Miskatonic University

Etexts for the occultist or metalhead looking for lyrics. FWIW FTW FYI etc

Metal is caught between the leaders and the hamsters.

Every time the leaders come up with something good, the hamsters clone it to death and make it meaningless.

Black Sabbath, 1970… followed by a string of real AOR-styled bullshit heavy metal.

NWOBHM, 1976… followed by a string of cheesy imitators peaking in hair metal.

Metallica, 1983… followed by a string of clones.

Death metal, 1989… followed by a horde of horrible clones.

Black metal, 1992… and we all know what happened.

Everything since has been clone. Why? Metal’s image is so powerful, sometimes we get hung up on it. Trying to re-live the past.

Behemoth frontman Nergal has been found innocent of charges relating to tearing a Bible on stage in his native Poland.

The nation has strict laws against offending religious feelings and Nergal, real name Adam Darski, was charged following a concert in Gdynia in 2007 after he called the Catholic Church “the most murderous cult on the planet” then referred to the Bible as “a book of lies” before tearing pages out of a copy. – Rock News Desk

When Slayer busted out Satanic lyrics in the 1980s, they were taking the cue from Angel Witch, Judas Priest, and Black Sabbath and making mythologies of the world’s end. They were revealing our inner bankruptcy and what we should be paying attention to, but instead of ranting out details like angry leftist punk bands (all leftists are delusional: anarchists, communists, democrats, socialists, libertarians, communitarians, and even apolitical humanists; humans are NOT more important than nature or the order of the cosmos) they looked at the big picture.

Now it has been cloned to death. It went from mythology to orthodoxy during the last days of black metal, and now it’s as Politically Correct as saying “but democracy will cure them” whenever you read about a revolution. It’s overdone. If you want to fight Christianity, this is not the way. If you want to find a better life, this isn’t helping. All you’re doing is becoming caricatures of yourselves.

What made metal great wasn’t its destruction of idols, but the thinking outside of the box, looking for adventure beyond the safety zone of human-centric thinking — whatever form that took, whether populist Christianity, fear of Satanists, democracy, socialism, being nice to people, comforting aesthetics, whatever.

If you want your genre back, stop aping the past. Put what it had — a mythology of greatness, heroism, adventure and amorality — to good use. Embrace nihilism. The human drama doesn’t matter. The ongoing drama of life moving from primitive origins to future possibilities, even if those contain orders “of the past,” is. Allahu ackbar!

American black metal outlaws BAHIMIRON are ready to unleash their wolves to the flesh of Christ with Rebel Hymns of Left Handed Terror this fall on MORIBUND RECORDS. Set for release on October 25th, BAHIMIRON’s Rebel Hymns of Left Handed Terror will contain nine hymns of rabid bestial nightmares, all in devotion to total death and the fiery depths of the black abyss. Full of rusty edges, this third shank in the guts will host such songs as “Their Blood Shall Fill My Chalice,” “Bestial Raids of Antichrist Darkness,” “Goathorned Messiah of the 7 Gates,” and “Anointed in Serpents Blood.” ”This is the album that goes back to the true roots of black death metal for us,” confirms vocalist/guitarist Grimlord, ”all the things that originally hooked me into playing this type of heresy – the kind of stuff that comes at you with knives and the blood of Satan.”

With members of IMPRECATION and MORBUS 666.

www.bahimiron.com

I like this short essay in defense of Gonzo-style subjectivity:

So the concept of opinion here is strictly experiential – it is your vision of this record that is being sought and an interpretation unshackled by the influence of individuals exerting which records that are supposedly valid or true. To tap deep into the essence of why your chosen opus matters to you should render all other considerations redundant. My fundamental concern is for readers to be able to channel your vision and either discover an offering they hadn’t had the opportunity to prior, or at least determine an unconsidered perspective.

Pre-empting reader response is futile, they will extrapolate the messages as they see fit. Considering the likely audience for a publication such as Black Metal Revolution, it is naïve to consider it some sort of “rule book” or “guide to BM for the uninitiated” as there is no prescribed list of the records that should and should not be included. There are offerings I would like to see adorn the books pages, but this is not something I intend to contrive as it is at odds with the production’s essence.

