Over the past decade, metal and related genres have shifted toward a highly technical perspective on instrumentalism. Where earlier genres valued the primitive and passionate, bands now tend to begin with a grounding in jazz and progressive rock theory and expand into metal.
This raises the bar for entry into the genre, but on the level of mechanics only. Corresponding, creativity seems to have declined in the genre, perhaps because artists with something to communicate — a.k.a. “content” — now face an uphill path toward technical perfection before that content will be accepted in the genre.
A similar phenomenon occurred in the classical genre as well. Like metal, this niche genre struggles to keep existing fans while making new ones and not becoming “dumbed-down” like everything else in popular culture. As a result, it has become perfectionist on a technical level, perhaps to the detriment of content, notes an article on the evolution in classical music.
Today’s classical musicians are rarely given this choice between expression and perfection. As David Taylor, assistant concertmaster of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, recently told the Los Angeles Times, “Today, perfection is a requirement. You must have flawless intonation, you must be a machine.” A single missed note or halting phrase could be a musician’s downfall: the end of a job interview, perhaps the end of a career.
This perfectionist culture can crush young musicians’ creativity: they’re too afraid of messing up to take risks. As Thor Eckert Jr. wrote for the Christian Post back in 1982, “the very qualities that made Rubinstein unique have been abandoned in the music world today. Rather than emotion, we now have technical prowess, rather than expressivity and poetry we have accuracy, rather than individuality, we have a bland sameness.”
The article goes on to discuss the impact that technology has had on classical music, namely a lowering of concert attendance and less of a tendency to purchase albums in favor of individual songs. This development threatens the mainstay income of classical musicians, and has driven them toward entrepreneurial ventures including pop music hybrids. While this particular source feels this is a positive development, many of us are not so sure.
When commerce takes over any given form, whether art or music or writing, it tends to increase the tangible factors of quality while decreasing the intangible ones, like content or profundity. This in turn drives artists toward increasing degrees of triviality and novelty in an effort to distinguish themselves, with the result that few focus on quality of expression beyond the technical at all.
Simultaneously, the knowledge of technical precision becomes democratized or spread widely at low cost, which means that soon the genre floods with highly proficient players who may have no ability to compose, improvise or otherwise contribute anything but “new” recombined versions of what previously existed. In metal, this has been a death knell; let us hope that for classical it is not the same.
The Summer 2014 edition of 2600 magazine includes an article by Brett Stevens about the intersection between the heavy metal underground and the hacker underground.
“Crossover: Where Metal and Hacking Met and Mixed” concerns the early years of PC hacking when hackers used the BBS underground and other facilities, some borrowed, to communicate about the nascent underground metal scene. It includes interviews with the leading hackers of that era who listened to heavy metal, including Cult of the Dead Cow and Erik Bloodaxe.
The article follows up on an earlier article published at Perfect Sound Forever, a long-running music e-zine, entitled “Hacker Metal.” That article introduced the concept of hacking and how hackers used BBS culture to stay informed about heavy metal and work around low media coverage.
Although a small portion of the metal community, the crossover between hackers and metalheads provides a fertile ground for the outlook that seeks to defy pointless rules and pay attention to the mechanics of power instead. 2600, named for the signal that allowed hackers to dial out on a line to which they were connected, provides a nexus for the hacker community who may now discover its inner Hessian.
The best-selling death metal band of all time, Cannibal Corpse maintains its audience by writing rhythmic hooks and cramming a half-dozen riffs into each song in a way that is memorable enough for the average listener. On their 13th album, A Skeletal Domain, Cannibal Corpse sensibly alter just about nothing to their winning formula.
If you can imagine the 1988-1990 period for Slayer and Exodus combined and turned up to 11, the basic idea of Cannibal Corpse will shine through the genre labels such as “death metal.” This music has little in common with early Morbid Angel, Deicide, Asphyx or other founders of the genre. If anything, it resembles 1980s speed metal given the death metal treatment with extremely distorted vocals, absurdist gore lyrics, and a higher dose of intensity in technique and speed.
