The Mythology of Death Metal

Death metal arose in the early 1980s, when the children of the post-WWII generation matured in the West (USA, Europe). These individuals grew up during an era when the capitalist/democratic West pitted itself against the communist/totalitarian Eurasian and Asian states, in the shadow of the second world war which established this division.

This was an era when the constant threat of nuclear conflict or invasion of Europe by the Soviet Union was perceived to be not only real but likely, a shade short of inevitable. The Baby Boomers, born 1944-1953, hoped for a prosperous future without the threat of Nazi Germany, but faced instead a “Cold War” in which six minutes of warning could announce total nuclear annihilation.

Most popular music took a populist approach and warned against the increasing conservative powers of the West, but death metal eschewed the political for the philosophical. It portrayed a world of death, disease, and occult torment hidden behind a smokescreen of technology, religion and politics. Its lyrics, dripping with references to horrible ways to die or decay, and frequently referencing Nietzschean concepts as well as a strong anti-Christian bias, referred to a side of life not seen in the media or political dialogue of the time.

To most, this was baffling — in a political, economic or social context, how does one understand “Only death is real”? It seemed a reminder that beneath all of our social constructs, containers of consensual reality, we were missing something. In this it was not entirely divorced from the post-Nietzschean fascination with deconstruction, exhibited in the literature of 1959-1976 as “postmodernism,” or a sense that our definition of the “real world” was illusory and leading us astray. Somehow, we had lost sight of the actual world — reality — and were living in a dream turning rapidly to a nightmare, as all illusions do when they confront reality. Reminders of mortality, of an occult religion where no morality of good/evil existed, and visions of decay rather than an abrupt apocalyptic end marked the lyrical and imagic differences between death metal and the speed metal, heavy metal and hardcore punk (ancestors contributed its hybrid genetic material) before it.

Where death metal was most influential however was its style of composition. Where rock bands put together a verse and chorus loop united by harmony, death metal borrowed from the classical, progressive rock and electronic music (the latter two genres being influenced by classical music most profoundly of mainstream styles) to create a synthesis between the theatrics of opera and the melodic phrasal composition of classical. This led to a “narrative” composition, or a journey through many riffs and motifs which changed the listener between start and finish; this contrasted rock and jazz, which in their simple loops with embellishments of improvisation crafted a single state of mind in which the precepts were fulfilled by the conclusion. Death metal, in this sense, was both structuralist or a study of how events connect as a whole, and Romanticist, in that it emphasized change in experience over solid assumptions.

Having learned from the speed metal and heavy metal and hardcore punk experiences, in which new genres rapidly became absorbed by the same groupthink they attempted to evade, death metal deliberately styled itself as unlistenable. Heavy, bassy distortion created an angry and violent sound, as did the intense rhythms and howling, hoarse, screaming, shouting, rasping vocals it utilized. This was outsider music, not another product to fit into a functional modern life as an aesthetic complement to expensive decor and an entertainment system.

When all of these traits are analyzed, it is clear what death metal brought as art to the West: the idea that our modern life was an illusion based on a shallowness similar to the categorical division of life into good and evil, right and wrong, us and them. We had lost sight of reality through these illusory divisions, and the result was an apocalyptic confrontation that threatened all life — and while most wanted to evade this realization, death metal wanted to reinforce reality instead.

Twenty years later, no radical changes in this outlook have occurred, although black metal formed to address (in part) the shift from conservative to liberal politics in the West in the 1990s. Death metal is as relevant as it was in the 1980s, with black metal as an added commentary. Its physical presence as a genre has been mostly assimilated by groupthinkers who want an “authentic, radical” perspective, but the original music remains.

To see its relevance as art, and a more intensely artistic form of underground genre is hard to find, it is important we turn to philosophy. Kant saw us as living in a time of “radical evil” when our mundane actions of survival constituted a great future downfall; T.S. Eliot, interpreting Nietzsche, saw the modern time as a triumph of the taste and judgment of the masses absorbing the better wisdom of actual thinkers. Death metal, with its allusions to hollow men (Entombed) and Nietzschean topics as well as its perception of a pervasive occult evil, explored and explained these ideas.

How does a death metal artist or fan think about the world? As a slow suicide. These individuals grew up in a time when masses of credulous voters and buyers could be swayed from trend to trend, and easily duped by political lies of the basest quality. Death metal saw this mass of undifferentiated people as the sustaining force of our public illusion, and injected a dose of grim reality to counter the tendency toward pleasant illusion denying actual dangers. Death metal is the revealing force of our modern dread as we are slowly dragged toward a grisly doom by a popular opinion that resentfully denies any who assert reality.

Interestingly, despite all that has been written about death metal, very few thinkers touch on these points. They are not popular. They are dangerous ideas, and difficult to prove because they are stated in metaphor. Much like death metal itself, they are outsider perspectives which will never be accepted by the crowd, which speaks both for their accuracy and urgency as the slow suicide continues.

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Metalocalypse: Hipsters Slandering Hessians

Ironic, “unique” show celebrates metal as a genre for failures

In the last decade metal music, once more or less exclusive to a community of dedicated Hessians and at worst a more removed group of transient but still fervent supporters, has fallen victim to a superficial co-opting by hipster culture. That is, they wear Slayer or Iron Maiden shirts not because they genuinely enjoy the music but because these bands are “kooky” or “crazy” and associating oneself with them is the defining statement of hip irony in the 21st century. Tolerating this trend is annoying enough, as it brings the dedication of Hessians into question: “So, do you really like Slayer, or are you just wearing that for fun?” but the problem has become epidemic as hipster-focused media is produced en masse for outlets like Cartoon Network’s “Adult Swim”. Even in this arena, metal no longer safe.

Twenty years ago, most people had a hyperbolic and absurd idea of heavy metal and the bands creating it, thanks to the oft-quoted (and increasingly tiresome) film “Spinal Tap”. However, it was clear that the writer/actors of this movie actually had a degree of affection for the music they aped, and it was reflected in the way they managed to address many truisms of the continuous collisions between metal’s fantastic elements and the inflexible realities of the layman’s world in which the music must struggle to be understood. This degree of sympathy and insight is strictly absent from the new animated feature “Metalocalypse”, which basically takes the “Beavis and Butthead” premise of Hessian daily life and elevates it to an insulting degree.

The show offers the premise of a fictional metal band called “Deathklok”, and the creators reveal their weak grasp of the material by first portraying the band as literally one of the richest and most powerful entities on earth (a feat that not even Metallica has accomplished), and then making their music sound wholly ambiguous- we hear three-note trudges and growls ala Six Feet Under combined with keyboards and guitar wankery more befitting of Demons & Wizards. While some may be quick to point out that the show is a parody and as such is not obligated to follow “the rules”, this reviewer believes that such decisions reflect broad generalizations about metal and its subgenres and bring the intent of the show into question.

More damning, however, are the characterizations of the band members. The writers attempt to place a death metal vocalist, a speed metal guitarist, two “European” power metal guitarists, and a nu-metal drummer into the same band, presumably in the interest of painting the entire genre with the same brush. All the members are portrayed as rock-stupid, and the shrill and unintelligible voice acting is no help. A joke can only go so far if absolutely nothing said is understood. The band is portrayed as savants who can play music to millions of people at a time but cannot grasp the idea of purchasing food at a grocery store. It seems like a more consistent idea would be to portray a relatively unsuccessful band doing everything in life unsuccessfully, or a successful band doing things in the wild excess that their lifestyle affords them, but to cram two half-baked ideas together only goes further toward ensuring that the cartoon serves as a mocking affront rather than a sly parody. The only real thing that gives the show a chance at holding interest is the random and prolific violence, though it does contributes little more than an opportunity for a very cheap laugh.

The real problem is that “Metalocalypse” (this is the last time I’m typing that stupid fucking name) is not designed to entertain Hessians, but rather it is there to give hipsters a false insight into a world they cannot or do not wish to understand in genuine terms. The show is made by outsiders looking in, and it shows on every level. Never mind the fact that the dialogue, when intelligible, is stilted and inane, the comic timing is non-existent, the plots are ambiguous, and the animation is lazy and sub-par. Metal is one of the only art forms on earth that must tolerate this kind of insult, in part because it advocates goals and means that threaten the status quo, but it is nevertheless a valid endeavor that deserves respect and legitimacy. It goes without saying that any serious Hessian should ignore this cartoon, but it wouldn’t hurt to encourage others to do the same. If someone at your school or place of business sees you wearing the shirt of your favorite band and starts talking about metal hipsterism with you, set them straight. Explain why they have got the wrong idea, and see if you can steer them in the right direction (i.e. “Have you ever listened to Show No Mercy”?). Maybe they won’t become converts, but then again maybe they won’t make their decisions about an entire genre of music and its culture based on a half-assed joke show either.

by David Anzalone

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Averse Sefira, Images of Violence, Devourment, Pleasant Valley, Insidious Decrepancy, Hatchetwork and Scattered Remains in Austin, Texas

Averse Sefira, Images of Violence, Devourment, Pleasant Valley, Insidious Decrepancy, Hatchetwork and Scattered Remains
March 11, 2006
Redrum, 401 Sabine Street
Austin, Texas

The Texas metal underground has historically been a divisive place: too many bands wanting to be number one and not helping others, so that there are infinite favorites but no greats. With the return of Averse Sefira to Texas after a long absence, a resurgence in confidence is seen in Texas metal. Not only has collaboration come to visit, but the community seems hungry for a few talented acts to represent a scene that was once overburdened with also-rans. This change in attitude is fortunate, because at this show not only did long-running Texas black metal legends Averse Sefira showcase a resilient and enduring sound, but also local death metal upstarts Images of Violence demonstrated the power and synchronicity of their new lineup.

After opening sets by Hatchetwork and Scattered Remains, one-man death metal machine Insidious Decrepancy banged out a set accompanied by drum machine. His music knows two modes of thought: first, a thunderous chromatic rhythmicism reminiscent of the elements of Morpheus Descends that inspired NYDM legends Suffocation, and second a fastpicked scattering of notes with minor key melodic implications in the style of technical death metal bands like Necrophagist or Martyr. The music is easy to listen to and gratifying in its old school attitude, yet seems to make no clear or forceful statement, even if in form – including vocals, guitar and the nonintrusive drum machine – it is highly polished. After this came Pleasant Valley, who craft a style of death metal that varies its consistency-heavy riffs with breaks and interludes that seem inspired by “found sounds” music in their attempt to mimic daily life. It was hard to figure where this band was going with their music or what was the desired content of articulation, but they were faithfully attended by a small crowd.

Images of Violence took the stage next. Fronted by local tattoo legend Jonzig and supported by former Acerbus battery expert Larry “The Professor” Jackson, this band have come together from the primitive death metal of their origins. Riffs flow smoothly together and those of little impact, the space-holding chorded disorder that many death metal bands use to connect disparate statements, have been dropped entirely. With new guitarist Dauber filling riffs with varied texture, including strumming speeds that would be oppositional to the motion of riff except for the high degree of internal counterpoint to the riff permitting parallax motion, Images of Violence have become more ambitious in addition to closing gaps in the conceptualization and execution of songs. They sound like an updated version of Montrosity that thanks to Larry’s percussion is able to stack rhythmic breakdowns in a constructive manner; other influences would be a smattering of Suffocation in the corrugated internals of riffs that are on the surface basic patterns that by virtue of simplicity and boldness demand attention, and a sense of progressive melody in guitar fills, perhaps Pestilence or Gorguts. The essence of this music is an old school roar like Obituary or Malevolent Creation, but bleeding from within is a desire for a voice that speaks all languages in the experience of death metal, and the result is an articulate band that sacrifices none of the pleasures or impact of the germinal form of death metal.

In the short break that followed, most of the attendees of this show coalesced back onto the floor, watching the stage. Averse Sefira is not a band that permits fence-sitting; people tend to follow them religiously or despise them with ornery ecclesiastical passion, but tonight there was a sense of appreciation for these musicians who braved public disapproval of black metal in the early days and in its later days, endured being lost in the masses of nearly identical bands who like spawning salmon recorded demos and, stranded up a stream they could not navigate, died. Averse Sefira outlasted them all and recently released a triumphant third album that capitalizes on their technical skill and spirited, occult vision of metal as an art form (and not simply entertainment, like a video game or sitcom). The club darkened suddenly after a cursory soundcheck. Concentration broadcast from three sets of eyes, and an introduction composed of opposites, the sonorous and the abrasively rhythmic, the ancient and the modern, the smooth and the dispersed, filled the room. It was followed by a sudden attack. Being a three-piece, this band requires each member to fill sonic territory like an occupying chieftain, and after two songs and an improvised speech on the heroic values potentially accessible to the Texas scene, the band tore into the rest of their set like a marathon runner escaping sodomitic jailers. The highly specialized application of guitar and bass came together, and arch-drum veteran The Carcass (also of Death of Millions and Show Me on the Doll) held back his legendary energy in order to fit into the contours of each song. Guitarist Sanguine A. Nocturne channeled the spirit of deceased Voivod guitarist Denis d’Amour by wrestling with lushy discordant noise and messy squealing harmony, but he used this mess surgically by applying it in counterpoint to his more emphatic playing, which smoothly synchronized to the rigid rhythmic structures supporting it. The result was an impressive hybrid of Immortal‘s triumphant romanticism and the lost wanderings in violent wastelands portrayed by Morbid Angel, with influences from throughout metal’s developing lineage. The collected experience of these band members, including for nearly a decade of death metal and radio presentation before Averse Sefira, gave them the confidence to pull off a performance that did not just “nail it” but was able to flex some muscles in the process and give depth to this experience. None of this was lost on the Averse Sefira diehards in the crowd, who lost it somewhere during the first song and probably did not regain mental stability until late the next day.

The crowd was respectful of this act who have bravely and steadfastly worked their way up the black metal food chain without compromising their ideals for anyone, or backing down from their high ideals of what makes excellent, enduring art. Interestingly, the audience of this show were mostly older, a fact given context by the emo-core and ambient alternative stoner grunge zydeco blaring from nearby clubs like Emo’s and The Velveeta Room: the horde of clueless kids who will find something to champion for their years between 18 and twenty-five have moved on, finding black metal to be less pleasurable than the next trend. These people bloated black metal in a situation reminiscent of microcosmic imitation of human behavior; they discover a good thing, and finding that people want it and people wanting it mean power, distill it into a basic but accessible experience and then flood it with wanton, careless, selfish people, at which point it collapses into a polluted ruin. Such behavior was more common five years ago but now has mostly run its course, since the imitators brought in so many bands that they diluted quality down to the level of mainstream radio rock, at which point most people who could pass the GED were heading away from black metal as a genre. Although this situation is still rampant, wiser heads have prevailed, and the ranks have thinned alongside the hairlines as the black metal generation has grown up and maintained the faith while the trendfollowers have scattered like their own vapid thoughts. Those who attended this show saw how this historical process affects bands through the newfound diligence of the crowd and the way that the few drunken failures who did turn up were rebuffed, quietly, as one might purposefully ignore a homeless person at a eugenics conference. Respect was given where deserved more than before, and this bodes well for the Texas scene not only recovering from black metal’s latefound popularity but getting over its carny hipsterism that caused problems for bands in the 1980s, as anyone who remembers dead horse deconstructing can attest.

Devourment played last with a style of disconnected technical metal that is both intriguing and completely visible as the bare bones of a simple animal: no matter how intricate some of the riffs will get, these songs like those of chug-metal veterans Skinless plod along with the aim of gratifying a primitive groove instead of shocking us through transition and layering as all the great bands in the style did. Although one of their guitarists came from legends Imprecation, it’s doubtful that this band will be anywhere near that important.

For some this was a first introduction to the Redrum club, which is a nice enough place built like conventional Austin housing on a raised platform over a winding polluted stream ridden with trash. Its airconditioning was insufficient, its bar lavish, its sounds system not just competent but endowed with a sound engineer who was dedicated to finding a representative sound for each band and watching over them during the show. The setup was more professional than past metal shows, and while it didn’t change the agenda of the bands onstage, it did make it easier to witness. It is no wonder that more Austin shows are going to Redrum than other venues. Thanks to the labor of several different entities, the entire show fit well into this kind of casual professionalism, and endowed the fans of these older but increasingly valid styles with a varied and yet consistently powerful concert experience.

Bands:
Devourment
Images of Violence
Pleasant Valley
Insidious Decrepancy
Averse Sefira

Promoters:
Redrum Club
Extreme Texas Metal

Media:
Averse Sefira video Live in Quebec (WMV) 

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Ambient metal

People frequently ask “So what is an ‘ambient metal’ band? Have you actually seen one? Are there any metal bands out there who, if asked, would identify themselves as ‘ambient metal’?” To understand why the term is used, it is important to examine first why bands do anything that they do and second, what the term “ambient” means in the context of history.

Bands are assembled of individuals who together, in some form, decide what their output will be and create it. While much of this is a spontaneous project, there is behind-the-scenes transfer of information through shared musical influences or ideas and concepts the band members collectively find useful. It is unlikely that four guys with guitars sat down one day and said, “We should be the next cutting-edge thing. I know – let’s do ambient music, but on guitars.” A more realistic version is that a band formed and started playing with some ideas they found intellectually or musically stimulating.

The earliest human music was strictly rhythmic; the next generation of change brought linear melodic music; the generation after that used harmony and syncopation to integrate the two, and this slowly gave way to the furthest evolution of form, in which melody as the primary content expression was given context by the most complex understanding of musical devices yet known. Despite its seemingly technical origins, this music achieved an acme of expressiveness in artistic outlook. Human culture is still waiting for another artistic movement with the patient spirit and yet unbridled passion of Beethoven, Bach, Strauss or Wagner.

In the media age of the 1950s-1960s, the previous popular forms of Christian hymns, blues, country and polka were whipped into a single entity and called “rock music.” It has the populist features that classical music lacks: repetitive beat, droning pentatonic harmony, and constant dynamic intensity. It is cyclic music of an unchanging character. This linear constancy reflected the literature and ideals of the early industrial age, or modernism, although presented in a postmodern (“non-hierarchical”) aesthetic concept, until punk music distilled rock music to a few chords and shattered the illusion of uniqueness to any given rock band.

We might call rock “discrete music” because it aimed at a simple, 1:1 ratio between simple and gesture in the music. While earlier music had used pentatonic scales, including accidental or “blue” notes, blues and rock standardized on the pentatonic scale plus a single blue note; most rock is major, harmonic minor, or blues scale composition because these allow a flexible harmony in which no notes are specific to major or minor keys, meaning they can be used over different tonal centers without any notes that sound bad against a chord. Rock standardized the song format on a simplified version of English sea ballads; rock standardized constant syncopated percussion; it also standardized topics and a role (sexual initiation of teenagers). It broke away from the classical idea of phrases which periodically harmonized to exclusively use chords — descending from the guitar’s role as a rhythm instrument in ensembles, minus the ensemble — which caused rhythmic strumming within a narrow tonal range to replace the many notes and changing time signatures of what came to be called “lead rhythm” phrases. Borrowing from Anglo-Celtic, Scandinavian and German folk music, and adding a simplified version of the instrumentation used in German beerhouse bands, it took the lowest common denominator and made a fixed form of it. In short it was the perfect product, but in order to do that, it had to simplify itself into interchangeable parts which each had contextless and thus universal emotional symbolism.

