Hipsters attack black metal with pale imitations

deafheaven_-_sunbather

Since the early 1970s, the music industry and the social scene behind it — comprised of those who use external appearance to signal social success — has been trying to find some way to counter the authenticity of metal. While rock and blues stars appeared to be rebels, the truth emerged over time that most were very conventional in their outlook except for hedonism.

Heavy metal on the other hand rejected the founding myths of our society since the intellectual shift so-called “The Enlightenment,” in which people decided that social pressure to enable the individual to be “equal” whether right or wrong, good or bad, was more important than social standards. Heavy metal pointed out that our perceived enemies are scapegoats, and the real problem is that the enemy is us, and that people are delusional and happy hippie flower power is another variety of the bourgeois deliberate ignorance of reality that promotes social decay.

In recent years, the same people who were hippies back in the 1960s — the conformity of appearance non-conformist and then going to work at a bank and retiring as a fat Baby Boomer — have returned as “social justice workers,” or SJWs. These people, together with an industry that realizes it can sell more re-branded indie rock than it can discover compelling metal bands, have created a new style that culturally appropriates the appearance of black metal while injecting it with the same messages of self-indulgence, self-pity, victimhood and pacifism that the hippies bleated about back in the day.

As the UK’s leading cheerleader paper reports, the herd is claiming this new false black metal is in fact an “innovation,” despite it resembling music from thirty years ago that black metal bands detested.

Enter “blackgaze”, the buzz term for a new school of bands taking black metal out of the shadows and melding its blast beats, dungeon wailing and razorwire guitars with the more reflective melodies of post-rock, shoegaze and post-hardcore. It’s a geographically loose scene and its bands have been embraced by the indie media, which means you’re now as likely to hear black metal at ATP as in the Carpathian mountains.

Alert readers may note the “post-rock, shoegaze and post-hardcore” attribution, which Death Metal Underground has long identified as being the origins of this material. In other words, it is not black metal, but indie rock playing “dress up” as black metal. The quest of the industry for a safe rebellion goes on.

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8 thoughts on “Hipsters attack black metal with pale imitations”

  1. Anthony says:

    Listen to a screamo band like Envy, and it’s pretty much indistinguishable from Deafheaven:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJWtLePVkos

    In fact, I think I’d much rather listen to Envy, since it doesn’t have the shitty drumming, alt rock bar chord noodling, or half-assed one-note chug attempts at “thrash breaks” that plague New Bermuda. It still sucks though.

  2. I blew my head off like Per Ohlin says:

    Oh look it’s MBV, Orchid and a splash of Sunny Day Real Estate dressed up with black metal aesthetics.

  3. Nuclear Whore says:

    With that cover, it’s not metal. Sorry but not.

    In before reactionary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qya11_ecexg
    From the 90s, band “Summertime Daisies” playing Suffocation-like music.
    This is metal.

  4. Jake Barns says:

    Deafheaven are the leaders of the metal scene at the moment. Sunbather is the best metal album released in the last 15 years and New Bermuda is the best follow up album that could possibly have been made.

  5. Phil says:

    Isn’t this hipster attack just one of many attempts to assimilate/blend/water down metal?

    My old uni metal society loved these kinds of hybrids. “Metal” music that didn’t really challenge the listener, and provided cultural markers that they can recognise. This, whilst giving the listener a claim to be part of a minority sub-culture.

    Shit like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWDQAFeXvLk

    Self-contained riffs of all illustrious kinds with Darkthrone trills and Pantera grunting over the top.

  6. Butt Naked Showgazer says:

    All this hipster stuff is great and all but the real issue is whether or not AVRIL LAVIGNE is dead? Rumor says she died in 2003 and since then a look a like took her place!
    DMU should look into this issue!

    1. Weltmacht says:

      Unfortunately, I can confirm that Ms. Lavigne did pass away in 2003. She was last seen with Phil Anselmo outside a pain management clinic in Florida.

  7. Weltmacht says:

    The explosion in popularity of this type of music blows my mind. I guess this is what happens when you combine 15 years of Opeth and Agalloch worship by the metal press with a new generation of “socially-conscious” hipsters who want to dip their toes into every subculture without the slightest interest (or ability) to understand why they exist in the first place.

    I’ve listened to a few blackgaze bands — Deafheaven, Moonlover, Alcest — and I really don’t get the appeal. It fails to be black metal or shoegaze. It’s just…not good.

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