By JOHN WRAYPublished: May 28, 2006
You might have been excused, if you were standing in the crowd at the Knitting Factory in New York on a Wednesday night in January, for thinking you were at a heavy metal show. The room was filled with smoke from two fog machines turned on full blast, the stage was an unbroken wall of speakers and amplifiers reaching almost to the ceiling and the men in front of the speakers — there could have been as few as two of them, or as many as five, it was impossible to tell through the fog — wore jet black robes with hoods that hid everything but their disquietingly goatlike beards. The audience certainly seemed to think it was at a heavy metal show: as the robed figures (druids? warlocks? inquisitors?) picked up their guitars, shouts of "Satan!" could be heard, and hands were raised in the classic devil-horns gesture everywhere you looked. The Knitting Factory is by no means a metal venue (it's known mainly for indie rock and avant-jazz ), but on that night it was clear that the head bangers had taken over. That is, until the robed men started playing.
One of the two men at the front of the stage took hold of his guitar in a businesslike way and played a single chord: a classic metal chord, a down-tuned A or C-sharp, outrageously bottom-heavy and distorted, not unlike the opening of Black Sabbath's "Iron Man." That, however, was where the similarity ended. A full minute later — an impossible length of time by any conventional musical standard — the same chord was still building on itself in the packed, airless room, complicated now by a second guitar line and at least three overlapping waves of feedback. No drums had kicked in, no singer had appeared and if any heads in the crowd were banging, they were doing so in extreme slow motion. The music was unbelievably loud — so loud, in fact, that the sound waves made your rib cage vibrate like a stereo cabinet and your teeth literally rattle in their sockets — but the effect was somehow more meditative than violent. The overall experience was not unlike listening to an Indian raga in the middle of an earthquake.
On closer inspection, you would have noticed that surprisingly few people in the room had the look of genuine metal heads; big hair was in notably short supply, and the ratio of button-downs to heavy metal T-shirts was approximately one to one. What unified the two camps, disparate as they appeared, was an almost studious devotion to the music. Most people had their lips pressed together and their eyes tightly shut, as if standing in a heavy wind. At one point there might have been a voice droning somewhere behind the feedback, or possibly the squeal of a Moog synthesizer, but for the most part there were simply the guitars. For the next 70 minutes the wall of noise continued to reconfigure itself, as much a tactile phenomenon as an audible one. Time decelerated, began to wobble and eventually ceased to apply altogether. Then the music suddenly ended, seemingly in midprogression: the robed figures disappeared, the houselights came on and a Gustav Mahler symphony began to play over the club's severely traumatized P.A. system. The crowd stood still for a few moments longer, emerging from its trance, then dispersed in a quiet and orderly manner. The night's Sunn0))) performance was over.
Our first few records were met with complete indifference," Greg Anderson, one-half of Sunn0))), told me a few months after the Knitting Factory show, grinning good-naturedly. "No one cared, you know?" We were sitting in a deserted sports bar on a slightly down-at-the-heels stretch of Hollywood Boulevard, not far from the offices of the band's label, Southern Lord Recordings. "We just did it because it was our stuff, and we really believed in it. So now, to see Sunn0))) as the biggest thing on our label, really kind of freaks me out. But it's a testament, I guess, to the fact that there's been a change in the way that people are thinking about music." In his black boots, jeans and battered plaid shirt, his face all but hidden by his dark brown beard and nearly waist-length hair, Anderson certainly looked the part of a satanic-rock demigod; our conversation, however, didn't fit the bill at all. I discovered that he was a devoted fan of bebop, that the thing he valued most about his music was the improvisational freedom it allowed him and that the volume of Sunn0)))'s live shows was intended, at least partly, to relax the crowd. "I think low-frequency sound, when played above a certain volume, is very conducive to a meditative state or a trance," Anderson said. "That's how I got into playing this kind of music. I was into feeling it: not just hearing it but feeling it, all over my body. After every show we play, I feel totally exhausted — my brain and body are like jelly. It's a wonderful feeling." Anderson paused briefly, running his fingers thoughtfully through his beard, looking positively Thelonious Monk-ish. "And I believe that sensation can transfer to the audience as well."
At this point, I felt obliged to point out that I couldn't imagine Lars Ulrich, Metallica's drummer and promotional mastermind, extolling the soothing qualities of his band's live shows. Anderson laughed brightly. "I can't, either," he said. That fact didn't seem to bother him at all.
