I’ve been listening quite a bit to the new BEHERIT. I’m on an oil rig, have almost none of my belongings (this is a rush job), and need desperately to entertain myself. For music, all I’ve got are the speakers on my netbook and two albums:
Beherit – At the Devil’s Studio 1990
A random death metal comp I made a few years ago
I made the death metal comp to try to explain to other people why I — normally a classical listener, around 75% of my listening, with another 15% being Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream and Lord Wind — love this music. It captures the (cough) true diversity of this music and its imagination. It also captures what the music tries to embody: many different views of the same spirit, a feral but principled aggression that seeks to like a warbound king set all that’s wrong to right and to smite the weak, sniveling, boring, pointless, craven and ugly from this earth.
This brings me to the new old Beherit: I’ve come to love this thing. It has what The Oath of Black Blood has, which is reckless noise and pure energy. It also has what the following album brought, which is a sense of evil not as some stumbling error, but as a deliberate force — a conniving, undermining, dark and pervasive force that seeks to overthrow the light which converts the rich diversity of life into simple symbols and moral concepts.
As the gunfire in Norway fades, and the crumbling of the USA’s rotting edifice of spoiled entitlement brats begins, this is the appropriate soundtrack: all that in the cosmos which we have banished because it is disturbing returning with sublime intent, overthrowing our oblivious pleasant notions and anthrocentric delusions, and replacing them with the savage but ultimately logical order of the primordial forest at dawn.
CIANIDE premiere track from new album, their first in six years, set for release tomorrow!
Widely revered Chicago death metal cult CIANIDE are premiering a new track, “Dead and Rotting,” today at Metal-Army.com alongside an interview with the band. “Dead and Rotting” comes from CIANIDE’s brand-new album on HELLS HEADBANGERS, the appropriately titled Gods of Death, set for release tomorrow worldwide. The link to the track premiere can be found here: http://www.metal-army.com/?p=22698.
Already, CIANIDE’s Gods of Death is being hailed by the international metal press, even landing the band a covetted feature in next month’s issue of Decibel. Here are some snippets of the buzz currently circulating around Gods of Death:
• “Will make peers like NUNSLAUGHTER or JUNGLE ROT weep” – Terrorizer [4/5 rating]
• “Death metal at its most primitive, primeval, and downright punishing, ugly as sin and reassuringly predictable. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” – Decibel
• “Exactly what it is intended to be: a well-done homage to early Celtic Frost” – About.com [B+ rating]
• “Comes from the oldest style of death metal…will confirm that the underground isn’t dead; it’s just overshadowed by the drama of the emotional-like-emo people” – Examiner.com
• “Cianide stay the course and leave an even longer trail of corpses” – Blabbermouth.net [8/10 rating]
• “Monstrous” – Popdose [10/11 rating]
• “Death metal as it should be, at its ferocious, bestial zenith” – Metalcurse.com [10/10 rating]
• “Proves that Cianide still has what it takes to be one of the more important driving forces of the underground metal world to date” – Apochs.net [9.5/10 rating]
• “For those who prefer their metal keeping its direct link and inspiration all the way to the glory ’80s, Cianide is one of the most obvious answers” – Dead Void Dreams webzine [9/10 rating]
• “A worthy effort from a band whose return is most welcome” – Metalreviews.com
• “Lots of bands are now jumping on the bandwagon, but these guys have been doing old-school since old-school wasn’t cool” – Wormwoodchronicles.com
• “This is the way death metal was meant to be: thick, groovin’ and brutal” – Brutal Control webzine
• “A superb death metal album that delivers exactly what you want: no-frills deathliness with no fancy trickery on the production or mix” – MetalTeamUK.net
• “Operate in a space between BOLT THROWER’s chugging surety and the more ominous, cavernous resonance of INCANTATION…one of our most devout, unsung US death veterans, and worth experiencing if you want nothing more than to ball your fists up and feast on human misery like a streetfightin’ troglodyte” – From the Dust Returned webzine
About Metal Army: Metal-Army.com is the new number-one online destination for the metal community! Featuring all of metal’s latest news, reviews, etc and guest writers that include Oderus Urungus (GWAR), Rob Dukes (EXODUS) and UFC fighter Dan Hardy (amongst others), Metal-Army.com is home to the best that metal has to offer. Metal-Army.com also hosts monthly bar nights across the country where metalheads can go to hang out with fellow metalheads, have some drinks, and see some of their favorite musicians spin their favorite metal songs during special DJ sets. Past DJs have included members of White Zombie, Exodus, Testament, The Cult, Neurosis and more! The next Metal Army Night is scheduled for August 9th at Idle Hands Bar in New York City at 9PM!
