At some point, one must admit that all religion is the same at its core: you either believe in some divine force underlying life and pushing it toward good, or not. Everything else is grafted-on control methods to fit the culture that produced the religion in order to keep it healthy.

Yes, there are extremely practical reasons for those Noahide Laws and the Ten Commandments, as well as the usual religious prohibitions on promiscuity, alcoholism, gambling, murder, assault, rape, and the promotion of non-procreative sexual activity.

Yes also, people take those too far because they are not goals in themselves, which was the point that Yeshua ben David made in his prophecy, namely that you cannot get to God simply by avoiding the known pitfalls; you have to orient your head positively and affirmatively toward the good.

Naturally, this pissed off everyone who was in power at the time, since they liked being able to skirt around the letter of the laws, give a token sum at the tax office and church, then continue their obese and manic pursuit of increasing amounts of money, power, and status.

People confuse the symbolism there, too. Money, power, and status are good things to have, without a doubt, but pursuing them alone misses the point that there is a higher goal, too, which in a purely atheistic sense we might say is self-realization, self-discipline, and self-discovery.

Modern people — nitwits to a man — are good with the latter, but the former two bug them because they require bonding with the universe, nature, and civilization. We do not exist in vacuums; we are part of the world, and it demands our stewardship.

In this way, the two publicly-permitted political sides offer us as usual the same argument in two forms. The Right likes rugged individualism, or anarchy without subsidies; the Left desires compassion, which means subsidized altruism.

Both of these are simply the individualism-egalitarian axis revealing itself. Individualism says “me first before all else,” and in groups, becomes “we are all equally able to pursue me first before all else” with token payments of taxes and tithes to keep the gods at bay.

Religion, properly understood, means stepping past individualism-egalitarianism and instead looking toward doing the good. In my view, all religions are languages, and the core of all religions is essentially the same:

But under all this confusion of tongues and myths, of local histories and particularist doctrines, there remains a Highest Common Factor, which is the Perennial Philosophy in what may be called its chemically pure state. This final purity can never, of course, be expressed by any verbal statement of the philosophy, however undogmatic that statement may be, however deliberately syncretistic.

The very fact that it is set down at a certain time by a certain writer, using this or that language, automatically imposes a certain sociological and personal bias on the doctrines so formulated. It is only the act of contemplation when words and even personality are transcended, that the pure state of the Perennial Philosophy can actually be known. The records left by those who have known it in this way make it abundantly clear that all of them, whether Hindu, Buddhist, Hebrew, Taoist, Christian, or Mohammedan, were attempting to describe the same essentially indescribable Fact.

The original scriptures of most religions are poetical and unsystematic. Theology, which generally takes the form of a reasoned commentary on the parables and aphorisms of the scriptures, tends to make its appearance at a later stage of religious history. The Bhagavad-Gita occupies an intermediate position between scripture and theology; for it combines the poetical qualities of the first with the clear-cut methodicalness of the second. The book may be described, writes Ananda K. Coomaraswamy in his admirable Hinduism and Buddhism, “as a compendium of the whole Vedic doctrine to be found in the earlier Vedas, Brahmanas and Upanishads, and being therefore the basis of all the later developments, it can be regarded as the focus of all Indian religion” is also one of the clearest and most comprehensive summaries of the Perennial Philosophy ever to have been made. Hence its enduring value, not only for Indians, but for all mankind.

At the core of the Perennial Philosophy we find four fundamental doctrines.

• The phenomenal world of matter and of individualized consciousness–the world of things and animals and men and even gods–is the manifestation of a Divine Ground within which all partial realities have their being, and apart from which they would be non-existent.
• Human beings are capable not merely of knowing about the Divine Ground by inference; they can also realize its existence by a direct intuition, superior to discursive reasoning. This immediate knowledge unites the knower with that which is known.
• Man possesses a double nature, a phenomenal ego and an eternal Self, which is the inner man, the spirit, the spark of divinity within the soul. It is possible for a man, if he so desires, to identify himself with the spirit and therefore with the Divine Ground, which is of the same or like nature with the spirit.
• Man’s life on earth has only one end and purpose: to identify himself with his eternal Self and so to come to unitive knowledge of the Divine Ground.

