1980s: the world may end at any minute. The Cold War ravaged the earth: missiles inbound at any second had people living in fear of total obliteration, total erasure. There was passion in the moment and in striving for some sense of rationality despite it all.

2010s: it may never end. Rationality, liberal democracy, commerce, etc. — the “good guys” of the past 20 wars — have won. The result is a society so boring and unpleasant that we fear this may be all there is to life, and it makes us frustrated and futile.

Good novels about our dilemma:

• “White Noise” by Don Delillo
• “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley
• “Journey to the End of the Night” by Ferdinand Celine
• “Elementary Particles” by Michel Houellebecq

This lends itself to black metal, which is a rage not for order but for the passion in our hearts that can create a drive to order. It is rage against the meaningless, safe, conformist, and well-intentioned society. It is a statement that rationality itself has defeat us and we need to embrace the feral, irrational, and passionate again.

Of course, society gives us false outlets. Sports/vids, porn, shopping are substitutes for what we need.

The primary purpose of civilization is to allow the intelligent to rule over the unintelligent, which achieves better long-term results because it makes all of society as effective as its smartest members. The paradox of civilization is that by making the unintelligent effective, they survive at greater rates, which given their greater reproduction rates means they rapidly drown out the intelligent and reverse the advances of civilization.

Indeed.

I have been assured by the band that “Full Moon Conquest” does not refer to sodomy.

• Wulfgravf “Fullmoon Conquest” EP playlist

WULFGRAVF is old school hardcore, RAC and primitive black metal (Impaled Nazarene, Profanatica) in a blender.

To be released in 2012 by Wolftyr. Alruna plays fiddle on some tracks. For this video I used various samples from myspace etc (Note: some of the samples are in their unfinished form). Album is inspired heavily by Conan the Barbarian.

• Pre-order ($14 + $3.50 shipping)

It’s in Austin but may still be cool:

Creatives campaign for a truth, a reason, a solution, a future. In what some call the most important vote in the history of the U.S.A, WE THE CREATIVE get together to fight and fuck and flounder and forgive…. To talk about solutions, how we might and what we might do to make the future ours.

We celebrate with music, short videos, cult-culinary, art, spoken word, comedy, and poetry, but this is on the level of Black Metal poetry. This isn’t that re-live the 60′s shit, this is the here and now, and this house will be full to the top, with the top, for the lowest of the low.

Political debates and drunken knuckle fights!

This is the real underground, not some well planed and mass marketed, trust fund fueled, white washed and made safe bullshit… this is from the streets, from the zipcodes you love to hate… no well connected trust fund artists here, check the artist and their websites out, give em a spin on the old google, you’ll see that their individual lives and talents are the things others observe and then make movies about.

http://www.wtffest.com/

It’s hard to pass up the money. The kids want rock ‘n’ roll disguised as heavy metal, so they can be both (a) dangerous rebels and (b) fit in.

COC just jumped for it. Here’s the sampler from the new album (note the rip of Black Sabbath’s “Children of the Grave”):

TX-based texturally interesting death metal.

Death metal from Indianapolis, returning in 2012 with an album on Abyss Records:

Very much the “Midwestern style”: heavy mid-paced speed metal influence, a lot of lead rhythm riffing, covert melodic influences.

Metal, dark ambient, neoclassical and books.

Arktos’ Christmas sale has been extended until Wednesday, 11 January, after which it will be ended. Take advantage now!

• Arktos Christmas Sale

My one true love is death metal and that can never be taken away from me.

Nielsen Symphonies Nos 1 & 6, the second release in Sir Colin Davis’s acclaimed Nielsen Symphony Cycle, is now available to pre-order on our website for only £7.99. Pre-orders will be sent out a week early on 30 January 2012. Official release date is 6 February 2012.

• Nielsen “Symphonies 1 & 6” pre-order