The members of Sunn0))) — pronounced "sun" and named after a rare brand of vintage amplifier — are not an isolated group of obscure heavy metal dissidents. Like many forms of popular music, metal has a family tree that began to branch virtually at the root. After Black Sabbath's self-titled 1970 debut, which more or less single-handedly defined the genre by marrying the heavy blues of bands like Cream and Iron Butterfly to apocalyptic, darkly Christian lyrics, a brief period of stability ensued; soon, however, competing strains began to emerge. Black Sabbath's most orthodox disciples, Judas Priest and Iron Maiden, essentially established heavy metal as a movement, codifying the sound (monolithic guitar riffs, aggressive, bass-pedal-heavy drumming and strident, operatic vocals) that we associate with the term "heavy metal." At roughly the same time, bands like Motorhead were developing the faster, punk-influenced sound that would eventually lead to "thrash metal," "death metal," "grindcore" and a dozen other subgenres and make bands like Metallica millionaires. By the 90's, there were arguably as many rival sects in the international metal scene as there are in the Protestant Church, with the dominant paradigm tending toward faster, harder and generally as frightening as possible. Parallel to all of this was a dissenting tendency — too loose-knit to be called a style — toward slower, darker, more melancholy tempos and a greater interest in melody and mood: bands like Trouble, Witchfinder General and Cathedral. This alternative tradition came, largely after the fact, to be referred to as "doom metal" and is as close as Sunn0))) comes to a pedigree.
As metal was integrated into the cultural mainstream, it was perhaps inevitable that a full-fledged, card-carrying avant-garde would come into being. The experimental metal community that began to emerge in the mid-90's, centered in major cosmopolitan centers like Tokyo and Los Angeles and Oslo, set its sights not on MTV or commercial radio but on the limits of the genre itself. In the process, bands like Sunn0))) won themselves an audience as far removed from the old-school stadium metal crowd as possible. This is music played in small urban venues for sophisticated crowds with anything but orthodox tastes: the sort of clubs Glenn Branca, not Glenn Danzig, would have played in. And the bands themselves are more likely to discuss Satan as a social construct than bite the head off a bat onstage, like Ozzy in his prime.
When I asked Anderson about Sunn0)))'s stage theatrics, his response was almost Warholian in its mastery of spin, laying claim to absolute sincerity while playfully allowing that a certain degree of camp might be involved. What about the robes? I asked. Anderson frowned. "The robe makes it easier for me, personally, just to forget about the audience and concentrate on what's going on onstage — the chemistry, the tones, the sounds." What about the fog machines? "The idea is that this is a ritual, somehow: not a 'gig,' not a concert, but a sort of invocation. That shifts the expectations of the audience." What about the final track on "Black One," the band's breakout 2005 album, for which one guest vocalist, the legendary "suicidal metal" recluse known only as Malefic, supposedly recorded his vocals while sealed inside a coffin? This, finally, prompted Anderson to smile.
"That was about capturing a certain kind of claustrophobic, isolated tone. There was actually a hearse parked outside the studio — a Cadillac hearse, painted purple — that belonged to the studio owner. So, we're like, well of course we have to put the coffin in the hearse! So we actually put contact mikes inside the hearse, and inside the coffin and on top of it, and shut the lid. Malefic's a tall, lanky guy, and he didn't really fit inside too well. Eventually he started feeling claustrophobic, and that's how we got the tone we wanted. There are outtakes of him knocking on the lid, saying: 'O.K., I'm done! Let me out!' " Might that not qualify as tongue-in-cheek? I asked. "Tone first," Anderson said, holding up a finger. "What this group's about is tone." He watched me closely for a moment, then his smile suddenly widened. "I love metal," he said, as if confessing a closely guarded secret.
Stephen O'Malley, the other half of Sunn0))), explained things to me in a slightly different way. "We're really serious about what we do, and I think it's completely honest, but a part of that honesty is the fact that Greg and I have a good sense of humor about the whole thing. We're having fun with these clichés and stereotypes of metal." With his long, center-parted hair and Mephistophelean goatee, O'Malley could pass for his bandmate's twin brother; if anything, however, his tastes are even more unorthodox than Anderson's. In the course of our first meeting, O'Malley cited no less than 43 direct influences, including Sun Ra, Philip Glass, Japan's hard-rock pioneers Flower Travellin' Band, the Seattle heavy-music icons the Melvins, La Monte Young, Celtic Frost, the Indian santoor player Shivkumar Sharma and a black metal band from Sweden called Dissection.
