Celebrating Jeff Hanneman

by Brett Stevens on May 2, 2015

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Today, May 2, in 2013 founding Slayer guitarist and composer Jeff Hanneman died.

During his brief tour of planet Earth, Hanneman fused the boundaryless songwriting of hardcore punk with the riff-based narrative ideas of heavy metal, producing what became an important template for all metal to follow. Punk, by reducing music to modal strips which fit within a percussive framework instead of accentuating it, and metal, with its phrasal tendencies that required internal dialogue between the riffs, gave rise to a new language with the first four Slayer albums which were mostly composed by Hanneman.

His music also took on a different form because of its perspective on the modern world as exhibited in both sound and lyrics. In his eyes, modern life became not a struggle for technology and politics to dominate the beast within, but a mythological conflict between what humans desire is true and project upon the world and a hidden layer of realistic truth in denial of which humans — and human civilization — self-destruct.

For these innovations, and the spirit that caused them, many of us feel indebted to Hanneman and honored to celebrate his art:

Having someone like you to lay down a realistic but transcendentally imaginative view of the universe really helped. I will never forget, and I am certain I am not alone. You spent your days reprogramming the cosmos with fiendish guitar riffs and that has made all the difference. Even though we never knew each other, in a way, we were best of friends.

This second of May, celebrate Jeff Hanneman not only with his music, but by carrying forth his legacy of clear-sighted realism matched to transcendental mythology, in all that you do.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=es5nlvCuQPA

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Demoncy – Empire of the Fallen Angel (Eternal Black Dominion)

by Brett Stevens on April 30, 2015

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Demoncy originally recorded Empire of the Fallen Angel in 2003 and a dozen years later has re-recorded and re-issued these compositions as Empire of the Fallen Angel (Eternal Black Dominion). Having thought for years that the original release deserved a second look, it was great to see it ride again.

Recorded solely by Demoncy creator Ixithra without the benefit of a band as happened on the original, this new edition includes four new compositions which will be of a style familiar to listeners of Enthroned is the Night: more melodic than the classic Joined in Darkness, but still furious in intensity. The re-created older tracks feature better vocals and better production, giving the guitars greater power and fitting songs together more tightly. Empire of the Fallen Angel came out when “depressive black metal” was first a trend, and represents a response to that in the form of black metal that is often doomy: slow, morbid, and atmospheric. While the traditional powerhouse Demoncy riffing that sounds like all the savagery of Incantation and Profanatica undergirded with melody is present, much of this release also resembles the mood-oriented immersive pieces of bands like Black Funeral or even Ras Algethi. This album was always a more sensible method of expressing that sensation in black metal than the “depressive” variant, which amounted to essentially Burzum ripoffs that never changed riff, and now with more powerful production it reveals its strength. A listener might also note pervasive influences from Gorgoroth throughout this material.

Much of the album also uses faster material of the type seen on Enthroned is the Night: fast angular riffing that preserves melodic affinity between internal phrases, keeping a sense of mystery and ongoing discovery vital in the music. The new vocals have all of the whispering abrasive sound that made Joined in Darkness sound like a communication from dark gods hidden underneath the earth, but with the intensified production both float above and complement the guitars. While this album is not as intensely violent and confrontational as Joined in Darkness, nor as death metal influenced and energetic as Enthroned is the Night, it captures both the esoteric fury of American black metal like Black Funeral and the melodic intensity of European acts, all within its own voice. This classic not only rides again, but does so with a new life of its own.

Tracklist:
1. Invocation To Satan
2. Risen From The Ancient Ruins
3. Scion Of The Dark
4. Eternal Black Dominion
5. Sepulchral Whispers
6. My Kingdom Enshrouded In Necromantical Fog
7. The Enchanted Woods Of Forgotten Lore
8. The Obsidian Age Of Ice
9. Night Song (Apocalyptic Dawn)
10. Empire Of The Fallen Angel
11. Shadows Of The Moon (The Winter Solstice)
12. Warmarch Of The Black Hordes
13. The Ode To Eternal Darkness

Empire of the Fallen Angel (Eternal Black Dominion) will see release on June 29, 2015 via Forever Plagued Records.

