Sadistic Metal Reviews: Death By Group Participation Issue

We should talk about dark organization in metal: whenever humans set up something thriving, it dies from within because individuals defer to the will of the herd, and also, under cover of that, individuals act against the goals of the group in order to advance their personal power interests.

In metal, this manifests as the same problem we see in every industry: lots of favorites touted with enthusiasm by a media that proclaims each one to be groundbreaking, stunning, brave, iconoclastic, and revolutionary, yet they never last more than a few days.

To get long-term appeal, you have to make good music, which means not just being able to play it and having production clear enough to discern it, but art: the music must evoke some experience of life or thought that leads us away from the tangible toward the transcendent and thus makes us appreciate life.

Really good art joins the body, mind, and soul. Slayer, for example, infuses us with great energy, a positive outlook of conquest and Lex Talionis crushing of the weak, as well as cerebral but visceral riffs that keep our little brains fascinated.

However, Slayer also brings about a sense of the mythic-historical and supernatural, in the sense that there is more to life than meets the eye. Funnily enough, science rediscovers mystery every now and again:

When a photon from the sun strikes a leaf, it sparks a change in a specially designed molecule. The energy knocks loose an electron. The electron, and the “hole” where it once was, can now travel around the leaf, carrying the energy of the sun to another area where it triggers a chemical reaction to make sugars for the plant.

Together, that traveling electron-and-hole-pair is referred to as an “exciton.” When the team took a birds-eye view and modeled how multiple excitons move around, they noticed something odd. They saw patterns in the paths of the excitons that looked remarkably familiar.

In fact, it looked very much like the behavior in a material that is known as a Bose-Einstein condensate, sometimes known as “the fifth state of matter.” In this material, excitons can link up into the same quantum state—kind of like a set of bells all ringing perfectly in tune. This allows energy to move around the material with zero friction.

The science fiction future we desire has been surrounding us this whole time in the form of nature, which is smarter than us because it tests every detail over the course of billions of years, therefore has not only perfected but come up with technologies of which we can only dream.

When you think about it, our own technologies are sort of weak. Over half of the energy released by internal combustion engines is wasted, for example.

Using an engine cycle simulation which includes the first and second laws of thermodynamics, this study has determined the fundamental thermodynamics that are responsible for these limits. This work has considered an automotive engine and has quantified the maximum efficiencies starting with the most ideal conditions. These ideal conditions included no heat losses, no mechanical friction, lean operation, and short burn durations. Then, each of these idealizations is removed in a step-by-step fashion until a configuration that represents current engines is obtained. During this process, a systematic thermodynamic evaluation was completed to determine the fundamental reasons for the limitations of the maximum efficiencies.

Entropy wins at a crawl… heat is produced and dissipated, but the engine keeps cranking along consuming far more fuel than it needs. On the other hand, natural systems like photosynthesis and natural selection are low-waste systems, keeping efficiency and flexibility high.

The music industry could use a look at this situation. Currently, it is the engine of a ’93 Honda that has been improperly maintained. Its exhaust is as much unburned fuel as delicious carbon, and it can barely crank up to full power because so much energy is lost to its creaky frame and excess friction.

We could see the two models in application: natural selection rewards the good and filters the bad, but human socializing-based models like the music industry reward everything equally so that people feel good and allow the group to stay in power.

The problem with that is that then, like the review queue today, we have 250+ new options, almost all of which are garbage. No one is going to sort through this mess except some kind of benevolent autistic sociopath. Therefore, there are no favorites.

Without real favorites, hierarchy does not occur, and so genre cannot occur. When everything is equal, no new directions are found, but old directions are recombined endlessly, and everyone gets three days of fame before disappearing forever.

If you want metal to be healthy, you need the natural selection model. The garbage gets dumped, which means that listeners have fewer options, and as a result, they can choose the best, which then rises and creates new directions for other bands to pursue.

Looking back over black metal, it is clear that maybe 10-15 individuals essentially invented and perfected the genre, with some contributing and some finalizing, including Sarcofago, Bathory, Hellhammer, Slayer and all the first-tier Nords (Emperor, Burzum, Mayhem, Gorgoroth, Immortal, Enslaved, Darkthrone) and related bands like Beherit, Graveland, Havohej, and Varathron.

Those turned to a familiar wall in the sprawling house of dreams and kicked a hole in it, discovering a new world. They found some way to describe the world that seemed accurate, something to aspire to that was appealing, and some vocabulary — musical and symbolic — for conceptualizing that which was exciting.

You cannot have that in current metal. Any band that rises above the herd is going to end up last in the list because the hipsters will ignore it, people in competing bands will bury it, and the listeners will probably never find it anyway because they have 249 other bands that showed up that day.

In other words, we are seeing the music industry as a dark organization which is working toward what benefits its employees, namely having a constant stream of stuff to work on while they cash paychecks. We can see this type of pattern in any industry:

Over the past few years he felt the onset of the intellectual maturity that comes with experience, having run his own business for long enough to learn to spot patterns beneath the skin. A contractor who is evasive about timing, never has the right supplies, and frequently has to deal with emergencies is actually working for someone else, and using Randall’s company as a backup; he cut those contracts as quickly as possible. A supplier who suddenly never has anything in stock but is always willing to do cash deals has financial problems, usually drugs. A carpenter who does good work but never shows up on time actually hates his job and will be in an office within six months.

The music industry is on crack. As a result, it wants to see what can generate it quick cash now, not in the long term. That crack is the jobs it offers and, thanks to the success of black metal, it is bloated with people who are deskwarming while waiting for something better to come along.

Gosh, that sounds extreme, Mr Prozak. But we see the same thing in other industries too:

Another lawsuit, filed in January 2023 by the US Justice Department, went even further, alleging that Google envisioned AMP as “an effort to push parts of the open web into a Google-controlled walled garden, one where Google could dictate more directly how digital advertising space could be sold.”

Google wanted profits right then, which required limiting the open internet. They did it first with Wikipedia by creating replacement search results for content that was not controlled by major corporations, then raised the cost of publishing with encryption and later, standards for search engine placement.

Why would we expect the music industry to do anything different? It is made up of employees. Those do not want adventures, quests, challenges, or big tasks; they want to show up in the office every day, do the same stuff, and take home a paycheck that goes up by COLA each year to their Monrovia townhomes.

At this site, we do not treat you like a mentally disabled person whose whims are important. We treat you as a piece of meat which might survive if it becomes sentient enough to adapt to reality, and give you the best options for accumulating wisdom that we can find.

In doing so we, are becoming further underground as a means of avoiding having to falsely affirm the consensual hallucination of objective, absolute, and universal truths, values, and communications:

In fact, there is virtually no evidence to support the claim that music causes crime. What research has shown is that policing music and musicians often criminalizes or marginalizes young people, particularly young people of color. It also pushes particular musical genres underground, away from legitimate venues.

We are not suggesting all music is suitable for all occasions. Most parents would want to keep their young children from watching horror films, just as they might not want them to listen to drill music.

If this website seems pointlessly offensive or tackling Big Issues that no one wants to talk about, it is deliberate. We want to drive ourselves underground so that we can talk about anything. We do not view that as being for everyone, however.

In nature, hierarchies form because some creatures see opportunities to adapt and seize them, and then others imitate. Eventually the imitation becomes uniform and then new opportunities must be sought, but in the meantime, a hierarchy of competence is created.

By the same method, in the early black metal years a group of fanatics with zines, radio shows, and tape trading circles selected the best of metal and pushed it forward, while mercilessly and cruelly mocking that which failed. This created a hierarchy of ability.

As time passed, that become canon, and soon the idiots knew exactly what to imitate in order to turn their third rate speed metal, indie rock, alternative rock, and fruity urologist lounge waiting music into total kvlt black metal.

That in turn prompted others to be the usual contrarian ironist protest music type from the 1960s and make anti-kvlt music which tried to be regular rock that mixed in black metal along with its honky tonk, emo, jazz fusion, and other dead ideas in lieu of inventing something new.

