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If those words make you laugh as hard as I did, you are really, really going to enjoy this 1994 news report on the evils of black metal, which was dug up by The Gauntlet. In fact, despite the fact that, yes, some black metal musicians were definitely, legitimately fucknuts, this whole video is so silly, it’s almost hard to believe it’s real. Enjoy:
-AR
[via The Deciblog]
In b4 butthurt BM nerds realize a hot azn girl made this and they can’t decide whether to rage or white knight
U mirin? Follow her Tumblr!
-Sergeant D.
Sergeant D. celebrates diversity every day at Stuff You Will Hate.
(“My Ivy League education taught me how to over-analyze the Norwegian church burnings into Oblivion!”)
I’m not a metal isolationist, and I’m all for seeing our favorite genre given exposure in mainstream media outlets; just the other day I praised Pitchfork’s Brandon Stosuy for doing a great job in bringing metal back to the famed indie snob publication, and I’ve said that I think it’s pretty cool that NPR is getting into the metal game. But Sasha Frere-Jones’ recent black metal focus piece in the New Yorker made me want to punch a wall.
I’ve always had a problem with Frere-Jones’ writing; it’s my personal belief that music critics should spend more time writing about the actual MUSIC than the cultural events and historical significance surrounding it. Frere-Jones’ articles generally read like pretentious college history papers that prove made-up theses for the sake of proving made-up theses instead of any kind of analysis of what’s going on inside the notes, what’s being played. But let’s leave that aside for now and take this most recent article at face value; it stinks anyway.
Welcome to the latest edition of “Freeloader,” in which we review albums that you don’t have to feel like a douche for downloading for free. Today Satan Rosenbloom checks out Eschaton’s An Instrument of Darkness EP.
Two thoughts that I had while listening to An Instrument of Darkness, the boss two-song EP by Austrian black metal merchants Eschaton:
1) Maybe two songs are enough!
Think about how perfect a two-song release can be. It challenges the band to sum up its strengths in a far more compacted format than with a full-length, while still providing some element of contrast. The listener is rewarded with a release sans fat, and also some insight into what the band values about itself – I’d argue even more insight than you might get in an EP, which can often be a place to throw a bunch of stuff that a band didn’t think would fit on the new album.
Welcome to the latest edition of “Freeloader,” in which we review albums that you don’t have to feel like a douche for downloading for free. Today Satan Rosenbloom checks out four albums made by (mostly) solitary dudes.
Influential American art critic Clement Greenberg coined the term “post-painterly abstraction” to describe a movement of painters in the ‘40s and ‘50s that were abandoning traditional elements like subject matter and visible brush strokes, and instead exploring the flatness and two-dimensionality of the painter’s canvas – the things that make painting unique from other art forms. Greenberg would analyze the degree to which a painting laid these qualities bare, thus revealing a certain painterly purity and truthfulness.
The one-man metal project has been a thing at least since Bathory’s glory days. In this edition of Freeloader, I’m subjecting albums by a few recent lonely metalsmiths to a Greenbergian analysis – as in, how well does each album expose the qualities unique to the one-man metal band?
Welcome to the latest edition of “Freeloader” in which we review albums that you don’t have to feel like a douche for downloading for free. Today Satan Rosenbloom checks out Shadows by Embers.
Immediacy is probably my favorite part about being a music consumer in the digital age. One moment I don’t know that the Oakland black metal band Embers exists. The next, the band’s seven years of woodshedding and recording efforts have turned into 250 megabytes on my hard drive. That’s a great thing for a listener (and especially a critic), because it loosens the need to hear albums as discrete elements, rather than parts of a continuum.
The continuum is key for a band like Embers. Since their 2007 debut Memoria In Aeterna (available for free download on their Bandcamp page), Embers have written unabashedly romantic black metal epics that breathe and grow and gleam black over shifting landscapes. Their first record was perhaps over-ambitious; those persistent viola lines added little, and while there were plenty of hair-raising moments, the songs seemed alternately labored and rudderless. But like Opeth’s Orchid, Embers’ early material was admirable for its free-flowing approach to songwriting, if not for the songs themselves.
Of any non-metal band I might expect to write a tribute song to black metal, My Morning Jacket wouldn’t been on my short list… but here they come with “Holdin’ On To Black Metal” from their forthcoming album Circuital, out May 31st. I wonder if MMJ vocalist / guitarist / primary songwriter Jim James has some Venom, Bathory or Burzum in his past? Inquiring metal bloggers would most certainly like to know.