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Nausea – Condemned to the System (2014)

by Brett Stevens on April 27, 2015

CD Booklet

Yes, this is a metal blog, and yes, this is a punk album and also yes, people who try to be ironic are annoying. Nausea Condemned to the System is worth your time if you enjoy energetic and powerful music of any kind. Born out of a punk album, this half-hour terror extends to grindcore and the type of speed metal touches that influenced later 80s hardcore. Unlike most hybrids of this nature, Nausea fuses its influences into a singular voice.

Condemned to the System distinguishes it from thousands that wish to be like it by maintaining a high degree of internal contrast, dialogue between riffs, and compelling tempo changes in songs that develop from a central conflict and by doing so avoid the dual extremes of riff salad and endless loop that make many minimalistic albums as boring as listening to a diesel engine idle. Instead, these songs launch into verse chorus pairs shaped around a central conflict with discursive and transitional material allowing the central loop to take more form. Grindcore-style layering of riffs and instruments gives these songs additional power.

For punk purists, there may be too much emphasis on muted chords used to end phrases, and for metal purists, there may be too many straight-up punk riffs of the 1970s style, but when looked at from a distance, the singular voice of this band emerges. Tempos stay high and vocals incoherent, keeping the guitars and drums as the center of the band with guitars leading and drums producing a pulsing violence behind. Avoiding technical playing entirely, Nausea focus on paring down their songs until a unique form emerges, then playing it with full intensity. The result is an album of short glimpses of life portrayed with the manic intensity of a paranoiac on a four-gallon coffee break, capturing the alienation of punk without self-pity and the willpower of metal without posturing.

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Hot Fuzz (2007)

by Brett Stevens on April 25, 2015

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In the grand tradition of send-ups like Naked Gun, Tropic Thunder and Tucker and Dale Versus Evil, this goofy UK film tears apart movie stereotypes and cliches while providing relatively harmless laughs. It bears no relation to reality and exists solely as distraction but serves an important role in revealing movie tropes for the empty and implausible scenarios they are.

As in most good films, it begins with hyperbole and descends into satire. A super-cop from the city moves to a small town where he finds that mysterious deaths are going unreported. He investigates and finds a dark secret to this idyllic and seemingly useless place. Because of his inner conviction that law and order is important, he takes on the bad guys with impossible odds against him. Since this is a family film, there are no major surprises in the plot, and the filmmakers focused on texture instead. Like most films of this genre, internal plot features are repeated in different contexts to achieve both continuity and contrast. Characters, while one-dimensional, also exist as people with relatively complex motivations formed from a balance of self-interest and goodwill. What initially seem like simply stereotypes expand to show the reasons behind the behavior, reducing the implied mindlessness of lifestyle choices. This allows the filmmakers to mutilate, spindle and destroy those roles and bring out the absurdity of our time.

Comedy cannot be bloodless. In this film, the prime targets are the vast hypocrisy of a society that, like the idyllic town in this film, has given up on finding reason for its actions. It operates on rote, driven by money and obedient to mindless rules, and these two behaviors get the most ire. Throughout the movie, classic movie moments are revisited and destroyed with mockery. Characters twist and erode their own character types of the type one might expect in a Hollywood blockbuster. Through it all, the film manages to make its characters likeable by showing them as relatively simple people working on simple rules that they have found generally guide them to the right places in a world that is chaotic and beyond control. While no surprises or great profundity come from Hot Fuzz, what makes it powerful is that in the process of satirizing a situation, and then movies themselves, it also mocks the absurdity of our current era and the uselessness of people within it. Like all good comedy, this approach results in well-needed laughs and increasing cynicism toward “the way things are always done around here.”

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Helsingin Sanomat cites comments on Adam Gadahn

by Brett Stevens on April 24, 2015

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Finland, the world’s best country, possesses a large newspaper named Helsingin Sanomat which covered the recent death of Adam Gadahn and quoted yours truly:

“He [Gadahn] took it very seriously. He got into the music and studied it as well as he could,” says a death metal DJ using the pseudonym Spinoza Ray Prozak to The New Yorker.

