MaxFaust

I'm listening to what's pretty much porn for guitar enthusiasts ... recorded between 1969-1972, released in 1973, re-released 20 years later ... and a massive influence on a lot of hard rock bands that came later: Wicked Lady - The Axeman Cometh

Beatlemania was undoubtedly an exceptionally weird cultural phenomenon. I remember Whoopi Goldberg -- who strikes me as being a no nonsense kind of woman -- getting all dreamy eyed and nostalgic over how much she was in love with the Beatles back in the day, during some interview (I can't remember the exact context). The same thing happened to the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin. "Star worship" might be an alternative take on the old canard "cult of personality" ... or at least, that's how I choose to see it. (I seem to remember that being the title of a hit song in the 90s ... but I'm hard pressed to remember exactly by whom. Some kind of nu-metal act? That particular genre failed to ever interest me much.) There's an interesting personality that's lurking behind the scenes here, one music producer named Joe Meek, who wrote the first ever UK hit single to break in the USA. The year was 1962 and the song was called Telstar, by the Tornadoes. He's definitely worth looking into, because he was a HUGE influence on not only pop music, but also metal, particularly because a certain Richie Blackmore used to be a session musician in his studio ... and as such was massively influenced by Joe Meek's "anything is possible" kind of attitude. Anyway, Telstar was a communication satellite, and the first of its kind, that opened the air waves across the Atlantic. To what extent this should be celebrated is a matter of opinion ... but that it was an important cultural event is beyond reasonable doubt. Beatlemania would probably not have happened were it not for the Telstar. Since I am a bit of a snob and an elitist when it comes to art, I don't like "cheapness" and shit that's obviously made for the quick-fix end of the consumerist market. However, I respect the choice some make, that they should try and capitalize on their art as best they can. It's pretty fucking far from the worst thing that people can do ... although it is cheap and vulgar. Case in point, the direction Iron Maiden took after they fired Paul Di'Anno. Or Judas Priest in the 80s. (Glenn Tipton said in an interview that "they wanted to eat" after having been struggling musicians for the better part of a decade.) Or how Lemmy once sat at a train station, broke and disillusioned, eating baked beans out of a tin can with his comb, thinking "fuck this shit, I want money". But I'm digressing. I'm terrible like that. What do people think about the Butcher Babies? They seem to have a bit of the same "djent" (or metalcore?) vibe going on, if I've undestood this correctly (which may not be the case). Also, proper hard-ass metal boys seem to hate them. Whereas this may not be a requirement for joining the club, it's a phenomenon of some predictability. I love this shit. It's gaudy as all get-out but they seem to be having fun with their stuff. Is it metalcore though?

