Sadistic Metal Reviews : Unholy Desecration of Entropic Repetition and Randomness Edition

The question before us remains whether humanity will get its act together to adapt and survive. We beat the first few levels, yes, with agriculture and institutions, now have some nifty technology like digital computers and infernal combustion engines, but that just leveled us up.

We now face more serious bosses, long term problems, and bigger goals, since now we are aware of not just Earth but the starry skies of infinite universe. Persistently, our problem has been a failure to recognize what is real and actual, including works of art like Beethoven:

Beethoven’s Violin Concert in D Major, Op 61 is one of them.

The composer wrote the work for violinist Franz Clement, who received bravos from the audience at the premiere in 1806.

But the critics were unimpressed.

They described the piece as disjointed, its motifs as tedious, and said the sections in the highest register were too difficult for the soloist to play in a refined and precise manner. In the following years, the piece was barely performed.

Luckily, of late some recognition has been coming to bands like Demilich, which was at first as reviled as Beethoven:

I’ve always been more like a designer in music, not like, ‘Hey, this rocks, and let’s keep it grooving…’ Part of it is because I never learned theory, or jamming. I try to fiddle and experiment. I am very pattern and geometry-based—or my brain is—so that’s the basis of how I must have started doing those. And then, if it didn’t sound so good, I tried to find some little path out of it, and maybe back to it. It’s like a map: From point A, doing a round trip through an unknown point B, and then somehow getting back to point A.

Of course, once these things become accepted, they become standards in themselves, and many of us never move on from them. As they age, people listen less to music, and tend to have what they like and stick with it:

Until around the age of 11, children are generally happy to engage with unfamiliar music. Early adolescence sees a reduction in open-earedness, but is accompanied by an intense increase in interest in music more generally. Open-earedness increases slightly during young adulthood, then declines as we age.

A major 2013 study involving more than 250,000 participants confirmed these changing behaviors. It also showed that the significance we ascribe to music after adolescence declines, and the amount of music we listen to reduces from a high point of 20% of our waking time during adolescence, to 13% in adulthood.

Adolescents use music as an identity marker and engage with it to navigate social circles. Adults have developed personalities and established social groups. As such, drivers to engage with new music are lessened.

Or the bigger problem: that there is far more music now than ever before, and consequently people treat it like a tap in the bathroom that they turn on when they want background sound while perusing social media or watching Cuties on Netflix.

Part of it comes with finding what we like that expresses ourselves, part of it has to do with the absolute collapse of quality in everything in the West after the first Clinton term, and some of it comes from the fact that pretenders are the standard in the postmodern era, imitating a past of better hopes in a pidgin of buzzwords and distractions:

The incident has since led to outrage and embarrassment among the deaf community both locally and internationally.

Properly trained sign language trainers say much of what he was signing was incomprehensible, but he did make references to prawns and rocking horses.

Wilma Newhoudt-Druchen the first deaf woman in Parliament, tweeted that the official interpreter on stage was signing ‘rubbish’ and was an embarrassment.

We find ourselves wondering how these bands get signed, but consider how the market has changed: niche sales took over, so there was no single thing to rebel against, and the audience now has an abundance of music so is only interested in the latest thing, all while busier than ever before managing the deflections and excuses of a dying civilization.

At least the heavy metal classics are getting some recognition:

