Xibalba – Ah Tza Xibalba Itzaes (2018)

Both late comebacks of metal bands and revivals of metal sub-genres are offering familiar yet much more streamlined, simplified and somewhat more populist version of themselves. In various ways it stands true for albums like Beherit’s Engram or Asphyx’s Death…The Brutal Way and now also Xibalba’s Ah Tza Xibalba Itzaes. While such sensation remains a continuous distraction when listening to those albums, it isn’t impossible to find even in their shallower and derivative structures signs of renewed passion and intent.

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Brief Analysis: Beethoven – “Moonlight Sonata”

Although very well known this piece is largely misunderstood, this sonata rarely sees the powerful dream that inhabits it. Made of a single theme; a single tempo, a single great and mysterious image. The whirlpools in this secret work (third movement) does not alter the tempo; as the major revelation (second movement) does not change the color interior of the work. The first movement generates everything even when it plunges into the storm. A truly mastered, deep, framed, infinite and haunting work. Whose end can be linked to the beginning, in the same tempo and the same atmosphere, in the same tone (C sharp minor). It is then that the first movement takes its true meaning and its exact rhythm.

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The Dirt (2019)

Netflix categories The Dirt as a “dark comedy,” but more accurately it belongs to the new genre of victimhood/confessional documentaries that this film studio likes to produce. Like I, Tonya, which was the first of this type of documentary witnessed by your author, it admits wrongdoing but pairs it with a sense of being wronged.

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Virgin Steele: A Retrospective (Part 2)

[Continued from Part 1]

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Jobs Are Jails

What would Hessianism be, if it were expressed as a philosophy? The idea that beauty is found in whole structures and not textures; in other words, when you see all that is there, you understand the role of darkness and how the beauty in it is essential to have other good things, and when we deny it, we fall into an abyss of ourselves and suck in everything around us, choking ourselves out with our own weight.

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Keep Black Metal Evil

We find ourselves at one of those terrifying and exciting points in history, like standing on the narrow point of a mountain ledge and feeling the cold northern breeze. The old system has failed; we are going to change to something new, although most are still kicking their feet in a tantrum of protest at the threat of change. This opens up new spaces and possibilities.

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The Role of Satan in Metal as Envisioned By Bathory and Darkthrone

This article attempts to pseudophilosophize on religious awe and its connection to black metal through the analysis of two songs that are connected beyond time. Herein, we shall Enter the Eternal Fire and Walk the Infernal Fields in pursuit of the archetype of the first romantic hero, that is, Satan. (more…)

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Lords Of Chaos (2018)

In an industry crammed with anti-hero biopics, Lords of Chaos follows the self-destructive rock star trope while sensationalizing the events that occurred during the black metal movement in Norway. Instead of simplifying the story to tell a more accurate tale of actual events, it adopts the more complex and clunky Hollywood cliché of the anti-hero rockstar who must “confront his own demons” instead of the more interesting story, as happened in real life, of a clash over artistic, philosophical, and personal differences. (more…)

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SMR – Battle upon the Summit of the Mental Hospital

When all the bands that were terrible fifteen years ago still release music, there is no way that the desperation and attention whoring won’t come out in the music. Here are some of the worst songs to curse metal not only in these times but since the birth of the genre itself.

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