Defining Indie “Metal”

As many movies from the 80s and 90s will tell you (e.g. SLC Punk and PCU), youth counter cultural movements of those decades were once various fragmented groups or “tribes” baring their own identity while all opposing the mainstream Whitney Houston and boy bands on the radio. You had your goths, new wavers, punk rockers, emos, ect. at war with the “jocks and cheerleaders” collective of popular kids and, in some cases, at war with each other. But in the years to follow, the deadly combination of multiculturalism and micro culture has effectively ended this conflict as there was no longer a singular popular culture and therefore no “them” in the classic “us vs. them” dynamic. Therefore, these varying counter cultural factions were unified into one ugly all encompassing monstrosity: the hipster.

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Corporate Metal Labels Caught in a Death Spiral

Earlier this week the publishing catalog of metal mega-label Century Media has been pawned off for an undisclosed sum to Reservoir Media, a publishing boutique holding the royalty rights to songs by a variety of pop artists ranging from Drake to Lady Gaga. In investment terms, a boutique is defined as a financial firm that deals with a specific market, so picture Reservoir as a wealthy Wolf of Wall Street-like conglomerate recklessly gambling with the royalties of musicians. This is common in the modern music market, where suits are making bets on the evolving payout methods streaming services, but the surrender of Century Media’s entire catalog of albums (Death, Paradise Lost, In Flames) to a finance firm playing with house money goes to show how desperate the corporate metal labels of yesteryear have become.

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Hidden Metal In Plain Sight

Underground occult metal blog Praefuscus Ferrum recently posted a piece entitled “Underground turned Funderground, and the Obscurantist Elite” proposing that what killed underground metal was widespress consumer access to new technologies such as the internet. These and the increased exposure to fans led artistically successful underground metal bands to pursue raw consumerism at the expense of writing transcendent music. D.A.R.G. points out that “the truest artists purposefully hide away from the profane eye” as the communication mediums the underground metal utilized (physical mail, tape trading, and BBSes) have been usurped by ones more accessible to laymen. He states the underground became the “funderground” in the blink of an eye as mainstream rock and pop fans who felt adventurous wanted rock and pop music with “black” and “death” “metal” production aesthetics, not actual death, black, or even heavy metal. Now the musicians actually writing novel underground metal compositions hide unbeknownst to the typical beer metaller in plain sight.

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The Sad Pandemic of West Coast “Black Metal”

Today’s American black metal has found itself right within the parameters of Poe’s Law which, when applied to this abomination of a music scene, would sound something like this:

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Metal In An Age Of Insincerity

Over at Clrvynt, filmographer David Hall finally notices what DMU has been saying for 22 years: that heavy metal died in 1995 or so through lack of new ideas, and has been assimilated by rock music because metal is a better product as a flavoring than a separate entity. (more…)

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Russianvids Exposes Metallica

Youtube conspiracy theory vlogger Russianvids exposed Metallica’s connection to the Masonic-Satanic Illuminati. Russianvids noted many displays of goofy homoerotic antics from James Hetfield, Dave Mustaine, and Kirk Hammet. Lars Urlich’s predilection for kissing and tonguing other men is shown. Russianvids explain this is part of the Masonic conspiracy to condition the general populace into accepting homosexuality as normal rather than statistically abnormal behavior.

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Revisiting The Days When Black Metal Died

“Nothing gold can stay,” reminds us the poet Robert Frost, and this applies to black metal. Its gold occurred between 1991 and 1994, when its progenitors innovated a new style and took it to great heights, but after Burzum – Hvis Lyset Tar Oss, it became clear that black metal was not content to be a normal, rock-style music genre.

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Vice Magazine’s Embarrassing French Black Metal Film

As part of their quest to ruin everything interesting and appealing about both metal and life, the gullible cronies of media pyramid scheme Vice Magazine have journeyed to the grim countrysides of the French black metal underground to film what is undoubtedly the most boring film in the history of music. While Vice markets this abomination as a “documentary” calling it such is actually a misleading statement as the film is little more than a collection of autistic ramblings without a single question or narrative statement. In any case, the eyesore is a bastardization of the region’s legacy as any shred of decency still possessed by the founding members of Mutiilation and Drakkar Productions have been urinated directly into the toilet as they hammed it up for the same forces that they claim to be rebelling against. Fortunately, the film’s lack of credible sources and unbelievably poor post-production prevents it from succeeding in the demystification of what was once one of the more intriguing regional black metal scenes.

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Dark Economic Truths of Underground Metal

Recently many of the other “metal” websites, blogs, publications et cetera have been doing articles about the business side of music industry. Unsurprisingly none of these articles had the testicular fortitude to address the ugly reality of the underground metal economy as they are written by either slaves to the machine itself or losers who genuinely believe that they have “careers” in music which heavily depend on acceptance by the community. Since the Death Metal Underground staff bow to no masters social or corporate, we are in the rare position give you the truth in its rawest form. So with absolute disregard for the powers that be in metal, let’s take an honest look inside this machine to see how it really works.

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