pestilence to release The Dysentery Penance compilation of demos

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Legendary Dutch death metal band Pestilence is re-issuing its two demos from 1987 on a compilation entitled The Dysentery Penance, out in CD/digital on November 30, 2015 with the vinyl to follow in early 2016. The two demos, “The Penance” and “Dysentery,” show the formative years of the technical death metal style later to evolve from Pestilence.

To be released on Vic Records, this new release shows yet another death metal band reaching into the vaults so that new generations can experience the sense of possibility and discovery as these bands forged ahead in uncharted waters to create the new death metal style.

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Brendon Small launches “crowd” campaign to continue Metalocalypse

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Despite being a huge animation nerd, I was never able to develop much interest in Metalocalypse, but my support certainly wasn’t required for the companies involved to release four seasons, four Dethklok studio albums, and seriously concern Brett. A couple years of production may have fatigued its audience, though, as the show has essentially been canceled by Adult Swim. Show creator Brendon Small seeks to reverse this – enter the “Metalocalypse Now!” campaign, which at first glance is presumably intended to mobilize fans into a veritable army of demanding Adult Swim and/or Hulu provide the funding for a series finale. In isolation, this is at least a sign of the times – growing social media efforts and the theoretical possibility of crowdfunding continues to open up opportunities for content creators to promote and distribute their work.

On closer inspection, though, I began to question how relevant the efforts of fans would be in this campaign’s success or failure. The campaign has already attracted an enormous amount of corporate sponsorship, ranging from understandable fans like metal journalism/interest sites such as MetalSucks and MetalInjection, to record labels and surprisingly the computer peripheral company Razer. This leads me to believe that the result of this campaign is already predecided by the corporate sponsors. At best, anyone who participates in the social media end of this is a number they can pull up at the inevitable business presentation with Adult Swim’s executives. With some of the names involved, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a huge promotional blitz and a successful conclusion to this campaign, but our readership would likely be disappointed either way.

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Mayhem – Live in Leipzig reissued for its 25th anniversary

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I guess Peaceville really doesn’t know when to quit with the compilations and reissues (or that at least they’re a viable way to make more money off known famous works), since they’re also rereleasing Mayhem’s Live in Leipzig. This is specifically the 25th anniversary of the concert documented, as opposed to when it was first ‘officially’ pressed and sold to a mass audience some years afterwards. The CD version of this rerelease also contains a contemporary recording of the band in Zeitz, Germany. See Peaceville’s site for more details.

Whether Live in Leipzig is at all worth your time depends, perhaps, on how you value the various ‘eras’ of Mayhem. It is likely the easiest way to experience the band’s ‘classic’ lineup, featuring both tracks that would eventually make it onto De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas as well as somewhat revamped older tracks from the band’s early, proto-death metal days. As a listener, I find the most value in the polished studio work of Mayhem’s formal debut (because I value Atilla Csihar’s contributions), but the looser intrepretations here are worth at least a few spins.

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Grave previews new track from upcoming album

Out Of Respect For The Dead is in my review queue by virtue of its artist being at least semi-famous. While Grave’s reputation on DMU is something less than stellar, the fame they achieved as part of the early (Stockholm) Swedish makes their latest work worth looking at, at least in terms of comparison to their past and other bands’ present output. “Plain Pine Box” is admittedly not a particularly interesting song, being an extremely simple and basic track reminiscent of what would happen if you simplified Celtic Frost and added extra distortion. A previously released track from this upcoming album (“Mass Grave Mass”) resembles more the band’s stereotypical sound; overall, I expect competence from future Grave if not necessarily must-have or even particularly inspiring albums.

Out Of Respect For The Dead will be available on October 16th, 2015.

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Denner/Shermann – Satan’s Tomb (2015)

Denner/Shermann - Satan's Tomb (2015)

When I first became aware of this recording, I figured the obvious points of comparison would be Mercyful Fate for spawning the eponymous duo of this act, and Satan because that word was in this album’s title. Those comparisons have turned out to be less appropriate than initially expected – Satan’s Tomb draws more from recent mainstream heavy/power metal than either of those two. It’s not enough to separate them entirely from this comparison, but those expecting the second coming of Don’t Break The Oath are going to walk away disappointed for more reasons than they might expect.
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Hipsters attack black metal with pale imitations

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Since the early 1970s, the music industry and the social scene behind it — comprised of those who use external appearance to signal social success — has been trying to find some way to counter the authenticity of metal. While rock and blues stars appeared to be rebels, the truth emerged over time that most were very conventional in their outlook except for hedonism.

Heavy metal on the other hand rejected the founding myths of our society since the intellectual shift so-called “The Enlightenment,” in which people decided that social pressure to enable the individual to be “equal” whether right or wrong, good or bad, was more important than social standards. Heavy metal pointed out that our perceived enemies are scapegoats, and the real problem is that the enemy is us, and that people are delusional and happy hippie flower power is another variety of the bourgeois deliberate ignorance of reality that promotes social decay.

In recent years, the same people who were hippies back in the 1960s — the conformity of appearance non-conformist and then going to work at a bank and retiring as a fat Baby Boomer — have returned as “social justice workers,” or SJWs. These people, together with an industry that realizes it can sell more re-branded indie rock than it can discover compelling metal bands, have created a new style that culturally appropriates the appearance of black metal while injecting it with the same messages of self-indulgence, self-pity, victimhood and pacifism that the hippies bleated about back in the day.

