Since the late 1980s, all culture has been crypto: it hides in plain sight, it uses its own language and symbols, and it builds itself against the dominant contrarianism that took over in the 1960s and turned rock into propaganda and advertising.
32 CommentsTags: degeneration, lyrics, melody, metal, music
Not many people appreciate the importance of Slayer. Along with other proto-death/black bands — Bathory, Master, Sarcofago, Hellhammer, Sodom, Possessed — Slayer stepped out of the speed metal sound to the tremolo sound and realized the possibilities of through-composed narrative songs based on the riff.
92 CommentsTags: metal, slayer, speedmetal, Thrash
Two time finalist in the DMU song contests, which speaks loudly to the character of the music presented here. Over a decade in the making The Abject is diverse mix of various genres and style all held down coherently by the individuality of Chupacabra.
4 CommentsTags: Baroque, Chupacabra, hip-hop, jazz, metal, the abject
As the nation mourns the deaths of 9 people killed in the Dayton, Ohio shooting on Sunday more information about 24 year old shooter Connor Betts is surfacing based on his newly unearthed Twitter profile. While mainstream media outlets such as the Daily Beast have falsely reported that Betts had no links to extremist ideology, the account contains tweets that profess the gunman’s support of socialism, Satanism, and “Antifascism.”
46 CommentsTags: antifa, Antifacist metal, Antifascism, Antifascist grind, ben umanov, Brooklyn Vegan, Connor Betts, Dayton shooter, dayton shooting, domestic terror, Goregrind, Grindcore, Invisible Oranges, Kerrang, Kim Kelly, left wing, mass murder, Menstrual Munchies, metal, metal journalism, metal media, MetalSucks, neckbeard deathcamp, pornogrind, radicalization, rolling stone, Teen Vogue, terrorism, vice magazine
Climbing a mountain is a noble struggle and it is metal as hell. It contains ebb and flow, within and without; without, one finds conflict and peace in nature, in the rocks, in the animal kingdom, everywhere. Within, one has to battle against oneself, tiredness, thoughts, injury, and disease; yet all those things make the achievement of reaching the summit real and worthy. They fill life with meaning.
4 CommentsTags: art, ildjarn, metal, mountain climbing, mountains
Article by Ludvig Boysen
Why is the bass guitar in metal so often silent and unheard? This is a question which is often answered with audio engineering explanations, but the true cause lies in the composition of the music. Read on to learn the natural and compositional explanation for this phenomenon.
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By Cullen Toner
Many have expressed emotions of extreme shock and awe after discovering the explicitly Christian lyrics and aesthetics of my newest album, Deus Vult. How could I, the former singer/songwriter of New Jersey’s most popular Satanic band, find God and religion after 15 years of playing in bands with misanthropic, anti-Christian themes? What would cause a complete 180 degree change in lifestyle, a complete about-face in world view? And why would I recklessly proclaim such a change in heart to a world of black and death metal that would so surely respond in confusion, mockery, and utter malice?
To even consider the answers requires a great deal of courage and intellect, as most in the world of extreme metal have extensively conditioned themselves to the idea that metal, in all of its rebelliousness, is the antithesis to Christianity. But since the spirit of metal is one that has historically challenged authority and convention in a quest for deeper truth, those who truly understand its foundation will not cower from the mere suggestion of radical thought. And to those to I can assure that a long quest for logic and wisdom has unexpectedly led me at the foot of the upright cross. Not only did this provide happiness and fulfillment for the first time, but the foundation for meaning and purpose that many metalheads are currently in a vast search for.
In an attempt to explain as objectively as I can, this is how I came to embrace Christianity as my faith, and what it meant for my relationship with metal music.
45 CommentsTags: Antestor, christianity, Dawnbreaker, Deus Vult, faith, god, hellhammer, metal, Michio Kaku, Norwegian Black Metal, Religion, spirituality
What do Jonathan Davis, Corey Taylor, and Scott Weiland have in common? Answering the question “90 Hard Rock singers” would not be incorrect, but there’s something darker beneath the surface – all three men are rape victims. Davis even documents the experience in graphic detail in a platinum selling album from his band, and many of Taylors lyrics are riddled with sexual abuse.
Why were the executives of the murder industry so keen on pushing rape victims as the new face of rock n’ roll? Furthermore, why were the most popular genres of rock and metal so lyrically obsessed with self destruction? From Grunge “morality is useless and life is hopeless” to Nu Metal “I’m a freak and everyone hates me” to Emo and Screamo “I’m lonely and will never be loved” to indie (soy) metal and rock “We failed to be what we should have been” the message of mainstream rock and metal music has constantly be one of self destruction. This trend is mirrored by a 25% increase in American suicides in American suicides since the 1990s:
Suicide rates increased by 25% across the United States over nearly two decades ending in 2016, according to research published Thursday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Twenty-five states experienced a rise in suicides by more than 30%, the government report finds.
More than half of those who died by suicide had not been diagnosed with a mental health condition, said Dr. Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the CDC.
“These findings are disturbing. Suicide is one of the top 10 causes of death in the US right now, and it’s one of three causes that is actually increasing recently, so we do consider it a public health problem — and something that is all around us,” Schuchat said. The other two top 10 causes of death that are on the rise are Alzheimer’s disease and drug overdoses, she noted.
With statistics like this, it’s absolutely time to panic: our society is being marred by growing influences- intentional or not – to destroy ourselves. Let’s examine music’s relationship to this now obvious horror and see if we can determine why this is happening.
15 CommentsTags: culture, decline, government, metal, rock, social engineering
Cash grab alert! After giving the classic board room “fuck you” to cornerstone musician Abbath, the corporate conglomerate of Demonaz and Horgh have secured the legal rights to the band name “Immortal” and are now positioned to promptly squeeze their fans to blindly buy music and merch advertised as that of a Norwegian black metal legend. Although the pair have only played together on one album out of 12, they’re billing this as “the comeback of Immortal!” and have already gotten the infamously money-hungry Nuclear Blast records to set up the most overused rock n’ roll ponzi scheme.
Together, the pair have released a new song “Northern Chaos Gods,” the title/intro track of their first foray into commercialized rehash. So how did the miraculous (fake?) recovery of Demonaz’s tendonitis work out? Exactly how far into the waters of retro-rehash did the band wonder? Have they evolved even the slightest as musicians or do they remain forever trapped in the 90’s? As trust fund life-dropouts living in the woods at the expense of their family might say:
“Let’s find out!”
11 CommentsTags: Black Metal, cash grab, commercial, immortal, metal, necrophilia, rehash
Modern metal bands will often add all sorts of odd and extraneous elements to the music. What is most curious and notable, even as one cringes to the sounds of flutes or children’s choirs and such, is not what is in the music but what is lacking in the music: an aggressive, adventurous, feral spirit that is the common element of all metal music. While experimentation, new ideas, and new textures and elements are not in and of themselves bad things, most bands, being the crowdists they are, get the horses of the apocalypse before the meat wagon. As Socrates so sagely reckoned all those years ago, the spirit informs the final shape that the physical body will take – to build the creation without spirit is, in essence, to create something that lacks shape and indeed lacks the very essence of being.
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