In the 1970s, a countermovement arose in which musicians began looking to new forms for inspiration, and found them in the neoclassical: a merging of classicalist ideas of melody and layered structure with the newfound populist beat patterns of reduced structural changes to prevent intrusion upon the actual song pattern established by melodic architecture. Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, and arguably the first ambient guitarist, Robert Fripp, embraced principles of this ethos contra the simplistic lifestyle support of mainstream rock. In this atmosphere underground metal was born with 1983 luminaries Slayer, Sodom and Bathory. Each put out an album colored by the dark careless phrasing of Venom and wrought in the tremolo strum and ambient offtime rhythmic structures of extreme hardcore. This heritage forms the basis of all underground metal.

The opposite of discrete music, but not yet approaching the complexity of classical, ambient music creates a harmonic texture and relegates percussion to a background role, letting the phrase lead the change of song structure, key and tempo. An ideal ambient composition takes unchanging rhythm and over it layers phrases, creating harmony from their conjoined effect in the way classical music does, making moods “ad hoc” relative to its starting point. Where discrete music focuses on each piece of a song being a thing unto itself, using a universal set of symbols, ambient music invents symbols specific to each song and as a result gives pieces of a song meaning only when existing in the context of others. In this, selected metal and synthesizer music (synthpop, electronica, ambient) are closer to their classical heritage than the distillation of popular memes that is rock. Not all metal and ambient music fits this description; many artists, figuring that their listening audience would rather have something immediately recognizable and familiar in a “new” form, use rock-styled composition with different instrumentation.

Good examples of ambient metal are found in At the Gates The Red in the Sky is Ours and Darkthrone Transilvanian Hunger most prominently, but these are the end product of an evolution that began when Black Sabbath began imitating the phrases of horror movie soundtracks in streams of power chords. The first three Morbid Angel albums, anything from Burzum, the first two Sepultura EPs, and Sarcófago I.N.R.I. all exhibit ambient tendencies, among many other albums. Not surprisingly, these bands tend to write about topics that are not “universal” in the sense of common to all human beings in the way morality is surmised to be absolute, but write from a perspective outside that of the human, as if showing us interactions of people and nature in a dispassionate, nihilistic universe which delights in conflict and interconnection more than symbols held up above nature itself.

As any change in musical style points to a change in thinking patterns, the rise of ambience in metal signifies a falling away from mainstream views — which tend to be discrete, moralistic, utilitarian, and universalist — toward a naturalistic and scientific view of reality. The linear is broken; the complex and multithreaded view of causality that ancient civilizations had, in which no single event led to change, but a collaboration of events, has been restored in the music itself, as has a belief in varied dynamics, implying a greater narrative range. In this light, it is impossible to see this music as anything but an ongoing revolution, even if the names used here are still foreign to most of the bands producing it.

Ambient music and its relation to metal

The genres grew up simultaneously and converge in the current generation
by Alex Birch

After Burzum started producing pure electronic soundtracks to Pagan mythology, Fenriz from Darkthrone decided to go avant-garde and composing electronic space explorations, Ildjarn left his Discharge-empowered poetry and began producing synth-layered soundscapes, and Beherit, in an attempt to revive the band from the dusty archives, set out to create simple but haunting digitalized neoclassical harmony, many metal fans previously only accustomed to the sound of raw guitars, slamming drums, dark basses, and tearing screams from the abyss, now began taking great interest in what the electronic genre had to offer. To the surprise of many, electronic music was close to the compositional and aesthetic roots of metal, acknowledging new bands using ambient and metal to fuse a blend between two modern instrumentations.

am-bi-ent (am’be-ənt)adj. Surrounding; encircling: ambient sound; ambient air.[Latin ambiens, ambient-, present participle of ambire, to surround : amb-, ambi-, around; see ambi- + ire, to go; see ei- in Indo-European roots.]

– The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

As shown by the etymological explanation above, ambient music is an artistic medium trying to achieve an atmosphere or a particular surrounding, based most commonly on electronic sounds that are looped until the listener feels a certain mood and place arise within the mind. Usually the artist takes use of a basic synth-layer, using that as a base for a melodic or harmonic development. The synth-layer can collaborate through assonance or dissonance with another layer, in order to create balance and expand the instrumental possibilities. Tribal beats or other forms of percussion may be used to set a rhythm along with the flowing electronic waves, but most commonly these are left out completely. On top of the basic flow of key tones, the ambient artist experiments with melody and harmony, which we as listeners recognize as thematic communication. The melodies are often looped for a certain period of time, in order to achieve a form of transcendental, hypnotizing effect. Only by listening to the music continuously without interruption, perhaps over a time span of 30 minutes or longer, can the intensity and the thematic realization reach a high-end point.

Due to its very nature as music, ambient is ideal for meditation, as it means long listening hours, often with a calming and soothing effect for the mind, body, and soul. Its instrumental simplicity adds up to this, but the compositional method is often very complex. The artists can integrate different kinds of sound effects to create additional musical experiences: rivers flowing, people screaming, distorted political speeches, and even computerized sounds from a car or a machine, to further enhance and set the mood to its relative course. The leading melodies often intertwine with the basic synth-layer, ending in collaboration between rhythm (“pace”) and harmony. Some artists are able compose entire songs only by manipulating a few synth-tones, co-ordinating them into different patterns or cyclic key melodies, and as a result achieve an echoing effect in harmony. Percussion-only, like one tribal beat played against another, may also create an ambient-effect of great use — the possibilities lie within the ideas of the composer. Not surprisingly the ambient genre is a very experimental one, fusing metal, folk, jazz, and even classical music, into an organic symbiosis.

Ambient music can be seen as a structuralistic form of music, meaning the listener must recreate the compositional structure within the mind, in order to understand the ideas communicated through the musical medium. While popular music and most of the metal created today, are built around the concept of musical progression through key choruses that function as leading melodies, ambient music often lacks melodic development and instead tries to achieve an atmosphere by slowly building up harmonic tension over a large time span. The listener is forced to maintain a close relationship to the variation in tonal, melodic, and harmonic presence, and forge all partial developments of the music into a central motif. While this may sound academic, it is often very simple: by paying attention to the music you’re listening to, following the progression of the composition itself instead of the melody, you will automatically gain an understanding of the underlying structure within the music.

This does not mean that the structure in ambient music “exists” in the objective sense of the word, but that it functions as an assessment of the how the music is structured and what it tries to tell us through ideas. This, along with the fact that ambient music is created to achieve an atmosphere, makes it a very esoteric listening experience, almost like a religious ritual or an intense philosophizing thinking process. There are many kinds of ambient music and, like in metal music, certainly not all subgenres are relevant in the categorizing of the main genre. What they all share in common is a free compositional method of creating music, breaking the boundaries of verse-chorus-bridge-thinking and using the rhythm as a pacesetter and not as determiner of melodic or harmonic progression. This leaves the field open for the artists to create different patterns of ideas without being restricted to a linear beat, like in rock or popular music.

The relationship between ambient and other forms of music may seem far-fetched, but is in fact something that has helped it gain a larger listening audience outside underground circles. Metal music, like ambient, is built around the compositional idea that originates from classical music: long and intense pieces communicating an active life experience, through the inherent variation in musical structure. The free boundaries of harmony in classical music, are in ambient used to let go of all sense of percussion and instead form a continuous rhythm by regularly looping melody and sound effects, until a consecutive working arises and determines the overall thematic and musical base, on which to build upon through progression or deconstruction. Like with classical and metal music, ambient is through its free composition able to take use of partial experiences, and merging these together to form a central motif. While most rock and popular music is built around one key melody without significance to experience, classical, metal, and ambient music can only be understood when interpreting the melodic/harmonic and structural changes in the pieces, and construct these together inside the mind of listener, into a solid whole representing and describing an overall ideal, sensation, feeling, or experience.

The links between metal and ambient music are therefore multiple, and when leading bands within black metal realized the decay of the genre as a whole, they quickly turned to what must have been seen as an obvious next stage within creating neoclassical music: pure electronic textures, free from drums and conventionalities, trying to revive classical music through modern instrumentation. The ambient veteran Klaus Schulze proved that this was fully possible by releasing his album entitled “X”. In it he composes pieces functioning as musical biographies of famous German artists like Georg Trakl and Friedrich Nietzsche. While the first pieces are entirely created using the infamous synthesizer (an electronic instrument creating musical output by mathematically or by hand, manipulating keys and sounds by different musical techniques), Schulze gradually integrates classical instruments like violins. In the final piece he takes use of a full symphony orchestra and manages to create music where the classical meets the modern ambient sound techniques. The result is beyond what any artist within the ambient field so far has achieved.

Other ambient projects like the old-school synthesizer masters Tangerine Dream, began experimenting with the possibility in letting concurrent synth melodies function much like a symphony orchestra works with counterpoint, leaving out most percussive determiners and thereby form a music driven by a free melodic progression in sound. Post-techno projects like Polygon Window instead went the other way and tried to create harmony by working with tribal beats and looping them concurrently, so that a meta-harmony was taking shape as both rhythm and key melody. Early artists like Screaming Corpse would even strip the music of all melody, instead collaborating with sound effects in order to fuse different collage into central motifs. Buzzing sounds and distorted screams passing a digitalized filter, would function as instruments themselves, experimenting with echo-effects and extreme reverbing techniques.

This method of composing music was later developed into what we today refer to as “industrial ambient”, meaning a form of music that by working with machine-driven beats and sound effects replicating mechanistic and robotic parts of modern society, achieves a post-industrial form of electronic music. Similarly many projects take use of sound effects from nature, which nowadays is called “nature ambient”; samples of thunder, running water, moving glaciers etc. together with electronic instrumentation, in an attempt to describe an experience related to nature and its process as organic system. Amir Baghiri demonstrates this when forming melodic motifs by using water drums to evoke the soul of nature with its own organic material. Neoclassical ambient artist Biosphere can also be added to this list, manipulating sound effects from nature with cold and bleak soundscapes, forging a timeless atmosphere set out in the freezing northern Europe.

However, the most common form of ambient is that of long and simplistic synth tones, balancing between different tonal heights and variation in intensity, slowly building up a meditative state of mind within the listener. Lustmord and Lull are two classic examples of this compositional method: no percussion, no beat, no central melodic or harmonic motif, only hour-long sonic textures forged by the most simple of tonal variation. The theme is only understood by listening to the whole piece from start to finish, paying close attention to the underlying structures in the music and placing them in context with the central compositional idea. Metal works the same way: the understanding of the music is only apparent to the listener who follows the structural progression and not simply trying to find any “truths” within the aesthetic alone. Classical music is even more free from boundaries than metal, and requires a high attention span in order for the listener to follow each small harmonic change, and realizing its relevance from a larger contextual “truth”, which is assessed only within the mind of he or she who listens, but nonetheless is a result of an assessment of what the medium is trying to communicate.

Sometimes the entire musical picture is disintegrated into monotone sound waves, like a radio transmission being converted into pure synth layers, moving back and forth between two levels of intensity, much like the waves of the sea meets the shore. Post-Beherit project Suuri Shamaani composed music this way, following a logical progression of its previous attempts in creating solid and flowing music without as little rhythmic restrictions as possible. Inspired by synthpop masters Kraftwerk and the previously mentioned Tangerine Dream, Suuri Shamaani gained a new presence within ambient music with its desperately bleak, dissonant, organic, over-simplistic instrumentation. Fenriz’ side-project Neptune Towers was following the same lead when breaking apart the sparse beats found within the music of Tangerine Dream, and instead using the synthesizer to both shape rhythm and harmony around improvised melodies, thriving on free contextual motifs connected to the organic space of universe.

Similarly have some ambient artists been trying to use instrumentation from more traditional elements like heavy metal, to explore the possibilities in letting metal, ambient, and classical music collaborate on a common idealistic basis. Canadian ambient project Ashtorath and the more well-known artist Robert Fripp, found new life in the electronic genre when integrating classical harmony and metal instrumentation, like piano and guitar solos, even taking use of violins to achieve a neoclassical atmosphere.

While the composition behind ambient music has been complex as in the case of Klaus Schulze or Tangerine Dream, the simplicity of the instrumentation has remained as a hallmark for most of the material created within the ambient field. The veteran and official founder of the concept of ambient music, Brian Eno, stated in the liner notes to the album Music for Airports, that it had to be “[…] able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting.” His music was built around this idea: simple key notes balancing on equally simple central motifs, both working as background meditation, but also providing the listener with a deeper contextual depth that only could be found by paying close attention to the structural core of each piece. In this sense, ambient music is both passive and active, as the mind of the listener concurrently experiences a background and a leading theme. This was nothing new to the metal fans that started to listen to Klaus Schulze and Neptune Towers after the outbreak of populism within the genre after 1996.

Metal music follows the same compositional method as described above: what to most people sound like “noise”, is to the regular metal listener a clear and distinctive form of music close to the classical ideals. This is understood only by seeing through the “noise” generated by the guitar riffs and the slamming drums, and instead paying attention to the underlying melody, structure, and thematic presentation. Still the metal artist is able to take use of the “noise effect” by manipulating it and turning it into an aesthetic pleasure – an important part of the musical experience as a whole. Classical music almost completely breaches the boundaries of passive/active switching by its continuous flow of partial melodic development, but similarly has the ability of being understood as both an overall tonal advancement towards a certain key motif, and as partial context in melodic detail: the focus on the partial and the whole becomes a clash that can equally by seen as the switch between the passive and active listening experience. As listeners of classical, metal, and ambient music, we both interpret the active experience and the “passive” one automatically generated, by letting the mind making a continuous re-assessment of the overall advancement of the music. This is how we are able to remember certain key parts in a musical piece, from over an hour of perhaps 40-50 different melodies; we’ve registered the overall tonal variation and from there on, remembered the partial textures built around the central motif of each piece. This can be compared to the sense of hierarchical memory by which our brain often functions: you read the word “Burzum” and think of keywords linked to that phenomenon: “ambient”, “Odin”, “Discharge”.

Is should be somewhat apparent after this reading, that ambient and metal music have a lot in common, and that the narrative basis in metal music made a logical progression away from blues/rock standards, instead trying to conquer new grounds by leaving the standardized format and migrating to an open and free composition closer to that of classical music. With that migration, the blockheads that still today are producing four-chord-cycled riffs, were left behind and still to this day do not understand nor comprehend the genius in Neptune Towers or later Burzum and Beherit. The metal artists proved once again that their ideal was an elitist and romanticist one, creating art after experience and ideal, and not after commerce and popularity. Ambient was the choice for many serious black and death metal bands when the genre became crowded with too many populists, and since the ambient field was both close to classical/romanticist ideals, and offered a modern way of reviving ancient wisdom from centuries far left behind, it was seen as the only step towards a more unrestricted musical area, filled with the passion and atmosphere that defined the best of black and death metal. Today most serious metal fans also listen to classical and ambient music, knowing these three genres contain a lasting artistic expression towards natural and traditional ideals, free from conventions found within blues, rock, and popular music, breaking new boundaries as further possibilities are explored, along the way on the journey to the stars.

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Why “Christian metal” is an oxymoron

Any genre of music can be said to have an ideology, or ideological range. The musicians and fans had to pick the music because it sounded like something they wanted in their lives. With a really dumb genre, that would be distraction or posing like a slacker or a pimp. With more complex genres, the aesthetics and organization of the music suggest ideals people desire. For metal, the aesthetic — finding beauty in dischordant darkness — and organization — a “riff salad” that narrates like a poem — suggests a rejection of the human perspective for a more holistic reality.

It is this style of metal, from its first riffs derived from the modernist-classical-lite melodies of horror movie soundtracks, which, by eschewing fixed “meaning” for a sense of fitting together as a whole and having an architectonic clarity as the songs, shows us a world from the perspective of a movie, or a scientist, or history: the camera pans back and we no longer think of individuals involved as being important in their own right. We think of the story, the situation, and the outcome, but with our knowledge we cannot be limited to an anthropocentric position.

This is how, without even reading the lyrics, we can tell what metal has in the way of values and worldview, which if you believe in them enough to think they’d make a good organization for civilization, you call an “ideology.” The ideology of Britney Spears is “what the hell, who cares”; the ideology of jazz is cosmopolitanism; the ideology of techno is vibrant distraction; the ideology of classical music is a respect for intensity and attention span. All forms of art have some form of ideology, although sometimes it is hard to recognize because it is subtle or, in many cases, non-challenging (see “Britney Spears” some words ago).

The Metal Ideology

With a little more analysis, we can enumerate the metal ideology as follows:

  • Feral naturalism – Horror, predation, violence, and battle are praised for their intensity as experience and their power. Morality is thrown away in favor of this appreciation for the mechanisms of reality.
  • Technofutilism – As in horror films, technology and social institutions are useless for dealing with the problems we face.
  • Realistic individualism – The wisdom of crowds is feared and seen as false, since they pander to each other (poseurs, sell-outs). However, the individualist is realistic and so knows that everyone in a crowd is an individualist, and that’s how a crowd forms.
  • Nihilism – Morality is a human imposition, as are value and purpose. Nature doesn’t care what happens to us, and neither do the gods. We’re in the driver’s seat and whether we sink or swim is 100% up to us.
  • Holism – There is a frustration with the tendency of modern society to break down experiences and concepts by using exclusive logical OR operations in a categorical context; it is either a truth OR an opinion, but can’t be both, and so on. Metal is a genre of logical AND, in that it sees all of our judgments as attributes and reality as the only arbitrer.
  • Ludic, absurdist materialism – In a metal view, we are only fleshy bodies and we can have transcendent thoughts, but we will always be what we are. From that, we can clear aside pretense and enjoy life, which is inherently absurd, gross, terrifying, crass, insane and beautiful, the most rational design ever, rewarding.

Evidence for each of these assertions can be found in metal lyrics, imagery and through a thoughtful perspective on the sounds and structures used in metal songs. You could claim “the past is alive” and “only death is real” as good starting points, but even early Black Sabbath lyrics have the romanticist, naturalistic, holistic and nihilistic tendencies that create the above values system. In this, metal bands are not dissimilar to European Romantic poetry and classical music, which was also post-moral, saw the individual as a means and not an end, nationalistic, and playful.

