Another perspective on Satan’s Atom by Atom

The cover of Satan's latest album flipped vertically
Review by David Rosales (read the original by Gabe here)

First things first – let’s get the obvious clear and out of the way. Satan is a band of not only competent instrumentalists, but songwriters with an ear for balance, color and dynamics. The previous review written for DMU on this album emphasized and praised this point as much as the band deserves. As it remarks, the attention to structure in the composition throughout the record and its faithfulness to its chosen style is worthy of praise. The only thing being suggested here is going one step further in our observations.
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Slaughter of the Soul‘s 20th Anniversary of Awfulness

"Mud cake" - delicious.
Article by Daniel Maarat

Twenty years ago to the day, At the Gates completed their descent into Fredrik Nordström-produced, commercial pop garbage with Slaughter of the Soul. Since the Death Metal Underground does not celebrate mediocre Eurotrash speed metal (Go listen to Artillery instead), we will be blowing out the candles for a more significant release for the underground featuring many of the same musicians.

Grotesque – Incantation (1989)

The "In the Embrace of Evil" compilation contains, amongst other things, the entirety of the Incantation EP.

Grotesque’s legendary Incantation 12”, 45 rpm EP turns twenty-five this year. The only studio release of the progressive black death madhouse features the twin guitar and songwriting talents of Kristian “Necrolord” Wåhlin (perhaps better known for his contributions to the visual arts) and Alf Svensson. The melodically flowing compositions and shifting time signatures present on At the Gates’ The Red in the Sky is Ours (see former editor and continuing author David Rosales’s excellent article) appear in a more bloodthirsty, thrashier form on the first three songs. Following those are two earlier compositions of simple but very well done speed metal ensure the appreciation of even the most Neanderthal headbangers.

Most probably first heard Grotesque on the Projections of a Stained Mind Swedish death metal compilation or on the remixed and rearranged In the Embrace of Evil career anthology from 1996. In the Embrace of Evil has been quietly reissued this year by Hammerheart in a limited digipack format and Candelight in the standard jewel case with the original mastering intact for the first time. There is no ridiculous overuse of dynamic range compression for the sole benefit of losers with Apple iPhones and earbuds excruciating everyone else. Buy the CD, not the hipster reverse needle drop LP; In the Embrace of Evil was only released on CD back in the mid-nineties and an LP pushing fifty minutes in length can only have poor, distorted sound. Hear Grotesque’s journey from Satanic, Sepultura -worshiping first wave maniacs to black leather trench coat-clad, death metal exceptionalism.

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Response to “Time to do away with Manhood”

A still from "The Obsolete Man"
Article by Daniel McCormick; read the original article at The Guardian

A tenet of Christian faith is the idiotic concept of original sin, whereby it is understood we are all born with sin and must be faithful servants as punishment, in order to then be made well. This is a core belief of potentially billions of credulous people all over the world who claim fellowship with Christian death cults. These untold billions demonstrate the power of an illusion, and specifically the ability of a carefully crafted lie to take root and flourish through disinformation, misrepresentation, and argumentum ad passiones. In like manner, the modern feminist recognizes the power of a seductive lie and has taken this titillating concept of original sin and hammer forged their own bastard child. Original victimhood they bemoan, whereby it is observed that man is created sick and must faithfully serve woman in order to be made well. A predictable move for a supremacist, politico-pseudo-religious, ideology, as the claim carries with it the corollary that unless prostrating in servitude man won’t merely become but literally is a nemesis and bane to social order and progress. What is worrisome then, is in considering the absolutist, fatalistic, authoritarian will from which they seek privilege, and the credulous nature of the majority they which to use to attain this privilege.
 