"We're really interested in Tony Conrad, Steve Reich, all those minimalist composers," O'Malley said. "They took a point — one point in a possible progression, or series of notes — and elaborated all of the possibilities that were latent there. The microcosmic approach — Sunn0))) does that a lot." When I asked whether it was good P.R. for a metal band to name-check someone like Philip Glass in a national magazine, O'Malley shot me a deadpan look and shrugged his shoulders. "In the last four or five years, heavy music has progressed a lot. It's opened up to non-guitar-based types of music, nontraditional structures." He took a slow, thoughtful sip of his tea. "That said, there's a bunch of bands, who consider themselves 'true doom metal,' who do have a problem with us. They object to the fact that we don't have melody, harmony, song structures — all the traditional rock elements. We're just like, 'Why do you even care?' " When I suggested that professional envy might be involved, O'Malley smiled the same shy smile I'd seen on Anderson. "I'm really into Ethiopian blues right now," he said. "Ever heard any?"
Sunn0))) isn't the first band O'Malley and Anderson have played in together. O'Malley, 31, met Anderson, 35, in Seattle in the fall of 1991, when O'Malley was in high school and just before Anderson dropped out of Seattle Central Community College. Anderson's first girlfriend had a little brother, whom Anderson converted from effete post-New Wave — Love and Rockets and Bauhaus — to the glories of hard-core punk; the brother was friends with O'Malley, who returned the favor by giving Anderson a crash course in heavy metal. "I remember meeting this kid with superlong hair and sideburns, and I'm like, Who the hell is this guy?!" Anderson told me, laughing. "My girlfriend's brother introduced him to me as Metal Steve. I didn't really know about the underground stuff at that time — Steve was into all this fresh, new, extreme metal, and he basically said, 'Check this out, and this, and this.' Later, I turned him onto stuff I'd discovered, like post-rock and jazz."
A series of fairly straightforward metal bands followed, with names like Thorr's Hammer, Burning Witch and Goatsnake. The bands were fun for a while, and reasonably successful, but over time each of them grew confining — like any pop-music subculture (and perhaps more so than most), metal has a clearly defined sensibility, with a surprisingly strict set of rules governing everything from songwriting to the cut of your leather pants. After an extended musical hiatus, in which O'Malley tried his luck in England as a graphic designer and Anderson drifted south to Los Angeles, the Sunn0))) project took shape. The only rule for the new band — other than "heaviness," which, given its members' tastes, was likely to take care of itself — was that there should be no rules at all.
From the beginning, the Sunn0))) sound was connected to prevailing notions of heavy music by only the slimmest of threads. "We wanted absolute freedom," Anderson told me repeatedly. "Freedom to improvise, freedom to try stuff out, freedom not to worry about being entertaining." The first track on the band's 1999 debut, "The Grimm Robe Demos," makes the band's philosophy clear. Clocking in at just under 20 minutes, "Black Wedding" is immediately recognizable as a kind of manifesto, a declaration of radical intent, boiling down the traditional metal riff to its aural and conceptual essence. If Deep Purple had released an album showcasing the moments of pure bottom-end feedback between actual songs on "Deep Purple Live," it might have sounded something like "The Grimm Robe Demos." It's hard to imagine any music being heavier or, for that matter, very much slower — the first chord change happens four minutes and four seconds into the song. One fan wrote in an online chat room that the band waits for glaciers to roll by and then flags one down and hitches a ride.
In 1998, Anderson and O'Malley founded Southern Lord, largely in order to find a home for their own music; no metal label, no matter how "underground," seemed to know what to do with Sunn0))). "The Grimm Robe Demos" had sold less than 700 copies, and the follow-up in 2001, "0/0/ Void," had sold just over 2,000. Even for the embryonic experimental metal scene — a subculture within a subculture — those were discouraging numbers. Anderson and O'Malley's response was surprisingly pragmatic: they found an affordable office space on Hollywood Boulevard, printed up some T-shirts, pressed a reasonable amount of records, then quietly built a following.