In Hinduism the first of these four doctrines is stated in the most categorical terms. The Divine Ground is Brahman, whose creative, sustaining and transforming aspects are manifested the Hindu trinity. A hierarchy of manifestations connects inanimate matter with man, gods, High Gods, and the undifferentiated Godhead beyond.

In Mahayana Buddhism the Divine Ground is called Mind or the Pure Light of the Void, the place of the High Gods is taken by the Dhyani-Buddhas.

Similar conceptions are perfectly compatible with Christianity and have in fact been entertained, explicitly or implicitly, by many Catholic and Protestant mystics, when formulating a philosophy to fit facts observed by super-rational intuition. Thus, for Eckhart and Ruysbroeck, there is an Abyss of Godhead underlying the Trinity, just as Brahman underlies Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. Suso has even left a diagrammatic picture of the relations subsisting between Godhead, triune God and creatures.

In this very curious and interesting drawing a chain of manifestation connects the mysterious symbol of the Divine Ground with the three Persons of the Trinity, and the Trinity in turn is connected in a descending scale with angels and human beings. These last, as the drawing vividly shows, may make one of two choices. They can either live the life of the outer man, the life of the separative selfhood; in which case they are lost (for, in the words of the Theologia Germanica, “nothing burns in hell but the self”).

Or else they can identify themselves with the inner man, in which case it becomes possible for them, as Suso shows, to ascend again, through unitive knowledge, to the Trinity and even, beyond they Trinity, to the ultimate Unity of the Divine Ground.

ProTip: cut out the middleman and focus on that discipline and union between the creative and the analytical and you get closer to God/gods/nature than anyone following the black letter of the religious law will hope to do.

However, recognize that the 95% will instead pursue rules, symbols, patriotism, altruism, and conspicuous displays of emotion instead of focusing on the core of religion, which is to discipline the outer self to clarify the inner self (like ghee) and discover a transcendent view of the universe, which is the starting point for any potential supernatural or metaphysical exploration.

In the meantime, we have trouble in this society admitting that despite the noted anti-Semitism of many Christians, the religion known as “Christianity” is part of the Abrahamic group which has pre-Semitic Arab roots and lives on in Christianity, Islam, and Judaism:

The Codex Sassoon is more than 1,000 years old, dating from the late 9th or early 10th century, and sold for $38.1 million at Sotheby’s in New York on Wednesday.

It’s the earliest surviving manuscript of the Hebrew Bible that has all 24 books — the books that make up what Christians refer to as the Old Testament — with punctuation, vowels and accents. According to Sotheby’s, the Codex Sassoon is only missing 12 pages.

“It presents to us the first time an almost-complete book of the Hebrew Bible appears with the vowel points, the cantillation and the notes on the bottom telling scribes how the correct text should be written,” Sharon Mintz, senior Judaica specialist at Sotheby’s, said in March.

The original was probably spoken in Aramaic, then Greek, which was the lingua franca of the day. This language shows us the roots of Judaism in language:

Aramaic language, Semitic language of the Northern Central, or Northwestern, group that was originally spoken by the ancient Middle Eastern people known as Aramaeans. It was most closely related to Hebrew, Syriac, and Phoenician and was written in a script derived from the Phoenician alphabet.

Aramaic is thought to have first appeared among the Aramaeans about the late 11th century bce. By the 8th century bce it had become accepted by the Assyrians as a second language. The mass deportations of people by the Assyrians and the use of Aramaic as a lingua franca by Babylonian merchants served to spread the language, so that in the 7th and 6th centuries bce it gradually supplanted Akkadian as the lingua franca of the Middle East. It subsequently became the official language of the Achaemenian Persian dynasty (559–330 bce), though after the conquests of Alexander the Great, Greek displaced it as the official language throughout the former Persian empire.

Aramaic dialects survived into Roman times, however, particularly in Palestine and Syria. Aramaic had replaced Hebrew as the language of the Jews as early as the 6th century bce. Certain portions of the Bible—i.e., the books of Daniel and Ezra—are written in Aramaic, as are the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds. Among the Jews, Aramaic was used by the common people, while Hebrew remained the language of religion and government and of the upper class. Jesus and the Apostles are believed to have spoken Aramaic, and Aramaic-language translations (Targums) of the Old Testament circulated. Aramaic continued in wide use until about 650 ce, when it was supplanted by Arabic.

In fact, the two languages were very similar:

An ancient Hebrew Bible and more than 100 Roman coins were recovered by Turkish military police as Turkey’s efforts to contain smuggling continue.

