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#metalgate helps put Hatred back on Steam

by Cory Van der Pol on December 17, 2014

You probably don’t yet know this, but it’s ideological warfare out there. “Politics” no longer exists in the realm of voting and reading the Editorial page only. It is now part of every aspect of life, and the movement is only accelerating. This occurs because the people in our society are divided by what type of future society they want to be moving toward creating.

Some say this is accelerated by the collapse of the USA as a superpower and with it, the notion that the “American formula” of capitalism, the welfare state, democracy, consumerism and media power is no longer seen as a universal good. Instead it may be about to join the other failed ideologies — Communism, Nazism, Anarchism, and undoubtedly others — in the dustbin of history. Being on the cusp of such vast change naturally makes most people nervous, and so the masses are forming into mobs and squaring off against one another.

One of the big stories on your talking screen right now is The Interview. Apparently Hollywood — which never colludes with popular opinion in looking for bad guys who will not offend certain traditionally offended groups, like American Indians, the Chinese, and Arab Muslims — made a movie about a plot to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Il Jung. A group of hackers claiming to be from the DPRK have hacked into Sony studios, revealing in the process that upper leadership is almost entirely white and male, but are also threatening theaters that show this film. Many theaters have out of fear pulled it from their marquees. This is how you get things done in the age of ideological bullying: shut your opponents down, and call them fascists, all while enforcing some “fascism” of your own on their point of view.

Reaction to #metalgate has been mixed. SJWs first tried to deny it, then blamed the gaming community, and finally have fallen back on their try-hard die-hard standard of calling #metalgate supporters “fascists.” But today, #metalgate scored its first victory. The video game Hatred — developed in Poland by a group of metalheads — instigated controversy early on and, thanks to whining by SJWs who called it a “genocide simulator,” was removed from video game clearinghouse (like a cross between Google’s App Store and Amazon) Steam. But today, Hatred is back on Steam thanks to a grass-roots campaign by #gamergate and #metalgate supporters. You can see how this political warfare operates: the goal is to get the sellers to stop carrying certain games and music, which reminds me of the bad old days of the 1980s when Tipper Gore and her crazy friends tried to get heavy metal albums out of stores and barring that, required they have little stickers put on them saying that they had bad lyrics and Satan.

Over at MetalBlast, an article calls out this ideological warfare for the utter hypocrisy that it is:

In the world of Social Justice Warriors, when a white person “twerks” it’s cultural appropriation (because within their infantilizing view of blacks, Africans have a proud tradition of shaking their asses until they clap), while a female African American playing heavy metal is just a good “you go girl!” moment. This is, incredibly, both hilarious and infuriating at the same time, since while nobody has ever said that Derrick Green should leave Sepultura because he’s black, commentators, and even performers, demand whites leave jazz, rap and hip hop alone. Thankfully, those defenseless minorities can count with the Social Justice Warriors carrying the White Man’s Burden.

It would be ironic if “anti-racism” became another form of racism, one that rewards minorities for behaving in the way that their white overlords — er, social justice friends — want them to. But then again, it might not be out of character. After all, Eric Gardner was restrained by NYPD for the crime of selling single cigarettes. New York also made 24-ounce sodas illegal. Once upon a time, they made alcohol illegal, too. The motivation behind the “social justice warriors” of every age is the same: they have found a cause to which you cannot object without appearing to endorse its converse. There is no response to “Are you an anti-Nazi?” or “Are you a witch?” except an enthusiastic Yes! because otherwise you seem to be saying that you think Nazis and witches are just great, fine, peachy-keen. This condition is almost impossible to parody, as the Tyranny of Tradition folks explored with an article that made its points indirectly:

All I want is to not be told what to do by outsiders because they got their feelings hurt a few times growing up. People want me to speak in a way that is politically correct, but what about how I feel? What about who I am? Why do I have to be the one that pretends?