"Three basic types of people come to see us play," O'Malley told me. "First, the people who are really into experimental music or metal — the passionate music lovers; then you've got the spectacle crowd, who come for the robes and the smoke machines; last, you have a group of people who are more interested in the physical aspect of it. Those are the people who are just like, I'm going to stand at the front of the stage for an hour and a half — can I take it? Will I wet my pants? Will I puke? I'm going to be at the very front, in front of these amps for 75 minutes, and then when it's done I'll feel liberated, or I'll feel like I've beaten the band or whatever, no matter how tortuous it is." I pointed out that it's fairly uncommon for a band to divide its fan base into the aural, the visual and the tactile: I'd expected him to make a distinction between metal and experimental-music fans. O'Malley nodded politely, then did his best to bring me up to date. "In the past three or four years, since the point when the Internet started becoming the primary source for discovering music, the lines between different styles have really begun to blur." He spread his arms as he said this, looking at me almost slyly, as if he were about to perform a magic trick. "There's so much access to so many different types of music now, it's no wonder that people aren't categorizing themselves so sharply. It's pretty awesome, really."
Southern Lord Recordings had no particular ideology or purpose at the beginning, other than to advance the cause of music that its founders made or liked — but there was no question, ultimately, what genre of music that would be. "I like heavy music," Anderson told me simply. "That's where I come from." When I asked O'Malley to explain the label's name, he looked down at his fingers with something verging on embarrassment. "You know that Slayer album from the 80's?" he mumbled. "'South of Heaven?"' I was beginning to understand. "I see," I said. "So, then, Southern Lord would be another name for—" "That's right," O'Malley said quickly, clearly grateful that I hadn't made him spell it out.
Over the last five years, Southern Lord has become something of an independent-music success story. As awareness of "drone metal" — as Sunn0)))'s take on doom metal has been labeled — and of other forms of unconventional heavy music has grown, both on purist metal Web sites and on college campuses, record sales for the label have risen exponentially. Eight years after its founding, Southern Lord has arguably become as closely associated with the experimental metal scene as Blue Note was with the hard bop movement of the 50's.
"They've got a good thing going with that label," says Ian Christe, author of "Sound of the Beast: The Complete Headbanging History of Heavy Metal." "It's become a known brand, the way that Sub Pop was in the early 90's — people will check out a record they've never heard of just because it's out on Southern Lord." The label's discography is diverse, as you might expect of Anderson and O'Malley: two Saint Vitus reissues; a much-acclaimed comeback album by the minimalist post-grunge band Earth (which once briefly featured Kurt Cobain on vocals); and a strangely beautiful suite of songs called "Triste," by the Australian experimentalist Oren Ambarchi, largely made up of single guitar notes played over gentle static. One band more than any other, however, has helped to put Southern Lord on the map: a well-mannered three-piece from Tokyo with the slightly improbable name Boris.
If Sunn0))) is the ZZ Top of experimental metal, with matching beards and Gibson Les Paul guitars, Boris might be the Kraftwerk, or the Ramones, or even the Jimi Hendrix Experience, depending on the album. The members of Boris, each of whom goes by only his or her given name — Wata on lead guitar and vocals, Atsuo on drums and Chinese gong and Takeshi on Cheap Trick-style, double-neck guitar and bass — approach heavy metal with the seriousness of theoretical physicists. Like Sunn0))), they have the requisite long hair and black tour T-shirts; unlike Sunn0))), they are clearly and undeniably a rock band, with identifiable song structures, singable lyrics and a charming and welcome willingness to pay tribute at the altar of Black Sabbath. The fact that Boris's lead guitarist is a graceful, soft-spoken woman who occasionally wears Victorian blouses onstage is unusual, certainly, but in no way outside the realm of your run-of-the-mill head banger's fantasy.
At first glance, therefore, you might wonder where the common ground with a band like Sunn0))) would lie. The answer, of course, is simple: Boris is omnivorous in its taste, obsessed with surprising its audience and, in the words of Greg Anderson, makes "beautifully ominous" music. Not only that, but the kids seem to like it. Boris is currently second only to Sunn0))) in total record sales for Southern Lord artists, and the band's new album, "Pink," has been winning ecstatic reviews from 20-something metal heads and middle-aged critics alike.
