The Reminder

I have been pondering a great deal about the recent meteorite incident in Russia, California, apparently in other places as well. Ugh, shame on me, I'm not digging into researching where else there were meteors. Maybe because meteors happen, just not usually over highly populated areas, because the earth is 70% water. But nonetheless it puts life into perspective. Namely, how fleeting and fragile existence is here on Earth. How vast and filled with unknown peril space is, and it is so beautiful. I hope it is a wake-up call that there is no point in living in fear of Earthly matters. Some would say that is counter-intuitive, but it isn't, at all. Be alive, enjoy being alive. You never know when and how it will end, or change. Now science will seek the fragments of The Reminder, examine and experiment with it to understand further that which reminds us of our place in the Universe. That which reminds us of our fragility and our resilience at the same time, because although asteroids and meteors happen, the Earth has been revolving and rotating predictably and diligently for 4+ billion years now. Depending how you look at it, that could be luck or an accomplishment. Either way, the Universe has sent a Reminder.

Space, in all it's vastness and unknowns, can evoke the emotion of sheer terror. This is perfectly captured in art by Darkspace. I will post a link to Darkspace III, my intention is not to be redundant. My intention is that it relates, and the prior link was interrupted. Enjoy the album. Then buy it.

Upon discovering Darkspace, I visited their label, Avantgarde Music, which as been around for ages, and has under its belt dealings with early Mayhem, Katatonia, and others. The label has been around in the black metal world for a very long time.There, I discovered many more bands, very diverse in style but all dark. They have an MP3 player/Soundcloud link were you can listen to the music, and I highly recommend doing it. There, I discovered Manii, whose song "Endelaust" is enchanting, especially the way it starts off with the piano music. Laburinthos' "The Great Brothel of Mankind" is also an excellent piece of music, as well. You can buy hard-copy cd's and digipacks from them. If you have the space, still like hard copies, or are just a wonderful nerd, this is right up your alley! I know as soon as discretionary spending allows, I probably will be.

I had recently, within the last 2 years, transitioned from buying CD's to actually buying from iTunes, etc, but my recent purchase of Forest Stream's The Crowning of Winter made me feel nostalgic of the hard copy. ( I purchased from the Ebay seller Madrushmedia, and I must say the speed with which my CD arrived was astounding. I have never received something that quickly from purchasing online.) All the art and creation that goes into it, it kind of gives one an inkling of the artist's mind's eye, even if it isn't the musician him/herself who created it. Forest Stream is a departure from the black metal I have been posting about recently, it is more of a gothic melodic death metal. They do a great job creating a wintery sound, and I can almost smell the winter when I listen. I imagine icicles, snowy mountains, and a solemn, grey scene where one still finds a strange warmth and comfort in being alone. Other times, I envision one of those miniature ballet dancers which spin around when one opens a jewelry box, and evokes a certain nostalgia. The album is great for the mind's eye. On a side note, I would love to see a ballet set to symphonic black or death metal. Parts of Samael's Passage makes me envision the same. Oh how I miss my double-disc of that album, which had the Xytras keyboard interpretation of the album.

Tirade

I feel it necessary to go on a bit of a tirade here. I am trying to establish a blog here, and a great deal of what I write about happens to be a very specific niche of music. Call it genres, whatever you will. It is more extreme and unusual forms of metal. Part of the purpose of this blog is to celebrate the ability to find and listen to really obscure music online, and hopefully introduce all of you to new music. The metal world; unlike pop music, rap music, or other mainstream forms of music; from my experience over the 20 years of being a part of it, has benefited greatly from the new levels of ease of access that the internet brings. It allows us to be more discriminating.  I  hope that if you find something you love, you will buy it, much like I do.

When I post links to albums uploaded to YouTube, it is my sole intention to keep this blog interactive. Nobody is interested in a wall of text, no matter how sarcastic, entertaining, or grammatically correct I make it. This is music, it is an aural experience. So, you can imagine my anger and disappointment when music I link to here is then removed by YouTube because of their nazi infringement policies. Seriously? Whoever has an axe to grind against a small-time uploader of black metal is a penny-wise and pound-foolish jackass. Seriously? Are there not bigger fish to fry? Why target such a small niche of music? This kind of music was always difficult to come across, and having the opportunity to listen before one buys saves time and money for everyone in the long run. I imagine everyone who actually supports music will eventually go out and buy. For Pete's sake it is really annoying to load videos and deal with buffering if you want to listen to the music in the car from YouTube. Sometimes the sound quality really sucks, and I don't recommend distracted driving.

Whoever is the lame sycophant deciding to click on the report button really has no basic comprehension as to how discovering new music works. Gone are the days when we have had to hope that a friend has the music to sample it first. Gone are the days of searching for obscure radio stations, that have limited access, to hear new avant-garde music. Most of the time, when I post links to music here, it is because I recommend it highly, or it ties into the general topic I am writing about. Seriously? Music has been revolutionized, whether some "report button trigger happy" douchecanoe likes it or not.

Insomnium!

Here's a change of pace for you all! Especially appropriate because there is a blizzard bearing down on the northeast as we speak. Joy! I am overjoyed at the prospect of BIG SNOW.