Songs build themselves around either a chorus or a memorable riff, usually with hints of melody, and the rest of the time create a primitive groove based on an expectation of rhythmic satisfaction interrupted in sub-divided patterns that recombine the same few basic riff ideas. The guitars support vocals which take center stage in a monotone that foreshadows and echoes the dominant rhythms of each piece. Lead guitars sound straight out of the 1970s but played faster and more erratically, and bass while active and precise acts in a support role to guitars. The result delivers a compact sound that displays little internal variation.
When you listen to this album while distracted, after smoking a bowl, or while typing on the internet, it seems rather impressive. Each individual riff makes sense and the riff after also makes sense. The problem is that songs as a whole do not make sense. They fit together, but no internal tension or communication occurs, which leads to a very “postmodern” style where chaos surrounds an articulated foot-tapping chorus rhythm. The lack of relation and relevance between riffs and the whole of each song makes Cannibal Corpse seem like a stream of spare parts, even if linearly riffs follow in sensible order. You will hear a lot of Slayer in these riffs, which is always welcome.
Metal fans love this band and it is hard to see why they would not. It is catchy, extreme and chaotically hilarious. Its subversively discordant attitude toward all aspects of what most people accept as good and natural life makes it the surly kid who sneaks cigarettes into chapel. The best riffs are often the support riffs, which work in melody and challenging rhythms, and often sound like more intense versions of what second-string speed metal bands like Heathen, Atrophy and Assassin used to do. While I can praise what this album does well, and appreciate the ear candy attributes of it, there is no reason I would purchase this with my limited funds and listen to it on a repeated basis.
Although it has little in common with the horror movies and apocalyptic fantasies reviewed here, Ferngully: The Last Rainforest won me over with its themes of humans losing touch with nature and becoming greedy narcissistic dorks who then cause the destruction of rain forests.
Warning: this movie is about 1 hour 15 min long and is children’s animated film, thus can be forgiven its heavy-handed approach since we all know that movies for children are basically propaganda from well-meaning but usually delusional dipsomaniac adults. The soundtrack has traditional Slavic folk music that sounds mystical and yet upbeat like Dead Can Dance, and this redeems much of the loss of atmosphere that occurs once any story transitions to cartoon.
The story involves loggers using a leviathan of a machine to chop down trees in the last rainforest and polluting the land. A human gets accidentally shrunk by the forest spirit (faeries in this case) and sees the reality of the situation and makes attempts to stop this. Meanwhile, the leviathan machine causes the emergence of a physical/metaphysical antagonist who is contra nature/the forest. He was trapped in the trees in a long-past age but the churning of the machine inadvertently releases him and he melds with the machine and takes control of it. His intent is to finish his diabolical plot to destroy all forests and the life within them, possibly branching out Antaeus-style to destroy all life after that.
Naturally, our heroic characters launch on a quest in situ to defeat this monster. The intro mentions the pre-history: the humans also used to know of the existence of the fairies and during the black-demon cataclysm a Satan figure called Hexxus was spawned whose goal is to destroy the forest, and while the humans ran away, the fairies trapped Hexxus inside a tree. As you can imagine, a restoration of the magic in the soul brings back the fairies and possibly saves the last rainforest.
You probably do not want to watch this as an adult unless you are so drunk that you have an irrepressible urge to destroy rainforests and need a simple, step-by-step guide to changing your attitude. I mostly recommend this for adults to show to children, who are never too young to be taught the right propaganda — and I think this is probably better than the other options — to program them for zombie-like life among the office towers, fast food joints, sewage treatment plants and arms dumps of the modern world.
For those metalheads from black metal or other genres with a medieval leaning, an opportunity arises in the call for papers issued by the International Congress on Medieval Studies. If you write on medieval topics, you may consider submitting a paper:
Imbas is an interdisciplinary postgraduate conference hosted annually by NUI Galway. The conference gives postgraduate students the opportunity to present ongoing work and to discuss their research with peers in an informal, interdisciplinary setting. The 2014 Imbas committee is delighted to announce the call for papers for the 2014 conference. The theme of the conference is ‘East – West and the Middle Ages’, and it will run from the 28th to 30th November at the Moore Institute, NUI Galway.