Christianity, on the other hand, is more complex because it is open to wide interpretations. Narrowing in on what most people believe, we can see it has several basic tenets, originating in its idea of individual equality in the eyes of God. To a metalhead, this interpretation of Christianity seems anti-nature, because we are not equal in ability and any interpretation of equality is a human imposition that does not exist in nature; further, metalheads distrust the creation of alternate realities like God, heaven and hell. Not all interpretations of Christianity have these tenets, and some in fact are closer to what metal believes (the likes of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Johannes Eckhart or Arthur Schopenhauer come to mind). But for the mass religion that conquered much of Europe, these are its beliefs:

  • Dualism – Christianity believes in a second reality that exists outside of this one. This reality, in which there is pure moral “good,” is called Heaven and we are supposed to impose it on earth; Hell exists in this same spirit realm.
  • Morality/peace/benevolence – In Christian lore, the best possible method of living is one that is peaceful, as that way you do not interrupt others. To a metalhead, this is ridiculous because people can be doing things that while not explicitly immoral cause bad consequences, and so of course you interrupt them.
  • Discrete individualism – Christian dogma supports the idea of the individual as absolute in that they are to be granted as much freedom as possible, and can be judged only by God, and should be forgiven when they screw up. This is to a metalhead imposition of the will of the Crowd on the individual and a type of slavery, as it retards those who do have a clue from acting to keep the clueless from dominating via superior numbers.

The common root of these Christian beliefs is humanism, or belief in the predominance of the human form and its incarnations, individuals. The Christian God is shaped like a human; Christian morality rewards never harming or killing humans even if they’re doing insane things; Christian morality emphasizes how we’re all equal. We can see how the elaborate dance of morality and theology supports a much simpler human truth, which is the desire of the ego of each one of us to be independent from forces which can humble it with reality. We want to be free from the consequences of making bad decisions and the social judgment of others, because either can show us to be incorrect or to have a weakness, and that scares us in a social setting and makes us lose social status. The root of Christianity is affirming the ego’s power; the root of metal is affirming the power of nature and by unintentional consequence, decreasing the supremacy of the ego.

Romanticism

Romanticism, the parent belief of metal, originates in a more naturalistic time before beliefs like Christianity separated the self-valuation of the human individual from nature, and gave them an imaginary reality (morality) with which to compensate. Although Christianity means well, the unintended consequence is that it makes people more selfish because instead of just trying to live their lives, they are now trying to prove and justify their worth in a moral context. The resulting drama creates many social problems because it ultimately boils down to a denial of reality in favor of individual withdrawl from reality, and it creates neurosis and ego competition.

For this reason art — which tries to affirm our bonds to reality, or through unitivity remove us from false worlds and the withdrawl into our own perspective — has been at odds with society for at least a millenium, perhaps longer. Where social control, power, law and religion require external affirmation for the individual to justify themselves, art confronts the accepted vision of reality with a fantasy that is metaphorically more accurate than the “scientific” and “objective” beliefs of a dying society. Art reconnects us with cause/effect reasoning by taking us out of a false context, and through a new context, showing us where our values lie.

Both Romanticist art and metal are therefore in conflict with Christianity as 99% of its audience practices it, and they have run into additional conflict through Christian propaganda trying to emulate the original art forms. When a Christian or secular humanist (atheistic version of Christian morality) sees metal, which is a value system that not only denies their own but makes it look like an arbitrary fantasy into which people escape their fear of mortality and failure, they have a tendency to do what any good propagandist would do: make their own version of the art in question, and then point to that new creation which did not emerge from the artistic movement but was imposed upon it, and use its existence to claim that consensus does not exist in the artistic movement.

We call this imposed, false, externalized metal “Christian metal” because its defining factor is that it is Christian. It is not a genre, but can appear in any genre; it is an ideological tag with a parallel in neo-Nazi music in that what matters most is its message, and it uses metal as a conduit for that message, instead of wanting to create metal for metal’s sake and therefore explore the values of metal.

A History of Christian Metal

Metal is a romanticist movement which was inspired by the classical era of European humanity, including as part of its view many Romantic philosophical ideals which are pre-Christian in their derivation and anti-Christian in their values.

  • Black Sabbath – Black Sabbath were originally a blues band who later shifted to metal to reflect an interest in the occult. After three albums in which massive drug use and public outcry over their beliefs battered them down, they created an album which had several pro-Christian songs. This does not necessarily reflect their beliefs, nor is likely to do so, but illustrates the confusion and doubt they encountered at the time and the religion of their youth to whose programming they returned. Further, their songs which had a “warning” about the occult were a product of their having an interest in occultist themes, but not necessarily a propagandistic outlook on it (where in contrast, every single “Christian metal” band that has ever existed has taken a preachy, condescending, demagogic tone toward their audience).
  • Metal – Metal, in Black Sabbath and related bands of that era including King Crimson, Led Zeppelin, and Blue Cheer, reflected a tendency toward darker worldviews which could best be described as Romanticist in the spirit of the literature, art and music of the post-Renaissance in which artists disaffected with the humanism of the time sought a greater meaning than a moralization to existence through art. Poets like Keats, Wordsworth, and Shelley were a revolution against a secular Christian movement in which, despite little talk of afterlife and spirituality, a tendency existed for the first time in European art to preach a secular morality to which one adhered or drifted into the ambiguous, obscure and “evil.” The works of those poets and others from the modern Romanticist movement were invoked by the similar themes of early proto-metal bands, including a fascination with the morbid and with ancient times, a desire for transcendence within the world itself, a ruthless sense of self-discipline and heroic character, and a desire for more significance in life itself more than a concern for post-death salvation.After some years of heavy metal, the movement had solidified much of its artistic technique but had degenerated into hedonism, and fortunately was able to merge with the more dogmatic punk to form the first generation of speed metal. These bands were alarmingly preachy and leftist and as a result quickly self-destructed, prompting the extreme side of metal to go “underground” and dispense entirely with morality and, in the lead of heroes like Bathory and Slayer, who arguably invented the next generation, to preach an imaginative, Romantic “Satanic” outlook which like Black Sabbath was more fascinated with the occult than with preaching its values. The music of Slayer for example uses metaphorical Satanism to describe the errors and horrors of war, disease, violence and crime. Following these bands was a genre made more alienated by the increasing failures of society to recognize its error, and made somewhat bitter by the increasing resentment rising from a society (America at least) that in 80% of its members found an affinity for Judeo-Christian beliefs. Death metal and following it, black metal, as a result were more violent and more dogmatic toward Christ and Judea; part of this was inherited from their “hidden” ancestors in hardcore punk music, who as part of their alienated nihilism recognized religion as the social control mechanism which many of us allege it is.

    From the No Right to Disagree With Us Department:

    The national poll of 1,000 American adults conducted April 26 through May 6, 2002 found that 17% of Americans – or about 35 million adults – hold views about Jews that are “unquestionably anti-Semitic.” source

    With the state of metal now, virtually every formative band in the underground has taken a negative stance on Christianity (and many have attacked Judaism and Islam as well). This is a result of the evolutionary process within the genre detailed above. Times have changed since Black Sabbath, and to a perceptive youth of today the strengthening role of religion and secular moral symbolism derived from religion is not only clear but alarming. Consequently, the most popular metal genre ever, black metal, is unanimous in its destructive impulses toward Christianity and its parent religion, Judaism from the middle east.

  • Why Christian metal is destructive – The Christian — or to a philosopher, humanist, whether secular or ecclesiastical — worldview is the underlying outlook of our society. That means that anything which is not Christian or secular humanist is the rarity, not the other way around. Christians confuse a lack of symbolic agreement with Christianity — saying “I am a Christian” or similar — with a lack of agreement. Essentially, secular humanism and Christianity are the same philosophy and they’re what all but a few people in our society take for granted as “correct.”With this in mind, it makes almost no sense that Christians would attempt to subvert metal for their own dogma, yet they attempt it because symbolically, metal is threatening to the Christian outlook because it endorses a theory in which good and evil are necessary balance, yet does not endorse true “evil” (selfish, deconstructive, callow acts). We should be cynical toward the Christian metal perspective and question it at all times, because it is paradoxical for the following reasons:
    • First, if people should write about what they really believe in, why should they spread the dogma of a religion that they didn’t invent?
    • If they really believe this religion, then metal – as a movement with overwhelming occultist, nihilistic, fascistic overtones – is something they should avoid. Why would they choose to join a genre which contradicts what they believe?
    • Is there no greater “trend” than the 2,000 years in which Judeo-Christian religions have been gaining prominence in the west? What is “un-trendy” about following the same religion that at least 80% of the people in your country follow?
    • Why should metal desire “a lot more of the youth” to be interested in it, if conformity is not our goal? Metal is like many genres self-selecting, and does not aim to be broad. By your logic, we should start making music like Britney Spears (except with a Christian message!) in order to get a wider audience.
    • How can one “truly feel” something which one has to be taught in order to regard it as true? A man raised alone in the forest may invent a religion, but perhaps not the whole dogma of Christ.

    There is obviously more to be said along these lines of questioning, but it’s not necessary here. I’d like to close by mentioning something else: that every single “Christian metal” band that has ever existed has been a poor copy of a “secular” band. Even the most popular, “Believer,” were a ripoff of an Atheist album coming out a year earlier. The separate nature of “Christian metal,” and that the genre itself draws a clear distinction between “secular” and religious music, demonstrates how Christians view “Christian metal”: a tool for preaching acceptable lyrics into a genre that has otherwise on the whole rejected Christ.

In 1990, ninety percent of the adult population identified with one or another religion group. source

In our current time, Judeo-Christianity is not only dominant in social thinking but has become secularized and dominant there as well. Prior to Judeo-Christianity’s arrival, concepts such as “morality” and “equality” and dualism were rejected by the inhabitants of Europe as insane or alien. After years of slowly working its way into that culture, Christianity became the dominant religion through its influence among the poor, the downtrodden, the pathetic, the less-capable and the spiteful. Currently, Judaism and Christianity are the dominant religions in America and most of the Western World. For example, both presidential candidates in the last election spoke extensively of their relationships to “God” and of the “morality” of their ideas, including vice-Presidential candidate Joseph Liebermann who considers himself “the moral voice of the Senate.”

“From these two religions we find at least all of our last ten presidents and their ancestors, and among the believers we find the owners of every major media establishment in the country as well as most of the smaller ones. Virtually every Congressperson has prominently featured in his or her campaign propaganda the Christian or Jewish nature of his or her morality, and most television anchors will make reference to secularized Christian moral concepts or the Judaic “God” in the midst of a supposedly objective broadcast. Before Judeo-Christianity, these concepts did not exist in the Western world; their sole origin is in the religions of Christ and Moses (who were both born Jewish).

This article is not an attempt to smear the people ensnared by these sick ideas; on the contrary, I view them as “victims” also in that their consciousness has had a control mechanism implanted within it. This goes for secular people like yourself, who in good faith sit down and write me a letter like the one quoted above in which you espouse humanist ideals of “individual choice” and “belief.” In the cases of believers however, those ideals do not exist; what does exist is conformity to an ideal of social control, and metal rightly rejects it.

Christians see themselves as very tolerant of people of other faiths, with 81% of Christians saying that Christians in the United States are “very” or “somewhat” tolerant of people of other faiths. People who are not Christians agree with this view for the most part, but not nearly as many of them are fully convinced of Christian tolerance. Only 54% of non-Christians see Christians as being tolerant of people of other faiths. source

Another Form of Humanism: Satanism

Satanism in black metal, death metal, “doom metal,” heavy metal, evil metal, speed metal, thrash and grindcore/metal hybrids arises from the need of metal musicians to understand emptiness in the universe and find a metaphor for its acceptance, a trait in evidence in death metal, black metal, heavy metal and ambient metal to extremes. Much like Romantic poets John Milton or William Blake explored the occult, evil and Satan as metaphor, metal bands find Satan a tempting metaphor for a society against which you can rebel without escaping its psychological trap.

Many of society’s abused denizens, looking at the over-the-top exultation in Satanism, Evil, deviant or degenerate behavior in metal, find themselvs turning back in disgust: “Awk! These kids are just trying to piss me off – contrarians, they only want to invert what is, and to create attention for themselves.”

One could not be more wrong. Contrarians wish to behave “badly” to grab the attention that comes from swimming the wrong way up the stream, but to get that attention, they depend on a cousin of pity: the belief that those who choose a different path are lost and looking for the others to bring them back in to a hearth of comfort and goodness. In short, a contrarian affirms the belief system she is rejecting.

Satanism, as practiced by death metal and black metal bands, does not involve an inversion but a surpassing of moral norms and social custom. To understand this, one must first understand the nihilism of metal bands: they do not believe there is “good” or “evil,” but see events as disconnected from any form of absolute other than their inherent function – that is to say, metal bands believe that events do not have a face value and instead view existence with a scientific eye that traces a complexity of causes, reactions, and similarities but does not attempt to ascribe any of it to absolute forces except logical tendencies.

Where Satanism exists for metal bands it functions as metaphor in following the footsteps of the Master: in each mythology where he touches, the Satan-figure is the youthful and ambiguous rebel who rejects what has come before in favor of his own path, and despite his consequent exile from society, finds truth in what he has created and found. The cry from Milton of Satan’s independence – “I will not serve!” – echoes in a genre that insists on finding out its own answers, and creating its own paths, on an individual basis. Unfortunately, that leads to the ego-basis of Christianity and secular humanism, and shortly afterwards, the sickening morals that constrain begin again.

Resistance

You can strengthen the genre of metal by resisting this form of social control in form of boycotts, public awareness of its true intention, and a refusal to accept it as metal. If it is played on the radio, call in to speak the truth about its agenda. If a friend plays it on a stereo, speak out against the controlling mindset of the music. If someone tells you that it’s “open-minded” to accept music that attempts to destroy the philosophies of the genre to which it theoretically belongs, tell them that art does not reprogram human souls toward giving in to a fear of death, and that true metal will liberate them from their fear of existence.

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Quantity versus Quality in metal

We measure our lives by either quality or quantity. If it was a great steak, we say so and leave it at that; if it was mediocre, we say that sixteen ounces of it for thirty dollars was a “good deal.” The quantitative view is most popular because it is accessible to everyone, since only those who are endowed by nature with the sense to know a good steak from a crappy one can tell you its qualitative value. Since most people are not so fortunate, we talk about what a “great deal” it is that you can get something that legally qualifies as steak in prodigious amounts at a low price per pound. This is the essence of democratic liberal free enterprise society, in that it eschews all things which require a higher kind of person and replace them with the kind of assessments even a moron can follow (and congratulate himself for the “good deal” he’s getting).

But how does the qualitative work in a society? After all, say the “wise” pundits, wouldn’t it be hard to organize a society around qualitative value, since only a few can assess it? This column offers an example in the small. Peer-to-peer file sharing can take many forms, but one of the most common is that of a hub; this is a small community where people exchange files. Normally, to get on a hub, you must have some quantity of files to be shared, and without that, you can be excluded “fairly” because, of course, everyone can see that you need to have a minimum amount of stuff to get on. Like cheap steak, it might be stuff that would only appeal to morons, but it shows you’ve done the effort and therefore deserve to be on the hub – that’s “fair,” sensu liberal democracy.

The hub toward which A.N.U.S. contributes, the neoclassical hub, does not operate this way. There is no minimum share size to get on, and there is no reward for having more stuff; instead of quantity, the hub focuses on quality, because unlike liberal democracies it recognizes that unlimited moronic music is not “equal” to a small amount of quality music, no matter how much the average voter can’t tell the difference. You can get on the hub right now and start participating, but the admins who periodically peruse shares will eventually check out what you have and — Slipknot? Cradle of Filth? Pantera? — those who have moronic music get booted. I frequently get mail from these people, objecting that their ejection was not “fair,” and these mails invariably contain the line, “But I had (amount) of share!” These people are used to a quantitative, passive society, where no matter what the quality, as long as you get enough there to put a number in the blank on the form, you’re considered part of the club.

Not to say that a hub is a club, of course – a hub is a tool for sharing files, and a social space, as well. But what it is more than anything else is a reflection of the values of those who meet there. People who want to listen to crowd-pleasing music go to the bigger hubs and hang out with other people who like Britney, or cool jazz, or light rock, or even indiscriminate metal and grindcore – what the crowd wants is acceptance for mere quantitative participation, such as the number one (1) – if there is an (1) individual, then it should be equal, and admitted to the club, because – look – it exists, after all. This is what the crowd always desires, which is the paradoxical concept of group participation through pseudo-individuality. You can’t tell them their taste in music sucks, because then they’ll wail about how they’ve been wronged and it’s not “fair.”

For those who have made their way out of the biggest slice of groupthink, it’s healthier to find an enclave, or a smaller place where their views are protected from the majority view, which is the quantitative. If you have unending time and nothing better to do, it might appeal to you to listen to all 100,000 death metal, grindcore, black metal and heavy metal bands yet created. More likely, unless you’re a retarded invalid, you’ve got other things to do and so depend on finding the quality stuff through socialization and information resources. Naturally, the crowd will oppose you wherever you try to do this, as they like to believe either (a) that all music is equal or (b) that the most popular music is the best, and therefore you don’t need to actually look – just see what they’re playing on the radio now; “trust us.” The enclave ideal is naturally opposed to that of open to the public group participation.

Any social unit based on this notion of qualitative logic, and eschewing unnecessary quantitative logic, would naturally be a better place to live. Quantitative logic gets you the lowest common denominator, but if you return assessment to that of degree of quality, you instead get only the better efforts. Select the better people to be part of this community; that’s inherent to its nature. Let them pick the better art, learning, science and products, and then you’ve got less garbage (inferior products break frequently, and can rarely be repaired). When they make rules, they don’t have to worry about everyone – oh no, fat people in wheelchairs cannot fit into our new library – but those who actually make a difference. To people concerned about quality, the opinions of the mass are not important, and thus they don’t have to worry about offending people and can actually tell it like they see it – something you cannot do in our liberal democracy, or you’ll be blacklisted and investigated and eventually forced to take a job as a janitor somewhere.

A qualitative society is by nature structured toward building consensus. If you have something of quality, you hold it up as a shining example, and what is agree on is not that we should all have a similar quantity of thing, but that we should all work toward having a similar quality of character, strength, intelligence in ourselves. Since your society only admits people of quality, you don’t have to assume that every other person on the street is a moron, and thus can have compassion for random people in society – and have the option to socialize more, since you don’t have to first apply a filter to screen out the idiots. This is how society used to be, but it was lost in the populist revolt that demanded we all be equal and have an equal right to quantities of money; see what you’ve given up, in order to please the crowd? Well – at least on this hub, there’s a sliver of what once was, and what, if we work toward it, will be again.

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Summer Warfare: Bahimiron, Averse Sefira and Masochism in Houston, Texas

Bahimiron, Averse Sefira, and Masochism
August 28, 2004
Cardi’s
Houston, Texas

This city stretches like a dry riverbed across the flat land of South Texas, ending near the mud-brown ocean in which floats medical waste and human shit. Like most modern cities, it is both strikingly ugly and possessing some rare beautiful architecture, but the majority of it is open shopping centers and freeways. Lots of concrete to reflect sunlight and absorb toxic rain which rises in a sticky mist. Its strength is its verdant natural land, but as more people from every country on earth pour into it, this too is consumed.

Naturally, a place like this is perfect for a black metal show.

