Some thought that American society died with Jerry Springers. Others like William Gibson, who should know better, think it died with the Bush presidency. Those of us with any attention span know that the decay even predated April 9, 1866, when the Civil Rights Act was signed. The decay is innate.
22 CommentsTags: Archemoron, ecryptus, helcaraxe, sadistic metal reviews
It is now painfully clear that modern society has entered its endgame. Our agricultural miracle based on fossil fuels has reversed itself, no one trusts the sham elections, intelligent people are not reproducing, our infrastructure has rotted, technological development has stalled, most people have gone insane, and hope-cope has replaced solid thinking as we try to rationalize the decline.
10 CommentsTags: advent of fire, angelcide, artwork for the blind, beyond deaths throne, duskmortym, holocaustum, hrafnskald, intricated, kluizenaar, living inferno, mantiel, Necrophor, nocturnal prayer, ordinul negru, Osculum Infame, redemptor, second wind, smr, tine, Undead, warzy
On December 13, we celebrated the twentieth anniversary of Chuck Schuldiner dying of AIDS. While early Death was some solidly good music and the band remained quality through Human, Chuck turned from the metal philosophy of nature-worship to a modernist ideal of humanism, and lost his soul in the process.
No CommentsTags: AIDS, chuck schuldiner, death, death metal
Long-standing Canadian technical speed metal band Voivod announced their latest album, Synchro Anarchy, for release on February 11 of next year. The label issued the following statement:
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Tags: Speed Metal, Voivod
They always tell you to “think outside the box,” as if having everyone focused on non-conformity will result in anything but a new variety of conformity. So much of life comes back to the mirror image, where we are staring at a representation of ourselves, and trying to change how it looks, despite everything happening in reverse since left is right and right left.
2 CommentsTags: gawith hoggarth & co., pipe smoking, pipe tobacco, pipes, tobacco
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
As more people flee the world of vapes and cigarettes, pipes and cigars — but mostly cigars — show the signs of experiencing a renaissance. If you can work from home, why not enjoy a leisurely two-hour relaxing smoke instead of hurriedly wolfing down a nicotine jolt in the parking lot?
42 CommentsTags: dark fired kentucky burley, mac baren, pipe smoking, pipe tobacco, royal twist, tobacco
Iron Maiden just released a new single, “The Writing on the Wall.” This longstanding band, known like metal itself for spanning Left and Right with its anarcho-realism, now introduces a new theme: all that we thought was good, was bad, and “good” evil won, so it’s time to… burn it all down.
10 CommentsTags: iron maiden, NWOBHM
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
Genres flowered with technology, differentiated themselves, and starting in the 1990s with basically all variants known, the music industry began focusing on mash-ups and re-mixes, sometimes producing interesting results but not really new genres. This release mashes up martial industrial, dungeon synth, and something like darkwave or the farther edges of electronic body music.
No CommentsTags: darkwave, dungeon synth, electronic body music, martial industrial, soundtrack, under a banner black as blood