When our world is seen in a literal binary of “good” versus “evil,” we are the ones caught in the middle. We can become pawns for one side or the other, but insanity will win because politics has invaded normal life. The SJWs trying to take over metal have lost their legitimacy because metalheads have called them out on it, and the more they deny, obfuscate and outright lie, the more it becomes clear that we caught the real “fascists” with their hands in the cookie jar. They have lost legitimacy not just for their attempt to control us, but for their frankly boring and pointless imitation of all those old post-hardcore albums in metalized form. Metal deserves better, and seeing these pretentious gits kicked to the curb does us all a world of good.

5 Comments

Tags: gamergate, hatred, metalgate, politics, sjws

The Ouroborean Circle declares its presence

by Brett Stevens on December 16, 2014

Metal spills over into other areas of life. Every person has a philosophy, and if they are attracted to metal, it is that personal worldview that drives them toward it and not the other way around, although certainly metal further informs that worldview. As a result, metal finds similarity in other ideals that generally seek truth instead of seeking social approval.

For this reason, society has always feared heavy metal. Society is based on control, which is based on the idea of creating a “truth” which manipulates people. This fake truth is to some degree necessary to keep people doing the things required for us all to survive, but over time it becomes tempting for those in control to skim off the top. To do this, they expand the fake truth to obligate people to do stuff that benefits the people in control.

In the 1960s, metal gave the finger to both the establishment and the hippies who were basically preaching a watered-down version of the fake truth in vogue in that era. In the 1990s, metal gave the finger to the vision of us all happily getting along. And now in the 2010s, metal may be giving the finger to the idea of society itself. This document recently appeared in our unpublished staff-only address:

INDULGE

Satan represents indulgence instead of abstinence!

Indulgence is a model of pleasure seeking activity.

Empirical pleasure must exist in contrast to self-destruction if it is to be quantified in the context of carnality.

Consumption of repetitive experience is a pathology, not indulgence.

This group will not be for the slaves, but the masters. It will draw lines and cause anger.

Membership is open and expressive. ID cards will be available soon.

[illegible] humans do not entry.

I have written back to the email address provided and await a response, although probably I am not elite enough to qualify for membership or even a ten-question interview. Whether this is fallout from the Cobalt debacle or not remains to be seen.

7 Comments

Tags: anti-social, evil, indulgence, occult, Satanism

Exhumed to release Gore Metal: A Necrospective 1998-2015

by Brett Stevens on December 16, 2014

Exhumed released its debut of Carcass-influenced bouncy death metal, Gore Metal in 1998 with a bounty of crepitant grindcore riffs and death metal surging power. Almost two decades later, Exhumed returned to the studio to re-record its first album as Gore Metal: A Necrospective 1998 – 2015, which will see release this February via Relapse Records.

Thanks to increased musical proficiency through years of recording and better technology, Exhumed promises a bigger-sounding and more intense version of the debut. Vocalist/guitarist Matt Harvey said, “I’m super pumped that we got the chance to re-record Gore Metal. I don’t think any of us were happy with how it turned out the first time around, so getting another shot at it meant a lot to me personally. I was also really excited to have our old friend Ross Sewage reprise his vocals on the new version, ensuring that it still sounds like that era of Exhumed, though things are a lot more audible this time around!”

As a precursor to the release Exhumed will tour North America after their current European tour alongside Aborted, Origin and Miasmal. With co-headliners Napalm Death and Voivod, Exhumed will launch their tour on January 27th in Miami and continue to a final show on February 28th in Houston. Additional support will be provided by Iron Reagan and Black Crown Initiate with Ringworm, Dayglo Abortions, Theories and Phobia to appear on select performances during the tour.

Gore Metal: A Necrospective 1998 – 2015 Track Listing:

1. Necromaniac
2. Open The Abscess
3. Postmortem Procedures
4. Limb From Limb
5. Enucleation
6. Casket Crusher
7. Death Mask
8. In My Human Slaughter House
9. Sepulchral Slaughter
10. Vagitarian II
11. Blazing Corpse
12. Deadest Of The Dead

Exhumed 2015 North American tour

EXHUMED w/ Aborted, Origin, Miasmal:
12/15/2014 Grillen – Colmar, FR
12/16/2014 Steinbruch Theater – Darmstadt, DE
12/17/2014 Jubez – Karlsruhe, DE
12/18/2014 Rock It – Aalen, DE
12/19/2014 Heavy Xmas – Zürich, CH
12/20/2014 Turock – Essen, DE

