Sixgun Serenade – Fortunate Vessels

by Brett Stevens on June 6, 2013

sixgun_serenade-avenue_of_the_giantsI think the best way to understand the new band from Texas called Sixgun Serenade is that they are a pop band that likes metal riffs. This song features chuggy riffs from speed metal, noodly lead riffs from tek-deth, but otherwise, is pure alternative-rock-tinged pop music which delivers a gratifying melodic hook in a song that knows, like a dancer in the rain, how to pause and when to move. It combines really effective radio pop with some depth, and battering metalcore and metal riffs that keep the pop from swallowing up a realistic sense of how life is struggle.

If you remember the video for “Cemetery Gates” by Pantera, in which the vocalist had a similar hairstyle and tossed the hair in a similar way, and in which the verses were abrasive and the choruses sweetened by melody and soft vocals, the approach here may seem familiar. In fact, you might see it as a nod or tribute to that video, which kicked off the tendency of metal to accept alternative rock sounds and thus make melodic choruses to counterbalance the rage. Here, the battering metalcore/tek-deth aspects of the music are balanced by what would be a highly successful pop band in the chorus.

Obviously, this is not going to be for everyone. Some say metalcore is a contemporary version of glam metal or hard rock, but I think it’s more like a catch-all rock/metal hybrid not unlike Led Zeppelin or Tool. It aims for a rock audience, and hopes to wean them onto metal, or at least metal riffs, and from there to let nature take over. One thing that Sixgun Serenade do well is that they embrace technicality but, unlike many of the truly chaotic core/tek bands, use it wisely. That doesn’t mean selectively exactly, more than they tailor their techniques to the roles in which those techniques complement the song.

Another thing to like about Sixgun Serenade is that they do not indulge in pretense or hide their origins. This is pop music in the best tradition of the MTV era, where each song is designed to be compact, slightly repetitive, hooky and to have some form of song development that parallels what goes on in the video. The result combines silent theatre, language and music and creates a unified entertainment product. Unlike most pop music, however Sixgun Serenade wrap some guitar fireworks and abrupt riffing into their payload.

Sixgun Serenade released their most recent full length album, Avenue of the Giants, on March 26, 2013 via Dark Slate Records. Describing itself as “a passionate five piece American Metalcore band,” Sixgun Serenade comprises Cody Roye- vocals, Justin Werner- guitar, Stephen Loftin- guitar, Cody Blevins-bass guitar, and Justin Hendrix- drums. Currently the band is touring in support of Avenue of the Giants.

3 Comments

Tags: ,

Falloch: Further flushing black metal down the proverbial toilet

by Daniel Rodriguez on June 1, 2013

hipster_black_metal_flavored_alternative_rock_fanWith lyrical themes of suicide, drugs, and aimless misanthropy on one side, and kumbaya-esque sensibilities on the other, record labels have figured out a way to sell more metal-flavored products to mainstream alt-rock America: make alt-rock that superficially “sounds like” black metal.

Don’t worry; it’s not dangerous. These songs are still the same rock chord progressions we’ve always heard on the radio. The latest new trend formed by burnt out metal musicians who are too inept to fully sell out is to play another genre of music and wrap it in the aesthetic of another. You would think people are smart enough to figure out Nachtmystium is nothing more than Joy Division with raspy vocals or that Liturgy is failed ‘avant-garde’ post-rock dressed up as black metal (much like Solefald), but when marketing dollars and ads are at work, that is unfortunately never the case. Real metalheads know this is false metal, only appearing like metal, but to the American Apparel wearing alt-rock fans who buy Pitchfork magazine and Kerrang for the next bandwagon to hop on, it’s a new fashion statement or lifestyle option. It’s something ‘new’ they can belong to.

Black metal has been absorbed into the melange of the current ‘post-metal’ trend, inspiring new ‘artists’ to create their own rearrangement of pop music under the guise of black metal with no knowledge over it’s history, music, or having any idea about the expression of the music. Falloch, a new band from Glasgow, Scotland, may just be the final word on how awful, poppy, and warped this music associated with black metal has become.

Sounding much like a skinny jeans wearings Ulver shopping at Walmart for Thursday cds, Falloch further destroys the metal ethos much further than the later output from Katatonia or Paradise Lost could have ever hoped for. The emo crooning and the open chord strumming which is suggestive of a depressive hippie get together is all there, but watch out! There is a rasp or inappropriately fast drums at times in there to appear different, unique, whatever. The themes of sadness and lost love is there, and when you wrap this all up in a package whose cover art seems to portray a “this world is lonely, pity time!” aesthetic to AFI fans, you have a winner.

What’s most unfortunate is that Candlelight, a label who once released albums like Dethrone the Son of God has released this. So a once former niche hipster trend that no record label worth their salt would touch has now become a money maker that you can ship off to Terrorizer or Metal Maniacs for promotion in a big way. While some bands are able to mimic black metal better than others, Falloch fails to do even that properly, only using the genres recent popularity to cover up fractures in their pop songwriting and overextending very simple songs for the sake of coming off as ‘different’ when in fact it’s no more different than this.

Falloch is just another tool in the machine of corporate labels’ bid to assimilate itself further into the mainstream music scene. No doubt documentaries like Metal Evolution, Until the Light Takes Us, and Promised Land of Heavy Metal being shown on VH1 or Sundance had a hand in it falling to the hands of Starbucks culture, but even those documentaries have clear cut examples on what the music is all about, showcasing real black metal:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0jyfbgyfjM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfYJu9t9hhs

Instead we have people who have consciously decided to make “black metal” that isn’t black metal, and claim it’s an “evolution” when in fact it’s a regression to what existed before black metal, because they hate their fans and think they’re stupid, and want to make some money off of them instead of treating them like human beings. It’s hard to argue against ripping off any group of people stupid enough to think this is black metal, but it’s also unethical and guarantees we’ll get more of this milktoast, lukewarm, baby-soft “black metal” flavored alt-rock.

10 Comments

Death Metal Underground podcast 05-04-13

by Brett Stevens on May 4, 2013

death_metal_underground-podcastDeathMetal.org continues its exploration of radio with a podcast of death metal, dark ambient and fragments of literature. This format allows all of us to see the music we enjoy in the context of the ideas which inspired it.

Clandestine DJ Rob Jones brings you the esoteric undercurrents of doom metal, death metal and black metal in a show that also exports its philosophical examinations of life, existence and nothingness.

This niche radio show exists to glorify the best of metal, with an emphasis on newer material but not a limitation of it, which means that you will often hear new possibilities in the past as well as the present.

If you miss the days when death metal was a Wild West that kept itself weird, paranoid and uncivilized, you will appreciate this detour outside of acceptable society into the thoughts most people fear in the small hours of the night.

The playlist for this week’s show is:

  • Slayer – Necrophiliac
  • Cruciamentum – Rites to the Abduction of Essence
  • Extracts from Hugh Selwyn Mauberley by Ezra Pound (read by the poet)
  • Blaspherian – Invoking Abomination
  • Stravinsky – Symphony of Psalms, first movement


Without a doubt the Internet has been the great communications revolution of our time, changing the shape and the pace of commerce and culture alike.

For metal, the internet has primarily meant a far wider audience-reach, enabling the growth of the larger labels and festivals into massive unit-shifters, and allowing even the feeblest of bedroom bands to find five minutes of someone’s attention.

High speed downloading has made metal music across the board more heavily pirated than ever, yet simultaneously given the whole genre far more exposure than before.

Perhaps most significantly, the ability it gives individuals to both broadcast and share content has allowed forgotten bands – who, for the quality of their work, should have been classics – to reach audiences and acclaim they previously missed out on.

The internet, like society itself, however is not one great monolithic thing, but simply a series of networks, meeting points and exchanges, always changing and adapting piecemeal to developments in both technology and culture, and in-turn shaping the society it forms part of.

Where in the early years of the internet small localized networks allowed for basic communication and facilitated real world interaction, the present-day internet has through its size, speed and centralization become like an immersive parallel world, spawning its own cultural and even linguistic tropes; substituting in many ways for tangible real world interaction.

Three years ago Wired magazine actually pronounced the death of the world wide web, noting that after hitting a peak around the year 2000 the number of sites we visit and ways that we access them has become narrower and narrower. Sites like Facebook, Google and Wikipedia have an increasingly dominant share of global traffic, in the process marginalizing independent sites and narrowing both the kinds of information we receive and how we consume it. This is not necessarily a straight battle between the evil-empire corporations and the idyllic small world everyman (in the way that some activists like to portray politics in general), but a trade off between different advantages and disadvantages.

Fewer sites means greater efficiency and organisation with which content can be managed and shared, and also ups the standard for site design, development and security. The downside is that it enforces a steady uniformity on both the way in which things are communicated and on the prominence they are able to take. No one thing any longer can particular amount to more than the same little square box of information that makes up any search engine result or item on a social network feed, and everything comes and goes as quickly as anything else does in the same continuous stream.

