No review of the new Morbid Angel is enclosed here; by the time you read to the end, you’ll know why.

First supposition: there’s no point wallowing in what you hate.

Second supposition: if a linear trend toward worse is in existence, it is most likely that the most recent products are bad.

Combine those two.

Morbid Angel was a great and promising band for the first three albums because they were cruising on the strength of material they wrote in their lean and hungry days. By lean and hungry days, I mean their time in Tampa, working in a car wash, living together in the same house, doing an assload of drugs and most importantly, writing and playing the material that would be on the first album. As in, playing it over and over again until they got it right. This is a lot like what Slayer did in the early days.

Abominations of Desolation was a great album, but a bit disorganized. Mike Browning offered creative and prescient material; David Vincent acted like an MBA or business manager, cutting it down to the bare essence. As a result, Altars of Madness and the non-frufru parts of Blessed Are the Sick are pure power and come across without any fat on them. Having reached a degree of musical maturity, they knocked out Covenant …but just barely. The instrumental was convenient, many of the other tracks were ideas capitalized on from rejected earlier songs, they threw in an incongruous cover of “Angel of Disease” and wrote a few new songs that were powerful but not connected as a unit like those on the first two albums.

That was their great creative output.

Do you really need someone to bash the albums after that?

Let’s try this: once you enter the music industry, someone else owns your rectum. They own the right to open it up and put something into it. The reason for this is that musicians are as a whole sloppy people who don’t read contracts, refuse to understand business, and pretend that this stuff doesn’t matter in order to compensate.

As a result, they’re ripe for picking by the music industry. There’s no point blaming the music industry; in fact, they’re the heroes here because they are taking the output of dramatic, over-self-indulgent, narcissistic perpetual adolescents and shaping it into a product so those same quasi-functional people can continue existing. However, as a result, they take over the role of parent… and have to remind the musicians to make output.

In the meantime, the musicians are looking at the market. Death metal sells fifty thousand records; Pantera, Slayer, Marilyn Manson, Metallica, Megadeth, Tool, Primus, Rage Against the Machine, Nirvana, Mudhoney and Sonic Youth sell millions of records. That’s what the market looked like in 1995. So with some urging from the record label, bands change. Here they make a fatal mistake: their fans like them because they’re not Nirvana/Pantera, and trying to be something you’re not is a good way to become an inferior copy of it. (The correct response at this point is to make your albums more technical, more passionate and more realistic, but that’s difficult and requires you to NOT buy the comfy townhouse, but go back to the shitty day job at the car wash and living in a house together, making music. You have to give your life to it, for the most part. Sure, maybe you could live elsewhere in a townhouse, but each step into comfort puts you further from being able to knock off work and race home, looking forward to jamming all night and getting the music really right. Not the product — the music. But I digress.)

A lot of death metal bands, about 1994, realized they were kissing cousins of the Nirvana/Pantera/Tool crowd, and that if those guys were making an assload of money, maybe the death metal bands could too, if they just changed a bit. They changed, became inferior copies of the others, and promptly stepped out of the history books. Had they just kept making quality music, they would have lived in shitty housing for another seven years, then suddenly had an Introduction to Microeconomics moment: when you have seven albums out, and they’re all really good, you don’t sell as many records as Pantera does with one album, but you have a constant stream of fans who see you as “the real deal” and while they buy fewer albums, they buy consistently. And they buy all of the albums, so your first album charts about the same as your most recent. (This was proven by Metallica, before they went fluff, having all four of their albums and one EP in the top 200.)

With all that in mind, you know what happened to Morbid Angel. It must’ve been ugly: lots of fighting over trivial stuff, lots of negotiating about contracts they never read before they signed them, lots of hatred between band members blaming each other for the failure. And almost no time spent thinking about the music, about making music that they (Morbid Angel) would be really excited to hear, not think was on par with whatever Tool or Pantera were puking out at the time.

Do you really want a review of the new Morbid Angel? Formulas Fatal to the Flesh was good; everything else has been a failure. Domination tried to combine grunge, Pantera and death metal; Heretic was pure Pantera-doing-Tool; the live album was decent but everyone wanted to hear Brunelle solos on the older stuff; Gateways to Annihilation was just confused between styles, and now there’ s a new one, which most likely continues this progression.

We’re not looking at a musical entity called Morbid Angel anymore; we’re looking at a business. This business succeeds by hoodwinking teenage morons into buying trendy crap. This is a workable business model only because our society values morons, protects them, and wants to ensure that we’re all equal so the morons drown out the smart people. The guys in Morbid Angel agree with this. However, right now, they either puke out another commercialish album and capitalism on the raped necrophile whore of their good name, or they go back to working at the car wash.

What would you do?