Boris's success in America — which, though still fairly modest, is building up a remarkable head of steam — seems at once unlikely and inevitable. It seems unlikely not only because its members are relatively old (all of them are well past 30) and speak very little English but also because the band's identity shifts drastically from album to album: so much so, in fact, that a visual code has been developed for its record sleeves, the aesthetic equivalent of a parental advisory sticker. From CD's on which "Boris" is printed in uppercase letters (as in the case of "BORIS:Pink"), fans can expect Black Sabbath-by-way-of-the-Melvins heavy rock; if the CD in question features the band's name in lowercase lettering, they may need to check their expectations at the door. A recent lowercase Boris album, "Sun Baked Snow Cave," featured an hourlong collaboration with the Japanese experimental "noise" pioneer Merzbow, in which softly plucked acoustic guitar chords alternated with ear-piercing cascades of, well, noise.
"Boris makes both commercial and uncommercial rock," Atsuo, the band's drummer, told me proudly. "To make only one kind is not interesting." We were sitting in the corner booth of an immaculate Denny's in the depths of Tokyo's seemingly infinite western suburbs, a few blocks from the band's bare-bones rehearsal space. In Europe and America, Takeshi chimed in, people seem to want the lowercase boris, at least at the live shows; in Japan, the fans want to be rocked. "But the uppercase BORIS always sells more records," Atsuo observed between mouthfuls of cheesecake. Later, the conversation turned, perhaps inevitably, to the once-almighty Metallica and the fact it seems to be making only one type of music, especially lately. "They should try making both kinds," Takeshi said earnestly. "That would be very much more cool."
Like Sunn0))), Boris is almost startlingly cosmopolitan in person. The band members first met at art school, so I asked whether visual art had influenced their music. Atsuo considered this for a moment. "The Dada movement, and the neo-Dada movement, did not have very much influence in Japan," he said finally, bringing his fingers thoughtfully to his chin. "But what Dada did is like what Boris does. Our goal is to make people think — to bring about a change in their consciousness, to create a new way of listening, of hearing. Something like the music of John Cage." Atsuo has become an ideologue of sorts for the experimental-metal movement, famous for statements like the one he made during an interview with the Web zine RadCompany.net: "The moment when a person changes — that is the devil.. . .It's simple to talk about Satan as a symbol. But it's important to consider the deeper meaning of the symbol."
A little over a month ago, on a humid Sunday evening, Boris performed at a club called Shelter, in the Shimokitazawa district of Tokyo. Shimokitazawa is well known for its legion of "live houses," clubs where bands in every popular genre from hard-core punk to country and western perform each night of the week, occasionally on the same bill. That night's show — which had been listed, somewhat alarmingly, as "fangsanalsatan extra" on the club's Web site — was an intimate affair, a last-minute party for the band's inner circle. Shelter was jammed to the gills, as it must be virtually every night: the performance space is no bigger than your average suburban basement. At least a quarter of the audience, which looked surprisingly conservative, were Westerners. "I can't wait to tell my ex-boyfriend that I saw Boris play," said Ariel Acosta, a 24-year-old cultural-studies major from Virginia. "He'll be so jealous!" The crowd waited politely for the opening act — a pretty four-piece with a waifish lead singer who might best be described as a Pacific Rim Julee Cruise — to finish its set, clapping dutifully as it left the stage. Then a fog machine was turned on somewhere behind the amplifiers, the U.K. metal band Venom began to play over the P.A. and the atmosphere in the cramped room changed perceptibly. "Here we go," the extremely drunken Englishman next to me whispered to himself, closing his eyes and grinning.
The hour that followed had a lot in common with the Sunn0))) show at the Knitting Factory — the fog, the volume, the hypnotic flow of uninterrupted sound, the occasional devil-horns gesture — but the differences were easily as striking. The Boris show was symphonic where Sunn0)))'s had been — for want of a better word — tectonic: progressions were explored and returned to in unexpected ways, but the architecture of the music remained clear from start to finish. What's more, the personalities of the musicians, though occasionally obscured by the fog, were absolutely key to the event: Takeshi's metal flourishes, Atsuo's fanatical grin, Wata's beatific presence at the front left corner of the stage. For much of its 45-minute set the band was starkly backlit, and Takeshi's silhouette might have been lifted out of an early video clip from MTV's "Headbangers Ball." There were other moments when I was put in mind of a classic rock opera, like the Who's "Tommy" or even "Kilroy Was Here," by the 70's stadium rockers Styx, except that Boris's performance was both more feverish and more elegant.