Being a philosopher and a writer means that I take language very seriously. It kind of comes with the territory. It's undoubtedly my responsibility that this thread got politicized ... because I made that quip about Henry Rollins for president, which obviously ain't gonna happen, mostly because Henry doesn't really know how to lie. Other than that, I think he'd do a tremendous job. Now ... the reason why I suddenly landed -- or better yet, hit the ground running -- in this place, is because I googled "metal forum" and this came out on top. I have shut down all my social media, and extracted myself from every dedicated science and philosophy forum I've been affiliated with. Because shit's getting so politicized and aggressive. I figured that henceforth, I shall only descuss music, in public. Well, that didn't last very long, did it? To the point: There's a HUGE difference between Marxism (economic theory) and socialism (political toolbox). I'll agree that there's a connection, in that most socialists are at least vaguely affiliated with Marxist theory, but it's part of the problem that a lot of people yell Marxism! (or that their mind goes to that place) whenever the word socialism is mentioned. Just as it's part of the problem that people yell fascism! as soon as other economic theories are mentioned (particularly "the Austrian school"). This, of course, is mostly done by people who'd have a hard time explaining what socialism and fascism (let alone Marxism and Austrian economic theory) means to begin with. All they can see is the symbol side of things ... reacting like Pavlov's Dog (which BTW is name for a prog rock band that I like) when the bell rings. This hateful political climate has no happy end game, and I refuse to be part of it. The job of a modern state leader is to keep the peace and make sure the money gets spent wisely. No more, and certainly no less. The age of "big political ideas" is a bygone era. However that may be, there is something called "common human decency" which has got fuck all to do with politics. It's just a sound recognition of the fact that at the end of the day, an overwhelming majority of all people (everywhere) want reasonable economic stability for themselves and their family ... and to this end, they are willing to do an honest day's work. Actually, the most basic idea of both capitalism and Marxism is that of individual self ownership, i.e. that you are the lord and master of your own destiny and the products of your labour (whatever it may be) belongs to yourself. This is where shit gets fuzzy. What Marx did was to show -- by way of Hegelian dialectics -- how the accumulation of wealth tends to follow an exponential progression curve, invariably leading us back to a feudal system of lords and serfs. Same shit, new wrapping. At the pragmatic level, socialism in our time means strict regulation of the financial markets and collective ownership of shit that's obviously in the common interest zone, such as logistic infrastructure, health care, education, policing, and so forth. It ought to be a matter of common sense but for reasons I fail to understand, it just isn't. It's become a matter of ideological appearance ... that in bizarre ways look like how the frightened officials were trying to befriend that paranoid lunatic Stalin, in the 30s era Soviet-Union. Except that there's no actual Stalin in the picture, there's only "public opinion" and the ardous task of getting elected for office. But at the pragmatic level, it amounts to the same. Anyway, in keeping with the thread title, I guess we can say that in politics, skill is a better bet than personality. Which is why I'd root for the rather boring but highly skilled character Angela Merkel any day, over the colourful personality of Donald Trump. Which leads me to today's joke (since we're already standing with one leg in Germany and the other in the USA): Have you ever heard of a street punk thing called Combat 18? I don't know if they even exist anymore, but they were quite prolific in the UK both in the 80s and the 90s. (I'd assume that nowadays they sit and drink copious amounts of Tennet's lager whilst high-fiving eachother over the political victory that's called the Brexit). The 18 part refers to the letters AH, standing for Adolf Hitler. Those are the 1st and the 8th letters of the alphabet. If we apply the same code to the name Donald Trump -- DT -- we get 420. So if you've ever wondered what the phrase "420 friendly" means, there's your answer. By way of some other cosmic joke, 420 as a date, written the American way -- 20th of April -- also happens to be the birthday of Adolf Hitler. But politics ain't art (although some call it "the art of what's possible") ... nor should art be used for political purposes. Being an artist, let alone a great one, requires that you take a step back from whatever's considered "normal", to look at life, the universe and everything in a somewhat more "alternative" way. Art that doesn't make you feel anything, or at least "think", isn't doing its job. Whenever you are closer to yawning than to a reaction -- for better or worse -- you're confronted with poor art. It's by far better to hate a work of art (and go ballistic over how stupid it is) than to condemn it with a shrug of indifference.

Not at all !!! Whereas not many people would describe me as "positive" I am at least of the mind that any- and everything can be turned into something useful. To be honest, I find the type of people who wants to "save the world" a rather scary bunch of monsters. There can be no escaping the innate selfishness of any type of biological organism that has a will to live. No matter how we twist and shake, everybody (and everything) wants something. However, this may not be a point of clarity in those people who advocate selfless sacrifice for "the greater good" (whatever the hell that means). That being said, I happen to think that a little socialism can be a good thing ... as long as it doesn't turn into an ideological beauty contest. After all, what sane individual think it's all good when some people complain about not owning all the latest and greatest gadgets of comfort while others are more or less starving to death?

