Schools ban sacred Hessian symbol as “resembling a gun”

by Brett Stevens on August 29, 2012

Grand Island, NE — Hunter Spanjer is deaf, and uses a sign language symbol for his name that some school administrators say resembles a handgun.

More accurately, it’s the Hessian “devil horns” symbol, which teachers have been trying to ban since the early 1980s. Hessian activist Seamus Israel in Omaha offered the following analysis: “Teachers ban first, then look for a reason why they were right. Now they’re using fear of violence to discriminate against Hessians.”

Hessians, or metalheads, heshers, threshers, bangers and headbangers, is a term used to refer to those who are not only fans of heavy metal music but incorporate its values, imagery and outlook into their personal lives. “It’s a culture like any other,” said Israel. “Just because you weren’t born into it but found it later doesn’t make it any less legitimate than being French, Inuit, Maori, Jewish or a Wall Street economist.”

During the 1980s, American teachers banned symbols and behaviors they saw as associated with “Satanism” and sent students home. These included wearing all black, wearing Slayer t-shirts, wearing symbols like the ankh or yin-yang, displaying the “horns” symbol and reading H.P. Lovecraft at lunch when they should have been playing basketball or watching TV.

Used by Hessians worldwide, the “devil horns” symbol is formed by extending the forefinger and pinkie while tucking the other fingers and thumb into the palm of the hand. It is considered the sacred symbol of Hessian unity and allegiance to the ancient powers of darkness that existed before Christianity, humanism, democracy, reality TV and dubstep, said Hessian Reverend Vijay Prozak. “The devil horn symbol is our most sacred rite, similar to ritual dances or meditative breathing in other cultures.”

Protests continued at the campus on Wednesday. “This deaf child is paying the price for decades of American anti-Hessian bigotry,” said Israel. “In the rush to demonize the horns, and heavy metal music, teachers are now discriminating against deaf kids so that they can find ways to ban heavy metal from the campus.”

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Amnesty International sues military for use of later Deicide in torture

by Brett Stevens on August 27, 2012

For the last decade, the United States military has used loud rock music to torment captives from the war on terror. Isolated in dark cells, the captives are subjected to blastingly loud music on repeat for days at a time.

The international human rights agencies have been unanimous in their declaration that this is not torture until. Amnesty International spokesperson Bob Cratchit revealed that recent media sampling has provided a reason to declare this torture and end it.

The U.S. military has found the music handy at times. According to Mother Jones magazine, a song from Deicide’s album “Scars of the Crucifix” was played during interrogation of detainees in Iraq. The band said it was proud to do its part for the war effort. – AP

According to Amnesty International research, Deicide ended as a musical force after Once Upon the Cross and their remaining output is “so dishearteningly disorganized, aimless and without artistic merit as to create suicidal impulses in the listener.”

In fact, Cratchit added, “This music is so bad that most of our test subjects would only consent to listen to it when the only other option was Nickelback. Several test groups chose Justin Bieber’s ‘Baby’ on repeat over the later Deicide.”

Amnesty International acknowledges that early Deicide, from the self-titled album to the epic and devasting Legion, is ranked among the treasures of humanity. “Even Once Upon the Cross is an amazing album, although nothing like Legion.”

The US Fifth District Court held the injunction hearings and sampled the music in question. “The justices could tell right away,” said bailiff E.L. Saunders. “Old Deicide was distinctive and artistic, but the new stuff is a morass of confusion, like tormented souls locked in Wal-mart for eternity.”

The lawsuit by Amnesty International and three dozen other human rights and civil rights organizations allege that later Deicide, especially repeated, is a musical transgression that amounts to human rights abuse. Their lawsuit is pending before the courts at this time.

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Dark Descent sale

by Brett Stevens on August 21, 2012

Sometimes, metalheads talk about shopping.

When it’s hard enough to get the music you like, it’s sometimes important to nab it whenever it appears.

Dark Descent records put up a sale that ends next Wednesday featuring many of the mainstays of their catalog.