The show promoters at Extreme Texas Metal put together a type of show that is popular today, called in the vernacular the “shotgun,” since it is formed of a collection of marginally related bands fired out in sequence with the hopes of finding at least one that each member of the audience can like. Consequently, they are schizophrenic in atmosphere, with the decorum of a food court as portions of the audience assemble for each band while others sit back and comment. However, this is how one must make money in a bloated “scene,” and the Extreme Texas Metal staff did a competent and fair job of setting up the show.

Being a dilatory malcontent, our reviewer showed up late and was able to catch the last three bands, who together represented a battering ram of black and death metal.

BAHIMIRON

At this point, Bahimiron were barely taking to the stage. With an original member of Texas evil metal legends Imprecation (think of a more ritualistic, less bassy take on first-album Incantation) on vocals and lead guitar, and the two deviant minds of “Where’s My Skin?” magazine on bass and drums, this band is clearly a powerhouse of minds in the present community. Its adaptation to the current scene both affirms and negates it, making for a rocky adjustment as this band finds and refines its style.

Their style is a hybrid of the grim and necrotic fast and simple black metal of the later changes to the style, merged smoothly with the grand interiors presented by architectural melodic black metal such as Gorgoroth or Impaled Nazarene. Songs generally cycle between riff pairs at different tempos, then reach a stage of presentation in which pace often shifts dramatically, before inverting the process of reaching it and drawing out to a violent and usually abrupt conclusion.

On this night, the band professionally presented the same, with the addition of more confidence in moving and playing onstage and greater technical accuracy and synchronization. A new guitarist has joined the band to their fortune, as his rhythm guitar solidity allows a foundation on which other members can build. Percussion varied from hardcore rally beats to the metals-heavy blasts which allow them to pick up speed, no simple task since most chords are strummed at high speed regardless of tempo.

Vocalist/guitarist Grimlord, formerly of Imprecation, commanded the stage with his voice whipping from guttural to shriek to conventional singing as demanded by the material; his guitar playing is fluid and self-assured, and allows him to enhance his vocal delivery. Bassist Jenocide added a mute aggression and bulletlike low-note commentary to her impassive stage presence, while drummer Blaash was precise and energetic. Tearing through a mixture of old and new material, this longstanding Texas-Arizona front presented well and left no doubt as to their stature.

As many bands have, they suffered under the hands of sound production problems, mainly because Cardi’s was breaking in a journeyman audio engineer that night, and as a result peaking monitors cut out and distortion sometimes became a wash, disrupting the forward motion of the band. To their credit, Bahimiron held out until the problem was mostly corrected and then moved forward without losing atmosphere or becoming bitter, which was as unusual for a current band as it was appreciated by the audience.

If our reviewer had to make irritating suggestions, it would be that they worry not at all about having a “unique” personality and let their music talk. There is no need for a whisky-based endorsement in black metal, nor does this band need any cachet to invoke their (dark) spirit. The music addresses all that they have to say. If they have a weakness, it is on the knife-edge between minimalism and the hopelessly indeterminate riffing of the black hardcore bands; they will be fortunate if their more ancient and eternal influences win out. Regardless of these footnotes, this band is one of the few worth tracking in this age of black metal.

AVERSE SEFIRA

Many in the audience assembled had come to see Averse Sefira, if the sudden proliferation of metalheads at the stage and their equally conspicuous disappearance after the show was any indication, and the veteran metal band did not disappoint. Having apparently decided long ago to focus more on bringing their music to the world than on gratifying the comatose Austin metal market, Averse Sefira showed every bit of their touring experience and nailed out a highly professional set with very few breaks. This reviewer wonders why the club did not let them continue further, as there was time to spare thanks to three-count pauses between songs.

Guitarist and vocalist Sanguine A. Nocturne, astride a gleaming red B.C. Rich monster axe, seared the halls with a hissing and animalistic vocal delivery, backed up with the more on-the-beat enunciations of his cohort Wrath Satariel Diabolus, who roared into life with a black monster of a bass whose undertones drove the music forward with an urgent possession of emotion. This was framed and accentuated by the bullet-precise drumming of The Carcass, whose experience in numerous death and grind bands does not hide his familiarity with the technicality of percussion, mastering both exact timing and the deft transition of texture necessary to impel the music without drowning it in method.

Lucky enough to hear new material, the audience absorbed it in a state of contemplation and shock that would have pleased a Vedic philosopher, watching for details and essence alike. The newer songs can be described as an outpouring of this band reaching a musical and worldview apex, in which their mission has developed past requiring elaboration to the point of being demonstrated in many different forms; with their intent clear, they are confident in approaching even broader range of technique without fear of corrupting what is to be communicated.

As an example, rhythm is far from the rigidity of their first album or the delighted violence of the second, but like a groundswell changes topography to accentuate the expression particular to each part of a song. What was once abrupt is now sublime, and without venturing into jazz-metal territory, they invoke the languid as well as the militant in alternating sequence, creating an aura of insidious infiltration. Guitar technique has branched as well to use quick erratic notes in a wash of distortion as an instrument of harmony, creating a queasy uneasiness that like oil on water blooms into a rainbow when revealed in the contrast of light.

Newer songwriting continues the Averse Sefira tradition of writing epics, confronting the audience with a basic motif and then descending into its explanation, letting dissonance swirl around the audience as unexpected twists and turns converge on an occult mystery unifying the visible and the unseen. Clearly the presentation of older material has been affected, as it shows successive layers of adaptation reflecting both the changes in writing for Battle’s Clarion and the preparatory musical adaptation for the new album. It will be both exciting for the fan and an event for the community when their new work comes out.

Their playing reflected precision and professionalism throughout, with the presence that only an experienced band can have, dominating the stage and, as most cannot, using that supremacy to take a wide range of emotions and channel them into an expression of their work. Without falling into matyrdom at all, they bore out the indignities of periodic sound production problems and humidity without flinching, even honorably dedicating their set to the memory and continuing legacy of Imprecation.

MASOCHISM

It was with a great deal of professional integrity that this band took the stage, the hour having grown late and most of the fans departing after Averse Sefira slashed through their set. This would crush most bands, and is the most difficult circumstance under which to perform, but to their credit Masochism took the stage and wouldn’t let it go until they had sent their sonic disturbance into the universe.

This was fortunate for our reviewer, who remembering the performance of this secretive and rarely-sighted act from an Austin event two years prior, anticipated the set with high expectations. These were not disappointed.

Lead guitarist Juan Torres, who has supported a diversity of metal acts with his practiced and charged playing, forms the majority of the sound and direction of this band, and this night he led with alternately pummeling chords and incredibly fast lead picking which makes this music a study in contrasts. A progression leads into a song and varies through two riffs, then slams home with a conclusive dirge, only to be torn apart in the undulating rise and fall of melodic lead rhythm playing.

Similar in style thus to older Incantation and Sinister, the essential form of this band stretches to include a plurality of influences, ranging from older speed and heavy metal to modern black metal styles, something which is absorbed by a deft understanding of how riffs fit together. Transitions are often breathtaking in their boldness with enough subtlety that they are unexpected, and the procession of textures that compose verse material are both hypnotic and jarring.

Bassist/vocalist Kean Koite held down the set with remarkable free-hand (not picked) stringwork, being a master of both the techniques required to give his playing thunder and enough of bass playing as a science to insert adept fills and accents. One of the highlights of the show were his semi-poetic introductions to each song, in the style of Tom Araya many years ago, where a small vignette concluded in the topic and then name of each song; this may not be to everyone’s taste (and what is?) but it was appreciated by those of us attending as it brought a small intrigue to anticipation.

Percussion was exact and bellicose, matching the tight structure required by this style with an underplayed reliability that eschewed sophistication for effectiveness; few players have the ability to set aside getting more personal attention for the promotion of the aura of the presentation as a whole. Masochism are musically ahead of most local bands as they are in songwriting, but song titles and some stylings seem stuck in the late 1980s-early 1990s death metal movement, which suggests an update.

While Masochism are masters of fitting together surprisingly convoluted riffing with adept translation between radically different textures, their songwriting could benefit from more use of a unifying theme or concept around which to wrap this tapestry of forms. It is not a disadvantage, but this final tiny fraction of the creative process is what awaits to take this band from being overpowered for the style they have chosen, dominating it almost too much with their talent, to matching form and content and creating something of enduring breadth and significance.

As a side note, it was gratifying to see a clear national pride in Mexican origins shared between band and fans, with Mexican flag present on an amplifier; nationalism fits all ethnic groups, and pride in one’s tribe is a trait common to all strong individuals. If anything, this should no longer be downplayed, and in an age when NSBM and covert use of nationalist symbols is common in black metal, perhaps Masochism should visit aztlan.net more frequently and take advantage of that freedom and speak loudly and clearly about their cultural preference.

Impressive in performance, and in professionalism, they were an essential part of this concert presentation, and those who left early missed out. As a symptom of their single-minded determination to perform well, the band did not let it usurp their intent and ploughed right ahead. If you get a chance, witness Masochism when they come to your area; the right-hand guitar technique and interplay between bass and drums from a technical perspective, alone, makes it a worthwhile experience.

CODA

At this point the night was well underway, and even a giant cosmopolitan wasteland charged by the momentary escape of work drudgery afforded by a Saturday night was finding closure, so all departed into the flamboyant heat and uncountable incandescent advertisements of the Texas night. The show was a success because of the strength of the bands and the relative laxity of the promoters in encrusting a successful platform with too many local band-of-the-moments, but if this reviewer had one wish, it would be that next time these three bands and one local band (perhaps the reformed Crimson Massacre, who could not play because of personnel issues) could share the stage and complete the show earlier, giving each of these standouts more time to show us that among the few quality underground metal lives on.

Bands:
Averse Sefira
Bahimiron
Masochism

Promotors:
Cardis
Extreme Texas Metal

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Interview: Camazotz and Paraplethon (Spear of Longinus)

Black metal drew to its camp many who experimented in extreme metal and punk but found themselves alienated by the ideas of the mainstream. Like fellow hybridizers Absurd, the intelligent Spear of Longinus found they wanted to borrow bits from many genres of extreme social rejection, and hoped to unify them around an ideology which explained both solid reasons for disliking society and suggested something positive in its stead. A roving ANUS.COM representative in Australia was able to catch up with these gents and exchange a few words.

In a time when it is popular to be ultra-black-metal in the modern sense, your music seems to have older inspirations. What bands and eras inspire your creation?

Camazotz: nowdays I listn to all kinds of stuff, though my ‘heyday’ was that fine time during the 80’s when the metal scene was at it’s best, say 82-89 or so. Sure there have been great releases at other times but the highest concentration was around these times especially as I like a lot of the punk/hardcore gear that was getting about at the time too. For example Discharge, The Exploited, etc etc. 80’s metal would of course be the likes of Destruction, Bathory, Frost, Possessed. Etc so in light of that , musik in this stlye must be alive with energy to get my enthusiasm. Modern proponents that have done this would be stuff like, Darkthrone, Burzum and earlier Emperor releases.

I feel that good metal should be more punk than metal to be good metal, if you can follow.

You see most modern metal feels lifeless to me, it has no particular focus apart from just being metal, whatever the hell that just exactly is …

Of course stuff like Wagner and trancendental compositions greatly inspire us now. For example Tibetan vocals, Indian sitar etc.The different ‘tribal’ styles that we still have which are in fact relics of occult teknikues/principles put into practice.

Paraplethon: Inspiring music would be that with a passion, a driving urge… honesty and integrity, that has something to say – either of a temporal or numinous nature, and has the ability to… affect and effect. THAT is inspiring, something of the like worth emulating. Metal, generally, hardly ever has any one of such worthwhile traits, let alone all of them, so at most it’s vaguely interesting but rarely inspiring…

The ‘outer reflects the inner’, the ‘muse-ik’ being one of the records of who, what and where we are – nothing more, nothing less.

What inspires the creation of individual songs: real world events, or thoughts and emotions?

Camazotz: ahhhhhh now that’s a profound question comerade, quite bluntly this stuff is a direct result of the dualastik clash between maya/atman, matter/antimatter.
what the Gnostiks call dualism.

What to us is ‘real’? is a chair real? Or, is the impression we receive of the chair , the chair(real)? If so, then what is the ‘origional’ chair, actually?

It is a result of the luciferian urge to regain the trancendental ‘throne’. The path of fools.

This material world is the ‘result’ of other ‘events’, the point being to get back to the ‘real’.

RISE.

Break down ALL barriers, in fact, to die is best!

DIE

DIE

DIE, MY DARLING, die within oneself.

LIBERATION. The return to PLEROMA.

Paraplethon: Define ‘real’.

It seems you have attempted to blend the spiritual and the political into a single entity; to many of us, these seem inseparable in the first place. How did you come to the realization that this was the path for you?

Camazotz: the path told us so… obviously!

Yes these things are inseperable, just as matter is spirit. Energy, in a different format. BUT, they are of course something totally different to each other at the same time. That’s where things get tricky and humans fall apart, they loose unity/focus and ability to progress. This is the inbuilt striving to attain the “overman”.

The clash of the Titans!

This is touched upon briefly and enigmatikly in our track ” the lay of spartazen “, which will be included on the upcoming release “…And the swastikalotus”.

Paraplethon: Inseparable is the word. The recognition dawned with the realization that ‘All and Everything’ is inseparable. Vague allusions to begin with, experiencing it first-hand is… makes it so much more of a certainty… a most profound experience.

In this respect, it is not enough to say that we are dealing with a purely material and economic conquest. That view seems very superficial, for two reasons. In the first place, a land that is conquered on the material level also experiences, in the long run, influences of a higher kind corresponding to the cultural type of its conqueror. We can state, in fact, that European conquest almost everywhere sows the seeds of “Europeanization,” i.e., the “modern” rationalist, tradition-hostile, individualistic way of thinking. Secondly, the traditional conception of culture and the state is hierarchical, not dualistic. Its bearers could never subscribe, without severe reservations, to the principles of “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s” and “My kingdom is not of this world.” For us, “Tradition” is the victorious and creative presence in the world of that which is “not of this world,” i.e., of the Spirit, understood as a power that is mightier than any merely human or material one.

This is a basic idea of the authentically traditional view of life, which does not permit us to speak with contempt of merely material conquests. On the contrary, the material conquest is the sign, if not of a spiritual victory, at least of a spiritual weakness or a kind of spiritual “retreat” in the cultures that are conquered and lose their independence. Everywhere that the Spirit, regarded as the stronger power, was truly present, it never lacked for means – visible or otherwise – to enable all the opponent’s technical and material superiority to be resisted. But this has not happened. It must be concluded, then, that degeneracy was lurking behind the traditional facade of every people that the “modern” world has been able to conquer. The West must then have been the culture in which a crisis that was already universal assumed its acutest form. There the degeneration amounted, so to speak, to a knockout blow, and as it took effect, it brought down with more or less ease other peoples in whom the involution had certainly not “progressed” as far, but whose tradition had already lost its original power, so that these peoples were no longer able to protect themselves from an outside assault.

– Baron Julius Evola, On the Secret of Degeneration

What experience or realizations do you hope to communicate through your music?

Camazotz: more light.

Buddhism, in the summarization of Herr Nietzsche, is a self-denying religion, where it seems that most of the western tradition is self-affirming, although not perhaps in the ultra-limited-focus of self-based religions (Judaism, Christianity). In your view, how do Buddhism and National Socialism spring from the same origin?

Camazotz: everything springs from the same source.

All good and evil, is in fact, evil and good.

But we can play with words all day, frederika and bhuddhism say the same things, they’ve used the same kinds of terms though with different definitions attached. Like we said before, this is where the humans cease to function appropriately.

For example the term ‘ego” some use this to denote the highest qualities , while some use it to denote the lowest infrastructures.

The “self” in the purest occult definition is a separate atom, free from its contaminated restricted material existence. ( Karma.)

The “self” is the purified/liberated “being” , free and purified of the gross material contamination. The actual “self” cannot be restricted to the tri-dimensional realm, that we are currently chained to.

This is alchemy, all of egypt.

Primal christianity eg. Gnosis, is probably the mediator needed here to make sense of these issues.

The goal of national socialism , the result that is intended to be achieved , is the superman.

The superman is the overman, the man that has overcome his limitations and regrown to a super (from our present involuted state) level of being.

A bhudda, or, bohdisatva depending on the level achieved.

Angel or Archangel, if you’d like to use these terms.

Some resonate with the uber and untermenschen terminologies, its all the same .

I would at this point encourage humans to find a nice rock under a tree on a mountain by a stream amd meditate your brains out on these issues.

Paraplethon: It is perhaps self-denying in order to be truly self-affirming; the movie ‘Fight Club’ deals with these concepts pretty well.

The terminology may differ between Buddhism and NS, or between NS and any other traditional philosophy, though ‘terminology’ is just that – an outer husk whose only use is an attempt to describe, or in some instances plainly label, the ‘inner guts’ – the unseen thing within that is the whole value and point to the philosophy. And further than that, NS being a modern re-formulation, in such a dire time and circumstances, was and is bound to be different.

Where they are similar, one and the same even, is their concern with the development of a greater wo/man; the advancement of wo/man, and the means by which to get there aren’t really all that far removed either.

The foundation of every true State is the transcendence of its own principle, namely the principle of sovereignty, authority, and legitimacy. This essential truth has been variously expressed in the course of history; if this truth was not recognized, the meaning of everything that belongs to political reality would be misunderstood, or at least distorted. Through the multifaceted variety of these forms we always find as a “constant” the notion of the State as the intrusion and the manifestation of a higher order, which is then actualized in a power. Therefore, every true political unity appears as the embodiment of an idea and a power, thus distinguishing itself from every form of naturalistic association or “natural right,” and also from every societal aggregation determined by mere social, economic, biological, utilitarian or eudemonistic factors.

In previous eras it was possible to speak of the sacred character of the principle of sovereignty and power, namely of the State. For instance, the ancient Roman notion of imperium essentially belonged to the domain of the sacred. This notion, in its specific meaning, even before expressing a system of territorial, supernatural hegemony, designated the pure power of command, the almost mystical power and auctoritas inherent in the one who had the function and quality of Leader: a leader in the religious and warrior order as well as in the order of the patrician family, the gens, and, eminently, of the State, the res publica. In the Roman world, which was intensely realistic (or, I should say, precisely because it was intensely realistic), the notion of this power, which is simultaneously auctoritas, always retained its intrinsic character of bright force from above and of sacred power, beyond the various and often spurious techniques that conditioned its access in different periods.

– Baron Julius Evola, Men Among the Ruins

Do you see the individual as existing outside of a political and social context, or necessarily as part of one, even when attempting to avoid the issue?

Camazotz: the individual is in fact multidualastik.

The idea is to be a part of this world, but not of it.

Be separate and observe, but also be productive and interactive.

This is the key. You need both polarites to proceed. Balance.

The individual or ‘self’ not to be confused with the human organism, should be somewhat “above” the mechanical systems, overseeing, if you will. Guiding.

You will after some time of practicing these tekniques be conscious of the seperation/observation, then you can really get to work.