There once was a discussion where I found myself wanting to bang my head against my own keypad ... because my esteemed "opponent" kept on saying that it's a fact that music was better in the 80s. As in objective, undisputable truth. But that doesn't work for me at all. I was willing to concede, and allow for "mainstream popular music" to have become less dynamic, more bland, or whatever, as a byproduct of digitalization and just more aggressive people coming into the marketing and profits end of the game. But he would have none of that. In his eyes, this was some kind of magical thing (I don't know what else to call it), and that the boat had long since sailed in this issue. Cynical as I am, I suggested of course that there may also be something in his age, that whatever he experienced in younger years will stand out as fresher, more vital, hell even better than whatever he's observing nowadays. This was of course also flatly denied. I next tried to come up with examples of horrible, commercal exploitations of music back in the day ... under the umbrella argument that this is hardly anything new. For instance, I said, Elvis is called "the king" and shit ... but he does nothing for me. All I can see is a puppet on a string, or a product as it were. Yeah, sure he could sing and swing his hips and whatnot ... but the greatness is by and large a fantasy. Chuck Berry was the man. Jerry Lee Lewis was by far more of a rocker ... and don't even get me started on Gene Vincent and Kip Taylor. I'm not sure that I understand what "pop music" means. Beatles? I love the Beatles. Who doesn't love the Beatles? In fact, I seem to more often than not like all expressions that come from a place of bona fide talent. I find the old story about how Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil for an ability to play the blues quite interesting ... but that's some really twisted shit when you think about it. Most artists who sell their soul do so for hard cash and the devil is usually a record company, or even (as is the case nowadays) whatever corporate conglomerate that owns the record company. You get a flashy car, a nice suit, some coke and a bottle of Scotch. All you gotta do is remove all that's "controversial" from your music. Make it radio friendly. Shit happens when your objective is to become a rock star, and live the glamorous life, rather than be a creative artist and make your statement about whatever it is you wish to say. There are lots of "honest" artists that never make it until they start caring about what their audience actually wants ... and many see that as the moment of sell-out ... but I don't see it that way. There must be some line of communication with the people that you basically want to buy your music, in whatever form. Selling out is what happens when you allow yourself to become a product designed for mass consumption. Being everybody's friend amounts to pretty much the same as being nobody's friend. Or at least, that's how I see it.

These aren't the words of a nihilist, brother. Rather those of someone who once held high hopes. Far be it from me to diagnose the American malady ... but it seems like it's quite common to harbour an illusion about "moral certainty" ... on either (or all) side(s) of the political spectrum. Rather than being practical and focus on that which works, many are into what they think is "right" (which basically makes everybody not in agreement with their moral certainty, "wrong"). This will invariably lead to locked positions of conflict ... where the only thing that's open for change is how intense the conflict is allowed to become ... and the only workable position of stability is that of passive aggression. It's too easy to fall into disgust with the human race, all things considered. I think this is the place many wind up manouvering themselves into, over time, resulting in a more or less pronounced state of depression. Dante had an inscription on the gates of Hell (in the "Inferno" part of the Comedy) that said: "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here ". Which of course jives with the quite common trope (not least in the metal business) that this world is in fact Hell ... and that the best we can -- realistically -- hope for are some glimpses of happiness from time to time, within the more general state of hopelessness and misery. But what's wrong with the little things? Why are we expecting so much from life? At the age of 20, ten years seems like a lot of time. But when you turn 50, you'll realize that it's just a fistful of moments that pour out between your fingers like so much dry sand ... going only that much faster the more you try to clench your fist and hold on to it. Like I keep telling people: Getting old sucks, but it's better than the only alternative we know about.

One of my all-time favourite bands, hands down. I tend to think of Black Flag before Henry Rollins as a completely different thing though. As charismatic frontmen go, he's up there with the best. In my opinion, they should probably make him the next president of America. Seriously. At this point in time, I bet many yanks pine for someone who isn't corrupt and full of shit, basically representing the same old conglomerate of corporate interests and lying, thieving bastards. He's also very human ... but that may not work to his actual advantage.