For a considerable length of time feminism has been generally obsolete in the US, functional but directionless. To keep the menstrual machine relevant over the last few decades, during the modern dearth of social injustice, seeds of its ideological untruths have been sown in the popular consciousness by exploiting politeness. An obvious avenue because intelligent humans tolerate free speech regardless of how it makes them feel, and this tolerance comes at a price. For behind these soft campaigns of Stalinist censorship lay a many headed beast of manufactured victimhood gnashing its teeth in hunger for the credulous. As awareness raising becomes pleas for special privilege, as misrepresented social problems become calls for political action, the beast becomes less obscured behind the crumbling facade of benevolence. Because they are not vying to improve society, nor are they battling institutional injustice. No, today they are pushing for the legislation of morality and opinion and seek to censor, slander, and demonize all that would disagree. Because what Caucasian, alpha, manly men like myself are alleged to be guilty of is not actually anything we’ve done but, as we are told, we are guilty of thought crimes, of language crimes, and guilty of simply being the gender and skin tone we happened to be. This is part of a perverted guilt complex feminists have incorporated from the religious by which feminism proclaims to be able to reeducate and save males through their revealed wisdom (e.g. Catholic flimflam). From which I can only conclude that when a person’s standard for evidence is tantamount to Inquisition grade hearsay there is little to differentiate fanatical absolutists from each other.

I realize the female gender still has some legitimate first world grievances even today: women aren’t funny, cosmetics are expensive, beauty is temporary, but these problems are not institutional. Likewise whatever problem feminism has with masculinity is also not covered by government statutes. That’s because the problems as perceived by feminist theory have become so irrational and illusory and based on perpetuated biases that they shovel their own graves. I’m reminded of an old Twilight Zone episode (06/02/1961 – “The Obsolete Man”), which is a philosophical dialogue on absolutist fanaticism, and authoritarian ruthlessness. This episode ends with the antagonist facing the same sentence he’d inflicted on others, and closing with Rod Serling addressing the viewer.
“Any state, any entity, any ideology that fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of man, that state is obsolete.”
Thus, I maintain feminism is obsolete.
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Pathways

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Article by David Rosales

In ancient times, a transcendental and reverential cosmological vision made of the hardships of reality a way to elevate intellectual life to the status of the divine. The power to speculate, explore and decode reality around us was considered a gift.The time given to pursue such enterprises was considered invaluable.

What we now call history is the constant decaying of civilizations, an ebbing of true understanding, followed by a wave of revolutions, one after the other in relatively rapid succession as a drowning man desperately clutching for air. Scrapping whatever he could, man acquired dominion over the material while all sense of meaning was gradually lost.

“…for the powerful children of natural emotion will be replaced by the miserable creatures of financial expediency.”

The following is a list of four artworks of the greatest refinement, be it formal or otherwise, achieved through experience or birthed by the innerworkings of an innate calling. The first three are metal and of a minimalist stripe. The third is a Baroque religious vocal work. These are the echoes of what once was.

However, if there ever was an art for the elite, this is it. It will challenge each of the shortcomings of the fickle man. The first will call into question the superficial appreciation of aesthetics and will render the disavowal of prejudices compulsory. The second will require self-internment and the ability to perceive higher truths. The third will furthermore force those with a mind for the complex and an aversion to clear, straight lines to look beyond these and settle down in an openness to the expression. Finally, the last and most ancient will bring to bear the capacity of imaginatively layered music to quickly wear down the animal mind. This will be the bane of the simple-minded.

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On Det Frysende Nordariket

Disdained by most metalheads and followed with unthinking loyalty by kvlt fanatics, Ildjarn has achieved an infamous reputation in one way or another. Either of these camps considers the project to be non-music, with polarized opinions divided between “far from filling the requirements of music” and “simply beyond music”. The former point of view assumes a position of authority on technique whence it presumes to judge what music is. The latter is the inexcusable blindness of spineless and undiscerning individuals who place image before content.

While one could easily disarm the first argument on philosophical grounds, an unbiased judgement of the performance itself leaves any knowledgeable instrumentalist with no option but to accept that this is certainly not the weakness of the music. If issue were taken directly with the arrangement — the composition — of the music, there could be a worthwhile side to these attacks. More often than not, though, these critics arise from the new funderground camp, who have a notorious obsession with sheer standard behemoth-sounding production values, and so the argument usually runs along the lines of Ildjarn’s music being buried too deep in noise to have any value to speak of.