Politiks and social environment are unavoidable, they are necessary for the revolution.

At the base end of the scale, they are the extent of most peoples ‘realities’. They are therefore necessary tools to be utilised. Fortunately those who ‘know’ can work towards something numinous.

Paraplethon: The very term ‘individual’ presupposes such. Though, probably more-so nowadays than in the past a person is wholly defined by their interaction with certain groups of people – socializing, and by their working/financial position, both of which, generally speaking, are accepted as going on to form the basis of a person’s ‘political persuasion’ – the ideas and concepts concerning the nature of society, the person and the environment they hold to be true, ‘the best’ and seemingly self-evident, there is more to it than base temporal factors.

There is in each person a unique and most vital element to their being, this is the essential spark that travels from incarnation to incarnation, the immortal animator of our being. It is variously referred to as ‘the Ego’, by Gurdjieff and many others; ‘the Essence’, Yeats called it the ‘Anti-Self’, and in Alchemical circles its one of the things going be the name of ‘sulphur’. With the recognition of the essence, the awakening process, and the nurturing of it – bringing it forth into full flower – that’s when the doors of perception really start to open, when we discover our extra senses and so forth.

This process, that we just as might call ‘individuation’, is however barred; the path is blocked by our accretion, whilst physically incarnate, of shallow, hollow, most ephemeral notions of our identity – such as was mentioned in the ‘socializing’ and ‘social strata’ circles – the region of the cult of the personality. These ‘psychological aggregates’ are rooted in our all too willing reckless identification solely with the material plane when we find ourselves physically incarnate. So in order to uncover the real, hidden essence that is our being, where the realm of UNDERSTANDING is to be found, rather than just “knowledge of this, that or the other”, the false impression of what we believe to be our identity must be sloughed off to allow our being to breathe. It was in this area, the ‘Golden Dawn’ had a test wherein the candidates had to converse without using any first personal pro-nouns; i, my etc, etc…

So, yes, people CAN be individuals if they choose to put the effort in, otherwise yes, we can be defined by a social and political context. As for ‘avoiding the issue’, the making of petty excuses or whatever to not deal with the situation as it stands; ‘because’ has fallen; “now is the time of the Fall of Because.”

What is your feeling regarding democracy as a system of government?

Camazotz: seemed like a good idea at the time …..

as with any other failing, generally speaking it is the human factor that fucks it. the untermensch ‘ego’ . most systems have something to offer , at least in theory. but if there is a fault, the human scun will exploit it.

Paraplethon: It does appear to be a good idea in theory. Perhaps it works only on the small scale in practice; medieval Iceland for example.

The most valuable insights are arrived at last; but the most valuable insights are methods.

All the methods, all the presuppositions of our contemporary science were for millennia regarded with the profoundest contempt; on their account one was excluded from the society of respectable people — one was considered as an “enemy of God,” as a reviler of the highest ideal, as “possessed.”

We have had the whole pathos of mankind against us — our conception of what “truth” should be, what service of truth should be, our objectivity, our method, our silent, cautious, mistrustful ways were considered perfectly contemptible —

At bottom, it has been an aesthetic taste that has hindered mankind most: it believed in the picturesque effect of truth, it demanded of the man of knowledge that he should produce a powerful effect on the imagination.

This looks as if an antithesis has been achieved, a leap made; in reality, the schooling through moral hyperbole prepared the way step by step for that milder of pathos that became incarnate in the scientific character —

The conscientiousness in small things, the self-control of the religious man were a preparatory school for the scientific character: above all, the disposition that takes problems seriously, regardless of the personal consequences —

– F.W. Nietzsche, The Will To Power

Which ancient societies do you respect most, and why?

Camazotz: atlantean and lemurian.

These are the ones which I have the most vivid recollections of. They were superior to our present era as humans involute instead of evolute, as opposed to what the corrupt ones would have us believe.

These were what we would call ‘high’ cultures as they were organicly minded, of course the atlantean degenerated to a material teknology based system which set the mood for our current situation of disaray .

Organik civilisation is spiritual civilisation.

Blood and soil.

This level of being had a totally different outlook to the present. In those times the human was the teknology to be perfected, not , an outside material construct for humans to dump their shortcomings on to create even more limitations to the acheivement of human potentials.

Less is more.

You see energy is matter and matter is spirit. Therefore energy is spirit. So why would one externalise spirit instead of working internally/esotericly? Why would one waste their ‘quota’ of immediate potential on external materialism??????? This is why the great civilisations of old look so backwards to the uninitiated, the advance is hidden to them.

Stone,timber etc these natural materials are infinately more powerful to work with and beneficial as they are still the living energy of the elements/elementals which reside therein. Blood and honour.

Paraplethon: None more-so than others. There is something to be learned/gained from ALL quarters; it si a very general statement though we had something in times pat that we’ve definitely gone and lost in the 20th Cent. However, it doesn’t do to dwell on ‘what once was’ and forget to live; the present is the only time worth our energies.

Machiavelli says it is better to be loved than hated, but much harder to be loved by the fickle nature of populations. Do you see this as being a sentiment of the original “fascist” ethos?

Camazotz: naturally ’tis better to be loved than hated.

Hate will destroy you. This is not to be confused with a healthy adversity, which promotes growth and strength.

Naturally fascism recognises the way populations behave, I think everyone would know this wouldn’t you? The trick is to achieve FOR the people, especially if they do not at the time recognise what is best for them. Fascism does this.

Paraplethon: Not particularly… it sounds more like something out of ‘the successful propagandists handbook’ or something. The sort of thing anyone remotely concerned with having good PR would take note of… hardly a ‘fascist ethos’ as such.

The everlasting qualities of Varna and family traditions of those who destroy their family are ruined by the sinful act of illegitimacy.

– The Bhagvad-Gita

The fascia, from which fascism derives its name, is a bundle of reeds with an axe head attached at their center; the symbolism is in theory that while sticks break individually, together they are strong. Is there any unity toward a common goal in modern governments?

Camazotz: of course! It is a new world order after all!

We could go into all kinds of discussions regarding parties , wings and all manner of political doctrine, and really I think most of them do at least have something positive to offer.

But they fail because of the human element.

Humans are not perfect, we must perfect the humanoid psychologicly/spiritually, to reflect that in the social environment.

This is what the movement should be working at.

This is what okkult NS and Fascism is all about.

This what all religions are about.

This is the heresy we embrace.

This is the REVOLUTION we instigate.

This is what we practice.

This is what we preach.

Paraplethon: Yep, ‘strength through unity’, ‘united we stand, divided we fall’ etc…

The ‘common goal’ they’re intent on scoring is the complete enslavement of humanity as an identity-less, racially indistinguishable mass of automatons.

As dire as the current situation is, that we are here talking openly about their nefarious aims is proof enough we’re not yet living through our darkest hour, though it is very dim, very grim.

However, what we are witness to isn’t a particularly united/common front; there are those in varying amounts of agreement, from the rabidness of the US, Israel and Australia to the more wary French and Russians to those who remain definitely outside the fold; Iraq and Libya for instance. It must be pointed out though it isn’t only those countries labelled ‘evil’ by the worlds punch-drunk bully – the US, that remain on the outer; there is a semi-autonomous region of Siberia, perhaps the last place on the planet since the fall of Tibet, where governmental decisions are guided by spiritual elders, in this case shamans, whose aims are more along the lines of freeing the mind and spirit rather than enslaving and controlling them. And as for the recent US actions designed to stamp out any opposition to its aims as mentioned above, well Nelson Mandela makes it clear where he stands; “They think they’re the only power in the world. They’re not and they’re following a dangerous policy. One country wants to bully the world… If you look at these matters, you will come to the conclusion that the attitude of the USA is a threat to world peace.” Newsweek, 10th Sept. 2002.

It’s the Kali-Yuga, revel in the dischord and strife…

Have you had any problems with labels, fans, clubs or others because of your political views?

Camazotz: yes,

we have had some interest from a bike club due to us using “their” image.

We have had trouble with certain skin movements.

We have had trouble with the media.

We have trouble with %98 of the musik community finding it next to impossible to get gigs, advertising, label interest etc. and that is including the ‘pagan’ metal heretiks!

Also certain magikle societys in all their illumination, don’t get it.

Herr Nietzsche referred to Christianity as a great evil that, were it not to exist, would have to be invented. He also said “that which does not kill me, makes me stronger” in regards to experience — in your view, what is the experience — both personal and cultural — of overcoming christianity, and what strength does it create?

Camazotz: sorry this question was lost somehow.

Paraplethon: Firstly, ‘christianity’ is a VERY loaded word, so you would have to begin by narrowing your scope and define exactly what sort of christianity here is to be overcome. An example of how much variance/difference there is in the christian experience is Origen of Alexandria, a church elder of the 2nd or 3rd cent., who at his death was officially deemed a saint. However, some time later – a few hundred years or so, Origens position was re-evaluated, it was determined his Neo-Platonism didn’t sit well with what the church had become and so his writings were banned, or burned, his sainthood was revoked and he was declared a heretic. The rather drastic change in the opinion of Origen mirrors the devolution of mass christianity as a whole, culminating with the final purge of the esoteric aspect of the religion in the 15th cent. or thereabouts, whereafter the ‘Church of Rome'(and its offshoots…) were more or less just the outer husks/the misunderstood whispers, not much more than some meaningless moral code.

Esoteric Christianity, the real ‘inner guts’ of the movement – that which gives real meaning and value to all the rituals, practices and moralizing of that outer husk – the Roman Church, was forced underground.

So what aspect of christianity is to be overcome? The outer, exoteric branch everyone is familiar with? Fine, if you were to do so, you’d be taking the first tentative steps towards realizing that old maxim ‘Know Thyself’.

At its core, Esoteric Christianity IS a method, a philosophy of overcoming, of overcoming oneself – sounds somewhat similar to Nietzsche doesn’t it? Of course the terminology is different, but who cares for the terminology, it’s merely an attempt to describe the heart of the matter, there’s bound to be differing terminology as every ones experience os going to be unique to themselves.

However, the heart of the matter IS the same.

Europe is about to outlaw “hate speech” online through a program named Princip, after the assassin who started World War I. Of what do you believe this is a portent, and how do you think it will be circumnavigation?

Camazotz: I knew this was on the drawing board, but had no idea it was to be implemented at this point. Surely people can see that this is unbalanced?
anything can be circumvented. That’s how the whole internet thing came about in the first place. I feel the ‘left’ in all their glory should be assissted in their efforts to save the free speech that is still available. By that I mean whatever factions are still opposing these actions. In fact there should be more work with the ‘left’ alltogether.

This is ignorance in full flight.

This we must fight.

Lest we face the great night.(again &again&again.)

Ignorance can only breed ignorance, fear , restriction etc.

There must be dialogue/interaction with all factions and cults to make any progress in this world.

Together we are strong.

A good lesson in the cosmik principle of recurrence here don’t you think? Nothing should be repressed, this is the tao, more light.

Just what constitutes hate speech etc? The talk of fools.

It’s like this race question.

Those who want to be separate should be separate, those who want to mix should mix. Quite simple really.

A good analogy would be the olympik games, and the drug testing/bans etc.

I think there should be separate events where the competitors can shoot up absolutely any shit into their organisms they want. Hell they can even get nuclear powered bioniks in these events for all I care, go for it. We will see where that leads.

But there must be room for purity too.

I would recommend keeping records though, I don’t fancy getting lined up with a sheilagh that has had some kinda ape genetiks crossed so she can win a gold medal at gymnastiks or something.

Paraplethon: A portent? Orwells ‘1984’, Huxleys ‘Brave New World’ – that’s what a constriction on open dialogue and criticism is a portent of.

Do you have any interest in encryption? Or religious cryptograms?

Camazotz: encryption is a tool to be utilised like any other at the correct time and place. Aside from the allegory and symbols of regular occultism/ alchemy etc I’ve not really looked at encryption etc.

I take it you mean stuff like ‘the bible code’ etc?

I have read some on the ‘real’ jesus and such nationalist type things if you mean these?

Of course all secret societys have their encrypted ‘codes’ too.

Sometimes you will find things in our releases if you were to be vigilant.

Of course you can take that to another level in that this world is illusion , so through using the tekniques of the esoterik warrior one would be working in this fashion , ja?

“That’s all she wrote,” the Finn said. “Didn’t finish it. Just a kid then. This thing’s a ceremonial terminal, sort of. I need Molly in here with the right word at the right time. That’s the catch. Doesn’t mean shit, how deep you and the Flatline ride that Chinese virus, if this thing doesn’t hear the magic word.”

“So what’s the word?”

“I don’t know. You might say what I am is basically defined by the fact that I don’t know, because I can’t know. I am that which knoweth not the word. If you knew, man, and told me, I couldn’t know. It’s hardwired in. Someone else has to learn it and bring it here, just when you and the Flatline punch through that ice and scramble the cores.”

“What happens then?”

“I don’t exist, after that. I cease.”

“Okay by me,” Case said.

“Sure. But you watch your ass, Case. My, ah, other lobe is on to us, it looks like. One burning bush looks pretty much like another.”

– William Gibson, Neuromancer

Are there any similarities in your view between the Qabbalah (pre-Judaic) and the tree of life in Nordic religions?

Camazotz: you need ask? Of course.

Paraplethon: They are differing cultural descriptions of the same phenomena; physical worlds coming into being and the polarity to such.

Buddhism and National Socialism both emphasize discipline and a rational, non-superstitious, non-dogmatic approach to decoding philosophy, nature and the sciences. Is this congruent with the beliefs of the west at this time, or has a contravening force taken over?

Camazotz: the west has tapped into and let loose many principles/powers that have taken on their own momentum/agenda. Some of these do indeed work against the agenda of liberation but it’s all part and parcel of the package deal we bought off god at that clearance sale a few years back … it is all encrypted on that nordik tree of life you were alluding too b4 ha ha.

Be alert as the sentry in war.

Continue with the process and you will get the result.

What do you expect when we live so far from galatik centre? When it is within ones ability to upgrade to a double sun, you will still know the answer to yesterday, though not today.

The further you climb, the further you can fall.

Paraplethon: Rational? Non-superstitious? What form of NS are you referring to???

The very world we live in today is the consequence of 200-300 years of rationalism, denigration of superstition, and NS stood in direct opposition to this degenerate society; NS was a civilization unto itself.

Though what is ‘superstition’, being that most people have some sort of preconception. Superstition; tradition, myth, legend, perhaps a ‘cultural base’. Let’s go out on a limb and say perhaps all myth, legend, tradition(‘superstition’) is but a system existant to give us the means to negotiate our multi-dimensional reality at our will. THAT seems quite rational…

To attempt an interpretation of ‘superstition/myth’ purely from the physical/temporal point of view is quite ‘irrational’, though to do so would result in the conclusion that ‘superstition/myth’ IS itself quite ‘irrational’… whatever…

When you write lyrics, which is more important: exact meaning or the sense and sound of language?

Camazotz: that’s a funny question . As you will find that the ‘vibe’ or sense and sound as you put it. IS the exact meaning. Words can never give the truth, only a close approximation. That’s why letters have a kabbalistik corespondence, to get closer to what the real deal is. Also that’s why we need to utilise the layering of sounds with the words and such, to get as close as possible to the particular atomik rotational condensation as we can. Somewhere within the yin and yang polarities of that atomik field we will find the exact mathematical fraction hinted at.

You must do some travelling.

Do you read any philosophers or social theorists and if so, what doctrines do you find relevant to the current time and its discontent?

Camazotz: I rarely read at all these days. It just dosen’t hold my attention at all anymore. Now we work more practically with the meditations and such. The intellect rarely serves its master satisfactorally.

Simple observation and reflections will give you any informations that these types of pushers try to get thou addicted to. Only it will be pure and internally relevant to YOU and you’re peculiar frequency/orbit.

In addition to that, the big draw back is that people just go around adding all this information to their little brains, without actually utilising any of it or DOING anything. A bit of a waste of time really.

If I read anything now it is scientifik/okkult. Which is first applied on an intellectual level then passed on to the dan tien, then hopefully we can really do some work psychologikly. Which itself begins at the ritual level, then moves deeper.

Paraplethon: Chomsky, Hakim Bey, Alexander Dugin, Qadhafi… David Icke appears to be more daring and goes a bit further than the others.

In your view, is history a linear process with a clear end-point at which a triumph of development can be proclaimed?

Camazotz: if one followed this point of view , it could only be the triumph of death/dekay/involution. History is cyclik in both its ups and downs, every point is only a decimal on the way to another point . My answer to your question is , no.

Paraplethon: Think ‘cyclic’, in terms of ‘aeonics’, development, triumph, degeneration, decay, multiplicity, unity etc…

Saying that though, you’d have to have rocks in your head to still have faith in the ‘cult of progress’.

It seems in light of recent events, previously demonized political worldviews are gaining some ground in the mainstream, albeit in pieces separated from the whole, much as Christianity was absorbed. Do you think these beliefs will synthesize with current “popular knowledge” or will a splinter society be created?

Camazotz: a splinter society? Not for some time I’m afraid ( not in a positive way anyhow ), unless you want to count people such as Islam, Iraq and North Korea etc. we must promote the invisible empire, to be within the ‘system’ but not of it. To not be restricted by it, that is. Utilise it, be the master.

You must see that that is in fact the problem, society is too splintered. The sleepwalker cannot even see the line , neveralone know which side to stand on. Anything that has been assimilated has really been the grosser aspects of doctrines, with no depth to really make a positive difference. And who will lead this splinter society?

Paraplethon: Any ground gained is more likely the carrot dangled in front of us, so watch out for the big stick. They don’t seem like people willing to give up their power, or even share it around a little…

I’m sure people have asked this to death, but what do you think was achieved by the Al-Qaeda bombing in Bali in which 180 people, mostly Australians, were killed?

Camazotz: I guess they got rid of a few round eyes from their country. we got what NWO wanted.

Paraplethon: Al-Qaeda? Really???

About the only thing that was achieved was for 2-3 weeks sports wasn’t the most important thing in the lives of average Australians.

Of which work of the band are you proudest? Do you see an evolution in the process of your works?

Camazotz: we try not to stagnate. But then again a change is not necessarily a good thing, hopefully we can rebel in a positive fashion. I think the standard answer is that what ever is most recently released, is the best, ja!

Actually I try not to be attached to anything that’s been done, or will be done.

Paraplethon: The best thing about SOL is the concious attempt to influence others.

At least here in Texas, it seems to be hard to come by Spear of Longinus merchandise or recordings. Will this change at some point, and will you re-release older material?

Camazotz: older stuffs will be re-released as time goes by hopefully in ‘revamped’ formats. Just as soon as THEY let go, our stuff will be easier to get a hold of. Then we will also be featured on “top of the pops” wont that be grand ………. then the prism of perspective can take us away to the light cone.

What inspired the choice of band name?

Camazotz: hadit.

Has metal grown from the black metal experience, or are we in a lull between developments of metal and thus bands are turning to traditional, proven formulas for aesthetics?

Camazotz: metal has grown but it is also in a lull.