Also, perhaps counter-intuitively, it puts an increasing amount of power in the hands of ‘the community’ in the most amorphous and anonymous sense. Facebook for example, beyond a few specific algorithms, is far too big for those that run it to police the content everyone posts on it, so it relies on its users to flag antisocial content and determine what should be shut down. Obviously such a system is hypothetically open to exploitation from particular groups, but above all it enforces a status quo line of thinking on what is to be considered legitimate or acceptable information.

So the internet as it currently exists has helped put limits on both what we say and how we say it.

Metal music before the growth of the internet had been a largely underground cultural phenomena: specifically spurning group-think methods of quality-control and organizing more along Darwinian/Nietzschean lines, wherein the strength and boldness of the music determined its ascension to and effectively perpetual status.

The growth of the internet has therefore sometimes jarringly co-existed with metal. Early hessian websites like the Dark Legions Archive and the BNR Metal Pages set the tone for metal on the internet as it had existed in the real world up until then: an enthusiast-centered mixture of devotion, and unsparing praise for bands and albums whose quality made them deserving. Newer and essentially more democratic net developments however harbor a conflict between those who represent the old ways, and those used to the confused standards, egalitarian platitudes and big media saturation that characterize metal in its later years.

  • Birth A.D. – Shortbus Society
  • Primordial – The Black Hundred


The democratization facilitated by the internet hasn’t so far created a widespread resurgence in quality. The re-exposure of forgotten musical gems and past scenes has not so much led to a revival of the spirit that went with those bands, as much as it has contributed to the stagnating plurality of lifestyle options and consumerist flavors offered by our crumbling utopia. For example, the growth of retro-thrash, complete with authentic caps, sneakers, d-beats, nuclear-themed artwork and Anthrax-style vocals – or the retro Swedish style bands, all playing roughly the same bouncy down-tuned death metal through a boss hm2. Outwardly they ape the sound of the genuine article, but beneath the surface offer little of substance, never really aspiring to do more than just reproduce the appearance of those older experiences. Fundamentally this is no different than the obvious and easily called-out hipster cult – that fetishizes the random ephemera of past fads for the sole aim of shallow self-aggrandizement. The retro-thrashers and their like are metal’s own version of hipsters – products of the dead end civilization, endlessly and emptily regurgitating its own past for lack of any meaningful inner direction.

In this respect, the internet has only heightened the dopamine-addicted individualism of the consumer society and absorbed metal into that; allowing more of us to wall ourselves off inside our own heads – where we can play out whatever inconsequential fantasy we feel like and make affectations of action and authenticity without actually living it.

For those who know how to use it – and are cautious enough to keep its negative effects at arm’s length – the internet can be an invaluable resource for both sharing ideas and educating oneself. Metal on the internet need not be any different. Enough great music, previously under the radar, can (and has) come to light because of the internet to justify its utility. And, provided you are smart about it, it can also be an effective promotional tool for quality metal and for higher standards; as long as, above all else, you are careful not to get sucked into treating it as the ego feedback loop that most people use it for.

  • Timghoul – Rainwound

DOWNLOAD

3 Comments

Tags:

Profane Prayer – Tales of Vagrancy and Blasphemy

by Jon Wild on April 21, 2013

profane_prayer-tales_of_vagrancy_and_blasphemyOne of the things that distinguished Norwegian black metal from what had preceded it was its emphasis on storytelling: inviting the listener to not just observe, but be an active participant in discovering the meaning behind the work. The elements of composition were not, in themselves, the end goal of a song, but rather were tools used to convey the artist’s intention.

By using heroic imagery coupled with atonal yet melodic music, it went beyond the violent deconstruction of death metal by showing not only that the supposed progress of the modern era has been a sham, it offered an alternative: a return to an earlier age, a time when survival depended upon more than earning enough money to purchase antidepressants and microwave dinners.

This core of black metal was something that was increasingly lost as the genre became more popular, as newer bands overlooked this when attempting to understand how to play this genre of music.

As one of these contemporary bands, Profane Prayer plays black metal in the later Darkthrone style with an old school heavy metal influence. Indicative of its generation, this track (taken from their upcoming album) at first glance has all the elements of black metal: screaming vocals, pounding blastbeats, dissonant tremolo picking, and anti-christian themes.

However, what is lacking is the artistic vision the presages its creation. Although all of the individual components may be sound, there is nothing linking them together. Sections of the song are easily recognizable and there is care in how they are ordered, but the song does not challenge the listener to discovery. Like most black metal of its age, it’s not awful, but not particularly good either. If this band could couple their musical talent with a deeper artistic spirit, they would assuredly have a worthwhile composition.

Tales of Vagrancy and Blasphemy will be released via No Colours Records the first week of May.

4 Comments

Tags: ,

Interview: Professor Josef Hanson

by Brett Stevens on April 18, 2013

josef_hanson-university_of_rochesterAcademia’s recent acceptance of metal comes in several prongs. One prong is the study and publication of theories about metal; another at a more fundamental level is the teaching of metal and analysis of metal to a new generation.

Professor Josef Hanson of the University of Rochester teaches “High Voltage—Heavy Metal Music and its History,” a class which studies metal as music from a theory point of view, in addition to studies of musicology and lyrics as literature. While most music studies have focused on classical or popular music, increasing recognition of the similarity between classical and metal has driven wider acceptance.

Hanson’s class focuses on the music itself, its history and its significance. He was generous enough to grant us some of his time, and to allow us to interrogate him about his teaching, modes of study and most importantly, how he views heavy metal and why it’s important.

As I understand it, you teach at the Institute for Popular Music at the University of Rochester, and you teach “High Voltage—Heavy Metal Music and its History.” Is this more of a history class, anthropology class, sociology class or art class?

Thanks for taking the time to reach out to me! I offer High Voltage through the Department of Music at the University of Rochester, where I also teach music theory, basic conducting, and direct a brass ensemble. The Institute for Popular Music is a recently formed entity at UR that packages and promotes all of our courses in popular music and also sponsors a lecture series, performances, and fellowships for those pursuing research in popular music. I like to think of High Voltage as, first and foremost, a music class, but I also incorporate elements of sociology and modern history, since it would be foolish to omit the historical and socio-cultural factors that helped forge metal. So, I suppose you could say that the course attempts to be all of those things…but the music always comes first.

How long have you been teaching this class?

I am currently completing the second iteration of High Voltage. We try to offer it every other year. In actuality, the idea started with a summer version of the course I created in 2008 called “Bang Your Head!,” which I still offer every July through the Rochester Scholars pre-college program for high school students. I think we had five or six students sign up that first summer, but it gradually gained popularity, and now I have nearly 50 undergraduates enrolled in “High Voltage.”

Generally, what do you cover?

Historically speaking, we start in the 1960s with the collapse of the psychedelic movement and progress through the decades until we reach the present day. I spend every other week on one of the major “eras”: Sabbath and early metal, NWOBHM, thrash, black metal, death, etc. In between these stops on the chronological timeline, I spend time covering broader issues like the influence of classical virtuosity and the blues, censorship, iconography, and gender. So, generally speaking, I alternate between a week of chronological history and a week focused on philosophical issues, back and forth, for the 15-week duration of the course.

What’s the typical student like who takes this class? How has student response been, so far?

The student response has been very positive thus far. I attribute this partly to the subject matter itself, and partly to the design of the course, which is highly dependent on the students identifying their interests and then pursuing them through a variety of volitional learning activities. I don’t give a lot of exams that require rote memorization or trivia-style guessing…kids today can look things up on their smartphones in the time it takes most of us to recall an album release date or obscure song title! The makeup of the class can be quite interesting. I’d say 50% of the class is comprised of die-hard fans, complete with Iron Maiden t-shirts and studded belts. But the other 50% are new to the genre, and are taking the course because they know me from another class or because they want to try something that is completely new and different for them. I really enjoy witnessing the interactions that this combination creates.

You speak of heavy metal having “an impressive history of censorship, rebellion, and redemption.” Can you give examples of each of these events?

We spend a lot of time on the PMRC witch hunt of 1985, and the rebellious response of musicians like Dee Snider and Frank Zappa. But rebellion, in a broad sense, is one of the signature features of this music, so I also ask the students to critically analyze how metal artists’ refusal to obey a host of authorities permeates their tonal and rhythmic choices, their song lyrics, and the visual and behavioral aspects of what they do. And redemption…well, there are certainly plenty of instances of something resembling redemption in metal lore, starting with Tony Iommi overcoming the metal shop injury to his fingers, thus spawning the downtuned sonic landscape that still exists today. I think redemption is one of the signature messages of the course. Heavy metal music has been reinvented, and therefore, redeemed, over and over again. You just can’t kill it. There is nothing else like it in the history of popular music.

