N.W.O.B.H.M. Survivors

The New Wave of British Heavy Metal was the simultaneous, sudden emergence of hundreds of heavy metal bands in the United Kingdom in the late 1970s and early eighties. The NWOBHM was prompted by the collapse en masse of earlier hard rock bands and heavy metal originators. Led Zeppelin and other blues-based riff rock bands had collapsed into meandering stadium rock with only a couple listenable songs per record at best (“Achilles Last Stand” on Presence). Black Sabbath fell flat on their faces after Sabotage, making the meandering duo of Technical Ecstasy and Never Say Die. Punk declined from almost-progressive works as the The Stooges’ Fun House to boy bands such as the Sex Pistols playing radio pop. Deep Purple regressed to playing what their former guitarist Ritchie Blackmore termed “Shoeshine music.”

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Rotten Copper Unleashes “Live Among The Ruins” From The Toxic Wasteland Jams

Collapse rock band Rotten Copper emits small blips of its chaos live recording The Toxic Wasteland Jams through obscure pathways. Most recently, the video for the song “Live Among The Ruins” has touched down with a new video. In the video it is the year 2035. The world has crumbled. Only skaters and metal-heads remain. And they are threatened by not just a civilization in decline, but something not entirely human lurking among the dark places of the earth.

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Black Metal, Nihilism, and Heresy

I. Degrees of an Allegory in Black Metal

Black metal, as any art, spans not only the musical, but the ideological as well as some kind of social component. Those who claim its flag range from popular musicians dressing up, to occult panderers playing at magickians, to extremists, to individuals that society would consider degenerates. There are more groups that could be mentioned but that we do not need to mention explicitly. Needless to say, all of these groups have a very different understanding of what black metal is, and what their seminal exponents such as Quorthon intended or what his work represents, or should represent, once it was out of his hands.

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China Bans VPNs

The People’s Republic of China banned the virtual private networks that hundreds of millions of the 730 million mainland Chinese citizens connected to the internet use to bypass the Communist Party’s “Great Firewall” and obtain truthful information. The Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced this crackdown on the use of unsupervised internet connections earlier this week. The Ministry said they would be monitoring all mainland internet service providers, content deliverers, and data centers for “illegal information”. Communists once again are attempting to be thought police as otherwise they would not be able to maintain power.

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