You will find that the traditional motifs will eternally recur, hopefully in ever flourishing octaves.

The humans are doing the best that they can…. Poor creatures

Paraplethon: Don’t have much to do with ‘metal’ anymore, listen to it now and then, that’s about it… ditched it when that whole ‘retro’ thing took off…

Camazotz: hear hear, fuck retro.

It seems many American Christians support Israel because in the Christian view, an “end times” is coming and one of the signs of its arrival is Jewish repossession of their homeland. Could this be one of those prophecies that is ultimately self-fulfilling and nothing more?

Camazotz: the material realm is not always a faithful reflection of the superior. In fact my kitty kat is black.

The most unfortunate thing is that humans do not understand the symbolism employed.

They mix up the metaphysical internal with the terrene external. Ignorance doom flux.

Join a kult and make it prosper.

Paraplethon: The ‘end-times’ aren’t peculiar to just christians, there’s quite alot that culminates in the period 1960-2040, or even prior if you want to count Crowley’s proclamation of the ‘Aeon of Horus’ in 1904 or whenever it was. Just what do the ‘end-times’ signify though, that’s the more interesting question.

To answer your question though, on the face of it, it would appear to be somewhat of a self-fulfilling prophecy, with the various other evidence pointing towards an ‘end-times’ however, it is safe to say there is something in the air.

In your personal lives, do you watch television, movies, play video games, or use any drugs?

Camazotz: no drugs

no video games

no tv.

Occasional movies.

All you have is your training, you must be what you are independent of external influences.

Paraplethon: Movies… especially the ones with the esoteric undertones…

Why waste time with that other junk – “all we have to do is decide to do with the time given us”, what will you do?

Please insert anything here i’ve missed or which has been only covered obliquely.

Camazotz: thanx for the time and space mate.

Metal is dead, long live metal.

Sorry we didn’t put enough energy into this mate, but hopefully people can get an idea about it all from this. Be a practical particle, be sincere, and HE will come.666.

Von sol
Doomcrust.

Paraplethon: Nah, that’ll do… Thanks.

Spear of Longinus Homepage
spearoflonginus@yahoo.com

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Interview: Mr Blaash (Where’s My Skin? Zine)

Those on the prowl for interesting literature about the metal movement may be familiar with Mr. Blaash of Where’s My Skin? zine. His misanthropic commentaries on metal, death, life, self-mutilation and guns are gratifying to those of us who have experienced enough alienation to hate any form of sociability. Blaash kindly granted an interview between reloads on his MP5 during a streetfight in Houston.

How did you get into black metal: was there metal before it that you liked, did it alone appeal to you, or did you find it through a non-metal genre?

Hm. When I was a little blaash, back in the 80s, I found early bands like SLAYER, early METALLICA with Cliff (no remorse, no regrets, we don’t care, what it meant), early MEGADETH (its black Friday!), a little POSSESSED(7 churches), early SABBAT (a history of a time to come – from the UK before they turned UltraGay), and a fucking healthy LOUD dosage of RIGOR MORTIS ( DEMONS).. from there I instinctively turned to the glory of death metal, with DEMIGOD, XYSMA, FUNEBRE, PHLEGM, IMPETIGO, BOLT THROWER, CARCASS and so on.. mainly by listening to a radio show at like midnight by Wes Weaver (now of INFERNAL DOMINION) called Sweet Nightmares… around the time of my first issue oh, lets say 92 or so, I was introduced to the TAOG EHT FO HTAO demo from IMPALED NAZARENE.. I immediately made contact with the man and from henceward I followed with IMMORTAL’s “Fullmoon..”, MARDUK’s “dark endless” and COF’s “principle”.. it culminated with the first slicing as I heard the EMPEROR split with ENSLAVED.. truly an honour to have heard such albums before they have long since “progressed” or some such thing.. it is a shame that the younger generations (rightfully perhaps) spit upon these bands because they were introduced to the LATTER releases, instead of realizing that back in 93 or so that these were skullfucking releases at the time..

Describe what black metal sounds like to you.

As it should – Extreme, in at least some sense of the word.

Describe what black metal communicates to you.

Ah – An aura of violence followed by an intrinsic self destructive honour; that it is still within our grasp to end our own existence or that of another… feelings of no self worth, but with the knowledge that one does not need to have any.. perhaps this is sounding a bit confused; but for me it fuels the fire of negativism in my person; of continuing a fight with the knowledge that in the end I will lose; but that is not the point; the point is the struggle itself, and how many I plague, harass, molest, spread the seed of propaganda onto (heh or into)and/or horrify/depress or encourage others to do so….

What “is” black metal?

As with any form of medium; propaganda – a weapon to encourage negativity in the extreme to others…

How did you get into writing, and why did you choose to do Where’s My Skin?

When I was a young maggot I always had the penchant to write.. I used to write cynical opinions about world events.. I especially liked the LA riots (the darkies were outraged about something, so they destroyed THEIR OWN neighborhood.. shouldn’t they have at least destroyed somebody elses) and also Maggie Thatcher, and CNN (I really think they start the wars, just to have something on TV)…As I delved further into the scene, I ran into some killer zines like billy nocera’s COVEN zine and others.. however, I also ran into shittily written pieces of fucking nonsensical crap – I could not tolerate the extremely poor grammar and just outright usage of the same ‘its brutal man’ reviews. Fuck I couldn’t fucking stand it. Theres nothing wrong with a shitty looking zine – hell look at mine; but at the very least compose it competently.. a good current example would be HELLISH MASSACRE from Sweden.. also TALES FROM THE EIBON (france), tho needs A LOT OF WORK… seems to be showing improvement..

Do you believe as did Georges Bataille that human life in part consists of looking for a good method of expenditure, meaning a means of expression that culminates in the depletion of the life itself?

I believe this is simply a metaphor for ‘finding a goal’ in life. To find ‘meaning’ – be it rape, serial killing or an accounting position at KPMG.. as one attempts to reach these goals, he is confounded (and/or arrested or shot, depending on what goals one pursues)… and eventually dies. Bataille was quite a healthy pervert and an esoteric/violent thinker, from what little I know of him. Would probably great to trade stories with over whiskey.

Let us consider in particular how concepts are formed; each word immediately becomes a concept, not by virtue of the fact that it is inteded to serve as a memory (say) of the unique, utterly individualized, primary experience to which it owes its existence, but because at the same time it must fit countless other, more or less similar cases, i.e. cases which strictly speaking are never equivalent, and thus nothing other than non-equivalent cases. Just as it is certain that no leaf is ever exactly the same as any other leaf, it is equally certain that the concept ‘leaf’ is formed by dropping these individual differences arbitrarily, by forgetting those features which differentiate one thing from another, so that the concept then gives rise to the notion that something other than leaves exists in nature, something which would be ‘leaf,’ a primal form, say, from which all leaves were woven, drawn, delineated, dyed, curled, painted — but by a clumsy pair of hands, so that no single example turned out to be a faithful, correct, and reliable copy of the primal form. We call a man honest; we ask, ‘Why did he act so honestly today?’ Our answer is usually: ‘Because of his honesty.’ Honesty! — yet again, this means that the leaf is the cause of the leaves.

– F.W. Nietzsche, On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense

Is there any division between love and hate for you?

Well. They’re spelled differently. Hows that?Hm. Both are strong emotions…. I myself am trying to move to that cold, negative feeling that one gets when listening to the ANTAEUS interludes from CYAWS.. of simply Not caring. Par example “No I don’t hate that person, because that would mean I care about them – I just want them dead”… I realize in our pseudo nihilistic coalition it is necessary to have those with passion (and strong emotion like hate); those who enjoy their work – these men (women?) will be the brutal, sadistic serial killers that truly define us.. while we just sit back and guffaw when we read about the newest missing daughter’s breasticle found in her mothers shoe…

Most art in this postmodern time outside of black metal seems to focus on finding a convenient way to express the idea that human life is valuable. Why is it artistically, politically and socially valuable for you to think otherwise?

The morals of the current American society have attempted to teach this; however, I believe it is having the opposite effect.. the morally deviant can obviously see the hollowness of this deluge; hell, even the supposed xtians are doing the opposite these days..I have always been wary of society and socially accepted principles – I see nothing but mediocrity and hypocrisy .. that is one reason I have embraced the path of self destruction and disdain for the majority of society…

Do you think armed political uprising is in the American future?

No. Big Brother has too much of a stranglehold.. if we in turn manage some decent domestic terrorism, it will only serve as a carte blanche for the government to act in silencing us further.. still. It would be interesting to bring down the wrath of oppression – as it nominally, at the least, brings forth rebellion and then violent repression.. so.

What is your preferred method of killing humans?

Havent killed any, so unfortunately I cant give a first hand account and/or description and high points/low points of such an activity. However, I am very, very prone to projectile weapons.Again, those with the passion to properly enjoy this activity should be on our payroll; but me, hell, I just want to get the job done; I have a bar I have to go to afterwards anyway.

You live in one of the most ethnically- and culturally-diverse cities on earth, Houston. What do you like about Houston, and what do you dislike?

I can see you giggling as you write that statement. What the fuck .. we have a dangerous VietCong Mafia, 4thWard NigsAplenty, the BlackHand Messican mafia, and more Nigerian cabbies then I can shake my willy at.. there is NOTHING to like.. fuck. The only interesting thing is that there are Europeans (women) that come here, due to Houston being a port city. It is a nice break from the fucking Huge FuckinG MOO-Cows we have runnin’ around here that pass for women. Shit.

Isn’t it fucking hot as hell there?

Prozak – I’m gonna kick you in the groin for that one when/if I see you at the SatanTonio Fest in December. Fuck yeah its like breathing in a nuclear cloud – I don’t fucking care if its sunny in all of the south, we’re in a fucking sewer in Houston – the humidity makes it feel like youre in a sauna – to boot, it rains a lot, and then its SUNNY at the same time – great for blinding you and making you sweat your ass off. I guaranFuckinGtee satan thinks that even Houston might be a good training ground for some of his potential executives.

What do you like and dislike about Texas?

Likes –
Waco – hehe. Killed us some ATF agents we did. In the name of god too. Hehe
Guns. Lots of em.
Not too many Yankees – The northern aggressors
Space – nice, open non populated, flat space.
Cheap consumer goods – food, clothes, cocaine, whiskey, porn etc

Dislikes –
COPS – there are four fucking kind of cops in Houston alone that can shoot me – the Department of public safety (they have cowboy hats and BIG guns), Houston police, Houston Constables, County Sheriffs, METRO police.. shit
THE WEATHER – see above
The sports teams – they all choke/suck and I still watch them
THE WEATHER
The women – MOO.. they have trained the men to like them and think its okay theyre fat, overweight and whiney. The men feel They Have To Like Them because that’s ALL that’s around here. Shit they showed some pics of dallas women lookin’ all hot and slutty like – I bet they weren’t from dallas.. I’m exagerattin’ a bit I suppose – but its especially horrible in Houston.. when you can get a .99 cent hamburger and a .79 64oz coke and NOT do any exercise.. shit. You get an inflated heifer

Of course.. I ll plug them here I suppose

Are there any local bands you find excellent?

KATHONIK – most underrated band of houston – the front man for this band has been around for 10 fucking years, 4 demos, an unreleased (never will be) older album and a newer cd (that still needs proper releasement) – killllller razor in your face black with a touch of doom.. http://kathonik.cjb.net
ADUMUS – hehe. I know you don’t like the keyboards, but heh.http://come.to/adumus
BRUTALLY MUTILATED – old style IMPETIGO worship
BLACK BONED ANGEL – satanic celtic frost Johnny cash
TO SCALE THE THRONE – basic straight forward mid paced black..www.geocities.com/toscalethethrone
INFERNAL DOMINION – ex IMPRECATION .. fast as fuck brutal satanic death
THE DRUNKS – VIOLENT WHISKEY ROCKNROLL – excellent live shows.. good cover of witching hour..
UNCHRIST – newer band – good demo release – kathonik members
HIDEOUSLY DEFLESHED Uhm.. I liked their vocals – that is what saved me from just walking away from the stage in boredom…http://www.hdsproductions.cc/
I’m sure I forgot someone.. I suppose I’ll just get thocked for it.

What do you think distinguishes Texas as a locality from other areas, aside from climactic and geographical concerns?

We have a lot of satanic Hispanics? I don’t know. For some reason, I’ve noticed, even when in other countries, that I state I am a Texan first… I guess its because I’ve personally become enamored with the right of Texans to shoot and kill anybody attempting to steal property at night. Or the “trespassers will be SHOT” signs I see on open roadside (where I’m sure some redneck with a sniper rifle is just waiting for a city boy to try to piss on it)… just the fact that we up and stole this land fair n square from the Mexicans two centuries ago and that we joined the yankee coalition of states as a Favour to them. We have our oil, NASA (for space defense) and our own ground/air forces, so I don’t see a problem with becoming the United Texan Front or something…

Do you think there will be another truly great band from Texas?

You mean besides RIGOR MORTIS and ABSU .. and NECROVORE (I ‘m unfamiliar with this band however, but it is greatly appreciated it seems)…I think so. The climate and road construction leads to so much rage I figure it will manifest itself in another project. Who this might be.. I don’t know.

What are your feelings on Texas seceding from the Union?

See above.

do you think metal music is a form of rock-n-roll?

I am not a metal geetarist per se- but many I know seem have all started out with the older bands of rocknroll and such… and many still admire the technical proficiency of said artists.. I would like to say we’ve defined our own sub genre that cannot be categorized with simple rock bands; however though that argument may hold true for younger dragoons within the metal ranks, it might not hold much veracity with the elders of this genre – mainly with more experience there usually comes further education into other forms of music etc..

What is most important in a metal band, composition, production or attitude? Can these be separated?

1st Attitude – what is the goal with the propaganda – to just make racket and keep mum and dad awake at night. too much jerkin’ off so may as well try the geetar? Play in a rock band to get chix? Which is it?

2nd Okay – youre an evil motherfucker trying to seduce young jedis to the darkside, now what? Can’t play an instrument to save your life eh? Well fucking learn the basics before composing the propaganda – badly formulated propaganda encourages Ridicule..

3rd Production – low production means youre heavy – bad production means youre raw and kult – good production means you did it ABYSS studios and sold out.

When you hear something for the first time, how do you analyze it? For what do you listen?

Drums … I like blasting violence THEN.. vocals – horribly painful vocals like FUNERAL MIST, BETHLEHEM or ANTAEUS (live or rehearsal) can easily encourage Violence and Suicide.Lastly, geetars.. I can’t stand solos.. so unless its horrible I judge these last.

Do you believe the values and beliefs of artists shape the music they produce?

I would like to think so – ive noticed a change as of late.. in the early days of WMSitude, I used to ask bands the equivalent question of their beliefs and the reflection into music… most early bands (death, grind) simply liked playing aggressive music.. with the advent of black metal, it seems that it is Very Important that life imitates the music they produce.. and that is what I prefer.. THOUGH, there were some early satanic death and VIOLENT porn/rape/gore bands that were totally fucking into mass murder and of course endless sodomy of young pigtailed little catholic school girl anuses… so…

Does this explain “Christian metal”?

I have no logical explanation for xtian metal. IF this is to exist, I want more like David Koresh – he played that thar geetar, fucked everybody’s wives, and then done and shot and kilt some Federales…

In your opinion, what is the symbolic value of “Satan” to a modern society and those who wish to reprogram it?

It is an easy symbol to recognize as negativism… easiest put – the baphomet, the upsidedown cross, etc, represent to normal society something “bad”. It is then those who are wearing it that bicker/personalize what it means to them..

Do you believe “terrorism” is a valid way to describe the tactics of America’s current “enemies”?

Yep. Good for them. Fucking smartfucking towel heads. I comment on this greatly in upcoming issue h8te, which will be out in November.

What zines do you read?

I just got FINAL SOLUTION from spain – good interviews in that one; correct mindset for writing.. I naturally have a liking towards the JenOside33 issue#1.. heh. I like older DESCENT mags and also NORDIC VISION (its pretty)… HELLISH MASSACRE is number one on my list right now.. its gonna take a lot to get me away from that one.. IMPAIRED (mKm’s zine) was huge.. I would like to get hold of 666 zine from france…

Do you think black metal ever had a clear direction, or is that something we assume looking back into the past?

The latter. Too many of the so-called visionaries of the black metal elite got themselves stabbed or put in jail. The propaganda machine splintered into different factions, and thus we stand where we are now.. a re emergence of nihilism and flesh mutilation… not a bad thing. But it does seem to be circular…

Do you believe history “exists,” or that each age invents an interpretation of previous events to justify its position?

Heh, I believe those who Won The War Write The History. If you got fucked, well, history will put you as getting fucked, even if you put up a helluva fight. Yes, we do manufacture history as we need to, but not like the good ole days in 1930s germany. Man did they come up with some good shit. And also W.A.R here in the US has some need ideas on history, and its placement of the Zionist Occupational Government and the Gubment Cheese Getters (darkie)

Is there any “hope” for the human species?

Hope for what? I’ve read some of the manifestos at http://www.anus.com/anus/ideology/index.html …very interesting and I can admire the thought put into rationalizing Stupid Human Tendencies… But honestly, it doesn’t concern me… Shit will continue in one form or another after I’m gone, and you’re gone. So why do I care for the future?

These idiots who failed at that bank robbery in Norfolk, NE – how did they manage to do such impressive shooting yet utterly flail when it came to taking the till?

HEHE. I was happy to finally seem some people killed in a bank robbery.. but again. I would prefer if it were authorities. No, nobody is innocent, but if youre going to go on a shooting spree, go on a SHOOTING SPREE. If you’re gonna rob a bank, GET THE CASH. I heard there were like 4 or 5 head shots.. so I guess they just panicked, and started putting bullets in peoples heads. First way to get on the bad side of the law.

Are there any historical figures who have impressed you?

Ho chi minh – gotta like anybody who fucked the French right? (sneak and surround French man drinking wine in valley called dien bein phu)Joseph Goebbels – Nazi Minister of Propaganda.

What was the last book you read that made a lasting impression?

I live off the horrible gore of this man alone – Edward Lee. If you don’t know him – you must – fuck all other horror out there – this is The Shit.The last book I read was Sex Drugs and PowerTools – fuckin’ Christ. Check out whatsaheader.com for more info also heheh movie rights were given to them…http://www.necropublications.com/titles/sexdrug.htmI rarely indulge in the reading of any of the nihilistic writers.. though I suppose I should since I consider myself mostly nihilist.. ennui once again stunts my growth…

Awaiting the intention is neither a reflection upon the “goal” nor an expectation of the imminent completion of the work to be produced. It does not have the nature of a thematic grasping at all. Nor does retaining what is relevant mean holding fast to it thematically. Handling things is no more related merely to what it handles than to what it uses in relevance. Rather, being relevant constitutes itself in the unity of awaiting and retaining in such a way that the making present arising from this makes the characteristic absorption in taking care in the world of its useful things possible. When one is “really” busy with… and totally immersed in it, one is neither only together with the work nor with the tools nor with both “together.” Being in relevance, which is grounde din temporality, has already founded hte unity of the relations in which taking care of things “moves” circumspectly.

