Wolfgang, you have concluded that I am just a hipster barely dabbling into the death metal genre. You are wrong in that presumption. I've been listening to this CD since 2005 after ordering it from Moribund on a 100-Watt receiver with 2 large, reasonably bartered house speakers. It's rare that I ever listen to music on headphones these days because I don't have a computer at home. I post on friend's computers or library express terminals.
From what I can remember, jacking up the mids did nothing to fix the problem of incomprehensible riffs.
Anyway, my point was that I'm sure Infester would have been a DAMN good listening experience live. It's just not a very well mixed album. No excuses.
I opened up this thread to begin a dialog about presentation itself. Presentation is important because it is a front for the substance of any work of art. It's important because any good idea is ruined by poor presentation. If you're trying to sell a house, you tell the squatters to hit the road, decorate the place a little bit, provide some hors d'oeuvres, etc. Spruce it up a little bit.
What I'm saying is this. The only purpose of rejecting immediate appearance is to put it in its place, which is small. Doing away with it altogether is an overreaction. Sure that house might be in a great neighborhood, have the best subflooring job in the city with state of the art energy efficient windows. But if there's a junkie in the corner shooting up then nobody's going to stay around for the briefing. Am I getting my point across?
DISAGREE big time. That album sounds exactly like it should, as does In the Nightside Eclipse, Remains of a Ruined, Dead, Cursed Soul, Det Frysende Nordiriket, etc. etc. Death to the mainstream, and spending a month writing your album in a goddamned studio.
When did I say anything about the mainstream? Is sounding "raw" what it takes to not be mainstream? Please inform me what standards must be abided by before it can be considered non-mainstream? That said, I think In The Nightside Eclipse has a beautiful, unique production. One of my favorite. They did a good job.
I'm not going to split hairs with you about Ildjarn and Mutiilation, however because I believe a certain degree of noiseyness adds a tremendous amount to those bands' works. Death metal lacks such simplicity and consequent ambience. For the same reason, I think that "rawness" was important for bands like Darkthrone, Discharge, Beherit, and Burzum to some extent.
Why do we want to keep metal obscure? Why do we want as few people to hear about it as possible? Let as many people hear it as possible. Art is communication, therefore success as an artist should have at least something to do with the amount of people who are communicated to, no?
I'm not proposing in any way that bands compromise ANY part of their music or what makes it genius. Just that production is overseen with a little bit more concern for what sounds good. What "works". Infester had some damn good ideas and they were demonstrated poorly. End of story.
I will not tolerate being crucified for sharing this belief. I am not a hipster, and have never owned an ipod or any other apple product for that matter. I am not mainstream because I choose not to tolerate a poor job in the studio NO MATTER HOW GOOD THE MUSIC ITSELF IS! If it sounds like shit, be big enough to admit it. Metal has a lot of possible directions to go. We can do better than that.