Quandarousness

So, I get Terrorizer on my iPod. I like Terrorizer a lot and I was really excited when I figured I could get issues thusly. This might be harkening the end of printed media but whatever. That said, I don't know what bothers me more: how this month there was a huge feature on Slipknot (who are described as having "changed the metal world," or something equally, nakedly misleading or misconceived as that assertion) or the sheer volume of folk metal coverage. And that speaks to a quandary I'm having -- I feel like I can't objectively look at folk metal (e.g. Turisas, Finntroll, or...eughhh, Alestorm), all of it just seems like gimmicky, wishy-washy bullshit to me. Now, don't get me wrong, I love the sheer boyish enthusiasm and adventurousness of classic heavy metal and I can kind of see traces of that in the aforementioned bands but...uhhhhhhh I think they suck and I can't seem to force myself to appreciate them in the slightest. That's all.

W.F.

I'm Losing Scene Points

"A lot of people don't take metal seriously as art, and a lot of people don't take art seriously as ethics. That's fine, I guess -- but as for myself, I do both. These days, when people detect ambition in someone they leap on that person like hyenas. The label "pretentious" is unquestioned as categorically damning. But I think musical culture could use a whole lot more pretension, if anything. It suffers from false, dishonest humility, and from a lack of ambition to be more than either entertainment or a badge of identification with a group"
Guy from Liturgy, re: critical firestorm

I'm in what feels like the lonely position of liking Liturgy (not to be confused with the startlingly uninteresting Brodequin+Matti Way BDM band. Seriously, how did this winning formula fall flat??) as a concept and a band. Last year I stumbled across the first full length, managed to make it out to Charlotte, NC to see them, talked with the dude for a minute, read the manifesto, etc. and I did, and still do, find it all pretty interesting and entertaining. (I haven't listened to the new album as I keep forgetting to do so, but that's unimportant) As a band, the way Liturgy both embraced and bent the thematic and musical conventions of black metal was equally interesting -- here's this gang of urbane Brooklynites playing a fluid, amorphous take on Second Wave black metal about rapturous spiritual transcendence (eh, pardon the reduction there). It may be the way they have one foot in and one foot out that makes them so impossibly incomprehensible and offensive to the seemingly endless wave of anonymous (and otherwise) critics.

So, during these past few months two things have happened: 1) Liturgy has blown up, big time, and 2) They've attracted an enormous barrage of criticism, ad hominem attacks, you name it. In a way I saw this coming but I guess the sheer volume of it has turned out to be equal or greater to to how much press coverage the band has received, and I suppose I expected neither to reach such heights.

Since the sole purpose of a blog is for one to feel entitled to privilege their opinion over others, I'm going to take a stab at this and say that by and large all the criticism of this band, to me, seems to completely miss the point. I'm not trying to force anyone to like Liturgy as it's not important to me whether or not they are liked but rather I'm moved to speak on how Liturgy has been received and I believe that it says a lot about metalheads in general.

First, forgive me if you dislike the band and you have a more nuanced opinion on the matter, clearly this is less directed at you. To me, the recurring phenomenon at work here seems to be either an inability or a flat out refusal to even try to understand the band and if you want a good example of that, look no further than the inane comments on that Brooklyn Vegan page. I'm not saying this band is a gang of geniuses or anything but they are definitely unique in some aspects, so don't kid yourself. So anyways, the guy likes to talk about the band and the concept, and that seems to bother many people...very well, but is he really the first musician in recent memory to do this? Really? In this case, to me it seems like people can't stand the idea of a hip, philosophy major talking about his art, because if it were Chris Tucker instead, no one would be making such a goddamn stink.

So, first of all, I sense a failure to approach Liturgy objectively, generally speaking. To me, it seems like who Liturgy is (Hunter Hunt Hendrix) is far more important than what Liturgy does. I'll return to this point.

The recurring line is that the band (the guy, rather) is pretentious, which, first, I can concede to, to a certain extent and if it is off-putting, I understand but yet, what is the alternative? Again, not to strike a false dichotomy and pardon me if I am making a textbook generalization, but by eschewing Liturgy completely in favor of what we consider appropriate/"right"/"true" for metal (aesthetically, thematically, musically, etc), doesn't that strike a dogmatic tone? If so, does extreme metal really need dogma? I get it: being a metalhead for me comes with a sense of pride and I feel very protective, which is why nu-metal, obvious poseurs, and the larger portions of Victory Record's roster piss me off a lot and send me on the defensive BUT there's a difference between determining what is false metal (which sometimes feels extremely important, weirdly enough) and creating a artistically stifling environment.