However, Ildjarn at its peak is far more than the jumbled improvisations the early recordings let through. The extreme punk channeling raw energy that this music consists of took some time to be harnessed. Det Frysende Nordariket (“The Frozen Northern-Kingdom”) shows us a refinement and redirecting of these ideas. While the self-titled was barely more than a collection of scattered ideas, intuitive impulses and visceral cadences, it is in this release that Ildjarn develops these ideas into mature extensions which make efficient use of the strengths of the original riffs, thereby burying the relevance of their shortcomings.

Coming to an aural absorption or a gnosis, so to speak, of Ildjarn’s rougher side necessitates not only the listener’s amiability towards ultra-minimalist and long-winded ambient music, but also a positive familiarity with low-fi punk and metal production and its use of what are normally considered sound artifacts as tones and colors on the palette of the artist. Once this is understood and the raw texture is successfully digested, one can start to appreciate the unique ideas presented in each track. The genius of Ildjarn lies in the masterful ultra-minimalist manipulation of the original ideas that can be likened to a stretching and contracting, which is occasionally accompanied by a seamless expansion that is so shy it is barely noticeable if the listener is not attentive.

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On Hvis Lyset Tar Oss

1994 marks the turning point in metal history when innovation stops and a gradual degeneration starts to take place. This year is also the highest point in black metal, seeing the release of what we can consider the quintessential genre masterpieces. First among them is Burzum’s Hvis Lyset Tar Oss.

The meteoric ascent of Vikernes’ previous works from varied yet focused ideas to the purest synthesis of elements in Hvis Lyset Tar Oss could only have one possible outcome. The groundbreaking impact this had on the genre can only be compared to that of albums like Onward to Golgotha or Legion on death metal. While some argue that Vikernes single-handedly “developed” or “defined” black metal, the truth is that he brought it to an end in this album. It is the kind of album that has the words “THIS IS IT” written all over it. There is nothing for us, mortals, beyond the incognizable infinite.

While there is much dark beauty in other works in the genre, works that may serve as veritable portals to hidden corridors of existence, when it comes to the art of composition, there is no other that brings this black romanticism to a more perfect incarnation. Hvis Lyset Tar Oss addresses all facets of black metal and gives them an equally important place in a masterfully balanced music.

The often-used descriptor “ambient black metal” falls criminally short of what this album has to offer. That this “atmospheric” feeling is the only thing blind men can perceive is empiric evidence of its extant layers penetrable to their last consequence only by esoteric means. The least trained will only hear repetition (variation details are lost on them), while those into ambient music will sense the fog around them. He who decries structures and can, to some extent, understand their relations, will be able to delineate muscle fibers and bones — an objective confirmation of content. Further and higher lie realms to be walked but never shared.

Navigating the waters of this ocean, we see indomitable and gargantuan waves slowly rise before us, we experience the placid breeze under a dark-grey sky streaked by clouds mutilated by the rays of a moribund sun, and we face the wrathful tempest. Battered and sucked into a timeless maelstrom, all that remains at the very end is the essence, the ultimate undifferentiated mother of creation.

On The Rack

Asphyx’s debut garners “historical” respect, but is often deemed to be the preparative stage before more refined ones. This argument appears to be supported on two pillars. The first is that a later Asphyx was more technically outspoken, and the second, that the band managed to narrow down their style into a more focused expression. Both of these are true, yet they did not result in higher artistic merit as later works became increasingly sterile. The fact that people get “a feeling” from them is besides the point. Yet, when it comes to art and especially to music, some might confuse these visceral reactions with effective communication through the intuitive.

The Rack presents a style that is both minimalist in its building blocks but displays a progressive tendency in the overall arrangement of parts. Here, Asphyx goes beyond style fetishization and instead uses characteristic phrases and riffs as symbols standing for moods and points in a storyline. This vision places it alongside classic albums that work at a higher level than the merely technical or the grossly emotional. However, it is important to keep in mind that all this intellectual dissection is only a way to uncover this work’s secrets and must not be confused with the end.