If these reviews seem intolerant and cruel, it is because now of all times, metal badly needs natural selection. Good to the good, bad to the bad, and indifference to the grey areas. Hail the strong, but the sick must die.

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The Bleeding – Morbid Prophecy: some albums feel like they were composed on reality television shows where bands are handed a riff and told to make a song around it using only a plastic ukelele and a Boss HM-2 pedal, so they start with a riff and write a chorus to match, then begin the guitar practice where they think of plausible directions to take that riff, but the song itself has no direction nor does the band, as is the case of this modern metal with lots of speed metal tropes and tricks.

Even in Death – My Salvation: imagine Iron Maiden riffs set into a pop-industrial format with rap-influenced vocals sounding like a Pantera influence lurking in the woodpile or uncle’s bedroom closet, using alternative rock style dramatic choruses set against tight metal rhythms on the verses, but never really evolving past that point, so what you get as the entry atmosphere is where you stay and at some point you wonder why not just go touch grass instead.

Unearth – The Wretched; The Ruinous: the modern metal formula on the metalcore side involves inverting nü-metal so that instead of melodic verses and angry choruses, you get angry verses and melodic choruses with underpinnings of guitar harmony trying to give music that is otherwise driven by vocal chanting for its rhythms and uses hip-hop drum patterns and inflections in its guitar strumming some kind of heavy metal edge, but here it is mostly just obvious and boring.

Brundarkh – Those Born Of Fire & Shadow: fairly standard power metal that shows the influence of worship music in its vocal melodies, this band uses swelling choruses in the modern metal style set against verses which feature grim chanting and more of a speed metal approach, but unless you really want MTV-styled “inspirational” music mixed into your heavy metal, this is probably best left for the churches and edgy clothing stores.

Jaodae – Tree of Ténéré: everything about this release is bullshit from the pretentious eccleticism of its title and backstory to the pretense of being related to metal at all, since this is basically a droning indie-emo crossover like everything else these days, throwing in jazz fusion riffs done up with metal aesthetics when it can, but never building songs from the interplay of riffs to produce a shifting context which reveals the hidden dimensions to the mundane, perfect for Tool and Opeth wankers.

Dark Fury – This Story Happened Before: simultaneously inept and the most competent release in this queue, this album consists of songs built from really basic rhythmic elements with a sense of keyless melody rising from these basic conflicts, allowing them to develop internally despite being mostly circular, ending up at a place of a gradually unveiling atmosphere, straightforward in approach but more like the old black metal spirit of uncovering mystery and rejecting the human consensual illusion of a moral universe.

Ropes Inside a Hole – A Man and His Nature: they updated the Sade vocal style for a series of tracks designed to appeal to Enya fans with the usual cliché lush vocals and bright guitar sweeps, lots of jazz fusion tropes but in a pop sensibility with an ear for the lite rock audience, while calling it post-metal to disguise the fact that this is nail salon music from 1996 with slightly upgraded production and more pretense.

Infernal Curse – Revelations Beyond Insanity: attempting to go hard on simplicity signals a withdrawal from the increasingly hide-bound tendency of bands to ape “progressive” adornments and get “deep” in concept, this band aims for slamming black metal with a grindcore edge in the Impaled Nazarene meets Sarcofago vein but oversimplifies to basic song structures, familiar riff forms, and minimal relationship between riffs, making for a listening experience of drone that even over-excited percussion cannot mask.

Malacoda – Our Special Place: basically alternative rock with some power metal stylings, this music operates in the linear style that becomes circular through extreme opposites sort of like the political system or opinions on store brands (personally I think Kroger, Target, and Costco are in the lead) but then can only be contrarian ironist in response to that, ending up with pretentious guitar practice that seems designed to support the ego of the vocalist, or maybe put me to sleep in the car with repetitive fragmentary themes.

Structural – “Your Damnation”: this subgenre seems unfortunate because it combines the neo-progressive stylings of Pestilence and late Death with bouncing Pantera speed metal and the offbeat jazz fusion riffing that Gorguts unfortunately introduced, but if you played these songs without the surfacing, they would fit very much within the melodic speed metal of the late 1980s with influences from emo, gospel, and alternative rock in the melodies, which means a heap of metalcore leading nowhere but to itself.

Elle Tea – Fate is At My Side: if you throw in too many random ingredients into your soup, you will end up with something that tastes like nothing, and here the incorporation of too much hard rock into heavy metal leads to something that sounds like an emotionally vulnerable honky tonk band that discovered Judas Priest and Pearl Jam on the same day, making something that like all normie rock is just there to occupy time and drive away feelings of the bourgeois revolution failing.

Ablösung – Deformität: this is what normies think lo-fi black metal should sound like, basically an industrial band doing quasi-tribal rhythms with heavily distorted vocals and guitars droning away on three-note passages in the background, with vaguely techno-influenced beats to make it easier to appreciate while you tell your friends how edgy it is, but this is basically normie rock hammed up for an audience the band undoubtedly detests.

Forced Hand – War: basically metalcore that uses the cadencs of alternative metal mixed with with some hardcore and older proto-death metal like Master or Possessed, this band falls into the same old trope of all bad metal, namely focusing on the vocals and using drums to lead those, so that the guitar has no internal dialogue and therefore cannot develop phrasal through-composed riff themes and ends up simply being droning repetition of very simple riffs and contrarian attempts to highlight them.

Vivisect – Barbaric Death: mid-paced old school death metal somewhere between Carbonized and the first album from Cianide, this band uses simple song structures and rushing grindcore-influenced riffs to keep up a mood of descent into a sensation of alien opposition, showing creativity in some riffs shapes and despite too much reliance on speed metal style stop-start rhythm fills at the end of some phrases, builds a steady sense of escape from normalcy.

Langsuir – “Occultus Mysticism”: re-released recently, this release from 1993 shows us a band in the grips of transition between bouncy speed metal and aggressive death metal, ending up with rock drumming behind a series of riffs varying from Pantera through Slayer level, producing an uneven listening experience that relies on fairly obvious basic guitar patterns without developing them into something other than the linear, causing massive glaze-over in the audience.

Válvera – Cycle of Disaster: old school heavy metal presented in the modern metal fashion with NYHC vocals amd some entertaining lead guitars, this album consists almost exclusively of verse-chorus loops with catchy choruses but little tying the tracks together except rhythm, which means that although these songs are not random they are also not particularly expressive.

Mortem – Deinós Nekrómantis: somehow this release never had the weight of early Mortem, and it is easy to see why because the fusion between raging death metal and speed metal comes down on the speed metal side here, with too much emphasis on vocals and fast formless riffs instead of riff complexity working together to unveil a parallax of changing moods that gives us some insight into darkness and rage instead of just acting it out.

Zlórtcht – Welcome To The Zlórtchterhaus: Australian bands generally do not finish their songs because they like most antipodeans are disconnected from the mother culture therefore can only present a statement to the pluralistic crowd and see if it sticks, with this band being no different with hardcore style riffs that drone through a verse chorus-loop, whole note shift, solo, and then… and then they end because they are waiting for a riot to start, cigarette and Victoria Bitter in hand.

Witch Ripper – The Flight After the Fall: if you want to kill anything, unleash the professionals on it, because like all careerists they will make a slightly unique version of what is already out there, and by competing in this way, be reactive to the immediate past but oblivious to the whole, as in the case of this alternative-influenced stoner doom which basically sounds like a slightly heavier take on Oasis but with Coldplay vocals and the Edge from U2 phoning in the guitars.

Macabre Demise – Awakening: what a shame to find that someone made an album about being in a band and making an album rather than something deep in their souls, because there are some fine riffs on this one, but they are stuck in songs that are bouncy Pantera-style speed metal on the edge of mödern metal, using a few death metal styled discursive structures but never developing riffs more than fitting into a song that sounds badass sometimes and otherwise fades into static.

