A common theme you hear in critiquing music is the need to separate the art from the artist for the most objective analysis possible. This all sounds good on paper, but we are all human, and the flaws that imbues in us make our understanding of all concepts skewed by perspective. The metal path is one of social outcast and self-discovery through a grasp of the larger whole, and as such we are left with the purest essence of form and function, but still we allow our humanness to cloud our judgments inevitably. We won’t give the time of day to a record made by some stretch-lobed lumbersexual even if he might have accidentally produced the next necessary evolution in metal, and we like it that way. We have been proven right long enough by lousy records and “evolutions” of our favorite artists but although we may have erected a necessary safeguard for quality control, we need to analyze if it is constructed of statements and proofs of inherent positive musical traits or our own hubris instead.
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Tags: 2000, Concept Album, Grand Declaration of War, mayhem, Pure fucking Mayhem, review