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The color palette with which Asphyx plays has a narrow enough range that its extreme opposites are not as contrasting that they incur in an incoherent string of topic changes, yet the individual strokes that riffs represent are distinctive enough that they form clear statements and unambiguously show the way. The triumph of The Rack lies, furthermore, in that it not only signals these inclinations but actually follows them to their last consequence without derailing.

These progressions may seem too clear-cut, leading to them being perceived as ‘blocky’. But when inspected closely, they are shown to be not so much as separate stones in alignment, but as rock-hewn steps in a massive staircase of which each stage is birthed from the underskin of the last. Other ‘brutal’ albums constitute a string of emotions, but here we find an ancient megalithic maze that dwarves petty human creations.
Switching between thematic solos and motific riffs, grindlike attack and doomlike arrest, this first Asphyx takes us through savage plains and forbidden peaks in a barbarian’s world. Now we hear the rage of souls crushed, the karmic cruelty thence resulting, now the ecstatic state following the release of unrestrained fury as we claw our way through this arid wasteland of unmercy.

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On Historia der Auferstehung Jesu Christi (recording by Roger Norrington and the Schütz Choir)

A baroque religious work might at first seem like an odd addition to a metal compendium, especially one featuring such corrosive albums. A sympathetic relation may nonetheless be found in deeper metaphysical recesses. This hidden concept being the most relevant connection that merits mention does not stop us from discussing other outer traits that surface from that common source, even though their materialized natures lie at antagonizing angles.

The homogeneous, cloudy exterior of Schütz’s offering to the highest being is a continuous exaltation in which each moment is as much a unique apparition as it is an illusory shadow in a sequence of conditioned stages. A flow through condensation, solidification and dispersion let the listener on to the infinite possibilities arising from the two, who are themselves from the one.

Dense, saturated and appreciable only as a mass, Historia der Auferstehung Jesu Christi will only reflect a clear image if the listener is standing in the right place (at the right time?). This same is true of the Ildjarn, the Burzum and the Asphyx as well. They represent mental spaces within which they are as palpable and engulfing as daylight itself. But places must be traveled to, gates must be unlocked and the decision to step through them is a voluntary one.

Seeds being planted,
guarded by the old ones below.
Against the sky they lay roots,
Once to bloom with signs.

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Leviathan – Scar Sighted (2015)

Leviathan - Scar Sighted (2015)
Review by Corey M

USBM (United States Black Metal) as a term encompasses such varying sounds as the primal war chants of Von, the uncompromisingly precise assault of Averse Sefira, and the operatic mewling of Weakling. Scar Sighted, Leviathan’s newest release, is still USBM but typically is categorized by fans as “depressive suicidal black metal,” along the stylistic lines of Sweden’s Shining and fellow American Xasthur.

Unlike the epic and powerful surge of teeth-clenching energy that one feels from black metal ne plus ultra like Sacramentum, Immortal, or Darkthrone, Leviathan’s music is more about… who knows? Something relatively vague but generally negative, self-loathing, and frankly boring. Take this line of lyric; “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up and like the wind our sins sweep us away.” This line seems assertive and confident; you may wonder what meaning this cryptic passage may hold. And wonder you shall, forever, because placing it in the context of the rest of the song does not reveal any clearer meaning. There is no point other than the expression of narrow-sighted negativity. This is the unifying theme of Scar Sighted; a gross misdirection of self-contempt projected toward any and all things outside the self, with uninformed “occultic” references mixed in for good measure.

My contention with Scar Sighted is not just with the lyrics, though. The composition of each song reflects the fragmentation apparent in the lyrics, throwing out one cool-sounding line after another, but leaving the observant listener with a stark sense of having witnessed a slide show of barely-related images. Melodies come and go with nary a whimper as the listener gets deeper into each song. Certainly, a lot of blustery riffs throughout the album got me excited and interested in hearing where the music would lead me next. But that makes the album all the more disappointing, as one song can throw a series of two or three engaging riffs at you and then switch tracks completely and strand you amidst a wash of dissonant non-melody that, rather than moving the song forward, just wallows within its own two-or-three chord cycle that doesn’t relate to any other part of the song.

