Most attempts to understand metal have focused on lyrics and interviews with musicians, which both fails because they usually pick lower achieving musicians and because most people do not consciously know why they do what they do, especially in artistic genres based on emotion, gesture, and metaphor.
7 CommentsTags: metal philosophy, Nihilism, solipsism
As you may know, people like me are classed as “antisocial” and “unrealistic” because we are realistic, or look at the origins of things and their likely consequences instead of human social function. Consequently we find it hard to get along with either public political stripe.
5 CommentsTags: conservatives, leftists, metal philosophy
Poised somewhere between speed metal and death metal, Slayer re-invented heavy metal by incorporating punk and classical structures with trademark raging speed, complex arrangements, occult and literary allusions, and intricate rapid-fire guitar solos.
17 CommentsTags: death metal, metal blade records, slayer, Speed Metal
In addition to tape trading, compilation albums back in the day allowed a label to sell you one track from each of its most promising bands for a few dollars total, making them both a good way to find new bands and a cross between the mix tape and a radio show when you wanted varied listening.
No CommentsTags: anatomia, cadaveric incubator, cemetarian, coffins, death metal, horror pain gore death productions, infamous glory, inisans, leprophiliac, Mortuary, nominon, putrisect, reckless manslaughter, ribspreader, ruin, sacrifixion, seraphic disgust, undergang
We all love a good feel-good news story, in this case about an Irish baron who rewilded his estate:
According to the UN, the world needs to rewild and restore an area the size of China to meet commitments on nature and the climate – but not everyone applauds Ireland’s pioneering effort. “You’d be surprised when you live in a castle how many times people think you’re an idiot,” says Plunkett, the 21st baron of Dunsany.
He still loves death metal, and sports a ponytail and (fake) leather jacket, but he decided seven years ago to turn over 300 hectares of his estate to nature – no livestock, planting, sowing or weeding.
Before, the estate had just three types of grass, now it has 23. “I didn’t do it, the birds did.” Trees regenerated and multiplied – oak, ash, beech, Scots pine and black poplar. “I see a lot of saplings growing that I haven’t planted.”
Death metal emphasizes reality over human pretense. This leads us to see the importance of eternal things, instead of immediate novelty-based social gratification, and therefore treasure that which is out of human control.
On the other hand, any time you get a committee or a herd of people together, they start demanding that human desires become more important than reality, and this never works, so they double down and it becomes an obsessive mania to smash anything other than human desires.
This culminates in a state like Communism or Consumerism where human rules control everything, and as a result, life detaches from both nature and common sense, leading to a tedious existence of servitude to the lowest common denominator.
10 Comments
From a recent publication of Perfect Sound Forever, some information echoing our FAQ about the origin of heavy metal:
Leaving out the blues element in the late ’70s, metal pioneers Judas Priest and Mötörhead had used their heaviness while keeping in line with the attitude of punk to create a sound that was heavy rock n’ roll punk filled with economic guitar solos, much like those heard in the Ramones and Sex Pistols. In fact, Mötörhead’s 1977 self-titled debut, which had included the element of speed, had often mixed the sound of classic rock with punk and the ’70’s glam rock of Bowie and Slade. This would soon would be followed by ’80’s metal pioneers Saxon, Iron Maiden, Def Leppard, Diamond Head and Girlschool who had added a great amount of guitar dexterity to the mix becoming a prime characteristic of ’80s metal music from the beginning.
In addition, the article addresses some of the concerns with commercialization and assimilation that came straight out of the 1980s:
When considering ’80s metal, one has to recognize that although the spirit of punk from which it came had mainly focused on anarchy, anti-consumerism, anti-corporate control, much of it, particularly glam, had taken on a strong commercial aspect in the rise of a particularly increasingly commercial period. Mixed with a sporty look and big hair when an enormous mix of different music and styles had existed, after following on from punk and much that was derived from classic rock, metal music in the ’80s had flourished as corporate rock in a period when the commercialization of music saw the rise of an unstoppable corporatization on a wide international scale- indeed, major U.S. record companies were selling themselves to media moguls in Japan and Europe. In fact, metal was a music engulfed by a “give me the money decade” full of excess – drink, women, hair, drugs in a period which saw the beginning of fragmentation in music when the rebelliousness that once seemed to possess more innovativeness and originality from which it had originally stemmed from became swallowed up by commercialism.
In fact, one of the original ANUS articles, now lost to time, was about the difference between commercialism of a non-commercial genre and being within a commercial genre like Queensrÿche or Iron Maiden, who did their best despite coming from the aboveground.
4 CommentsTags: 1980s, assimilation, commercialism, Heavy Metal, underground
As the music world tries to deal with the effect of the culmination of heavy metal in black metal, the genre that went furthest from “normie” music and the most into the ancient and futuristic both, some of these documentaries prove rather interesting.
4 CommentsTags: Black Metal, Enslaved
Why do humans form tribes? If you want to break away from the rest, and not allow them to assimilate you, you must go your own way and militantly, bigotedly, dogmatically, and aggressively keep the others out, or they will try to draw you back into their dysfunction so they feel better about it.
49 CommentsTags: pantera, Speed Metal
From the flood of nonsense going through the news feeds, a sign that speed metal has gone mainstream:
A woman in New Zealand, refusing to bring another Mackenzie or Jack into the world, has named her three kids “Metallica,” “Pantera,” and “Slayer.”
Farrier reached out to New Zealand’s Registrar-General to inquire as to whether “there are any restrictions naming babies after band names, or albums.” He was told that there aren’t, “as long as the word used is not generally considered to be offensive or does not resemble an official rank or title.” This may rule out naming a baby after one of your favorite grindcore acts, but it did allow Farrier to verify the fact that Baby Metallica’s middle name is also—we’re not kidding—“And Justice For All.”
These kids will either have the best or absolute worst time in school, depending primarily on whether ‘80s thrash is currently cool with the youth—and whether lil’ Metallica has to deal with terrible classmates like “Napster” and “Decent Snare Drum Mixing.”
After nu-metal introduced chunky monkey riffs and gargled horse semen vocals to mainstream audiences, the percussive fast strumming riffs of Metallica, Overkill, Testament, Megadeth, Exodus, Anthrax, and their derivates (Pantera) probably seem tame, as do the later Slayer albums built around bouncy riffs and plaintively angry vocals.
When even Alex Jones uses Metallica songs for his interstitial music, and nostalgia for the 1980s and 1990s has overwhelmed a Western Civilization looking at the post-Clinton neo-Communist NWO disaster at the same time that people are seeking music from a mentally less muddled time, speed metal has become the archetype of all heavy metal, and therefore, has been easily assimilated by industry and mass culture.
Perhaps this explains why so many of the original death metal and black metal bands chose proudly to be underground, figuring that a few years of musical and artistic honesty would beat out becoming a careerist in a corrupt industry only to morph into Dad Rock as their fans aged into complacent suburban wage-serfdom.
6 CommentsTags: metallica, new zealand, pantera, slayer, Speed Metal
Welcome to that odd point, thirty years after the genre formed, when your favorite music has become if not universally socially accepted at least recognized as part of the landscape, which means that you, too, can go to expensive festivals in far-off urban wastelands.
9 CommentsTags: concert, live, mass destruction, metalfest