Your syllabus says you teach “both the musical structure and the fascinating social/cultural history of hard rock.” What sort of musical structures do you have in mind? Do these correspond in any way to the social/cultural events of the time?

That line in the syllabus is meant to convey the multifaceted nature of the course: equal emphasis on the music itself AND the context in which it was/is created. In addition to reading and discussing the history of the music, the students spend time learning about the scales, modes, harmonies, rhythms, and song forms common to metal. For example, the tritone, or flatted fifth scale degree, plays a prominent role in the sound of most metal artists, from Black Sabbath to Metallica to King Diamond and beyond. So, I make sure that the students can recognize that interval both aurally and visually. And yes, the musical structure is sometimes influenced by the context of its creation, but the progressive nature of metal from a formal/structural standpoint is probably more the result of musicians simply trying to push the genre to new extremes, as the music is passed down from one generation to the next. Whether or not the pursuit of purely musical innovation corresponds directly to social/cultural events is subject to debate, but my feeling is that a connection does indeed exist on some level.

You state that students should be able to “define the separation between ‘rock,’ ‘hard rock,’ and ‘heavy metal,’ and aurally differentiate between the various subgenres within these classifications.” How do you see these different genres as being musically and culturally different? Is there a purpose to their difference? What is the role of subgenre, and why in your view is it important to distinguish between them?

Labels are a curious thing. “Rock” has become an all-encompassing term to many, and therefore, has lost its value as a label for music. The line between “hard rock” and “heavy metal” is very subjective, so what I do is simply provide the students with numerous (often conflicting) sources that attempt to draw that line. Some people claim that Led Zeppelin is the “first heavy metal band,” while others (myself included) feel that Black Sabbath is the obvious choice. My role as instructor and “tour guide” for my students is not to force feed these judgment calls; I want to help the students understand that many smart people have produced intelligent yet conflicting arguments regarding what constitutes “hard rock” and what constitutes “heavy metal.” Then, I ask my students to compose an essay outlining their own opinions and hand it in, and I am always blown away by the depth of thought they display when considering these issues. Subgenres…well, that’s another story. The seemingly endless array of subgenres in metal is incredibly unique — I’ve never seen anything like it in music. While I do feel that it is important for those who engage with this music to know what I refer to as the “core competencies” (hardcore, metalcore, grindcore, deathcore, etc.), I’m ultimately not that concerned about labels. There are many shades of grey in between one subgenre and another, in my opinion. What’s important from my perspective is whether or not the students can tease apart the various elements of each subgenre, so that they can intelligently communicate what they are hearing even if they don’t know how to label it.

The syllabus speaks of metal lyrics as existing between the opposite poles of chaos and ecstasy. What are these poles? Do they explain the appeal of heavy metal despite its enduring negativity?

In her landmark book Heavy Metal: A Cultural Sociology, Deena Weinstein introduced this chaos/ecstasy duality, and I have found it to be a very effective way of establishing a continuum for students to use as they come to terms with the lyrics they are hearing. That being said, it is also easy to make too big a deal about the meaning of metal lyrics, which are (often simultaneously) metaphorical, intentionally inflammatory, absurdist, and unintelligible. In my class, we have identified themes of apocalypse, warfare, death and dying, and political unrest as inhabitants of the chaos pole. On the other end of the continuum, you have mostly glam and “lite” metal lyrics about alcohol consumption, sex, and generally having a good time. And more recently, extreme metal artists have written lyrics that paradoxically combine the two. So I don’t know if I would agree that there is an “enduring negativity” that defines metal lyrics…this is going to sound corny, but perhaps Danny Lilker helped coin the best phrase to describe the appeal of metal — a “Brutal Truth.” Now that’s a succinct and enduring description of the metal worldview!

You mention “myriad political/social/economic/cultural factors that forged heavy metal.” What are these, and how do you answer those who think music has no connection to phenomena outside of the music itself?

I can’t imagine a single effective argument positing that music has no connection to outside influences. Just look at the cultural melting pot that was New Orleans in the early 20 th century, or the effects of the Russian Revolution on composers like Shostakovich and Prokofiev. Metal, too, has been shaped by outside forces. There are many examples—the end of the counterculture movement and Altamont, the PMRC, Reaganomics, MTV, various wars and politicians. But the best example is the terrible economic conditions in Birmingham, England at the end of the 1960s, which undoubtedly played a role in the development of Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, and other early metal acts. In the Journal of Social History, there is a fantastic article on this very topic by Leigh Harrison entitled “Factory Music: How the Industrial Geography and Working-Class Environment of Post-War Birmingham Fostered the Birth of Heavy Metal.”

You use both Ian Christe’s Sound of the Beast: The Headbanging History of Heavy Metal and Albert Mudrian’s Choosing Death: The improbable history of death metal and grindcore (in addition to about a dozen other books!). What do you like about each of these books? Why do you use both (what does each lack)?

Ian’s book is the main text for the class, and I use it because it is engaging and well-written, hits most of the highlights required for a thorough understanding of the music, and frankly, because it is also inexpensive (the average cost of a semester’s load of books these days is over $500!). I then supplement with book chapters, scholarly articles, films, web sites, or anything else I can find. The point is to give the students a holistic view of the genre, not just one person’s perspective. Actually, part of the fun is finding the points of disagreement among several authors and debating those issues in class.

Apparently, you assign your students listening for each class period. How many songs do you assign them, and how do you select these songs? Can you show us an example playlist?

Roughly every other week, I assign a playlist of 15-20 songs (sometimes less than that). The makeup of the playlist is directly related to the era(s) we are studying and the philosophical issues we are debating. So, we might have a few thrash songs, a few early black metal songs, a few hair metal songs, and, if we are discussing gender, a few examples of misogyny in metal or a few tunes by all-female bands or bands with female lead singers. I also give my infamous “riff quiz” at the beginning of the semester, a drop-the-needle test of students’ knowledge of 30 classic metal guitar riffs.

    THRASH

  • “Peace Sells…But Who’s Buying?” Megadeth (1986 from Peace Sells…But Who’s Buying?)
  • “I Am The Law” Anthrax (1987 from Among The Living)
  • “Raining Blood” Slayer (1986 from Reign in Blood)
  • “Creeping Death” Metallica (1984 from Ride the Lightning)

    • DEATH METAL

  • “Infernal Death” Death (1987 from Scream Bloody Gore)
  • “Hammer Smashed Face” Cannibal Corpse (1992 from Tomb of the Mutilated)

    • CHRISTIAN METAL

  • “Calling on You” Stryper (1986 from To Hell With The Devil)
  • “Live to Die” Bride (1988 from Live to Die)

    • EXAMPLES FROM THE “FILTHY FIFTEEN”

  • “Eat Me Alive” Judas Priest (1984 from Defenders of the Faith)
  • “Into the Coven” Mercyful Fate (1983 from Melissa)
  • “Animal (Fuck Like A Beast)” W.A.S.P. (1984 from W.A.S.P.)

    • WOMEN/AFRICAN-AMERICANS

  • “Spit” Kittie (1999 from Spit)
  • “Blood Pigs” Otep (2002 from Sevas Tra)
  • “Night of the Living Death” Black Death (1984 from Black Death)
  • “Black Veil” Straight Line Stitch (2008 from When Skies Wash Ashore)

I interviewed Martin Jacobsen, who teaches a class at West Texas A&M University about metal lyrics and their significance as literature. Do you analyze metal lyrics, or do you view them as secondary to the music itself (guitars, bass, drums, vocal rhythms/textures)? If you do analyze lyrics, how do you do it?

Metal lyrics are incredibly interesting and certainly qualify as a form of literature, in my opinion. We do a bit of lyrical analysis in class, and we could probably do more. I certainly don’t view the lyrics as secondary; I’m just more adept at discussing the tonal and rhythmic materials of a song because my background and training is in music. Students in my class who find themselves drawn to the lyrical aspect of the genre often engage in lyrical analysis as a large-scale final project.

Do you think metal lyrics are metaphorical to the political/social/economic/cultural (PSEC) factors you mentioned in the syllabus?

Yes and no. While metaphor and symbolism are certainly at home in the metal lyricist’s toolbox, so too are honesty and bluntness. One of the refreshing elements of certain metal lyricists is their ability to cut through the typical songwriting blather and get to the truth. Bands like Slayer may, at times, court controversy, but they speak what is on their mind in ways that U2 and Bob Dylan never could and never will.

If heavy metal has a message, or some contribution to the history of art, what do you suppose it is? Can it be handily summarized, or is it a messy categorization, like the list of attributes of Romantic poetry that ends up being more of a laundry list than a central topic statement or mandate?