An official from the Culture Ministry told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity that an inspection of the manuscript was underway and that it wasn’t immediately clear whether text was written in ancient Hebrew or Aramaic, which can look similar.

This means that one of the major religions of the planet relies on second-hand accounts of what one dude said two thousand years ago, and these thoughts were later translated through several languages before getting to us in the modern form of simplified English that most people use (or even the Jewish-to-English pipeline).

Fundamentalism, or treating these words as the literal speech of an inerrant and absolute God, therefore relies on some big illusions, mostly that these texts are in any way accurate in the form we see them, or that they were anything but creations of human beings in the first place, even if intended to represent the truths perceived in the minds of these people about God/gods:

In moments of reflection
It all unfolds to me
I walk down through my mind
And feel a bittercold fear
What mankind did with pretence
Of religion and belief

Away is the sun
Endless the night
Mankind’s massacra
Intelligence is dead

There have been satanic rites
In blood, inverted crosses
Expulsion of all mortals
The “good” side isn’t better
Holy inquisitors on arbitrary command
Through all blasphemic centuries

Destruction and hate
Sewage of faith
Ignorant souls
The decline goes on
Man will never learn
That religion’s created by man

A writer can perceive the way the universe works, form conclusions known as “truths” in his or her own head, but then has to put them into tokens that depend on other people having the exact understanding of those tokens, which never happens.

Add layers of translation and the point is lost. We can see this most easily in religion, but that may be the smallest fraction of how this situation impacts us. All symbols and language must be suspect because this perception-interpretation loop is inherently manipulative:

Evolution came to an end when the human beast developed speech! As soon as he became not Homo sapiens, “man reasoning,” but Homo loquax, “man talking”! Speech gave the human beast far more than an ingenious tool. Speech was a veritable nuclear weapon! It gave the human beast the powers of reason, complex memory, and long-term planning, eventually in the form of print and engineering plans. Speech gave him the power to enlarge his food supply at will through an artifice called farming.

No evolutionist has come up with even an interesting guess as to when speech began, but it was at least 11,000 years ago, which is to say, 9000 B.C. It seems to be the consensus . . . in the notoriously capricious field of evolutionary chronology . . . that 9000 B.C. was about when the human beast began farming, and the beast couldn’t have farmed without speech, without being able to say to his son, “Son, this here’s seeds. You best be putting ’em in the ground in rows ov’ere like I tell you if you wanna git any ears a corn this summer.”

One of Homo loquax’s first creations after he learned to talk was religion. Since The Origin of Species in 1859 the doctrine of Evolution has done more than anything else to put an end to religious faith among educated people in Europe and America; for God is dead. But it was religion, more than any other weapon in Homo loquax’s nuclear arsenal, that killed evolution itself 11,000 years ago. To say that evolution explains the nature of modern man is like saying that the Bessemer process of adding carbons to pig iron to make steel explains the nature of the modern skyscraper.

The big point here is that the same harsh yardstick that we apply to religion should be applied to any written articles of faith: they are interpreted, and manipulators rely on the difference between your interpretation and their interpretation to control you.

The classic example comes from marketing. I sell you a new dishwasher with a lifetime guarantee; in the fine print, or in the courtroom, we find out that I meant “ten years” by “lifetime,” where you assumed that I meant as long as the gadget is intact.

Another one might come from the constant fighting over words from the US Constitution like “shall not be infringed” and “equal protection of the laws.” These terms are just about vague enough to mean whatever anyone wants, a type of mental “me first before anything else” and “do whatever you want” as a type of intellectual subsidized anarchy.

The simplest form is peer pressure, which always takes the form of “anyone who does x is a bad thing.” It does not focus on the missing y, which is the goal, because per the Bell Curve the understanding and ability to reach this goal is not present in a plurality of any group.

Practically speaking, the difference between “anyone who does x is bad” and “everyone who does a is good” does not exist. You just pile up enough bad things so that only the good one remains. Political correctness and religious fundamentalism both rely on this tactic as well.

For example, kids in middle school said that anyone who did not wear the cool shoes was a fag. Great, whatever. Then at offices, anyone who is not using Agile development is seen as not a winner. Or in politics, if you fail to mention Jesus or diversity, you are out of the running in the eyes of others.

