Lord Worm on mediocre bands

[username]

Well, there is a limit to how many different kinds of expression you can get out of black metal as a genre of certain style of guitar, drums and vocal. It's not like new Burzum or Darkthrone is complete rubbish, it's just not black metal (not that I so much like it myself.) Some have retained the artistic integrity better while moving to different genres, like Graveland and Beherit.

[WAAAAAAGH!]

Well, to be fair, later career Wagner is philistine garbage.

[Eleison]

Well, to be fair, later career Wagner is philistine garbage.

I really hope you're not referring to Parsifal, regardless, this is a pretty bold statement.  I'd like to hear some kind of justification for this opinion.

[WAAAAAAGH!]

He became too focused on theatrics and bombastic dramatization. I don't have a lot of colorful language to describe what I'm talking about. Hopefully that makes sense.

[Eleison]

I can sympathize with this opinion of Wagner, although, in my opinion, his final opera, Parsifal, does away with much of the excesses that were present in the works which preceded it.  It is, in my opinion, his finest work and one of the greatest works of art in the classical tradition.  I would be interested to know which works in particular you would single out for criticism, because, although I can understand your complaint, I don;t believe there is a particular period in Wagner's output which drops away significantly from the rest in terms of quality.

[ChapelOfTorment]

I got Karajan's Ring cycle almost ten years ago as a birthday present, and it's one of my favorite collections of music to listen to, but I can't really pretend to be a Wagner scholar. My only other Wagner recording is this Tristan und Isolde, which I also really like (it's got Fischer-Dieskau singing and Furtwängler conducting, how could I not?). This recording of Parsifal is on iTunes for five bucks; might be worth downloading the program just for that, since it's like four hours of music and by all accounts appears to be a good recording. I just downloaded it myself, and I'm looking forward to giving it a spin when Asphyx's Embrace the Death winds up.

It seems to be an unfortunate tendency of good bands to have a few turds hanging off the end of their discography. I was just thinking about this while listening to Deströyer 666 today. If they had just dropped off the face of the Earth completely after 2003 (which they appeared to have done until 2009), they would be remembered as one of the few elite quality black metal bands, but now, they're just kind of this boring black/thrash/whatever combo. You go to their shows hoping to hear their classics, but you have to suffer through their new shit while you're at it. The same goes for Absu, Asphyx, Grave, and countless others. Luckily, there's bands like Summoning and the aforementioned Graveland that keep it real throughout their whole discography. One really cool band is Saint Vitus: they put out a real stinker with C.O.D., but they came strong with Die Healing and (after a massive hiatus) Lillie: F-65, both of which were faithful to their back catalog, but also built on their past in a substantial way. Are there any other bands that have made a "comeback" like this? Only one I can think of is Deeds of Flesh after their first album, but they fell back down the shit-slide with their more recent stuff.

[aquarius]

Well, to be fair, later career Wagner is philistine garbage.

I really hope you're not referring to Parsifal, regardless, this is a pretty bold statement.  I'd like to hear some kind of justification for this opinion.

Nietzsche condemned Wagner's Parsifal for using intoxicatingly beautiful music to lull the listener into ideological submission, or something like that.

As it happens, I haven't even heard the entire opera (any recommendations?). Needless to say, the music from act II Klingsor's garden is absolutely sublime, and surely represents a complete fruition of the dense harmonic texture that Wagner was able to build and direct at ease.

[WAAAAAAGH!]

I can sympathize with this opinion of Wagner, although, in my opinion, his final opera, Parsifal, does away with much of the excesses that were present in the works which preceded it.  It is, in my opinion, his finest work and one of the greatest works of art in the classical tradition.  I would be interested to know which works in particular you would single out for criticism, because, although I can understand your complaint, I don;t believe there is a particular period in Wagner's output which drops away significantly from the rest in terms of quality.

I actually had the Ring series in mind. It borders on unlistenable to me though I can certainly understand why others might sing their praises. Perhaps I am being too harsh. I need to give Parsifal another listen. I'll come back to this after I have.

[fallot]

Lord Worm in mediocre band OH HOH