China Bans VPNs

The People’s Republic of China banned the virtual private networks that hundreds of millions of the 730 million mainland Chinese citizens connected to the internet use to bypass the Communist Party’s “Great Firewall” and obtain truthful information. The Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced this crackdown on the use of unsupervised internet connections earlier this week. The Ministry said they would be monitoring all mainland internet service providers, content deliverers, and data centers for “illegal information”. Communists once again are attempting to be thought police as otherwise they would not be able to maintain power.

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Trump Appoints Corporate Stooge to Head FCC

President Donald Trump, who nixed his predecessor Barack Obama’s transfer of American wealth to rice paddy waders for the benefit of plutocrats through the Trans Pacific Partnership, followed Obama’s example and appointed a corporate stooge for the telecommunications industry to head the Federal Communications Commission. Ajit Pai replaces the retiring Tom Wheeler who was head of both the the National Cable & Telecommunications Association and the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association which both previously lobbied on behalf of large telecommunications providers against net neutrality, one of the founding principles of the internet. Ajit Pai sat on the board and has opposed all regulations and rulings in favor of consumers, supporting the right of internet service providers to censor and throttle content to their customers’ connections.

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Demoncy – Within the Sylvan Realms of Frost Reissued

Demoncy‘s Within the Sylvan Realms of Frost has been quietly reissued by Nuclear War Now! Productions on CD as part of their series of Demoncy reissues. Within the Sylvan Reams of Frost is the most Norwegian sounding recording of Demoncy’s work and is a nice point in-between the classic Joined in Darkness and the controversial, almost Gothenburg, Empire of the Fallen Angel. Nuclear War Now’s remaster of Faustian Dawn last year sounded great so check this out if you’re a fan of Ixithra’s earlier material.

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Sadistic Metal Reviews 1-22-2017

Everything you love is eventually butchered, emulsified, digested, and squeezed out by lesser life forms ranging from head hunters to bacterium to mediocre metal bands. Here are some Sadistic Metal Reviews for our readers’ pleasure:

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Bolt Thrower, Carcass, and Morbid Angel Vinyl Represses

Earache Records is repressing the vinyl LPs of Bolt Thrower, Carcass, and Morbid Angel from the original tapes due to popular demand and inflated Ebay and Discogs prices. I reviewed the “Full Dynamic Range” remaster of Altars of Madness last year which sounded great. All are available for pre-order from Earache’s webstore and digital versions of most are on Earache’s Bandcamp page.

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Infamous / Winter Blackness Split Symbols Of Scarlet Revenge Released

Underground black metal traditionalists Infamous and Polish black metal act Winter Blackness have released a new split album, Symbols of Scarlet Revenge, on vinyl and cassette tape. (more…)

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Emperor: Metal for Mordor

The music of Emperor is commonly misconceived by the mainstream metal media and certain YouTube clowns to be merely an atmospheric wall of sound or symphonic black metal orchestration engineered for superficial, surface level aesthetic appeal to an audience atypical for black metal. This is in fact not the case. In the Nightside Eclipse is just as perplexing to typical headbangers on first encounter as it was upon release in 1994. Mainstream audiences are even more flabbergasted and regard the record as a mere curiosity produced by those murderous church burners, preferring Emperor’s more rock-structured later work such as Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk, which abandoned the band’s signature riffing style and method in exchange for ones influenced by more stereotypical Norwegian B-listers such as Enslaved and Kvist. Emperor did eventually sell out, becoming technical guitar wank, rock-structured heavy metal after their rhythm guitarist Samoth and drummer Faust were imprisoned in 1994 and their songwriting influence subsequently waned. Yet In the Nightside Eclipse‘s hymns to Satan and Sauron remain as natural mutations of their metallic predecessors’ attempts to imitate horror scores and classical music’s overwhelming power of sublimity.

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Watain – Reaping Death (2016)

Article by David Rosales.

I. Where is the music?

It is very rare to find a general fan of black metal today who has not at least heard of the name of Watain. The kind of fame it has attained, however, is the kind that is mostly based on peripheral affairs rather than the art which Watain is supposed to dedicate itself to. Watain is the kind of ‘entity’ (as most of these bands are now given to call themselves) that is surrounded by a nebulous aura which may at first, if one is inclined to be generous in providing the benefit of the doubt, seem like an hint of something truly profound going on. Now, whether that is the case in regards to the real, transcendent or philosophical knowledge or experience of the people behind Watain is not for the writer to say. On the other hand, the music itself does not seem to display any of the more-than-human qualities it should if one is to believe all the hype. In fact, it reveals itself as a very mundane affair when one is given to delve into a holistic examination of the music in itself, and even more so when seen in relation to the extra-musical portions of the ‘entity’.

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