Death Metal Underground Newsletter 3/17-3/24
Death Metal Underground
Newsletter 3/17-3/24
Because Metal Is Art
Teitanblood – Death
After black metal collapsed, fans went looking for the next great genre to fill the void. Unfortunately, the only “new” developments post-1996 have been of retrogression. Whether combining metal with vapidity (“post-black metal”), commercialism ((Watain, Satyricon)), or frequently both; fans were left without any direction to look to. After reviewing the situation, some honest people realized that “progression” was a sham and the solution was to take metal back to its earlier underground roots in death and speed metal.
Enter Teitanblood.
http://www.deathmetal.org/
Twilight – III: Beneath Trident’s Tomb
Commercial black metal. Oh dear.
Advertising agencies would like us to believe that Twilight is a “black metal supergroup”; but looking at the list of musicians involved, there isn’t much to do with black metal, let alone a noteworthy record within that genre. If there was a desire to be accurate, the band would be billed as “a group of musicians without much in common, to whom we rented a studio and told them to make something that we could promote”. It’s here the band succeeds…but not anywhere else.
http://www.deathmetal.org/
Rob Flynn expounds on how commerce crushes creativity
Alternative metal band Machine Head frontman Rob Flynn recently launched a blog-based tirade in which he excoriates the current music industry for being too industrial in its approach to music. In his view, as soon as something succeeds and lots of people show up to make money off of it, creativity is crushed.
http://www.deathmetal.org/
Mayhem announces details of Esoteric Warfare
http://www.deathmetal.org/
Jason Netherton (Dying Fetus) releases Extremity Retained: Notes from the Death Metal Underground
Former Dying Fetus member Jason Netherton, now proprietor Send Back My Stamps!, releases his latest creation in the form of a 480-page book of interview with figures in the death metal underground called Extremity Retained: Notes from the Death Metal Underground. The product of over 100 interviews over a three-year period, the book is comprised entirely of first-hand stories, anecdotes, memories and opinions.
http://www.deathmetal.org/
Interview with metal academic Ross Hagen
As part of our exploration of academia in metal, we meet all sorts of interesting academics with different relationships to metal. Some are more on the academic side, some on the musical, and some in-between. Ross Hagen straddles both extremes by being both a musician and an academic with a focus on teaching metal. As a result, he brings both personal experience and delight in the genre to the otherwise more abstract academic view. We were lucky to get in a few questions with this interesting person and teacher.
http://www.deathmetal.org/
Darkthrone announces release of Black, Death and Beyond anthology
http://www.deathmetal.org/
Codex Obscurum – Issue Four
Many of us old school death metal fans watched the rise of zine Codex Obscurum with growing interest because it, like Glorious Times and Underground Never Dies!, represents an attempt to look back at the underground and figure out what made it as powerful as it was. Part of the answer is selectivity, which is a gentle person’s form of “elitism,” meaning that one selects quality over quantity and vigorously promotes and defends the quality. This is what zines did, what radio shows did, and what labels did, back in the day, by choosing some bands over others. The vague smell of blood in the air is the shadow of long-forgotten predation and natural selection that also shaped us as humans, which means not so much “survival of the fittest” but that all who make a meaningful contribution get kicked upstairs and everyone else is forgotten.
http://www.deathmetal.org/
Sorcier des Glaces releases Ritual of the End
Northern wanderlust black metal band Sorcier des Glaces announces its fifth album, Ritual of the End, to become available shortly through Galy Records. This Quebecois act made a name for itself in the internally collapsing underground by crafting lengthy melodies in windswept melancholic formations, despite the trends of the time which it rebuked.
http://www.deathmetal.org/
Interview with Dallas Toler-Wade of Narcotic Wasteland
Most metalheads know the name Dallas Toler-Wade from Nile, the modern metal band that dropped static riffing and late-1970s guitar rock structures into death metal and paved the way for a new generation of hybrids and mythological themes in metal. However, before Nile, Toler-Wade created music with his cohorts in the band that has become Narcotic Wasteland.
http://www.deathmetal.org/
Newsletter 3/17-3/24
Because Metal Is Art
Teitanblood – Death
After black metal collapsed, fans went looking for the next great genre to fill the void. Unfortunately, the only “new” developments post-1996 have been of retrogression. Whether combining metal with vapidity (“post-black metal”), commercialism ((Watain, Satyricon)), or frequently both; fans were left without any direction to look to. After reviewing the situation, some honest people realized that “progression” was a sham and the solution was to take metal back to its earlier underground roots in death and speed metal.
