Some new reading for y’all:

• Beherit – At the Devil’s Studio 1990: more like the later EPs, a sonically-experimental take on these songs that were more Blasphemy like on The Oath of Black Blood but gained some power in their austere, minimal, aloof presentation on the second album.
• Cianide – Gods of Death: A big improvement over Hell’s Rebirth; a more self-conscious album, this one deliberately merges their Motorhead, Celtic Frost and Master origins in a new, streamlined form of the oldest of old school.
• Ejacula radio on KPFT 90.1: for those of you in Houston and awake from 3 am – 6 am on Friday mornings, this is the dark and shadowy metal show that has stalked this realm for 19 years.

These made it to Examiner to keep that source alive; despite having terrible software, distant editors and mostly celebrity content, Examiner is a great place to promote metal and make it into mainstream news.

We live in a world that preaches dumbing down: be equal, be safe and mediocre, pander to others by making everything very, very simple and similar to the other stuff they like.

If you can imagine a long line of sheep, chasing each other through the night, and as the night goes on and starlight flickers across them, you see in their faces the features of wolves…

But one thing that cracks me up: the notion of quality.

Most people, dumbed down by this society and perhaps by their genetic code, can understand quality of tangible substance. For example, a jazzy beat. Good guitar tone. High speed chaotic songs. Really sick vocals.

They can even identify that it’s harder to play than average, or that it has “different parts,” like a melodic slow part and then an acoustic part, then some high-speed guitar, etc.

What they can’t do is string any of this together.

To them, a band like Necrophagist that plays fast riffs in a random order, and whose songs literally signify nothing, is just as good as a band like Camel who carefully string together melodies to tell a tale — and make sure it’s a tale that draws us in, has emotional and intellectual substance, as well as a good rippin’ gut-hitting theme, like the battle for independence or to find a holy grail of some sort or another.

These people literally cannot tell the difference between random riffs bands (Cradle of Filth, Cannibal Corpse) and well-architected, sensible patterns that tell a story (Massacra, Atheist, Incantation). To them it’s all the same, because the parts are the same.

It’s as if I build two structures out of plywood:

1. A reproduction of the Palace at Versailles
2. A standard suburban home

These people will walk up to them and say something like, “Well, that first one’s bigger, but they’re both made out of plywood. Over here, I’ve got a house I made from sugarcubes. That’s totally unique, dude!”

When we talk about modernity as a time of shallow thinkers…

The lads over at A FIST IN THE ASS OF GOD have put together a compilation of undernoticed speed metal bands from the 1980s and 1990s. If you love this stuff, it’s quite good; if you don’t, it’s some of the more interesting edges of the genre so you can finally get “For Whom the Bell Tolls” out of your head.

Here’s the god-ass-packing tracklist:

1. Protector (Germany) “Protector of Death” (1986)
2. Morbid Saint (USA) “Assassin” (1988)
3. Soothsayer (Canada) “Build the Terrorism” (1986)
4. Burnt Offering (USA) “Power of Death” (1989)
5. Hobbs’ Angel Of Death (Australia) “Cold Steel” (1988)
6. Toxodeth (Mexico) “Black Doom” (1988)
7. Dolmen (USA) “The Ritual Night” (1989)
8. Pentagram [Mezarkabul] (Turkey) “Intro (Wreck)/Rotten Dogs” (1990)
9. Messiah (Switzerland) “Hyper Borea” (1987)
10. Ulysses Siren (USA) “Above the Ashes” (1987)
11. Infernäl Mäjesty (Canada) “Into the Unknown” (1988)
12. Sindrome (USA) “Rapture in Blood” (1987)
13. Anacrusis (USA) “Imprisoned” (1988)
14. Sacred Reich (USA) “No Believers” (1987)
15. Nasty Savage (USA) “Fear Beyond the Vision” (1985)
16. Lääz Rockit (USA) “Last Breath” (1987)
17. Demonax (USA) “Evil’s Cast Aside” (1984)
18. Holy Terror (USA) “Debt of Pain” (1988)

Download at this Mediafire link or visit the original blog post for more information.

If you needed confirmation the proles are running the show:

Like a stunning, stylized nightmare, Mike Hill’s first ground-rattling growl on Path of Totality is “CHAOS REIGNS.” It’s enough to conjure that memorable scene from Lars Von Trier’s controversial film, Antichrist, in which a self-disemboweling fox cryptically and prophetically utters these two words to Willem Defoe’s character. If anything, it sets the tone for a dark, fully absorbing listen on Tombs’ second album.

With Path of Totality, out June 7, the Brooklyn metal trio takes its disparate influences and distills an expansive palette using thick, controlled brushstrokes. The industrial sledgehammer of Godflesh meets the blast-beated darkness of early Darkthrone in “To Cross the Land,” while “Vermillion” intones a sinister psychedelic swirl over an impressive rhythm section preparing for war. The atmospheric Goth-rock of The Cure presides over “Passageways” and “Black Heaven,” as the dead-eyed stare of Swans — the members of Tombs are admittedly huge fans — lurks in unlit corridors. But while the band’s wide-ranging music libraries are on display, Path of Totality functions as something new, mostly because its extremity is tempered by a dynamic push and pull, accentuated by the spacious production of John Congleton, whose diverse clientele includes Explosions in the Sky, Baroness, Modest Mouse and St. Vincent. – National People’s Radio

Wow, look it has lots of different stuff in it. Translation: no direction.

Looks like a big-name indie producer made it. Translation: “post-metal” means indie with slow drums and distortion.

It’s on NPR. Translation: it’s OK by government and industry, thus as far from underground as you can get, no matter how underground it pretends to be.