A specific kind of forgetting is essential for the temporality that constitutes being in relevance. In ordre to be able to “really” get to work “lost” in the world of tools and to handle them, the self must forget itself.
– Martin Heidegger, Being and Time

Black metal was born right as the internet began being popularized in American and European homes. How has black metal been changed by the net, and vice versa?

Well now I can find anything out it seems by just typing it in the google search engine. That’s both good and bad.. now I have the information, but I cant hoard it and feel self important when I name drop.On the other hand, every bob, akhmed and zimboobma can make a cDr and put it on their webpage so now we have Afrikkkaner Black SpearChucking Metal.. sheesh. It allows for ridiculous crap that would have been stifled because it would not have been cost effective. The internet allows stupidity to be free of the righteous pain it should attain; after all, stupid should Hurt…

Is there human consciousness outside of the brain? In another phrasing: is the brain where the body, mind and soul exist, or is there another world in which these functions exist?

I am of the notion that there is something after my brain receives too many 9mm hollopoint bullets fired from a SWAT team members mp-5. I think it will equally suck.

Why do you think people go hogwild for religion? What do you suggest instead of religion to take care of the same need?

Sigh. Nothing. Too many persons are weak and need a crutch, or are hypocrites who have learned that just coz you say youre xtian, hell that means you can fuck your daughter and the dog in a 69 position and sell it on the internet as long as you ask forgiveness on Sunday. .. and give the minister a copy of course…It is convenience – religion is already set up; humanity as a whole is lazy, and is predisposed to go with what is at hand. Me, I’m gonna go jerk off. That’s what I feel about religion.

Where does one buy CDs and related stuff in Houston?

Sound exchange. http://www.soundexchangehouston.com/ Used to be a KILLER place called SOUND PLUS.. but sadly, it died a couple years ago.. that’s where I was first able to get Osmose releases (first and second IMMORTAL etc) WITHOUT paying Osmose prices (though it was still 20 bux for imports..)…

What do you think of the art of suicide bombing?

Good fucking Job. Good idea. Hell. We need some of those kids. Why the hell don’t we have our own suicide bombers. Damnit. Somebody get the Procurement Department on that one.Man. Tho.. I would at least want a good ole fashioned 12 hour orgy of catholic school girls BEFORE I go meet allah….

What lies next for your zine?

Issue H8TE young Prozak, Issue H8te. Finally to be released with a 12 page (I think) diatribe dedicated to hatred… examples taken from the school yard, from work and from terrorterrorterror… yessirrree bob. I guarantee you this will be just as shitty as before, with the same fucking horrible humour and tasteless porn and violence and bloodletting. Bands also.. confirmed KRIEG, WATAIN, MALICIOUS SECRETS, URGEHAL, HORNA, ARKHON INFAUSTUS, DAWN OF AZAZEL, NECROPLASMA, ARMAGEDDA.Who am I waiting on: AZAGHAL, HELL MILITIA and TEMPLE OF BAAL..And theres always issue 9…

I’ve always been impressed by the mix of metal, mutilation and machine guns. How did you come across this combination?

Death metal to me should have been simple – propaganda encouraging death. Most accessible are sharp knives and guns. Thus, logically, I should incorporate the instruments of death with the metal of death neh? Black metal brings to mind suicide and violence, with a little perversion to boot. Thus, some black metal causes blood to drip from my flesh. That goes in the issue, as it relates to black metal. You forgot porn too. I am one of the most perverted motherfuckers out there – and I guarantee you, if youre into metal, youre into porn – the two just go hand in hand.. so you see, its all a marketing strategy (heh)Yeah right. That’s why ive sold I think less issues then well.. not a lot of em. That’s fine. My goal is not to have many copies floating around.. I assume that those who want to read this shit, will find it.

Do you think there’s been a demographic shift in the black metal movement during the past few years (since 1998) to a younger audience?

Yes. See way, way above. Younger persons in the extreme scene have the benefit now of being able to pick and choose, and also ignore the first monuments that came out in the early 90s. Not a problem really.. but now also with all this CDR trading replacing tape trading and these high tech doodads that allow music to be taken from sites.. it leads to a proliferation of short term shit – what I mean is, yes, of course, there are those who will take this propaganda to heart; but there are those who will take it for a short while, and then find yet another form to entertain them; what I mean is that they leave their crap around for us to step in; before hand, in the days of Paper, one had to write and send tapes and such – it cost money ; nowadays, one can put ones fecal matter on a webpage and spread their e-coli music as such.

If you have any hopes for the future of metal as both a musical movement and a political/social one, please detail them here along with anything else I forgot.

It’s all in issue h8te son. You do us a service, mr. Prozak – I gather both a smirk of approval to an all out heil prozak with the material you have written and continue to produce – a true architect of propaganda you are, and should be bestowed the mandatory schoolgirls for slavery and sodomatic rites.

Mr. Blaash
http://wheresmyskin.cjb.net/

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Interview: Cory Allen (Acerbus)

Acerbus have for some time been the enigma of the Texas scene: music that takes the furthest extension of death metal extremity known to humanity, the technical deathgrind genre, and expands it with a progressive and conceptually advanced edge that leaves most typical listeners of any genre standing open-mouthed. Well-versed in conventional music, Acerbus are exploring for new ground, and we were lucky to be able to talk to guitarist Cory during a break from his rocket science experiments. “Can the man behind the mask answer a few questions?”

What do you see as the distinction between art and entertainment, if one exists?

I definitely think a dichotomy between art and entertainment exists. I believe that art is a mental expression through your physical self, releasing any number of emotions, creative ideas, or in some cases rather scientific musical ideologies based on charted biological responsive “information.” I believe that entertainment is more based around the ever-popular biological survival ticket, or the dollar. Entertainment is something that 47-year-old men sit around in boardrooms concocting trying to blend the perfect ideas to entertain the masses and rake in an easy 1.5 billion in 2 weeks. You know, prime time television shows, game shows, reality shows, family movies, blockbusters, etcetera.

Do you believe art begins as a conception independent of its medium, or is it strictly configurations within the medium that inspire an aesthetic appreciation?

I believe that this varies from individual artist to individual artist. Speaking personally it’s a mixture of the two. Without a doubt it’s more of an inspired aesthetic appreciation and vision yet independent conceptualism does play its roll in some of my song writing. As in extremely awkward things that related none what so ever, not even related percussivly to music induces a spawning of musical ideas.

Do you think it’s possible that a band make significant art with only a handful of power chords?

It all depends on your definition of “art”. It’s like a space-time continuum paradox similar to Schrodinger’s Cat or Einstein’s mouse. I mean, the most beautiful and amazing piece of art to me could be garbage to you, so it’s possible or impossible depending on your perception of what art is. Short answer Yes with a capital N and long answer No with a capital Y.

Are emotions part of the logical process of the mind in your opinion, or are they of the mind?

I think that emotions are stuck somewhere in our time-evolved mammalian primitive minds. They are thoughts that cause nothing more that problems and weakness yet they are necessary so that the human DNA strand will survive and not kill itself off. It was VERY smart and sneaky of our DNA strands to slip that anti self-destruct mechanism into our biological programming.

Are you a materialist (no other words besides this one) or do you have any forms of transcendent mystical belief?

In no way am I a materialist. I do have what I believe is a very open minded transcendent belief. A belief really consisting nothing more that knowing that there are an infinite amount of possibilities and a complete void of fact behind any of them. Even if there were “facts” remember what a very smart man once said, “There are no facts, only interpretations.”

Marijuana seems to be a divine substance to many. So you think this is an accident of nature, something we’ve conditioned ourselves to find, or an accidental property of the substance – or another possibility?

I was actually discussing this yesterday. Once again, there are millions of scenarios containing endless amounts of speculation within each but I will tell you about an interesting theory that I had on the subject. Say the earth is a living organism. Thriving physically and possessing an extremely advanced consciousness that of which is beyond our imaginations or comprehension, i.e., growing wood on its surface for its experiment “humans” to use to build devices to help them live easier therefore longer. It distanced itself the seemingly PERFECT distance from the sun so with its what we see as annual rotation calculated its experiment could live comfortably under the climate conditions. Basically, the miracle plant is just another thing that the earth has grown for us as it watched its experiment get more and more hostile toward one another and boxed into ridiculously small reality tunnels. The growing of the plant by the earth provides its experiment with calmness, happiness, heightened physical pleasure and expanded thinking modulation to help shatter some of those miniscule sized reality tunnels that the humans that are too scared of their own existence want you to reside in forever. But hey, it actually doesn’t sound that far from the truth does it? (You know you read too much philosophy when you answer a question with a question! HA!)

What would your ideal lifestyles be, if you were exempted from the problems of resource scarcity?

I would begin by eliminating 90% of the population, which would be a huge step in the right direction of an ideal lifestyle. Other than that, all I would really yearn for is to be alone in a huge building consisting of a giant music and book library, a state of the art professional studio and a musical instrument library consisting of every instrument in existence. I suppose a gigantic INSIDE pool heated to 98 degrees would be in order as well. I love water. Looking at it, being in it (when it’s clean), drinking it, and thinking about it. It’s pretty amazing to me. It’s the mystery substance!

Do you think some bands are better at aesthetics than music, and should be lauded for opening doors that musically competent descendants will explore? (Think: Venom)

My answer to that question is a rather repugnant one in that I do not approve of artists that rely strictly on aesthetics because 9 times out of 10 that reeks of gimmick. Yet as you noted bands of that illustration have opened doors for artists who have created relevant and meaningful art. Therefore, I think that the grandfather artist (ones of aesthetic dependence) should not be glorified simply due to the fact that their gimmicky “act” unbeknownst to them happened to influence an artist of substance to create something momentous.

What do you see as the ideological, musical and social roots of the death metal movement?

I think that bands such as Deicide, Suffocation, Carcass, Morbid Angel (barf), and Napalm Death fundamentally established the foundation of the death metal movement. Actually, I think almost every new band’s ideologies and “social” roots (not something I enjoy at all in the death metal world) are still somehow based and JUDGED (its VERY harsh these days) on what thoughts the revolutionaries first had. It’s as if these bands created a steel mold for the rules of the genre and all that really happens even after 10 years of existence is bands just filling that mold and ever so slightly expanding on it. That’s definitely something I try to focus on during song writing, to try something new for the genre, and by new I don’t necessarily mean undistorted jazzy fills and adagiated bridges but just in a compositional manner or how the over all conception of the endless possibilities of an instrument are conceived. I think that some people that have yet to get up and peek out of the top of that mold that they’ve been sitting in the bottom of for the last few years will be jaded by this but I think the genre will dry up, get old and fizzle out if some people don’t start having an open mind about the genre’s amazing possibilities and its future and if someone doesn’t have the gallantry to take a chance on expanding the genres limits. You know you can only eat your favorite food everyday for lunch for so many years before it become bland and uninteresting. Music needs spicing up ever so often just like food.

In your opinion, what are the primary musical differences in form between black metal and death metal?

First, touching lightly on the more prominent definitions of the metal genre, and what I would look at as somewhat stating the obvious to any competent individual, I think that DM’s energy is generally fueled more by gore and technicality and BM’s energy is usually fueled more by rage (as blind and unguided as it may be sometimes). The vocal style usually sticks out like a sore thumb as DM vocals prefer the guttural growls or pig noises and BM vocals usual prescribe to the high screechy or I just slammed my genitals in a sliding glass door vocal style. BM guitars are generally consisted of standard tunings, which goes along with the high screechy vocals, where DM bands enjoy the tuned down sound (which in my opinion has become rather ridiculous these days. ACERBUS tunes to CFA#D#GC which is two full steps down on each string and that isn’t really considered that low in comparison to some bands in modern times), once again the deep guitars are coinciding with the vocal style.

Now to get slightly more in depth with my segregation descriptions, I will try to expand more. The musical stylings that I hear in BM songs are primarily composed of mutated minor chords. Quite often I find BM bands utilizing natural minor chords, which lacks a major seventh. While “eerie” or “whiney” sounding it provides no real power or emphasis to the root note of the chord. Harmonic and Melodic minor chords are intermingled with the natural minors to provide power and still retain a “dark” sound. These Harmonic and Melodic minor chords are used to strengthen the minor keys, there for giving way for some dark powerful sounding riffing. As far as an individual riffing style I think audibly there is an obvious sound that is generally more “open” and “breathing” even a somewhat dissonant and definitely more disharmonious sound with a tendency to move in shapes and patterns based on a full note chord to a two and a half step dropped minor chord reverting to the previous full chord with a slight half step rise minor alteration then reverting back to a lower minor chord plus and uncontrolled arpeggiation to follow with implied and increased attack to end and finally execute one performance of a riff. As far as a BM orchestration goes, I think BM focuses more on long-winded repetitious movements using the vocal pattern as lead point of which to follow and adhere to, almost defined as a somewhat deranged classical definition of the term symphony.

I think that the majority of death metal band’s riffing focuses on using diatonic chords intermingled with modulated minor pentatonic single notes tremolo picked scales to provide a constantly powerful, even, and bludgeoning barrage of whole note patterns and movements. Unlike BM, DM bands are not partial to letting songs “breath” or become “dissonant”. DM bands are usual very heavily infatuated with a song structure that has no musical “holes”, or a lack of sonic intensity at anytime in anyway. Unfortunately, I think during composition a lot of DM bands lose sight of the meaning behind the word orchestration. Ive noticed that a lot of DM bands just seem like the write 50 riffs, put them into a hat and randomly pull them out in no order yet string them all together using drums fills.

Today there are plenty of modest and worthy laboreres among scholars, too, who are happy in their little nooks; and because they are happy there, they sometimes demand rather immodestly that one ought to be content with things today, generally — especially in the domain of science, where so much that is useful remains to be done. I am not denying that; the last thing I want is to destroy the pleasure these honest workers take in their craft: for I approve of their work. But that one works rigorously in the science and that there are contented workers certainly does not prove that science as a whole poesses a goal, a will, an ideal, or the passion of a great faith. The opposite is the case, to repeat: where it is not the latest expression of the ascetic ideal–and the exceptions are too rare, noble, and atypical to refute the genreal proposition–science today is a hiding place for every kind of discontent, disbelief, gnawing worm, despectio sui, bad conscience–it is the unrest of the lack of ideals, the suffering from the lack of any great love, the discontent in the face of involuntary contentment.

– F.W. Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals

Is there such a thing as musical novelty? (a combination of notes striking or distinctive for purely musical reasons, with no other implications) or do you attribute what is commonly identified as such as being more of a stylistic novelty?

Yes, but I don’t think it is as much a musical novelty as it is a programmed effect that has thwarted us as time and “standards” have evolved. It’s almost more of a comforting thing to the ears of the close-minded more than a stylistic redundancy. Over time people have been “programmed” to recognize what sounds “correct” and “incorrect” in music, and really all other aspects of life as well. It’s quite a shame but its true. Certain progressions of musical notes or chords have been labeled “incorrect” because to most people they sound “ugly” (minor chords, several notes played at once which are out of key with on another), while others are considered beautiful (whole note chords, several notes played in octave). They both sound beautiful to me, just different. Who are we to say that certain notes grouped together are right or wrong? My interpretation of this ridiculous dilemma is that it clearly seems as if this musical decision coincides with the rest of general human ideology. Humans are always trying to label “beautiful” or “normal” people/animals good and “ugly” or “different” people/animals bad. This reflects onto all aspects of general human thinking so why not let it bleed into music as well? We are brainwashed into thinking that what is disharmonious is “bad” and what is harmonious is “good”. Some people might think its preposterous for me to make a statement such as this but I think its preposterous for people to be trapped in a musical box which has been assembled by their “peers” and guaranteed by record labels which focus on the business of music rather than the music of music.

In ancient Greece, poetry was considered incomplete without accompanying music which united the significance of the words with the significance of certain tones and musical shapes. Is there any relevance of this idea today?

I think so. Music completes life. Certain songs complete and are appropriate for every, and any occasion. The choice of this music is, of course, up to the individual and will never be the exact same for any two people. I’m generally awake 19 or 20 hours every day and there is literally no more than two hours or so of my day, everyday, that is void of music. Working in a music store definitely contributes to my habits.

What inspired you about the deathgrind genre, or was it a culmination of other influences?

It has been countless influences, and the influences that influenced the people that influenced me. As Einstein said, you must honor the gift of evolution that is life, which has been worked on diligently for millions of years. People often tend to look that fact of existence over. I try to take the same approach to music, it seems like great men in the past have already done all of the really hard things in music for me and I think that now, anyone who picks up a musical instrument is on easy street in comparison to these previous achievements. Do you know off the top of your head who invented the first sound recording device?

I will try and stop from getting to far away from the question at hand and get back to my most prominent influences. I guess in the very beginning, 6 years ago, when I was 14 years old and had picked up a guitar for the first time, I was worshiping 3 bands. The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Primus, and Deicide. I loved the sound experimentation and groundbreaking abstracting of music that Hendrix had, I loved the sense of humor and unconventuallity of Primus, and the aggression and technicality of Deicide. Those are the bands that made me want to pick up a guitar and that eventually drove me to create a band of my own that I wanted to contain all of the things that drew me to my early influences, in one single band. Now days the only thing that REALLY inspires me is avant-garde classical composers, i.e., Philip Glass, John Cage, Steve Reich, Kronos Quartet, ect.

What do you normally listen to in your time off from being death metal terrorists?

Actually, I enjoy listening to almost every genre of music. I really like Modern Psychedelic music, tons of obscure Classical composures, truck loads of Jazz and all of its sub-genres, of course Metal, Electronic music, Meditation music, Noise artists, and International (there are some really amazing eastern musicians). The list really has no end. What I’m listening to from each genre always changes but I can give you some things that are currently finding their way off the shelf into my CD player.

Kronos Quartet – “Black Angels”
Tan Dun – “Ghost Opera”
Suffocation – “Peirced from Within” and “Effigy of the Forgotten”
Jonas Hellborg/Shawn Lane/Jim Sipe – “Personae” and “Zenhouse”
Uncle Moe’s Space Ranch – “self-titled”
Clinic – “Walking with Thee”
Godspeed You Black Emperor – “Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven”
Philip Glass “Glassworks”
John Cage “The Seasons” (Margaret Leng Tan’s toy piano piece is amazing!)
Flaming Lips – “Soft Bulletin” and “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots”
Autechre – “Gantz Graf” and “Tri Repeatae”
Gyorgy Ligeti – “Ligeti Project II”
Medeski Martin and Wood – “The Dropper” and “Uninvisible”
John Zorn/Mike Patton – “Hemophiliac”
Pat Martino – “Live at Yoshi’s”
John Adams “Naive and Sentimental Music”
Primus “Pork Soda” and “Sailing the Seas of Cheese”
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan – “Body and Soul”
Anoushka Shankar – “self-titled”

That’s what ive listened to heavily this week, but like I said the list is ever changing and I have a ton of CDs or so, so I’m always listening to something different.