Enter Teitanblood.
http://www.deathmetal.org/
Twilight – III: Beneath Trident’s Tomb
Commercial black metal. Oh dear.
Advertising agencies would like us to believe that Twilight is a “black metal supergroup”; but looking at the list of musicians involved, there isn’t much to do with black metal, let alone a noteworthy record within that genre. If there was a desire to be accurate, the band would be billed as “a group of musicians without much in common, to whom we rented a studio and told them to make something that we could promote”. It’s here the band succeeds…but not anywhere else.
http://www.deathmetal.org/
Rob Flynn expounds on how commerce crushes creativity
Alternative metal band Machine Head frontman Rob Flynn recently launched a blog-based tirade in which he excoriates the current music industry for being too industrial in its approach to music. In his view, as soon as something succeeds and lots of people show up to make money off of it, creativity is crushed.
http://www.deathmetal.org/
Mayhem announces details of Esoteric Warfare
http://www.deathmetal.org/
Jason Netherton (Dying Fetus) releases Extremity Retained: Notes from the Death Metal Underground
Former Dying Fetus member Jason Netherton, now proprietor Send Back My Stamps!, releases his latest creation in the form of a 480-page book of interview with figures in the death metal underground called Extremity Retained: Notes from the Death Metal Underground. The product of over 100 interviews over a three-year period, the book is comprised entirely of first-hand stories, anecdotes, memories and opinions.
http://www.deathmetal.org/
Interview with metal academic Ross Hagen
As part of our exploration of academia in metal, we meet all sorts of interesting academics with different relationships to metal. Some are more on the academic side, some on the musical, and some in-between. Ross Hagen straddles both extremes by being both a musician and an academic with a focus on teaching metal. As a result, he brings both personal experience and delight in the genre to the otherwise more abstract academic view. We were lucky to get in a few questions with this interesting person and teacher.
http://www.deathmetal.org/
Darkthrone announces release of Black, Death and Beyond anthology
http://www.deathmetal.org/
Codex Obscurum – Issue Four
Many of us old school death metal fans watched the rise of zine Codex Obscurum with growing interest because it, like Glorious Times and Underground Never Dies!, represents an attempt to look back at the underground and figure out what made it as powerful as it was. Part of the answer is selectivity, which is a gentle person’s form of “elitism,” meaning that one selects quality over quantity and vigorously promotes and defends the quality. This is what zines did, what radio shows did, and what labels did, back in the day, by choosing some bands over others. The vague smell of blood in the air is the shadow of long-forgotten predation and natural selection that also shaped us as humans, which means not so much “survival of the fittest” but that all who make a meaningful contribution get kicked upstairs and everyone else is forgotten.
http://www.deathmetal.org/
Sorcier des Glaces releases Ritual of the End
Northern wanderlust black metal band Sorcier des Glaces announces its fifth album, Ritual of the End, to become available shortly through Galy Records. This Quebecois act made a name for itself in the internally collapsing underground by crafting lengthy melodies in windswept melancholic formations, despite the trends of the time which it rebuked.
http://www.deathmetal.org/
Interview with Dallas Toler-Wade of Narcotic Wasteland
Most metalheads know the name Dallas Toler-Wade from Nile, the modern metal band that dropped static riffing and late-1970s guitar rock structures into death metal and paved the way for a new generation of hybrids and mythological themes in metal. However, before Nile, Toler-Wade created music with his cohorts in the band that has become Narcotic Wasteland.
http://www.deathmetal.org/
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Subvert the dominant paradigm, don't be a solipsist.