Hipster alternative rock band Bolzer blew up at Death Metal Underground on their Funbook page for telling the world what the first preview track, “I AM III”, from their upcoming album Hero actually was: vocal harmony focused alternative rock with generic riffing in the middle for no reason other than to pretend that their random music is metal and to “connect” two unrelated rock parts. Our staff’s commentary is after the jump.
So Death Metal Underground are basement-dwelling troglodytes who pump Massacra all day? Thanks Daria. Bolzer are advancing pseudo-metal and music toward what exactly with their random rock songs? Records the 15 to 32 year old male demographic will tolerate but not pay full attention to while simultaneously commuting and swiping on Tindr?
Death Metal Underground is super serious about what bands like Bolzer really are: disposable garbage with two worthwhile riffs totaling less than ninety seconds of music per record. Ritalin, Adderall, and Michael Bay have lowered the attention span of the millennial generation to that of a small toy dog; they eat substandard crap like Bolzer up for two weeks before randomizing their playlist and having the fifteen second compressed commercial jingle pop up again next year.
The commentator Rayner correctly notes that Bolzer are land whales of the hipster, black ‘n’ roll scene. Due to Bolzer’s warranted low self-esteem, any negative feedback results in emotional outbursts. Bolzer display the typical, unusual “May I speak to the manager?” tattoos, piercings, and hairstyles favored by unemployable, pushing 40 year olds attempting to enter into cuckholded polyamorous relationships with overweight thirty year olds with pixie haircuts and thick-rimmed glasses.
Humans are meat too! What will Bolzer do when they read our Sadistic Metal Review of Hero? Threaten to commit harakiri with their samurai sword handle umbrella? Drink themselves to death on IPAs and flavored vodka? Bolzer will probably just eat an entire bag of Chips Ahoy!, spilling the crumbs into their keyboards for the rats in their sub-standard hovels, as they’re posting on social media about how badly Death Metal Underground “triggered them” with our “elitist disdain” for their pitiful attempts at imitating Alice in Chains.
Tags: alternative rock, Bolzer, crypto-indie, death metal underground, facebook, hard rock, Hero, hipster bullshit, hipsters, Iron Bonehead Productions, nu-metal
DEATH TO FALSE METAL
MAKE HEAVY METAL GREAT AGAIN!
Whatever I still like me some Roman Acupuncture and Aura from time to time. Let em make whatever the fuck they want now I don’t give a shit.
Granted, we all have some guilty pleasures when it comes to music. However, this does not mean that it (metal/music) should stop striving for the upper echelon of compositional greatness. Nor does it mean that we should stop calling out novelty bullshit like Bölzer for faking their way into metal by means of lackluster AOR-riffs payed backwards… MOCK THE IMPOSTORS!
Well from the first two releases I thought Bölzer were going in a great direction and I had hoped they would build off of what they captured on Aura, especially Entranced by the Wolfshook. Fast, catchy, pummeling riffs but nope. Soma wasn’t bad but just average and now their sound feels too far from Aura and RA so I’ve lost interest. Seems like they aren’t even a metal band anymore. If they had built off of Aura I believe they would have had a good full length. I understand what you mean but sometimes I think novelty bands are useful. Steers trendies away from actual quality underground metal.
I heard the song you mentioned (Entranced by the Wolfshook) – this is what would happen if Incantation sold out and turned into Gojira. I don’t know if this could be called metal; it seems like something geared towards the Neurosis/indie (hipster) crowd. A Profound Lore version of Fallujah? Anyway, I see this band getting a lot of positive attention recently and this is pretty dismal stuff.
I mean to each their own but it was definitely not geared toward that crowd initially I believe. When those two releases were out I only recall those on the NWN forum praising the band but now many have caught on. The band played many fests and toured with big names giving them a much wider audience.
Jesus, nice teenage female,mallcore, comb over. Can’t leave out the anti racist,esoteric,reclaimed Swazi tatt.
Give me a fucking break.
Before anyone cries that pointing out someone’s appearance is both superficial and juvenile,and does nothing to add to the discussion of music, I think Bolzer sucks. I’ve always thought their gimmick was lame and on the same level as people dressing up in “ethnic” clothes at tourist destinations,so rubes can feel cultured. Their music itself is boring and one dimensional,and they rose to popularity riding the 2010s “war metal” wave much in the same way Diocletian did.
