I have no way of knowing if anyone will read this letter. It joins the others which have been hidden in the knot-hole of the ancient tree on top of the mountain that locals simply call “the big one,” to which I make a daily pilgrimage. My life has become oriented around what I can only describe as a portal to the future.
2 CommentsGraveland Announces 2018 Tour, Releases Video For Re-Recorded “Thurisaz”
Ethereal second-wave black metal band Graveland will be touring across Europe in 2018, continuing a series of selected dates in Germany, Poland, and Ukraine. At these shows, the band will be playing songs from its compilation of re-recorded Graveland songs with the classic feel but without the “old days” bad production, 1050 Years of Pagan Cult, which is available through Heritage Records.
5 CommentsTags: Black Metal, germany, graveland, poland, Ukraine
PCU‘s Dark Forecast
A few times every decade, a work of literature or film comes along that astonishingly predicts the future with unbelievable accuracy. Back in 1994, we were given a dead-on glimpse of the social climate that we’re currently living in across modern western civilization through a seemingly harmless silly, good times college comedy, as it advertised itself to be. But instead, PCU showed us the world we would be inhabiting twenty years later.
10 CommentsTags: 90s, alt-right, antifa, culture wars, film, lifestyle, PCU, political correctness, sjws, social justice warriors, Trump, war
Poverty is the Price for Metal Stardom
The Talk:
Every metal musician needs to have “The Talk” at some point or another and for some of you, this will be that moment. In the world of metal, “The Talk” is the soul crashing, dream obliterating conversation where one learns the valuable lesson that you can’t get rich playing extreme metal. It’s heartbreaking and defeating but better learned sooner than later. And since a young ambitious musician isn’t necessarily considering the logistics, lifestyle goals, etc. of their future before they drill on that pentagram neck tattoo, I want to make sure readers of DMU are abundantly clear on what to expect on the financial front when engaging in life as a touring musician.
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Tags: At the Gates, Black Metal, cannibal corpse, children of bodom, cradle of filth, dark tranquility, death metal, economics, gorgoroth, immolation, mayhem, metal, motorhead, music business, music industry, necrophagist, poverty, Thy Art is Murder, truth, watain, wealth, whitechapel
Trendkillers #2: Blast Beats Must Die!
The blast beat has had a very unlikely journey through its relatively young lifespan in music. Rooted in a jazz technique of an alternating bass drum/hi-hat and snare 16th note pattern (though played at much slower tempo in jazz music), it found a unique identity in the early 1980s when underground hardcore punk bands like Siege and Asocial began using it at aggressive speeds to enhance their violent bursts of rebellion. This made it a close friend of metal when the middle of the decade saw a fledgling death metal movement getting its hands dirty with hardcore punk speed and sound in an effort to push its own extremity. Over the next 15 years, several drummers would rise to prominence with their clever use of the blast beat to either push these combinations to extreme speeds or to utilize them enduringly for an effect similar to trance music. Suddenly, every metal band that wanted to play fast or play simplistically HAD to play blast beats, and we eventually reached a point where blast beats were the most dominant part of every death and black metal song’s drum composition.
For the future of death and black metal to establish themselves distinctively, they must abandon what has become routine and keep only what is necessary to preserve their underlying spirit. And with this understanding comes an unfortunate truth- the beloved blast beat must be laid to rest, so that new life in metal can grow.
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Tags: Black Metal, blast beats, cannibal corpse, conditioning, darkthrone, death metal, fenriz, metal, metal drumming, mind control, repulsion, sepultura, Trendkillers, trends
Sadistic Metal Reviews: Poles and Proles 2017
Reviews by Lucius Vorenus.
73 CommentsTags: 2017, azarath, biesy, black 'n roll, blaze of perdition, butt rock, cytotoxin, deathcore, der weg einer freheit, hate, homosexuality, mord'a'stigmata, poland, poseurs, sadistic metal reviews, sun of the sleepless, svart crown, the ruins of beverast
Thergothon – Stream From the Heavens (1994)
Murky and obscure like the style itself, a definition of doom metal proves elusive. Proponents of doom metal uphold it as a qualitatively discrete sub genre within metal on the grounds shared set of aesthetic, formal and ideological particularities that binds together a seemingly disparate conglomerate of artists and styles.
23 CommentsTags: 1994, Doom Metal, funeral doom, Heavy Metal, review, thergothon
Upcoming Archgoat EP and European Tour Dates
Finnish war metal band Archgoat have a new EP for something to shill on tour with hipster black ‘n’ roll bands Bolzer and Svartidaudi.
6 CommentsTags: archgoat, black 'n roll, Bolzer, cash grab, EP, Europe, Finland, Finnish Black Metal, news, shills, tour, tour dates, upcoming release, War Metal
Meditations on the Death of Wishful Thinking
To be a writer, if you are any good, is to be a blasphemer. Humanity is an entropy engine because each person decides on what view of the world makes them look the best, and so the constant weight pushing down on us is that of the herd, of a group of individuals united only by selfishness, come together into a mob for the purpose of asserting their right to be different and unique, constantly leading away from an understanding of the world around us and any meaning that can be found in it.
38 CommentsTags: adolf hitler, AIDS, article, Black Metal, censorship, funderground, havohej, Heavy Metal, idiots, ildjarn, joseph stalin, lifestyle, meta, nietzsche, Nihilism, parliament, Philosophy, pipe tobacco, politics, Romanticism, samsara, sodom, sodomy, tobacco, yeast
Roots of Evil: The Origins of Metal
With the fiftieth anniversary of metal music around the corner, forthcoming years will witness an increase of publications dealing with the history, legacy and defining characteristics of the genre. This could finally resolve the lack of consensus that still exists regarding the definition and origins of heavy metal.
25 CommentsTags: Ambient, article, black sabbath, cream, electronic, Genesis, hard rock, Heavy Metal, heavy metal history, heavy rock, metal history, origins of heavy metal, progressive electronic music, progressive rock, proto-metal, psychedelic rock, punk, tangerine dream, the stooges