Post Luctum – The Indifference of Time: I: it is sad when something goes from pioneering to a trend, but everyone wants his fifteen minutes of fame, so they churn out very similar products with no essential differences but lots of surface variation, and then wonder why we have a constant stream of new best-ever bands but nothing ever sticks, so all musicians end up equally ignored and humanity defeats itself again like on this emo and funeral doom crossover.

Extinction Agenda – Inter Arma / Silent Leges: although it borrows styling from many of the mid-1980s thrash bands, this recording has more in common with a version of early Sodom or Tormentor with more linear note choice, aiming for building energy to swing into infectious choruses with absurdist guitar solos reminiscent of old Suffocation or Demilich, but here kept in service to the immense forward drive to these simple songs designed to hammer home a point in voice and rhythm.

Pyrexia – System of the Animal 2023: this band re-recorded its classic takes in the modern metal style with more groove surrounding more rigid slam-style percussive offbeat riffing that is both jazz and speed metal but preserves the strengths of neither, making for an album that is indisputably “heavy” but also once you have seen the particular rhythmic hook of each song, entirely predictable and therefore skippable.

Cosmic Burial – Far Away From Home: these guys really like 1980s dark gothic and power pop that capped melancholy verses with bittersweet choruses and produced a type of wistful nostalgia and hopeful skywatching in the miasma of daydream, and here they make competent melodic heavy metal that maintains an atmosphere but does not particularly develop it, making this seem more like something that would play in the background during a Christmas rom-com set in post-apocalypse Ohio.

Summit – The Winds that Forestall Thy Return: all of these slick deep-profound titles sound like alternative bookstores, and this band combines post-metal with technical death metal to create a bouncy droning void that like an alternative coffeeshop feels slick until you realize it is just hipsters reselling Costco coffee, showing us how the people who wanted to succeed in the music industry just combined all the big commercial successes of the late 1990s, so you get alt-rock, indie, shoegaze, punk, emo, and lite jazz (Bare Naked Ladies and Phish) mixed together like a stew of things that killed at least fifty percent of the audience in the past, which is why today metal is as one-note and tiresome as punk was in the late 1980s and as empty of ideas as jazz became after it kicked out the Black guys and brought in Italian college students.

Cortege – Touching the Void: add metalcore vocals to bounding speed metal and Cannibal Corpse riffs, build them around a ranting vocal like Rammstein without the grace, add sing-song rhythms, then throw in absolutely symmetrical riffs and song structures, and you have the perfect album to torture people at Gitmo. A few hours of this and even the most die-hard al-Qaeda operative will be wearing a dress and drinking whisky.

Mercyless – The Mother of All Plagues: if this band was going to have “a moment,” it would have happened twenty-five years ago when people were hungry for death metal and speed metal hybrids, but now these circular songs built around whispered chant-vocals sound like something you find in the cassette player of the 1994 Impala that your grandmother left in the barn just in case the rapture came and she needed a quick jaunt around town.

Grave Next Door – Sanctified Heathen: stoner metal just sounds like 1960s road music with more distortion and has the same kind of pointless urgency and interchangeability to its songs, which makes any serious listener duck out, since the resulting atmosphere really does not vary much between songs, nor do songs convey anything but the free love, civil rights, cheap drugs, and pouty tantrum Boomer era sense that life needed more protest so maybe we could find a part of it that does not suck.

Alpinists – Corpses of the Universe: aesthetically a tribute to Dead Infection, this album suffers from singularity, meaning that each song has a very simple concept of a riff and a rhythmic breakdown and does not develop further, so for a few moments you get that feeling that the itch that Blood, Disharmonic Orchestra, Napalm Death, Ildjarn, or DRI used to scratch with a couple riffs that developed into an atmosphere will be scratched, but instead the songs fall short as if unfinished thoughts.

Pig Destroyer – Pornographers of Sound Live at St Vitus: most people consider this grindcore, but more accurately it is emo music given some grindcore technique, centered around feelz-heavy vocals just like a pop-punk band and specializing in breaking up rhythms to make a point or have a teachable moment of some kind like a Boomer forcing his kid to share his candy with the underprivileged (later he will tell him: “you never had any candy”) but tbh this is just mental spam to interrupt coherent thinking.

Cattle Decapitation – Terrasite: this band succeeds because it aims for a nü-metal style groove based on the downbeat instead of the offbeat and as a result creates the type of cadence people liked in old school death metal which was less delivered toward advertising fantastic positive promises but instead was more like the grim voice of doom and the commonsense reality everyone denies, but you have to like rap-like vocals, bouncy riffs, and songs that are complete in the first thirty seconds but go on for five minutes.

Various Artists – Metal! Live in Bahrain Vol. 2: these bands have probably been executed already, but they execute a well-produced live set which shows us the third world approach to metal, which is to compress fifty years of different metal genres into one and then to give it a local twist, with Hellionight offering speed metal in a death metal style, Ryth giving more of a hard rock and heavy metal approach with a unique mid-paced doom rhythm, Lunacyst delivering fast and frenetic melodic speed metal with death vocals and modern metal touches, Necrosin showing us more of a NWOBHM and punk take on underground metal, sounding a lot like Divine Eve, and each band sending up a few tracks of well-performed metal.

Nyogthaeblisz – Apocyphral Progenitors of Mankind’s Tribulation: disguised in a thick veil of noise and echoing vocals, this release comes to us from the Sarcofago, Blasphemy, and early Beherit school of chaotic fast rhythm riffing in thrash-like song structures which rely on verse-chorus within a larger pattern of styling the song to fit the riff, creating momentary glimpses of a dark vision of humanity that is mostly powerful for its loud and encompassing dynamic rather than melody or structure.

Sauron – Wara!: an odd hybrid of NWOBHM styled metal and progressive pop metal like Supuration with touches of alternative metal, this band ventures through fifty years of metal tropes in its own idiosyncratic way, making songs that are powerfully-driven like RAC but settle into the brain more like 1970s guitar rock, ending up with something that probably does not belong in underground metal but is probably too far out for the normies anyway.

Itzamná – Maldito Predicador: finally someone took late hardcore and put some life into it, even if the riff forms are mostly throbbing positional harmony like Crass or The Clash had going, and the rhythms are pretty familiar even if played at two to three times the speed of a hardcore band, putting these guys into Ratos de Porao and Corrosion of Conformity territory; it is so simple that you probably will not describe it as “good” or “bad,” just enjoyed in the moment or not.

Sunnudagr – Le Silence: a 1980s flashback, Le Car and Le Pen, comes to this band that combines folk and post-metal to mix it into a smidgen of hardcore and a little bit of black metal, but mostly this sounds like songs you sing to children after the fourth hour of diarrhea and vomiting when you just want the little obligations to pass out so you can snatch a few hours of sleep before another somnolent day of meetings and conference calls.

Póstuma – Moralis: melodic metal in the modern style which focuses on nice lengthy melodies built around minor scales and varies up its verse-chorus pattern with this, including return to introductory riffs and transitions, showing a greater competence with percussion than most bands, but designed to end its melodies on a pleasant and consonant note as if it were asserting some kind of scientific management planf or human happiness, ending up being fairly typical.

Black Mass – Feast at the Forbidden Tree: scratch the surface and you will find the same hightops and black jeans speed metal that dominated the late 1980s except now kept on a rolling drum track so that it does not pause at the end of each phrase, reminding me of Carcariass or other high-intensity bands, but the result is so internally similar that it becomes difficult to want to hear it repeated, yet repetition is most of what this release offers.

Various Artists – Purity Through Fire Promo Sampler 2010 AYPS: interesting archaeology provides us insight into how long metal has been cap in hand, starting with Irminsul who provide Renaissance Faire folk metal with Disney style exuberant leads, then Kroda comes in with a dressed-up form of basic black metal hopes wild instrumentation will cover for the hollowness, after which Vspolokh splays out a death-doom paced version of black metal that never really develops but stays coherent, followed by Myrd with droning mid-paced black metal that really goes nowhere but avoids randomness, La Division Mentale aims for a groove-oriented form of indie-metal with industrial overtones that is simple but fully developed, and CrystalMoors weighs in with melodic black metal at doom metal paces reminiscent of Varathron.