Photo credit: the image for this article was generated by the Gab DALL-E style “AI” (machine learning) image generator which was force-fed prompts of Beherit lyrics, excerpts from NAOS, and random snatches of the poetry of Thomas Stearns Elliott.

~~~

As Light Dies – The Laniakea Architecture: more emo music and Rammstein cloning carefully disguised as folkloric black metal but, ultimately driven by the vocals, this quickly turns into slower and softer metalcore and reveals its essential core of boredom, sort of like some kind of synchronized swimming take on assisted suicide by mercurcy enema.

Blood Star – First Sighting: female vocal driven uptempo heavy metal with a lot in common with European acts of the 1980s and UK acts from the previous decade, this band bashes out compelling versions of classic riff types but holds the songs together more like a disco or Europop track with vocals and rhythmic breaks holding it together, so this will not interest much of the death metal faithful but falls into the new type of Austin heavy metal that is popular with the kids these days.

Unholy Craft – Naar All Tid Er Omme: of recent releases, this comes the closest to good, but like so many these days, spends so much energy on recapturing old tropes and producing its version of classic riffs that songcraft is forgotten, and as a result, these songs are repetitive looping of random elements, leading to a type of enervation for the user as nostalgia, hope, and basic appreciation collide with the reality that this is going nowhere; the biography warns us that this band idealizes B-grade blackmetal like Sorhin and Fimbulwinter, so if being at that level was their goal, achievement unlocked.

Ended – Into the Nothing: at some point in a genre, momentum overwhelms direction and everything becomes recombination, hence the frustration many of us have with melodic metal, but this release is more accurately described as reliving 1980s European melodic heavy metal and working in a bit of prog-metal offtime riffing with some speed metal bounce, sounding a lot like Accept, Asia, and Foreigner having a lovechild that then decided to get a bit heavy and deep in order to attract the soy basement audience.

Pustilence – Beliefs of Dead Stargazers and Soothsayers: if you combined Mortem and Baphomet, you might get something like this collection of old school riffs with an emphasis on the percussive, strong in its individual parts but never really knitted together into anything expressive, resulting in constant emotional churn and textural variation that while pleasant to listen to, adds up to very little as a whole listening experience.

Atrocious Filth – OVV: entering into the alternative technical metal category along with Supuration, Pyogenesis, and Voivod, Atrocious Filth tries to do what many in late death metal did, which was to transfer to a new form of music that was more musical and used harmony and melody as well as structure, but often the requirements of open chording and longer melodies force an emphasis on repeated rhythm and vocals to hold together what have become disparate elements, hiding whatever refinements they have made behind unexciting riffs and song collages that run together over time.

Putred – Repulsie Post​-​Mortem: this band nails the mid-paced morbid cavernous death metal approach in terms of rhythm and song structure but riffs hover on the edge of obvious melodies and this detracts from long-term listenability, although unlike most everything out there today this band writes songs that hold together and deliver a unique impression of an aspect of life that changes somewhat over the course of the song, like adaptation provoking internal mental change, which if this album were not so sing-song and point-to-point in its riffing would make it an instant keeper.

Blodtår – Det förtegna förflutna: this release reminds me of the people who do gymnastics routines at the Olympics that are technically correct but have nothing to hold them together except a few repeated forms, so despite all of their athletic excellence, the end product is mutt, much as is the case with this late Norsecore tribute which knows how to build a song around a simple progression but not how to oppose it and vary it to develop it, which makes it sort of like listening to a stuck door chime played on HM-2s.

Satanika – Horde of Disgust: on the surface, this seems like it will be evil death metal, but it comes more from the genre of catchy heavy metal with death vocals in the style of Doomstone, Deceased, Mortician, Cannibal Corpse, or Nifelheim with lots of bounding riffs that mix grindcore rhythms with basic speed metal and death metal riff styles, all guided by an infectiously hook-driven vocal, but it is hard to imagine reaching for this to listen since it is basically Miley Cyrus with Pantera riffs.

Catacomb – When the Stars Are Right: mixing 1980s goth into modern metal, this band focuses on chanted whisper vocals and has repeated-strum-oriented doom metal riffing at a faster pace going in the background, making a plesant sort of dark heavy metal that by using very similar riff forms, sort of runs together except for the chorus, probably doing better than most modern metal but hard to want to repeat listen.

