Brett Stevens

California Death Fest supports SJWs, boots Disma from lineup

by Brett Stevens on October 7, 2015

Although neither the fest nor the band have confirmed this, users are reporting that the California Deathfest (presented by the Maryland Deathfest promoters) has caved to demands by social justice workers, or SJWs, to dis-invite New Jersey old school death metal band Disma.

Disma, who boast a vocalist of Jewish heritage and write songs about slow melancholic death, are being attacked for the perception that vocalist Craig Pillard’s side project Sturmführer had right-wing overtones. Despite the utter lack of any political content in Disma lyrics, some SJWs — feeling emboldened by recent mass events and cucking by mainstream media — have urged California Deathfest to deny Disma for some time.

As this story develops, more will be posted. This incident represents the type of lynch mob mentality that Metalgate rebelled against in the first place: an intolerance for any speech but the SJW-approved, Soviet-style repetition of certain key issues as a means of seizing power.

13 Comments

Tags: california deathfest, censorship, craig pillard, death metal, disma, metalgate

Primordial vocalist Alan Averill weighs in on SJW academics

by Brett Stevens on October 7, 2015

Folk metal band Primordial vocalist Alan Averill inveighed against social justice worker (SJW) academics who recently witch-hunted “racism” and “sexism” in folk metal, claiming they are johnny-come-latelies using the authenticity of the metal name to draw attention to their careers. Writes Averill:

I don’t know whether to be bothered sharing this shit…..I think what these fuckwits fail to understand, or rather as usual intellectual ghost hunting is the place that ‘folk metal’ takes within the overall timeline and context of metal. The imagery and themes of folk metal are distilled from metals’ pre-occupation with fantasy not necessarily from a historical or factually based context, nor does it have to be. The language of for example Viking mythology has been perfect for metal since Zeppelin wrote ‘The immigrant song’.

Folk metal essentially took the place culturally in metal from where power metal left on in the late 90s and early 00s. Often it has more to do with role playing, gaming and fantasy….just with furry boots.

Claiming that is is somehow racist because it borrows from pre christian European history is just pointless and reductionist, bands do not have to apologise or justify singing about their culture and as I said most of it is through the prism of fantasy and myth because the imagery is simply perfect for heavy metal.

Sexist? again rubbish, I can think of quite a few ‘folk’ metal bands who have written tomes and hymns to the goddesses of the ancient world, both Cruachan and Waylander from Ireland spring to mind. You can find the same reverence for the feminine in nature in not only my own band Primordial (who are not folk metal but have connections to that scene) but also in bands like Enslaved, Wardruna, Our survival depends on us, Dordureh, Fen, Eluveitie, Negura Bunget among so many others (yet this is conveniently ignored) . Not to mention the band quoted as starting the whole genre Skyclad, even a cursory glance at their lyrics and imagery will suggest the opposite of this study. Again just a cherry picked argument from someone hunting ghosts.
Not to mention the fact that if you have ever attended a pagan metal show in Europe or the USA (and I’ve been at loads) you will find a very very healthy % of the crowd are women and often on the stage, the general feel of pageantry and joviality in this scene is least of all full of the macho behaviour these authors are looking for. It’s a young excitable scene which likes to play dress up, dance around and drink a beer or two…

You want ghosts? go ghost hunting somewhere else

I once lectured about Black Metal here in Ireland…to a room full of people full of agendas and opinions and angles for their own conspiracies and prejudices. My opening line
‘You can’t intellectualise a punch in the face’
…..you weren’t there and I am going to tell you how it was so shut up and listen.

You can read the full rant on a favorite social networking site for bored cube slaves to vent about the meaningless of life where some of the feedback has been quite interesting. The backlash against SJWs, revealed by Metalgate when one of the researchers mentioned above, Karl Spracklen, unfriended me over Facebook for allegedly un-PC postings elsewhere on the internet, has now reached a broader audience which is tired of outsiders interfering in metal to pick up on its perceived cachet of cool.