Savage Annihilation – Soumises À La Procréation: basic chugging death metal with fast choruses and verse-chorus songs, this band rapidly wears into repetition and its riff-writing seems to fit within the early days of the genre without much distinction or unique shaping to what are mostly purely chromatic riffs with a lot of rhythm work, vocal emphasis, and percussion coming alive on the fill to distract from how not very interesting this all is.

Embryonic Slumber – In Worship Our Blood is Buried: bog-standard post-metal, meaning shapeless riffs with lots of folk-style strum and drone, then vocals lead everything with anguished emo- or metalcore-style screams, and songs do not develop so much as introduce, then launch into, a mood in which they wallow until the user opts for euthanasia and blissfully exits the envelope of pointless sound.

Necromaniac – Morbid Death Rising: lots of good ideas mixed in with the familiar tropes (“clichés”) in an order that never allows any part to breathe and develop the type of strong presence from which one can build a contrast, then a dynamic, and finally the type of adventurelike storyline that plays out in the poetry of riffs and phrases talking to each other through an evolving song, so this one falls into background noise rather quickly.

Morticula Rex – Autumnal Rites: somewhere there is a Platonic form for basic death metal that attempts to use vocals to dominate where riffs should convince and therefore ends up with this bombastic and grandiose approach that by reverting the riff to timekeeper loses out on the ability to develop, so no matter what transitions they throw in, the band remain stranded in circularity, which is not terrible for the first listen but becomes unbearable tedium on second hearing.

Wooden Veins – Imploding Waves: mixing Eurovision pop, metalcore, and what is left of heavy metal with indie rock and some touches of jazz fusion, this band makes a unique version of the same old crap that everyone else has, including Coldplay styled super-emo vocals which aim toward a “heartwarming” feel, but in the end this is as unconvincing as advertisements on late-night television.

Supreme Pain – Divine Incarnation: there needs to be a word for this type of late-stage death metal that focuses on speed thrills and double-strum thumps but has no sense of internal continuity or contrast, therefore feels like charging into Walmart on meth just determined to get one of every sale item into your cart before the gong in your head starts to play The X-Files theme and if you have to punch a few security guards or grandmothers that’ll be okay too.

Konkhra – Sexual Affective Disorder: chugging more than pure percussive death metal comprises about half of this release, giving the feel of the slow days of aging speed metal before Metallica released a self-titled album and sank the genre into pink bubbling AIDS, this album aims for ultra-heaviness through lots of slamming alternated with soaring tremolo riffing, producing a confused approach where the incessant pounding feels like a headache brought on by low T-cell count.

Schattenwald – Der Winterkönig: following the Dimmu Borgir format, some flowing melodic black metal which sensibly avoids stop-start for the most part, this band nonetheless has two flaws, first its riffs being somewhat standard to the genre, and second a failure to intensify songs over the course of the album while relying on vocals to stitch together any anomalous riffs, sort of like joining a frat and getting handed a beer while people watch television and then nothing changes for four years.

Barús – Fanges: ever since Deathspell Omega followed Satyricon and Grand Belial’s Key in pulling the wool over the eyes of metalheads by convincing them that songs that go nowhere but dance around a lot in the middle are deep and epic like Opeth, bands have been trying this strategy of dressing up fundamentally boring music in emo and post-metal tropes in order to con a few suckers into buying the crap, but if you sketch it out on guitar (or kazoo) you find some very familiar blockhead riffs and no real correspondence or interaction between them, leading to random songs who hide their randomness behind cultivated aesthetics of the bizarre, leading to an intricate nothingburger.

Evilcult – The Devil is Always Looking for Souls: whether this band is South American or not, they make metal in the South American style, which is to combine heavy metal, hard rock, glam metal, death metal, war metal, and black metal into a type of thumpbing bomba music which like jello salad has moments of profundity floating in opalescent goo of indeterminate origins, with a heavy Iron Maiden influence here but ultimately painfully repetitive arc songs.

Obsecration – Oceanum Oblivione: if you write down all of your ideas over a few years, then come together for a weekend in the studio to stitch them together, you will end up with an album where individual instrumentals shine out over songwriting, and little cool bits float in a vast sea of relatively predictable riffs that were necessary to hold the disparate stuff together, making for a confused and tiring listen.

Sepulchral Voice – Evil Never Rests: standard speeding black/death with speed metal song structures, simple riffs based on rhythm more than harmony or melody, and circular song structures with a few diversions more than tangents which introduce competing themes and drive song evolution, this release is perfectly competent for what it is but it would be difficult to want to listen to it repeatedly now that such music is in abundance.

Mortuary Drape – Spiritual Independence: if you wanted a heavy metal album that alternates between galloping beats and mid-paced, almost doom metal passages, then this one might fit the need, but this album seems on the verge of coming apart from internal tensions between the different albums that it seems to want to be, and the black metal vocals seem only to highlight what could be described as a Venom and Manowar crossover that converges more on a mood of indecision than energy.

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119 thoughts on “Sadistic Metal Reviews: Death By Group Participation Issue”

  1. Scared and confused says:

    “Gosh, that sounds extreme, Mr Prozak”

    The hell are we supposed to call you nowadays, man? :(

    1. Dave. It’s always Dave.

  2. What if I told you that at some point you just run out of riffs – the same limits that apply to language apply to music also. You don’t expect metal to still exist (at least in the same form) in 50 years from now do ya?

    Just let the horse die already, and go home to watch anime and listen to retrowave with your tranny-furry gf or some shit, because that’s the future right there, and you might as well enjoy it, because no one is rewarding you from above (or below) for your staunch elitism… salutations for the one-man army behind the laptop wit dat dere celltek…

    1. I believe nothing of the kind. The universe is infinite and so is riffcraft, which like language is more about the order of riffs telling a story than it is about totally unique and mindblowing killer riffs man. Everything is built on something, if nothing else Bach and Plato.

  3. Wolfcastle says:

    I enjoyed that Mortuary Drape album but couldn’t get into Morticula Rex at all.

  4. A Joyless Process says:

    I spent a long time slogging through metal, and most of it from the golden age, and music in general particularly during the initial creative explosion of a given kind,, until it got to the point where I’d easily listen to a dozen bands in a row for like maybe 30 seconds each cuz. And realized that with few exceptions, if you’re into music you will hear about the good stuff with nothing more than leisurely curiosity, because it becomes popular, because it doesn’t actually suck, like most music does. No wonder you want everyone to die.

    1. The reason you hear about the good stuff today is that a lot of us threw in the hours back in the day. Musicians are mute, industry and hipsters want mediocrity. Everyone? No, just the lowest 99%.

      1. Running Anus says:

        I guess I can qualify that by saying RELATIVELY popular does apply to a lot of stuff, and its understood and reflected in general consensus that some stuff is better than others, and theres also the transcendental vs body vs poser shit to consider that was discussed a ways back

        some of us are critics, I was maybe poorly saying that I get it. it wasnt a cut my dude

        1. Rectal Fistula says:

          You know what sodomizes metal? Five million useless fans who buy whatever shit is current this week and still do not own the first three Darkthrone, Bathory, and Immortal LPs.

          1. hey dont touch my metal scene that i dont really participate in says:

            whatever. think of how many copies of the classics people own and then never get rid of

            1. Niggardly Nuggets says:

              They got BTFO because the new fans are a million times their number. Cope, seethe, and dilate much? I bet you typed this on an Apple Watch while drinking Bud Light and watching The Little Mermaid.