Some highlights for the hardcore death metal or black metal maniac, especially those who like recent history:

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Thevetat – Disease to Divide (Dark Descent/Destro Records)

by Brett Stevens on August 14, 2012

Thevetat’s demo CD “Disease to Divide” will be available early September. This is a collaboration between Dark Descent Records and Destro Records. The demo will be streaming on the Dark Descent Records Band Camp page when it becomes active later this month. The CD is the most limited Dark Descent Records CD to date, so don’t miss out. These will not be available for long. More info soon, including a link for preview on the Dark Descent Records Band Camp page.

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Immolation – Live at B.B. King in NYC, 2006

by Brett Stevens on August 8, 2012

To sweeten the pot of the Hope and Horror EP, Immolation added a live DVD of a show demonstrating material from throughout their career. Pound for pound, this recording is one of the better live video and audio combinations to come out of extreme metal. The sound is a single track extracted from the soundboard, leaving out most crowd noise and faithfully capturing the instrumental sound in a thin but clear quality where optimally guitars would be louder. However, nothing cannot be heard and there are no fade-outs, which makes this a joy to follow along, especially since the videographer specializes in capturing tight shots of the playing of instruments as well as wide pans that show the enormous synchronicity and professionalism of this band. Unlike most videos, there are enough shots of the drummer and they linger long enough for us to see the interplay of hands and feet. The performance Immolation delivers merits quality cinematic treatment because it is technically precise, with medium levels of energy that allow the music not performer aerobics to be the focus of the video, and with none of the unprofessionalism or confusion that can make metal shows drag like extended sentences in foreign prisons. For technical reasons as well as the power of the performance itself this video should be commended.

1. Swarm of Terror (03:09)
2. Unholy Cult (06:25)
3. Into Everlasting Fire (05:27)
4. Dead to Me (04:11)
5. Sinful Nature (03:14)
6. Harnessing Ruin (04:27)
7. Unpardonable Sin (04:26)
8. Crown the Liar (04:41)
9. No Jesus, No Beast (04:45)
10. At Mourning’s Twilight (06:07)
Length: 48:18

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Outsiderness in heavy metal

by Brett Stevens on August 8, 2012

The world has never forgiven metal for being an outsider. Since the dawn of its creation, metal has not gone along with the love songs, hippie values and cheerful oblivion of the rock/pop crowd.

When other bands were singing about flowers in their hair and how peace would save the world, Black Sabbath — inspired by horror films, which have similar themes and sound — took a view that could only be described as “heavy” and thus as unpopular, inevitably outsider.

Much like Galileo centuries before, Black Sabbath upended the human cosmos. Most people saw themselves as the center of the universe, and their individual desires and concerns as important.

Heavy metal smashed all that down by viewing humanity like microbes on a microscope slide. We are tiny, insignificant, and battered by the winds of history, in its view. The highest goal is not some callow happiness, but to fight with honor for glory!

This sentiment shows up throughout metal in many genres. This is music for war, death and evil. It is music that recognizes hatred and cruelty as a necessary part of the dark half of the human soul. It is natural music, as natural as a predator crushing its adorable prey.

Naturally, this is very offensive to some people.

In the 1980s and 1990s, their response was to try to ban metal, first for sex, drugs and Satan, and next for politically unacceptable speech. Starting in the 2000s they found a better way to smash it: assimilate it.

Their method is simple. They make bands that sound like metal, but are compositionally closer to mainstream rock music. That way people stop seeing a difference between the two, and metal vanishes, replaced by rock music.

This brings us to “indie rock.” In the early 1980s, people used the term to refer to any DIY rock bands, most of which emerged from the DIY punk movement of the previous decade. Because of the punk influence and outlook, most of these bands sounded similar.

Indie bands use punk riffs and power chords, tend toward minor key droning, have a little bit more country and folk music in them, and are less consumer-oriented. Where the big bands sing about politics and getting laid, indie rock sings about being alone and confused.

If big rock ‘n’ roll makes perfect consumers, indie rock does even better. It makes people who pity themselves and need a lifestyle with lots of products to buy in order to fit in. Do all indie people collect records, buy nostalgia toys, and have ironic tattoos? Maybe not all, but most.