To Wrest’s credit, a lot of the riffs are very cool, and he has a refined sense of how long a riff can be exploited before it becomes too boring for repetition. Sometimes, he makes the right choice and heads into a complimentary riff to accentuate the previous one. However, more often than not, the last riff is shrugged off and a whole new feeling is admitted, complete with a disparate drum beat, a new scale, and, too often, a new vocal style. Wrest has a very intense low-end growl that synergizes with the grimy, slimy, bass-heavy sound that is wonderfully mixed on this album. Wrest is clearly a craftsman that takes his work seriously and not a lazy writer. However, the result of his work is an incoherent collection of songs, some of which sound like they could come from a post-hardcore band on Level Plane in the early 2000s. With that in mind, Scar Sighted wouldn’t be a bad album by any means if it weren’t marketed as black metal. But when contrasted with the standards of black metal and the techniques employed by the best bands, we find that the intensely personally-focused introspective meanderings of Leviathan fall apart.

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Perdition Temple – The Tempter’s Victorious (2015)

Perdition Temple - The Tempter's Victorious (2015)
Article by Daniel McCormick

The Behistun Inscription of King Darius was carved approximately 2,500 years ago in what is present day Iran. It includes a multilingual narration (the veritable Rosetta Stone of cuneiform) and a relief which depicts the Great King before nine men whose hands are tied and necks roped. These nine doomed men symbolize the leaders who dared challenge Darius I’s power and the inscription narrates how the Great King and his army “utterly smote” all opposition time and again. It is a monument to masculine preeminence, violence, and revenge; elitist and cruel it is typifying of what is great in life: victory. These are timeless aesthetic values which parallel a modern metal ethos and embody its philosophy of power – as Nietzsche once wrote, “The excess of power only is the proof of power.”

Slavoj Žižek writes in his 2008 book ‘Violence’ that most of us are “caught in a kind of ethical illusion”, which is ingrained in our instinctual reactions and that “This is why shooting someone point-blank is for most of us much more repulsive than pressing a button that will kill a thousand people we can not see.” (e.g. Milgram experiment) This is the same evolved psychology as William Blake inquires questioningly about in ‘The Human Abstract’, as Baudelaire’s “unmoved hero” lends counterpoint to in his “Don Juan in Hades”, as Byron attempts to exploit in “The Prisoner of Chillon”. The general innate effect induced reflexively by cognition of some negative state from which either sympathy, empathy, or indifferentism commands our attention. Through this, the deduction or normalization of altruism and pacifism as the commonality can then be contrasted to the induced (or conditioned) opposing hierarchy of predation, hegemony, and misanthropy. Herein we see where a great form of power lies, where the aesthetic values of works like the Behistun Inscription draw their wealth; here we define the base sum from whence the antithetical, or negative, values arise and thus saturate a work of art through mechanisms of visceral response. There is a physical relationship stemming from reality to the values and ideas I am speaking of that is inseparable: our minds.

From an inseparable form in understanding come values, or categorical variables, which define much what draws me to a piece, or genre. These categories tend to revolve around my intuitive response to, or interpretation thereof, distinct drama/ representations characteristic of the grander ideals which germinate visceral responses. From this negative inclination much has been cultivated in the form of artistic tributes, both modern and old, to the glory of death, ruin, victory, and the mental states which are the highest peaks of emotional experience; an impact to psychology like arousal to a sex organ. Because for all the waxing upon the beautiful as an ideal one can happen upon it becomes self evident that that which is ugly, deformed, sickly, unclean, or of choleric temperament, can bring about a much more physical reaction. Watching executions, hearing cries of agony, observing the emaciated, the diseased, the exploited, the broken, the deformed, in even the briefest of glimpses the effect can be very real and intimately innate, as a substance that holds unending possibility for suffering which the light of creative ambition shines upon.