4 Comments

Tags: alan averill, Black Metal, censorship, folk metal, metalgate, primordial, sjws

Black Funeral composer opens Greater Church of Lucifer in tourist trap

by Brett Stevens on October 7, 2015

Black Funeral guitarist, vocalist and composer Michael Ford has created a Greater Church of Lucifer set to open later this month in Old Town Spring, Texas. As local news reports, the church is scheduled to open on October 30 and will dedicate itself to non-theistic Satanism:

“A Luciferian would find it insulting to bow before any perceived deity,” co-founder and Luciferianism expert Michael Ford said. “We don’t believe as a basis in the existence of a deity that wants us to worship it.”

Luciferianism has been around in some form for centuries, but this is the first time members have erected a building to conduct services.

In contrast, the “Old Town” district of Spring, Texas, a suburb of Houston, is known for kitschy antique stores, artisanal greaseburger restaurants, and a complete lack of parking. Favored by both tourists and zombie-eyed big city dwellers desperate for something to claim as a meaningful activity in their cubicle-job and cubicle-condominium lives, Old Town Spring draws millions of people a year to purchase antiques recycled from garage sales and dumpsters and probably hands out nearly as many parking tickets.

2 Comments

Tags: black funeral, greater church of lucifer, houston texas, luciferianism, michael ford, old town spring, Religion, Satanism

Goatlord guitarist accused in double murder

by Brett Stevens on October 7, 2015

Guitarist Joe Frankulin from doom-black metal band Goatlord has been accused of murdering Jennifer Donoso and her 7-year-old son, Lex, in Las Vegas on September 29. According to local news reports, the murders capped off increasing erratic behavior by Frankulin.

One of those neighbors says that Frankulin seemed to come unraveled over the past six months, becoming increasingly interested in hanging out with the neighborhood kids.

“The last six months he kind of gave me a really eerie feeling,” Ermilio said. “Like the way he acted. His demeanor. He would always be around children.”

Ermilio added that Frankulin was a member of a local Doom Metal band called Goatlord. According to the band’s Facebook page, they were active from 1986-97.

While Goatlord experimented in the primitive and unstable sound of bands who wanted to be like Venom but with visible derangement, its previous footnote to history stood at only the production of a few albums enjoyed by some diehard fans (and claimed to be enjoyed by even more posing tryhards) for their erratic atmosphere. With Frankulin’s arrest, the future of the band and its legacy remain in doubt.

1 Comment

Tags: Black Metal, goatlord, joe frankulin, murder

Desecresy posts cover, tracklist for Stoic Death

by Brett Stevens on October 7, 2015

Old school but innovatively nocturnal doom-death band Desecresy has released the cover adn tracklist for its forthcoming album Stoic Death to be released on Xtreem Records on November 1, 2015. The tracks are as follows:

Remedies of Wolf’s Bane
The Work of Anakites
Passage to Terminus
Abolition of Mind
Sanguine Visions
Funeral Odyssey
Cantillate in Ages Agone
Unantropomorph

The band also released a preview track, “Abolition of Mind,” which can be experienced in the video below. More information about Stoic Death can be viewed on the label page.

1 Comment

Tags: death metal, desecresy, xtreem records

Slayer Repentless over-analyzed

by Brett Stevens on October 4, 2015

Only one can lead: guitars, voice, bass or drums. Whatever takes the lead will compel others to follow because lead means sketching out the structure of the song. The classic metal albums all lead with guitars and vocals catch up while drums provide accents and bass does whatever it feels necessary.

Repentless reverses this formula. It is built around Tom Araya’s mostly fast-spoken or chanted vocals, and guitar keeps up and drums frame the whole thing. The bass doubles the low notes and does little else, but Slayer has always used that technique. The problem is that in a desire to make catchy choruses and compelling verses, Slayer has relegated its most powerful aspect — the lead rhythm guitar — to a supporting role.

Despite a number of good riffs that call to mind material from the Seasons in the Abyss era, on this album Slayer has had to contort itself to fit around the vocals like a rock song, which de-emphasizes guitar and consequently cramps it and, in its reduced role, forces it to show off and simultaneously keep itself restrained. This keeps the worst of metal guitar and throws out the best. In addition, this reduces songs to minimal song structure based more around a lyrical narrative (or topic of a video) than development of melodies or patterns in the riffs.