In fact, indie rock and mainstream rock are two sides of the same coin. They are both based on the desires of the individual and a need for some kind of consumption to have identity. One appeals to the thoughtless, the other to the neurotic.

On the radio there are songs about disposable relationships, getting laid, feeling good and buying new things. In the dark hipster corners of the internet, indie rock bands pour out songs about having a cup of coffee, feeling empty and giving up on love.

When nu-black metal superground “Twilight” (composed of Nachtmystium’s Blake Judd, Atlas Moth’s Stavros Giannopoulos, Sanford Parker, Leviathan’s Jef Whitehead, and Krieg’s Neil Jameson) announced that Sonic Youth guitarist Thurston Moore would be joining the band, it was a formal certification that black metal was being replaced by metal-flavored rock.

This sleight-of-hand is a play on outsiderness. Paradoxically, outsiderness is the easiest way to sell a product. It says “You’re different, you’re not like everyone else.” Much as birds in the jungle like to have bright plumage to stand out from the others, men and women in modern society like to be different.

However, truly being different is a big deal. It means nothing is convenient, and that you have to live a lifestyle that takes you away from the herd, and reduces your access to easy friendship, mates, business, etc. You have to be a real wildman, underground man or drop-out. Most people don’t want to do this.

As a result, there is a huge profit to be found in manufacturing outsiderness, or taking the same old stuff and re-surfacing it with something tinged with outsiderness. Hence metal-flavored rock: look outsider like a metalhead, but be normal and social like a rocker.

The world experts on having an outsider surface to cover their inner mundanity are the hipsters. They like indie rock because it, too, is a re-surfacing: it’s essentially the same stuff that’s on pop radio, but with DIY aesthetics and lyrics about being an outsider.

Hipsterism has taken over mass culture because, as AdBusters puts it, hipsters are what happens when your culture has died and there is nothing left but interpersonal drama. The hipsterification of metal picked up steam in the late 1990s.

Indie-metal superstars Mastodon are working on a new single collaboration with indie drama queen Feist. Some new horror called “vest metal” is already showing us indie trends in action.

Underneath the skin, however, modern science has officially recognized that all pop music is essentially very similar on a musical level, even if on the surface — its “flavoring” — it’s “different.” This has caused others to wonder if music now is a spectacle that’s all image, with musical quality ignored in favor of novelty and popularity.

This won’t suprise metal fans, who tend to see society as a lost colony of narcissistic sheep rocketing toward an apocalypse, but might upset the “normals.” I guess there really is something to outsider status, after all.

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Metal Zines

by Brett Stevens on July 23, 2012

In the 1980s or early 1990s, public internet had not yet democratized and devolved information to the lowest common denominator. The only source of news came from either the mainstream, or tiny xeroxed magazines published by citizen volunteers. Six big companies controlled the music industry.

Zines routed around this monopoly with news, analysis, interviews, and contact information for underground metal. Knitted together by a postal network of letter-writers and tape traders, they united bands and fans for a genre that was too small and too alienated for the mainstream press.

We’ve put together an archive of metal zines from the classic period. It’s a free text directory tree, so there’s no fancy navigation, just the raw PDFs and JPGs themselves.

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Steve Harris – British Lion

by Brett Stevens on July 18, 2012

EMI Music are proud to announce the release of Iron Maiden founder Steve Harris’ debut solo/side project album. Entitled ‘British Lion’ and comprising ten songs that Steve and his collaborators have been working on for the past few years between Iron Maiden tours and releases, it is an album that will surprise and delight music fans the world over.

With a decidedly heavy rock-vibe this roaring debut paints with a full palette of sounds; brooding, melancholic, righteously indignant and exuberantly heavy. With Kevin Shirley at the mixing helm – whose credits include Iron Maiden as well as Led Zeppelin, Journey and Rush among many others – this is an album to sink your teeth into.

From the growling riffage of opening salvo This Is My God to the heavy forlorn balladry of follow-up Lost Worlds which showcases Richard Taylor’s soaring vocals, it’s clear that ‘British Lion’ is an altogether different beast from Maiden.