A submission to BMR is a clear account of a record that matters to the author and why. Sure it can be more should you wish it to be. Some are better equipped than others to provide such an insight, though creative prowess is not necessarily a gateway to divination. VON is always going to appeal to me over some sort of pompous, overblown and overproduced act like Dream Theater; though try to explain to a Dream Theatre fan WHY that is the case is futile. The language of reverie is different for all individuals who are truly channeling their innermost. – Black Metal Revolution

None of the DLA’s critics have ever noticed this, but we have never been cruel to subjective opinion. We have only said that beyond the individual, it is unimportant.

We are nihilists. What matters to us are consequences in reality, not peoples’ feelings, perceptions, desires, emotions, aesthetics and so on. We are ultra-realists.

The fact is that some art stands above others; the counterfact is that this does not necessarily determine why you like it. Our goal is to find the art that stands above the rest. Otherwise, why both read a review? Who cares what the other guy likes, unless you’re looking for something to listen to, or a canonical depiction of a genre?

We all have some bands we like because we like them, not because we think they are good. For me, it is older punk bands, who now stand revealed in the light of experience. They are amateurish, sloppy and often redundant. Not all punk bands are this way.

In defense of VON, who we have listed on the site, they like punk were an important step in removing the pre-conceptions of rock music from metal, especially black metal. They are also good, in a limited sense; they are probably not good for repeated listening, as musically, they are boring. No three magic notes exist which are so fascinating they trump complex melody; it’s basically rhythm and arrangement at that point which determine the band.

As far as this listener goes, I like both Beethoven and Von — I recognize Von’s limited historical importance, and that Beethoven is objectively better than Von, and that to think otherwise is mental retardation. I still like Von.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the regular edition of this album, either aesthetically or technically. Deathgasm Records did an excellent job. But along came Die Todesrune/Deathrune/Death To Mankind Records with a limited edition, “300 copies,” art direction inspired version of this new classic, so who are we to say no?

Both cover and booklet are stunning in their integration of old school death metal art conventions, and newer stylings that simply look good and portray this album in the best possible light. The digipack — normally I dislike these fragile things — is as well put-together as you’ll find in this format, and its elegant matte surface conveys a richness of color impossible on slicker releases. The result is a whole package: music, idea, image and persona.

If you haven’t heard this might slab of putrescent occult death metal, it’s like old Incantation executed by Deicide at the pace of Obituary. The result is a brooding, expansive and otherworldly catacomb of doubt, violence and despair that is alluring in its promise of a world more interesting than our current utilitarian/moralist one. For those who love death metal, or just intense music that is not pure uptempo distraction, Infernal Warriors of Death delivers a crushing blow.

01. The Disgrace of God

02. Desecration Eternal

03. Sworn to Death and Evil

04. Lies of the Cross

06. In the Shadow of His Blasphemous Glory

07. Invoking Abomination

08. Exalted in Unspeakable Evil

Deathrune has also released a regular CD edition in Europe, and by the end of the August will release a gatefold vinyl edition as well. You now have no excuses not to own this crushing release if you want it.

I’ve been listening quite a bit to the new BEHERIT. I’m on an oil rig, have almost none of my belongings (this is a rush job), and need desperately to entertain myself. For music, all I’ve got are the speakers on my netbook and two albums:

• Beherit – At the Devil’s Studio 1990
• A random death metal comp I made a few years ago

I made the death metal comp to try to explain to other people why I — normally a classical listener, around 75% of my listening, with another 15% being Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream and Lord Wind — love this music. It captures the (cough) true diversity of this music and its imagination. It also captures what the music tries to embody: many different views of the same spirit, a feral but principled aggression that seeks to like a warbound king set all that’s wrong to right and to smite the weak, sniveling, boring, pointless, craven and ugly from this earth.

This brings me to the new old Beherit: I’ve come to love this thing. It has what The Oath of Black Blood has, which is reckless noise and pure energy. It also has what the following album brought, which is a sense of evil not as some stumbling error, but as a deliberate force — a conniving, undermining, dark and pervasive force that seeks to overthrow the light which converts the rich diversity of life into simple symbols and moral concepts.

