The spirit of metal must evolve

Note these micro-symphonies:

Metallica – Orion
Burzum – My Journey to the Stars
Metallica – Call of Kthulhu
Asphyx – Depths of Eternity
Dismember – Override of the Overtures
Atheist – An Incarnation’s Dream
Therion – The Way
Hellhammer – Triumph of Death
Rigor Mortis – Six Feet Under

People think they want what they don’t, because they are trying to find the appearance of what they want and not the underlying structure.

When people say they want simplicity, what they really want is organization. It’s why “My Journey to the Stars” works even though it’s “complex” in theory — complex means having a central idea that is simple and clear, and then manifesting it in different forms so people can compare them like metaphors and see the abstraction. (The dumbass variant of this is the Dark Funeral play riff at fret n, then play it at fret n+1).

The role of art is to be a silent philosopher, meaning that it does not make explicit but gives us a clear spiritual commandment and its corresponding aesthetic from which to work.

There’s too much of a causal malfunction: man A does something, and man B sees the results, and tries to work backward toward the cause. The genre doesn’t understand its own spirit and aesthetics (the cover of the new Kreator is a brilliantly stupid manifestation of this).

But there’s still room for someone to translate the spirit, aesthetics and organization of classical music — narrative motives — into death/black metal. That’s the real ground to conquer. Whoever does that will be initially unpopular, like death metal and later black metal were, but later acknowledged as a hero. People can’t put into words what they want. When shown what they want, they will initially resist it because it doesn’t “look like” or “sound like” what they want — people in 1990 “wanted” simpler, catchier, groovier speed metal, and that movement went nowhere.

Similarly, now they claim to want the fusion of black metal/shoegaze/Blink 182/speed metal that is popular, but no one really seems to love it. There is still great room in this genre for those who can conquer.

0 thoughts on “The spirit of metal must evolve”

  1. o'callaghan says:

    although this is the (totally righteously) omnipresent claim of this site, i think that never was written so simply and synthetized as in this post. perfect to make it understand even to the most obtuse minds.

  2. nigger cumlord says:

    the hits are into the hundreds at most for this website, and despite being black listed across the web as well, anus still gets mentioned briefly in semi major publications, bands, webzines, etc. clearly the right people seem to understand what is being said

  3. 740187139470148917 says:

    @ nigger cumlord:

    not to mention, I see the latent ideas present on this site (and even some of its language) oh so subtly sneaking their way into the mainstream: forums (even metal forums where this place is bashed hard), publications, and even movies. is this just some kind of psychological effect (biased observer), or has anyone else noticed this?

  4. j.-p. caron says:

    “The role of art is to be a silent philosopher, meaning that it does not make explicit but gives us a clear spiritual commandment and its corresponding aesthetic from which to work.”

    Perfectly put. As obvious as it might seem for us, it is quite difficult to put this idea across.
    But what I

Classic reviews:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z