EXHUMED:
1/24/2015 The Rock – Tucson, AZ
1/25/2015 Red 7 – Austin, TX
w/ Napalm Death, Voivod, Iron Reagan, Black Crown Initiate:
1/27/2015 Grand Central – Miami, FL w/ Ringworm
1/28/2015 State Theater – St. Petersburg, FL w/ Ringworm
1/29/2015 The Masquerade – Atlanta, GA w/ Ringworm
1/30/2015 Ziggy’s – Winston-Salem, NC w/ Ringworm
1/31/2015 Soundstage – Baltimore, MD w/ Ringworm
2/02/2015 Gramercy Theater – New York, NY w/ Ringworm
2/03/2015 Union Transfer – Philadelphia, PA w/ Ringworm
2/04/2015 Opera House – Toronto, ON
2/05/2015 Maverick’s – Ottawa, ON
2/06/2015 Club Soda – Montreal, QC
2/07/2015 Palladium – Worcester, MA w/ Ringworm
2/08/2015 The Chance – Poughkeepsie, NY w/ Ringworm
2/09/2015 Agora Ballroom – Cleveland, OH w/ Ringworm
2/10/2015 Reggie’s – Chicago, IL w/ Ringworm
2/11/2015 Amsterdam – Minneapolis, MN w/ Ringworm
2/12/2015 The Zoo – Winnipeg, MB
2/13/2015 The Exchange – Regina, SK
2/14/2015 Republik – Calgary, AB
2/15/2015 Starlite Room – Edmonton, AB
2/17/2015 Rickshaw Theater – Vancouver, BC w/ Dayglo Abortions
2/18/2015 Studio Seven – Seattle, WA w/ Theories
2/19/2015 Hawthorne Theater – Portland, OR
2/20/2015 Metro – Oakland, CA w/ Phobia
2/21/2015 Strummers – Fresno, CA w/ Phobia
2/22/2015 House of Blues – Los Angeles, CA
2/23/2015 Club Red – Tempe, AZ w/ Phobia
2/24/2015 Sunshine Theater – Albuquerque, NM w/ Phobia
2/25/2015 Summit Music Hall – Denver, CO w/ Phobia
2/26/2015 Granada Theater – Lawrence, KS w/ Phobia
2/27/2015 Gas Monkey – Dallas, TX w/ Phobia
2/28/2015 Fitzgerald’s – Houston, TX w/ Phobia

Lineup on Gore Metal: A Necrospective 1998 – 2015:

Rob “Bodybag” Babcock – bass, backing vocals
Mike Beams – guitar, backing vocals
Bud Burke – lead guitar, backing vocals
Mike Hamilton – drums
Matt Harvey – guitar, lead vocals
Ross Sewage – lead vocals
Backup vocal “Slay Team”: Alejandro Corredor, Dr. Philthy

“…a gleeful celebration of death metal…” – Decibel

“EXHUMED is Carcass reincarnated.” – Terrorizer

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Tags: exhumed, gore metal, relapse

Destroying Divinity – Hollow Dominion

by Cory Van der Pol on December 16, 2014

Cross Immolation Here in After with a modern brutal technical death band like Deeds of Flesh and you have arrived at the starting point for Destroying Divinity, who specialize in a barely controlled chaos of exuberant ripping and high-speed charging Krisiun-style riffs channeled into violent and athletic songs. Hollow Dominion clocks in at just over 33 minutes but packs in at least two albums of riffs.

Like most percussive metal bands, a great deal of the focus on Hollow Dominion involves use of choppy muted chords to emphasize a riff pattern and then varying that texture to create a kind of parallax shift sensation, allowing a melody to slowly emerge. Where this band excels is in packing together these riffs so that each change relates to the riff before it, and every riff fits in the song, but the song still makes sense with enough variation to avoid trope. If they have a failing, it is that many of the chord progressions used in these riffs are rather linear, which creates a heavy chromatic effect but also some predictability. Generally however the band manages to introduce its songs with the more obvious riffs and work deeper until it has subverted them with more interesting patterns.