This is far from a bad album. The problem is that it is the wrong sort of album. Metal escaped from rock by minimizing the human, especially vocals and feelings, to create a gritty realistic confrontation with the nihilism of existence — the knowledge that events do not depend on feelings or mythological beings, but cause and effect. Slayer expanded its audience in the 1990s to the present by being more centered on vocal hooks and foot-tapping rhythms, and does well at this, but at the expense of what made this band great.

12 Comments

Tags: death metal, Heavy Metal, Repentless, rock music, slayer, Speed Metal

La Gloria Cubana – Churchill Maduro

by Brett Stevens on October 4, 2015

This medium strength cigar begins with a leathery flavor with undertones of vinegar. For the Churchill size, especially in a Maduro wrapper, I recommend making as broad of a cut as you can and then using a tamper to push in stray tobacco and expand the airflow by disrupting the tightly layered leaf. This opens up a massive wave of rich smoke from the oily and aged leaves, which burn through an initial bitter flavor toward a nutty, buttery and satisfying deep tobacco flavor.

La Gloria Cubana came of age during the 1990s cigar boom as people reached beyond the traditional market leaders for new, intense flavors. Originally blended by Ernesto Perez Carrillo in the tradition of his family back in Cuban, these well-rolled cigars with high-quality leaf have now become standards at most cigar shops to the point that novelty seekers (hipsters and others) will avoid them. These cigars begin life as blended tobaccos from the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua, layered and bound with a binder of the same and then wrapped in an outer shell of broadleaf Maduro color leaf from Connecticut.

The result preserves the contents for breathing necessary to age and percolate those sugars to the surface, but also avoids adulterating the flavor. At medium strength, the cigar burns from hints of leather into a nutty middle and then ends in a leathery, strong smoke that bears down on the smoker with copious nicotine. Like a Wagnerian opera, the Maduro Churchill cigars work up to a crescendo and then become avenging Valkyries intent on the kill. For the fifty-nine minutes of your life that this cigar will occupy, much of the world will recede and thoughts will become clearer. Ash falls in full clumps and your sense of time evaporates, leading to a disappointment when the nub finally cashes and the cigar remains a pleasant memory.

Quality rating: 4/5
Purchase rating: 5/5

1 Comment

Tags: churchill, cigars, la gloria cubana, maduro, medium

Pipe smokers are the rebels of the 2010s

by Brett Stevens on October 4, 2015

Take your TARDIS back to the hazy 1960s. A buttoned-up Dale Carnegie America has encountered the new rebels: like the beatniks, but simplified, the hippies shock society by systematically violating its standards. They smoke marijuana, have promiscuous sex, listen to loud protest music, and live in squalor, much like the Bohemians of the 1900s that the beatniks were imitating.

Now spin the dial forward to 2015. Television lauds the hippies, who are now old and grey and telling us how we should think. Rock music is used in every commercial, played in every grocery store, and government agrees with the protest lyrics — as do the large, buttoned-up corporations. Promiscuous sex is the norm and marijuana is legal in many states and tolerated with a wink and a nod in others. How do you rebel against the rebellion?

One way is to smoke a pipe, which violates the taboo of our current social pretense of “health” and moral “goodness”:

Interestingly enough, a side-effect has arisen as marijuana becomes more prominent at Stanford. As support for it rises, that for tobacco seems to be waning and a prejudice rapidly forming against it. Recently the Faculty Senate postponed voting on an all-campus smoking ban (tobacco only, recall), that would in essence push all forms of tobacco smoke to the other side of Campus Drive. The only spaces allowed for smoking would be designated outdoor areas and, interestingly enough, faculty/staff residential areas. Slight hypocrisy aside, the ban was designed to be a preventative measure against any sort of respiratory problems resulting from potential second-hand smoke.

The radicals are now in charge and have become old and boring. Anyone singing their song is just bleating. But they have their taboos, too. They fear tobacco and alcohol, masculinity and strong warlike music such as heavy metal. If you think humanity should have a future, you owe it to yourself and the rest of us to rebel against this new generation of buttoned-up nannies and their attempts to control us.