I’m actually quite fond of My Morning Jacket; they’re that rare indie(ish) band that I can get down with, in no small part because they’re all such great musicians (and they write great songs and aren’t annoying). My Morning Jacket are my ace in the hole whenever metalgf and I are on a road trip and I’m tired of putting up with Taylor Swift.
“Holdin on to Black Metal” is definitely best enjoyed with the lyrics in front of you, so check those out courtesy of SongMeanings.net after the jump as you watch the YouTube vid above.
The idea of February as Black Metal History Month is hilarious. I’m sure there will be plenty of knee-jerkers who claim that it’s offensive and insulting to Black History Month, whatwith the original version celebrating the history of a persecuted and enslaved people and the metal version glorifying a bunch of church-burning bigots.
So if “knee-jerker” applies or might-apply to you (feel a sudden and uncontrollable urge to chime in with a comment? that’s you), kindly direct your ire at Metal Injection, as they came up with the hilarious and brilliant idea to celebrate Black Metal History Month throughout February:
Join us throughout February, the grimmest month of all, as Metal Injection celebrates Black Metal History Month. Be on the lookout for black metal related history write-ups, reviews, podcasts and more all month long!
Who knew orthodox Jews got down with Satan? MS Uber-Maniac Josh Kidd put together this video of the orthodox community celebrating the holiday of Lag BaOmer, of which lighting giant fires is apparently a central part. That’s a pretty serious old-school moshpit around the 2:05 mark, too.
Just don’t invite Varg to your Lag BaOmer party.
-VN
Horned Almighty
Necro Spirituals
Label – Candlelight
Release date – January 25
Are there times when you just want to strip away the niceties of everyday life, flush away any remote sense of decorum, and turn off your brain? How often do you wish you had time to throw back a multitude of pints, curse out your God-fearing neighbors, and cause undeterred rampant chaos? Sometimes it’s best to revert back to your cavemanic id, and if you need a soundtrack to accompany your civil disobedience, listen no further than veteran Norwegian black thrashers Horned Almighty’s newest collection of instigation, Necro Spirituals.
I went and saw Watain here in LA a couple weeks ago. I’m not a fan, but my girlfriend loves them and bought the tickets like two months in advance. Even though their music doesn’t do a whole lot for me, I have to admit they put on an excellent show. The stage was all gussied up with rotting, stinky cow heads, burning crosses (I was actually surprised you can do this in a post Great White world), and like 483 lit candles. According to some others I’ve spoken with, they were all rubbed down in some kind of animal blood as well (imagine that pre-show ritual!). This certainly made for some eye candy while sitting through an hour of songs I don’t know at all. As my mind drifted off throughout the set I pondered many things in regards to this band’s appeal, or at least this kind of entertainment in general. In fact, to call it “entertainment” is probably selling some of these fans’ dedication short. There are people who are really down with this shit.
Since the dawn of time over 9,000 years ago, man has achieved progress only by questioning himself, putting even his most basic assumptions to the test of rigorous, unforgiving critical analysis. Once upon a time, we believed that the sun revolved around the earth, all matter was made of four basic elements, and that Brujeria really were Mexican drug traffickers, but thanks to the tireless efforts of great thinkers like Galileo, Hobbes, and Hume, now we know better. In the same spirit of fearless intellectual honesty, I ask the readers of MetalSucks the following: which is the best, BLACK METAL or DEATH METAL???
Chris Dick posted the below video on The Deciblog yesterday, and… holy shit. It’s amazing. Apparently someone took the audio from a hit viral video I’ve never heard of ’cause I’m not cool, “Kittens Inspired by Kittens,” and set it to various black metal images instead of, y’know, pictures of kittens. Amazingly, the audio matches up pretty much perfectly, and the results will make your beer come out your nose.
-AR
You’ve seen the world’s youngest Nile fan… now meet the world’s youngest Gävel fan. Baby gets noticeably less cranky and more willing to eat around the 2:00 minute mark when papa pops on a metal video on YouTube.
Will keep in mind for the inevitable time (but no time soon) when there’s a little Vince Neilstein Jr. running around the Mansion. With any luck he won’t grow up to be like this kid.
