Convicted murderer Varg Vikernes is too dangerous to be released into society, according to justice officials. Government critics fear that his background as an ideologically motivated church-burning arsonist, and his connections with neo-Nazi groups, are making it impossible for him to get a fair parole hearing.

“I can’t understand it. They want me to make arrangements with social services, even though this is unnecessary. Must I be on welfare in order to be released? I have a house, a job and a family waiting for me,” Vikernes told daily newspaper VG.

Vikernes denied parole

If they were metalheads, they’d see that an institutional appraoch to life doesn’t work because we don’t fit into neat and easy categories like “good” or “bad.” Smarter kids like Vikernes especially. Considering his stated goal is making music and writing books, we have to view this as an act of censorship against metal.

June 6 is a perfect day for Hessians across the country to come together and engage in something upon which we can all agree – listening to Slayer! Also, do you really want those evangelical Neo-Cons to have all the fun with their “National Day of Prayer”? Enjoy a “National Day of Slayer” instead:

National Day of Slayer

* Listen to Slayer at full blast in your car.
* Listen to Slayer at full blast in your home.
* Listen to Slayer at full blast at your place of employment.
* Listen to Slayer at full blast in any public place you prefer.

Download Slayer’s 1986 Demo with songs from “Reign in Blood”

Then you can take that participation to a problematic level:

* Stage a “Slay-out.” Don’t go to work. Listen to Slayer.
* Spray paint Slayer logos on churches, synagogues, or cemeteries.
* Play Slayer covers with your own band (since 99% of your riffs are stolen from Slayer anyway).
* Kill the neighbor’s dog and blame it on Slayer.< National Day of Slayer

Sponsored by:

The Hessian Studies Center and
The Dark Legions Archive

Cauterizer – Then the Snow Fell

This band made the classic mistake of trying to make death metal a bouncy, jaunty, ironic hard rock genre at the time it was moving away from all that garbage. Had they tried it eight years later, they would have been Slipknot, but instead, they’re mostly forgotten. Sound is like old Therion and old Entombed played by Motley Crue.

Dissenter – Apocalypse of the Damned

We put Behemoth and Hate Eternal into a blender and got a highly competent effort that’s painful to listen to. Repetition of themes is aggressive, as is mirroring of similar rhythms throughout each piece, and like all metal made after 1995, there’s zero sense of dynamic, just a constant high-volume assault — a lot like hip-hop. A shame since these musicians are clearly above average in proficiency.

Eldrig – Kali

I wanted to like this. As atmosphere, it’s well-done; note choice is good, rhythm is good, dynamics are well done. As art, it’s a non-entity because there’s almost no change. It’s like Hindu-themed apocalyptic wallpaper.

Black Funeral – Vampyr: Throne of the Beast

This is an inverse review: all the Black Funeral albums other than this one are lesser. Vampyr is the peak. Seek Vampyr if you like Black Funeral.

This is a good effort: they got themselves in better physical shape, focused their energies, and made a record better than anything afterSerpents of the Light. In form, it shows both a convergence to a mean (return to heavy metal influences of youth, mixed in a salad shooter and made generic by need of compromise) as well as a yearning for New York death metal like Immolation, whose internal rhythms and melodic rhythmic leads are borrowed here. Much of it sounds like more primitive versions of the rhythms behind Once Upon the Cross and Serpents of the Light, as played by a hybrid between Angelcorpse, Dream Theatre and Immolation. As a result they’ve thrown in some fairly advanced playing, but it is as an adornment, and not central to any message conveyed, which is the boiled-down version of the past mentioned above. It’s a good effort; it may not be good enough to stay on our playlists for long, but it exceeds expectations based on past works and levels a groundwork for future works.

Autopsia sent in a link to their demo recordings. They play a style of old school gore death metal in the nexus between Impetigo, Suffocation, Carcass and Malevolent Creation. For more information, contact them at their email.