Karma Killer, with its dirge-like muscularity, and Us Against The World, with its massive chorus, demonstrates just how far ‘British Lion’ has flexed Steve Harris’ considerable musical muscle. Dovetailed with guitarist David Hawkins’ positively gargantuan lyrical guitar melodies, it’s a mere hors d’oeuvre ahead of the epic, riffing-feast of The Chosen Ones, with its swaggering bravado.

A World Without Heaven, at a breathtaking seven minutes and infused with progressive elements without ever teetering into self-indulgence illustrates perfectly these songsmiths’ colossal abilities to create a mood and stay there. Supercharged by Steve Harris’ inimitable style, there’s an un-cynical vibe here that’s as refreshing as it is out of place in today’s all-too-categorised music industry.

And as far as the name ‘British Lion’; “I’ve always been proud to be British,” explains Steve, “I don’t see any reason why I shouldn’t be. It’s a massive part of being me. It’s not like I’m flag-waving or trying to preach, this is not a political statement at all. It’s like supporting your football team, where you come from. I just think it lends itself to some really strong imagery too, and to me it fits in with the sound.”

With Iron Maiden, Steve Harris has become one of the most recognised and successful ambassadors for British music on the world stage. Having released 15 studio albums, sold over 85 million records worldwide and played more than two thousand gigs in 58 countries in the band’s thirty-five year career, his appeal is truly global.

And now with ‘British Lion’, Steve steps out from Iron Maiden’s illustrious shadow to present a different side of his musical visions.”

The tracklisting for ‘British Lion’ is as follows:

1.This Is My God
2.Lost Worlds
3.Karma Killer
4.Us Against The World
5.The Chosen Ones
6.A World Without Heaven
7.Judas
8.Eyes Of The Young
9.These Are The Hands
10.The Lesson

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Interview with Jan Kruitwagen about the upcoming fifth Sammath album

by Brett Stevens on July 14, 2012

Originally this was to be published on Examiner.com, but they censored it for reasons unknown, with no explanation given.

One minute it was there, and the next minute it was all deleted as if it had never existed. Never mind the work that went into putting the interview together, formatting it in Examiner’s arcane system, working around their software, etc. Just deleted. I use Examiner.com because, since most of what they publish is pop culture, it’s a good place for links to underground death metal and black metal bands to exist, but it makes me wonder how professional they are to simply delete work without an explanation or even notification.

I was able to restore most of it and at the band’s request, we’re republishing the uncensored version here.

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In a time of just about any style being called “black metal” if someone shrieks during the recording, Sammath stay true to the older ideal of powerful, melancholic, evil and naturalistic music.

Their archly elegant Strijd kicked off a promising career, and since then, the band have experimented with a more warlike outlook. We were fortunate to catch a few words with founder Jan Kreutwagen about the band’s fifth album, yet unnamed, which will emerge this year.

What can you tell us about the new Sammath? When will it be recorded, on what label, what’s it like?

It’s turning out just like I wanted Sammath to sound back in 1994: a fine-tuned combination of total chaos, aggression and the right dose of melody. Every time we started to write tracks for this album something good popped up.

The new album is only 34 minutes. I can’t see myself creating a better album than this in the near future. The work Ruud (bass) put into Sammath over the last few years is probably why it all sounds this way. He has a good ear to weed out the weak parts and most of all filter out the bullshit. His dedication and experience, and also that of complete nutcase drummer Koos Bos, have made Sammath sound like this. I write all the music, but what Koos and Ruud deliver is so damn aggressive and intelligently thought out that it takes it all to a new level.

Folter will be releasing the CD at the end of this year or maybe early next year. I get enough offers from other, smaller and larger labels, but I will never leave Folter Records. What others think or how big the band is doesn’t really concern me. Jorg is a underground maniac and he was the first to give me a recording contract in 1997.

The demos you’ve been posting are admirably raw. Will the production and adornments remain this minimalist, or will there be more guitar solos, production tweaks and other refinements as there were on the last Sammath?

The tracks on the internet are just pre-production demos; all drums and guitars will be re-recorded in the coming months. I decided to throw some tracks online and the response has been overwhelming. I really want this release to sound as basic and raw as possible but with a great production that does not sound thin and weak like most black metal releases. Before we enter the studio I want the entire album finished in demo version.