You guys seem pretty triggered that the band haven’t started crying and jumping up at down, pathetically clinging onto the one supportive comment and blowing it way out of proportion in an attempt to validate your worthless crock of shit word salad about the (sub par) new single.
Heh, ur name is “period”, das funneh, cuz u sound like u need to change ur tampon.
Old Bolzer is decent metal. I, but never excited me, seemed just another typical NWN fad band.
Bolzer now are either delusional or con men, to think this track “I AM III” is anything more than 1980s-type indie rock/post punk, with a slight industrial flavor, like Killing Joke.
Yeah, it has SOME indication of black metal/death metal, but not enough for us, the diehard fans.
Is that a “fad” like a “trend” as in “no mosh, no core, no trends, no fun”?
It’s about this simple: if I wanna listen to metal, I’ll listen to Slayer or Mercyful Fate or [etc…]
If I wanna listen to indie rock, I’ll listen to Dinosaur Jr or The Replacements or something.
I don’t need the two mushed together into a compromised bland mishmash.
I remember when Bolzer played mdf 2014 and a bunch of people were raving about them that year. They were playing at the same time Dark Angel was and I was much more interested in seeing a watered down version of Dark Angel than I was in seeing Bolzer. They were never a band that sparked my interest. There are many nwn war metal bands that are supreme to Bolzer at even their best moments.
I was there, they played after Dark Angel and before Asphyx, and some people were visibly annoyed with them while a core around the stage were losing their minds. I don’t remember them much, actually a boring overtly serious band with bald guys and zero fucking riffs played that night as well, some fucking hyped up bullshit that was relentlessly boring as fuck. I really don’t get flash in the pan hype in the underground, it feels like people are forcing enthusiasm out of desperation, popular bands are always obnoxious and shitty. Also anytime there is backlash against this site the attacks are always way off target showing they don’t even remotely understand what is going on here. Reading the FB comments it’s like Bolzer goes “look they don’t like us because they’re losers” and their defenders are like dumb stockholder greaser girlfriends on their arms going “yeah yeah I know aren’t they soooo stupid!” while constantly looking back with a dumb smile hoping for approval (and in reality favors, praise and adoration on FB are rewarded with favors). Even if you hate this site you have to admit there is more going on here than mindless asskissing and empty socializing.
I concur.
When balding,the sidecut thing just looks more retarded….i didnt know that was possible til i saw that pic.
Anyways thanks for the reminder of why I’ll continue to avoid facehook like the plague,a site full of whiney sjw fags jacking eachother off in the comments,providing moral support when “the meanieheads” don’t give them a participation trophy for their failed effort.
Someone should pay a couple crackheads to go to a bolzer show & fling their own shit at the band while screaming ” here’s an honest review of your music”.
Maybe you should get in touch with that Foval guy that got fired after being caught on camera bragging about how badass he was to pay off homeless people to start shit at Trump rallies. He can probably hook ya up.
The band may be silly sellouts pimping lounge rock, but the people in that thread are deranged idiots who are in total denial of reality. No wonder the best explanation for a differing opinion that they can come up with is “u is troll site.”
It’s hugbox culture. Where every criticism can be dismissed as “hate.”
One of the worst side effects of the internet is how if you use it with enough confirmation bias, you can totally insulate yourself from all differing perspectives to the point where you basically can’t rationally disagree with other humans anymore.
also, are you voting this year?
Xenophobia is bad. Antisemitism is bad too. Even though Israel has border control about 100 times more strict than in the US and even though Hasidic Judaism is one of the most ethnocentric, tribalistic ideologies on Earth. But that’s complicated and stuff.
Those things that you mentioned are only bad when Europeans do it.
Especially European men.
Of course, you can be proud to be anything except a white heterosexual male.
Why do you (want to) feel proud of genetic accidents you’ve done nothing to accomplish? More colloquially put: »Gay pride« is gay.
I agree about not feeling pride for achivements which do not reflect on you.
But in this case, I agree with this nationalistic homophobe’s sentiment.
Pride is not what should be felt, but an appreciation for a people’s (good) nature and achivements is good to have.
And I’m not even saying that only European peoples have such things to be appreciative of.
Pride is not what should be felt, but an appreciation for a people’s (good) nature and achivements is good to have.