Yeah, I thought so.

by Steve Brettens, Lontinuak, Pijay Vrozak and L.M. Hencken

[b]Timeghoul[/b]

Progressive death metal band that offers a mixed bag of doom, avantgarde, death and grind.

From one of my favorite blogs, in the intersection between Men’s Feminism (sorry… men’s rights), right-wing futurist politics, and social mockery:

Metal is the modern music genre that is closest to classical music, capturing feelings of vastness, romanticism, and heroism that other genres simply don’t have. More importantly, metal is music with purpose. It’s music with a defined philosophy, an end goal, and a reason for existing – the exact opposite of pretentious avant-garde tunes that appropriate symbols, sounds and names for no other reason than to be “creative,” or because they’re “ironic”:

There are superficial reasons why metal compares so much to medieval music, to do with the lineage of the musical language it uses (metal started when Sabbath starting imitating horror movie music clichés – which themselves relied on a lot of ‘medievally’ sounding devices, because they sound ‘creepy’ to modern ears). More fundamentally, metal shares a dark but reverent worldview and mythic/allegoric way of describing life which is much more at home in the ancient world than it is modernity.

Metal’s sense of purpose makes it incomprehensible to superficial thinkers like hipsters, which is why when they try to make metal music, the results are beyond godawful.

[…]

Black metal first started in Norway in the late 80′s and early 90′s, roughly around the same time that new musical strains of youth in revolt were catching on in the U.S. The same era that gave us the misanthropic howls of Burzum and Mayhem also gave us Nirvana’s existential angst, Guns ‘N Roses’ violent machismo, and N.W.A.’s aggressive black ghetto pride. It was another great youth upheaval, not as big as the 60′s but still prominent in its own right. What’s the thin red thread connecting Kurt Cobain, Ice Cube and Varg Vikernes, and why isn’t black metal mentioned in the same breath as grunge and gangsta rap?

Answer – all these musical genres were pioneered by Generation X, the first generation to grow up in a world dominated by feminism, multiculturalism, consumerism and all the other lovely byproducts of the sixties. Feminism automatically made anyone with a Y chromosome an enemy of the state, tearing apart families and turning black America into a matriarchal hellhole, and anti-racism and multiculturalism made white men doubly marked for execution. Meanwhile, anything that was left of native American or Western culture was being crowded out by the consumerist cancer, its race to the bottom fostering nothing but cheap pop tunes, stupid movies and advertising. Gen X was born with one foot in the old world and the other in the new, giving them an acute sense that something was wrong with the world. Cobain’s singing about the pointlessness of life and Ice Cube’s rapping about getting revenge on the po-lice sprang from the same source – alienation from American society.

The same spirit of alienation fueled the birth of black metal, doubled in intensity because of the conformist nature of the society from which it sprang. We’re talking about Norway here, one of those Scandinavian countries that idiot liberals love to praise. “Oh yah, those Norwegians and Danes and Swedes are so happy. They’ve got paid daycare for working moms and they selflessly bring in hordes of refugees from the third world to give them better lives and they’re SO forward-thinking when it comes to women’s rights. How could anyone not love all that?” But while American GenXers were content to remain aimlessly raging against the Man, black metal musicians formulated an actual philosophy beyond fatalistic whining, and actually took steps to implement this philosophy. And thus, the people who claimed to be on the side of the “yoof” turned against an actual youth movement that rejected everything they held dear. – IMF

Black metal was the only outpouring of artistic or philosophical spirit in Generation X.

Everything else was a repeat of the past (Nirvana) or co-opted by commercial society, “canned rebellion” for teenagers thinking only of themselves and not about the consequences of their actions (all rap, Tool, Rage Against the Machine, Ministry).

If the answer were as simple as repeat what the hippies endorsed in 1968, kids, we’d be there by now.

Instead, black metal went to the core of conservatism — a conservation of culture, heritage, and natural environment, for the purpose of giving meaning to the individual through participation in a abstract yet realistic ongoing goal.

Liberalism offers more direct participation, in individualism. You, by being a brave individual, do your own thing — like everyone else. As it turns out, there aren’t many different things to do, so you end up a job-enslaved media sheep like the rest. But at least you were able to raise your fist for — what? feminism, civil rights, the oppressed, gay rights; heck, anything not really related to changing the course of history and humanity’s future.

Generation X grew up in the old America. We saw what 1950s-1970s America was like: somewhat boring, but honest.

Post-1968, America turned toward liberalism of the hippie type. Everything fell apart. The Glorious People’s Revolution turned out to have boring, Soviet-like consequences: cities of uniform blocks, jobs of slavery to incompetents, a failing government, an official dogma (of diversity, equality and democracy) that doesn’t work in reality, and thus a system eating itself out from within.