That makes (at least) two of us. To begin with, I didn't understand why Jinjer wasn't to be found anywhere. I tried to express why I like them / what I like about them by -- facetiously -- saying that I have them placed next to Meshuggah and Gojira in my CD shelf (I'm old, so it's all about the hardcopy for me). I am completely mystified by "modern" concepts such as Djent -- that I initially thought was a Belgian city, and tried to make sense of it the same way that there is a "Gothenburg" sound -- but when looking at Wikipedia, it was examplified by Animals as Leaders ... which I have to say are awesome musicians, but perhaps too good for their own good, so to speak, and not really expressing the "feeling" that I find to be the lowest common denominator in my own music taste. Right ... so there's "metalcore" ... which sounds like an amalgamation of metal and hardcore (even though the suffix "core" can apparently be used in a number of weird ways that I don't understand) ... and that ought to be a blend that unites the best from two worlds that I've kind of lived in since the late 70s. The first band that jumps to mind when people say "metalcore" is D.R.I. although I fail to see how any genre can be so obese that it can contain both D.R.I and Gojira. But D.R.I. did as a matter of fact appeal to both the punks and the metalheads back in the day (at least the metalheads that were down with thrash, which not everybody was). To make sure we're on the same page when it comes to hardcore though: Black Flag, Dead Kennedys, Agnostic Front, Blood for Blood, that sort of thing. A more recent act such as Hatebreed should perhaps be called "metalcore"? They have the more "fat" (or perhaps "groovy") sound down ... which to me sounds like genetic material from Pantera, only they play much faster, of course. (Didn't Phil use to sing in a HC band before joining Pantera? His style was certainly more HC than HM.) This thread could be moved to another location, I suppose, but what I want to discuss is musical taxonomy (genres) in general, rather than what is and what isn't "true" or "fake" (because that just ends up being a bitchfest of private taste and opinion). Not so much how to classify the three bands I've specifically mentioned so far ... as they -- private opinion alert! -- don't really fit well with any of the genres that people typically tend to use most. (Forgoing weirdness that people seem to use for purely spiteful reasons, such as emo and mallcore.) And leaving completely out of the discussion raw facts, such as how neither Lemmy nor Ozzy (or other "old guard" musicians in general) were ever really comfortable with being labelled heavy metal ... which is something I completely understand because they were around before metal proper (the genre) became a thing. As was I. That being said, I can of course see how genres are useful, if not even outright necessary, for music journalists and others who are speaking theory rather than playing music themselves. But it can easily slip into counterproductive mudslinging, typically with fighting words such as "true" (and its opposite). What people like and dislike based in personal taste is fair enough. I just don't see how that should ever become objectified and made into some kind of crusade against the "not worthy" ... who are honestly just making music that they themselves like. Which is also fair enough. Case in point, a band such as Carcass, that didn't sound good to me until they released Heartworks, which is probably among my ten favourite metal albums of all time. But that's me. Others may feel otherwise. I even know some people that were deeply disapponted when Carcass "went soft". But what can you do? The heart wants what the heart wants, right? I went to the other forum and read my way through the "metalcore" thread, without becoming any the wiser. I tend to "get it" fairly rapidly, however complex the subject matter. I understand quantum mechanics and general relativity, for instance, but that may just be because they are farly accurately defined by their mathematical structure. Art is just so much more slippery like that. Open for subjective interpretation and various degrees of perceptive extacy. Speaking of which, the point of all and any music for me is the "eargasm". I don't think I can express it any more accurately than that. Which is why debating the merits of this and that subgenre seems a lot like trying to nail down what's the right way to have sex.

I see a vague joke here somewhere, involving Elf and Dio and "somewhere over the Rainbow" ... but I shall behave myself and stick to the point, which is that Tolkien based his entire universe in Norse mythology. The place where I live is actually called "Greater Elf Valley" ... which is obscured by the fact that in modern Norwegian, the word "elv" also means river (adding a double layer to the name Rivendell), whereas in ye aulde days, the word was å. (A wovel not found outside of Scandinavia anymore.) I was into Tolkien for a while, quite some time ago, but the black metal boys kind of ruined that for me. All those Tolkien references had me facepalmed whilst grinding my teeth. Anyone remember the first "Lord of the Rings" movie? Cartoon-based, with real actors in the mix, particularly as templates for the orcs. Being a lover of the cult movie Bad Taste, I was kind of skeptical when I heard that Peter Jackson was directing the new movie(s) ... but was pleasantly surprised when it premiered. Nowadays, Middle-Earth seems to be located in New Zealand ... which is about as far away from Norway as you can possibly get without actually leaving the planet alltogether. Which is funny, if you have a somewhat bizarre sense of humour. I'm definitely going to see the new movie though, as soon as it hits the market.