From a long look at reality, there are no magic words. If you are going to be religious, the fact of belief in the divine is the dividing line, not which particular religion, sect, or cult you subscribe to. You are isolated from the agnostics and atheists by the fact of religiosity itself.

Even more, there is a great grey area for those who are merely transcendental. They see reality as beautiful and having a point, which is a kissing cousin to religion, and even if agnostic or atheist, are expressing the same basic idea that life is meaningful and there is a right way to do it.

Metal comes in because it is reductionism plus yearning for possibility, much like the Romantic literature that seems to have inspired it. It is hard realist, meaning that it does not reject any aspect of reality and sees those as more important than opinions about them, but also hopeful.

This means that metal accepts religion only if it is also realist, which translates into a rejection of dualism as is found in most but not all interpretations of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Anything it accepts must be realist, but that includes some religion.

While “Christian metal” is obviously a fake product designed solely for propaganda purposes, metal can have Christians… just not metal that is Christian. Metal is its own philosophy. It can be compatible and overlap with others, but not be taken over by them.

We have to be skeptical about Christians in metal as well. Some want to use metal as a vehicle for their beliefs and will deconstruct metal imagery and use it to paint a pro-Christian picture, in the same way some want to use it as a vehicle for politics.

“Christian metal” (spit) is an artificial narrowing of focus from the metal philosophy to a Christian-selected variant, just like political correctness and religious fundamentalism reject everything but their dogma as a means of steering us toward their dogma by making everything else “not cool man.”

Metal cannot be conservative or Leftist; it is simply realist and transcendental, which although it is the origin of conservatism, is larger than conservatism, since it is compatible both with natural selection and the pagan morality of “good to the good, bad to the bad” which grafts the Lex Talionis into the “social morality” or peer pressure morality that takes over most religions and all social groups.

This means that we are on our own. No other group is going to completely overlap with us and, if given a chance, they will take over and use us like a Fleshlight. That is the Iron Rule of nature: all things act in their own self-interest alone, whether people, groups, viruses, paraphilias, or ideas.

That in turn tells us that Jesus and Buddha, despite leading belief systems that are foreign and therefore must be considered hostile to me because they are not from my culture, have a valuable lesson for us. We need to look at the positive core of belief, not negative boundary rules like the Ten Commandments, Political Correctness, or Noahide Laws.

Negative boundary rules tell you what you cannot do so that what is left is (in theory — dangerous words!) what you should be doing. This rapidly translates “avoid thing” to “do !thing” and we end up with a conformity-based system that is easily gained.

After all, most humans live by The Optics, which means how things look at a momentary glance. If they come in the door and you are standing over the murder victim with bloody hands, they will assume you are guilty. Since most fear looking more deeply, the optics can literally get you killed.

Boundary rules deal with The Optics. If they say not to cheat on your wife, religious leaders will invent temporary wives so you can sin within the limits of the rules. If they say do not kill, a debate arises about what is legal killing and what is not, in the tradition of the Pharisees and Sophists.

Plato pointed this out to Sophists long ago. By narrowing the argument, they were able to derive principles or rules, but then re-applied those in a symbolic context, ignoring the positive core and intention behind these. That allowed them to legitimize anything under color of law and logic.

Metal is like populism a rejection of the black letter rules in favor of everyday commonsense knowledge about the why behind them and how it connects to reality. We do not cheat because it has consequences entirely independent of getting caught, like loss of faith in a marriage.

Populism like metal revives everyday commonsense knowledge as primary instead of relying on the layers of abstraction we have created that are used by peer pressure to limit mention of unpopular aspects of reality. This is the method in common between egalitarianism and fundamentalism.

They want you to ignore consequences on reality and focus on the individual, meaning “what other people think about” things instead of what they are. In groups this becomes egalitarianism simply to create a mob for enforcing individualism. The two, individualism and egalitarianism, differ only in degree.

They want subsidized anarchy but always end up at the third world system, namely tyranny with warlords who grant favors in exchange for loyalty, because this is the basis of disorder. It looks like order but is in fact unstable, which benefits the individualists of course.

Metal rejects the focus on the individual; that is for anarchist punk bands, Communists, and religious fanatics. It embraces a focus on the all, which means not just civilization but the universe and all of time both future and past. It is both the broadest and most realistic view.