              1. will yourself says:

                what the fuck are you on about about dude. at least go be a pretentious embarrassment irl u might learn something useful

                1. Niggardly Nuggets says:

                  Cry more for the cameras, you self-lubricating power bottom. You know that all the recent model metal is bubble gum for shit-gurgling morons and that these people have taken over and ruined everything. Defend the herd much? Did the UN or Eurovision give you a gold star for humanism or smth

                  1. the end of metal as we know it says:

                    yeah i know but i dont care u aggro dork

                    1. Niggardly Nuggets says:

                      Yeah, okay, I can feel the ambience. At this point I just want to kill all of the normies that have trashed the world for no purpose and no victory. We must kill the weak.

                    2. Normies are just serfs. They are our slave population, the lowest caste, “thralls.” They have functional intelligent but no capacity for analytical judgment, which is why we called them fools, nitwits, eggheads, boffins, clever, etc. in the past. The correct solution is to once again put these people into soft slavery like feudalism and ignore their ravings because if we let them have any power, money, or influence they will ruin everything.

                    3. Complete Fool says:

                      Doesn’t matter if life is war, a stage, a test, a game, a simulation, an equation, or nothing at all, don’t be a bitch, I mean unless that’s what you’re into.

                    4. Not to wax too much advaita, but life is a simulation in the sense that physicality mirrors a more complex underlying informational substrate, and we know this only through our mental representation of it. It is not a simulacra in that it has not narrowed the complexity of the task by doing so, but we are two layers removed from the thing-in-itself, or should I say, the thingness-in-itself. Also bourgeois talking monkeys with car keys munch barf on rice cakes.

                    5. Get a room you two.

            2. I wonder if this is true. It seems to me that most people drop out of music at 28 and rediscover it at 48 as they notice life slipping away, then sell everything at 68 because they want to “be current.”

  5. Sodomize, Crucify, Profit! says:

    Mediocrity plagues the trades and “old world” craft: ¡cheap! labor with [potential] skill who don’t understand the importance of either long-lasting construction or conservation of historic methods. Contractors who see the whole concept of good quality are hamstringed by this labor, the crowd, and city officials as well as equality driven building code. The worst contractors win by cheap costs. They belong in the final pinata line with no blindfolds on the whole way.

    1. Another view of this is the committee problem: no one gets fired for hiring one of the lower-cost contractors, but if you take a gamble on someone doing the job right and they have complications or the job only needs to last for six months, you get fired from the committee, at least. Consequently there is a race to the bottom and a rationalization interest in not noticing the low quality. We are not going to get the return of quality without some form of strong power like aristocracy, which is why everyone opposes it: they would have to start paying attention (cf first scene in Repo Man).

  6. Questionable Presence says:

    nature, which is smarter than us because it tests every detail over the course of billions of years

    Which surely must make it the dumbest thing there is?

    therefore has not only perfected but come up with technologies of which we can only dream.

    Nature is full of extremely complex organisms with ingenious mechanisms, true, but it’s also filled with backward, far-from-perfect, half-assed crap that only manages to reproduce because it’s not a complete disaster. This is what we have to remind creationists and other cretins about all the time.

    1. Eh, you overstate the point. The duck-billed platypus exists because it can survive in its environment. Like everything else, it is probably on its way to becoming something else. Test it for another ten million years and you might have an interesting creature. This is how nature works. In the meantime, humanity has not come up with anything as exciting as photosynthesis or the Krebs cycle, mainly because our designs are linear based in the loops in our heads. Nature does not operate through consciousness, like us; it works by repetitive testing and variation. This is how you get something mind-blowing, which is why it is smarter than us, even if it takes longer — some might say this indicates a cosmic role for conscious intelligence — and creates lots of variation to throw at the wall and see what sticks.

      1. Questionable Presence says:

        Maybe this simple-repetition-plus-time method works fine as far as lower-level systems such as photosynthesis go, but as complexity increases, so do the monstrosities. As mammals, our eyes have blind spots (unlike octopi), we have nerves taking idiotic detours and we can asphyxiate just because our esophagus completely unnecessarily crosses our windpipe. And these are such basic aspects of our anatomy that whatever we evolve into in ten million years, we’ll still be stuck with these imperfections. The hypothetical alternative would be an intelligent designer – intelligent because it considers several designs before testing one. But instead, nature had us blindly evolve from fishes. It’s just mind-blowingly dumb.

        1. That would be a role for consciousness: effectively simulating the conditions of reality instead of iterating; natural selection is, after all, a big sorting algorithm, sort of like a nested for-next loop like you use for a primitive bubble sort. However, consciousness is more failure prone, so brute force works. In ten million years of evolution, these things would get hammered out if and only if they caused organisms to die before reproducing. If not, they may not be a big deal; we should also consider that with limited space and resources, the alternatives to what we have now may be worse.

          1. Questionable Presence says:

            Sure, they may not be a big deal, but they’re still a bad design, because nature allows whatever is just good enough to survive a particular environment, which explains why most species are hypersensitive to disturbed ecosystem equilibrium. So it’s no wonder evolution takes forever to get anywhere. And whenever intelligence does arrive on the scene (it has likely happened before), it’s like an upper-class prodigy accidentally placed in a ghetto school, marveling at how slow, stupid and ineffective everything is, but as he tries to fix things, he gets stabbed in a dark alley for upsetting the laws of the hood.

            1. Questionable Sexuality says:

              blah blah blah I love Chuck Schuldiner’s stumpy penis

              1. The review queue
                Is mostly poo
                And squeezing goo
                Merely makes one sticky

              2. Questionable Presence says:

                Do you mean to say you don’t find this topic interesting? What the hell?

            2. Nature allows things to survive until traits kill them, then those traits are eliminated. In the meantime, what harm do they cause? With the other hand, nature induces lots of mutations and sees if any of them stick, adding traits that take over if they allow more thriving and therefore more breeding. So we have negative eugenics with killing the unfit (splurt!) and positive eugenics with the ultimate determiner being reproduction. In human groups, things are as you say, but if the average group IQ is over a hundred or so, the others can appreciate some of the leadership, and so you get a hierarchy that promotes the best. Even in simple hunter-gatherer groups the best hunters became respected. We see the inverse of this in a democratic time and the problem of the tropics, which is that nothing lasts long enough to care about quality, but that is not the case everywhere.

              1. Questionable Presence says:

                Harm? Most of nature is harm, ill-conceived traits or no.

                The “prodigy in the hood” bit was about man versus nature, not human groups.

                1. In nature, intelligence has some applications. If you get a genius squirrel, it will not help it much.

                  1. Mowgli says:

                    tell that to the squirrels

                    1. Squirrels are going to rule the world because they are adaptive generalists. Along with the rats, grackles, and monitors. They will eat anything, live anywhere, and are oblivious to quality. Some of them are quite good; I have met intelligent squirrels. Others remind me of humanity, so I kill them viciously and toss their bodies to the dogs.

                  2. Questionable Presence says:

                    No, indeed it won’t. Intelligence is always fucked, because this is nature’s turf, it sets the rules, and any intelligent being has no choice but to follow nature’s ultra-retarded whims. Had it been the other way around, with a great intelligence designing existence, then at the very least we wouldn’t have to pretend.

                    1. Having a great intelligence design nature requires that this intelligence be a centralized force which can be corrupted. That itself is a fragile and therefore non-intelligent design. The way nature works is brilliant: designed around an unconscious algorithm that always moves toward both refinement of its parts and a balance that keeps entropy low. You will not find a more intelligent way of going about the process of beingness.

        2. The Universe says:

          no u

          1. Questionable Presence says:

            Piss off, Universe, I want a refund.

            1. End humanity, problem solved.

  7. Neil Jameson says:

    Ropes Inside a Hole – A Man and His Nature, what a let down, I got so excited by that title I had to make sure Ma was asleep on the couch so I could do a greasy hand lubed job loudly with no sudden bursts in the room as the locks were taken off my doors after she found me hanging from the ceiling with my pants down, I swear I had it under control! Oh well, at least David “Evil D” Vincent doesn’t ever let it down, his new project here is actually BETTER than Altars of ZZZZZness! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOuiDoSoUS0

  8. Waspmccoy says:

    How brett

    Can i crush my tribe and force it to go back to africa
    Grow serbian hawaiian brides
    Kill all rap metal dummies
    Combine satanic death metal rap correctly

    Answers from you brettimus prime the (waspinator?)