Begotten – A Warning Silhouette: droning minor-key emo music dressed up as Burzum-style black metal, this offers minimal song development but lots of luscious repetitive riffing in modes to make you feel self-pity and righteous victimhood, which makes this album brain poison of the first degree.

The Unholy – Garden of Souls: heavy metal style doom metal at uptempo punk pace and the sensibilities of 1960s rock, with a vocalist straight out of later Saint Vitus, this band seems like it would be intriguing but instead becomes very heavy on the hammering out of simple little songs which add melodic complication without melodic complexity, making them more tiring than inspiring.

FesterDecay – Reality Rotten To The Core: a Carcass/Autopsy inspired work of deathgrind in the old school, this album uses lots of bounding energetic riffs and unlike most bands, makes them relate to another enough to have functional songs, although they do not do much more than establish their theme and work it out in a circular fashion, which means that listener energy flags toward the end of this otherwise excellent release that seems to recall how the underground did things and why.

Død Håp – Black Sun: we are all imitators now, reliving the past of the 1980s and early 1990s because after the Clinton years, everything stopped functioning and American and European life mostly lost meaning through a combination of egalitarian politics and corporate neoliberalism replacing culture, which means that all music can do now is comment on the individual and make social gestures, which is what this emo-infused imitation of third wave black metal attempts to do, producing songs that go nowhere and mean nothing.

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57 thoughts on “Sadistic Metal Reviews : Unholy Desecration of Entropic Repetition and Randomness Edition”

  1. Warkvlt is High IQ Music says:

    “droning minor-key emo music dressed up as Burzum-style black metal”

    applies to so many bands these days… worse is, the closer they try to “sound like” Burzum aesthetically, the further they get from Burzum’s actual music. Some death metal bands like Infester, Incantation, Demilich and early AtG sound closer to Burzum than many of the clones.

    1. I think of this in terms of the decay of any idea because other people seize on the easily discerned parts of it, take those for the whole, and then use it as a vehicle for their own neurotic drama. Take relativity, for example: an innocent doctrine that explains how a universe arises from nothing by forming of the interconnections between its parts. The Left turned it into relativism, and the Right then turned that into a Galileo-cum-Scopes jihad in favor of “objective” reality, at which point the Left went further and demanded a soyfruity world where nothing was real except public opinion. Or even the hamburger: whether Salisbury steak or the humble peasant sandwiches of the Volk, the burger has been around for some time, but only when it moved into the cities — now a burgher burger — did it gain the modern form of being a stripped-down product that addresses special interests and therefore has no real organizing design to itself. The bun got big, so the food was mostly carbs, and then they tacked on condiments from around the world (ketchup from India, mustard from Germany, mayonnaise from France, relish from Persia) and a few token vegetables that poll highly among the different special interest groups in the herd. Women like lettuce, it turns out, and Boomers love tomatoes on everything. Everyone else was OK with a few pickle slices. Then they dumbed the cheese down into “cheese product” which is what happens when you throw a few fields of soy and grade-Z milk into a blender, and serve it up with glitzy promises like “have it your way” and “flame-broiled,” all of which miss the fact that the burger has now become euthanasia cow puree on a sugar bun with token vegetables and soy sauces. No surprise that people do the same to metal; the big shock about parallelism is that whatever defects happen in our leaders, also happen in our people, and that civilization health parallels the mental health of those within it. But yes, these days people are making the same droning three-chord blather that blighted late hardcore, then dressing it up in one of the “skins” available in Metal Hero the video game, such as metalcore, Incantation clone, DSBM, funeral doom, progressive metal, fun hard rockin’ heavy metal with death vocals, etc. The great thing about Burzum is that nothing is like it. “Tangerine Dream played by early Prong.”

      1. Dumbtard says:

        >there is no such thing as a burger
        >this is how you make a shitty burger
        >all burgers are gay because multiculturalism sucks

        1. Walter says:

          You really got him

          1. We have the best tards, and we are going to make this nation the most retarded it has ever been, a more massive explosion of tardation across the tapestry of history than has ever been seen before!

            1. The stupid shall inherit says:

              Where America goes, the rest of the world will follow!