In this way, it gets back to the roots of culture and human understanding, going past the symbolic level which has been re-applied as a means of censoring what people can think, and therefore pointing them toward what those who wish to control them want them to do in order to train them in obedience and the dogma of the controllers.

Metal shows a return to the folkish spirit which rejects the consumer, peer pressure, and socialized false reality:

I also began listening to Lonnie Donegan and skiffle, our version of folk. That was a turning point. Compared with the awful pop records my parents had, skiffle was exciting—simple and soulful and played mostly with homemade instruments.

Geezer Butler also gives us some closure on the origins of the naming convention of metal:

Black Sabbath name? It comes from the 1963 film, Black Sabbath. My brother, Peter, saw it. I was too young but loved the name.

Ever see it? I bought the DVD when it came out. It was terrible.

Metal has a spirit, and you either follow it or are left wandering in the muddy wastelands, throwing together pieces of the vision but never achieving that transcendent moment of clarity and life-appreciation plus will to carry on that makes good music.

“Spirit” is important here. We can delineat metal by technique, aesthetics, and imagery — tremolo picking, heavy distortion, loud vocals, violent percussion, death symbols, gore and disease, loud volume — or by compositional direction and the artistic image it aims to present, which guides us to “spirit.”

The spirit of metal is recognition of reality against the human projection of groups, and through this realism, a greater morality than morality. What works, matters. What does not is actually bad, even if it seems good or is well intended. Good to the good, bad to the bad, and leave everyone else alone like a pot-smoking hippie who is generally tolerant of anything that does not wreck civilization, nature, or the sanity of others.

That spirit of metal gets discarded first by the parasites and products invading the genre, including the various Christian metal, Leftist grindcore, and far-Right RAC products that present lesser versions of the metal vision and spirit.

These are part of a general symbolic takeover of music because, as our present political system becomes unstable now that its consequences are becoming as visible as its symbolic promises, everything has become politicized. Political correctness and religious fundamentalism are just part of this trend.

Why did music shit the bed in 1996? The millennial favorites are all fakes ripping off the past, and the Zoomer music is designed to be like a hot water tap, just turn it on and the stuff that flows out is the same regardless of genre (finally equal!!!).

Musicians in the 1980s were still in the early rock mode, trying to make cool songs for people like them to have an intense experience listening to. Then in came the business school and statistics graduates who viewed music as solely a moneymaker.

They made pop into a full industry. Not surprisingly, record sales peaked in 1996, and then dropped off because people hated the plastic trash music had become. The recent 1990s/1980s nostalgia is not just for a saner time in the West, but for a time when music had spirit.

True, achieving hot running water was probably the peak of human civilization. After that, almost everything has been heading downhill, but most likely history is a sine wave, which means as soon as we drop the plastic garbage we can be heading upward again.

At this point, we will have gotten past symbol and gotten back to spirit, at least in part, and can finally admit what is relevant to the human experience and dare we say it, human soul, instead of the negative boundaries that have ruled us out of fear of peer pressure.

Metal is a defiant fist against the present, pushing us relentlessly toward this futurist time. And now, on to some terrible artifacts of a degenerated time which show us exactly how they are lacking in spirit or understanding of anything but the careerism and individualism of this dying era…

***

Wooden Shadow – Eternal Land Of Wrath And Mourn: this band presents as doom metal with folk and church music influences, which means power metal melodies and occasional undistorted guitar in a mid-paced melodic death metal format that also borrows its percussion from power metal, making for a listen that is not unpleasant but also is somewhat focused on maintenance of a mood and tweaking it upward for a descent to a sentimental conclusion, which is inspiring but not inspiring of repeat listens.

Hooker Spit – Krotch Splitter: the only thing death metal about this release is the vocal track, but otherwise you get some light-footed heavy metal and speed metal crossover with some of the flair that Autopsy has for throwing a couple simple riffs together and getting an exchange of energy between them, but very little about this suggests a repeat listen.

Justified God Killing – The Overthrow: melodic death metal on the surface, this band at its heart aims for early 1990s speed metal with lots of Slayer influences, but tries to work in bounce metal and groove, producing the usual unbalanced hybrid that either runs or limps but never keep continuity of motion, therefore has a stop/start feel as well as a strong aura of disconnection and distraction, making it good music to show your therapist but unsuitable for repeat listens.