Someone else attempts to explain Satanism in metal:
To quote Beauvoir on Hegel, followed by a Hegel quotation found in DsO’s lyrics: “Hegel tells us in the last part of The Phenomenology of Mind that moral consciousness can exist only to the extent that there is disagreement between nature and morality. It would disappear if the ethical law became the natural law.”
“Death is the most terrible of all things; and to maintain its works is what requires the greatest of all strength.”
Perhaps, then, Satan is the terrible marriage between natural and ethical law. Such might explain DsO’s utter lack of moral consciousness. The only conclusion that can be soundly drawn, without their peculiar cacophony of influences to draw upon, is that Deathspell Omega’s metaphysical take on black metal has eclipsed their grim-and-gore-obsessed predecessors along with 99% of everyone else claiming to be in it for the music or the message. They remains true to the core of the black metal ethos — a notoriously difficult task — while simultaneously repurposing traditional black metal structures to their own end (anathema to black metal on paper, epitome of black metal and AMSG in practice), almost sidestepping into an alternate reality where Satan reigns, bleeding their world into our own until it’s hard to tell which is which. – Tiny Mix tapes
All of humanity has since the rise of liberalism, and before it populist Christianity, been attempting to reconcile natural law with social law (morality).
Social law says that everyone is equal, and that only this order makes sense.
In dramatic contrast to the above article, most thinkers do not see nature as chaos or chaos as a lack of order. They see it as an order beyond human comprehension, but nonetheless, perfectly rational.
The difference? It’s not biased toward the human equation.
“Good” and “evil” create reality, which is a “meta-good” — it is a good thing, borne of both good and bad things.
The human definition of “good” means what is safe for humans; what denies reality, in other words.
Evil is the insurgent reminder that this simplistic viewpoint is incorrect and therefore, will bring us into collision with reality. Like peak oil, economic crashes, constant statist-versus-nationalist warfare, and social decay.
For too many years, we have let the herd rule. Their doctrine: every person is equal and important.
Our rule: natural law and its order are important, and everything else is human wishful thinking.
Heavy metal is a culture because heavy metal is a unique spirit: a warlike desire for adventure and meaning, not safety and egodrama.
No mosh! No core! No trends! No “fun”!
Idiots continue to want to make heavy metal into rock music.
Rock music is based on individual drama — the same thing that makes people feel it’s OK to litter, vote for manipulators and then blame others, buy McDonald’s and then bemoan corporate domination. People are the problem. Not institutions.
We like to think we’re all equally capable, and so if something went wrong, it was a misfortune/victimhood. The truth is that most people cannot balance a budget, shop for good food, or avoid repeatedly doing self-destructive and pointless actions. Humanity is overrated.
Now we have idiots who want us to think that if we just relax our standards, everything will turn out just fine — like that worked for the hippies, Romans or other groups of deathbound fools:
A YouTube user named “iAMVyt” has posted a video clip online discussing the idea that metal elitism is causing the downfall of the entire genre, and that there cannot truly be an “underground” scene in the age of Facebook. Take a gander at the video clip, and feel free to share your thoughts on metal elitism and what it means to be “underground” in the comments section below. “iAMVyt” also commented on the clip:
“This is just a short video covering a couple of my beliefs about metal elitists. No, this is not criticizing everyone who enjoys metal. It is not criticizing everyone who identifies themselves as a ‘metalhead.’ It is not criticizing everyone who has a strong belief in anything involving music or metal.