Imbas accepts papers from all disciplines, with a focus on any topic from Late Antiquity to the end of the medieval period. Interested postgraduates are invited to submit a title and abstract of 250-300 words, for a research paper of 20 minutes, to the Imbas committee at imbasnuig@gmail.com by 15th September, 2014. For more information see http://www.nuigalway.ie/imbas/
Selected proceedings from the conference will be published in our peer-reviewed journal.
Metal academics might find it interesting to submit here and draw some parallels between medieval practices and those of modern black metal. If nothing else, this would be a great place for all the swords and armor pictures that from Manowar onward have graced metal with their presence.
Swedish death metal/metalcore hybrid At the Gates revealed the cover artwork for their upcoming album At War With Reality and issued some details about the concept and purpose of the new work.
The artwork, designed by Costin Chioreanu, reflects the topical direction of the new album toward “magical realism,” a literary genre that emphasizes the fluidity of what we think of as a static and linear reality. Said Tomas Lindberg, vocalist:
The concept of ‘At War with Reality’ is based on the literary genre called ‘Magic Realism’. The main style within this genre is the notion that ‘reality’ is ever-changing, and needs to be constantly re-discovered and re-conquered.
The band also released some of the song titles from the new album, including “Death And The Labyrinth,” “The Circular Ruins,” “The Conspiracy Of The Blind,” “Order From Chaos,” “Eater Of Gods” and “Upon Pillars Of Dust.”
The album was recorded with Fredrik Nordström at Studio Fredman. Jens Bogren, who mastered the new work at Fascination Street Studios, had this to say about the musical experience that it promises:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0vkElvuk-c
At the Gates line-up:
Tomas Lindberg – Vocals
Anders Björler – Guitars
Martin Larsson – Guitars
Jonas Björler – Bass
Adrian Erlandsson – Drums
Death Metal Angola tells the story of Angolan couple Sonia and Wilker who want to put on the first national rock festival in their country. They hope that this will unite a people broken by constant warfare, unrest, poverty an corruption.
In the trailer, Death Metal Angola lets us hear some of the music from Angola. It has death vocals, but sounds more like a hybrid between blues and grindcore riffs, with lots of lead fills and a more relaxed rhythm. As death metal and related genres seem to adapt to local cultures and musical preferences wherever they go, this provides an interesting insight into Angolan music.
The film will see theatrical release in early November and is being described as both a film about death metal and a film about war.
Assuredly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the sons of men, and whatever blasphemies they may utter; but he who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is subject to eternal condemnation. — Mark 3:29
Many metal bands feature occultist or Satanic imagery and lyrics. However, some metal bands took this Bible verse as a challenge and created blasphemy on a theological level, denying God with a philosophical basis.
Since metal has always been fervently anti-dogma and a firm believer in a boundaryless existence, the notion of sin is, in itself, a sin. Here are five anthems of rejection that took the final step and committed the unpardonable sin.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9P99BCrKgc
Incantation – “Rotting Spiritual Embodiment” (Onward to Golgotha)
Taking a mortalistic approach, Rotting Spiritual Embodiment claims that the Holy Spirit dies with the body that it inhabits, thus affirming an absence of all metaphysics and a sheer physical basis to life itself. This form of materialism proves more dominating than even atheism as it denies the basis for a holy presence and argues instead that it is mere physical illusion. The crushing and darkened power chords seem to compel the embodiment — the physical form of the spirit — further and further into obscurity.
Holy apparition, seeking death to save.
Sins of the flesh, the cadaver is unfit.
Penetrate the mind and body, spirit is incarnated.
Spiritual entrapment.
Spiritual deformity…
Foolish ghost of god.
Embodied with the putrid corpse.
Trapped within the flesh.
