Fair enough. "Diagnoses" was the wrong word to use, and I should have instead used "Syndromes". I guess they can just be thought of as categories of personality type, both of which are probably very conducive to good art.

Despite the hipster hype, Xasthur's "Telepathic with the Deceased" truly is a great album. I would rank it one level below Joined in Darkness. Everything after that got shockingly boring.

To be honest I'd rate "Subliminal Genocide" a cut above the other Xasthur that I've heard. I'm a drooling Leviathan fanboy though, so should probably be ignored.

Thanks for posting those links! Something that occurred to me while watching, was that all three men seemed very much "in touch with their feelings" and self-reflecting, probably to a greater extent than most of society. This is probably necessary to create such powerful art, and flies in the face of the autism/Asperger's stereotype mentioned earlier. On the one hand they reject humanity, but on the other they can't escape their own.

I understand your point about humans perhaps being the evolutionary precedent, but what this means is we have no proof and we can kind of make it up as we go along; "humans are doing this now...we must have evolved to do it!" Personally I find discussions of what humans were "meant" to do based on evolution go around in circles and are of little relevance practically, especially since intelligence is our most significant evolved trait, and allows us to do whatever we like even if it kills us after reproductive age (eg driving cars, smoking). In our history, humans have had the intelligence to adapt to whatever food sources are available.

As far as milk being a renewable resource, it only is in the sense that cows "replace" each other on any closed farm. Once you take into account that a glass of milk took 200 litres of water to produce, and each dairy cow consumes more than 20kg of vegetable matter per day (at a feed conversion ratio of about 6 on a dry matter basis), you can see that we are squandering our resources and screwing over about a billion starving people of the world. To add to this a bit more, a kilogram of cheese requires ten kilograms of milk to produce, so that just multiplies the greed.

Basically, dairy is one of our most effective ways of saying "fuck you Somalians!"

I think the message the OP was trying to convey is that composition is significantly more important than aesthetics. Perhaps some people are hard-wired to only look for aesthetics.

We need however that they not shove it down our throats (hehe) by being publicly gay.

I don't really see the logic behind this. If promoting quality is our aim, then surely we should promote actual achievements, rather than our rather mundane ability to breed. Those who don't have this "skill" simply want basic rights so that they have the same opportunities for meaningful achievements. And surely whether something is done in public is irrelevant to its merit?

Total silliness.

It tells me that they are dabblers who aren't interested enough in the music to explore beyond the superficial. The good stuff has always excluded these people.

The word "hipster" implies that they listen to their music ironically or to impress people, which may occasionally be true, but I think my "dabbler" hypothesis is far more plausible.

The fact that Euronymous didn't physically execute every sound on De Mysteriis I think is irrelevant, in the same way that classical composers don't play every instrument.

I think it is possible to get a unified concept with two people involved if they have the same vision. Three people is certainly pushing it though, and I've never seen it work. Xytras and Vorphalack are a good example, as are Fenriz and Nocturno Culto. With these guys, session musicians are just a means to an end.