Caveat: This is going to be arrogant (or elitist if you like that better).
Sorry, but no: If someone’s self-accusation is “I have a skin colour, a gender, a nationality and – most importantly – a sexual orientation(!!1)” the only possible answer is “Fine. Just like all the other six-and-something billion hairless, two-legged mammals running around on this planet who mostly just keep getting in the way”. Specifically with regards to the last, people already used to have one in more civilized times, they just had more important/ interesting things to talk about. Please don’t hold a street parade about it. Nobody except your partner(s)-of-choice should have to care.
I just told you that one should not feel pride for belonging to a group, but that one should appreciate the virtues of various groups, including his own.
If a person has virtues, then he should be proud over that.
No disagreement here. I didn’t write about »virtues« in general.
Jews are god’s chosen people so, that’s OK. You just have to remember how horrible the holocaust was, oh I mean the holohoax.
THIS is the biggest lie ever spread. “jews”? Christ called them them out, for exactly what they are.
Israel lost their name but became the greatest people that conquered the entire planet.
Who is that? yes, the White Adamic Race, which is mostly True Israel., eg. Europeans and British folk.
I didn’t know DMU was this well known. You never see these readers in the comment section.
I’m guessing that most of them have either heard of DMU via word-of-mouth from retarded friends or retarded metal sites and just bought into the first opinion they heard (because racism/sexism/transphobia or something), or, this is their first exposure to the site and they got so assdamaged over their flavor of the week band getting shish-ka-bob’d that their already tenuous grasp on reality was shaken loose and they retreated to their most basic conditional reaction which is to feign outrage over things that they refuse to accept lie beyond the limits of their comprehension.
Pugs are such a useless breed. Only animals that can survive in the wild should exist.
Little fuckers can’t breathe right because we like them squished noses. Quite sad really.
As humans, we have a unique position as the stewards of the greater nature.
Creating breeds that can’t even act out their instincts properly is irresponsible and unjustified.
And for what? So that hipster morons can appreciate their quaint, yet less elegant than stronger races’, appearance.
We are not in that position at all. You are citing delusional post-christianisms which humanize the characteristics of that God.
But he’s right in that it’s fucked up to breed things that we think look cute but have severe physical deficiencies. Also of note are the munchkin cat breed. They are considered valuable and sell for a high price but they are really just mutants that wouldn’t have proliferated if not for some perverse genetic cultivation.
To consider yourself a steward of the planet is not even a Christianism either. Anyone can feel an intense appreciation for nature, such that meddling in the development of a species feels profoundly gruesome. Now quit being a contrarian meaniepants.
We have already driven more than one species to extinction, and we breed new races as we see fit.
We are a powerful species, and we are abusing that power.
Next in line: domesticated humanoids. Smart enough to do basic tasks, dumb enough not to survive when left to their own devices. Seriously though, humans are the perfect candidates for domestication with their big, round heads and small jaws and lack of anything resembling actual fangs. Hell, they are basically domesticated already.
Yeah I was going to say, if you’ve ever been into the inner city of any major US metropolitan area, you’ve already seen the result of domesticated humans turned loose to try and survive on their own.
I see you have met the STEM graduates.
Shitty band.
Yeah Bölzer are trendy ass arena rock and they suck dicks, blah blah blah… But then why are they even being talked about on a website that is supposed to be about “underground metal”!? It’s fairly palpable that most extreme metal in this internet age can hardly be considered “underground”, particularly when compared to what was once called the metal underground. So then why is most of this website’s energy put into talking about not the underground? Just because you’re talking shit about all the trendies, doesn’t change the fact that you’re taking about them. What made the metal underground once great was the fact that they ignored the fucking trends. They hated them too, but instead of putting all of their effort into hating the mainstream, they decided it was inconsequential because they held no interest in changing it and becoming the next trend. They were so anti trend that the mainstream might as well not have existed. Their effort was put forth into purely the underground, which is what made it so festering and vibrant.
Now, I understand that times have changed and the definitions of the underground are blurring, but that means that that much more effort should be put into to talking about and focusing on the bands that are still moving this music forward, free of trends and free of rock stars; music for the musician, not the listener. The only way the purity of the underground will survive is if we (those who listen to metal not to look cool, not to seem edgy and not to make friends, but because there is no other way for us) talk about and spread true metal that is still fighting strong.