Peter Neuber (Axis of advance, Severe Torture) will once again be doing the mastering. He knows exactly how to get Sammath to sound its best — a review for the last album stated that it sounds like it’s all going to cave in at any moment, raw, loud and filthy. This time there are no guitar solos, production tweaks or other bullshit; the tracks have enough energy already. It’s all very primal and blunt. I don’t think todays black metal fan will like it. The last album is still fucking killer, but this will make it sound like an ABBA release.

These songs strike me as the best expression of the direction you’ve gone since the first album. How has your direction and intent changed?

Finally I am achieving what I’ve always wanted but simply could not do. It’s not technical, it’s just all very blunt and straight forward aggression. But the combination with the new chainsaw bass sound, the over-the-top crazy drums, without triggers or any bullshit, makes it all sound very alive and dynamic. Someone told me it sounds like a combination of all previous Sammath CDs. I also think experience and creating your own sound is something that takes years to achieve.

Problem is that, unlike in 1994 when we started, we all have families, kids, so most of our days are filled up with watching over the kids or getting enough money together for them. I usually only have enough time at night so I get up in the middle of the night to work on new material. I now have the opportunity to record whenever I want, seeing as I have my own primitive little hellhole to create music at dangerously high levels without anyone being able to hear it.

Sample tracks posted so far sound like a cross between APOCALYPSE COMMAND and first album SETHERIAL; they’re blasting black metal with death metal influences, on the edge of war metal, but they have actual melody and structure so it’s not as monotonic. What are your influences and what style do you want to express with the new songs?

You have described it brilliantly. Those bands are fucking great! I had never heard of Apocalypse Command (shame on me, just ordered all I could find). I didn’t really have any plans before I started recording; I just began and it ended up like this. After a few months I got the feeling that this was going to be very stripped down album, blunt black metal — no remorse. A big influence on me the last few years are Blasphemy, Revenge, Brutality, Incubus (now Opprobrium), and Autopsy. And some new bands like Portal, Impetuous Ritual.

Do you think black metal is still alive, or has it been absorbed into something else? How do you describe your music, now that we’re entering into black metal’s second decade?

I really don’t have a clue, at concerts I see less and less people I know, but then again I don’t go as frequently as I used to. I only have time in the winter, making sure to go to the Nuclear War Now! Productions fest this year again, the scene is great when you see over a thousand maniacs from all over the world there. Last year there were a group of about thirty of us creating havoc outside and I think there were twenty different nationalities.

Black metal has always been a strange scene; people tend to get too serious, no fun, no humans, to me that’s absolute weakness. I think black metal died when all the suicide-kill-people self-mutilating fags appeared. All this anti-life gayness stands for the depressed little boys who simply can’t get laid and feel like the world hates them. There used to be a great gap between gothic and black metal, the way some bands try to combine these two are what’s raping the scene the most.

For me, and I can also say this for everyone in Sammath, black metal stands for arrogance and power. My grandfather taught me this, fuck everyone’s opinion, never listen to other people, always follow your instinct. Screw religion, never trust anyone, and above all, don’t give a shit. Even if people think I’m wrong I’m right. This might sound irritating, but I don’t look down on people, I’m a pretty easy going person, I just don’t bow down to anyone (except my wife…). The new Sammath sound is black/death/war metal, nothing new, but it will fuck you up.

Thank you for your time, and good luck with the new Sammath! Based on the promo track you sent us (attached in video form), this is going to be a great addition to the Sammath catalogue.

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Massacre – Succumb to Rapture

by Brett Stevens on July 12, 2012

http://soundcloud.com/centurymediarecords/massacre-succumb-to-rapture

MASSACRE – Succumb To Rapture. Taken from the 7inch EP “Condemned To The Shadows”. Century Media 2012. In stores on July 30th – pre-orer now: http://www.cmdistro.de/Artist/Massacre/1677

Available as:
Black 7″
Ltd. transparent 7″
Ltd.. Yellow 7″ (CM DISTRO only)

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