The one I have before me now is Perdition Temple – The Tempter’s Victorious. It is an eight track onslaught of blackened death metal for the modern day exterminationist. There are general themes of mass death, satanism, and morbidity, the sort of abstracted fantastical storytelling common the genre, and though there may be some weakness in the textual substance the incorporation of the ideas is well executed. The sound carries an approach to structure that focuses on an unceasing attack of technical riffing at a tempo evocative of full auto fire backed by vocal and percussive dynamics arranged with the structural integrity of a M1 Abrams. There is a detectable formula to the album as a whole, e.g. a crushing and sometimes chaotic guitar sound matched to blasting drums and Impurath preaching hate, but such is the style and the elitists expectation towards consistency. The musicianship displays high caliber and the black, thrashy, satanic death format feels natural and engaging, as opposed to coming off as contrived.

This album falls far more into the Florida death metal stereotype than one typical of USBM. The music predominantly builds on precise, aggressive, density and a sort of rapid oscillation between heightened tension and resolution that is ever running at full tilt. Considerably inaccessible, or lacking in the common musical expectancies of harmony, contour, etc. The Tempter’s Victorious plays a familiar style that reminds me in many ways of bands such as Angelcorpse, Blasphemic Cruelty, Diabolic, etc., and others whom have shaped their music to be the antithesis of traditional demands from the listener. However, as an educated devotee, this material is appreciated all the more for the respite it provides from the hell of popularist modernity and the industrial scale by which accessibility is mass replicated. Perhaps that is also a commentary on the infuriating nature of refinement, and while it may be true to conclude that Perdition Temple present little in the way of new frontiers and that this may not be the most memorable of albums it is nonetheless a solid product of extreme metal.

Released by Hell’s Headbangers and available for limited free streaming, I’d suggest checking out the title track, “Doomsday Chosen”, “Scythes of the Antichrist”, and “Devil’s Blessed” which should give you a working idea of what you can expect from this band, e.g. heavy usage of palm muting, tremolo picked arpeggios, varied meters, dissonance, endless blast beats, shredding solos etc. Should you be of a similar mindset to myself, you’ll no doubt conclude this is a worthy black/ death release created by established musicians. The strongest aspect of this band is the quality of death metal put forward, e.g. the most important part. I believe what is really lacking is a stronger or more developed voice, vision, or intentionality behind the imagery and topicality of their expressions. The use of black metal themes and attributes does well to fill this void, but when you draw contrast to the strength of the music the actual thematic purpose of the album becomes exceedingly generic. One needs only a cursory reflection on the lyrical content to realize this has an identical failing of many black metal albums inasmuch as the lyrics center around bizarre satanic fantasies, using odd/nonsensical word combinations, and words seemingly chosen merely for dramatic effect. By looking less superficially, one overcomes this short coming, as analyzing the value system producing the content affords one endless range by which to indulge the emotions of hate, violence, and victory.

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Abbath debuts newly recorded song (“Winter Bane”)

https://soundcloud.com/abdelsalam-schopenhauer/abbath-winter-bane

Article by Daniel Maarat

Addict in denial Abbath Doom Occulta has previewed a new track with Metal Hammer from his solo project, Abbath. Winter Bane “…comes with many of the qualities that are the essence of this band: epic, honest, powerful, and a heavy headbanger.” Surely many neck vertebrae will be dislocated by this radio pop for nasal decongestants attempt, but many more by decades-old Immortal material:

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Dakhma – Astiwihad-Zohr (2015)

Dakhma cover
Article by David Rosales

What is up with this sudden influx of nonsensical war metal? Is this some sort of epidemic? Is there no end to subpar minimalist death metal clones? Dakhma’s Astiwihad-Zohr is one of the many albums that, once weighted and considered in the light of everything that has come before, forces one to ask if it was really necessary that someone waste any kind of resources recording it. While not outright offensive, it is lukewarm, at best while at worst, it is comical in its unabashed mediocrity.