And if this website is of the opinion that the metal underground is dead, then they should shut this site down or change its name to notdeathmetal.org, if it would like to spend all of its time and energy talking about what is not metal, rather than what is. Metal isn’t for fatalists, it’s for immortals.
Fuck Bölzer… I never want to read or hear their name again. And when that happens I will know that the underground has reclaimed itself.
Signed,
You should all fuck off and die…
Some metal listeners get confused by bands/labels that pretend to be “underground” but are really just small-time and relatively obscure.
One thing DMU does well is to draw distinctions between shitty bands that don’t get popular because they are shitty, and bands that are actually good but so idiosyncratic that they scare off casual listeners.
And if you pay attention you’ll notice that DMU makes a point to shine light on any and all acts that rise above mediocrity, regardless of “underground” status or whatever. Infamous, Sammath, Ripper, Condor, and a couple more recently have been championed by various writers. It’s not as if pessimism is fun or makes us look cool. It’s just really hard to find anything good. So if you stumble across something that deserves coverage, bring it to attention here.
meh
What a profound sentiment. Something to really think about… Thanks for sharing.
Metal is not dead. The 2010’s have given us good albums in the form of Godless Arrogance and Summoning’s latest.
If you haven’t heard Godless Arrogance, listen to it. It’s just as good as the classics from the 90’s and 80’s.
As for your argument, I’m undecided.
It’s tempting to ignore the false, but now that people are claiming false metal to be true, don’t we need an antidote against that falsehood?
There will always be people searching for a meaningful experience in music. Someone should be there to guide them away from the bad commercial stuff and toward the honest powerful stuff. So if you have gained the knowledge to separate the true from the false, it behooves you to impart that knowledge on metal neophytes.
I say this because without guidance I wouldn’t have found out about albums that now mean a lot to me and have actually improved my outlook on life altogether, unbelievable or exaggerated as that may sound to some (who don’t “get it”). So yes there is certainly a need for someone willing to call out faux-underground metal and expose its intention as a vehicle to garner money or social status.
It isn’t that I believe that false metal shouldn’t be decried, but, though I am admittedly a new reader of this site, there seems to be a disproportionate amount of attention paid to the fake bands, and not nearly enough is paid to those who are keeping metal alive. Perhaps everyone here hates the bands that I am about to mention and thusly, why they have not been covered (all of them are black metal, as current death metal and thrash/heavy/speed bands seem to become more and more derivative with each subsequent release and band, with few exceptions, while black metal seems to retain a higher ratio of authentic yet original), but why aren’t bands like Wulkanaz or Panphage being reviewed on here, or Goatmoon, or Black Twilight Circle bands like Odz Manouk, Tukaaria or Torture Chain. There are labels that are keeping the flames fanned like Ætergap, Scythe of Death and Darker Than Black. It seems that their could be A LOT more attention paid to what is actually going on in underground metal than currently is covered on this website, that has such immense to potential to be a vanguard of the true metal underground if they’d only return their focus to it, and not expend all of their energy hating the false underground. Whether the labels or bands mentioned produce anything of worth to the writers of this site, well that is up to them, but at least these bands are not trying to play into the pseudo-underground and are instead focusing on what matters to them… the music. I would rather read a review shitting all over Goatmoon’s “Finnish Steel Storm” (a personal favorite of mine) than continually have my mind refocused on such garbage as Bölzer. At least the review would have to do with the true current underground.
The Black Twilight Circle was reviewed and the whole movement explained a past SMR. Most of these releases are not reviewed as they are bad and there is only so much listening time in the day.
Aw… okay
But it needs to be proportionate! For every batch of sadistic metal reviews, there should be at least one review of an album that at least has potential. Perhaps it is difficult to find what is good out there, but good journalism has never had a reputation of being easy…
I just about fell asleep listening to the ‘Christmas Carol’ track. Meandering, droning, mindless bullshit. What a fucking waste of ten minutes.
Oh and that fucking picture almost made me barf hot pumpkin guts all over my monitor.
If it looks like a hipster, acts like a hipster, makes music for hipsters, then…
Ah fuck I forgot where I was going with that one. Help me out, Bolzer fans!
ace frehley for prez
why not?
the election is a fraud already