What Are You Listening To?

[Dead1]

Creeping Death - Boundless Domain

Vader - The Empire

[AlSymerz]

Druid Lord - Relics Of The Dead

[GoatmasterGeneral]

2 hours ago, Thatguy said:

To each his own, but you are objectively wrong. Fen do everything right - insistent riffing, always tremendous drumming, nasty vocals, tolerable clean vocals and intelligent , accomplished musicianship. Also passion. One of my favourite bands and I wish I could see them live.

Yep, BTToS was dreadfully produced but they are professionally produced nowadays. Gloria has a sort of weird charm and is nothing like BTToS at all which made the great unwashed hate it at the time. They were wrong.

I agree entirely, but it's the difference between great and good, and they are such excellent players. 

'On Strange Loops? Thatguy likes it of course and has the T-shirt.

"Intelligent, accomplished musicianship??" Dude, I fucking hate that shit! If I were to read that phrase in an album review l'd turn and run for the hills and never look back. I won't speak to "tolerable clean vocals" as we all have our own differing ideas about what's tolerable and what's not.

As a card carrying postmodernist I can assure you there is no such thing as "objectively wrong" or objectively good or objectively bad when it comes to art and music. All things music related are entirely subjective as you well know.

Not at all surprised to hear you liked Strange Loops. I am a bit surprised to hear you bought their shirt though, you really don't strike me as one of those black band t-shirt under your lab coat every day kind of guys. Beemer drivers don't advertise death metal bands! Even I, one of "the great unwashed" don't wear black band shirts many days.

 

1 hour ago, Nasty_Cabbage said:

Ah crap. I meant Crimson Massacre. Beneath the Massacre were a grindy mathy core band from a while back. Definitely not to be confused with Crimson Massacre: These guys

I won't listen to any band that has the word "math" in their description just on principle. That's why I can't tell any of those B bands apart, BDM, BTBAM, BtM none of them. I know I've heard their names kicked around here and there, but I've never actually listened to any of them. Fuck those guys.

Luster of Pandemonium, the first minute (56 seconds to be exact) was beyond fucking horrific, a crime against humanity. I shouldn't have let it play for that long, I think I'm gonna be scarred for life now. Talk about rubbing sauerkraut into an open wound. 

[Dead1]

18 minutes ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Beemer drivers don't advertise death metal bands! Even I, one of "the great unwashed" don't wear black band shirts many days.

 

 

Dude I always wear metal tops, sometimes even to work when I can't be bothered donning a suit and tie. Even if I ever owned a beemer I would still be wearing a Carcass or Morbid Angel tee!

I own 4 non-metal t-shirts (thanks to wife) and 6 metal ones. 

[SurgicalBrute]

1 hour ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Even I, one of "the great unwashed" don't wear black band shirts many days.

Poser

Where as, a true metal god such as myself has a wardrobe that's roughly 90% band tees

[Thatguy]

1 hour ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

"Intelligent, accomplished musicianship??" Dude, I fucking hate that shit! If I were to read that phrase in an album review l'd turn and run for the hills and never look back. I won't speak to "tolerable clean vocals" as we all have our own differing ideas about what's tolerable and what's not.

As a card carrying postmodernist I can assure you there is no such thing as "objectively wrong" or objectively good or objectively bad when it comes to art and music. All things music related are entirely subjective as you well know.

Not at all surprised to hear you liked Strange Loops. I am a bit surprised to hear you bought their shirt though, you really don't strike me as one of those black band t-shirt under your lab coat every day kind of guys. Beemer drivers don't advertise death metal bands! Even I, one of "the great unwashed" don't wear black band shirts many days

My tongue was deeply in my cheek as usual...but I love Fen as you know and anyone who disagrees is by definition unworthy. I haven't called the Cabbage unworthy yet, but there it is.

I have too many black (or ironically white - Aosoth) T-shirts and I wear them as and where I please. The On Strange Loops shirt is a very nice colourful Möbius strip.

[Dead1]

Guns N Roses - Use Your Illusion I

30+ years later and the heroin addled misogynistic delusion of grandeur that is Guns N Roses still gets me pumping even though I should know better. 