Brutal death metal will not find a fan in every listener. It relies on cadence, trope, repetition and basically pounding the listener into her chair with solid slamming percussive riff after riff. In addition, Destroying Divinity pick up a number of techniques from Immolation such as the guitar squeal, recursive rhythms that simultaneously relax, and a tendency to use higher-string chords to offset the guttural vocals and pounding bass-intense riffs. In combination these two forms show metal as more of a series of patterns than a convention sense of riff-chorus, which makes this album a welcome antidote to the highly repetitive and circular songwriting of modern metal. With great intensity Hollow Dominion creates a world of vast internal diversity and then populates it with conflict, delivering death metal satisfaction with brutal death metal rigor.

2 Comments

Tags: Brutal Death Metal, death metal, destroying divinity, lavadome productions

“On the right side of history”

by Cory Van der Pol on December 16, 2014

The arrogance of someone proclaiming themselves on the right side of history still takes my breath away. As if after all this time, there are simple solutions to human problems that involve a totalitarian presence, which is control of all that we say and thus what we think. This issue defines #metalgate and explains why it has provoked such panicked reactions from the nu-metal SJWs.

SJWs raise a number of objections to #metalgate. Their first trick is to claim that #metalgate does not in fact exist because there is not a single touchstone event, as there was with #gamergate, which set it off. Since #metalgate was brought on by years of articles (and boring, soulless politically-correct burnt out hardcore bands writing “metal” albums) there was not a touchstone event, but a gradual rising opposition. Their next trick is to claim that metalheads want the ability to behave like louts without consequence. This is an obvious lie, since all we’re asking is to keep the PC thought police out of metal, since PC thought police ruin everything they touch, much like their bad “metal” bands. Finally they insist that metal is dodging these issues entirely, which is not true. Metal simply refuses to adopt the PC framing of these issues, which is designed so that only one conclusion is correct. Their approach is similar to a Republican asking where we stand on allowing al-Qaeda into schools. The only response you can make is “well, of course I oppose that,” or your response is going to look like you are supporting al-Qaeda.

The point of this approach is literally thought control. As Roger Brown wrote in 1976:

The structure of anyone’s native language strongly influences or fully determines the world-view he will acquire as he learns the language.

Language works both forward and backward. It programs our minds to think in certain ways. If that language is changed, it works backward to change how we think about things. This is why people want to change the way you talk, program you to think in terms of issues, and otherwise force you to put your speech into a narrow range of what is defined as acceptable. They want to control how you think.

#metalgate got some interesting support some time ago from an unlikely source:

This artist remains controversial because her band was so heavily promoted as being “female-fronted,” which to a metalhead is suspicious because it obstructs from letting the music speak for itself. Like music which insists you appreciate it on the basis of theory, whether musical or gender studies, the sex-based approach demands fans look at the music first in terms of what precious little category it fits into. This is the same thing as requiring that we like a band simply because it is popular and sold a lot of albums. Krieg’s Imperial weighs in on this one:

This might sound a bit mean-spirited, but I don’t think seventy-five percent of people would give any second thought to Myrkur if there wasn’t the campaign of secrecy behind it pre-release, coupled with the fury over the main musician having ovaries and other things people who still live with their parents are confused and frightened by. It speaks a lot to gender politics in music in general with how this scenario played out, and it wasn’t at all helped by shrouding the whole thing in mystery early on; Velvet Cocoon did that ten years ago and much more successfully. Now, it just comes off like the Sex Pistols or American Idol-styled manufacturing, but that’s easier to ignore than the moist masses who, when faced with a woman, can only yell “TITS!” like she’s unaware that she has them. Yes, black metal is a negative expression which isn’t the most inclusive of genres, but recently people have been acting more like they’re on Xbox Live than in a genre which should be held to a higher intellectual standard than most.

This takes a moderate approach to metal which is that most of us are tired of the bad behavior of people on the internet, which is not limited to tidy categories like “sexism” and “racism” but approaches all-around shittiness because angry teenagers either find an outlet for their anger — plant trees, join the Guardian Angels, work in a soup kitchen — or they become hateful little haters who do nothing but hate on all of us. #metalgate isn’t about these people. It’s about a small group of media darlings and their pointless indie rock and hardcore punk bands pretending to be metal so they can enforce thought control over us and make us their bitches.