Funny, I was just grading my students’ mid-term exam, which consisted of one question: “What is heavy metal?” They could choose to answer it any way they like. And the prevailing thought was that heavy metal is the disturbance of what is considered normal, polite, or acceptable, whether musically, visually, behaviorally, or in the direction of chaos and/or ecstasy. It’s hard to encapsulate in a single sentence. Although it is incredibly subjective, I think the message ends up looking like a collection of things, a nexus of truth, rebellion, perseverance, and power.

Your syllabus mentions having guest speakers and musicians. Anyone that the larger metal audience would recognize?

Here in Rochester, we are well-positioned in terms of connections to heavy metal. Metallica recorded Kill ‘Em All in downtown Rochester (at what is now known as Blackdog Studios), and I have taken students there on a pilgrimage of sorts, since the layout of the studio is basically the same as it was in 1983. We’ve got Manowar to the east of us and Dio hailing from a little further beyond that. In terms of actual guests, I have been very fortunate to get to know Danny Lilker (who lives in Rochester), and I have asked him to visit on multiple occasions. You should see the looks on the faces of the students when six- and-a-half feet of pure metal walk through the door! Danny is extremely generous and entertaining, and his visit is always a highlight of the class. Chris Arp (Arpmandude) of PsyOpus is also local, and he is incredibly intelligent and energetic in the classroom. He came and played for us a few weeks back and just blew everybody away. I have been in contact with other metal “celebrities,” but our schedules haven’t lined up well enough to facilitate a visit. I do host other speakers and musicians, either fellow professors or members of local bands, and I am very fortunate to have some extremely talented up-and-coming metal musicians enrolled in the class, most notably, Cody McConnell of Goemagot.

How much of the underground metal (death metal, black metal, grindcore) do you teach? Do you see it as a recognizable extension of earlier metal, or has it gone to an entirely new place?

I feel I must include the more extreme or underground subgenres of metal in order to tell the story effectively. Everything is connected musically in some way, even if just through the use of power chords or the tritone. Considered more broadly, any underground scene is normally the result of the continuous rebirth of metal that has defined the genre’s existence; indeed, it is this “diversification” that has given the genre its incredible staying power. Thrash bands wanted to push the boundaries established by the NWOBHM, early metalcore bands wanted to push the boundaries of thrash, and it goes on and on. It is a never-ending process of creative destruction and reinvention, so the newer and more extreme tangents of metal are just as central to the story as the classic material. Besides, if I skipped Grindcore, how would I find a way to include “You Suffer” by Napalm Death?

16 Comments

Tags: ,

Interview with Imprecation

by Brett Stevens on March 23, 2013

imprecation-satanae_tenebris_infinitaFor a brief moment in time, forces of the cosmos united to shape from raw aether a new style of music. This music, called “death metal,” brought together a total alienation from modern life with a desire for the forbidden realms of death and the occult. In this new form, a few sage voices prevailed.

One such voice was Houston’s Imprecation, who combined several styles of death metal to make a compelling and darkly atmospheric version of death metal that remains distinctive to this day. They flourished for some time, and as the death metal scene faltered and was absorbed by trend-minded imitators, they returned to their homes under the black earth and waited. In the early 2000s, they were reborn.

The result has been a flourishing of death metal here on the third coast. Imprecation leads the way with its morbid and esoteric music and left hand path imagery. Its rebirth seemingly brought other bands out of the obscurity and rallied interest around a movement which challenges the apathy of even a major industrial city.

We were fortunate to catch up with frontman David Herrera to talk about all things death metal and the state of Imprecation, who are a few months from release of a new album on Dark Descent Records.

You have a new album due out on Dark Descent, Satanae Tenebris Infinita. What’s this album going to be like and how will it be different from your past work, including 1995’s demo compilation Theurgia Goetia Summa?

It has not strayed far from our path that we set in 1992, there are different elements to it but nothing outrageously different about the album.

Some have told me that it sounds like we took the past and gave it a touch of modern dynamics, but have stayed true to our approach and sound.

Personally, I feel that it is a triumph for the band, and a proper representation of where we stand presently and a glimpse of future songwriting as well.

This album is a great triumph for you, because Imprecation has struggled through the years to maintain itself and only now is issuing a followup to the early 1990s work. What did you change in order to make this happen?

I agree, and it feels like a tremendous weight has been lifted off of our backs, especially for Ruben and myself. When we got back together it was to execute unfinished business, and the making of a proper full length was on the tops of our list of goals to achieve with the band. Our next goal is to take our craft overseas, who knows if and when that will ever come to be.

Is all the good metal “the music of Satan”?

Not necessarily, but it doesn’t hurt! The age old saying about the Devil having the best tunes rings true, and I am a firm supporter of all true hymns of the Left Hand Path. I also do believe that the music has to come from a Death, Black or Doom metal background to embrace the impious fires and nature of Hell.

I find all sorts of devilry in other forms of music, from old Delta blues to classical. One of my biggest inspirations comes from the songs of Glenn Danzig, especially his era of Samhain and his first four solo albums. Of course I am a big fan of the Misfits as well. Also I am very much driven by dark ambience, especially artists such as Lustmord and the music that you hear in the Kubrick masterpiece of “The Shining”. The Devil is also very much present in artists such as Diamanda Galas, The Swans, Coil, Bauhaus, and Ministry to name a few. At least to my ears!

Dark Descent has already released a new track, “From Beyond the Fiery Temples,” which shows a style that seems to emphasize ritual in its pacing and song development. Is this for occult reasons, or musical ones?

The song is steeped in the mythos of H.P. Lovecraft; it’s mainly visions and dreams states that I have been in. I wanted to pen some lyrics on that imagery, it’s been some time since I’ve touched on that path.

Imprecation is composed of active musicians who have multiple projects. You have Morbus 666 and Bahimiron, Reuben Elizondo has too many to count, and Archfiend is in Adumus. How do you keep the balance going?

Imprecation is the main priority with all involved. I’m still active in Bahimiron, and the triad of Milton, Ruben and myself plan on releasing some future stuff with Morbus 666, but nothing is set in stone at the moment. I do not think that Adumus exists any more, but it is ironic that all the members of that band excluding myself now currently play in Imprecation.

It seems that in 2002, Imprecation got back together with Wes Weaver on guitars, but then he split off into his own band, Blaspherian. How do you see the two musical visions as similar, and how are they different?

I don’t really know how to answer this one exept that Wes is a good friend and I fully support his endeavors with Blaspherian. The style that he developed with his time in Imprecation is present in Blaspherian, but I feel that his band has achieved its own vision and personality.

There’s no other way to ask this but bluntly: is death metal coming back? It seems like we had a decade of mewling guitars and pig squeals, but now the old school is rising. If so, what do you think brought it back? Necromancy?

It does seem to be emerging once again, there are some really killer bands coming out true to the Death metal cult. I think it has come back to life simply because in metal people always go back to the old ways. Some of these kids are getting into what they perceive as Death metal because it is what they are told Death metal is. But when they hear the reference points such as Celtic Frost, Possessed, Morbid Angel, Deicide, Autopsy, Death, Bathory they realize that the shit they have been supporting like Job for a Cowboy and Slipknot is actually not Death, and all of a sudden they have a wealth of classics to feast on. I can’t tell you how many times people tell me how refreshing it is to hear the sound that Imprecation has, and they always ask why more bands are not doing this style anymore. The truth is that there are some cults doing it right, and the Death metal scene is stronger now that it has been in a long time.

My only complaint is that there is a lot of bands that are embracing the true spirit of Death, but they are only imitating it rather than using it as a tool to explore their own path. There seems to be a shitoad of Incantation wannabes out there right now, and before that was a slew of Blasphemy clones. With that said I’d much rather hear these bands than the ones that are flooding the underground with their weak death-slam sounds, with the stop/go guitars and drum hits and pig grunts and squeals.

And I especially HATE those over-triggered drums, they have absolutely no power behind them.

The way you choose to write song titles and lyrics reminds me of 19th century literature, yet you’ve been alive exclusively in the 20th and 21st centuries (excluding reincarnations and avatara, I suppose). What books, poems, writings, etc. have been influential on you?

As far as poetry, I’m pretty limited on influences though I really dig the poems of Frost. The isolation in his work takes me to wonderous places. I also love the poems of Edgar Allan Poe, the hallucinations he emits with his words are fantastic. As far as books I admire the works of Crowley and Jack London. I also get into old Clive Barker stuff as well.

But I’m not going to lie to you and have you believe I have a wealth of books and am a big reader. It’s not that I don’t want to read, I just simply do not have the time in the day to commit to a book. Gilles de Rais from Teratism is releasing his own material right now, I just got a first edition of his book Black Magic Evocation of the Shem ha Mephorash and it’s proving to be a great and interesting read. There is some killer, dark shit going on in that book!

Where did you record Satanae Tenebris Infinita and who produced it? Can you tell us what the title means? How do you feel it differs from previous Imprecation releases?