[AlSymerz]

Omicida - Sacrifice Of The Bastard Son

 

I wear what ever t-shirt comes out of the drawer. Be it a band t-shirt (in any colour from black to white, orange to purple), a cheap no branded shirt, silly super hero shirts or even a cartoon dog from a kid's tv show.

 

[RelentlessOblivion]

Enslaved - Vikingligr Veldi

 

I don’t wear my band shirts as often as I used to.

[Hungarino]

New completely unnecessary purchase. Band is pretty good, but the shirt speaks to me. All that is missing is a pentagram 

[GoatmasterGeneral]

5 hours ago, Dead1 said:

 

Dude I always wear metal tops, sometimes even to work when I can't be bothered donning a suit and tie. Even if I ever owned a Beemer I would still be wearing a Carcass or Morbid Angel tee!

I own 4 non-metal t-shirts (thanks to wife) and 6 metal ones. 

10 whole t-shirts? Wow! Not gonna go count them for you here in the middle of the night but I must own at least 50 or more (probably more) metal band T's (all black and just one grey) and probably twice that number of other shirts, short sleeved, long sleeved, pull over, button up, woven, knit, whatever. No suits or ties though. I almost always wear a metal band T-shirt in the colder months as the bottom of 2 or 3 layers where you'll never see it. In the nicer weather (May through October) it's probably 50/50 metal band shirts and plain solid color t-shirts except in the hottest months (July-August) when the black band T's can often be too thick and hot to wear comfortably. I don't care if strangers who might see me around town know I'm a metalhead or not. I know I am, and no one else cares or looks at my old ass anyway. Well some probably do but I just ignore them.

Also, I know it's juvenile but I had to chuckle because here in the states only women wear "tops."

 

3 hours ago, Thatguy said:

My tongue was deeply in my cheek as usual...but I love Fen as you know and anyone who disagrees is by definition unworthy. I haven't called the Cabbage unworthy yet, but there it is.

Just where do you think my tongue spends most of its time mate?? No need to answer, that was rhetorical, but you can bet your sweet ass it's certainly not tickling your posh refined Ozzie anus. If loving Fen and Krallice is what's required to be "worthy" in the ACT these days then I'm quite content to be unworthy. But you know I love ya anyway Doc. Nothing could ever change that.

 

[GoatmasterGeneral]

Nae'blis - Sketches of Reality, Sweden 2007. Funny how slow death metal is generally known as "doom" but slow black metal is called "depressive" or "melancholic" or sometimes even "suicidal." 

 

Beyond Melancholy - That Loneliness That Will Never Leave Me.... Italy

 

[Dead1]

59 minutes ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

10 whole t-shirts? Wow!

 

I only own what I wear.  In fact I generally only own things I need or will use.  Anything extra gets sold or donated or chucked out (even CDs and vinyl)

 

Hell - Curse and Chapter

[Nasty_Cabbage]

I used to buy a lot more metal shirts than I do now. I still wear the ones that aren't torn to all hell outdoors depending on the situation. So maybe not to a fancy restaurant or to a family reunion where my cousins, nieces, and nephews are. It's not like I think any of them would ultimately care, but there's no real point in deliberately flaunting that I've had a much more urban-centered upbringing than most of them. They're just about all in agriculture in some capacity or another and live in the country. There's nothing wrong with that and they're generally just as if not more intelligent than your average city dweller, but it can sometimes drive a social wedge when they just won't really be able to connect over certain things common to growing up in the city and regular concert attendance for bands they will probably never ever hear of is one of those things. I can enjoy camaraderie in either mode. Obviously for concerts, metal shirts for bands that aren't playing that particular gig are a must. That's also the only place I'll buy metal shirts any more. Support the band and all that.

I've been following Mithras since their early days when all they had out was a few demos and, needless to say, I adore them.

And, now that you mention it Goat, slower black metal does tend to attract a weird collection of sub-genre qualifiers. Couldn't say why outside of maybe "suicidal" being studio code for "This man is poison. Don't let him into the studio as he has no capacity to work with others within a band or within a professional recording space... Plus he's probably broke."