In the fine old tradition of backwards Satan speak, turning DOOM on its head will give you MOOD. Not saying it's the right way, I am of the opinion that doom metal is very mood-focused. Which has me digging for some really old stuff that may (or may not) have been working the same angle ... so that it may (or may not) be part of the DNA of modern doom metal (whether we like it or not). Geneticists are constantly speaking of the mythical LUCA (last universal common ancestor) and where exactly on the path of evolution you should put it. At the very least, I think Sabanna Breeze was onto something along those lines, in 1968: Then came Black Sabbath, of course. With the rather predictable tail of copycats and spin-off products. There once was a band that called themselves Supernaut -- no hiding the Sabbath lineage there -- who were into dark, dirty sounding and not least repetitiously monotonous music ... which I think is a fine example of early doom metal.

Yeah, I feel you. In the words of Chuck D: Don't believe the hype. On the other hand, some of the time it's simply because it's a great act. Case in point (with a side nod to a parallel discussion on trad heavy that's going on in another thread), how people would try to shove Mercyful Fate down my throat back in 1983, when Melissa was something new and sensational. They had to trick me, i.e. play it "in the background" without telling me, so that I could pride myself in "discovering" MF on my own. I can be a right bitch like that ... although I've loosened up over the years. I no longer feel as if I have to be the one who calls the shots. It's very interesting how "djent" (and most things that end with "core") seems to be so strongly hated by so many. I kind of get it, but at the same time I don't really get it. ("The lady doth protest too much" as Shakespeare said.) It reminds me of how "proper rockers" used to hate prog and heavy. Narco-infused psycho-jazz was but one of the things that were said. Then they would beat us up, for good measure. It's nice having someone to beat on, I suppose. The path of the righteous man is fuelled by hate for all things they consider to be "wrong". Unlike a lot of people my age -- many of them my good friends -- I don't feel as if metal had its golden age in the 80s. That's a load of crap to me. Or at best, a blatant example of selective memory. I was there. The 80s was a miserable decade, with cold war and aids and whatnot. The only golden age worth shit is the everlasting "right now" ... and right now, I see a metal scene that's more diverse and vital than ever. After the rise of YouTube, it's possible to find stuff that you'd only hear people whisper about during the so called golden ages ... and if you tried to get your hands on any of it, you'd have to pay several months worth of hard earned salary. That it to say, if it was even on the market. (Even a -- strictly speaking -- pirated cassette copy of the crappiest kind would cost you a pretty penny.)

We could probably dance back and forth with the arguments here ... like how big of an influence MF were to everybody ... not just BM bands exclusively ... which would lead us, well, nowhere really. However, being "right" means nothing to me. At the end of the day, what remains is the fact that they came out of left field and impressed the shit out of all metal lovers. They still do. So let's get back to the point at hand, which is "trad metal" and worthy bands in this genre. The big names need no particular promotion, as they are easy enough to find (and be told about) but there are some little ones that are (or can be) delightful to come across ... and one of my eternal favourites in this respect is Dirty Tricks from 1975:

Sorry. No likey. It sounds like some kind of silly black metal spin-off product that's way to "designed" for me. There's also something artificial and grating about the production, so that it slowly but surely gets on my nerves. 4/10.

It can. I was there. Nobody talked about "black metal" (and I was reading NME, Melody Maker and whatnot with a fucking magnifying glass at the time). It was just an album title from the previous year ... and it was most certainly nobody who compared Venom to Mercyful Fate. Two vastly different bands. There's also the fact that Kim left MF to form his own band because he felt like going more "metal" whereas the rest of MF wanted to go more "rock'n'roll". To be honest, it's a complete mystery to me why anyone would lump Mercyful Fate in with Bathory, Hellhammer and Celtic Frost. No, I'm not buying any musical theory based rationalization made 20+ years after the fact. That being said, I'm a sucker for a band called Exciter (who's later been labelled "speed metal" but that ain't right either) who released the seminal album Heavy Metal Maniac in 1983. Then there was "the Belgian Motorhead", a band called Killer, that made some waves with their "Ready For Hell" album in 1980. I'd also recommend checking out Raven ... their 1983 album All For One is pretty good "trad metal". As for the black stuff, there's been some debate whether the US gig Blessed Death belong in this genre, or rather their album Kill Or Be Killed from 1985. I don't think so myself ... but opinions are divided.

Great cover art. The overall sound seems a little too "smudged" for my tastes. The vocals are a little generic as well. 5/10.

They were probably having a "Neo" phase.