-VN
Thanks: Thahirah Taslimsdóttir
Half-assed appropriations of black metal imagery can join ironic facial hair, fixies, and rapist glasses on the list of tiresome, worn out memes that hipsters keep trotting out long after they’ve worn out whatever welcome they had (see also the recent Reign In Blonde post on this subject). For most of us, the novelty of black metal wore off sometime in the mid-90s, but apparently it’s still fresh for Goldfrapp, the latest coked-up assholes to pat themselves on the back for discovering that corpsepaint is ridiculous.
To underscore exactly how late to the party these smug dickholes are, here are a few other things that happened in 1994 (the year Varg Vikernes was convicted of murder and put Scandanavian black metal on the map):
Interviewing Buzz Osborne was, without a doubt, one of the best experiences of my lucrative career in music journalism. Sometimes, interviewing can be a real drag, me trying to pull meaningful answers out of disinterested people. What a bummer it is when you realize that someone whose music you dig turns out to be a jerk or worse–a bore. Thankfully, the frizzy-haired Melvins frontman and Fantomas guitarist proved to be a funny, engaging, and opinionated interviewee, turning what could have been a straightforward Q&A session into an hour-long phone conversation. For your sake, I’ve broken this dialogue up into two parts, the first of which appears below.
The Bride Screamed Murder, the imminent new full-length Melvins album, is the strongest work of the current Big Business-infused lineup and quite possibly the best damn record the band’s put out since the classic Houdini. Read on to learn King Buzzo’s thoughts on the new record, black metal, military cadence, and why U2 are “a bunch of pussies.”
I’ve always found metal logos to be fascinating. Shit, we even have a weekly contest based on ‘em. I once penned a blog post for another website proclaiming death metal the best of all metal sub-genres because it had the coolest logos; maybe that piece will see the light of day some time soon. But there’s just something so great about metal logos… you [can often] know loosely what a band will sound like just from the particular style of their logo. I don’t think this is true for other genres of music, but maybe one of our readers with a deeper knowledge of, say, indie rock can tell me why I’m wrong.
The German design book publisher Gestalten is publishing a book on this very topic — specifically black metal logos — by Chrisophe “Lord of the Logos” Szpajdel. A press release tells us that the “book is a collection of hundreds of Szpajdel’s powerful hand-drawn nature-inspired logos that combine letters with visual elements from art movements such as art deco and art nouveau.” The publisher has graciously made available several preview pages from the book, and what’s cool about this book is that it isn’tjust a collection of logos; the logos are juxtaposed with the artistic photographs of nature that directly inspired them, like the preview above. I totally see the resemblance, and it’s neat to see that these logos aren’t “just” random scratchy lines.
Check out a very high-quality version of the above image as well as one more that’s equally as cool. The book is 272 pages of full color print and comes out this month for € 35,00 / $ 55,00 / £ 32,50; order it here (when it becomes available).
-VN
Images used with permission By Christophe Szpajdel from Lord of the Logos, Copyright Gestalten 2010
As you’ve no doubt noticed, we’re mostly done for the year here at MS. Suarez is going to see Coalesce on the 30th at Club Europa in Brooklyn, but other than that metal pickins around here are slim. Axl’s holed up in the Axl Annex with Sacha the Death Metal Puppy and I’m heading down to sunny Costa Rica in a few days. Peachy!
MS reader “tnicklas” send in this mildly entertaining Black Metal Christmas video by the band Erlosung. Enjoy, and stay warm.
-VN
Although the girl isn’t so little she is definitely black metal and full of shenanigans. This should be the new status quo for grim and frostbitten.
-VN
[Thanks: Max L.]
When it comes to black metal guitar pedals my first choice bar none is the Valnøtt, made famous by The Austerity Program’s Justin Foley. But MS Maniac Joseph Griesel sent us a link to the new Dragonfly BM-1 Black Metal Guitar Distortion Pedal, so trve and kvlt that production is limited to just 666 units worldwide.
The BM-1 advertises itself as “A tribute to the first wave of Black Metal of the 1980′s. Raw, primitive, old school Metal Tone!” And against all expectations, the thing actually sounds pretty damn good… check out the demo below.
While the BM-1 does admittedly deliver a pretty killer tone, we much prefer the Valnøtt for its versatility as a bass, vocal and drum pedal in addition to just guitars. Check out Justin Foley’s Valnøtt demo video after the jump.