David: We recorded it at Big Door Studios in Webster, TX. The guy who owns the studio is a good friend of mine who goes by Mike BBQ, he’s an excellent engineer and has a keen understanding of brutal sounds. I’ve been working with him for years, all of Bahimiron’s albums were recorded there. What I like about him is he wants to bring out the natural sounds of the instruments and my voice, but also is not afraid to experiment from time to time.

The title of the album simply translates to The Infinite Darkness of Satan. The album was originally going to be called “Of the Black Earth”, but our labelmates Maveth just released an album entitled “Coils of the Black Earth”. Being that we also have a song on our album called “The coils of Eden” we just felt that there were too many similarities to release our album with that name. Of course we have much different sounds, but you catch my drift.

What’s funny is that in 1992 I printed out shirts for the “Ceremony of the Nine Angles” demo with the phrase “Of the Black Earth” on it, as that was going to be the name of our album to be. 20 years later, Maveth beat us to the punch! I do, however, like the new title better. I think it fits with the vibe we had on our only other LP Theurgia Goetia Summa.

What’s next for the band? Will you tour, or try to get “American Idol,” or work on more material? Do you have other releases like splits or 7″ coming out?

Hahah, fuck that plastic show! No tours will happen, as we are all working guys with families to support. But there are shows coming up in Birmingham, New York, Philadelphia, and Boston this year. Looking forward to getting back up north in allegience with Signature Riff, Vinny runs a tight ship up there and is great to do business with. As far as upcoming material, we have a split 7 inch coming out on Dark Descent with none other than Blaspherian!

Thank you for taking the time to answer our questions. Please keep us informed about your news and events in the future.

Hails Brett! Thanks for all of the support you have given Imprecation throughout the years, all the best to you.

11 Comments

Interview with Shane and Amy Bugbee (Milwaukee Metalfest, The Suffering and Celebration of Life in America)

by Brett Stevens on March 11, 2013

the_suffering_and_celebration_of_life_in_america-shane_and_amy_bugbeeShane Bugbee and Amy Bugbee, who wrote The Suffering and Celebration of Life in America which featured interviews with Possessed, Averse Sefira and Gene Hoglan, answered our interview request with a flotilla of good information.

These are the two writer-artist-metalheads who hopped into a decade-old Suburban with $200 and drove across America, spending a year touring the USA to figure out what Americans actually believe and where the soul of America rests.

During the process, they interviewed Possessed’s Jeff Becerra twice, Gene Hoglan, Ian Mackaye, Averse Sefira and many other underground figures who have featured prominently in the evolution of metal.

They also caught the spirit of metal in their critique of society and its tendency toward herdlike conformity, along with a refusal to join in. The resulting adventures were insightful and humorous, and you can read them in the book. But for now, the interview…

I’m here in Tampa, Florida questioning Shane Bugbee and Amy Bugbee about their new book, The Suffering and Celebration of Life in America. We are most definitely not firing shotguns, drinking whisky and listening to old Sarcofago bootlegs. Let’s see what they say when I whip out this list of questions written on an old receipt for ammonium nitrate and fuel oil…

AMY: Hi Brett, thank you for asking questions, glad to answer them, thanks so much!

When did you first become a metalhead? Why? I assume it would have been easier to get into AOR or country.

AMY: I have been a metalhead since I was little girl, and when I think back to where it began, I must have been in 3rd Grade. I had a sister 5 years older than me, and we grew up in a working class community on the industrial South Side of Chicago. We would pool our allowance ($3 a week each) and buy an album — AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Judas Priest. The first time I heard Black Sabbath I was hooked. I can remember when Ozzy left Sabbath, I remember when Bon Scott died, I was 9 or 10 and I was devastated. 

We had a record store in downtown Hammond, Indiana that we walked to almost every Saturday, called Hegewisch Records. They used to put album art on black t-shirts with hundreds of bands, I started wearing them in 4th grade. That place was like a secret world, I loved it. (The owner was murdered in 1991 – shot five times, never solved – but that’s how it is where I grew up!)

SHANE: my uncle was digging on sabbath, led zeppelin, ac/dc & zz top when I was a wee lad, so, that was a start… the first 45 I was given as a gift was elvis, the first full record, kiss destroyer and, the first cassette, van halen/fair warning… seems like my uncle liking hard rock bands helped to influence and guide me, that and the clan-ish war beat of heavy metal/hard rock that naturally attracted me…. I think the metalhead is a lost culture/clan that is split up through kings or natural catastrophe… we find each other through the music… my earliest metal memories are listening to the radio in a chicago suburb and wanting the first ozzy solo record so bad I said out loud I’d sell my soul to the devil for it… I wound up with a copy the next week… kiss on TV, I can’t recall exactly, but maybe when kiss appeared on mainstream, prime time tv, I think is was CBS who aired phantom of the park… buying a bootleg led zeppelin record from the classified ads in rolling stone – these are some of my early metal memories.

What were your favorite metal bands? What made you like these more than others?

AMY: As I mentioned I really loved Black Sabbath, and a lot of what I would now call “Hard Rock” bands. At 14, I was introduced to Metallica, Slayer, and that whole second generation of metal through a crew of friends I’d begun running with. I thought Metallica, Motorhead, and all those bands were  great, but my real loves were Venom and Slayer. I remember running to the record store the day Slayer’s Hell Awaits came out. I was working my first job at a Dairy Queen in Harvey IL, and I got myself a decent stereo and bought albums with most of my paychecks that summer. I would immediately record the albums onto cassette tapes and I took them everywhere. I was the person everyone turned to for music after a while.

So much great music then — Mercyful Fate and King Diamond, Exodus’ Bonded by Blood.  I am lyrically inclined, so Venom was something I was really drawn to. Today, there is a lot of really good and a ton of really bad metal out there, as always probably. 

Sad to say, since I lost my entire music collection I have been less inclined to buy music, and listen instead to a lot of internet metal radio and even our local community station. 

SHANE: it’s impossible for me to make a list of favorites as they will move and change, sometimes daily… here’s a quick retrospective and some of those I’ve loved through-out the years…

  • van halen
  • ozzy ozbourne
  • deicide
  • obituary
  • slayer
  • ac/dc
  • black sabbath
  • king diamond
  • destroyer 666
  • dark funeral
  • electric wizard
  • sepultura w/max only.

that’s a hard thing for me to put a reason on taste… I’d say the overall thing that sticks with me through all art is aggression and honesty… be it a painting or a song. there is of course my influences as a child, influence from peers.

seems like my uncle liking hard rock bands helped to influence and guide me, that and the clan-ish war beat of heavy metal/hard rock that naturally attracted me…. I think the metalhead is a lost culture/clan that is split up through kings or natural catastrophe… we find each other through the music…

Shane, I remember that you were involved with the Milwaukee Metalfest. I don’t think metal fans today remember how important that event was, but it was like the industry conference for metal fans (not the metal industry, which didn’t exist). How did you get involved, and what did you take away from the experience?

SHANE:
the metalfest was quite the gathering point, wasn’t it. boy, those were the days… I got involved because I had a zine (Naked Aggression) and was trying to sell jack koshick (metal fest founder) some ads, I told him I could help with sales and wanted to sell vendors tables and publish a program book I could sell ads in… I felt they could profit off of the show without all the ticket buys (pay to play) they made low end, un-signed bands take part in… I really hated the pay-to-play deal and wanted to help make the fest better… it was cool, I made enough money to live off of for six months a year but the metal fest only crumbled due to too many pay-to-plays and the fest became less and less about the music and all about the money… funny thing is, I quit because so many brothers in metal came up to me during my final metal fest, they would yell and scream about the shitty pay to play bands and the schedule, telling me they’d never play the show again, so I quit thinking I’d give up the 6 months worth of payment working on the metal fest and I’d start a fest for all those bands that would never play the metal fest again… I was going to do it for the ‘scene’ !!! hehehe, yea, right… the scene!!! the second we put together the expo of the extreme, the scene turned its back on our show and each and every band that said they’d NEVER play the metal fest, RAN to play the metal fest, and if you told the promoter of the metal fest that you were going to play my show it became the fastest way for a band to not only get booked, you’d also get paid and a decent stage time on the metal fest stage… so, the biggest take away was the ‘scene’ or ‘art’ within the metal community had gone away – it became a business and was striving to be an above ground and exploitable job vs. a pure expression… I should have just continued to play along, fighting against it all was personally satisfying, but it didn’t help my bottom line and I lost a lot of friends over that war of principles.

the black metal underground gave me hope for a bit, and on the net I’ve re-found the metal underground, so it didn’t die, it just stays in the cave.

For “The Suffering and Celebration of Life in America,” which has one of the most metal titles of any book I’ve read recently, you interviewed a number of underground metal legends, including Jeff Becerra, Gene Hoglan and Averse Sefira. How did you manage to meet so many fascinating people? Why do you think they granted interviews to you as opposed to the rest of the metal press?