Power of Fear – A Breed Apart: the point of hardcore was to reject the calcification and get to a simple honest look at reality as it was lived not how it was theorized or expressed to peers, but this band goes in the opposite direction by embracing the calcification through mixing emo and nü-metal with some punk riffs and grindcore vocals but never giving up on bouncy millennial rhythms nor writing songs that come together on anything except distraction to punctuate repetition.

Painstorm – Devouring Entrails: we all want old school death metal back and this band clearly live the era and its spirit but combine its tropes into hasty songs that rely too much on insubstantial rhythmic divergence and not enough on building themes, all under vocals that are chanted like the worst era of speed metal through Kreator and Destruction, resulting in somewhat catchy material that is just too obvious for a re-listen much less open jam on guitars on the carpet of needles under a Seattle bridge.

Blodulv – //: we knew black metal was headed into the fire during 1993 when all of the seminal releases came out and were recognized so that someone could easily patch together a textbook of techniques and then apply them to boring songs at the right tempo, using familiar rhythms and riff forms, and with aggregated and distilled aesthetics to provide a perfect black metal product, and this release just carries on that convention of outward-in songwriting that goes nowhere.

Stratuz – Osculum Pacis: doom metal kicked open the door for normie rock with the caveat that it be played slowly and have a melancholic outward aspect, and this band evokes European doom like Empyrium and Candlemass with emotional vocals but underlying hard rock and heavy metal riffs, with the industrial-style presentation where guitars are essentially rhythm counterpointing the drums and the song waits for the dramatic vocals but otherwise is filler. Hit ALT-F4 to close player.

State of Deceit – Stalked By Daemons: paint-by-numbers speed metal that sometimes slides into a groove but uses modern metal (post-Pantera, NYHC, and nü-metal) rhythms on the guitars and a more streamlined version on the vocals, managing at its peak to dial back the chanty bounciness of those vocals, but never escaping the ghetto of basic speed metal where songs do not organically grow so much as riffs are forced together for the ability to keep the vocal chant sounding okay while the audience slips into catatonia.

Storm – “House of Cards”: any time you hear the labels talk about gender-bending and innovation, keep in mind that they mean they think someone has recycled past influences into a “new” sound that is mostly aesthetics, therefore can be easily cloned and make everyone a bunch of money, which is appropriate here because this is bog-standard metalcore with more influences from the bands that are big on normie streaming services which sound like a hybrid between Oasia and Lizzo with more guitars. Unrelated to the Norwegian band.

Corpsessed – Skeletal Grotesquery: if death metal has a core it is phrasal riffs interacting in a way that creates contrast and then brings balance to the interaction, establishing a new context in which previous sounds make sense in a different way, but Corpsessed focus on “atmosphere” in the sense of random parts set against each other to create a sensation of unease upon which standard riff archetypes are piled to make it seem like something is happening, when really we are just bored by this Incantation clone.

Intöxicated – Sadistic Nightmares: bluesy hard rock with influences from melodic speed metal and death metal styled vocals, this band manages the right rhythms but songs do not develop so much as devolve from unorganized parts into simplistic cores based on the chorus rhythm, at which point unless you like lots of strident chanting like Chinese propaganda over guitar practice like open mic night at the Song Remains the Same club in some Boomer retirement community in Ohio means this is totally irrelevant.

Ukanose – Siaurum Vejum: folk metal is goofy by nature and you end up with Renaissance Faire and tourist gift shop fodder, but this band manages to make it musical and keeps an ear for what parts work with each other, which produces music that one can follow and enjoy even if the requirements of the aesthetic ultimately crowd out any real internal development since there is little room for it.

The Under – The Fathom EP: there is some background metal here behind the vocals which sound like something right out of the 1970s combining Motown and burly Southern rock into a spreading mass of cheese that threatens to drip into every crack on the Earth and make it uniform like an ideal product, completely smooth and therefore easy to visualize with a tempting uniformity like it might control all of the universe and be stronger than God like plastic or AI or perhaps even orgasm, but this album still sucks ass.

Droid Killer – The Terminator vs. The Preacher: despite strong Voivod stylings, this band is basically stoner doom and alternative rock mixed into a little heavy metal with the usual focus on vocals causing minimal focus on riffs, and sneaking normie content sensibilities into the backdoor despite an underground aesthetic, making for a listen that is like Muzak played on Boss HM-1s and Marshall Stacks much like “French bread” at the grocery store just means the same slop made into a longer shape.