              1. Into the abyss of Late Stage Democracy, consumerism, and metalcore!

          2. raveman dinosaur spirit journey says:

            i am balls deep in the anus my man

            1. Flying Kites says:

              Surely you’re referencing the American Nihilistic Underground Society. It’s easy to get lost in the anus, and yet one can always unplug and resume normal life.

              1. Freaking Out Man says:

                what is a normal life and stop calling me shirley

                1. You don't know man, you weren't there, MAAAAAAAAN!!!! says:

                  Normalcy is a farce, its nothing but a lie.

                  1. I rule this world,
                    and Satan’s son was sent.
                    Son of evil, heart cold as blood.
                    Father Satan give me your power!
                    To create a new world.

                2. Television, lottery, pizza, beer, having sex with fat people, altruism.

        2. There are good burgers, but only the atavistic ones that try to be Salisbury Steak.

      2. T Malm says:

        what a retarded way to wander into an analogy

        1. Life is retarded. Only sodomy is true!

        2. Metaphors are gay unless they feature homosexual innuendo says:

          There are two types of internet personae: The autistically aloof kind and the charlatans that try to sell you shit.

          1. I would like to think I am the former, but “autistically aloof” hardly describes someone who interacts on a regular basis. More likely you have old school content creators versus the nü-school who are basically social media creations. This is consistent with the former group getting banned from social media regularly.

            1. Innuendo Inside says:

              I’m sure there is overlap, or a spectrum of sorts, like the Kinsey scale.

              1. “The Grifter-Autist Spectrum: Why Internet Identity is Not Binary,” by Hui Sapir-Castillo, Neurology, Issue 31, Number 2.

          2. T Malm says:

            I dont understand the metaphor, not enough homosexuality

            1. This entire site is a metaphor for homosexuality. Think about brutal inversion of all that is holy. The brown eye winks, and a drag queen comes out for depressive suicidal black metal story hour.

      3. Uruk-Hai says:

        Yes, and as Fearsome Legacy: The Apocalyptic Metal Years 1988-1994 had it, Burzum always stood above black metal “like a kite: grounded in a tradition, but with a from-above perspective where any genre seems a small country on a boundless continent.”

        1. Burzum understood, like Fripp, the raw abstraction of music and how to mold it to an everyday experience that showed glimpses between assumptions and showed new territory for minds to wander. He wanted to stimulate the fantasy of mortals. He did quite well. Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk should welcome a new addition to their elite mannerbund.

          1. Gnarly says:

            Perhaps we’re extremely lucky that these artists managed to create something so beautiful within the postmodern era before music collapsed entirely. One takes a lot for granted.

            (Tour de France Soundtracks was the comeback of the century.)

            1. There was a brief period where the audience was not only competent, but had left behind the mainstream, and could make greatness after the 1960s disaster, but then they faded out and the music went with them.

            2. Tour de France Soundtracks was the comeback of the century.

              Understated, even. It is rare for a band to return to their core of quality in a new voice.

        2. T Malm says:

          Is that a book? I can’t find any info on it but it sounds interesting.

        3. Oyster says:

          Yeah what the fuck? Where do i find this “Fearsome Legacy: The Apocalyptic Metal Years 1988-1994”?

          1. It’s an underground manga that features lots of pegging.

  2. Phlegmbrandt says:

    DMU in the MTV dimension (a.k.a.: I had a moronic idea and cut and pasted some shit together):

    https://i.postimg.cc/Mw5RLd0R/htatay.jpg

    Much love,

    Phlemmy

    1. questions that will keep me up at night says:

      if brett is butt-head, who is beavis? and who is stewart?

      1. Phlegmbrandt says:

        Beavis is all the followers who don’t really get it, but are excited anyway.

    2. Accordingly, I have posted this to all social media. The response generally seems to be that I talk like a fag and my shit’s all retarded.

    3. Live AIDS 1985 says:

      Does MTV even exist anymore?

      1. They sort of died when they stopped playing videos.

  3. I Sperg says:

    Holy shit, Antti Boman talking about patterns! I’m actually creaming my autistic pants here.

    And he’s right about how Demilich was inspired by Finnish music, it sounds just like Finnish tango with distorted guitars. <3

    1. It definitely sounds Finnish: weird, in the dark, but not quirky, more like purposeful and discovering a more useful asocial atmosphere than the usual human mental fuzz. Throw it on with some Beherit and Demigod for the full effect. The first Amorphis album is great too, like an epic take on Nihilist and Carnage.

