Part IV: The Spiritual Significance of Struggle and the Mountain
“The most spiritual men, as the strongest, find their happiness where others would find their destruction: in the labyrinth, in hardness against themselves and others, in experiments. Their joy is self-conquest: asceticism becomes in them nature, need, and instinct. Difficult tasks are a privilege to them; to play with burdens that crush others, a recreation. Knowledge-a form of asceticism. They are the most venerable kind of man: that does not preclude their being the most cheerful and the kindliest.”
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(review can be found here)
Is it delusional to believe in a revitalization of our much beloved music? Judging by the everflowing stream of nonsense bombarding our ears for the last 20 years or so, it is all too easy to answer the question affirmatively. What ultimately makes it worth hanging around just a little longer are the precious few and often unexpected discoveries that somehow manage to make it to your stereo. Like Zarathustrian Impressions by the debuting epic death/black metal ensemble Polemicist. With a combined assault of evocative melodies, erudite songwriting and conceptual rigeur, these Philadelphians have not only helped restore faith in underground music, but also cleared the path for further exploration in the crossection between black, death and heavy metal.
3 CommentsTags: friedrich nietzsche, interview, polemicist, zathrustrian impressions
Some say the spirit of black metal experienced an afterlife in dungeon synth, the fusion of Conan soundtracks and traditional folk music that took life in projects like Lord Wind, later Burzum, Ice Ages, and even tangential more ambient soundscape projects from Ildjarn, Beherit, and Neptune Towers.
No CommentsTags: Ambient, dungeon synth, eikona
Part III: Man and his place in the Cosmos
Perhaps the most anthropocentric song by Bathory. And this is a good thing, since this is not the humanism of egalitarianism and mediocrity, it is rather a vision of mankind’s destiny and potential that should find a good use to our technology and knowledge. This destiny shall propel us towards the stars!
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Part II: The Gods
Through Blood By Thunder was considered to become the title of the album. A song with an intro that picks elements hinted at by Twilight of the Gods, herein the godless period of darkness is succeeded by a dithyramb of religious fervor, the lyric ‘there is no thrones up in the sky’ is supplanted by ‘my father’s gods, I’ll die for you’ and blood becomes a crucial element in this loose epic poem, namely the ‘bond of blood’.
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(Join Ionnas in this six part epic that will reveal the secrets of one of metal’s greatest treasures)
Part I: Bathory and the Prophecy of the Seeress
In this album analysis, we shall surf the Kali Yuga in quest for the essence of metal, the journey of the human Will from its twilight, through the dithyrambic ecstasy of life’s passion for death. It is truly, a fitting companion through the Age where God is Dead.
Our aim is to find what makes music great, and if we do, we might be able to unveil what makes metal music great. In the end, perhaps we shall manage to see what elements in metal can enhance our lives.
Tags: Bathory, hammerheart, quorthorn, ultimate analysis
Blazing war/black metal operators Sammath opened pre-order for Across the Rhine is only death, the sixth album from the black metal fusionist Dutch/German band. This includes a wooden box version of the album which incorporates artifacts from WW2 and a Sammath logo patch with a copy of the digipak album.
5 CommentsTags: Black Metal, hammerheart, sammath
It turns out that sound behaves like both wave and particle much as light does:
Researchers have gained control of the elusive “particle” of sound, the phonon. Although phonons — the smallest units of the vibrational energy that makes up sound waves — are not matter, they can be considered particles the way photons are particles of light. Photons commonly store information in prototype quantum computers, which aim to harness quantum effects to achieve unprecedented processing power. Using sound instead may have advantages, although it would require manipulating phonons on very fine scales.
In other words, waves and particles behave the same way, suggesting that pattern is more important than form, and that this patterning communicates information which serves to store and forward energy. Sounds about like most of my listening experiences.
5 CommentsTags: phonons, quantum physics, sodomy, sound
Many find it offputting that sites like DMU distinguish between music as mere product and music which offers something transcendent, inspiring, informative, or otherwise artistic in addition to wanting to be sold on the open market and succeed there.
6 CommentsTags: brill method, factory method, music industry