As the gunfire in Norway fades, and the crumbling of the USA’s rotting edifice of spoiled entitlement brats begins, this is the appropriate soundtrack: all that in the cosmos which we have banished because it is disturbing returning with sublime intent, overthrowing our oblivious pleasant notions and anthrocentric delusions, and replacing them with the savage but ultimately logical order of the primordial forest at dawn.

KILL

CIANIDE premiere track from new album, their first in six years, set for release tomorrow!

Widely revered Chicago death metal cult CIANIDE are premiering a new track, “Dead and Rotting,” today at Metal-Army.com alongside an interview with the band. “Dead and Rotting” comes from CIANIDE’s brand-new album on HELLS HEADBANGERS, the appropriately titled Gods of Death, set for release tomorrow worldwide. The link to the track premiere can be found here: http://www.metal-army.com/?p=22698.

Already, CIANIDE’s Gods of Death is being hailed by the international metal press, even landing the band a covetted feature in next month’s issue of Decibel. Here are some snippets of the buzz currently circulating around Gods of Death:

• “Will make peers like NUNSLAUGHTER or JUNGLE ROT weep” – Terrorizer [4/5 rating]
• “Death metal at its most primitive, primeval, and downright punishing, ugly as sin and reassuringly predictable. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” – Decibel
• “Exactly what it is intended to be: a well-done homage to early Celtic Frost” – About.com [B+ rating]
• “Comes from the oldest style of death metal…will confirm that the underground isn’t dead; it’s just overshadowed by the drama of the emotional-like-emo people” – Examiner.com
• “Cianide stay the course and leave an even longer trail of corpses” – Blabbermouth.net [8/10 rating]
• “Monstrous” – Popdose [10/11 rating]
• “Death metal as it should be, at its ferocious, bestial zenith” – Metalcurse.com [10/10 rating]
• “Proves that Cianide still has what it takes to be one of the more important driving forces of the underground metal world to date” – Apochs.net [9.5/10 rating]
• “For those who prefer their metal keeping its direct link and inspiration all the way to the glory ’80s, Cianide is one of the most obvious answers” – Dead Void Dreams webzine [9/10 rating]
• “A worthy effort from a band whose return is most welcome” – Metalreviews.com
• “Lots of bands are now jumping on the bandwagon, but these guys have been doing old-school since old-school wasn’t cool” – Wormwoodchronicles.com
• “This is the way death metal was meant to be: thick, groovin’ and brutal” – Brutal Control webzine
• “A superb death metal album that delivers exactly what you want: no-frills deathliness with no fancy trickery on the production or mix” – MetalTeamUK.net
• “Operate in a space between BOLT THROWER’s chugging surety and the more ominous, cavernous resonance of INCANTATION…one of our most devout, unsung US death veterans, and worth experiencing if you want nothing more than to ball your fists up and feast on human misery like a streetfightin’ troglodyte” – From the Dust Returned webzine

About Metal Army: Metal-Army.com is the new number-one online destination for the metal community! Featuring all of metal’s latest news, reviews, etc and guest writers that include Oderus Urungus (GWAR), Rob Dukes (EXODUS) and UFC fighter Dan Hardy (amongst others), Metal-Army.com is home to the best that metal has to offer. Metal-Army.com also hosts monthly bar nights across the country where metalheads can go to hang out with fellow metalheads, have some drinks, and see some of their favorite musicians spin their favorite metal songs during special DJ sets. Past DJs have included members of White Zombie, Exodus, Testament, The Cult, Neurosis and more! The next Metal Army Night is scheduled for August 9th at Idle Hands Bar in New York City at 9PM!

CIANIDE – “Dead and Rotting” by MetalArmyUSA

For more info, consult www.hellsheadbangers.com and www.myspace.com/cianidekills.