8 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

As a card carrying postmodernist I can assure you there is no such thing as "objectively wrong" or objectively good or objectively bad when it comes to art and music. All things music related are entirely subjective as you well know. 

I realize the card carrying thing is figurative, but that's the type of phrase that would make me sigh with weariness. It's certainly not the biggest contradiction I've ever heard. Michael Moorcock who wrote among many other things, the Elric stories and novels, and took far too much acid in the sixties described himself as an "anarcho-pragmatist". That'd be like Indiana Jones self-describing as an archeo-iconoclast. On the level of postmodern approach to ideas like intrinsic truth in the aesthetic ideation of art, I actually take postmodernism to be a somewhat coded term for a very healthy form of cynicism in study. The problem occurs when we introduce it to students far too early before they have a proper background in form, rhetoric, and argumentative structure. You don't teach some one demolition before teaching them how to properly analyze the ins and outs of the buildings they'll be demolishing, and I've seen sooooo many students use it not as a way to approach an idea with a clearer understanding of how to test it for weaknesses, but as an excuse to simply not approach the idea at all.

All this to say that I don't really mean to tease you, Goat, about calling yourself a postmodernist. I'm sure your understanding of the idea is much stronger and more thorough than most. You just caused me to recall a ton of frustrating discussions I had with people who, if tasked with changing a tire, would say "well, to me, all things being relative, your word 'tire' means Captain Crunch, and to change means 'please go and eat all of my', and I actually already did that this morning, so you're welcome."

[MacabreEternal]

Void Ceremony - Threads of Unkowing (2023)

 

[MacabreEternal]

Foreseen - Grave Danger (2017)

 

[GoatmasterGeneral]

4 hours ago, Nasty_Cabbage said:

I realize the card carrying thing is figurative, but that's the type of phrase that would make me sigh with weariness. It's certainly not the biggest contradiction I've ever heard. Michael Moorcock who wrote among many other things, the Elric stories and novels, and took far too much acid in the sixties described himself as an "anarcho-pragmatist". That'd be like Indiana Jones self-describing as an archeo-iconoclast. On the level of postmodern approach to ideas like intrinsic truth in the aesthetic ideation of art, I actually take postmodernism to be a somewhat coded term for a very healthy form of cynicism in study. The problem occurs when we introduce it to students far too early before they have a proper background in form, rhetoric, and argumentative structure. You don't teach some one demolition before teaching them how to properly analyze the ins and outs of the buildings they'll be demolishing, and I've seen sooooo many students use it not as a way to approach an idea with a clearer understanding of how to test it for weaknesses, but as an excuse to simply not approach the idea at all.

All this to say that I don't really mean to tease you, Goat, about calling yourself a postmodernist. I'm sure your understanding of the idea is much stronger and more thorough than most. You just caused me to recall a ton of frustrating discussions I had with people who, if tasked with changing a tire, would say "well, to me, all things being relative, your word 'tire' means Captain Crunch, and to change means 'please go and eat all of my', and I actually already did that this morning, so you're welcome."

Yeah well I might have been purporting to be a post-modernist for the purposes of that post I was making to Doc, but I wouln't say I'm truly a full-blown post-modernist in actuality. You can't take all the shit I say on here literally. In my head I'm often going for humor even though I'm sure I miss the mark much of the time. It's primarily the rejection of objective truth that I find attractive about post-modernism, especially as it relates to the appreciation of art and music. Drives me nuts when people try to assert that pieces of music are objectively good or bad because I know this to be false. But I'm not too attached to very many of the other tenets of post-modernism, except for I guess skepticism and relativism, I'm big proponents of those as well. 'Cause the thing is I most definitely subscribe to the belief that words have objective commonly accepted meanings and you can't just juggle them around at will to suit your own purposes. And I'm not sure, but that belief alone might very well be enough to prohibit me from qualifying as a post-modernist.