The sad fact remains that people who talk about “the right side of history” have a control agenda. We see again why metal is always unpopular, which is that it avoids herd opinion on all fronts. Political correctness is herd opinion. It’s not even related to actual leftist theory, but uses that as its cover story to hide the fact that it’s a naked grab for power. Jim Jones, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Tipper Gore and other cult personalities use this approach to build personal armies and take control. They are no different from the bigots who lynched people and who are currently beheading people and blowing up children in the middle east. Metal is just fighting back on its own terms, despite the apathy and isolation of most metalheads, because we don’t want to be part of their weird political jihad. And what’s more metal than that?

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Tags: gamergate, metalgate

Digging further into Abscession Grave Offerings

by David Rosenberg on December 15, 2014

As the title suggests, Grave Offerings has a lot to give. In a metal world bloated with copycats, have-beens, hipsters, cultural appropriators invading the genre, imitators and true-blue kvlt types, it is rare to hear an album that is not only competent but has its own personality.

While most metal musicians focus exclusively on having memorized the major and minor scale shapes on the guitar neck, knowing the most common chord progressions and understanding the concepts of modulation and time signatures, the art of songwriting requires a different kind of technicality. Abscession rises above the herd in knowing the genre, having technical skills, and being able to write songs, but above that their repertoire is strained.

Almost every embellishment such as drum fills or guitar solos is fitting and never overbearing despite the obvious proficiency of the performers. This is not altogether uncommon but it is something that is appreciated by fans of proper music, as opposed to what my good friend Dionysus would refer to as “guitar-shop metal” or the kind of guitar tricks you show your friends but that get old really fast on an album. Grave Offerings displays a variety of Svenska Dödsmetal influences which range from the early foundational bands like Nihilist, going through Carnage, stopping by Entombed for an infusion of Death n’ Roll inclinations and all the way to fully-fledged Gothenburg sound while avoiding sounding like any one of them all the time and occasionally bringing out a voice of its own, although not often enough.

Abscession have the artistic sense to make the songs stay within an idea without wandering off topic. At the same time they do this too zealously and the music always remains so close to the germinating idea that it seems to shy away from any great variations lest they be seen as foreign. Since the songs are, on a general level, verse-chorus pop songs, there is a need for subtle ventures outside the strictly familiar to distinguish each song with a purpose unique to that song. It must effectively convey that purpose through its free expression (the previously mentioned ventures) parting from its stable basis (what was referred to as established idea and “known territory”, not foreign) as one needs a vector to have two points and a direction to effectively communicate information.

When a more distinctive idea does surface it often does so with scherzando overtones — playful, bouncy, not grim — which I find unpalatable in the context of the rigid intensity of death metal and especially in the context of Swedish death metal. This aura has traditionally replicated that of old school horror films in the best of cases and at worse has been borderline cartoonish. By indulging in the more humoresque-like passages Abscession ends up crossing the line into explicitly comic territory. This usually happens when the Death n’ Roll facet of Swedeath is explored as exemplified by the fifth track on the album: Blowtorch Blues.

Both while listening to Grave Offerings for the first time and after having listened to it seven times at the time of this writing, I had the strong feeling that the first four tracks were more than enough: there’s virtually nothing else added by the rest of the album. All in all, if we are going to allow ourselves to give safe mainstream metal from Scandinavia praise for some originality and inventiveness within their miserable sellout constraints, I would be much more inclined to extend this courtesy to the latest album by Björler’s At the Gates (as opposed to Svensson’s At the Gates): At War with Reality.

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Tags: abscession, At the Gates, Swedish Death Metal

Why metal is better than “social justice”

by Cory Van der Pol on December 15, 2014

As #metalgate rages on on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Tumblr, the people who are trying to force these views on metal are defending themselves by claiming that #metalgate doesn’t exist or is insignificant. The truth is that this agenda has been advancing for some time and it has a dirty secret.