We’ve been quiet but not lazy. New article Frontiers, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Creation and Love Destruction is online for your reading pleasure. It’s about how to reverse a decaying genre, or decaying civilization, through laughter and destruction.

Next, we’re having a meeting in Houston, Texas on May 30 for all those who might be in the area and want to attend. Talk, food, pranks, possible mayhem. Come meet some fellow deviants and see if they have ideas to share.

Nihilism is the removal of false logic based on the human perspective. Like heavy metal, it’s an attempt to see the heavy in life — the invisible threads of experience, need and wisdom that unite those who are awake.

Nihilism should be seen as a form of idealism, a rejection of the phenomenological and existential, as well as the dualistic heaven/earth scenario that creates an absolutist good/evil. Nihilism is looking at what connects the many parts of life, at once, instead of limiting ourselves to a human or machine perspective.

Nihilism is Romanticism.

Nihilism is derived from a Liberal impulse, “do what is right not what is profitable,” but uses the methods that have been true in every age. It is more conservationism than conservatism. It is anti-liberal, and demands that both capitalism and socialism be tempered by an abstract goal.

Nihilism is nothing, like the order of the universe itself. You cannot touch it, you cannot own it, you cannot make it your own. Sometimes, you can channel it, and you will find your thoughts have greater clarity and your actions are not only more effective but achieve results of greater beauty.

And that, in the end, is nihilism: using primal science to escape linearity arising from our entrenchment in the human time-denying (but not timeless) perspective, and to unite the threads of interconnected reality into an organic order.

What is nihilism?

Dark Legions Archive: The Net’s Oldest Metal Site

Hod – Cry and Piss Yourself

A fusion of Mayhem and Satyricon with impulse-driven American turbo death metal like Angelcorpse, Hod brings zero surprises but keeps the power of momentum balanced with an ambiguous lightly dissonant harmony. It suspends belief with single-string riffs which turn opposite views of a note cluster into an ambience, then launches into Gorgoroth-style additive chord progressions that end in obscure suggestions of direction which never materialize. The object of this band appears to be the contrast between mood and adrenaline, and if it does so without any particular deviation from the past, it also does so well. Its strength is this balance, and its weakness is a tendency to fall into variations of patterns that Destruction and Kreator made cliche long ago, but there is potential here for development if the band is able to flesh out its repertoire of riffs without losing the single-mindedness of its songs. Sometimes this band is like listening to someone’s metal collection; for example, the song “Demoralizer” could have come from a Master session outtake. But what’s with the 89-IQ-point, Pantera-inspired title?

Fetid Zombie – Pleasures of the Scalpel

Once upon a time, a lonely genre called death metal thrived, and people liked it because its message “only death is real” cut away the illusion of a world obsessed with social status, self-serving morality and trends. Then, some trendy fratboys put together a band called Cannibal Corpse and made the first real parody of death metal, except that they seemed serious, and people bought it in droves. Soon many imitations burst fully formed out of the garage studios of the world. Fifteen years later, Fetid Zombie skewers that tendency with a parody that takes the most simplistic aspects of death metal and blows them gloriously out of proportion. Guitars ride the downbeat of a chant synchronized to basic drums, hammering out the most linear riff patterns possible, on absurd topics of carefree infection, happy mutilation and joie de mort. It’s unlistenable but delivers a message the death metal community needed to heed long ago.

Apparently, the fragile but adept partnership that was Celtic Frost has dissolved with the departure of lead conceptualizer Tom G. Warrior. The other members will carry on as they were. From the official website, “Celtic Frost singer and guitarist Tom Gabriel Fischer has left Celtic Frost due to the irresolvable, severe erosion of the personal basis so urgently required to collaborate within a band so unique, volatile, and ambitious.” From all of metal: we are not glad to hear this but if it’s what all members must do to keep creating, do it, and keep creating ambitious metal. Ignore whores, hipsters, ingrates and Jesuits.