Forever rots in misery…
Morbid Angel – “Blasphemy” (Altars of Madness)
A call to arms for blasphemy and a declaration of a life free from the clutches of religious dogma, this song takes a straightforward approach to blasphemy through invective condemning God and arguing for his invalidity. It also directly blasphemes the holy spirit in the chorus. Complete with Satanic and Thelemic philosophy, this is a sonic symphony straight from the fiery depths.
I am the god of gods
Master of the art
I desecrate the chaste
Writhe in the flesh
Blasphemy
Chant the blasphemy
Mockery of the messiah
We curse the holy ghost
Enslaver of the weak
God of lies and greed
God of hypocrisy
We laugh at your bastard child
No god shall come before me
Blaspheme the ghost
Blasphemy of the holy ghost
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law
Rebel against the church
Drink from the chalice of blasphemy
Rise up against the enslaver
Immolation – “I Feel Nothing” (Here in After)
Immolation, while anti-religious, never took much of a Satanic approach to their opposition. They present their views from a more atheistic standpoint, and in the pulverizing song, “I Feel Nothing,” Immolation pose the question: Where is the Holy Spirit? The song describes a person who cannot feel the Holy Spirit within them and they refuses to force themselves to believe, so they reject its existence along with the rest of the trinity.
Your prayers,
I don’t feel them in my heart
It is not hate
That I stare coldly at the son of god
I can not force the blood of Christ
To flow through me
God is love and his love is dead
Drown your sorrows in prayer
But your prayers will never change the world
I separate myself
From those who chase the spirit
I can’t fall to my knees
And pretend like all the rest
This is a soul that doesn’t need saving
Their paradise not mine; an illusion I will not believe
Divine presence of perfection, turns sour in my gaze
Why should I feel compassion for the suffering of your God
For all the pain he allows, I give him what he deserves
In the name of the Father,
In the name of the Son
Where is the Holy Spirit, I feel nothing
As I stare upon the crucifix, I feel nothing for a God I never knew
I refuse to embrace, and live by his word
I take not of his body
I take not of his blood
I don’t need salvation
Or his forgiveness
I don’t want his kingdom
My kingdom is here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEb8S49w-Oc
Deicide – “Behead the Prophet (No Lord Shall Live)” (Legion)
When you think of blasphemous death metal, Deicide undoubtedly comes to mind among the first few entries. Not only does the band name advocate the murder of God but the entire approach of the band denies any form of inherent or mystical order. In “Behead the Prophet (No Lord Shall Live),” Deicide describe the Holy Spirit as foredoomed and proclaim a devilish victory over the holy.
Deny resurrection, behead the Nazarene son
Foredoomed holy spirit, our war at last be won
Legion crush Jehovah, see through the faceless dog
Untie our world from Satan
You know it can’t be done
Wipe away this world of unworth
Decapitation, Satanic rebirth
Off with his head to sever his soul
Beheaded prophet the suffer is yours
“Forever…..”
Virgin, mother murdered, once warned but now is dead
Destroyed heaven’s kingdom, in flames the righteous fled
Legion, thou has waited, to face the sacred dog
Satan’s revelation, this world will always be ours
End of god the way it must be
Behead the prophet, let Satan free…
No god, no lord shall live
What always has should never been
No god, no lord shall live
Behead the prophet and we win
No man to begotten, infant Jesus dead
End of god forever, cast among the souls of Hell
Thou who has imprisoned, suffer by your own demise
Execrate the revelation, MASTER SATAN RISE!
Deny resurrection, behead the Nazarene son
Foredoomed holy spirit, our war at last be won
Legion crush Jehovah, see through the faceless dog
Untie our world from Satan
You know it can’t be done
No god, no lord shall live
What always has should never been
No god, no lord shall live
Behead the prophet and we win
No man to begotten, infant Jesus dead
End of god forever, cast among the souls of Hell
Thou who has imprisoned,
Execrate the revelation,
MASTER SATAN RISE!