Stephen O'Malley first heard Boris in England and quickly passed its demo on to his bandmate. "The first stuff I heard of theirs was amazing," Greg Anderson says. "It was really, really heavy. I could relate to it completely, because it was inspired by the same bands that inspired us — particularly the Melvins and Earth. After that, they started experimenting, and I couldn't always follow where they were going — every record sounded different than the one before. But I respected that completely." It's clear that Southern Lord expects great things from "Pink," the latest Boris album, which had its U.S. release this month. "The new record is a combination of all the Borises of the past," Anderson says. "They're keeping that heavy element alive, but they've really developed their sense of melody — this new album is the most tuneful thing they've ever done." When I expressed surprise at hearing "tunefulness" praised by a member of Sunn0))), Anderson seemed almost hurt. "I am totally into melody," he says quietly. "Stevie Wonder is one of my all-time favorites."
Of all the parallels between Sunn0))) and Boris, none are more essential than their shared belief in collaboration. Partnership with like-minded musicians, however far-flung the genre, has emerged as a hallmark of the new metal avant-garde. Starting with "0/0/ Void," Sunn0)))'s second full-length release, each of the band's albums has made use of guest vocalists, ranging from the Hungarian "black metal" singer Attila Csihar to England's Julian Cope, whose band the Teardrop Explodes rode the British New Wave to brief fame in the 80's. Boris, in turn, has collaborated with Merzbow and Keiji Haino (two of the legends of Japanese experimental music), with a member of the psychedelic folk band Ghost and, most recently, with Anderson and O'Malley themselves. A Boris/Sunn0))) album, titled "Altar," is scheduled to be released in October. "Altar" is not a split LP — something quite common in the indie-music world — but an actual merger of the two bands, with musicians from each contributing to every song on the album.
Perhaps no collaboration better illustrates Sunn0)))'s distance from traditional metal, and its proximity to the avant-garde, than the band's current project with a 32-year-old metal fanatic named Banks Violette. Violette is not, strictly speaking, a musician at all (though he's covered in tattoos, keeps a drum kit in his apartment and claims that metal is more important to him than art), but a sculptor and an installation artist. O'Malley, who now lives in New York, has written music for two of Violette's pieces, the first of which, "Bleed," is now in the collection of the Guggenheim Museum.
"Bleed" consists of a mound of lacquered wood fragments, reminiscent of Robert Smithson's broken-glass sculptures of the 60's, across which low-frequency sound is pumped at extremely high volume by a loose ring of speakers. "Greg and I have always been into the idea of sound as a sculptural element, something that you feel as much as hear," O'Malley told me. "So the project made sense to us." Violette, who has collaborated with other metal bands in the past, including Norway's Thorns, explained his interest in Sunn0))) in similar terms: "For me, what Steve and Greg are doing bears comparison to Donald Judd's work, particularly his boxes of the 60's and 70's. Their sound is serial, repetitive, plays off of mass and is as much a physiological phenomenon as an acoustic one. It stops being an aesthetic experience and becomes a body experience. There are exact, direct parallels there."
Visual artists have allied themselves with heavy metal before — Mike Kelley's most recent exhibition, "Day Is Done," referenced 70's metal iconography, and Matthew Barney's film "Cremaster 2" famously featured Dave Lombardo, formerly of Slayer, playing a drum solo — but Violette's investment in the genre borders on the obsessive. For his latest project, a one-man show at the Maureen Paley gallery in London, the artist has cast the entire Sunn0))) back line — the Moogs, the guitars, the towering wall of amplifiers and speakers — in industrial salt. "Salt's a little tricky as a medium," he confessed, smiling boyishly. "It's hydrophilic, which means that it attracts moisture. A puddle tends to form along the bottom. Some galleries don't appreciate that." The band will perform at the opening, playing at its customary bone-rattling volume, but the audience won't be able to see the musicians: they'll be in a closed-off room one floor below the exhibition space. "The idea is absence, nonparticipation, missing the event," O'Malley told me, clearly excited by the concept. "On the second floor, where the piece is showing, you'll just have the residual sound, the ghost of the actual performance."