SHANE: we simply asked trusted sources, friends of friends… a lot of luck went into whomever we eventually spoke to… traveling with no $$$ meant that we would find work, then a place to crash, then a gas station, then the highway. if we were lucky an interview we planned from the beginning of the trip might fit in…

as far as the interviews with us VS the metal press??? I don’t see us as metal press, just press. The metal press talks metal, so they are by their nature, predictable… and about the business of their industry… me, us, our trip was something different and exciting and I think top tiered metal heads are always looking for excitement vs. business.

AMY: I think, as with everyone we spoke to on our road trip, we were coming at things from a unique angle or perspective. We were not asking about their latest record or whatever BS they hear all the time so they were interested in being represented in a different way maybe.

I had interviewed Jeff Becerra on my defunct radio show some time back, and Gene Hoglan we’d met while living briefly in LA after our “shunning” – I’d invited him to a porn party via myspace, he said he wouldn’t know anyone, I said we just moved here so we don’t know anyone either, and he actually stopped by. Turns out a bunch of metal guys were at the party, I remember one guy falling to his knees to praise him when he walked in. Averse Sefira was a recommendation from a wise internet friend, as I was unfamiliar with their work before that. They turned out to be one of our favorite interviews.

Amy, you started out as a teenage metalhead and still proudly wear the Possessed shirts of your youth. How did your friends and family react to you being a metalhead? Can people cope with it these days at all?

AMY: To be honest, I have nothing left from my youth, my t-shirts and my record collection were lost while on the road, Jeff gave me that shirt when we stayed with him, but I get what you are saying…

As I said my sister got me into metal, our crowd was metal. We were the hardest of the hardcore in our town, but not for metal, more for drugs and mayhem and stuff. Our crew included druggies, thieves, pimps, prostitutes, guys who worked for the biker gangs and other criminal syndicates. Most of them are dead or in prison nowadays.

Ironically, the very friends who got us into Slayer and that whole wave of metal hated it when my sister and I started going to lots of shows in Chicago – to see bands like Possessed, Dark Angel, and even some hardcore bands.  They said that was just noise — Silly boys, just could not handle we were more metal than they were!  In reality, getting deeper into metal and spending less time with those people in Calumet City probably saved my life.

As far as family reaction, I was raised Atheist in a Catholic community so we were always outside of society. I’ve never been baptized, read the bible, or attended church. My parents were logic minded, they were spiritual but not Christian. I was told I was going to hell for attending public school and biting my nails by the Catholic kids on my block.  In public school, when everyone was preparing to do communion or whatever they do in second grade, and kids realized I didn’t attend any of the local churches, I was called a devil and a witch, and they stopped talking to me, so I was never part of society. If you always live outside what is “the Norm” it has no meaning to you.

You two launched yourself out on the road with what, an old Suburban and $200? Were you afraid? I think most of us are afraid to leave the morphine drip of our paychecks and grocery stores. What motivated you to do this?

SHANE: when I look back I can see a lot of feelings… but I cannot feel those feelings. I’m not above being afraid, just don’t think of it that way… this was a reverberation, a creative reaction to an aggressive action against my family… so our expression to that aggressive action was survival and revenge all rolled up into one. so, the motivation was to stay sponsored as I had been with my newspapers and creative enterprises, while at the same time finding creative ways to enact revenge on the town of ely, but responsible revenge… I wanted the world to know about ely… I wanted the world to think about ely. not the town, but the mindlessness of the collective mind. I also felt it was time our art became understood, the stuff amy & I had been doing was so-misunderstood it was easy for the other side to paint us into a corner… my friendship with Dr. LaVey, the obscene books I published, the angry, pro violent art… for me, the nucleus of what I did has always politics, I have always seen stuff like my association with the church of satan to be an artistic and political movement and NOT a belief or a religion, more of a political expression… everything I express is based in politics… so one of the major reasons I wanted to do the trip was to let our politics/art speak for themselves and, not in such an abstract way as art sometimes expresses itself, I wanted our misunderstood expression to be communicated through visceral, real life, in the flesh action… so, it was time to hit the streets and meet the enemy.

AMY:  We were terrified! But even more terrifying was the thought of canceling after months of planning, and being failures. We already felt we had so much to prove, we’d just been shunned and run out of a town, we were sleeping on my in-laws basement floor. When our sponsor pulled out and left us every reason to cancel, the alternative of having to eat crow, and find shitty jobs, and get a shitty apartment, and be stuck in some awful suburb of Chicago while the in-laws gave us the “I told ya so” speech daily was more than we could deal with, if we died on the road that was just as well. Better to go and die than stay and be failures.

Plus, when we were tipped off Adam Curry was going to take our idea and replace us with some of his contract podcasters as soon as we signed the contract (he had it in the fine print thinking we would not read it), there was no way we were going to let that false metal loser do that to us.

I understand that you were involved in a community, and were accepted and valued there, until people found out that you’d written — not worshiped, written about — the dark lord himself. They ran you out of town. Oprah wants to know “How do you feel about that?” but I want to know how you think this reflects on the nature of religion and dogma. Does it make us into monsters, or does it take one monster to turn a town against people?

SHANE: one of the main questions we asked of americans was “is there a difference between religion and spirituality?”

I felt strongly that it was the religious, not the spiritual who were the flock of blind and ignorant followers who are ultimately soldiers for corporate buffoonery… maybe a simple question, big deal, the years leading up to our road trip and this question I assumed any and all religious/spiritual believers were harmful to the future of human evolution, but at that point in my life I had met a handful of decent christians and others who were spiritual and unshakable in their beliefs and it was always these kind of spiritual folks who would have no problem hanging out with amy & myself, but the religious… beyond fearful, so afraid, they didn’t want to know.

so, our trip and the “is there a difference between religion and spirituality” question, along with all of the great answers confirmed my thoughts that religion is for weak minded scared little sheep, but, now I was able to add to my philosophy a compassionate thought about the spiritual, those who find and define a personal spirituality are thoughtful, they think, they work at it, they listen to others, the exact opposite of the closed off religious. as far as the human animal being a monster, well, the human can be scary, and if enough of us humans get together with an idea to control and manipulate people we can certainly create a monster or two for use as a tool of fear, but you need blind followers to give a monster life, so I’d say it takes a manmade monster and a whole lot of ignorant followers to turn a town against people.

AMY: It did not matter that we’d moved to the northern Minnesota wilderness because my father, who had retired up there some 15 years earlier, had had a stroke.  Everyone in my family wanted to put him in a home or stick him in their basement, and I knew either choice would kill him, the only chance he had to recover was to be where he loved to be – in his home near Ely, MN. We gave up a lot to be there for him, we had just sold our house and were planning to move to NYC. This was the total opposite of that plan, but Shane made it work, he came up with a gourmet Blueberry soda pop and soon we were bringing in semi-trucks of it. It was really taking off.

Then, we decided it was weird a tourist town had not updated their visitor’s website in over three years, so we made our own, and that expanded to doing a podcast — the first one in the Northwoods, we started an arts paper. We didn’t make a dime off that website or paper, we did it to help.

We donated a pallet of soda to help the hockey team keep their ice maintained all season, and we were trying to save the school’s art program with an event for the movie A Christmas Story when the shunning began.  

None of those good deeds mattered to anyone. Those good Christians cared not for our deeds that they could see right in front of them, or the positive relationships we had built in the community. They decided we were bad based on online work we’d done, websites in the virtual world, interviews Shane had done, some a decade old.

Even the so-called artists and thinking people of the community turned on us because they did not want the finger pointed at them. 

It all came down to an anonymous letter that three or four people were behind, it called us devil worshippers. Because of it, stores pulled our soda from shelves, I was unhired from a new job, not because people even thought what was in the letter was true really, but because they did not want to go against the grain. 

We really did not have a chance. The worst part of all was leaving my dad. 

It has had terrible long lasting effects for us. I’ve still lost jobs over this stuff, it really follows you, it scares people, and it makes us seem paranoid.

A few years back I read that more than half of the kids in “gifted programs” listen to metal, and maybe that is just it, even metal it seeks its own level, there is metal for the not-too-bright, and there is metal for the kids who are too smart for the world they were born into. I think many kids who are super smart are pretty cynical about things, and if you are sensitive or compassionate the suffering of the world is crushing.

That being said, why do you think it is that metal is fascinated with evil, Satan, murder, war, sodomy, disease, power, control and torture? It sounds like the musings of either an abused child or a child abuser. Is there any connection to how our society chooses to organize itself?