Havohej – “Dethrone the Son of God” (Dethrone the Son of God)
Concluding this list is a cold and blasphemous sermon from the great Paul Ledney of Profanatica, Havohej, Incantation and Revenant among others. To go too far in depth about this piece would be to undermine its experiential value to new listeners. I’ll say only this: “Dethrone the Son of God” is the spirit of rejection translated into a litany embracing hell over the “pure” but delusional spirit of believers.
Rip the sacred flesh
Sodomize the holy asshole
Drink the red blood of the mother of earth
Masturbation on the dead body of Christ
The king of Jews is dead
and so are the lies
Vomit on the host of Heaven
Masturbate on the throne of God
Break the seals of angels
Drink the sweet blood of Christ
Taste the flesh of the priest
Sodomize holy nuns
The king of Jews is a liar
The Heavens will burn
Dethrone the son of God
God is dead
Holyness is gone
Purity is gone
Prayers are burned
Covered in black shit
Rape the holy ghost
Unclean birth of Jesus Christ
Heaven will fall
Fuck the church
Fuck Christ
Fuck the Virgin
Fuck the gods of Heaven
Fuck the name of Jesus
Who am I to criticize wide and frequent use of technology? It has brought great benefits and much landfill, as well as seeming to fill our time with activities that are both “work” and “fun” at the same moment. It has made life easier, and made the list of stuff to do longer. I suppose it is a mixed bag.
In general, I am fond of MP3s. “Try before buy” provides a great principle for buying music that in theory would lead to the rejection of the usual stuff and embrace of the distinctive and elevated. This would (again, in theory) give consumers better music and give small bands a chance against big industry bands.
In practice, people simply become overwhelmed with the sheer amount of stuff, which spams their brains, and thus they download a ton and a half of metal and listen to all of it once, which leads to the conclusion that it is all about the same in value. In turn, that causes them to stop worrying about quality and to download anything above “barely acceptable” and put it on their playlist. This favors the big industry, which can use its advertising power to overwhelm those spammed brains and so people go back to the 1980s condition of buying whatever is advertised and ex post facto finding a way to like it.
So, maybe MP3s are not the savior of the music industry. And a relatively recent Abigor interview raises another point: MP3s ruin our appreciation of the album as a whole as if it were a communication from a band to its audience. Instead, we are awash in easily queued and listened music, which by reducing our effort in hearing it reduces our ability to perceive it.
[E]verything should be viewed as one piece of art, not just the sound that’s coming out of a studio in whatsoever form, be it vinyl, CD, a file (originating “from the connection in the wall”, that’s the horizon teenagers have these days.
They don’t care and they’re not as informed as we were – when we liked certain albums back then we knew the lyrics, could draw the logo and knew every dot on the cover or who was in the thanx list. Today it’s about a track in the MP3 playlist only, albums matter less and less). An MP3 player can’t capture, it simply isn’t, such a piece of art. People tear individual tracks out of the album context to an MP3 playlist and the music looses it’s meaning and also it’s value.
How much is such an MP3 worth? Nothing. And therefore people lose respect of the artist’s work as well. They forget that this soundfile actually has a history full of sweat and blood, and quiet some people put in a lot of money before the first cent comes back from sales, all this seems like a long lost echo when I hear people talk about their MP3s. People that talk about their record collection have a different access.
All of this reminds me of the “bad old days” before the internet and underground alike when people heard new stuff on the radio and listened to that without even thinking there might be an option. The same four companies owned every radio station in the major cities, and the same six labels owned everything played by those radio stations. Not much has changed, except that what is driving people to that same old stuff is the vast amount of musical spam coming out in MP3 format designed for people who cannot tell the difference between plausible and mediocre music.
Every metal fan knows it: the look of incredulity on someone’s face when halfway through a conversation you mention that you listen to heavy metal. It’s a look that says, “Hmm… He seemed otherwise sane and cultured when we were just talking… Didn’t notice he had any problems understanding society’s unspoken rules on personal space or (sniff) hygiene… Why would he listen to that neanderthal drivel?”