From the Morbid Angel myspace:

TERRORIZER is back with a new album and the line-up consists of Pete on drums, Anthony Rezhawk, David Vincent on Bass and Katina Culture on guitar. The new album is in its final stage of production and will be out early 2012.

No word on whether they’ll do a 28 second cover of “Radikult.”

Journalist Nathan Birk went in investigation of the Blasphemy phenomenon, and was able to wrest an interview from these guys 20+ years past their original works of hateful, apostatic skinhead black metal/grindcore crossover. Excerpts from the interview are published on the Zero Tolerance blog. Some insights:

Both Blasphemy albums are equally classic in my opinion, but why do you think Fallen Angel Of Doom resounds so powerfully with so many people over a number of generations?

DeathLord: Blasphemy were focused only on Blasphemy during the Fallen Angel Of Doom era. Soon after that, even as early as the Gods Of War era, their energies were spread to other interests.

Black Winds: Let me put it to you this way – I wrote the song ‘Blood Upon The Altar’ from Gods Of War after a bottle and a half of tequila!

Maybe… because Fallen Angel of Doom is the far better album.

While Blasphemy have certainly wielded a global influence on new generations of black/death metal, it seems the biggest pockets of influence are situated in the US, Canada, Australia, and parts of South America and South East Asia – to what do you attribute this to? That Blasphemy wield influence on countries that are…well, less purely ‘white’?

DeathLord: Where do you get this information?! I can find you 25 Burzum clones from Brazil and another 10 from Australia! Also, Burzum record sales are better than Blasphemy record sales in every country you mentioned, so explain why these “less purely white” people are into that style? All metal, all genres, is a worldwide phenomenon. You are obviously speaking about Europe in this question, yet we get the most requests to bring our live ritual out there and I get the most orders for Blasphemy merchandise from there, too. And to add to this, it doesn’t get more ‘white’ than Finland, yet I hear Beherit, Satanic Evil, early Impaled Nazarene, Archgoat, and newer bands like OfDoom and Black Feast, etc, that have a distinct bestial sound with a Blasphemy influence. Blasphemy are indeed “global” and equally listened to, per capita, in all regions of the world. I know this firsthand through my distro and contacts.

Black Winds: The South Americans are probably the biggest black metallers in the world. If we played a show down there with Mystifier or Impurity or someone, there would be thousands there! Traditional Sodomizer’s band Tyrants Blood just played down there, and it was crazy! We don’t notice skin colour, only how black metal people are.

He ducked the question with a false comparison.

So, how would you address charges of Blasphemy ‘resting on your laurels’? Meaning, playing those reunion shows but without any new material in almost two decades…?

Black Winds: Tough. If you don’t like it, don’t come and see it.

DeathLord: Have you ever noticed that people go crazy at a show when the band plays their old songs and are bored to tears when they do a set of newer material? Well, we don’t only hype up the crowd with a few old tunes, we play them ALL! They are eaten up with total frenzy for the entire duration of the live ritual! But, to answer your question, we’re Blasphemy and we do whatever the fuck we want! We don’t answer to any “charges” against us.

Well, it’s sensible. If you’re not going to be able to write newer material that’s better than the old stuff, you should just play the old stuff.

Interesting how bands like BEHERIT continued improving, BURZUM sold out worse than Metallica after peaking late, and ENSLAVED have become something entirely different, namely a hard rock/jam band. BLASPHEMY have stayed true to their roots, even if their answers in this interview aren’t entirely logical. Birk asks the right questions; he could ask all the old stuff, but instead he asked them about their place in the metal canon, and got some intriguing answers.

Read the interview here: Crime (and Powerlifting) Pays — An Interview with Blasphemy

We were sad to hear of the passing of Seth Putnam, vocalist/guitarist for Anal Cunt and Vaginal Jesus, recently. Mr. Putnam was a top-notch troll who poked fun at the parts of life we were afraid to bring to light.

In honor of his life, here are some interesting quotations of his from the interview we did with him a few years back in Heidenlarm Zine #4:

there is no “cut and dry” approach to what i like and dislike. a lot of bands i originally hated end up being some of my favorite bands (village people,culture club,morbid angel,etc). i tend to not like too much after 1985 though.

i don’t really pay attention to what goes on in the world very much. i’m not that interested. i’ve had times when i had some interest here and there, but not in a long time. i think the worst thing going on is forced multiculturalism and wiggers. if you compare t.v. and popular things now to even as short as 20 years ago, everything is completely different.

it’s a miracle if i see anyone at an “underground” show that i’d see in the early 80’s. whether you like it or not, underground music is a fad for most people. the ones who stick with it are the ones that i will usually talk to (if i am friends with them). getting upset about people not “being into it” anymore is useless, because i know most of these people will be lawyers in a couple of years.

i hate people and i try to be not involved with society as much as possible. just about everything anyone says makes me angry. the world has gotten so much gayer in the last few years. i try my best to have no idea what’s going on in the world. – Heidenlarm Zine #4

We’ll miss you, and that famed acerbic wit, Seth.

One of the other old school metal sites is Brian N. Russ’ BNRmetal.com. If you’ve read these pages for awhile, you know that Vijay Prozak and our other writers enjoy this site for its pithy characterizations of several generations of metal.

It’s a far better resource than Metal-Archives, who are so upset by old school sites that they censor both BNRmetal and anus.com on their forum, and the odious wikipedia which was clearly written by marketers and truly clueless “fans” of mainstream music that wants to be “bad” like that underground music. In fact, it’s where my research often starts for new bands, followed by going to a blogspot and downloading the damn thing.

BNRmetal.com is now holding a contest, “Vote for The Best Death Metal Album Of All Time,” which pairs some old favorites against each other:

versus

versus

If you have any strong opinions on this issue, go here to vote for BNRmetal.com’s best album of all time.