When we look back at the present era, we will separate out stuff that was aligned with the mainstream illusion from material that tried to discover an inner truth paired with external reality. Anything outside of the bourgeois Consumerist, Communist, and Christian social bubble will endure.
15 CommentsTags: cold war, death metal, Satanism, slayer, Speed Metal, underground metal
Writing about a dead genre can be exhausting. You search through ten thousand bands looking for the few that grasp what the genre was always about — its newer incarnations are meaningless — and despite enjoying this, find that the good is drowned out by the mediocre.
103 CommentsTags: art, Black Metal, Heavy Metal, Satan, underground metal
Blood Fire Death: The Swedish Metal Story
by Ika Johannesson and Jon Jefferson Klingberg
240 pages, Feral House, $19
As we get past the glory years of underground metal — roughly 1987 to 1994 — more histories are emerging such as Blood Fire Death: The Swedish Metal Story which came out two years ago and presented itself as a history of Swedish underground metal. It achieves that and more, but falls short of its ultimate mission, which is to explain Swedish death metal and black metal, world-renowned for their intelligence and intensity.
8 CommentsTags: Bathory, entombed, mayhem, Sweden, Swedish Black Metal, Swedish Death Metal, swedish metal, underground metal
The task before a reviewer varies widely. If you want to be a big shot, you need to write about what the labels want, since they are the only source of top-down money coming into the genre. They will then reward your publication with advertising, it will then reward you with a promotion, and eighteen months later, you can ditch it and move up to the big leagues.
25 CommentsTags: 2018, Angantyr, archgoat, best of, black funeral, Black Metal, condemner, death metal, deceased, Drawn and Quartered, Grindcore, Heavy Metal, internal bleeding, iskandr, judas priest, kever, master, monstrosity, nachtlieder, phosphore blanc, progressive metal, retortion terror, Satan, slam metal, sludge, Speed Metal, Summoning, Therion, trenchant, underground metal
Notorious violent black metal band Sammath gained a fanbase among the black metal horde for refusing to tone down the intensity of black metal, and instead mixing it with elements of fast technical death metal to achieve an uncompromising sound. Following up on the epic Godless Arrogance, the band faces a massive challenge in exceeding what it has already achieved, but a new demo suggests that this Dutch-German black metal assault has done just that.
6 CommentsTags: Black Metal, death metal, sammath, underground metal
With a total of 18 podcasts in conducted in Spanish, programs by La Vanguardia Subterránea are worth the time of non-Spanish speakers wishing to spend an evening exploring dark and twisted music. (more…)
No CommentsTags: abominacion, Black Metal, la vanguardia subterranea, underground metal
An era comes to an end with our editor, Titus Pullo, leaving us to work elsewhere. Thanks to him, this site encountered new life, but he had taken it as far as he could and so now, it is time for yet another change.
18 CommentsTags: dark legions archive, darwinistic elitism, death metal underground, fisting, generation x, heavy music, underground metal
Underground occult metal blog Praefuscus Ferrum recently posted a piece entitled “Underground turned Funderground, and the Obscurantist Elite” proposing that what killed underground metal was widespress consumer access to new technologies such as the internet. These and the increased exposure to fans led artistically successful underground metal bands to pursue raw consumerism at the expense of writing transcendent music. D.A.R.G. points out that “the truest artists purposefully hide away from the profane eye” as the communication mediums the underground metal utilized (physical mail, tape trading, and BBSes) have been usurped by ones more accessible to laymen. He states the underground became the “funderground” in the blink of an eye as mainstream rock and pop fans who felt adventurous wanted rock and pop music with “black” and “death” “metal” production aesthetics, not actual death, black, or even heavy metal. Now the musicians actually writing novel underground metal compositions hide unbeknownst to the typical beer metaller in plain sight.
11 CommentsTags: Black Metal, consumeriam, death metal, demoncy, desecresy, funderground, hidden metal, infamous, metal underground, praefuscus ferrum, sammath, Serpent Ascending, underground, underground metal, underground music, underground never dies
The underground is dead; the new frontier for metal music is the hidden scene. (more…)
20 CommentsTags: death metal, egalitarianism, funderground, metal underground, Nihilism, Old Disgruntled Bastard, underground metal, veganism
Right now, above the metal underground there is what was coined, I believe originally by Pogrom from Arghoslent, the “Funderground”. The funderground consists of independent labels, sometimes mainstream distributed, releasing thousands of albums each year full of rehashed material or rebranded three-chord hardcore with different superficial aesthetics to fuel a bar show audience’s drunken moshing or make hipsters feel smart for liking an indie rock release with a dirty production. One can see this divide in most of the popular “underground” web forums such as those of Nuclear War Now! and Full Moon Productions. The most popular “underground” “metal” releases of each year are all older metal rehashed into pop-rock structures or rebranded hardcore. This divide is similar to what is felt in mainstream Western culture with the leftist “elites”‘ constant Marxist virtue signaling and branding freethinkers with various epithets for refusing to chant the praises of socialism mandated by the vanguard party.
32 CommentsTags: ananku, best of, Black Metal, death metal, elitism, funderground, Godless Arrogance, Heavy Metal, hipster invasion, james hetfield, kaeck, metallica, sammath, Serpent Ascending, Stormkult, underground, underground metal, underground music