That look presupposes a tired old trope of modern culture which is that the enlightened listen only to sensitive indie bands who sing about either love or “social issues.” These bands sing softly and semi-ironically about real world things like love, heartache, drugs or the quest for world peace. In contrast, metal embraces comically violent and magical subjects fit only for basement-dwelling neckbeards who play D&D on Saturday nights and rednecks who wear kitschy looking t-shirts with pictures of wolves howling at the moon on them. This “enlightened” mentality is similar to the trendy outlook that presumes all smart people should care about the same fashionable political causes.
I listen to metal music with its fantastic lyrics and imagery — rather than music with lyrics about real world stuff or political fashions — because it’s an escape. After I’m done hearing about the dramas of my friends, co-workers and families the last thing I want to do on my own time is listen to someone else croon about all their problems. Real world subjects are depressing to hear about precisely because they’re so commonplace and everyday. This includes the political, because the only reason people talk, sing or demonstrate about political issues is to make themselves look cool, which is a way to get new girlfriends, meet drug connections and gather around a social group.
Metal to me is anything but escapist. It is metaphorically accurate where the idea that human drama describes the universe is solipsistic. Nature is mercilessly hostile to human life, which can be snuffed out at any minute and one day inevitably will be. I spend much of my time contemplating the finality of death and the implications it has for our everyday choices and morality. Metal music by focusing on the bigger things — and by having an often ruthlessly dark sense of humour about human frailty — reminds me of the bigger questions in life and reflects the topics I think are really worth talking about.
Even more, metal gives a certain hope by expanding our view of the world beyond personal drama and political fashion. In a society where secularism and scientific rationalism have all but won out, it’s nearly impossible to believe there is anything magical or esoteric about the world. Whilst I am quite happy we live in a time when backwoods superstitions are not the basis of our science and medicine, there is something nonetheless dispiriting knowing there’s no such thing as miracles, no demons or sorcery, and no great cosmic quest to set ourselves to, just the weekday commute and a beer in front of the TV whilst watching sports on the weekend. That we live in a universe ordered by mathematics and the office timesheet. I think most metalheads recognise this and secretly yearn for an excuse to be able to see their world in terms of something grand and magical, whether that be through the prism of The Lord of the Rings style epics or by believing that reality is all ultimately a battle of wills between God and Satan.
H.P. Lovecraft, who is not surprisingly the biggest influence on metal lyrics in literature, articulated this kind of feeling about the modern rational age better than anyone else. A fervent advocate of the secular and scientific way of thinking as the only way to understand our universe, Lovecraft nonetheless posed his fiction as a great cosmic gambit: what if we’re wrong and the universe is in fact populated by powerful forces and beings beyond our control and far beyond the possibility of our comprehension? In other words, what if what we think is “rational” is in fact our own human projection and nothing else, and we will not find out until something dark and unseen attacks? Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!
For me, what begins as a question of why someone would listen to Ildjarn and not The Smiths ultimately boils down to how one views the world: either to see everything as knowable and within the grasp of human understanding, if we only figure out the maths behind it; or through the metal lens which views humans as tiny, arrogant and probably doomed. The former to me seems painfully dull and conformist, whilst the latter is dangerous but leaves plenty of possibilities open and ready to be explored. This is not a dichotomy between science and religion, because metalheads accept science, but a question of forward decisions: looking to what is important, what paths we should explore, and what might inspire us to be “better,” instead of merely safe, logical and inoffensive as science can advise us to be.
This conflict exists between a worldview that is hubristic about the capabilities of humanity (“Peace, science and John Lennon CDs will save the world!”) and a worldview that is more suspicious of straight and narrow paths. This second worldview that thinks there is always an undiscovered frontier over the next hill, always a need to veer off the well-trodden path, always going to be a reason to have to get your hands dirty. A worldview that embraces the inconveniences, imperfections and overall strangeness of being alive as actually part of the beauty of it. It rediscovers humanity by escaping our notion of humanity as perfect and instead looks to a universe of perpetual conflict and destruction for meaning. This is the world of metal and it is more real than your safe and trendy indie rock will ever pretend to be.