There are some bands that seem to fall inbetween the cracks, or whatever. I've spent some time searching for Jinjer ... one of my favourites as of lately ... but couldn't find anything anywhere on-site, but perhaps more worrying is that they didn't even have anything on them at metal-archives (and they seem to typically have something about everything). What to call them? Tech-prog-death-space-goth-core? I don't know. I'm not really a genre man ... but if you had to place them in some of the genres that exist on this site, which would it be? I suppose Tatiana's growling would make it "deathsy", but on the other hand, they're kind of progressive in their instrumentation ... which by no means is stopping them from being all over the place in their 2016 album, King of Everything. Perhaps they aren't even considered a "metal" band proper. WTF do I know? I just happen to like their music. I don't hear anybody questioning the metallic status of Gojira though (even though people are kind of either on the love or on the hate side, not so many are "neutral"). Nor Meshuggah ... that I would think belong wherever Gojira belongs ... as they appear to have structural similarities, at least in my ears. Be that as it may, I've chosen to place Jinjer next to Gojira and Meshuggah in my shelf ... because that's just how I feel about it ... and nobody gets to "moderate" my choices in my own house. (Although a friend recently remarked that "you sure have a lot of Iced Earth albums for someone claiming to not like power metal.") Anyway, since I couldn't find anything on Jinjer, I shall take the liberty of promoting them a little here and now.

It's an interesting psychological quirk, this idea that whenever some person does something really nasty, this somehow reflects on everything else that they have ever done, or will ever do again. The taint somehow becomes transcendental. Case in point, Gary Glitter, that I not very long ago got chided for mentioning among "important glam rock artists" ... because he too got arrested for possessing abuse documents of a paedophile nature. Nowadays, you rarely hear the word "child pornography" in Norway. I've been one of many people that back in the late 80s started a campaign against that very concept, under the rationale that pornography is something that depicts legal activities between consenting adults, and that there can be no such thing as "child pornography", there can only be documentation of abuse, or evidence of a crime, to be exact. A crime I, like most sane parents, think is even more horrific than murder. Which is why I have no sympathy whatsoever for those who explain themselves with being "just curious" (as is often the case). My tolerance level may be high and all, but there are some hard limits, and this one is non negotiable.

Tubeway Army - Replicas Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft - Gold und Liebe Laibach - Nova Akropola Osamu Kitajima - Benzaiten Hedningarna - Kaksi (& Trä) Al Di Meola - Electric Rendezvous Pretty much anything by Frank Zappa + a ton of other stuff that I could spend the rest of the day writing down, except that it would bore the living shit out of everybody, myself included. What can I say? I'm just a lover of good music.

That's some rosy-red wishful thinking right there, I'm afraid. Let's begin with "Swedish Dance Bands" ... Vikingarna, Sven-Ingvars ... (this genre being parodied by Black Ingvars) ... which I can't fucking stand ... and move through a number of weird evangelicals and Pentecost cults that flourish all over the place ... before finally confronting the folksy "Americana" thing which makes actual Mason-Dixon "Bible-Belt" rednecks look innocent by comparison. The biggest festivals in Scandinavia are by far the country music (and accordion-polka-bullshit) ones. Gospel choirs exist pretty much everywhere ... and they are big sellers of albums too. As for me and myself, I don't think in terms of genres, for better or worse. (Or, rather, I use the genre denotation as a general guideline for what to expect from an artist, in a rather broad sense, but when listening to the actual music, the genre is discarded as "value system".) What I dislike is "cheapness" ... which has got nothing to do with the production budget but is rather an attitude towards the art in and of itself ... like the feeling you some times get ... that this shit is made just for the money, it's got fuck all to say, or express, in any more meaningful way. Music that's got no soul, so to speak.