Now this is music that gets me excited and brings many endorphin rushes. Many may laugh, apparently Insomnium have been around for quite some time (demos going back to 1999), and I have been living under a rock. But, alas, I have found Insomnium, and shall be listening them to death. This is just beautiful melodic metal. It is just the upper I needed after stumbling down the black metal tunnel for a while.Through YouTube, I have sampled thus far a smattering of their work from most albums, and must say it is all amazing, endorphin-rush metal, IMHO the best kind. When the music flows perfectly from brutal vocals and hard riffs to keyboards/instrumentals, whispers, clean vocals, and back again there is only pure joy to the senses. To check out the band's earlier works, one only has to go to the band's (aforementioned) page and click on the link to their demos. There one can listen to their 1999 demo, and see how incredibly talented this band has been over the years. Seeing that they went on tour in Europe with Paradise Lost makes me feel pangs of envy, I would have LOVED to see them perform. Alas, my life/work schedule hasn't allowed me time for many concerts at all, and I feel terribly out of the loop sometimes as far as live performances go. (Let's not even discuss the Opeth/Katatonia show in Brooklyn that I just found out about will be in April and is already sold out. Wail!) Nothing worse than getting to the party too late, eh?

Well, here is more Insomnium.

I encourage you to embark on this aural journey for yourself, visit some Insomnium on YouTube. Hopefully it will result in you throwing some money at a much-deserving band, if you can afford to do so. I do want to clarify at this point my stance on such matters. I buy music. It is a hobby of mine, along with making my own jewelry, and occasionally drawing. If the band is worthy, and I love the music enough, I buy the album, possibly other bandmerch, and attend concerts. I love the fact we can listen to anything we want nowadays on YouTube, Pandora, and wherever else on the internet. Finding new music is always only a click away.  It is so much easier now than it was, say 10-15 years ago, to listen to music you want to hear, and not just what is commercialized by mainstream sources. I have seen a dramatic shift throughout the years because of this, regarding record labels, creativity, and bands not having to "sell out" for major corporate interests influencing their music in order to survive and continue to play music. Either that, or record labels are finally realizing dyed-in-the-wool metal fans can smell a sellout a mile away before the album is even released. Maybe it is both.

On Genre.

I'm gonna start off by saying, I hate labels. I don't get the obsession with categorizing and micro-categorizing, and the pretentious behavior that goes along with it. Is it black metal? Avant-garde black metal? Symphonic black metal? Or how about primitive black metal? Is it death metal? Is it sludge? Is it industrial? Or gothic symphonic melodic black metal? Is it melodic death metal? Progressive symphonic death metal?

OH MY GOD. CAN YOU JUST LISTEN TO THE MUSIC, ENJOY IT, AND BE DONE?

Must it have a category? Must there also be disparaging comments between fans because of their preconceived notions about a small, compartmentalized, micro-genre of music, that may as well be just ONE BAND, and all the bands that imitated them?Anyone who has ever wasted precious moments of their lives reading YouTube comments on music videos knows the bottomless pit of spiraling snobbery those threads become. It is this obsessive categorization, and subsequent stigmatization and creation of new obscure stereotypes which has turned some aspects of the metal world into a self-defeating fail. I have seen metal scenes destroy themselves with this nonsense. The constant pretentious genre-snobbery has got to go. I don't want to hear about how "x band" used to pioneer primitive black metal back in the day (probably when said bloviating individual was still in diapers and yet to be weaned) and how they are just beside themselves regarding the band's new material, and how they sold out because they no longer play primitive black metal, or have decided to use female vocals, or keyboards.

But I cannot help but wonder if all this obsessive genre categorization is actually just people geeking out about the music-- which is all well and good. But when people mindlessly imply that anything new that comes from very old bands cannot possibly be better than their first ever album in 1994, for example, it drives me nuts. I mean, get over it. Mayhem will not release another Di Mysteriis Dom Sathanas. (and thank goodness for that! Today's technology and production quality has only HELPED the sound of black metal.) In Flames is not releasing another Clayman, nor are they going back to their Subterranean album. Amorphis has morphed. So has Katatonia. Samael tried to go back to their pre-Passage black metal style, but only for one album. (Oh, and about Samael-- That can be an hours-long discussion whether they are industrial or black metal or industrial black metal.) The same goes for Emperor, Cradle of Filth, and any band that may strike your mind when going deep into the realms of the origins of extreme genres.  It is possible to respect and revere older work without completely defecating on anything new as though it is all Screamo Emo garbage.

Third, what is up with the homophobia that comes with trashing music? I don't think one's style of musical performance has anything to do with their gender preferences. Calling a musician gay, or their music gay, can really put the wrong ideas in people's heads. It creates and implants associations between certain qualities in music and what represents stereotypes about gender and gender preferences, and does absolutely nothing but create negativity and homophobia. It also creates this phenomena of closet metalheads about certain bands. "The shame feeds the anger feeds the shame feeds the anger feeds the shame!" (Let me pay homage once again to Ihsahn, out of context, but his newest work is pure genius.

I guess this post is a call for more open-mindedness in metal. It really is quaint, no? So many narrow-minded attitudes in a music scene which--let's face it-- one has to be really open-minded to embrace to begin with. It seems so senseless to me.

Here are some bands, new and old. Some mentioned in this post.

As much as I respect that most black metal that exists today is because of this group, I can't say I like this, personally. To each their own, but I am glad the music has progressed from this.

 

And Amorphis, a complete change of pace. This is a band that has changed profoundly over the years. IMO for the better. 

And Enslaved... Then...

and now... (I didn't list RIITIIR because I already posted that in a previous entry.)

Old In Flames. It wasn't bad, but some people are really stuck in the past, and don't think it ever got better than this.

And here is something new that I have come across, well, actually it's from 2008. There is a kick-ass user's YouTube Channel called Full Black Metal Albums which I have been using as a reference to find those old black metal albums that I either no longer own, or never had a chance to own, and to sample things I have never heard of. 

It must be the winter, I find myself drawn into the wall of sound that is black metal. My tastes fluctuate, and I love all sorts of metal, and can go from something like this to Nightwish to DevilDriver to Eluveitie while also listening to cyberpunk/industrial stuff like Nolongerhuman and Suicide Commando. I am the genrebuster. \m/