Sil Khannaz – The Madness Of Fear: old school aesthetics conceal a mix of 1970s and 1980s metal which is reasonably well-composed (parts relate to whole, there is a point, appropriate repetition) but pointless outside of a desire to make generalized metal with slightly more modern aesthetics, meaning that these songs are self-referential i.e. “about themselves” which makes them as relevant as fragments of our DNA weaponized into narcissism as viruses or perhaps mold under the fridge.

Static Abyss – Aborted From Reality: all post-metal is basically a ripoff of what Godflesh did on Streecleaner mixed with what bands like Ras Algethi pioneered, and when you combine post-metal and modern metal — a hybrid of speed metal and death metal with influences from late hardcore — you end up with something like this, lots of punkish riffs aiming toward atmosphere with vocals as secondary, so you get a good sense of descent into darkness but not too much development, more like a hardcore band than metal.

Purtenance – The Rot Within Us: less of the purely random here than in the past, this album focuses on really basic riffs with blocky rhythms that appeal to a crepuscular hiking rhythm and are adorned with melodic fills of a slightly saccharine nature as well as rhythm riffing techniques that slow down rather than enhance the experience, but the hurdle this band faces next is making itself interesting by giving these themes life and an honest conflict instead of just related cousin riffs that are friendly but distant.

Terra Builder – Solar Temple: these days, unwrap any metal labeled as “brilliant” and “innovative” and you will find speed metal, as in the case of this band which treats black metal, punk, doom metal, and speed metal as a grab bag from which it takes parts to recombine, managing more musical integration than most but remaining adrift in the lack of a strong voice because they made soup out of the metal genres.

Overt Enemy – Insurrection: modern metal demands too much influence on vocals and reduces guitars to a supporting instrument, which in turn pops drums up to more of a central role, making metal fall into the same antipatterns as rock music, essentially becoming too human and too social and therefore forgetting anything beyond social and egotistic impulses, which is why this collection of Slayer, Pantera, and Neurosis tropes goes over like a lead balloon in the Marianas Trench.

Falling from Grace – At the Edge: essentially melodic death metal with verse-chorus structures, this band puts together solid tunes that do not evolve much internally but create a mood and fall into it with enough internal tension to hold together, but Pantera influences mar this with predictable riffs that restrain song development by making a bouncy rhythm the most important element, meaning that one can nod at this with some respect but never want to listen to it again.

Project Renegade – Order of the Minus: apparently modern metal means industrial metal verses, bouncy nü-metal played with jazz rhythms instead of hip-hop, and then power metal cum Oasis style coffee shop indie inspirational indie rock style vocals on the choruses, leading to something that jars merely because of its discordant parts but also because it attempts to make tuneful smary groupthink emotional normie music into metal which fails like Donald Trump in a dress.

Tortured – Genetically Engineered Monstrosity: not old school death metal, this is instead deathcore complete with screeing pig vocals and massive breakdowns, incorporating some riffs from slam and some elements of percussive death metal but ultimately, because it is based around the gurgling vocals, going nowhere except making sonic wallpaper for rage quitting Asteroids at the arcade while your parole officer looks on and makes a note to up your methadone dose.

Ring van Möbius – Commissioned Works pt II: Six Drops Of Poison: if you like light prog like Camel, Procol Harum, or even the more melodic side of King Crimson from Red, this type of 1940s jazz-influenced complex vocal melody with keyboards and understated instrumental highlights will provide gentle listening fodder, since songs develop moderately but sanely and the focus is on providing a tune that hides rather than shows off its muted progressive elements.

Scream Maker – Land of Fire: basic stadium heavy metal, halfway between glam like WASP and something like Boston or Foreigner, mixed with power metal tropes and thankfully almost no modern metal elements except slightly in the drums, writing later Iron Maiden styled songs which are basically circular with solo, double-timed riff, or minor melodic side quest before returning to main theme, which are enjoyable and reasonably distinct.

Distorted Force – Angelic Bloodshed: more energetic than most power metal bands, this attempt to minimize modern metal influences makes good use of rhythm and harmony but does not write in melody as a connecting force except in the vocals, and this leads to a huge amount of circular repetition that like pop means you must just really like the two riffs used as background for the vocals you hum along to while cutting off your ankle monitor or shopping on Alibaba for corn shavers.

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