    1. I am a gardener. To have a health garden, you separate the plants that are incompatible and group together the ones that work as little ecosystems. I would rather not crush anything, although I always favor killing the weak and promoting the strong, which some say makes my allegiances lie with Lucifer and Prometheus not Jesus and Apollo (although I am fond of Apollo). Africans will be happiest if they return to Africa and control Africa, i.e. a total end to Asian, Middle Eastern, and Western dominance and manipulation. The same stupid fuckers who today are dumping toxic waste in rivers are the idiots who decided to set up colonial empires and enrich themselves that way. The kings kept them in check but after the Magna Carta and Peasant Revolts, the aristocracy had no power.

      1. Jamaican Joel says:

        Gardener? I thought you were in IT?! Or was that before? Can’t keep track of you, mon.

        1. Some things occur outside of the workplace. I like growing things, especially food items, since I like to cook and do not trust the christslop and goyslop they serve in the big stores and restaurants.

          1. Fine Kill the Jews and Congoids But Get the Christians FIRST says:

            You ever think that maybe just maybe there are like 50 000 of you underground hardcores living in your mom’s basements (free tendies) who care about this and everyone else is just a consumer buying whatever makes them forget about their mortality and insignificance for ten minutes, and they think your nuts for even caring in the first place? Faggoths

            1. Yes, but I think the Bell Curve rules us all, or rather whatever weird science it is that produces Fibonacci sequences, standard distributions, and Pareto optimums. There is always a talented one percent. They make all the important choices and everyone else follows belong belatedly (a long tail) imitating them, mostly producing faeces and landfill. Most of humanity is a Petri dish in which we grow a few exceptional individuals and then sacrifice them at a shareholder meeting full of Jesus clones.

      2. Cynical says:

        “(although I am fond of Apollo).”
        At the end of the day, everything good is either Apollonian aims through Dionysian methods, or Dionysian aims through Apollonian methods.

        1. The ceremony of opposites remains intact.

  9. Bill Burroughs says:

    Dave Lombardo of Slayer fame just released his first solo album. I’m not sure if the music will appeal to the tastes of all us folks who self identify as pregnant men that frequent this site, but it’s worth a listen and I think he knocked it out of the park given what he was apparently going for.

    It’s kind of like Cuban club music and industrial metal smashed together, but in an oddly tasteful and un-gimmicky way. Some of it could even make for a great soundtrack for a suspense/thriller film.

    Apparently he had been thinking about putting something like this out since the late 90s but never had time until recently. Glad to see he was finally able follow through, and did it with gusto.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fE8CnXGatq4

  10. Questionable Presence says:

    Why corruptible?

    One could imagine a world where all parts are already refined from day one, in a perfect, closed system in which entropy is not an issue.

    1. Seems illogical, but ask yourself: in that universe, what would be the point of doing anything? It would be tautological.

      1. Questionable Presence says:

        There would probably be no point: you would be free of desire and you would love it, because that would the kind of creature you’d be, reveling in bliss and perfection. In our universe, there seems to be no point either on the whole, although here we have to invent one so as not to lose our minds.

        1. Sounds very dualistic, if you know what I mean. Eliminate conflict and you have Utopia, peace, perfection, and safety. The self dominates.

          The point of our universe is not to crash. (First rule of code: make sure your shit don’t crash. Second rule: make sure it does something useful. Third rule: make sure someone is gonna pay for it. Fourth rule: write and comment it clearly so when the next guy cannot figure it out, you can call him a stupid n00b and get his ass fired, then get rehired as a consultant.)

          To do that, it uses relativity, which engenders constant conflict as the world expands in variety, but also natural selection, which keeps that variety relevant to the central point, i.e. logicality to the whole (relativity to all).

          Without this, you would have a timeless, one-dimensional universe where each person knows only themselves.

          At that point, they collapse from lack of reason to exist. Jesus weeps.

          1. Questionable Presence says:

            Then consider the alternate reality a modified brain-in-a-vat scenario. A Creator of sorts has you constantly experience excitement, peace, adventure, love, purpose, wonderful social interaction, variety – anything that makes for an awesome life experience. You never encounter pain, fear, boredom, etc., and your brain doesn’t mind the lack of any of those things, because that’s the way it’s designed. Conflict, natural selection and how the universe we find ourselves in works isn’t relevant to that alternate reality.

            1. This fentanyl television existence however has a downside: you never own anything, least of all your own life. You are entirely passive, like a vat-grown organ, receiving pleasure. At some point, the pleasure itself ceases to have meaning since there is no contrast, and even though your brain does not mind the lack of those things, it becomes entirely passive with repetition and in fact ceases to exist as a thinking entity. It becomes like a severed limb flopping in the sun, mere reflex.

              1. Questionable Presence says:

                It doesn’t need to be (i.e. perceive itself to be) passive at all. I mean, it doesn’t know it’s a brain in a vat. Contrast, or at least variety, should be easy to simulate, and I’m sure a Creator could develop an infinite number of little adventures that would inspire even very complex and demanding brains. Besides: passivity, pleasure, repetition, meaning, contrast, thought – these things, and how they must relate to each other, are all concepts intimately colored by the necessities forced upon us in this life. Even the most basic aspects of existence as we know it could be set up entirely different, because what happens after death could literally be anything.

                Anyway, the real difference between our existence and my imaginary one is that in the latter you would be guaranteed the good life, while in the current universe you have to be extremely lucky, statistically, to be one of the creatures to get a break: “If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored.”

                1. Fuck the pope says:

                  This is Christianity repackaged. “The fact that a better reality can be EASILY CONCEIVED is proof that this one is inferior! What, you don’t want the better reality I described? That’s because a mind that hasn’t experienced that better reality CAN’T CONCEIVE of it!”

                  Take your bible-thumping shit somewhere else.

                  1. One theory is that Jesus smoked a huge amount of weed and just wanted the best for everyone.

                    He observed that people were mentally disorganized, and would be happier if they could tell shit (careerism, lusts, overeating, gambling, stupid power games) from shinola (good for shoes).

                    I doubt Jesus the man, to whatever degree he exists or existed, wanted anything egalitarian. He wanted a path to sanity for the normal. He knew that some people were frigging doomed, but he proved that to them through forgiveness. “Fine, I’m not judging you for being a whore or on drugs. Now what? Are you still happy being a whore or on drugs?”

                    Unfortunately for Christianity, it was written by people of mixed-race who were neurotic, and they like the good vaisya they were focused on an entertaining story rather than the philosophical nitty-gritty. That is why Christianity spread: it simplified and sexed up big ideas, such as that great Garden of Eden story which pretty much explains humanity in a page or two.

                    That, its written nature, and its ambiguity about dualism led it to be abused by the herd, who fail to abuse things like Plato only because they are too clear and simple for even a horde of idiots to mangle.

                    We are really talking about dualism here.

                    In naturalist/realist land, nature is supreme because it works under any conditions.

                    Dualists want a more perfect world where we take out the bad and are left with the good, forgetting that we need the bad to know the good.

                    Someone living in Utopia would strive for nothing and therefore become catatonic.

                  2. Questionable Presence says:

                    I’d never promote a better, otherworldly reality, that would be disastrous to humanity.

                    1. Perhaps one might add here that idealizing a “perfect” and “pure” world is itself an act of alienating ourselves from this one.

                2. I like the population analysis because it is true: a good life is possible, but then when you add too many people, it becomes impossible. Of course, you need some people, and with the advent of medieval warfare, it became clear that whoever had the most warm bodies would win. Modern warfare has made that even worse although this may be reversing with the age of SkyNet.