SHANE: our tribe/clan may have been broken up by war or natural catastrophe, maybe metal is a base and visceral sound for the underclass tribe/clan we all seem to belong. … or maybe metal is the sound of war and those who are attracted to metal are either natural warriors or those individuals that have stepped into a mind for war based on circumstances beyond their control… I’ve always seen metal as a life force, a clannish beat that has once again brought us together by empowering the used and abused. so maybe you have a point, I’m not sure, for me, metal is in my earliest memories… it seemed natural to me and I was abused as a child and as I recall, the early metal shows did seem to be a place where all the abused and lost met up… either that or the punk rock shows, though, it’s always seemed to me punks have very different politics vs. metalheads so, maybe it’s not the abuse, or the warmth of a parent, or the lack of attention from a teacher that drove us to leather, spikes and denim, maybe it was our natural politics of might makes right/survival of the fittest that has brought us together.

AMY: That is just who we are as metal heads, we are the people from the wrong side of the tracks, we’ve seen too much too soon, and no one in society holds out any hope for us.  We are the throwaways.  

Bands sing about what they know and where they are from, and they sing to kids who know the same. If death and destruction is what you experience, that is what you will be attracted to musically. 

I never liked pop music, it just meant nothing to me. AC/DC’s ‘Problem Child’, now THAT I could relate to. A happy kid from a nice community is not gonna want to listen to Venom. 

A few years back I read that more than half of the kids in “gifted programs” listen to metal, and maybe that is just it, even metal it seeks its own level, there is metal for the not-too-bright, and there is metal for the kids who are too smart for the world they were born into. I think many kids who are super smart are pretty cynical about things, and if you are sensitive or compassionate the suffering of the world is crushing. You got to get that out somehow, and aggressive music is as good a way as any.

I started going to a lot of metal and hardcore shows when I was in high school in the mid to late 1980s, the scene then was really small, and everyone knew everyone. There was a kinship there because we were all messed up.  In those days, if you fell in the pit someone always picked you up. There was a unity in the metal scene, it felt safe. I can remember the most outrageous hardcore people being worried if we would get home okay, driving an hour out of their way to take me home, or offering a place to stay. 

Sure there are exceptions to every rule, but I would say most metal heads are smarter than their opportunities in life provide for, and that creates frustration. Not only are they smart, but they are sensitive, maybe more sensitive than most, kind of like how tribes can pick out the kids who will become the shaman, they have that added ability to feel the world around them, I think metal heads are a lot like that. Perhaps that is where the connection comes from.

If you had any advice for teenage metalheads, based on your successes and failures (we’ve all had them), what would it be?

SHANE: dream, but do the work to manifest the dream.

through out my time producing and publishing, a lot of folks will meet me and it seems they look me up and down and try to understand how I, a person they automatically discounted could, let’s say, own his own soda company or, publish books, and the big difference between me and them, I work long hours at it, I’m totally dedicated, and when the project no longer becomes fun, I continue to struggle through it and I work even harder.

as far as my failures go, they all stem from childhood issues that took me far too long to figure out, so I would advise the metal youth to understand themselves and the reasons they are angry and then work on re-directing those energies into something creative or at the very least productive… depression is for the food of the world, don’t be food.

AMY: The best advice Shane and I got on the road – “You don’t have to be what people say you are”. That came from an 88 year old lady who really knew about the world. It may be the best advice ever.

The world is vast, and the teen years matter so little once you get out of them. If your life sucks read a lot, learn how to manage your money, and plan your escape. The kids I knew who had no goals are mostly dead.

Don’t let yourself be trapped in stagnation from fear, we are all scared.  Standing still is way scarier than moving forward if you are on a tightrope, just keep moving forward. 

And, you know that saying “You got to have something to fall back on if ___ doesn’t work out?” It’s a lie. If you have something to fall back on you will. Give your true passion 100% then if it fails, and you have exhausted all possibilities, that is when you work on plan B.

9 Comments

Interview with the fan who prefers to buy CDs

by Staff on February 25, 2013

physical_cd_collectionIt’s no big news when someone who grew up two decades ago prefers to buy CDs. Back then, the shiny little discs represented a break from the cumbersome technology of the past and instead were a gateway to modernity.

Not so, now. People growing up in the last decade have emerged in a world where “buying music” increasingly means downloading a song from an iTunes or Amazon account. The idea of buying physical CDs is as odd to them as buying a player-piano scroll.

However, there are always those who don’t go with the flow. We found a user named Evisceratorium at large on the internet who is willing to tell us about the decision as a new listener to go back to buying physical music instead of digital.

I understand that you’ve grown up with the digital download generation, but have switched back to buying CDs. What were your reasons for doing this?

I decided that the overall experience of buying physical music was more interesting and fun than simply pulling up a downloading website and clicking a button. It simply started as an alternate way to own music, I guess — I didn’t consider one way of doing things to be superior to any other. If I was at the record store in the mall and I saw an album that I was interested in checking out, I’d buy the CD there instead of getting it off iTunes, if only for immediate gratification and convenience.

Do you think there’s a value in having a tangible product? Do you have your collection on display, or use it as conversation pieces?

I think there’s a lot of value in owning the tangible product, especially for musical formats. It’s not just a sign of devotion to me, it’s a token piece that I get to keep and look at whenever I’d like. I’ll admit that, contrary to most somewhat similar opinions I’ve heard, I don’t buy music to support artists I enjoy. If I enjoy them, that’s fine; but frankly I usually expect to receive some item in return for my money and support, rather than something intangible. I do have my collection on display — Discogs.org says I have 280 items on some format or another as of right now – and yes, I do enjoy talking about it to other people. I like going through other people’s collections and comparing their albums to my own, too, so I appreciate it when other people talk about their finds as well!

But to be entirely fair, I don’t have this same sort of attachment to physical formats of other media like movies or books. I don’t feel like people should be obligated to acquire every single thing they want in physical form, because even I don’t really do that for things that aren’t musical; but if you’re truly passionate about something, you should seriously consider having pieces of your passion there for you to touch and observe, because it really is a great feeling.

Do you know of any others who have made the same decision?

The same general principle, yes, but I don’t personally know anyone who mirrors my personal philosophy verbatim. Most illegally download most or all of their music, or they physically buy most of it but download when the item in question is rare or out-of-print. I’ve never done that: if an album I want is out-of-print then I wait for it to become available for sale, if it’s brutally expensive I save up and then get it, or if it’s not available I don’t acquire it period. It doesn’t mean I want it any less than anybody else, but I don’t see why I can’t wait to own it like everyone else did. I think a lot of the people who download work mostly off the concept of instant gratification, which I think hampers the excitement of music quite a bit.

Besides, anyone reading this is already utilising the giant resource that is the Internet, and with a bit of digging on the buyer’s end, I would argue that (excluding most demos from decades-old bands, I’ll admit that these tend to be unattainable) most “rare” or “out-of-print” albums are a lot easier to find than most people would like to think. Expensive? Well, of course, you’re trying to get a product that came out 15-20 years ago and has been spread throughout the world since, or a product that was limited to 50 or fewer copies and is only now being relinquished by one of the fans who originally acquired one. But if you want it, it’s definitely there. Even Bathory’s infamous “yellow goat” LPs are a couple of clicks away from being yours, according to Discogs. For nearly $1,000, yeah, but if you really want it that bad, it’s there. The whole “downloading old stuff is okay because it’s not there” comes off to me as a side effect of the Internet age: a combination of impatience and a retrospective sense of entitlement. In other words, the Internet is attempting to transcend the limits that were originally set by the record labels in question and I don’t appreciate that. But I’m starting to digress from the point. Basically, no, I don’t know anyone who embraces physical formats as adamantly as I have, though most of my friends buy physical copies of albums to some extent.

Other than the reasons for which you initially started buying physical copies of music, have you discovered any other advantages?

Quite a few, actually. Physical albums are much more likely than digital files to contain vital information about the album which one might be interested in. I’ve seen tons of posts on forums where people asked about the lyrics to certain songs and the answer was right there, plain as day, in the booklets of the albums in question. More subjectively, I think they’re a lot nicer to look at, the variety between stuff like digipaks, cassettes, box sets, and LPs is nice and gives each item a more unique identity, and for me they make me develop a closer relationship to the album than if it were only a bunch of files. (You can see this in terms of interpersonal relationships, too – proximity breeds intimacy amongst people, and I’d argue that the same can be said of people and objects.) They’re something to look at when I’m bored, admire as an aspect of myself when I feel upset, and as I mentioned earlier, they’re fun to talk about.