The dirty secret of the “SJW” agenda in metal is that it is totally unnecessary. Despite my own sympathies with many of the ideas they hope to achieve, like better treatment of human beings, I suspect most of these people are just poseurs. They are adopting certain viewpoints that they think are necessary to get ahead socially. Nothing makes a person feel more powerful than to be able to call someone else ignorant and selfish, while (in their own minds) looking superior, intelligent and altruistic. Especially if you are coming from behind and feeling ashamed about your family origins or stature in life, it can make you feel like a god to have moral right on your side and to look much more advanced than those around you. This is just another shade of the broken social life in the modern world coming home to visit metal and use metal for its own ends.

But even more, these “helpful” demands from SJWs are totally unnecessary. This is metal, where if you can create the music, you can join in the fun. We have always had something better than feminism with women being present and respected in Nuclear Death, Mythic and Bolt Thrower. People of color have always been here in Thin Lizzy, Suffocation, Blasphemy and Mystifier. Metal bands come from all over the world and from every tribe, culture and religion imaginable. We tend not to mark a little box each time someone who is non-heterosexual, non-white and/or non-male joins our ranks, but they are there and always have been. In metal, there is no need for a crusade for equality because we already have it. Even better, we have done so without turning that into a crusade against those who are heterosexual, white and/or male. We just accept people as they are.

When #metalgate upsets people it is because they do not want to face the conflict between outsiders and metal, as is shown in this article on MetalSucks:

But my ultimate problem with #metalgate is that it’s entirely manufactured. No one, or no group, is banding together to try and change metal in any one specific way — the threat is entirely imagined. Certain social values enter the metalsphere simply because those values are spreading throughout society as a whole — this idea that “SJWs” failed with #gamergate so they’re now moving on to a different cause is total bologna. They’re entirely separate people!

Personally, I enjoy what Vince Neilstein writes but don’t read it that often, mainly because I don’t visit sites with ironic names that censor out the word “fuck” for reasons unknown. But while I think he’s normally on point, here he confuses a few things. First “those values are spreading throughout society as a whole” means society outside of metal is adopting these values, and now wants metal to bow down and conform. He’s basically taking a pro-#metalgate point of view there but I’m not sure he intended two. Second, he assumes that the people involved in resisting the SJW incursion are #gamergate people, when actually it’s people like myself in metal who are not from either side of the political spectrum. We hate politics in our music, metal has already addressed this issue, and we don’t want to follow the herd in whatever flavor-of-the-month the iconoclastic hipsters behind the SJW fad think is important.

Metal has never been about doing what everyone else is doing but it has also never been about being “ironic” and trying to be different so hard that we act randomly. Metal is its own law and has its own culture. From outside of that culture, as Neilstein writes, people are trying to push conformist social values on us. The best “activism” for all of us who love metal is to push back against that dominant paradigm and go our own way instead.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQBo2Drpx9I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKhFJXYRFYs

6 Comments

Tags: gamergate, hipsters, metalgate, MetalSucks, sjws, vince neilstein

#metalgate: SJW-metal is the new “Christian metal”

by Cory Van der Pol on December 15, 2014

#MetalGate exposes human behavior at its most basic level. When someone stands up and refuses to go along with the herd, most people fear that person. S/he is refusing to endorse the same behavior that everyone else engages in, which makes them look like they may be wrong. Even worse, this person has found a way of life which may even be better. This freaks them out and so they attack.

If you went to an American high school, you are familiar with the two types of iconoclasts. The first do everything they can to make sure that you know they are an iconoclast: they wear hats, dress oddly, listen to “edgy” music and give the finger to authority — usually some 64.5 year old security guard — whenever they can. The other type are quietly iconoclastic by cutting out of their lives all the time-wasting stuff other people do so that they can focus on what they want to do. In this group, you find many of the artists, top students, athletes, musicians and other honestly interesting people. The first group tries to be this, but never can be.