It appears that anyone with a penchant for occultish themes and an appeal for the underground metal most superficial aesthetic feels entitled to put out one of these turds that the supporting community, the “scene”, considers an invaluable contribution to the ever-growing stack of EPs and albums nobody will give a second listen to. This needs to stop now. This metal funderground is destroying everything underground metal meant as an artistic refuge for true expression, even though uneducated and rough on the edges. No, it isn’t “cool” that we are immortalizing any of this shit in vinyls. No, it isn’t cool that nowadays there are so many bands to choose from when most of them are not worth a second of your life and they only drown and even suffocate those with actual potential.

With no heads or tale to speak of, these songs meander between heavy minimalist riffs, meaningless silences and long growls and grunts for “the feels”. This is all part of the idiocy of postmodernist thinking that falls into the trap of awarding relevance only to individual, ultra-subjective feelings towards passing moments in the music, and meaning to nothing in art. This is psychobabble for morons trying to feel smart. They forget that although human rules of social engagements are, indeed, “constructs”, this does not mean they are less relevant. They forget that all spoken or written language is also a “construct”, yet it is not any less meaningful because of it. This understanding that requires a journey into complexity and back again into perspective seems to be out of reach for most. Enslave the masses. Take away their means of assailing our senses with this display of mental retardation.

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Diavolos – You Lived, Now Die (2015)

Diavolos - You Lived, Now Die (2015)
Review by David Rosales

Band and album names often reveal the character of the music contained in detail, but the art of discerning or intuiting these things requires some experience as well as conscious and active attention to correlations. A tongue-in-cheek and mainstream-friendly name like Diavolos already conveys an ironic attitude towards the genre itself. A empty and virtually meaningless album name like You Lived, Now Die lets through the stink of missionless, anarchist fun.

All that said, Diavolos does excel in its technical application and configuration of riffs and riff compendiums as a progressions. But this is only skin deep and it is right after middle of songs that their lack starts to show in the need for solos sections that break off from the initial idea only to connect with a speeding outro. These songs are built and pieced together as IKEA furniture. Cheap and convenient.

Diavolos’ You Lived, Now Die will prove an entertaining listen to those with a weakness for eighties Teutonic speed metal, but will probably not be spun more than once or twice as it provides little that cannot be found in older bands. I am guessing that the bet of a label on this is just to keep presenting the same thing in a new package. This works only because most are too lazy to explore and actually listen to the music, which would reveal most of this second-rate vanity as completely redundant and even more importantly, unable to achieve valuable communication.

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Triumvir Foul – Triumvir Foul (2016)

TF_frontcover
Review by David Rosales

All exteriors, no soul. All pretension, no content. These are the sort of comments that are hard to back, especially in the light of the predominant materialist paradigm that chooses to ignore or reject the validity of any metaphysical judgements on.. well, anything. This includes music, which among the arts is the least given to materialist interpretations and whose nature lies wholly in the experience created within the triangle of producer, product and receptor/consumer. That is to say, the intention and thought of the composer codified into the music and its interpretation, the qualities of the product itself, and the reception of the same work by an audience with a singular background.
Some take this harsh judgement to mean that the writer is implying that the person who wrote the music had no intention or feeling for the music, but it is not so much that as the fact that a music veiled in unoriginal styles (which are in any case the words of the classic role models being imitated) cannot possibly convey the unique mental states of this imitator. Now, this is not a matter of requiring everyone to be 100% “original”, having to reinvent the wheel at every corner. This would entail failing as innovation hipsters do, at grasping the value of working on the work of the greats before you. But, your own work should precisely build on and not just use exactly the same expressions. In other words, bands such as Triumvir Foul sound very similar to Christian fanatics who cannot resist the compulsion of quoting three verses from the Bible for every dull sentence they babble.
In other words, the discussion on whether a music is superficial or not is usually a complex one and must be examined on a case-by-case basis, since the reason why this Triumvir Foul fails as art is completely different from the reason that, say, Ara, utterly fails and burns as a Hindenburg full of fireworks. While many metal albums may give you the specific tropes in techniques, tone and even riff-arrangement styles, only a very talented composer and original thinker can provide you with the most worthwhile aural experience. Triumvir Foul definitely is not up to that task.

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