Prozak describes the death metal subculture as an extremist movement.

“We are people dissatisfied in modern society. We believe we are on a journey towards death, doom, destruction, horror,” he says.

“Many death metal songs describe a sickness, particularly a sickness that emerges from our midst, paralyzing us and there is no way to fight against it.”

Prozak is a radio DJ and freelance writer specializing in death metal and black metal, who seems to have a very extreme view of death metal music in his writings. On his website he, for example, states that death metal is “more important than life.”

Extreme music attracts extreme people. Those take several forms, with the honest ones being attracted to it because they believe none of the solutions that society will consider are viable responses to the problems at hand. What appears to be rejection of society is in fact rejection of social control over what can be done to solve the problem.

While I want to neither defend nor criticize al-Qaeda, as that is off-topic for this blog and probably beyond my knowledge, I want to point out again: Adam Gadahn was not a bad person. His early life was chaotic and horrible and being highly sensitive, he realized how doomed this modern Western civilization (MWC) is. He chose death metal, and then branched out into Islam, and whether or not his actions were correct, his criticism should be considered, and he should be remembered as more than a tick-box in the column of “enemies droned.”

Just like Josef Stalin did some things right, al-Qaeda undoubtedly has legitimate criticism in with their other attributes, which not being a religious scholar I do not fully understand. They hate fast food, urban blight, mass culture pop music, cheesy movies, lying politicians and a society withour culture or honor too. That makes them very compatible with death metal but more in line with black metal.

Thanks to Antti Boman and Devamitra for the notice and translation.

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“Don’t let death metal become death by metal”

by Brett Stevens on April 24, 2015

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Oregon transportation authority Tri-Met is running a series of ads on billboards and posters warning people against the problems of distracted pedestrians, especially those lost deeply in their MP3 players. The campaign includes the above amusing reference to death metal, “Don’t let death metal become death by metal,” although both sound pretty cool to us.

This is not Tri-Met’s first mention of death metal in its public campaigns. It also shows up in writings about riders. If anything, this suggests the Tri-Met people are at least aware enough of death metal to deserve more of it in their lives.

Lady on my bus wearing cute pollyanna dress, white rights, black penny loafers and blasting what sounds like death metal.

If you feel a need to spread some of the death metal awareness, consider contacting Tri-Met by sending a copy of Deicide Legion to this address:

Tri-Met
Attn: DEATH METAL
701 SW 6th Ave
Portland, OR 97204
(503) 238-7433

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Deceased releases Cadaver Traditions tracklist

by Brett Stevens on April 24, 2015

Longstanding US speed metal/death metal band Deceased has completed work on its upcoming two-disc album of covers, Cadaver Traditions, which will be coming out on Hells Headbangers Records this summer.

Cadaver Traditions will include 53 tracks in total, with two of those being brand-new recently written Deceased songs which had previously been released on vinyl. Judging from the wide range of influences on this disc, it will not only be fun for Deceased fans but for metal historians looking for the roots of early death metal.

53 tracks in all 2 cd set… look for it this summer on hells headbagers ‘cadaver traditions’. cover song mania and the 2 newest deceased songs finally on cd. up til now it was only vinyl.

    DISC 1

  1. Black Metal (Venom Cover)
  2. Deathrider (Anthrax Cover)
  3. Corporate Death Burger (MDC Cover)
  4. Dis-Organ-Ized (Impetigo Cover)
  5. Right Brigade (Bad Brains Cover)
  6. VoiVod (VoiVod Cover)
  7. Doomed By The Living Dead (Mercyful Fate Cover)
  8. California Uber Alles (Dead Kennedys Cover)
  9. Wrathchild (Iron Maiden Cover)
  10. Here To Stay (Sheer Terror Cover)
  11. Headhunter (Krokus Cover)
  12. SATO (Ozzy Osbourne Cover)
  13. Do Or Die (Znöwhite Cover)
  14. Violent World (45 Grave Cover)
  15. World Peace (Cro-Mags Cover)
  16. Eliminator (Agnostic Front Cover)
  17. Die By The Sword (Slayer Cover)
  18. Witching Metal (Sodom Cover)
  19. Social Security (Excel Cover)
  20. Violence And Force (Exciter Cover)
  21. The KKK Took My Baby Away (Ramones Cover)
  22. No Compromise (Xentrix cover)
  23. Chemical Warfare (Slayer Cover)
  24. Bodies (Sex Pistols Cover)
  25. Not To Touch The Earth (The Doors Cover)
  26. Reaganomics (D.R.I. Cover)
  27. Torn apart by werewolves (Deceased )