Which is ok because I actually identify much more as an iconoclast. Like many of the older baby boomers that came before me I lived through the late 60's hippie era, albeit as a little kid, but I think I was pretty intently aware of shit that was going on in the world around me for a little kid. Certainly a lot more aware than my 9 year old is now. As a precocious child my mother always described me as an "old soul" even though I've since grown up to believe the concept of a soul is utter nonsense. Beyond "flower power" which I never really gave a shit about, that 60's hippie movement was all about irreverance, skepticism, disillusionment, cynicism, iconoclasm, and giving the middle finger to the establishment. Don't accept the bullshit they're trying to feed you, think for yourself and question everything. And as a child of the 60's counterculture movement, and to a lesser extent the beatniks before them (through my dad's love of Bob Dylan which as a kid I found fascinating) I've always striven to embody all that stuff too. You name it, I was and still am against it, two middle fingers proudly stabbing into the air because one is just not enough to get your point across. Was never real heavily into all that peace and love junk, but I loved the idea of tearing shit down (figuratively speaking of course - I was just a little kid) Guess that's why I found punk rock so damn appealing as a teenager in the 70's. It was anti-establishment as fuck and had irreverance and iconoclasm I could sink my teeth into. And I've held onto those counterculture values ever since.

 

Democratic National Convention, Chicago August 1968

[MacabreEternal]

Blood Tsunami - Grand Feast for Vultures (2009)

 

[Nasty_Cabbage]

A Flourishing Scourge - s/t

▶︎ A Flourishing Scourge | A Flourishing Scourge (bandcamp.com)

I hate the band name. Interesting cover art, but it doesn't do much to allay my fears I'm about to run right into a wall of Killswitch Engage styled awfulness.

Hey. This isn't too bad. Lotta melody here, but we avoid the breakdowns and 'core styled vocals. Good melodic base that's much more euro-centric than U.S., and the vocalists doesn't scream like his voice just dropped yesterday. I like it.

 

[Nasty_Cabbage]

Exordium Mors - As Legends Fade and Gods Die

As Legends Fade And Gods Die | Exordium Mors (bandcamp.com)

Must have missed this one last year. I loved Apotheosis of Death, and so far this isn't disappointing me.

[Dead1]

Personally I think postmodernism is a disastrous school of thought.  I agree with it in essence - nothing has true objective meaning or intrinsic value.  All of those are created by subjective human minds. All of existence is essentially nihilistic ie without any value (positive or negative). 

And like any nihilism, it destroys meaning in human existence.  Taken to its logical conclusion, it's extremely destructive as it removes all barriers to violent and destructive behaviour.  

Not only is there no "good or bad" art, there is also no "good or bad" human behaviour.  Murder and rape are essentially the same as having a cup of tea or folding some washing in terms of morality.

And post modernism does actually support this notion.  We already hear post modernists saying cultural values are not comparable and thus criticism not possible.  Eg westerners can't criticise one culture for honour killings because that culture's value set is different to western ones.  

What's left after stripping all values is nothing except base self indulgence be it indeed having a cup of tea or murdering someone.

So personally even though I define all of human existence as essentially meaningless, I chose to have a value set in order to give meaning to my life.

That includes art as well as socio-economic, political and other philosophical concepts.

Ironically the post-modernists and other nihilists also choose to give their lives meaning including very much adherence to the modern humanist cultural values developed in the Enlightenment.  

 

High On Fire - Snakes For The Divine

Obituary - Obituary

[Serpentboi1992]

[Dead1]

13 minutes ago, Serpentboi1992 said:

Possibly the dumbest album cover ever!

[Thatguy]

9 minutes ago, Dead1 said:

Possibly the dumbest album cover ever!

Could be, but if there is a dumber one Serpentboi will find it.

GENEVIEVE - Akratic Parasitism. The nice band name is belied by this loud and wacky music. I will need to listen to this again.

SERPENT OF OLD - Ensemble Under The Dark Sun. Much more conventional.

[AlSymerz]

19 minutes ago, Dead1 said:

Possibly the dumbest album cover ever!

Well they do try hard for the title. But they are a piss take band so the covers fit what they do.