As clowns push death metal and black metal into pure repetition, death-doom rises, in one fiery instance with Consecration who take a Candlemass approach to Skepticism style funeral doom and make energetic but morbid havens of dark sound.
The hybrid origins of doom metal, going back to Black Sabbath and Saint Vitus, emerge in this release which combines upbeat heavy metal riffs with extended chromatic dirges with hints of melody, giving it a duality that powers its return to nihilistic confrontation with the empty side of life.
Songs are based around using the chorus like a weapon, building divergence in layers and then returning to a familiar them in a new context before eventually expanding it like a growing flower. In all of it, a funeral atmosphere persists and paradoxically, becomes comfortable.
Tags: consecration, death-doom, Doom Metal
Boring.
Which brings me to the point that normies should stick to mainstream pop-rock like Korn, Nirvana, Within Temptation, HIM and so on or take a hike, instead of trying to fit into the underground and making the millionth mediocre, faceless Darkthrone or Slayer ripoff that ultimately ends up sounding even worse than rock music. We don’t need more metal, but a severe reduction/depopulation of it.
Huh.
What’s some of your favorite recent bands?
Recent good bands are very few, but that’s expected. The most recent highlights are:
The new Tenebro was like a strong 8.7/10
Kaeck/Sammath seems to have their shit together, but they need to bring something new to the table next time because rehashing the same formula incessantly, even if tried and true, is starting to get old like the band members themselves.
Desecresy actually manages to make “avant-garde” sound good, an *extremely* rare case of brilliance I’ve not seen before.
But where it’s mostly at is finding good remasters or, if done right, re-recordings of old releases really.
Controversial opinions:
I dislike remasters and reissues. Print the album as it was in the old days and let people see it warts and all. Retroactive attempts to improve things rarely turn out well.
Agreed on Desecresy, disagreed on teneBRO, and disagreed partially on Kaeck/Sammath; they tend to be stronger every other album when they get clarity on their latest evolution, and the new Kruitwagen project seems to show another direction.
We have seen this in another band… or several… Asphyx/Soulburn, Sinister, and Pestilence all have this issue.
Brett,
What would you say is the “definitive” Desecresy album at this point? I admit I don’t have much experience with the band, but when I went through their discography it all kind of blurred together.
Also, have you considered revising the “Best of Metal” list? Godless Arrogance needs to be included in the “Best of Black Metal”.
The one I listen to most is Chasmic Transcendence. This was sort of where their ambitions and style coincided completely. However, anything up through Stoic Death is top-tier. Good point on the “Best of Metal” list. At some point, I need to edit many of these older documents…
We probavbly need a severe depopulation of humans in general…
Humanity needs to get back to a half-billion. If all people under IQ 100, and all sociopaths/narcissists, vanished tomorrow, we would hit that handily. It would also upgrade third world countries to first-world IQ levels, even if their populations would be much smaller. It would clear the third world of incompetent middle managers, journalists, and manipulative, nasty incompetents who seem to form the basis of the world Leftist Revolution and most churches.
All good points.
But probably even less people, like 250 million.
3rd world countries might need to be depopulated entirely.
I’m probably not a Right-winger by nature, because my feeling is that if we removed the bad from the third world, they would have a chance to thrive. There are probably twenty thousand good people in Mexico and if the rest died, they would make a thriving society. Even Ireland and Italy have good people, albeit admixed ones, but if they kept those and gassed the rest, those societies would be mostly functional. 250 million sounds good to me however. This would ensure that pollution was essentially non-existent on a global level, even though some people will pollute localities because that is what people do.
Even bigger point, from the mailing list: “There are people who actively contribute to whatever they do, and others who follow instructions only. If we gassed the latter group, humanity would vault into the future.”
Concerning remasters, I don’t hold sentimental or moral value to soundwaves. If there’s room for improvement, then the ends justify the means. If AI or the forces beyond can take over the world by genuinely improving it, then so be it.
Tenebro: you promoted it, now I’m not allowed to like it. It’s a good idea if you don’t promote anything you don’t like in the future.