                  Let us imagine this Master Controller for the Brain-in-a-Vat (BIAV) person. It offers infinite variety, but that quickly becomes disorienting. It also misses out on the joys of repetition; if you got served a different recipe for every meal, you might miss the ones that rise above the rest. Even more, in your world of variety, you might prefer some experiences over others; this, too, is character/personality. Constant pleasure would become boring at some point, and constant variety because it is repetitive in its lack of repetition, disorienting and also boring. You would seek strife as a means to have something to overcome so that you know who you are; in a relative universe, we mostly know ourselves by what we do not like or seek to avoid, which then forces us to choose something to balance that negativity, and from that we get our positive goals. I hate E. Coli in my food, so I banish it from the house, but then aspire to design hygienic systems which make life more pleasant. The pessimist says that pleasure is the absence of pain, but the naturalist says that pleasure is a goal in itself, since there can be beauty, goodness, sanity, health, and prosperity and those allow us to enjoy the experience of overcoming. Challenges fit within that experience.

                  In our present universe, it is actually easy to live the good life; there are no guarantees. Set up a sane society and you get a pleasant existence, at least until idiots come in and ruin it. Learn to love eating idiots and the problem is solved, since eugenics and cannibalism are natural partners.

                  1. Questionable Presence says:

                    You can have the joys of repetition as well if you like; if our Creator can create anything, and you think something’s lacking, we’ll just add it to the list. A reality where one thing compromises something else and needs balance is so Our Universe. Bleh.

                    Yes, if you’re a human being living during a somewhat affluent era, there’s a chance you’ll have a good life. If you’re any other creature, the risk that you’ll die a horrible death after a short, stressful life is quite overwhelming.

                    1. Fuck the pope says:

                      Maybe you just suck?

                    2. When I go into the wild, I observe a lot of happy critters. Yes, life is fraught with risk and deprivation, but there are also times of plenty and enjoyment. In the human world, people who behave in a sane manner tend to do well, although this has been reduced by the insanity of mob rule, most of which is dualistic victimhood scapegoating that reasons that since our world is not perfect, we might as well steal everything and give it away so that none of us feel nervous, even if that backfired and made everyone nervous because of the lack of social topography and stability.

          2. Cynical says:

            You have the first and second rule backwards. If it does something very useful that nothing else does, but it crashes from time to time… well, we’ll reboot the boxes every so often, utility comes first.

            1. Almost nothing never crashes. I mean for a regular program it should not detonate upon normal usage. If it has a memory hole or burns down over time, that is just one of those things until someone rewrites it. But millions use Windows, and we know that thing is unstable like a meth-addicted OnlyFans thot on her fourth marriage.

    2. Perfect Pussy says:

      I don’t think you can imagine this flawless world in much detail.

      1. Questionable Presence says:

        Do I have to?

        1. Tripper says:

          Well you’re trying aren’t you? And yeah you do, for this discussion to be more than a diversion, because for all the information we have about life as we know it, we still know next to nothing, and this is the reality we’re actually dealing with that we’re talking abkut here. This hippie shit you’re into does not and cannot exist, I mean one can’t even imagine it well enough to ponder how it might work. Is this lacking in itself the result of our grumpy old 3.5 dimensional entropic universe? Who the fuck knows?

          Yeah I know there’s no purely abstract reason to value diversions any less than any other activity, but the experience of life is not purely abstract. It involves a lot of, if not mostly, mundane shit, and applying your earthly power to arranging the mundane shit into something interesting is what’s called a labor of love, the closest you’ll ever get to a universe that doesn’t merely slowly and painfully kill you.

          But I’ve been up for days so maybe I’m missing something.

          In other news Obituary and Immolation are on tour together and fuckin killin it, don’t miss out

          1. One possibility is that the universe is purely logical.

            If nothing exists, there is a logical difference between zero and one.

            Therefore, if there is a zero, there must be a one. Relativity makes this happen.

            Then, if there is a one, it must have different qualitative grades, giving it in the next iteration the aspect of quantity. Now you get one through ten, or sixteen, depending on how we are counting.

            That in turn subdivides like the cells of a zygote.

            Now it starts to divide internally. One seven and another seven have different qualities, so they can both split into quantities that differ and be different qualities of seven.

            What we think of as good/evil is a distinction between qualities of quantities based on how well they are adapted.

            What is good is what adapts really well; what is evil is what impedes adaptation.

            Adaptation includes the good, beautiful, and the true once one gets above 120 IQ points or so.

            If we kill everyone under 120 IQ points, humanity advances to the next level.

          2. Questionable Presence says:

            But that’s the thing: I’m not into this hippie shit. And it probably doesn’t exist. All it is, is an argument to counter what to my mind is a bit too unwavering a fascination with the workings of nature (or, as it seems, with computer code).

            1. We exist in nature; a fascination with its workings should be the default. Further, keep in mind that you are coming late to the party, i.e. there has been a great deal of thought before you got here and you are seeing the results of that, not the beginnings of it. No one starts out in life a nihilist, naturalist, or red-pilled on the Fenian Question. We get there over time, experience, and thinking things through. Some call that “autism,” but that seems like sour grapes to me.

              1. Questionable Presence says:

                But I agree: nature is very fascinating, and I personally love my place in it. But I’d also never call nature smart.

                “there has been a great deal of thought before you got here”

                “Here” as in this website? I’m not entirely sure what you’re saying. That you’ve already made up your mind about these things and therefore discussion is unwanted? You could’ve told me a few dozen comments ago.

                1. I would call nature smart, smarter than humans by far. Its design works from the ground up in any situation. It can restart itself. Human designs require a lot of setup and are fragile. The blind but systematic idiocy of nature always produces results and avoids catastrophic (all life ends) results where possible; if life fails on Earth because of an asteroid, it will start up somewhere else. Nature probably operates from a few basic instructions and therefore is resistant to any kind of subversion, at least until we get to crafty little monkeys like humanity.

                  I talk to people a great deal online and in real life. I find there are sometimes things to learn, and always it is useful for those reading, who outnumber participants by thousands to one. However, it does not make sense to assume that there are hasty conclusions in my writing, since it is based on three decades of work going back to my teens. The concept of nihilism came to me early in life, and sort of hit fruition when I was about fifteen, and all of this has unfolded from that, and so on. This does not mean I am not interested in discussion, or that I am closed-minded, just that if you claim that somehow something has “not been thought of” this is most likely false. I gain great benefits from interacting with people here and on social media in that they often mention details of interpretations that are new to me or put a new spin on something old, not to mention actual life experience and examples of these things. On the open-minded scale, I tend too much toward open for my own tastes, but it is hard to say that there have not been benefits, just that it is time-consuming sometimes!

                  1. Questionable Presence says:

                    There’s a robustness to nature given its slow development (from the ground up) – its base clearly won’t crumble easily. And that’s good. Beyond that, I’m more skeptical of its brilliance.

                    I don’t think your conclusions are hasty and I have no reason to assume you haven’t thought things through. I disagreed with a point in your writing.

                    1. The resilience is part of the intelligence of the design. Human designs tend to fail early, where nature keeps going. To a realist, that suggests that it has a greater intelligence to it even if produced by unintelligent means (sort of like ChatGPT).

                2. Fuck the pope says:

                  You know better. You were the recipient of divine revelation.

                  1. I am a nihilist, but I believe in the Divine Presence (DP). It works by making reality consistent and tending toward the good, such that if we invest time in discovering it, we can begin to unravel its mysteries. Really, a benevolent act, I think. If people stopped scapegoating reality for a few moments, they might see the majesties of logic and creation are one, and that goodness is there, although rarely undisguised.

            2. Tarot Dick says:

              I get all that. You’re running a thought experiment but aside from reminding me that life is often unpleasant, it looks pretty useless over here. And I think it fails to support your idea that the universe is hella stupid. As far as your comment to Brett goes, it’s not that his mind is “made up”, it’s that you’re exploring logical ideas and logic works in linear progression, and yeah, you’re not the first dude to wonder about this sort of thing. That would be like Sleep existing without Black Sabbath. It doesn’t make sense.