“It is criticizing what I believe to be foolish views and opinions. If you do not agree with my opinions, that is FINE. If you are a metalhead and find that this video does not describe you… You are not a metal elitist.”
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, metal was a scornful, fascist genre.
These bands knew they did not want to end up like the just-sold-out speed metal (Metallica, Testament, Anthrax, Exodus, Megadeth) and the mainstream heavy metal of the time, which was laughably bad hair metal and beginnings of industrial and alternative metal (Ministry, Faith No More).They had just seen metal get popular in the late 1970s only to die, then come back in the early 1980s, then start to die again.
The black metal bands were even more extreme. They realized that as long as they made music for beer-swilling know-nothings to tap their toes to, the genre would go nowhere. It would get re-absorbed by the mainstream and turn into the same horrible shit that infested both the radio and (in goofier, hipster form) the indie charts.
Elitism is the cornerstone of quality metal. When they abandoned it in 1994, a dearth of quality music resulted, with a few exceptions (later albums from BEHERIT, CIANIDE, ASPHYX, DEMONCY, AVERSE SEFIRA, SUMMONING and a few others). Those bands rose against the grain because they believed in quality over quantity. Whether they would call it “elitism” or not, it’s roughly the same animal: we want quality music, so we push away from the pointless, commercial or derivative.
Now this idiot tells us elitism is killing metal?
More like he means poseurdom is killing metal, as it always has. Poseurs are people who want to use the music to make themselves look cool.
Opeth listeners who want to show you how “open-minded” they are, Primus listeners who want to talk about how technical their music is, self-righteous Rage Against the Machine and punk rockers talking politics, and metalcore devotees who embrace the combined hipster/bohemian bourgeois lifestyle of over-emotionality and self-righteous moral indignation… these people then are the faux elitists — the poseurs — who are ruining metal.
Did he think of that?
No, because that would require him to admit that heavy metal is truly a different view of the world.
Although I listen to many different musical styles, including classical, jazz, blues and even bluegrass, my contemporary tastes lean toward heavy metal, hard rock and alternative. In other words, loud, aggressive songs with ear-piercing vocals, massive guitar solos and heavy bass and drums. The musical talent of these artists is undeniable, but the appeal is definitely an acquired taste.
Long story short, this isn’t your parents’ music. Unless your parents were long-haired, headbanging types who wore copious amounts of black clothing and makeup, that is.- National Post
We are a new generation that pisses all over the old. 1968 was hippies telling us the same crap that metalcore bands tell us today. If you want to be the musical inheritor of your parents’ or grandparents’ failed and stupid political projection, be my guest. You’ve just admitted you want to repeat the dysfunction of the past. Sounds like what an abuse victim would do.
For 2,000 years now we’ve had helpful morons to tell us that “all we need is love.” If it were that easy, it would have happened millennia ago. “All we need is asparagus” has similar relevance to the morally complex problems we face. In addition, unless you have your head up your ass, you can see how the human individual acting selfishly is a much bigger problem than whatever failings our institutions have had. We just like to blame the institutions so we can keep being selfish.
Trust nature instead:
Every sensible swimmer knows that avoiding a school of bait fish or immediately leaving the water if a cut started to bleed is ‘best practice’ when attempting to avoid a meeting with a shark.
But Eyre Peninsula’s Matt Waller has added another tip to the ‘don’t get eaten’ handbook with his discovery that Great White’s are much less aggressive when listening to ACDC – particularly ‘You Shook Me All Night Long’.
{…}
“I started going through my albums and ACDC was something that really hit the mark.