As the UK’s leading cheerleader paper reports, the herd is claiming this new false black metal is in fact an “innovation,” despite it resembling music from thirty years ago that black metal bands detested.

Enter “blackgaze”, the buzz term for a new school of bands taking black metal out of the shadows and melding its blast beats, dungeon wailing and razorwire guitars with the more reflective melodies of post-rock, shoegaze and post-hardcore. It’s a geographically loose scene and its bands have been embraced by the indie media, which means you’re now as likely to hear black metal at ATP as in the Carpathian mountains.

Alert readers may note the “post-rock, shoegaze and post-hardcore” attribution, which Death Metal Underground has long identified as being the origins of this material. In other words, it is not black metal, but indie rock playing “dress up” as black metal. The quest of the industry for a safe rebellion goes on.

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SJWs attacking punk/thrash/reggae band Bad Brains for un-PC beliefs

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As recent events have emboldened SJWs to be more aggressive in their attacks on those who have not adopted SJW beliefs as the one true religion, increased chatter suggests more criticism is heading toward the Bad Brains, a founding punk band who used thrash speed in their songs alongside reggae interludes.

One SJW source (that disguises itself as satire) summarized the situation earlier this year:

Lauded Rastafarian hardcore band Bad Brains have recently passed a serious milestone in their career, again escaping serious scrutiny for their actions by their gaggle of pathetically-adoring and mostly white male fans.

This year marks the third decade that the beloved African-American religious zealots have completely escaped the prying eye of the punk community for penning incendiary anti-gay lyrics such as “Don’t blow no bubbles, don’t blow no spikes, don’t pack no fudge”.

Many in the punk community, but all of those “many” being SJWs, feel that Bad Brains have betrayed the implicit SJW assumption that any people who are not white should adopted SJW ideology. In fact, it was white punks who began the attack, as Daryl Jenifer reveals in an interview:

Check it out. All the things I’ve been telling you about the road and path of The Bad Brains, there was an era that lead into us discovering Rasta and Jah, and these things that were part of us being black and recognizing this part of our culture. Like with anything, say you’re a young Krishna, there’s a tendency to be over-zealous. We were over-zealous in our views about homosexuality, due to our ignorance, and the fact that we hadn’t matured to a certain level. Just like anyone getting into anything. Every member of The Bad Brains are loving and we have nothing against any of god’s creatures. In our growth and in trying to become wise and see life for what it is, without judgment, we went through a time where we did judge. Anyone can remember a time and say, “oh you remember when I was like that.” A doctor can say, “Remember when I first worked the ER and was all nervous and people were looking at me when I was crazy.” So when you’re coming in as a young Rasta and discovering it, just like in Christianity, homosexuality isn’t accepted. So being young Rasta and studying the religion that’s what you see. But if you still continue to study and mature you’ll find other texts that say, “love all god’s creatures.” So you can’t just make your own thing and say, “This guys black, or this guys homosexual, I don’t like him.” The Bad Brains had a period of time where we might have said some things. Meanwhile, we were in a band and were popular, so it got out there. But someone took that and ran with it. People that hated us for various reasons, people that were trying to be like us. I don’t want to call any names, but like the band MDC were the first to go out of their way to find something wrong with the Bad Brains. Everybody loved The Bad Brains, so they want to find something wrong with us. It happens with everyone like Tiger Woods, you get popular and people are going to try and hate on you.

The SJW crusade in metal and punk continues with its desire not to avoid threatening speech as it claims, but to create “safe spaces” where only SJW-compliant speech is allowed. The ongoing and accelerating criticism of the Bad Brains only fuels this fire and will intensify it until rebuked.

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Nunslaughter drummer Jim Konya to be removed from life support

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Nunslaughter drummer and vocalist Jim Konya, who once famous ran for a local political office with a quasi-Satanic platform, and fueled Nunslaughter through almost a dozen full-length releases and nearly infinite 7″ EPs, experienced a stroke three weeks ago and recently worsened. He will be taken off life support today, October 7, and is not expected to survive.

Konya, whose output with the band was matched by his fierce loyalty to the underground metal scene, will be remembered by many as a generous and committed persona who along with several others created one of the longest-running and most prolific bands in death metal history.

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California Death Fest supports SJWs, boots Disma from lineup

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Although neither the fest nor the band have confirmed this, users are reporting that the California Deathfest (presented by the Maryland Deathfest promoters) has caved to demands by social justice workers, or SJWs, to dis-invite New Jersey old school death metal band Disma.

Disma, who boast a vocalist of Jewish heritage and write songs about slow melancholic death, are being attacked for the perception that vocalist Craig Pillard’s side project Sturmführer had right-wing overtones. Despite the utter lack of any political content in Disma lyrics, some SJWs — feeling emboldened by recent mass events and cucking by mainstream media — have urged California Deathfest to deny Disma for some time.

As this story develops, more will be posted. This incident represents the type of lynch mob mentality that Metalgate rebelled against in the first place: an intolerance for any speech but the SJW-approved, Soviet-style repetition of certain key issues as a means of seizing power.

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