Finland, the world’s best country, possesses a large newspaper named Helsingin Sanomat which covered the recent death of Adam Gadahn and quoted yours truly:
“He [Gadahn] took it very seriously. He got into the music and studied it as well as he could,” says a death metal DJ using the pseudonym Spinoza Ray Prozak to The New Yorker.
Prozak describes the death metal subculture as an extremist movement.
“We are people dissatisfied in modern society. We believe we are on a journey towards death, doom, destruction, horror,” he says.
“Many death metal songs describe a sickness, particularly a sickness that emerges from our midst, paralyzing us and there is no way to fight against it.”
Prozak is a radio DJ and freelance writer specializing in death metal and black metal, who seems to have a very extreme view of death metal music in his writings. On his website he, for example, states that death metal is “more important than life.”
Extreme music attracts extreme people. Those take several forms, with the honest ones being attracted to it because they believe none of the solutions that society will consider are viable responses to the problems at hand. What appears to be rejection of society is in fact rejection of social control over what can be done to solve the problem.
While I want to neither defend nor criticize al-Qaeda, as that is off-topic for this blog and probably beyond my knowledge, I want to point out again: Adam Gadahn was not a bad person. His early life was chaotic and horrible and being highly sensitive, he realized how doomed this modern Western civilization (MWC) is. He chose death metal, and then branched out into Islam, and whether or not his actions were correct, his criticism should be considered, and he should be remembered as more than a tick-box in the column of “enemies droned.”
Just like Josef Stalin did some things right, al-Qaeda undoubtedly has legitimate criticism in with their other attributes, which not being a religious scholar I do not fully understand. They hate fast food, urban blight, mass culture pop music, cheesy movies, lying politicians and a society withour culture or honor too. That makes them very compatible with death metal but more in line with black metal.
Thanks to Antti Boman and Devamitra for the notice and translation.
Tags: adam gadahn, al-qaeda, antti boman, devamitra, helsingin sanomat, spinoza ray prozak, the new yorker
More drone strikes, less pitty.
“His early life was chaotic and horrible and being highly sensitive,”
Come on dude. Feelings, sensitivity, bad home life–so what?
Let’s talk results. Humans are not the center of the universe, and feelings don’t matter more than reality. The reality is this guy made a stupid below-120 (probably below 90) decision and these are the consequences.
I guess we all get a little liberal and faggy when it’s our mates we’re talking about, not some hoodrat on death row.
Sure, radical Islam is antithetical to the anti-culture global shopping mall, but it’s their antithesis, not ours. You’re a potential thrall to them, not an ally.
It’s the same reason it never really sat right with me when white new right nationalists pretend to get along with the black power crowd just because we both know multiculturalism is a failure. We’re still enemies. You know it on a visceral level.
I agreed with just about all of that, save for the part where you wrote:
“…radical Islam is antithetical to the anti-culture global shopping mall, but it’s their antithesis, not ours.”
–‘Cause it is ours, just as much as it could ever be theirs. Acknowledging this nuance does change the overall tone of your message somewhat, but you make a good point: short term alliances of convenience (my enemy of my enemy is my friend) should not be mistaken for a true allies. When people do this they confuse part of the reason in the first place for ever taking action, rendering said action pretty damn pointless. But more importantly, i think it rapidly leads to ideological confusion.
One thing to consider could be the lack of any organization to truly rail against the status quo as we’ve come to know and hate it: Where’s the Eurocentric equivalent of Al-Qaeda? Where does a man of action who grows weary of armchair theorizing and avoidance go to dismantle the fail in all earnest? To my knowledge no such organization exists. True, he could have become a Neo-Nazi, but that’s an altogether imperfect solution for ideological reasons: A Neo-Nazi takes the symptom of the disease for the true cause, in addition to the fact that the Neo-Nazi solution is just ethnically based populism–gotta embrace hierarchy to really shake shit up. At this point, in the case of Gadahn, it could have boiled down to more or less practical considerations of what group could inflict the most harm on the enemy, which isn’t the West (for now) as much as what we have become.
However, I think reality is a bit more simple: I think Gadahn has middle eastern ancestry (I reference his name and appearance as evidence) and identified with Islam like an angry disenfranchised Teuton mighty identify with Nazism, Paganism, or what have you… In the end his allegiances as a metal-head were more or less in alignment with the path he chose, and the tenets of those which were common to metal merely overlap with radical Islam. Of course, there is particularized space specific to each which does not overlap in any way, due to the fact that they are each manifestations of different groups used to combat their own problems, many of which they have in common; this accounts for the similarity to a great extent, I reckon.
Ok, back to the sodomy. Toodles.
“However, I think reality is a bit more simple: I think Gadahn has middle eastern ancestry (I reference his name and appearance as evidence) and identified with Islam like an angry disenfranchised Teuton mighty identify with Nazism, Paganism, or what have you…”
The actual reality is quite amusing as he was born Adam Pearlman, a Jew.
Is this somehow related to the fact that most UK moslim converts are ginger?
o9a.org for those in the west who are determined to swim against the vortex.