7 Comments

Tags: anarchy, beatniks, bohemians, hippies, pipe tobacco, pipes, stanford, tobacco

Academics create witch hunt against metal

by Brett Stevens on October 4, 2015

Academics, always in a position to justify their jobs and knowing they can make headlines by finding “racism” and “sexism” under every rock like 21st century witchfinders general, have recently released a study claiming associations with racism and sexism in folk metal.

As Leeds Beckett University states:

“Through the study, I found that although women fans of heavy metal enjoy folk metal with the same kind of passion and intensity as male fans, and there is no doubt they find identity and belonging through the music, the heart of folk metal is predominantly masculine. The warrior myth that folk metal is focused on is normalising this masculine predominance in our modern day world- men still have enormous social, cultural and political power.

“Folk metal’s obsession with warriors and cultural purity, displayed through tales of Vikings and dressing up as Vikings on stage, reduces belonging and identity in a muti-cultural, cosmopolitan society to a few exclusive myths. It is showing white men how to be white men and showing women and ethnic minorities their place in European society.”

Talk about jumping the shark: the definition of “racism” used by these academics is pride in your heritage and masculinity, in the context of music enjoyed by women (and, from my observation, people from minority groups as well). What is this, then? It’s another attempt to browbeat metal into going along with the SJW agenda by calling us bad names and hoping we’ll apologize, purge the dissenters and start repeating the correct message as these academics see it.

Karl Spracklen, previously interviewed here, became part of Metalgate when he “unfriended” me on Facebook and presumably helped block me from the Metpol mailing list after SJWs attacked me for allegedly having opinions that were not politically corrected. It is interesting that he, as a white male, caught the fear and now has joined the SJW side.

As always, metal remains a desired commodity. Metal symbolizes rebellion and freedom. That is why many groups — Christians, Nazis, SJWs, corporations — would love to be able to control it and have it parrot their party line, thus controlling more minds. But as Metalgate pointed out, the resistance in metal to such control is strong and we enjoy telling society where it can stick its pretentious and manipulative “moral” standards.

23 Comments

Tags: caroline lucas, censorship, folk metal, gabrielle riches, Heavy Metal, karl spracklen, metalgate, racism, rosemary hill, sexism

The Classical-Metal connection expands

by Brett Stevens on October 1, 2015

For 20+ years, first with the Dark Legions Archive and next with the Death Metal Underground, the writers behind this site have encouraged comparison with heavy metal and two things: European Romanticism in art, music, and literature; and European classical music, which overlapped with Romanticism both in a specific time period and in themes it revisits even to this day. The similarities are abundant and apparent but offensive to those who want to believe the blues-rock spectrum was part of an authentic tradition, when in fact it was a commercial product simplifying earlier styles, and that — of course — metalheads cannot have any associations more profound than the sacred indie rock and its origins in 1960s protest music.

Now, others are taking up the call. Perfect Sound Forever, one of the oldest e-zines on the net, addresses the metal-classical linkage in an article in its current edition:

I’m here to show you that rock and roll and classical are very much relatives in an, albeit, diverse musical family. First off, the sort of person who enjoys classical music is the same sort of person who would enjoy metal or heavy rock music. Research by scientists at Heriot-Watt University has found that not only are peoples’ personalities linked to their taste in music – classical and heavy metal listeners often have very similar dispositions.

“The general public has held a stereotype of heavy metal fans being suicidally depressed and a danger to themselves and society in general,” explained Adrian North, the professor who led the study. “But they are quite delicate things. Metal fans, like classical listeners, tend to be creative, gentle people, at ease with themselves. We think the answer is that both types of music, classical and heavy metal, have something of the spiritual about them — they’re very dramatic — a lot happens. ”

Perhaps more will be known about not only the similarities between these genres, but — because every cause has an effect — what similar ideas or emotions motivated artists to make such similar music centuries apart.

7 Comments

Tags: academia, Classical, classical music, Heavy Metal, Romanticism, Science

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