Heavy metal has always been the interesting kid. It does not need to shout its iconoclasm from the rooftops because when you throw the music on your stereo (or cell phone mp3 player) you can immediately sense that something different is going on here. It does not sound like regular rock music, the 31 flavors and 50 shades of which normal people listen to. This is music that has gone beyond what others are willing to tolerate, and it echoes this idea in its lyrics and imagery. People fear death, disease, warfare, the occult, conflict and evil, so metal sings about these things. It reveals to us everything that we would rather deny, including — especially — the apocalyptic and dystopian factors that point out that our society is over-ripe and likely heading for a fall and decay. Heavy metal is like the person at a cocktail party who will not take the hint and keeps asking about your upcoming corruption trial even though it is rude, unsociable and impolite to do so.

When a true (but quiet) iconoclast stands up, all the fake iconoclasts immediately want to take that person down. S/he makes them look bad in comparison because they are clearly people acting like iconoclasts, not actual iconoclasts. As many people have noticed through the years, there is no bigger group of sheep than those who insist they are not like the other sheep. An actual iconoclast does not need to tell you that he’s different; he just does what he does, and that difference becomes clear. There is also one more thing he possesses, on top of difference, which is direction. He is not different to be different. He’s different because he has a plan, an agenda and a purpose, where everyone else is just dressing up in weird clothes to try desperately to be “cool” (itself an ultra-sheep concept).

Over the years, many groups have tried to take over metal. In the 1980s the Church felt threatened by heavy metal and so sponsored a form of contemporary worship music known as “Christian metal” which imitated heavy metal bands, but had Christian lyrics. It never felt right as metal and so never caught on with anyone but those who were already Christian. Christian metal peaked in the mainstream with Stryper, whose Amy Grant style take on Motley Crue made fodder for endless jokes but also a fair number of album sales before the band vanished into well-deserved obscurity. The feeling among Christians was that since heavy metal was evil, Christians needed to make a “safe” version of that evil music so they could enjoy it too. The media ate it up, too, because it was ironic just like the high school iconoclasts. Christian metal was the equivalent of wearing a fedora and suit vest over jeans and a Hawaiian shirt while talking about the blue energy fields.

The problem with this agenda shared between the Christian establishment and the media establishment had two heads: the music wasn’t very good, and these two groups were obvious outsiders. They tried to solve this by getting Christian bands to play alongside regular metal bands, but this did not end well as most metalheads recognized this intrusion for what it was. No matter how many times the Christian bands said “See, we’re one of you!” and the big newspapers referred to them as heavy metal bands who coincidentally just happened to be Christian, metalheads did not buy it. Christian metal fizzled after some time. Other groups tried to achieve entry in the same way, including far-right groups, vegans and anti-drug crusaders, but all slipped by the wayside from failure to be accepted. The simple reason for this is that allowing metal to be assimilated to become a voice for someone else’s agenda violates the basic idea of metal itself:

If I could distill metal into a single phrase, it would be this: metal is the musical equivalent of the word “FUCK” aimed at society.

This is why the SJW’s will never win. Their “victory,” if such a thing is possible, would be Pyrrhic. It would destroy metal. It would turn metal into pop rock, and metal is the violent musical reaction against pop rock.

With #MetalGate, what happened was that in the late 1990s a ground of ex-hardcore people decided they wanted to make metal “safe” by having it bleat out their doctrine. Their viewpoint was popular among the new group of hipsters and other iconoclasts who filled American cities. This group created a new type of metal, a hybrid between death metal and post-hardcore and sometimes indie rock, and declared themselves the new underground. To be part of this new underground, you had to have the “right” opinions. The old underground nearly universally rejected them on musical grounds, since the new hybrid metal was both random and highly resembled old, burnt-out 1980s genres. But that did not stop these people from recruiting a new group of fans and trying to edge out the older underground types. They also had media support; most of them worked in media or knew people who did. New labels, magazines, and web sites popped up to sign these new bands who brought in a new audience not of metalheads but ex-hardcore kids. Like people fleeing a big polluted city only to move to a smaller city and make it big and polluted, they jumped ship looking for something unruined to ruin.