Kruitwagen: De Zwarte Dictaat is the best thing they ever did by far, anything else is roughly 7/10.
What is this juvenile stuff?
It’s not sentimental or moral value to say “keep historical documents original.” Also, stop selling overhyped, usually badly-done remasters. There is a carveout for the historical renewers like Headsplit and Nuclear War Now, since they actually preserve sound instead of simply compressing.
There is no “allowing” in this discussion, only the point that we are talking about greats and while I enjoy Tenebro, it might not be in that category. I would argue that Sammath Strijd and Godless Arrogance are, as well as much of Desecresy (but not the last two) and Demoncy (but not the most recent).
90’s technology is not on par with today’s tech, the modern remasters are mostly superior, so if I can buy a faster car that consumes less, I will fucking take it any time. However in the drawback in return that nowadays creativity is not on par with the 80’s and 90’s. Millenials and Gen Z are about as creative as a rainbow turd in the rain.
Preserve your shit, who’s stopping you? But it’s typical backwards “hell’s headbangers” type metalhead mentality, by collecting outdated technology like CD’s and Vinyl, while also stacking up shirts, going to concerts, when you can just get everything digital and almost for free. It’s artistic eugenics by discarding useless crap.
Good point. They are beaten down by social conformity because they live in vastly unstable times. They missed the truly horrible parenting that Gen X endured, but grew up in an obviously dying society in broken homes and moron fodder schooling. They have my sympathy. Millennials can’t code however.
Now on to the fallacies and other brain lint you dumped:
1. “90’s technology is not on par with today’s tech.” Differences are not substantial enough to worry about. The stuff sounded great back then, and with our ultra-elite stereos now, we can enjoy it in greater clarity. Oh wait, no one is remastering for stereos, they’re remastering for ear buds and phone speakers.
2. “if I can buy a faster car that consumes less, I will fucking take it any time” — with lots of screens and a subscription.
3. “However in the drawback in return that nowadays creativity is not on par with the 80’s and 90’s.” Since you like economics, consider this: the incentives are against creativity because everyone is listening to soundalike boring post-94 droning emo/hardcore crap. Any musician with creativity/insight/prophecy/realism will go to another genre.
4. “Preserve your shit, who’s stopping you?” It is a question of the genre, not one dude. Dudes get flattened by steamrollers. The music must be preserved, and it is being driven out of circulation by the turds.
5. ‘But it’s typical backwards “hell’s headbangers” type metalhead mentality, by collecting outdated technology like CD’s and Vinyl, while also stacking up shirts, going to concerts, when you can just get everything digital and almost for free.’ And then when Amazon deplatforms the band or Spotify loses its licensing, you have nothing, but you do not care because it is all fungible droning noise anyway. I’ll stick with CDs, vinyl, and cassettes, thanks.
6. “It’s artistic eugenics by discarding useless crap.” Assuming that people can actually hear everything and discern, this would be true, but anything good is drowning in a sea of useless stuff that is profitable because the audience is accustomed to droning emo/hardcore style stuff and cannot tell the difference.
Kids (and others) now are getting ripped off. They buy this stuff (digitally!!1!) and bore themselves inside, but do not notice because the social scene is busy hyping the mediocre so every hipster gets a chance to be equal.
The autism is strong in you, keep on fighting, the crickets just might care.
Love what the molested/borknagar guy did with blod draum a few years back.
It was an ambitious attempt to chronicle the band. In my view, one of the worst offenders on reissues is tacking on “rare tracks” that are the same songs you just heard, but in pre-production forms. Every band needs a rarities CD with their demos and best live moments instead. Quality-over-quantity produces more fervent fans.
I had no conception of this “remaster” craze when I bought the NWN Carnage-Dark Recollections, but luckily it sounds great, as far as I remember whatever mp3 I listened to way back sounded like.
I merchantly screwed up, probably, when I shilled out way too much for the Ildjarn discography on BandCamp. I guess the majority of the money went to Season’s of Mist.