    28. DISC 2

  28. Mad Man (D.R.I. Cover)
  29. Fire In The Sky (Saxon Cover)
  30. 2 Minutes To Midnight (Iron Maiden Cover)
  31. Die Hard (Venom Cover)
  32. V.A. Rocks Your Liver (Verbal Abuse Cover)
  33. Blower (Voivod Cover)
  34. Wiped Out (Raven Cover)
  35. Stay Clean (Motörhead Cover)
  36. Tormentor (Kreator Cover)
  37. Nuns Have No Fun (Mercyful Fate Cover)
  38. Agents Of Steel (Agent Steel Cover)
  39. State Oppression (Raw Power Cover)
  40. Bombs Of Death (Hirax Cover)
  41. New Age Of Total Warfare (Warfare Cover)
  42. Metal Church (Metal Church Cover)
  43. Subliminal (Suicidal Tendencies cover)
  44. Zombie Attack (Tankard Cover)
  45. You Stupid Jerk (Angry Samoans Cover)
  46. I’m Not Jesus (Ramones Cover)
  47. Nothing (Plasmatics Cover)
  48. Iron Heads (Running Wild Cover)
  49. Stand Up And Shout (Dio Cover)
  50. False Profit (English Dogs Cover)
  51. Ultra Violent (N.O.T.A. Cover)
  52. The Ballad of Harry Warden (My Bloody Valentine soundtrack cover)
  53. Luck of the corpse (Deceased)

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Absurd Asgardsrei: possibly the worst re-issue in metal

by Brett Stevens on April 24, 2015

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In 1998, a few black metal musicians — many of whom faced legal troubles in their home countries — came together to make a recording. The result, Asgardsrei, captured black metal in transition: its epic past, its roots in punk merged with Oi, and its tackling of unpopular subject matter, in this case out-of-the-closet NSBM.

This form of music differed NSBMTM that was to follow which meant exclusively Drudkh-style droning sugar-substitute melodies and battle-related titles with neo-Romantic lyrics:


Alone I wander
Wastelands of the soul
Among the corpses and ash
A single flower rises
Kill the Jews with fire

Absurd back in the day combined a poetic style that might be called “immaturism,” a wide-ranging complaint with the modern world, and yes, some rather violent ideas. It defied categorization. Their debut album, Facta Loquuntur, sounded at times like ultra-simplistic punk with lyrics from a child’s point of view, pointing out not policy failures or physical breakdown in Western society, but its completely backward spirit and denial of all existential importance. Always on the edge of black metal, Absurd both increased the discernible Oi/RAC influence and put together more black metal style riffing, creating a hybrid that kept both voices without allowing the extremes of either to take over.

Fast-forward to 2012. Absurd — now with none of the 1999 members — re-issues Asgardsrei in a new form. As it is arguably the most musically interesting album from Absurd, combining the raw forest metal (this is the band that wrote “Green Heart” after all) with greater proficiency and alertness, it could be a big seller for this band. Unfortunately, they decided to under guise of a re-master actually alter this album. First they turned up the guitars and turned down keyboards, background sounds, etc. They replaced the subtle intro with patriotic bluster and industrial percussion. Then they either modified or added drums to give the album a constant kick-happy Oi beat. Finally, they modified vocals to sound more like the recent Oi/metal hybrid the band has been putting out. The result crushed all subtlety and made this album very much the exact thing this band in its original form would have recoiled at.