In other words, this is Christian metal all over again. They want to make metal “safe” by insisting that we talk about life in the way they have defined it, which is a series of “issues” much like Christian metal wanted to talk about morality when metal wanted to write about war. They have media support and want to use that to drown out other voices so that only they have control. Personally, I doubt they even believe the stream of stuff they write lyrics about, but like the fake iconoclasts from high school, just want to sound “educated” so they can be superior to the rest of us unwashed, uneducated, and simple-minded metalheads. Christian metal took the same attitude which was that we were simply ignorant sinners who needed to “receive” the good news of the Bible. Like Christian metal, “SJW metal” is failing and that is why certain media personalities are trying so hard to make us accept it. #MetalGate is the first pushback against the Stryper of the 21st century, and it’s making them so mad they are scrambling all hands to put out denials.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nn4QsRmm6Y0

5 Comments

Tags: christian metal, metalcore, metalgate, sjw metal, sjws

Demoncy to release Risen From the Ancient Ruins and re-issue Empire of the Fallen Angel

by Brett Stevens on December 15, 2014

In addition to unleashing a re-issue of its classic Joined in Darkness, nocturnal subterranean black metal band Demoncy plans to release a new EP entitled Risen From the Ancient Ruins and a re-issue of its full-length Empire of the Fallen Angel a/k/a Eternal Black Dominion.

Forever Plagued Records intends to release both of these “this year,” according to an announcement on its email newsletter, but this language does not clarify which year this is since 2014 is nearly done. Most likely, this announcement was intended for early 2015 and reflects a 2015 street date for these albums.

Here is the full statement:

Forever Plagued Records is also very proud to announce DEMONCY will be releasing a new EP this year entitled “Risen From The Ancient Ruins”, it will include three new tracks and one ambiant. As a follow up, another DEMONCY release FPR has planned for this year, namely, the new rendition of “Empire Of The Fallen Angel aka Eternal Black Dominion”. Both releases will feature IXithra’s voice of unclean spirits.

3 Comments

Tags: Black Metal, demoncy, forever plagued records

Warfather – Orchestrating the Apocalypse

by Brett Stevens on December 14, 2014

We can look at objects as their surface traits, or attributes they have in different categories at different times, or look at them as shapes (or even forms) which manifest themselves in those attributes. When this logic is applied to genres, we quickly see how complex the term “death metal” can be.

If you ask your average journalist about death metal, s/he will start listing off descriptors, like heavy distortion, guttural vocals, intense riffs, blasphemic and occult topics. The implication will be made that all of these things together make death metal and yet, four average musicians could bash out an album of Dolly Parton covers using those attributes in an afternoon and it would be no more like death metal than the original.

What holds death metal together is its internal language where riffs correspond to structure. The process of assembly, called “riff-gluing” by Bob Bacchus of Soulburn/Asphyx, means knitting those riffs into a narrative where they both comment on one another and lead to a series of mood or atmosphere changes in the whole which suggest some kind of event, realization, journey or gesture. With this approach, the death metal style of riffing is inevitably invented, as is the need to have vocals take a background role and guitars to lead and dominate over drums, bass and vocals. Even if death metal had zero influences before it, if people set out to reinvent it based on that idea alone they would end up with something a lot like underground death metal.

Warfather combines the charging high-speed riffs of Angelcorpse, the abrupt transitions and chanted choruses of Hate Eternal, and the love of sweeps and odd melodic twists of post-metal and metalcore. In doing so, it loses sight of what makes death metal a whole, and instead takes the pieces it finds most convenient and makes out of them something else. Because this something else lacks a centrality, it must choose between being so chaotic it becomes boring or so repetitive that it becomes boring. Warfather choose the latter and pound out catchy choruses and verses with strident rage guiding the vocals, but have nothing to unite them while seeking to break them up with flourishes to disguise the lack of development. Songs do not ramble, but charge in different directions and then resume back at the starting point before fading away. While there are some good riffs on here they are lost in a void of context. The end result is organized disorganization where all the pieces fit together and mean nothing.

On paper, Orchestrating the Apocalypse seems like it would offer everything a journalist uses to describe death metal: the riffs, the vocals, the loudness and perhaps even the blasphemy. As a listening experience it misses the intensity of death metal by a mile through focusing on these surface traits and missing the motivation to put them in a meaningful order that made death metal so terrifying, mindblowing and vertiginously exciting. All that remains is to finish this review and move on.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-AvSmyVSR8

17 Comments

Tags: metalcore, warfather

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