Someone else attempts to explain Satanism in metal:

To quote Beauvoir on Hegel, followed by a Hegel quotation found in DsO’s lyrics: “Hegel tells us in the last part of The Phenomenology of Mind that moral consciousness can exist only to the extent that there is disagreement between nature and morality. It would disappear if the ethical law became the natural law.”

“Death is the most terrible of all things; and to maintain its works is what requires the greatest of all strength.”

Perhaps, then, Satan is the terrible marriage between natural and ethical law. Such might explain DsO’s utter lack of moral consciousness. The only conclusion that can be soundly drawn, without their peculiar cacophony of influences to draw upon, is that Deathspell Omega’s metaphysical take on black metal has eclipsed their grim-and-gore-obsessed predecessors along with 99% of everyone else claiming to be in it for the music or the message. They remains true to the core of the black metal ethos — a notoriously difficult task — while simultaneously repurposing traditional black metal structures to their own end (anathema to black metal on paper, epitome of black metal and AMSG in practice), almost sidestepping into an alternate reality where Satan reigns, bleeding their world into our own until it’s hard to tell which is which. – Tiny Mix tapes

All of humanity has since the rise of liberalism, and before it populist Christianity, been attempting to reconcile natural law with social law (morality).

Social law says that everyone is equal, and that only this order makes sense.

In dramatic contrast to the above article, most thinkers do not see nature as chaos or chaos as a lack of order. They see it as an order beyond human comprehension, but nonetheless, perfectly rational.

The difference? It’s not biased toward the human equation.

“Good” and “evil” create reality, which is a “meta-good” — it is a good thing, borne of both good and bad things.

The human definition of “good” means what is safe for humans; what denies reality, in other words.

Evil is the insurgent reminder that this simplistic viewpoint is incorrect and therefore, will bring us into collision with reality. Like peak oil, economic crashes, constant statist-versus-nationalist warfare, and social decay.

For too many years, we have let the herd rule. Their doctrine: every person is equal and important.

Our rule: natural law and its order are important, and everything else is human wishful thinking.

Heavy metal is a culture because heavy metal is a unique spirit: a warlike desire for adventure and meaning, not safety and egodrama.

No mosh! No core! No trends! No “fun”!

Idiots continue to want to make heavy metal into rock music.

Rock music is based on individual drama — the same thing that makes people feel it’s OK to litter, vote for manipulators and then blame others, buy McDonald’s and then bemoan corporate domination. People are the problem. Not institutions.

We like to think we’re all equally capable, and so if something went wrong, it was a misfortune/victimhood. The truth is that most people cannot balance a budget, shop for good food, or avoid repeatedly doing self-destructive and pointless actions. Humanity is overrated.

Now we have idiots who want us to think that if we just relax our standards, everything will turn out just fine — like that worked for the hippies, Romans or other groups of deathbound fools:

A YouTube user named “iAMVyt” has posted a video clip online discussing the idea that metal elitism is causing the downfall of the entire genre, and that there cannot truly be an “underground” scene in the age of Facebook. Take a gander at the video clip, and feel free to share your thoughts on metal elitism and what it means to be “underground” in the comments section below. “iAMVyt” also commented on the clip:

“This is just a short video covering a couple of my beliefs about metal elitists. No, this is not criticizing everyone who enjoys metal. It is not criticizing everyone who identifies themselves as a ‘metalhead.’ It is not criticizing everyone who has a strong belief in anything involving music or metal.

“It is criticizing what I believe to be foolish views and opinions. If you do not agree with my opinions, that is FINE. If you are a metalhead and find that this video does not describe you… You are not a metal elitist.”

– Metal Funderground

Elitism is the one thing that saved metal.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, metal was a scornful, fascist genre.

These bands knew they did not want to end up like the just-sold-out speed metal (Metallica, Testament, Anthrax, Exodus, Megadeth) and the mainstream heavy metal of the time, which was laughably bad hair metal and beginnings of industrial and alternative metal (Ministry, Faith No More).They had just seen metal get popular in the late 1970s only to die, then come back in the early 1980s, then start to die again.

The black metal bands were even more extreme. They realized that as long as they made music for beer-swilling know-nothings to tap their toes to, the genre would go nowhere. It would get re-absorbed by the mainstream and turn into the same horrible shit that infested both the radio and (in goofier, hipster form) the indie charts.