Thuringian plain, deep dark forest
Evil dwells on there in the woods
Snowcovered hills, cold winds blowing
Romantic place, is it understood ?!

Evil in the forest in Germany’s Green Heart !

Hateful savages, strong black minds
Out of the forest, kill the human kind
Burn the settlements and grow the woods
Until this romantic place is understood !

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mG5ecRXELoY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yZuRPWBbe0

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Remember the fallen (Adam Gadahn)

by Brett Stevens on April 23, 2015

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Remember those who never had a chance. Like many of us, they grew up in a wasteland of broken families, pointless wage-slave jobs, hippie ideals and grim social collapse mundanities, a utopia of fond visions and a dystopia of nightmarish collisions with the reality those denied. They had nothing to look forward to but a mortgage in the burbs, a family ending in divorce, and a society which systematically disregards the beautiful and zeroes in on the failed, the corrupt and the deceptive. A world coated in advertising and saturated with deceit.

It is my unfortunate duty to relay to you that Adam Gadahn, a metalhead and devout fan of Incantation and Timeghoul, passed away in January by drone strike. As the lapdog media relates:

Officials also announced that a separate strike killed Adam Gadahn, an American who became a prominent propagandist for al Qaeda, was close to Osama bin Laden, and had a $1 million bounty on his head. The deaths bring to seven the number of Americans killed in drone strikes, six of them inadvertently.

The White House said it was unaware the four were present at the sites, which were hit on Jan. 14 and Jan. 19 near the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan. President Barack Obama apologized to the families of the hostages and said he took full responsibility as commander in chief.

This conflict is beyond politics. Yes, we have divided into factions but no, that is not our problem. Our problem rebirths itself time and again because it is within. We have become rotten, whores to our own independence and manipulators so canny we have even fooled ourselves. This civilization has sold itself snake oil for centuries and the result is the continual destruction of those with spirit, sensitivity and the guts to do something about it. Those who conform, lower standards and follow trends always win. This is the source of evil the real thing, as opposed to the supernatural scapegoat that the credulous choose to believe exists.

Evil is real. Its name is error, and all error consists of separating our expectations from reality. That eventually becomes a devotion to lying about the split between mental image and the world beyond, at which point we retreat into a fantasy existence of mental projection, desires and emotions. As a wise poet once said:

Take your instinct by the reins
You’d better best to rearrange
What we want and what we need
Has been confused, been confused

We are confused. Our wars no longer advance anything but the defense of the status quo, and all of us hate that. We all admit the problem is morons and that 90% of everything sucks, but no one is willing to get past the sacred cows lest some opportunist step up and whip up a lynch mob to tear down the heretic. “The nerve of that guy — he said our society is actually failing. What a rube!”

Above you can see a letter written by Gadahn back in the day. It contains some of his opinions on death metal and literature. He had great taste in metal, came from a broken home in a broken time, and did his best. Rest in peace, Adam.

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Castrator – “No Victim” (2014)

by Brett Stevens on April 22, 2015

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Approaching deathcore like a doom metal band, Castrator mix invariant riff-chorus pairs with extended solos over slower riffing and hybridize the chromatic riffing of their influences with Judas Priest style hard rock riffs. The strength is the melodic soloing which, while very much cut from a conventional metal/rock mold, guides the slowly looping slow-paced riffs to make an interesting atmospheric piece. Their death metal riffs however both conform strictly to archetypes and achieve no variance, so that a wall of extremely similar sound gives way to a solo, then repeats briefly and fades away. Many of these riffs stick to fixed patterns at a single note, which produces the kind of droning that made post-Suffocation clones excruciating. Melodic hooks drape over power chords in a backdoor way of creating a groove, but these become repetitive quickly as well and have the kind of pop tendencies that trivialize death metal. The vocals perhaps provide the strongest point of focus for this band, but that in turn becomes a weakness, because vocals alone cannot unite a loop of similar verse/chorus riffs with breakdowns into a song. The gruff monotone vocals keep a bass-heavy pulse going that drives songs forward with aggression and anger. While the band write catchy songs, the low internal complexity and archetypal riffing detract from the desire to hear this again.

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