Yosuke normally does really good re-issues without crazy remastering. Might have to hunt down that Carnage…
I also picked up NWN’s Beherit-DDtM, and experienced a poltergeist immediately upon opening the case, before I was going to burn a FLAC on Exact Audio Copy. The moment I got the case open, my hand slipped and I threw the damn case halfway across the room breaking half of the plastic bits on the middle that holds the cd in place and coming so close to cracking the disc. : p
Also not a fan of those soft cover cases that Carnage was placed into or sleeves. Sleeves are absolutely not appropriate for transporting cds, whatever the sleeve is made of rubs off onto the disc.
You definitely did.
Why buy anything on Bandcamp when you can find it on soulseek?
I like buying CDs from the artists who contribute a lot. They deserve the support. Economically, this is my vote. Also tactically, it makes sense for the labels/industry/zines/radio (LIZR) to see that this band is succeeding because its music is valued more than the infinite flood of jazz fusion emo drone shoegaze late hardcore underground “metal” or its funderground equivalent.
I collect artifacts as well – if I had the resources I’d have a castle full of records I’m sure – but I’m not paying for permission to download something, I’m far too skilled a pirate for that.
I ought to have asked around for Vidar’s CashApp account and sent him the ducats directly.
This is really what it boils down to.
Cool story, bro.
Either that, or the normies make something like hipstery progressive garbage like Opeth to “stand out”, DSBM or “Stoner Doom” etc.
They never get it right.
You get droning funderground, or droning avantgarde imitations.
Nothing with purpose (“of substance”) ever.
Fact is most people have a shit ear so this’ll always be a problem.
I’ve slogged through enough 80s/90s demos and go nowhere bands to come to that conclusion.
You could make the argument that the social aspect, the “scene” has decayed considerably but I’m not convinced thats a bad thing and don’t care anyway because I wasn’t in the pit when morbid angel was touring altars, I was probably learning how to shit in a toilet.
The shit bands faded away then; now, they are celebrated. That is the difference.
Do not care about the “scene” because it is the consumer base; the real scene is people making music, zines, radio, labels, mixtapes/comps, etc.
Most people have a shit ear, maybe, but now the audience is won over by such people and so anything that is not shit gets deprecated. It offends them, you see.
This is very true of metal and basically anything else that is describable in casual conversation with strangers.
The underground will always suffer from the fact that anything truly great will leave its little scene of substance and once enough of that happens within a movement, the tourists start latching on and it’s all downhill, but that means there will always be an underground where the interesting mutations are happening.
The interesting mutations are few and widely ignored, which drives competent composers out of the genre over time. However, this is gold:
Things fall apart. Sounds like the decline of every civilization and once-great company.
I’m pretty sure metal as we know it peaked 30 years ago, but what about metal as we do not know it?
Greatness unintentionally bringing about the destruction of its inferiors by its will to power strikes me as perfectly natural.
Kind of gives me a sense of inevitability.
You’re probably right about low population spacefaring ethnostates being the future, at least for a while – iq being essentially just a consequence of need on an evolutionary scale. In 1000 years it might be 200 or 500 – doesnt matter, there will still be dumber ones and some not so dumb. In 1000 years there might be 3 foot wide blue people one one continent and 10 foot tall purple ones on another, some with wings and some with gills and all strutting around with at least 50 pounds of inconceivable biotechnology coursing through their fibers, their genes long indistinguishable from that of their fleshy ancestors and all living in whatever aesthetically distinct and spiritually fulfilling societies they happen to belong to. Maybe after a period of chaos making our times look like an episode of the three stooges.
What would the metal spirit sound like then?
My guess is that when sanity returns, metal will take on more distinctive national characters.
I think it’s going to use vocals less, have longer songs, and feature more interplay between the guitars.
It is going to sound like prog and classical if they kept the balls of punk and the mythic vision of metal.
Bratt lashing at the Italians lately is so random and forced, because the Irish thing has wore out. When I wake up in the morning and see everything wrong with the modern world, the last thing that pops up on my mind is a bunch of pasta eating knuckle head greaseballs being behind it all.
It’s the secret occult societies; the bankers, the transhumanist Klaus Schwabist “elite”, the globo-homo movements etc. etc. that are behind the new world order… not a bunch of Robert Deniros and Al Pacinos ffs.