I had never heard of this. Thanks for posting that.
Order of the 9 Angels? That’s just Amerika.org given an occult makeover for the new age fags in the Brett-O-Sphere™
Typical clueless critic; doesn’t even know the proper name of what he’s trying to mock.
This site used to represent power-based art and culture. The sort of thing that would get the blood pumping, and the heart beating.
Now it celebrates any faggot who simply has ‘the right [read: childishly traddie, anti-liberal] views’, no matter how retarded his/their results:
-Current Burzum
-Adam Gadahn
-Shit 80’s movies
-Absurd
Not to mention all the whiners who contribute nothing but complaints in the comments! Man, this place has really gone downhill, huh?!
DMU provides you with guidance that can save you from wasting time with shitty music so you can spend time with good music. If you want to increase your heart rate, go check out some porn or pick a fight with some homeless guys (make sure to record and upload video).
You have zero idea about what anyone using pseudonyms here in the comments section has contributed in the past.
“DMU provides you with guidance that can save you from wasting time with shitty music so you can spend time with good music.”
So did the DLA.
…Advocating for Absurd and current Burzum is not exactly representative of “providing guidance that can save you from wasting time with shitty music”.
This place has become increasingly about pushing ideology at you through music. Test? Pushing Lord Wind and current Burzum at you as representative of ambient music, when the works in question by these artists are some of the most boring examples of ambient music. They are pushed because they have traddie themes. ALso, Absurd play fucking terrible, talentless punk music. They are pushed because they have traddie themes.
Insert the life-failures who go and join ISIS here too. They are pushed because they have traddie themes, despite their products/actions being completely fucking worthy of death.
Three bands? Out of thousands we could, while criticizing the crowd favorites from that group?
You’re not making sense here, or you’re pushing an agenda of your own.
Help us by answering these questions:
1. What is your agenda?
2. What is your contribution?
It’s not as simply as ‘three bands’. It’s the following: a new article on Varg frikkin’ Verkines every time he so much as pushes a ‘middle C’ on his electric keyboard. It’s recently ubiquitous articles on mediocre films, when there are folks like Kubrick, Francis Ford Coppola, Von Trier, and others out there. It’s the endless article praising Islam terrorists, Mass murderers like Brevik, and fucked up kids who shoot up schools. You stop short of ‘celebrating them’, but you nevertheless make excuses for them by using such a tine sample size as representative evidence that modern society is sick from Liberalism, etc etc.
Where are the Beethovens, The Nietzsches, the Wagerns, the philosophers? Back in the DLA.
I thought the DMU was going to separate politics from art. Instead, it’s gone the other way, and in the meantime is getting more and more bloggish/populist. I used to greatly respect your work.
It did. Then politics came our way. What did you do to help?
You didn’t need to tell me any of that. Apparently you missed my comments on the Absurd article, which said essentially what you did but with more aloofishness. Just because Brett suggests music doesn’t mean it’s good. It’s part of our civic duty as readers to present counterarguments when we disagree. The worst we can do is provide other readers with an opposing perspective.
No, I take that back; the worst we can do is bitch inpotently.
This guy is a real fag. ‘Ales Stenar’ fucking rules.
Let me say something more. Lord Wind is so underrated that I can collect the Ales Stenar LP(2002 released) from my shitty country easily even by now. Trendy? Are you mad?
He did say ‘traddie’, and not ‘trendy’.
Sorry, my bad.
Don’t talk shit about cheesy 80s movies faggot
Damn! that’s some sad, sorry shit right there. You got some real hate in you boy and no that ain’t good. I suggest you get out and about a bit more. Do some healthy stuff like go hiking or walk along the beach. Drink more water and stop philosophising with the hammer so much. That shit drive a nilla insane.
Now get your sorry ass out of this virtual reality word-war and into a nice hot shower. Come on man, just do it for me this once: chill – the fuck – out. Come back in a weeks time just to say thanks, if you must. And don’t think I won’t be thinking of you!
– Big Tim
Yes Brett what the fuck?
WHERE ARE THE MALEVOLENT CREATION REVIEWS ?????
Your estimation of radical Islam is simplistic to the point of absurdity. Sure, they disdain western culture and it’s trappings as much as any same person should. However, if you tried living under the caliphate they wish to establish you might not be so approving. It’s the most rigid form of religious fundamentalism in the modern world.
You say you value realism and hate that realistic views are suppressed under the weight of a culture in denial in the West? In countries influenced by radical Islam you get hacked to pieces for promoting science over religion.
You say you hate the unthinking mob mentality of the West? In Islamic nations you conform or die, and they train their children at birth to blow themselves up over minor differences in scriptural interpretation.
I don’t care what this guy’s taste in music was. The only thing in the world that is MORE reprehensible than our superficial culture of denial is the absolute totalitarianism of radical Islam, and he personally contributed to it’s efforts.