Is there such a thing as political ideas expressed in art, or do you see there being a necessary connection between political ideas -> social ideas -> perceptive concepts?

There are political ideas expressed in art and rightfully so. Political ideas need expressing so why not use one of the most affective methods of convoying ideas as your medium?

I know you bastards read philosophy; what are your favorites? What did they express that was not seen articulated elsewhere?

Yes indeed. I guess a few favorites are Friedrich Nietzsche’s “Thus Spake Zarathustra”, Immanuel Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason” (if you can make it through this book, read it again and ponder each line he writes, as each sentence holds at least a paragraph’s worth of metaphorical ideology. I own the Cambridge edition, it is abridged appropriately and edited in a way which makes the text easier {well I should say possible for most people to understand} for those who haven’t taken a Kantian philosophy course.), and while it is sort of a culmination of such topics as physics, philosophy, non-Aristotelian logic and semantics, I enjoy Alfred Korzybski’s “Science and Sanity.” I enjoy most titles by Robert Anton Wilson dealing with philosophy/consciousness expanding. While I believe most of his books are nothing more than other peoples’ ideas funneled down and regurgitated so people with “lesser intellectuality” can understand them and begin the process of consciousness expanding. Normally I would disagree with this method of funneling information/writing but he actually notes when he is taking from someone else’s thoughts or literature so that makes it valid in my eyes. His books are fun to read, he makes good points and has a great sense of humor. Stephen Hawking’s book, “A Brief History of Time” is good for the most part. I could go on forever here but I will list another good one, Carl Sagan’s “Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark.” To answer your second part to this question would be a whole other interview. The ideas expressed in these books that were not articulated elsewhere are so deep, vast and lengthy that a summarization of all of these individual ideas within a few pathetic sentences typed by myself, to me, would be an insult to the writers who I look at as some of the intellectual iron men of writing. Although, I believe a quick summary to someone who is interested and has never read or heard of any of these books is due. As basic and stripped down as it can be put, the over all point of all of these books is to force the reader to look at life in a different light. Metaphorically speaking, your mind is like a parachute. Closed you will die, open it will save your life and you will float above as you watch the others hit the ground screaming.

In spiritual practice, which is more important: coherence with natural schema of patterning, or symbolic adherence to human desires?

I think both are equally unimportant. Both are nothing more than a subconscious choice that is made of how a person perceives and interprets his/her own reality based on how their brain programs cropped and filed away the information of spirituality that has been directed to them and imprinted in their brains based on what experiences and information (or misinformation, really) they happen to come in contact with during their life that has consequently shaped their perception and beliefs according to these random events.

What do you think about Falun Gong?

From what I have read or been told about falun gong it’s really nothing more than Chinese yoga for people whose reality is based on pseudoscience. I know it involves physical postures accompanied by mediation which will supposedly promote mental/spiritual well being. I read an article in a magazine once with the “leader” stating by mastering falun gong you can obtain such metaphysical abilities as levitation and other supernatural powers. In my eyes, falun gong is as ridiculous as any other type or brand of a spiritual salvation that is defined by one living person (on an upside, at least their “leader” isn’t fictitious). Master Li, the “leader”, is the only person who can define the ways of F.G. therefore the ideology immediately causes me to burst into laughter and look at F.G. as nothing more than another man (Li) who is probably semi-intellectual who uses shills to control the minds of the mentally weak and needy. To me, the idea that a carbon based life form is to be looked at as a bringer of salvation is hilarious, pathetic and simultaneously horrifying in the fact that there are about 2 million people in the world that prescribe to the theory of falun gong. It’s a shame our species has bred beings that believe one of their own kind could be their bringer of salvation and are so mentally weak and distorted that they are sucked into a thin, as in lacking of content and containing no scientific relevance, vision of salvation in hopes of obtaining “supernatural” powers for no more than time and a likely weekly fee. I think the first step in demystifying any method that promises to bring salvation is if biological survival tickets (money) fit into the equation. I would imagine that a being that brings salvation would not be of biological content therefore would have an absent need for our (note the first word after the parenthesis) biological survival tickets.

Do you have any opinions of pornography? Do you feel it turns humans into symbolic structures in the same way religion does?

I think pornography is humorous. Not really from the point of view of the female who is baring her hide but from the male’s perspective. I think guys and women alike who enjoy pornography are either not aware of certain aspects of their existence or the worse scenario, are aware yet don’t care. Males tend to drool, stew, fantasize and obsess over pictures of naked females and critique their body in comparison to their personal preferences. Here is where the humor comes in. What males don’t realize whilst they enjoy porno is all they are doing is acting as the primates that they are, filled with a genetic structure that does not want to die out therefore possesses the constant need and want to reproduce. For example, when a guy says, “that bitch is hot”, unbeknownst to him he is thinking “the fat distribution and reproductive organs of the opposite sex in my sight seem extremely healthy and from what I’m perceiving visually has the ability to provide extremely healthy children for me.” When a guy looks at a pair of naked breasts he quivers, when in actuality that thought of lust running through his mind is nothing more that his deeply rooted and distilled thought that these mammary glands (plump breasts) will provide perfect sustenance for his offspring therefore promoting the longevity of his DNA strand, which is the most important aspect of a living organism. Apply this ideology to all other focuses of lust and there is a similar truth such as above behind each one. Peacocks spread their feathers to show the females the array of colors and the amount and fullness that their feathers possess which is a trait of a healthy male that in turn attracts the female, just as the human male works out, combs his hair, and wears becoming clothing etcetera, to attract the female. Unfortunately cars, money and so on are signs of power and well being which also attracts the human female. This is where the humor in pornography lies for me. When some pathetic male is gawking at or masturbating to a photo of a naked women he has no idea he is simply bleeding for his master, the DNA strand that is programmed to reproduce at all costs. Just as it is stereotypical for a male to feel and act “Zen-like” and feel necessary to reminisce of his previous nights copulative affairs with other males. He is satisfied physically that he has fulfilled his biological purpose in life and must tell the other males in his “tribe” of his affairs to gain a top dog status. Watching or hearing of these events provide me with endless laughter and entertainment; therefore the idea of pornography is extraordinarily humorous to me.

Another counsel of prudence and self-defense is to react as rarely as possible, and to avoid situations and relationships that would condemn one to suspend, as it were, one’s “freedom” and initiative and to become a mere reagent. As a parable I choose asociation with books. Scholars who at bottom do little nowadays but thumb books–philologists, at a moderate estimate, about 200 a day–ultimately lose entirely their capacity to think for themselves. When they don’t thumb, they don’t think. They respond to a stimulus (a thought they have read) whenever they think–in the end, they do not but react. Scholars spend all of their energies on Yes and NO, on criticism of what others have thought–they themselves no longer think.

The instinct of self-defense has become worn-out in them; otherwise they would resist books. The scholar –a decadent.

I have seen this with my own eyes: gifted natures with a generous and free disposition, “read to ruin” in their thirties — merely matches that one has to strike to make them emit sparks — “thoughts.”

Early in the morning, when day breaks, when all is fresh, in the dawn of one’s strength — to read a book at such a time is simply depraved!

– F.W. Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals

What activities do you have outside of music?

I don’t do a lot that doesn’t relate to music in some way. I enjoy drawing, writing text in a style I call “metaphilosophtry”, which is a mixture of metaphor, philosophy and poetry. I love reading philosophy, physics, and psychology books and really enjoy psychotropic experiences. Not sleeping much and drinking lots of coffee fits in there. I rarely go “out” as I hate loud noises (yes I know its sort of contradictory to being in a band but loud music is the only loud noises that are enjoyable to me) or being around people. Other than that there isn’t much I do that doesn’t have to do with music in some way or another.

What do you do to relax and have fun?

Well, there is the obvious, I play in Acerbus, I write music at my home and record various guitar or keyboard pieces on my digital studio. I try and have an intellectually stimulating conversation with someone every now and then. I’m quite the hermit and often refer to myself as a “misanthropic nihilistic introvert”. I love studying and thinking about the psychology involved with musical notes and progressions and I suppose the previous question will answer the rest.

If music is a language, what distinguishes certain pieces as impressive relates to the poetic content they express. Is there a difference between content and form in music?

I definitely think that certain progressions or orchestrations in musical notes, patterns of notes or chords will draw out certain emotions or trigger thought patterns that are unique to each listener. This is where my main interest in music lies. With every piece of music I write I keep in mind how it (the piece) will affect the listener on individual levels as well as in cohesion with the rest of the composed piece. I hope this is subconsciously apparent to people who listen to Acerbus. When people come to me after our shows they will tell me that we just sound “different” and that they cant quite place their finger on what it is but we just sound “different” to them. Hopefully this is a result of my psychological study of music at play since I write music utilizing certain aspects and attacking the listener’s ear in such a way that their brain cant help but to register these sounds on their musical spectrum as “new”, hence people telling me Acerbus just sounds “different” to them. Hopefully this method is at play but one can never be absolutely sure.

What’s wrong with humanity?

Do you want me to write a 2000 page essay here? I’ll give it to you as stripped down as possible. Humans have “evolved” to a biological life form that holds horrible traits called narcissism, ego, deceitfulness and personal dogma. America has arrived at a point where everything is based on biological survival tickets (money) and milking and flexing the primitive aspects of humans for all that their worth. Everyone in America (99%) has the mindset as follows: me first, I’m right you’re wrong, I am not successful without loads of money, I must outdo everyone else in the world on every level to retain top dog status, I’m the most important being on the face of this planet that would shrivel and die if I were to cease to exist. It’s sad really because life would be grand if everyone would drop all of this self important hogwash and read a book about, or at least an introduction to non-Aristotelian thought. Unfortunately, this will never happen so I say it would be in our best interests as a species to destroy all existing political and social parties and try to start over again with an actual democracy instead of one that spoon feeds its residents the illusion of freedom, the illusion of choice and the illusion of safety.

if you could be one non-human species (imagine reincarnation or other “magical” occurrence) what would it be?

I’d settle on being a viperfish. There are amazing and undiscovered things in the deep sea that would provide an infinite amount of eye candy for me as I enjoy looking at things and pondering on them. Having photophores that cause light to emanate from your body using bioluminescence would be amazingly amusing. Knowing reality as an air breathing life form would make living underwater very interesting. As an added bonus viperfish are extremely gnarly looking so that is a definite plus for me as well.

Which book would you most likely have written, not being already given to a career in musicianship?

Without a doubt I would have written, “Prometheus Rising” by Robert Anton Wilson. It’s a great book that anyone on any intellectual level can understand that will help him or her expand his or her reality tunnel resulting in higher intelligence, understanding of their self and others and awareness of one’s own biological nature and an introduction to the ways brain programs work. All things I think humanity could use sorely at this current time.

What do you think of the Austin scene? Do you think a city’s collective attitude determines what music will emerge?

I’ve gotten asked this question EVERY interview I have ever done since Austin has the reputation for being the “live music capitol of the world”, which is total bullshit (there is probably at least 200 bands that play in clubs all over Austin every night, it doesn’t mean that they have any real musical substance to them), so forgive me for not elaborating in great lengths one this one. Let me say this, we play a lot of out of town shows and most of the people that are into underground metal in Austin are in bands. I think the attitude of a city has little effect on what bands will emerge. I see where bands from certain areas have certain “sounds” but I think that is probably just a factor due to a psychosomatic suggestion that bands from certain cities hold a certain sound that must be emulated. I’m sure bands from the same areas experienced the same influences and I would imagine that would have something to do with it as well.

Do you see yourselves as expressing the ideas of your environment, or reacting to those ideas? (not to be confused with reactionary opposition, or an emotional/irrational response of rejection)

I guess I create music based on my influences, perceptions of what I think is musically divine, my own thoughts and on what ways I think that music can and needs to evolve.

Do you plan to have a family and “normal” life, if the opportunity rises?

No. An American “normal” life is nothing more than the lowest common denominator.

When you are playing, do you visualize the difference between the shapes you are touching/pressing on the fretboard, or do you have another method of preparing for the radical sweeping fretruns that seem to be easy for you?

This is a hard question to answer, but I will do my best. I hope my response remains coherent to everyone because I know exactly what I’m talking about but it’s difficult to put certain brain/body functions in to text form. When playing I visualize geometric patterns on the fretboard that are segregated in a grid-like pattern (as in each fret contains 6 lines which can be looked at in cohesion with all others as a giant piece of graph paper, each line holds a tone and is programmed into my brain accordingly) with the boundaries for each possible note change being each fret and string. This method of playing is extremely critical during my four fingered tapping solos. Most times when I play I do it in a sort of subconscious manner, I just kind of let me hands go to work. The best comparison is typing on a computer keyboard; each key is assigned a certain character just as each string is assigned a different note. Certain words you type, after typing them a few times become natural and this allows you to type in a fluid and fast way. This is just like how I play guitar. After I write a guitar riff the hand movements that are necessary to create the sound of the riff become like a stamp. Once it’s forged all you have to do is apply it and its there in perfect relief. The assemblage of many riffs, rhythm, transitional or lead, form together as one giant hand pattern or in other words about 40 different “riffs” or stamps compiled will create one giant “stamp” or song. I think that is the best I can explain it. I hope it made sense.

When you interact with normal people, how much do you self-censor what you’re going to say?

Unfortunately I do. I don’t censor what is considered “foul” language but I majorly censor what I would like to say intellectually. While people are talking they generally want their opinion to be heard and they don’t want to feel inferior. If I say something to someone that is what I consider a slightly deep thought, people will most times not understand you and think your just trying to be a “know it all”. So whilst in conversation with people whether it is friends or strangers I just strip down what I’m thinking so everyone understands and no one feels left out forcing them to lie their way through a topic since humans can’t stand admitting to not knowing something. I consider doing this a social Valium, but I never said I had the best social skills.

If you make people feel that they know something, they will adore you, if you make people realize they know nothing, they will loathe you.

What does Acerbus do to prepare for a concert?

We all stretch our muscles, tune our instruments, and arrive at a mentally self-confident state of readiness. Larry prescribes to the athletic abstinence of all physical indulgences theory for several weeks before any show or recording. I suppose that is all.

Have any labels woken up and signed you yet?

No. I have sent promotional packages to countless labels but every response I have gotten has been that we are too “extreme” or “out there” to bring in a large quantity of sales therefore the labels are unwilling to take a chance. I guess I’m out of touch with the metal community because I thought in the early nineties when Suffocation, Carcass and Deicide were breaking new ground being as extreme as possible was the name of the game. I don’t mean this in an egotistical way at all but I’m not worried: I know we will get signed eventually its just a matter of when and who is willing to take a chance.

What do you see as the primary differences between classical music and jazz?

Another essay style answer is in order here but I’ll try and keep it to a few sentences. This will probably only be funny to 1 out of 10,000 people but here it goes… I’ll try and be “the minimalist” while answering this question about classical music. HAHAHA! Man that’s funny in a cheesy way! Anyway, most Classical music is very refined and often referred to as “educated” music that is based on theory and what is “correct” (except for my favorites), while jazz is a style of music, while still well refined, is characterized by improvisation and experimentation. Hopefully everyone reading this already knows this fact but the alternate definition to the word “jazz” is miscellaneous or unspecified things. There we go, short and sweet and without speculation as promised.

What are the most significant musical innovations in the last fifty years, in your opinion?

This is another hard question to answer, but I’ll give you the most prominent things that stick out in my mind. The invention of several instruments (electronic and others) has done music well. The fact that in the last 20 years musical genres seem to have been mixed up a lot more. Unfortunately, this genre mixing has not been good all the way around but it has produced a few gems. It’s like mixing paint colors together, if you do it right you get vibrant unique colors. If you do it wrong you get brown. I can tell you some artists that I think have really pushed the limits of music as a whole in the last 50 years. Philip Glass (whom I happen to be listening to as I answer this interview), Steve Reich, Jimi Hendrix, John Cage, Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, John Zorn, Primus, John Coltrane, Black Sabbath, Thelonious Monk and the Kronos Quartet. These are just a few but I think that they have all have had a profound impact on music over the last 50 years.

Do you feel ambient music brings any theoretical change or alterations in form to popular music, and, if so, what do they signify in the mental processes of artists in this time?

Slightly, and by that I mean everything has an effect on everything. Any slight alteration or event will affect an infinite number of reactions that will cause change throughout the world. Introducing new musical ideas or genres will work in an identical fashion.

Is history cyclic, linear, or linear within cyclic? Please explain.

The thought of history being cyclic is not feasible to me. Charting reoccurring events and loosely comparing them to more recent events suggesting the idea that history is cyclic is very similar to people who believe in psychics or faith healers. Weak-mindedness and deluding myself into believing coinciding similar facts cause factual relevance in certain events is not something I’m a fan of. Believing that history is linear within cyclic patterns sounds like someone who is one the edge a cliff preparing to jump off but just can’t quite do it yet. I think history is linear and I think people that believe history is cyclic could probably be diagnosed with infophobia and need to get hobbies, try pseudoscience it will be right up your alley.

How do you reconcile the view that art is a matter of individual interpretation (#2) with the idea that all listeners are affected similarly by certain musical combinations (#1)?

A sense of relief falls upon me to discover that the perceiver asks for further information on questions that have what could be seen as contradictorily answers. I will attempt an explanation using metaphor with promises that my answer remains coherent. Imagine bottles of paint and a mixing palette. Each base color in the each bottle (red, green, blue, yellow) is pure and unaltered such as an un-interpreted message to your brain. Any disturbance to this pure thought or “pure color” (which represents and un-interpreted brain message) will cause the same amount of change to the final interpreted message (“mixed primary paint colors” or a thought that has been altered by your minds own personal perception. ) in the outcome. So, the fact that I stated that “art is a matter of individual interpretation”, resembles how everyone’s “final perception” or, a thought that has gone through your brain programs thus the outcome will vary based upon each individual’s “reality tunnel” or, the way they perceive reality. Now, when I say “all listeners are affected similarly by certain musical combinations” I mean that if I can find musical combinations that actually change the original unperceived signal (which is the same for everyone), then the outcome will be slightly different, yet different in the same way for everyone. I will explain again in a different manner to promote the illumination of my point. Imagine having 10 painters that are all using the same paint bottles. You tell them to mix the colors on their own palettes and to each paint a landscape. Therefore, each painter s final picture will be different based upon his or her perception of a landscape. Now to change each painter’s painting without changing their interpretation of the landscape we would change the base colors from red, blue, yellow and green to black, purple, orange and brown which would cause the same change to each painters painting without changing their perception of their landscape.

There’s too much to talk about, and I’ll keep asking questions forever. Is there anything else you’d like to add for benefit of broadcast to the world?

Thank you for reading the entire interview, I’m glad you made it all the way through! Thanks to SRP for writing an interview that owns questions of substance and once again I appreciate anyone spending the time to read this. Anyone should feel free to contact me if they wish: Acerbus@angelfire.com

Thanks Again for your time!

Cory

-ACERBUS-

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