Both of whom support the NWO or at least the far-Left. Most Italians and Irish vote Leftist or, if they vote conservative, are fixated on “Christian issues” like abortion and Ten Commandments in schools.
However, I think conspiracy theories are useless. We are seeing democracy do what it always does. Equality is thinly-disguised individualism, and when people no longer focus on maintaining a shared property (civilization, artistic genre, wisdom, science, tradition) then it decays to their disadvantage, even if they are too oblivious to realize it until too late.
Remember, when the day comes that you’re actually proven wrong with tangible evidence as a mere mortal, try not to short-circuit and have an epileptic seizure!
RE: “It’s the secret occult societies; the bankers, the transhumanist Klaus Schwabist “elite”, the globo-homo movements etc. etc. that are behind the new world order… not a bunch of Robert Deniros and Al Pacinos ffs.”
This is a whitewash of reality.
The fact that transhumanist psychopaths “are behind the new world order” and rule globally is only ONE part of the equation. The pack of leading psychopaths do not operate in a vacuum, and never have — study the free essay “The 2 Married Pink Elephants In The Historical Room”… https://www.rolf-hefti.com/covid-19-coronavirus.html.
The psychopaths in power are in those positions and do what they do ONLY because of the mostly willful activities, or inactivities, of the majority of self-entitled “decent” or “civil” or “good” or “awake” or “spiritual” or “religious” people — the 90-95% of the herd — and because they do NOT really want the truth but comforting fantasies.
“Our current ‘state’ is the dictatorship of evil. We know that already, I hear you object, and we don’t need you to reproach us for it yet again. But, I ask you, if you know that, then why don’t you act? Why do you tolerate these rulers gradually robbing you, in public and in private, of one right after another, until one day nothing, absolutely nothing, remains but the machinery of the state, under the command of criminals and drunkards?” — from a White Rose Pamphlet, the ‘White Rose’ was a German resistance group fighting Hitler’s Nazi regime
“The world is the way that it is because most people do not care enough (even if they SAY they want things to be different) to change it through their actions.” — Mark Passio, Spiritual Teacher
Isn’t it about time for anyone to wake up to the ULTIMATE DEPTH of the human rabbit hole — rather than remain blissfully willfully ignorant in a narcissistic fantasy land and play victim like a little child?
Of course it is but…
“I’ve come to realize that the biggest problem anywhere in the world is that people’s perceptions of reality are compulsively filtered through the screening mesh of WHAT THEY WANT, AND DO NOT WANT, TO BE TRUE.” — Travis Walton, Author
Without a proper understanding, and full acknowledgment, of the true WHOLE problem and reality, no real constructive LASTING change is possible for humanity.
And if anyone does NOT acknowledge, recognize, and face (either wittingly or unwittingly) the WHOLE truth THEY are helping to prevent this from happening. And so they are “part of the problem” and not part of the solution.
“If we have learned anything in the past six years, it is that vaccinologists, doctors, and the government in general do not have good intentions and never did. The clear intention of everyone concerned was and is to make as much dirty money as possible, letting any amount of collateral damage slide, including a genocide and mass poisoning [with Covid-19 jabs]. The fact [is] that Big Pharma just murdered millions of people, with the full support of government, media, and “science”. With Covid, everyone is part of the fraud, many of them paid off, so no one has any reason to expose it, and big reasons to bury it. Don’t believe anything these people tell you, ABOUT ANYTHING. It isn’t time for a civil war against your neighbors, it is time for a revolution against these hoaxers and thieves.” — Miles Mathis, American author, in 2025
Translation: commoners are incapable of self-government. Peasants cannot be king, even for a day.
That’s YOUR twisted ridiculous childish translation. It surely does NOT mean that. But most commoners, or child-like trolls or otherwise insincere sinister mentalities, will prefer a self-serving ludicrous misdirecting bogus translation like yours because the commoners/the masses are — per their phony rationalization or “thinking” — merely innocent victims of the psychopaths in power.
Oh yes, my interpretation is crowd-friendly, most definitely, assuredly, worthy sir.
You’re a fucking dumbass.