I personally would have shot him in the face, given the chance, and I mean that with the most sincerity I have ever applied to saying anything in my life. I hope that pieces of his weakling’s brain were strewn unceremoniously about the cesspools they have for streets over there and irretrievably mixed in with human feces in a final, metaphorical gesture of what his life’s worth, his mind and his will had become.
Stevens is off the fucking planet here. So are his little fan boys like Dick Head.
All the points you raise are spot on.
Stevens, there would be no death metal under Sharia law. Nor black metal.
@ Roger
Ok dude, so this site’s recommendations on ambient electronic music are to your dislike, can you recommend anything worth listening? And I mean that in a genuine curiously tone, I’d like to give it a shot to whatever you think is better ambient than what this site suggests.
.
I’ve been listening to KK Null, Shurrii Shaamani, Aphex Twin, Winglod and Daed. All are Prozak’s recommendations and they fucking rule. Winglord kinda reminds me of Summoning’s latest.
Hi Mosher,
I’ve only ever seen him write about Aphex Twin in actual articles, out of those artists you mention.
But anyway, here are some that come to mind, excluding 70s classics like Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schultz, CAN, Ash ra tempel, etc. So most are relatively modern.
Burial – untrue https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3vTkf1qmOk
Ochre – dustlands https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXFDlw4Cfwo
Radiohead – treefingers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gb5ZlZTQUw
Rrine – Iamor https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yx74lJPBAuE
Ashra – Sunrain https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yx74lJPBAuE
Devin Townsend – arc https://youtu.be/ErzX_3nZyhQ?t=15m56s
Donnie Darko – soundtrack https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4riivOFlhIU
Jocylen Pook – Masked Ball https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=go4E4tNGQks
Meanwhile, I will (not so keenly) await another article on Varg Vikernes next time he so much as farts.
And that’s about all you want to know.
Roger Waters is what we might call a “frenemy” of this site: endless criticism, zero help, basically just grandstanding to promote his own personality/avatar.
Get your head fixed.
What kind of help are you looking for?
The usual: writers, people to work as a “street team” of sorts and promote us, even an editor.
The vital distinction here is “skin in the game”: the internet is full of critics who are happy to offer drive-by contrarianism but never lift a finger to do anything that is geared toward anything but themselves. This is why even their “contributions” in the form of boutique bands and wordpress.com sites flail and fail after a few years, but during that time, served to allow that person to continue the claim that he was an active participant and not just a kvetching bystander weekender like most people.
Richard Head or Dualist should write. I disagree with too many stances here to do so myself.
Oh come on, now. You’d be great on the classic metal and heavy metal reviews. I agree about RH and Dualist but we need to find them better author names.
I didn’t mean to come off that due to disagreeing I am too good for the site- I just don’t fit with the overall aesthetic I suppose. I appreciate that you think I’d be good at lending a hand, and although I surely could point out the merits and pitfalls of classic and heavy metal, since those styles don’t represent my preferred listening I wouldn’t feel very passionate about what I am contributing. I’m already writing elsewhere, barely, and don’t worry, it’s not for metal archives.
Thank Satan.
I just figured it would be fun to have you writing something here. About half of what I write is not even on metal, but people seem to like it (except certain vociferous and irate commenters).
Dear Brett,
For someone who has spent some time repeating over and over the statement that appearance =/= reality before attacking your opposition, it is interesting that you respond in a purely reactionary manner – literally like you’ve just gone ‘Ommph!’ after walking around a corner and coming across a bad smell – to a mere name.
How about we keep the discussion to the substance (the music), dear chap?
Factual error: it’s not a name, it’s the music behind it.
Hold on, we should be talking about the PARTICULAR TRACK I posted. Not Devin Townsend’s more predominant albums. I posted a track from a purely ambient album he has done. And it’s about 10 times better than recent burzum snooze-fests.
More generally, I posted a collection of ambient/electronica tracks, and you have proceeded to latch on simply to one of them to make a cheap point, not even because of the music, but because of the appearance.
This is not noble conduct.
The composer does not magically change when he switches instruments.
Do you care to tell us mere mortals, since you have now weighed in on it of your own accord, what makes newer Burzum ambient works better than this Devin Townsend ambient piece, separate from cover art, historical actions by the artists and, most importantly, political orientation?
In other words: defend the idea you don’t base your music tastes on something subjective. You are always telling people art is objective. Prove it.
You claim people could convince another one to acknowledge the so-called “objective” facts. Prove it.
You right you know. only you let 2 much hate show.. especially the last paragraph. Meaning, ur all fucked up too boy! jus be careful, cos like, no middle path means you don know shit nawa mean ? but fukit, I say let whoever wins, wins.
and god dam im tired…. !
Lets say (theoretically) that there`s about to be an all out war between muslim nations and israel, who will you side with?
Israel, of course.
It’s only cool to side with violent Muslims when they’re butt-hurt about the spiritual decline of the decadent west, didn’t you know?!
lolololook who’s come out of closet… ! a rather surprising answer from one Roger esq. (formally of unwashed dildo fame?)
well not really cos being a righteous lefty is pretty much standard fare here at the counter-current burnout crew HQ (AKA DMU frontpage)