If black metal, or extreme metal in general, is going to continue to grow as an art form, it needs to continually rejuvenate itself. I'm not saying the Liturgy is the future of black metal or anywhere even remotely close to it but rather, they are just one piece of it and somehow, someway, their artistic contribution has some value whether you like it or not, just like how somewhere in the midst of all these almost-universally-godawful deathcore bands that I hate, there is undeniably some value in that music as well, whether I like it or not.

I stand by this, as poorly phrased as it may be.

-W.F.

I live with my parents, again

In short, I love refrigerators full of food, dogs leaping into my lap, and New England weather.

Anywho..

Something I noticed is the promotion for the upcoming Black Dahlia Murder album. A lot of metalheads bash this band and they have been labelled as metalcore since day one. I don't particularly mind them. To my ears, this band has been consistently melodeath for as long as I've ever known them, which is FINE, it's just not my thing anymore. Sure, when I was 16 and I had heard maybe two death metal songs in my life, "Elder Misanthropy" was the shit. Truthfully, listening to that song again, I definitely prefer it to anything more recent Ive heard from them. It must be the vocals. In short, I think that band is a completely inoffensive, authentic-if-not-somewhat-derivative group (then again, what band isn't derivative in some way?)

For some reason, though, they were always pigeonholed with the more egregiously unoriginal and commercialized metalcore bands of the mid-2000's, even if their actual music had less in common with said groups. Maybe it's Metal Blade -- think of all the crap bands Metal Blade began to pick up around 2005. It could be the band's sometimes jocular song titles, especially on Miasma. "Statutory Ape*." That speaks volumes. Obviously song titles and subject matter in your average death metal band are reasonably tongue and cheek, to a point (and I'm just using this one song as an example). Having a pun right in the title kind of butts up against the requisite air of mystique one's band is expected to have. Breaking kayfabe like that may very well strike some metalheads as flippant. Me, personally, I don't care much but maybe that's one thing about this band that pisses other metalheads off.

(*It should be said, this line of thought forced me to go back and read their lyrics, which are actually pretty good. Surprise! Cool.)

Anywho, starting around Nocturnal, I, like many people no doubt, began to notice a return to more "classic" aesthetics: songs about fucking dead bodies, generally macabre/occult lyrical content/song titles and spooky album art. I haven't listened to that in years and I was pretty over it by the time the next album came out (2009??) but evidently it's more of the same in that respect.
(Interestingly enough, by around 2008 I was really burnt out on death metal, mainly due to the sheer fatigue of listening to all these modern bands like TBDM and Behemoth, with their overly-loud, hi-fi production. Had I not meandered into classic Floridian and Swedish death metal, I might have been off of death metal forever. I digress.)













I wish to now approach the heart of what have in mind. The promotion and artistic approach of Ritual seems like the most extreme logical conclusion of this push for authenticity, in a way slightly similar to how the newer Job For A Cowboy began sounding like something between Morbid Angel and Suffocation.

The album is evidently a concept album about Satanic rituals, which may be a gross generalization of the thematic content, pardon. Quoth the band: "All of the lyrics to Ritual are bound by a common thread of black magick and the occult, the worship of darkness, and the preservation of inner strength and will." They continue: "Yes, we are an evil band. Yes we sing about Satan. But really, how I see it, our evil is for your own good! The character Satan in our music represents the freedom to think for yourself… the strength to see through the facades of the norm that is presented to us at birth, and the courage to live your own way, free of the burden of guilt and shame. That’s how it’s always been for us and this record is no different."
Gotcha. That's par for the course, considering the ubiquity of Satan in metal, in general, and that is totally a-okay with me. Satan, as a concept representing individualism and the rejection of blind faith, etc etc has always been very poignant to me, so, I don't have any qualms there.

What strikes me as somewhat fishy is the very sudden shift from this somewhat light-hearted approach (see their dvd) to selling a deluxe edition of their upcoming album with a ouija board, incense, and powdered dragon bones or whatever the hell. It seems somewhat incongruous. Maybe I'm alone here. Or, maybe I'm creating a false dichotomy where a band can't joke around and sell a deluxe version of your album with special occult artifacts, like demon farts in little glass vials, but the whole thing seems just a little too forced and somewhat unnecessary. While on the one hand, most of the criticism against this band also seems fairly misguided, besides them being sort of unoriginal (which is FINE! It's completely okay and there is nothing particularly bad about TBDM), but on the other hand, it seems like this lingering stigma of them being phonies (which I don't buy, again) has forced them to really ham it up on the occult/whatever-the-hell-else department, which is a shame, because I think the music spoke for itself well enough, which I concede to, even though I don't really dig melodeath anymore.

I think that's all I had in mind. Now, I'd like a beer.

-W.F.



For more on the release:
http://grafwall.indiestar.tv/2011/04/black-dahlia-murder-bdmmetal-discuss.html