The same people did it, in France, Russia and the USA. No, I don’t mean a specific ethnic group from the middle east — if only life were so easy and brainless (though they always make enemies for their high participation rate). I mean the Crowd. The underconfident, dumb but not stupid, clever but not smart, stuck in the middle and raging egomaniacs. They’re damaged by broken homes, confused by a world where they are not God, and they want to rage and make an official announcement that we are all equal, so that the rest of us must respect them instead of casting them aside like the nobodies they are.

Hipsters are the same phenomenon. Boring-ass normal people decide to be egodramatic, get some social attention, and use socialization as an alternate path around reality itself. Politics can be used to the same end, as can money. But at the end of the day, you are your character, and being a hipster does nothing for that.

Black metal was a drift back to reality, as was death metal (“Only Death is True”). They cut through the fantasy world of a modern time and forced us all to wake up for a few moments. It’s important not to let that legacy die.

Six song preview from the new album:

The record label says:

Sorcier des Glaces has finally finished recording its third album called “The puressence of primitive forests” that will be released on July 25th on Mankind’s demise records. A limited edition of 100 copies will include “Snowland” (original master) as a second CD. – Mankind’s Demise

This is part of the band’s triptych:

We can officially confirm that a third opus is in the making. So there are
going to be 3 new chapters in the Sorcier Des Glaces’ saga. The first one
is “The Puressence of Primitive Forests”, expect a release date in July
2011 on the Quebec label Mankind’s Demise Records. A cover song will be
featured on the album, our version of Hungary’s TORMENTOR “Tormentor I” (we
covered the first version of that song, originally appeared on “The 7th Day
of Doom” in 1987). Mankind’s Demise will also release a limited 2CD edition of the album that will include a remastered version of our first album (1998′ Snowland). I
know that the album has never been officially available, we’ve been asked
so many times for that so now this is your chance!

We wish to make the second album (“North”) available not too far after
“Puressence…”, all depends on how things will turn out.

Concerning the third and final chapter, it’s actually in the making, all
songs are composed and some parts are already recorded as I write these
lines. It will be called “Ritual of the End”. Hopefully we will record
three cover songs too for that album, 3 bands that are very influential for
Sorcier Des Glaces’ sound and material since the beginning. Here are the
projected track-listing of the album:

1- Under the Moonlight
2- Morbid Ritual
3- Snowland
4- The Frozen sword of Midnight
5- The sign of the End
6- Slumbering in the Dark (outro)

Expect the three releases to be total Cold Primitive music! In our opinion
far better than everything we have done in the past (Snowland in 1998 and
Moonrise in Total Darkness in 1999). Everything gets darker, colder,
primal…. engulfed in a sombre melancholic atmosphere. Some riffs are very
old, composed even before our first album!
As for the split mini-album with Québec’s MONARQUE, no release date yet but
It will certainly be in the first half of 2011. It will feature 4 exclusive
Sorcier Des Glaces songs (2 new songs, a cover and a remake of “The Night
Throne” from the Snowland album) they will not be featured on any of the 3
upcoming albums… – Sorcier des Glaces

The band has also release a complete MP3 of one song from the new album, “…Et les Anges périrent sous la Neige.”

Download it (MP3, 7mb) or watch:

Celebrate the Inter-National Day of Slayer on June 6, 2011.

Slayer is an emblem of metal: fast, powerful, still alien to the mainstream after 28 years.

If every other religious, ethnic and political group gets their own holiday, we deserve one too.

How to Celebrate

* 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.

DO NOT use headphones! The objective of this day is for everyone within earshot to understand that it is the National Day of Slayer. National holidays in America aren’t just about celebrating; they’re about forcing it upon non-participants.

Taking that participation to a problematic level

* Stage a “Slay-out.” Don’t go to work. Listen to Slayer.
* Have a huge block party that clogs up a street in your neighborhood. Blast Slayer albums all evening. Get police cruisers and helicopters on the scene. Finish with a full-scale riot.
* 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.

Inter-National Day of Slayer Task Force

Morbus 666 is a project of Imprecation vocalist and Bahimiron multi-instrumentalist Dave Herrera, who has a number of projects of note and clearly understands underground metal as the living, untameable thing it is. The band have just releases Mortuus Cultus on Graveless Slumber Records, and you can now hear a track from it:

Morbus 666- Baphe Metis (Absorption into Wisdom)

Label release:

GSR is now taking preorders on the debut material from one of the newest and in my opinion best Texas black metal bands, Morbus 666! Comprised of members of Bahimiron, Adumus, Imprecation, and Thornspawn, Morbus delivers venomous vile black metal in the old ways! This album unleashes 5 tracks of morbidly twisted black metal in the Behexen meets early Enthroned vein, all for the glory of the Horned One! All preorders and an unspecified number of first editions will come with 7″ bonus artwork outer sleeve as well as stickers and possibly more!