Another important thing is that I think buying physical items, or paying for music in general, forces people to be a bit more patient with their music, which is always good. I see so many people talking about hyper-downloading all thirteen of a band’s albums, at which point I assume those albums probably either fester on those people’s hard drives or get listened to once and subsequently forgotten. I’ll admit to having terrible self-restraint, so physical albums help me to limit myself and pay a bit more attention to everything. Put a wager of your own money into the game, and you’ll be much more likely to take things slower, appreciate nuances that you might miss on a cursory listen and be able to say more about what you listen to, instead of only being able to say “oh well duh I heard that album once, I think it’s good”. I haven’t heard that much music by quantity (there are still plenty of big-name bands where I either haven’t heard them, or I’ve only heard an album or two of theirs), but I feel like I could say a lot more about what I have heard than most other people could. Life is short, but not short enough to where you should feel the need to rush everything. Art should be given ample time and appreciation for it to sink in properly, lest we run the risk of bypassing things that we’d grow to love with a bit of patience.

This doesn’t really fit into any of the questions you’ve posed, but I’d like to briefly add that I don’t see anything wrong with people “taste-testing” music. I’ve checked out numerous bands and albums via YouTube and I don’t see anything wrong with doing so. And occasionally when I review albums I don’t own, I’ll download them, listen to them for reviewing purposes and then delete them. Free streaming and downloading are unquestionably useful tools. (Though they’re not always my preference…seriously, once you have around $20 or so, go to some underground black metal distro and buy five $4 cassettes by bands you’ve never heard, it’s a lot more fun than it sounds!) It’s when people start abusing these tools to acquire anything and everything at will that I’d say they’re starting to be abused beyond their original purposes. And yes, I’m aware that metalheads are not the most opulent subculture, but I refuse to believe that most people are so hard-pressed for money after the bare necessities of groceries, clothing, education and utilities that they are rendered completely financially unable to buy a $12 CD or a $4 cassette. This may be the naivete of youth speaking, but I get the feeling that most people who don’t have the money to waste on “inessential items” such as CDs are instead just using it on equally inessential things like food that isn’t rice, bread, or ramen noodles. When you boil down to it, music is just the same as any other luxury: you’re not entitled to it whatsoever.

Can you tell us a little about yourself, your background in metal, what sort of metal you like, and how you balance your metalness with a normal lifestyle?

I just turned 16 a month or so ago, so I guess most people would say I’m pretty young to be talking about something like this. I live in an area of the United States (read: Bible Belt) where metal music is essentially nonexistent, so that in combination with my status as a minor means I can’t really go to metal shows. I’d like to think I give back to the metal scene at least a bit, though: besides my insistence on buying albums, I post on forums a lot, and I have an account on the Metal Archives (as MutantClannfear) where I’ve posted about 130 reviews, mostly of brutal death metal or deathcore albums.

I got into metal via “the ’00s nu-metal kid’s way”. I hear lots of people talking about how they started with Iron Maiden and Metallica and trickled up through power metal and thrash up to extreme metal, but I took a much more direct route. I was aware of Metallica from earlier in my life, but my real impetus for getting into metal was Slipknot. I think I first heard them in 2008 via Guitar Hero III, and that game later led me to Rock Band. The downloadable content of Rock Band led me to Cannibal Corpse, Job for a Cowboy, Lamb of God, and Whitechapel in late 2009, and that was basically where my journey began.

I’d consider myself pretty well-rounded when it comes to metal, though my favourite genres are probably brutal death metal and the more airy, atmospheric sides of black metal. But my list of favourite bands would include stuff like Dark Angel and Black Sabbath, as well, and my favourite band of all time would be Lykathea Aflame. I never really shed my roots as I still listen to nu-metal and deathcore, and even find both styles growing on me a bit the more time passes. I don’t feel like I need to “balance” my metalness out with the rest of my life, per se. I’d consider myself more of a general music fan than a metalhead, and though metal is my favourite genre of the bunch, I feel like I enjoy a bit of everything (though my tastes have primarily been modern pop music lately). Outside of the shirts I wear, I don’t try to be ostentatious about my tastes in music unless people ask. And yes, I give non-metal genres the same attitude towards purchasing physical music: in fact, the last two CDs I bought were by Ellie Goulding and Ke$ha, oops.

Sorry if this rambles a bit, but I’m a bit tired and I feel like I had a lot to say. All in all, I think the physical side of music is a thing that goes greatly overlooked now that people can effectively bypass it, and I’m damn proud to see the metal scene in particular fighting to keep it alive for as long as it has. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to participate in this interview!

And there you have it. Start buying CDs, because it’s a great way to experience music. Or vinyl, if your tastes run to that. Thanks Evisceratorium for a great interview!

14 Comments

Tags: ,

Interview with Strider of Inner Society

by Brett Stevens on December 23, 2012

inner_societyInner Society covers metal of the past and present both in China and the world. Strider, the editor and progenitor of this project, took a few moments to speak with us about his role in music and the strength of metal that powers the blog.

How did you become a fan of heavy metal music, and what made you decide to take the next step to being active in the community?

A net friend introduced me to Emperor, Dimmu Borgir, Burzum and other extreme metal bands during my first semester in college when I was just a mainstream alternative heavy music (like NIN and Tool) listener at the time. From then on I became a diehard metal fan.

I spent a lot of time surfing metal forums at the beginning of this process, debating about music and searching for anything I found interesting about metal. After listening to metal for about five years, and gaining skill at playing an instrument at the same time, I digested most of the big names in metal and became selective about what I heard. All those pop-song formulated and chord-based music are of little interest to me in the guidance of DLA and DMU.

At this point, I felt an urge to construct a community for all the people who like me have had enough of the dramatic modern music scene and instead want to study the heroic, narrative, anti-modernism nature of metal. Thus I created the blog.

China has been steadily increasing its numbers of metal bands. Do you think a distinct national sound is emerging? Or are there multiple national sounds (regional, like in the USA, or ethnic, like in Europe) appearing? Can you describe it, and mention how it pairs up with any belief systems that may have guided it?

Yes, bands like Zuriaake and its follower Deep Mountains had pioneered a sound that combines the Romantic side, more specifically the spirit in the Tang Dynasty poems and the landscape paintings of ancient China, with black metal.

Their usage of drumbeats are in the vein of court dances while the guitar sound resembles the overwhelming feelings of the misty Chinese mountain scenes. Together they provide a unique national metal sound that is very distinct from the average black metal bands.

But the problem is that these bands are at their core depressive or suicidal metal acts, which tosses decomposing chords and weepy riffs like an emo/screamo band would use into the songwriting mold of Burzum while lacking a valid direction. Basically they have nothing to say: they are aesthetically innovative but not transcendental.

Your blog, Inner Society, features an academic but practical look at the history of metal and its classic works. What are the advantages of this approach, in your view, relative to them more fan-based view that most sites take?

The fan-based metal sites are nightmares to me. They group all the people including the self-image-showcase hipsters into the same place in the name of metal. This lets everyone scream out their opinions no matter how foolish or worthless they are. Eventually this drowns the quality works in the sea of generic. That’s why I found DLA and DMU appealing at first place and ultimately created the counterpart in Chinese.

traditional_chinese_paintingDo you think metal music is in a slump? If so, how would it get out of this slump? What is it that makes the older metal stand out more, in the West at least, than the newer metal? Is there an idea, spirit or approach that works best?

Yes, metal music is dead at least on the surface of this planet. If it is to rise again the fans and the artists should learn to appreciate the consistency, integrity and artistic (as in classical music) approach that the older works endorse. Don’t lower standards if the music is not on par with the classic Burzum or Pestilence albums, because if we lower standards, metal will not be reborn; instead, we will get a wreck of clones and mainstream-absorbed rock star wannabes, and their popularity will drown out any quality metal that does birth itself.

What is it that makes the older metal stand out more, in the West at least, than the newer metal? Is there an idea, spirit or approach that works best?

There is an old saying in China: The times produce their heroes.

I think the same applies to the older metal bands. They had a broader space for development during the birth of underground metal. Based on the melody line oriented composition mode (the usage of movable power chords) and the barbaric image (anti-modernism) of the past metal genres, bands like Slayer, Sepultura, Possessed and Bathory simply took everything further. Ultimately, they pushed metal to a more extreme and more intricate height.

Whereas the newer bands are confronted with a highly commercialized metal scene, in which most of the people are looking for the metal version of rock music.Deep in their hearts, they know writing something as cryptic as the old classics would immediately cause them unpopular(at least it is so from the beginning). It feels like sail against the current.

In your view, is there something “ancient” about metal music that makes it so distinctive from every other pop genre? How would you characterize what you love about metal?

To me, the warlike guitar sound, orientation of melody lines and poetic structure of metal music are all inclined toward the ancient. Whereas other pop genres seems to be mostly about the celebration of modern world and modern lifestyles.

What I love about metal is that I think people can find the true beauty of our world through the abstract but reality-reflecting fantasy world that metal music creates in the absence of social pressure and the false values of our recent society. Metal culture is one of the few grounds nowadays that the hidden-reality-aware people can make use of to rebuild society from within, and that is definitely worth fighting for.

Visit Inner Society at www.innersociety.org.

No Comments

Tags: ,

Classic reviews:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z