Elitism is the cornerstone of quality metal. When they abandoned it in 1994, a dearth of quality music resulted, with a few exceptions (later albums from BEHERIT, CIANIDE, ASPHYX, DEMONCY, AVERSE SEFIRA, SUMMONING and a few others). Those bands rose against the grain because they believed in quality over quantity. Whether they would call it “elitism” or not, it’s roughly the same animal: we want quality music, so we push away from the pointless, commercial or derivative.

Now this idiot tells us elitism is killing metal?

More like he means poseurdom is killing metal, as it always has. Poseurs are people who want to use the music to make themselves look cool.

Opeth listeners who want to show you how “open-minded” they are, Primus listeners who want to talk about how technical their music is, self-righteous Rage Against the Machine and punk rockers talking politics, and metalcore devotees who embrace the combined hipster/bohemian bourgeois lifestyle of over-emotionality and self-righteous moral indignation… these people then are the faux elitists — the poseurs — who are ruining metal.

Did he think of that?

No, because that would require him to admit that heavy metal is truly a different view of the world.

Although I listen to many different musical styles, including classical, jazz, blues and even bluegrass, my contemporary tastes lean toward heavy metal, hard rock and alternative. In other words, loud, aggressive songs with ear-piercing vocals, massive guitar solos and heavy bass and drums. The musical talent of these artists is undeniable, but the appeal is definitely an acquired taste.

Long story short, this isn’t your parents’ music. Unless your parents were long-haired, headbanging types who wore copious amounts of black clothing and makeup, that is.- National Post

We are a new generation that pisses all over the old. 1968 was hippies telling us the same crap that metalcore bands tell us today. If you want to be the musical inheritor of your parents’ or grandparents’ failed and stupid political projection, be my guest. You’ve just admitted you want to repeat the dysfunction of the past. Sounds like what an abuse victim would do.

For 2,000 years now we’ve had helpful morons to tell us that “all we need is love.” If it were that easy, it would have happened millennia ago. “All we need is asparagus” has similar relevance to the morally complex problems we face. In addition, unless you have your head up your ass, you can see how the human individual acting selfishly is a much bigger problem than whatever failings our institutions have had. We just like to blame the institutions so we can keep being selfish.

Trust nature instead:

Every sensible swimmer knows that avoiding a school of bait fish or immediately leaving the water if a cut started to bleed is ‘best practice’ when attempting to avoid a meeting with a shark.

But Eyre Peninsula’s Matt Waller has added another tip to the ‘don’t get eaten’ handbook with his discovery that Great White’s are much less aggressive when listening to ACDC – particularly ‘You Shook Me All Night Long’.

{…}

“I started going through my albums and ACDC was something that really hit the mark.

“Their behaviour was more investigative, more inquisitive and a lot less aggressive – they actually came past in a couple of occasions when we had the speaker in the water and rubbed their face along the speaker which was really bizarre.” – ABCA

We’d love to know what the sharks think of DEICIDE and INCANTATION.

The self-obsessed rhythms and whining, self-pitying hooks of pop music would probably just make them attack the boat.

Similarly, poseur bands like MASTODON, KYLESA, GOJIRA, OPETH, etc. would have the same effect.

Lack of elitism is killing metal.

Elitism means tolerating only quality music. It’s like natural selection for heavy metal: keep the good, throw out the shit.

Metal is dying because it is flooded with insincere hipster bands, commercial trash and pointless rehashing of underground styles.

The only force that opposes that are the people who insist on quality control, a/k/a the elitists.

The opposite of an elitist is a poseur. Poseurs want to use the music to make themselves look smart, unique, interesting, different, etc.

When those people started infesting metal in 1994 or so, the downward spiral began. Now there’s only a few acts that aren’t as abysmally bad as the stuff on mainstream radio.
– Comment on the above “elitist bashing” article

Nature knows metal is a path of its own. It’s only selfish humans who keep trying to neuter it, so they can stop fearing it. Hail elitism!