Track List-

1) Summon the Cult of Pentagram
2) Baphe Metis (Absorption into Wisdom)
3) Possessed by the Glory of Lucifer
4) Those of the Devil’s Flesh
5) Poisonous Blood

Yosuke Konishi (NWN) returned to KFJC radio to do another six hours of radio madness. If you like old school and new-underground metal mixed in about equal proportions, this show is filthy loud and fast, and evil.

• Playlist
• Audio (380mb)

KDVS has its long-running “Raise the Dead” show which played the same night, and can be found at the archive page:

• Playlist
• Audio

I never was really all that into Kiss, mainly because everything they did someone else did first and in less of a grandiose, overblown style. But when death metal bands comb through the Kiss catalogue and selectively cover some of the more intense moments, I have to applaud it. Back in the middle 1990s there was a rumor of a Kiss covers album featuring Tampa bands including the two who are featured in this article. Then, probably as soon as a lawyer saw the plan, it evaporated. Does anyone know anything more?

Here are two of the surviving tracks that made it to individual albums:

Death – God of Thunder

Resurrection – War Machine

Others, hilarious but unrelated:

Death Angel – Cold Gin

Arch Enemey – The Oath

Goatlord – War Machine

Masacre – Strutter

I love cosmic music. When downtrodden 1970s Germany had to re-invent itself, it came up with this devotional, esoteric, futuristic, reverent and hopeful music.

Cluster – Zuckerzeit

This is one of those albums that gets pointed out to you by the sage music veteran in a corner at an impromptu house party. “Yeah, you like Tangerine Dream and Eno? Try this out. It’s the real deal. A big improvement over those.” So you get it from your record store or favorite blogspot, and throw it on the speakers, and listen. What will strike you quickly is how aesthetically powerful and diverse this is. Each song picks a different set of sounds, and as a result, stands apart from the others. How they did this with 1970s technology I will probably never know, but I can imagine it involved hours of painstaking work. You will not find this breadth of richness of experience and variety on a Tangerine Dream album, and Fripp/Eno loses its surface shine in comparison. For this reason alone, I can see why so many people swear by this album. For those who like mid-1990s ambient, you can hear how this album must have been a major influence on Aphex Twin and clearly was on Electric Company. The same zen for many different perspectives on the same object applies. However, all the effort went into the surface: melodic development is near non-existent, and song structures are linear or cyclic but embrace no particular narrative and go really nowhere. The result is a listening experience that’s all on the surface and misses the real point of music, which is composition: writing melodies and fitting them into songs that sound like the profound truth of some experience. “Zuckerzeit” doesn’t hold a candle to Tangerine Dream or Fripp/Eno in this regard. Those august composers can show the same view of many different experiences, while Cluster resort to many perspectives of what is essentially the same underlying experience.

Ash Ra Tempel – Inventions for Electric Guitar

This is another album favored by insiders. Unlike many of the more keyboard oriented sounds of the 1970s, this is pure guitar noise. Hazy, beautiful guitar noise in long sprawling compositions. At least a thousand notes get played on each, it seems, and the styles vary in a deep tapestry from fast and furious to slow and bluesy. You can see every part of the whole that is our modern world embedded in this album. Unfortunately, it’s also a surface treatment; these songs are wholly linear. Ash Ra Tempel have mastered the aesthetics of the cosmic bands and in fact best them in that regard, but have not plumbed the underlying composition. These songs use the right type of simple infective melody, both cheerful and slightly melancholic, and build intensity in the way way as a Tangerine Dream song with lots of chaotic noise harmonizing, but there’s nowhere to go. Songs gradually get more intense and then fade away. They resemble nothing, whether objects in reality or in the mind; their experience is evident from the first note and as the last falls, is fulfilled but without surprise and thus depth. At some point, it becomes clear that Ash Ra Tempel make these songs from a pastiche of influences taken to a new aesthetic extreme, but there may be no content, which is why this release falls short of the true cosmic bands.

Your local hipsters will not understand the points made in this article. Good — the Dunning-Kruger effect triumphs again.

I can’t believe that, in a community of people who claim to be so tight and supportive, this hasn’t gotten more traction.

Nuclear War Now! Productions label head Yosuke Konishi logged on to KSFJ radio and recorded a six-hour live broadcast of his favorite metal tracks:

Playlist / Parts 1 ~ 2 ~ 3 ~ 4 ~ 5 ~ 6 ~ 7 ~ 8 ~ 9 ~ 10

Mostly old-school stuff with some new-underground additions.

For your convenience, here are all of the shows in a single archive (635mb, Megaupload) so that you can download them with one click and happily listen away.

I have to say that Yosuke K. did an excellent job with these shows. The purpose of radio, like sampler CDs or written reviews, is to expose an audience to contenders for quality and/or insightful music. By providing a contrast between samples, the DJ shows his audience what he has learned (as an expert in the subject) and allows them to make their own choices about where they fit into that vision. More information from the man himself in this forum topic.