It seems a bit of a foregone conclusion ... but does anyone know of any metal fans who doesn't like horror movies? I've certainly never come across any. I think the horror trope is as important to the metal genre as the fuzz box. In my opinion, there is a quite specific reason for this. Terribilis Est Locus Iste ... as the freemasons say. Meaning "this is a terrible place" ... that is to say, this world that we live in and, by extension, the human condition. Okay, so I've met a moron or two ... but overall and on average, I'd say that metal fans are usually smarter than the general population. They are also more empathic and "emotionally wise". Again, I have no numbers or research to back this up, but it is my impression, based in my subjective life experience. How to express the anguish of existence? How to deal with a world where evil men rule and stupid people are genuflecting before the golden calf of money and shiny stuff? In many ways, hard rock and metal can be said to be "industrial blues", a way to cope with the ugliness and absurdity of it all, given that you can't just pretend as if everything is hunky fucking dory. There's gotta be an outlet, some way to deal with all the frustration and aggression that's naturally building up within any sane and reasonable person when watching the news and trying to relate to all the dumbshit and outright insanity that's happening out there. Rather than political, I'd say this is a philosophical thing. How to be honest in a world of lies and pretence? Music is art, and of all the arts probably the most emotional one, foregoing language and "explanations" as a way to connect with the world. It's not the music that's vile and destructive, it's the world that it reflects. This point seems to be entirely lost to "the opposition" who seems to think that the right and proper way is to live in a bubble of make believe.

There's no accounting for taste. De Gustibus Non Dispotandum, as the Romans used to say. Indisputable. It's not for me to say what other people should and shouldn't like ... but I claim self-ownership and full responsibility for my own shit. It was a grim realization, coming to terms with how your childhood heroes was turning into a disco band. Which reminds me ... I remember being dumbfounded by the "new" Deep Purple too. House Of The Blue Light? Jeez.

(Raises hand.) I used to be one of those individuals at a certain age period of my life. I was heavily into the "punk" thing in 77 and 78, thinking of myself as a "merciless warrior soul". Fucking ridiculous, of course, but in my defence, I was just a kid. Anyway, the spirit was that of "if you can't say it in two minutes or less, don't speak" ... which was a flagrant negation of my even younger self, when I was heavily into guitar solo worship (I am unsure when the air guitar was invented but it was definitely before my time). Interestingly, I considered my musical tastes to exist within a continuum before my punk rock years. At that point in time, my taste for brutal, nasty shit kind of separated from my more eclectic (and somewhat closeted) attraction towards musicmanship and production values, etc. I would have that split personality for many years after. I probably still do, in some respect ... but at least I'm not ashamed of anything anymore. It was a little weird for some time ... having to explain my Frank Zappa fixation to those of my friends who we into Crass, Poison Girls, and that sort of thing. On the other and, you can hide a lot of inept musical skills behind that "wall of sound". On the third hand ... there is the fact that when you go to some hard rock show only to get violent in the mosh pit, you don't care so much about whether the stage act at hand can actually play for shit. All that matters is the violent energy.

I shall consider this a hypothetical "desert island" thing ... and with some pain-in-process select ten classics, but I refuse to arrange them into a hierarchic order (as that would give me a headache). They are all equally worthy, and it's all my taste, no objectivity even vaguely attempted ... which means there will be no accounting and no explanation. Oh, and just one album per band. Shit's gotta be difficult, right? Or at least painful. Mercyful Fate - Melissa Motörhead - Overkill Black Sabbath - Master Of Reality Iron Maiden - Killers Judas Priest - Sin After Sin Witchfynde - Give 'Em Hell Budgie - Never Turn Your Back On A Friend Diamond Head - Lightning To The Nations Hackensack - Up The Hardway Lucifer's Friend - (self titled)

I am now getting the feeling that this place -- this website -- is going to ruin my already shaky finances. There are so many great bands that I've never heard of before ... and given that I've been pretty much raised on a diet of Black Sabbath, I've always had a soft spot for that which is some times called "Sabbath worship". I liked Pentagram and Saint Vitus back in the day, of course ... and I fucking LOVE the Melvins. Then there is this and there is that and and and ... sorry Mac, kiss your wallet goodbye. Fuck me, I came out of this thread with a two digit wishlist. Oh well. What can you do? Anyway, I think there is a case to be made for Darkthrone's Panzerfaust being at least a distant cousin of the doom genre. It was a big sidestep away from the three albums that preceded it anyway (or "the trinity" as it were). Check this out (with doom in mind): A fun fact I came across along the way: Akelei. It was the calling code of German submarines during WW2 and the first word they cracked after Alan Turing figured out the Enigma machine back at Bletchley Park. Nowadays a great doom metal band, it would seem. How befitting.