              It would probably be cooler to just go on a hike and blaze one with you. I bet the conversation would veer towards something more consequential.

              1. Blaze one, and pretty soon you are going to try to climb a mountain. This is the essence of life. That and necrofisting of course.

    3. Unquestionable Sodomy says:

      In this perfect world, all anuses become vaginas the instant they are penetrated, making homosexuality impossible, therefore decreasing the sum total pleasure in the universe and increasing entropy, at which point the whole thing turns into a supernova.

  11. Rigor Dickus says:

    Yay, another shitfit “””””article”””””” by Brattie. Absolutely buckbroken, to the point of moderating comments because poor little Brattie can have his feefees hurt by random anonymous comments lmao

    1. Walter says:

      Okay man

  12. one legged uberman says:

    When you realize that God and the devil are real, but not according to modern Bible translations, and with all supernatural signs involved (no I don’t have schizophrenia either)… and then you see some guy on the internet insisting his craze about IQ, sodomy and Irish genetics for some decades now as if it’s “the ultimate truth”, you know then you’re dealing either with a troll, a nutjob, or a very sad case of autism. Though the nihilism here is understandable if you never had supernatural experiences.

    But it’s not that I’m warning you of some fiery judgment because I don’t believe in the existence of eternal torture in hell (which is a paganized mistranslated idea derived from Augustine), but rather that we’re definitely dealing with some horrible ideas here. You’re the laughing stock of the internet Brattie, and I’m trying to save your dumbass from yourself…

    1. The nihilism here is understandable because I have never had schizophrenia. IQ is a fundamental part of understanding humanity. While not an atheist, I am skeptical of anthropomorphic gods, internationalist organized religion, written “truths,” objective/subjective divisions, and dualism generally.

    2. Questionable Presence says:

      nutjob

      We call it teabagging where I’m from.

    3. Three-legged Oberman says:

      Brett might be autistic, but Christ is gay and you’re even gayer.

    4. Doug says:

      whoah, snazzy comment! The snazziness of comments seems to be increasing exponentially with time!

      1. Disability FMC says:

        Over time, the probability of all things becoming fake and gay approaches one.

        1. This is just entropy.

      2. People are bringing their A-game to this site, which runs the risk of making it infested with hipsters.

  13. Questionable Presence says:

    When I go into the wild, I observe a lot of happy critters. Yes, life is fraught with risk and deprivation, but there are also times of plenty and enjoyment. In the human world, people who behave in a sane manner tend to do well, although this has been reduced by the insanity of mob rule, most of which is dualistic victimhood scapegoating that reasons that since our world is not perfect, we might as well steal everything and give it away so that none of us feel nervous, even if that backfired and made everyone nervous because of the lack of social topography and stability.

    Yes. I agree with all of that.

  14. Questionable Presence says:

    The resilience is part of the intelligence of the design. Human designs tend to fail early, where nature keeps going. To a realist, that suggests that it has a greater intelligence to it even if produced by unintelligent means (sort of like ChatGPT).

    Don’t humans keep going? We’re still here, trying new things. And if we consider the billions of years for even the simplest designs of life to emerge from the primeval soup, early failures seem to be nature’s thing, not man’s.

    1. I'm With Stupid says:

      Yes apparently humans do keep going

      1. Until we eat them.

    2. It is unclear how long the Human Experiment will last. On the other hand, nature’s smallest creatures seem to do well. It seems to me that nature will keep creating higher intelligence beings in an effort to get them to discover space folding and explore the stars.

      1. Questionable Presence says:

        That’d be cool. Not so much for us as individuals since we’ll be dead in half a century, but hey, that’s life.

        1. The secret to life is that at any time, making saner decisions leads to better outcomes. Humans have chosen flaming insanity for almost a millennium now, so not surprisingly, things are getting sort of ugly. But we can change that too, at any point.

          1. Questionable Presence says:

            I’m surprised and a little impressed that humans haven’t self-destructed already, considering what we’ve been through. There are definitely sane people out there, doing the right thing at the right time. On the other hand, extremely good intentions often seem to lead to their extreme opposites.

            1. “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.” It is sort of like the sola fide argument: before one engages in works (tikkun olam, noblesse oblige, or analogs) one must first make the brain functional by adapting it to reality and the logic one discovers within.

      2. Doug says:

        Label instructions for this jar of creamy alfredo human existence (male version) :

        seek out hot chick(s)
        don’t overindulge
        be content and don’t overthink
        aim for the stars
        refrigerate after opening

        We are a glorious imperfect species that AI can only fantasize about. We must embrace this in order to harness the perfect laws of nature/physics and God(s) willing propel our “goofy” butts to the stars. Or something like that.

        1. One might wonder what the heck is wrong with humanity, but I see it as a consciousness-building activity for the few capable of clarity of thought. The point is to discover the world, figure out what is functional and what is not, and find enough transcendent vision and wisdom to want to be functional. That eludes most of humanity, which is why they are edible.

          1. Questionable Presence says:

            In this case, it seems a matter of not everyone being the science-y type. Some folks just want to party.

            1. This is why caste systems exist: elevate the competent so that everyone benefits from their leadership. The others are doing what they are wired to, and if that incrementally and gradually improves, the population slowly rises. It also helps to purge the tards, thieves, liars, insane, whores, and rapists.

  15. Questionable Presence says:

    I am a nihilist, but I believe in the Divine Presence (DP). It works by making reality consistent and tending toward the good, such that if we invest time in discovering it, we can begin to unravel its mysteries. Really, a benevolent act, I think. If people stopped scapegoating reality for a few moments, they might see the majesties of logic and creation are one, and that goodness is there, although rarely undisguised.

    (Scusi, but I cannot help myself:)

    The hyena finally stopped tearing bits of flesh from the panicked but immobilized wildebeest’s hind leg. Instead, a new pain scorched its insides as the carnivore poked its head into the antelope’s gut and started gnawing at its intestines. Over the several more minutes of being eaten alive, hyperventilating and pissing itself now and then, the wildebeest thought to itself:

    “Ah, the majesty of the universe. So logical. So consistent. The difficult experiences in my life – the periods of dehydration and starvation, the PTSD, the diseases and parasitic infections – they all seem such a small price to OHSONOFABITCHTHATHURTS!! … a small price to pay for the opportunity to discover the good in life.”

    The hyena had just pulled out a kidney with its fangs and now started digging further up the antelope’s chest cavity, while a slimy mess of inner organs gushed onto the ground.

    “You may laugh, hyena,” the wildebeest thought during its final moments. “But at least it works.”

    1. Why would we expect a wildebeest to know more of the universe than a prole? These are mere stimulus-response organisms in most case, and they have no such thoughts.

      1. Questionable Presence says:

        Hmm. I probably shouldn’t follow my dream of a career in stand-up after all. (Just replace the wildebeest with a human being.)

    2. The Number Of The Wildebeest says:

      The is like the last scene in Braveheart except gay and retarded

      1. Questionable Presence says:

        I’d love to watch the version of Braveheart you’ve seen that apparently isn’t entirely gay and retarded. Is it a Chinese remake?

        1. Wack Sabbath says:

          Nothing gets by this one

  16. Questionable Presence says:

    Perhaps one might add here that idealizing a “perfect” and “pure” world is itself an act of alienating ourselves from this one

    Thought experiments on a website probably won’t be very detrimental to most people, but do mark this comments section with trigger warnings just in case.

    1. Obitchuary says:

      So you’re moving on from the navel gazing to sweeping ad hominems, very cool

      1. Questionable Presence says:

        We’re discussing metaphysics – of course we’re navel-having. But thanks for your sideline input.

        1. Logical Phallus Sea says:

          now youre just wasting my time

        2. I like functional, applicable, and useful philosophy. The rest is a jobs program for basement nurdz.

  17. Stephen Cefala says:

    I’m trying to start a band called Cultwrecker or Cultthrower. Anyone interested?

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