“Their behaviour was more investigative, more inquisitive and a lot less aggressive – they actually came past in a couple of occasions when we had the speaker in the water and rubbed their face along the speaker which was really bizarre.” – ABCA
We’d love to know what the sharks think of DEICIDE and INCANTATION.
The self-obsessed rhythms and whining, self-pitying hooks of pop music would probably just make them attack the boat.
Similarly, poseur bands like MASTODON, KYLESA, GOJIRA, OPETH, etc. would have the same effect.
Lack of elitism is killing metal.
Elitism means tolerating only quality music. It’s like natural selection for heavy metal: keep the good, throw out the shit.
Metal is dying because it is flooded with insincere hipster bands, commercial trash and pointless rehashing of underground styles.
The only force that opposes that are the people who insist on quality control, a/k/a the elitists.
The opposite of an elitist is a poseur. Poseurs want to use the music to make themselves look smart, unique, interesting, different, etc.
When those people started infesting metal in 1994 or so, the downward spiral began. Now there’s only a few acts that aren’t as abysmally bad as the stuff on mainstream radio.
– Comment on the above “elitist bashing” article
Nature knows metal is a path of its own. It’s only selfish humans who keep trying to neuter it, so they can stop fearing it. Hail elitism!
The rise of the Black Metal movement in Norway is a case of humorless dirtheads taking a joke way too seriously. The joke was Satanic rock, which Lords of Chaos skillfully traces from its early origins in Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Coven (who transformed from performing black masses on stage to perpetrating the weepy hippie hit “One Tin Soldier”) to metal’s second big wave in the early 80s and the rise of kitsch Satan-rockers Venom. To our modern eyes, Venom looks the spitting image of Spinal Tap during their Smell the Glove phase, but to dirtheads who didn’t know any better, Venom was the long-sought embodiment of evil. It was from the Venom branch of evil-metal that all of metal’s more violent, “evil” forms descended, including Black Metal. – Exiled (all quotations from this article)
This charge could be leveled at metal lyrics in general, but this idiot doesn’t know his metal history.
Black Sabbath – War Pigs:
Now in darkness world stops turning,
ashes where the bodies burning.
No more War Pigs have the power,
Hand of God has struck the hour.
Day of judgement, God is calling,
on their knees the war pigs crawling.
Begging mercies for their sins,
Satan, laughing, spreads his wings.
Oh lord, yeah!
Old school heavy metal, like Black Sabbath and American speed metal bands: watch out, evil will destroy us!
NWOBHM, like Angel Witch and even Judas Priest: society is blown because moralism is false, let’s explore the occult.
This theme also showed up in progressive rock…
Had the author of this piece done even an hour’s research this would have been evident, but he thinks he’s being funny.
The point of Satanic rock was to scare the Normals while fucking with the minds of its pimple-faced, predominantly male (nerdoid) audience, who needed to create a counter-world, with counter-morals and counter-aesthetics, to empower the nerdoids against the cooler, more successful jocks.
Straight out of 1980s teen movies. We know what research he did do…
The humor and empty boasts inherent in Death Metal were lost on Norway’s youth. They took Death Metal literally, and quickly discovered that it wasn’t “evil” or “authentic” enough. There were too many “poseurs.” And more important, too few genuine corpses for a scene that claimed to be so obsessed with death and violence.
You’ve got it backward. Death metal embraced all of this stuff first; remember the news stories about how a murder victim had been found lying on top of a copy of Death’s “Leprosy”? How many early death metal bands drifted toward actual occultism, and endorsing some fairly evil stuff?
Black metal just wanted to make it fully real.
For one thing, Black Metalists are incredibly pedantic–as laughably pedantic as the worst jerks you knew in the college rock/punk/hardcore scene, and pedantic about the very same stupid things: who is more “genuine,” “authentic,” “extreme,” “on-the-edge” and in metal’s case, “evil.”
Dummy, you just said it was an ideological genre. Of course authenticity matters.
