Corporate Metal Labels Caught in a Death Spiral

Earlier this week the publishing catalog of metal mega-label Century Media has been pawned off for an undisclosed sum to Reservoir Media, a publishing boutique holding the royalty rights to songs by a variety of pop artists ranging from Drake to Lady Gaga. In investment terms, a boutique is defined as a financial firm that deals with a specific market, so picture Reservoir as a wealthy Wolf of Wall Street-like conglomerate recklessly gambling with the royalties of musicians. This is common in the modern music market, where suits are making bets on the evolving payout methods streaming services, but the surrender of Century Media’s entire catalog of albums (Death, Paradise Lost, In Flames) to a finance firm playing with house money goes to show how desperate the corporate metal labels of yesteryear have become.

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Hidden Metal In Plain Sight

Underground occult metal blog Praefuscus Ferrum recently posted a piece entitled “Underground turned Funderground, and the Obscurantist Elite” proposing that what killed underground metal was widespress consumer access to new technologies such as the internet. These and the increased exposure to fans led artistically successful underground metal bands to pursue raw consumerism at the expense of writing transcendent music. D.A.R.G. points out that “the truest artists purposefully hide away from the profane eye” as the communication mediums the underground metal utilized (physical mail, tape trading, and BBSes) have been usurped by ones more accessible to laymen. He states the underground became the “funderground” in the blink of an eye as mainstream rock and pop fans who felt adventurous wanted rock and pop music with “black” and “death” “metal” production aesthetics, not actual death, black, or even heavy metal. Now the musicians actually writing novel underground metal compositions hide unbeknownst to the typical beer metaller in plain sight.

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The Sad Pandemic of West Coast “Black Metal”

Today’s American black metal has found itself right within the parameters of Poe’s Law which, when applied to this abomination of a music scene, would sound something like this:

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Metal In An Age Of Insincerity

Over at Clrvynt, filmographer David Hall finally notices what DMU has been saying for 22 years: that heavy metal died in 1995 or so through lack of new ideas, and has been assimilated by rock music because metal is a better product as a flavoring than a separate entity. (more…)

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Russianvids Exposes Metallica

https://youtu.be/emq1RuljGDs

Youtube conspiracy theory vlogger Russianvids exposed Metallica’s connection to the Masonic-Satanic Illuminati. Russianvids noted many displays of goofy homoerotic antics from James Hetfield, Dave Mustaine, and Kirk Hammet. Lars Urlich’s predilection for kissing and tonguing other men is shown. Russianvids explain this is part of the Masonic conspiracy to condition the general populace into accepting homosexuality as normal rather than statistically abnormal behavior.

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Revisiting The Days When Black Metal Died

“Nothing gold can stay,” reminds us the poet Robert Frost, and this applies to black metal. Its gold occurred between 1991 and 1994, when its progenitors innovated a new style and took it to great heights, but after Burzum – Hvis Lyset Tar Oss, it became clear that black metal was not content to be a normal, rock-style music genre.

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Vice Magazine’s Embarrassing French Black Metal Film

As part of their quest to ruin everything interesting and appealing about both metal and life, the gullible cronies of media pyramid scheme Vice Magazine have journeyed to the grim countrysides of the French black metal underground to film what is undoubtedly the most boring film in the history of music. While Vice markets this abomination as a “documentary” calling it such is actually a misleading statement as the film is little more than a collection of autistic ramblings without a single question or narrative statement. In any case, the eyesore is a bastardization of the region’s legacy as any shred of decency still possessed by the founding members of Mutiilation and Drakkar Productions have been urinated directly into the toilet as they hammed it up for the same forces that they claim to be rebelling against. Fortunately, the film’s lack of credible sources and unbelievably poor post-production prevents it from succeeding in the demystification of what was once one of the more intriguing regional black metal scenes.

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Dark Economic Truths of Underground Metal

Recently many of the other “metal” websites, blogs, publications et cetera have been doing articles about the business side of music industry. Unsurprisingly none of these articles had the testicular fortitude to address the ugly reality of the underground metal economy as they are written by either slaves to the machine itself or losers who genuinely believe that they have “careers” in music which heavily depend on acceptance by the community. Since the Death Metal Underground staff bow to no masters social or corporate, we are in the rare position give you the truth in its rawest form. So with absolute disregard for the powers that be in metal, let’s take an honest look inside this machine to see how it really works.

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Metalucifer Release “We Are Still Metal Kids” Video

Metalucifer, the heavy metal loving parody side project of Gezol from Sabbat (Japan), released a new video to Youtube from their upcoming split 7″ with Sabbat. “We Are Still Metal Kids” is a  disposable, haphazard parody of NWOBHM bands such as Iron Maiden and Judas Priest just like all other Metalucifer songs . It will also eventually appear on an upcoming album to be released on Iron Pegasus / R.I.P Records. Metalucifer’s previous albums (Heavy Metal Drill, Heavy Metal Chainsaw, and Heavy Metal Bulldozer) and all of their other cash grab releases are all pretty much disposable kitsch but still better than most of the war metal, metalcore, and crypto-indie rock the Funderground attempts to force down our throats.

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