      1. I Sperg says:

        Maybe that’s the Asian influence. But Antti is probably more Scandinavian. You’ve probably met him, what did your implanted DNA scanner tell you?

  4. T Malm says:

    Hey Brett, I maybe misinformed about the specific responsibilities of the higher ups in service of the Crown, but:

    Given your position as Her Majesty’s Prime Homosexual, you must feel that it’s your sacred duty to review the new Dodheimsgard album when it comes out.

    Butt plug connoisseurs everywhere are looking forward to this once-in-a-lifetime occurrence! It’s a Singularity of Gayness that will define Black Metal Homosexality for decades to come! The Gay Pride flag on the cover shows that the band put the utmost care into their upcoming work to make the most momentous Faggotry imaginable! Evil D himself will marvel at its majesty!

    Can’t wait! G’day mate!

    1. I support all homosexuality worldwide.

      1. T Malm says:

        Don’t try to act like some international paragon of gayness.

        We know the Queen’s Buttsex is your favorite because it’s so dry.

        1. Dry? We use proper butter, like on toast at tea.

          1. T Malm says:

            Don’t play dumb, Brett.

            Everybody knows British sodomy is drier than John Cleese’s nuts.

            1. How do you know what John Cleese’s nuts are like? Have you been unfaithful to me? Just for that, I am canceling our monthly Amazon order of a 55gal barrel of lube.

              1. T Malm says:

                John Cleese’s nuts are a national treasure. You have shown your true potatoes, Brett! You’re clearly just larping as a true Anglo, as I had always feared.

                I am hereby leaving you for tiny midget.

                1. While I have a great admiration for John Cleese’s nuts, the true Anglo method of sodomy involves a pat of butter and a French horn.

  5. curio says:

    After a mostly sleepless night, I’ve realized that the act of collective praying is a masturbatory act.

    If a church-going community comes together, it’s fucking stupid to sing hymns, eat wafers, hold hands (I’m not holding your goddamn hand, homo) and keep Ukraine in our lame thoughts.

    It would be worthwhile for that same community to come together, commit deeds (of flesh) of:

    1. feeding retards, narcissists and criminals into the fiery belly of Moloch.

    2. have a small group of 160 IQ men lead a discussion of how the cosmos, the gods and mathematical patterns all tie in together. Anyone can listen in, which would exclude most of that community.

    3. The rest of the community can hold demonstrations of talent and skill in the name of learning where anyone can participate. It doesn’t matter what the skill is as long as it’s competent.

    1. The point of collectively praying is for it to feel okay for most people since they fear their thoughts when alone. Most church activities are social activities designed to point people toward being slightly more thoughtful for ten minutes. The 160 IQ types find each other and should write great books and come to agreement. Eugenics requires mostly simply rewarding the good and ensuring that the intelligent, sane, and healthy have more children and the money to raise them, but also requires removing the far left side of the Bell Curve where the retarded, criminal, perverse, and insane lurk. This can be done through asylum, jail, exile, or woodchipper; it does not matter to nature so long as they do not sabotage others and do not breed. Bonus points for sterilizing everyone under 115 IQ points.

      1. Pro Pain says:

        160 IQ types? Cooperation? Frankfurt School? Sodomy?

        Last time these types came together, they made the Expendables action movie series.

        So, yeah, I’m all for it.

        1. In my view, the influence of the Frankfurt School is overrated. They just stitched together the American Civil War narrative, the French Revolution narrative, and the propaganda needs for defeating Hitler.

          Funny how that series came from a 1988 movie about Cambodia, and now seems to be overpriced Hollywood stars blowing away drug dealers with miniguns.

          1. Pro Pain says:

            Yes, the FS was largely just a front for a glory hole club, but they used their large brains to perfect the stimulation of their penises. It all came together really well.

            The Expendables, of course, was a front for Sylvester, Arnold and Dolph to form a lobby group for manly Italo-Teutonic love.

      2. T Malm says:

        Many “160 IQ types” are criminals, perverse, or insane. Is our noble monarch going to be throwing them into the woodchipper too, or does he favor some sort of rehabilitation? Simply leaving them to their devices?

        1. Many “160 IQ types” are criminals, perverse, or insane.

          I disagree. However, many below-115s certainly are.

          Exile is probably the best option. Send them to Mexico.

    2. Sodomize your idols says:

      We already have that, its called “American Idol”.

      1. AKA “real democracy”

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