Indeed, every sad word of An End to Evil oozes Perle’s and Frum’s pained, wasted 60s youths: wasted in yellow sheet stains, wasted studying maps color-coded with spheres-of-influence, wasted memorizing German armaments, and college years wasted playing Risk in their dorms while the socially successful hippies frolicked and fucked all around them.
Wow, straight up Crowdist dogma: it doesn’t matter how effective you are, be sure to be SOCIAL! That’s what matters!
Should Black Metalists cut their hair and vote Bush-Cheney ’04? Dude, I think the answer’s pretty fuckin’ obvious. In fact, thanks to these guys, America has become the world’s first Black Metal Nation.
A sub-intelligent finish to a downright retarded (yep, like trisomy 21 — retarded people are dumber than normal people) article.
I enjoy this blog because of their deadpan, straight-forward, radical honesty perspective:
Spear of Longinus is an Australian Black Metal/Thrash Metal band formed in 1993 from Brisbane in Queensland whose lyrical themes are based on National Socialism, religion, philosophy and hatred.
The phrase “Spear of Longinus” is in reference to the spear that pierced Jesus Christ’s side as he was on the cross. It is told that who possesses the spear is granted immortality.
– The Right Hand Path
Today’s to do list:
Fix the kitchen faucet.
Themes based on National Socialism, religion, philosophy and hatred.
Brett Stevens article in Houston’s underkvlt metal/rock mag:
During the 1950s-1970s we had bombers and cruise missiles, but in the 1980s we had supersonic intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) loaded with multiple independent re-entry vehicles (MIRVs) that blanketed cities like fission cluster bombs, erasing whole patches of the landscape. We were told we had seven minutes of warning
It was a terrifying time; people clung to dogma (“freedom” in the west, “equality” in the Soviet bloc) and tried to block any greater meaning out of their heads. Meaning started two world wars and could get you killed. Being really happy for blue jeans, cable TV and a fat paycheck was safer than bread. This vapidity produced a type of pop culture that was both saccharine and aggressive, emphasizing shallow emotions at the same time it pressed people onward to become part of the machine, to work hard and join the flow. Underground metal threw all of this back in its face.
United by the slogan “Only death is real,” underground metal as an artistic movement sought to remind people that all the crazy distractions, entertainment, politics and economics that filled our news and minds were distractions from the real agenda, which was having a meaningful and purposeful life. – Rivethead
Click the link to read more. Designed to offend numus and mellcores alike. And anyone else, come to think of it. Allahu ackbar!
One-time only rebroadcast of the streaming video of A Day of Death (July 16, 2011). Final chance to see the entire event. Whether you missed it or attended it and want to relive it for another day, you have one more chance to see Kam Lee join Druid Lord on stage, one more chance to see Kam Lee join Derketa on stage, one last chance to see Kam Lee perform “From Beyond” in its entirety.
$10 via Paypal to glorioustimesdeathbook@gmail.com (no later than Friday, July 29 at 10 pm est) link and password will be sent via email approximately 1-2 hours before the event airs. Grab some beers, invite the friends over and enjoy this once in a lifetime event, some of the bands of the day will be available in the chat room throughout the rebroadcast.
Lineup:
Lethal Aggression (only part of their set was streamed)
Hubris
Seplophile
Resist Control
Sam Biles
Avulsion
Goatcraft
Druid Lord
Derketa
Rottrevore
Deceased
Insanity
Nokturnel
Kam Lee
plus a surprise or two thrown in for this special rebroadcast.
Remember how Sepultura tried to go tribal, Nile went Egyptian, Mictlatecuhtli revered the Aztecs, and Cenotaph created a death metal sound unique to Mexico?
Ayasoltec is carrying on that idea and doing it better with their Aztec metal which has a modern metal influence but even more, a rhythmic change from the cadences of death metal to the tribal, without “tribal” meaning “rock played on hand drums.”
It’s on Examiner.com for public exposure to the “nice” people, but really has no purpose except to whip up some fury as these guys return in a few months.
Black metal was unique.