The day after we spoke, Sunn0))) was scheduled to fly to Brussels for the Domino Festival, in what was yet another first for the band: a guitar-free show, performed entirely on Moog synthesizers and oscillators. I should have known better by this point, but I couldn't resist: I felt dutybound to mention that most people wouldn't consider a band without guitars to be a metal band at all. "That's exactly why we're doing it," O'Malley said, as patiently as possible. When I asked Anderson about the coming gigs, he sat back in his chair and gave a quiet laugh, looking something like a well-intentioned pirate. "Steve's the arty guy in the band," he said. "I'm the guy that likes to stay home and watch 'Seinfeld."' But an instant later he was as serious as the grave. "I totally respect Steve's interests," he said. "I may just be a metal head, but I'm definitely always up for something new."
John Wray is the author of the novel "Canaan's Tongue." This is his first article for the magazine.
― scott seward (scott seward), Sunday, 28 May 2006 20:45 (nineteen years ago)
― scott seward (scott seward), Sunday, 28 May 2006 20:48 (nineteen years ago)
oh my
― scott seward (scott seward), Sunday, 28 May 2006 21:16 (nineteen years ago)
oh dear
― scott seward (scott seward), Sunday, 28 May 2006 21:17 (nineteen years ago)
oof
― scott seward (scott seward), Sunday, 28 May 2006 21:18 (nineteen years ago)
The writer doesn't remember Voivod and Celtic Frost in the 80s
― DJ Martian (djmartian), Sunday, 28 May 2006 21:20 (nineteen years ago)
― Abbadavid Berman (Hurting), Sunday, 28 May 2006 21:21 (nineteen years ago)
"a much-acclaimed comeback album by the minimalist post-grunge band Earth"
― scott seward (scott seward), Sunday, 28 May 2006 21:23 (nineteen years ago)
http://ilx.wh3rd.net/thread.php?msgid=639015
― NoTimeBeforeTime (Barry Bruner), Sunday, 28 May 2006 21:23 (nineteen years ago)
― Abbadavid Berman (Hurting), Sunday, 28 May 2006 21:24 (nineteen years ago)
― Abbadavid Berman (Hurting), Sunday, 28 May 2006 21:25 (nineteen years ago)
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Sunday, 28 May 2006 21:28 (nineteen years ago)
― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy (Kerr), Sunday, 28 May 2006 21:30 (nineteen years ago)
(kidding)
― Abbadavid Berman (Hurting), Sunday, 28 May 2006 21:33 (nineteen years ago)
― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy (Kerr), Sunday, 28 May 2006 21:38 (nineteen years ago)
The current editor of the Times magazine wrote music criticism for Slate for a while.
― behind the news, Sunday, 28 May 2006 21:38 (nineteen years ago)
urp
― scott seward (scott seward), Sunday, 28 May 2006 21:53 (nineteen years ago)
― scott seward (scott seward), Sunday, 28 May 2006 21:54 (nineteen years ago)
omg, yoo r startling me with yer cosmopoopulism hevy rokker!!
― scott seward (scott seward), Sunday, 28 May 2006 22:02 (nineteen years ago)
"black metal"
― scott seward (scott seward), Sunday, 28 May 2006 22:03 (nineteen years ago)
― sean gramophone (Sean M), Sunday, 28 May 2006 22:15 (nineteen years ago)
― save the robot (save the robot), Sunday, 28 May 2006 22:16 (nineteen years ago)
― scott seward (scott seward), Sunday, 28 May 2006 22:19 (nineteen years ago)
better them than actual metal bands, i guess.
― GOD PUNCH TO HAWKWIND (yournullfame), Sunday, 28 May 2006 22:54 (nineteen years ago)
xpost, omg, skot, they aren't dumb, they're cosmopolitan, they eat cheesecake. And the NYT flew me to Japan.
I was put in mind of a classic rock opera, like the Who's "Tommy" or even "Kilroy Was Here," by the 70's stadium rockers Styx...
The liar, liar pants on fire maneuver, for retrieving the interest of the upper middle class reader, should it be wandering. They're like Styx! I know Styx!
― George 'the Animal' Steele, Sunday, 28 May 2006 23:01 (nineteen years ago)
hahaha!
― scott seward (scott seward), Sunday, 28 May 2006 23:03 (nineteen years ago)
mr. steele OTMFM.
― GOD PUNCH TO HAWKWIND (yournullfame), Sunday, 28 May 2006 23:30 (nineteen years ago)
― George 'the Animal' Steele, Sunday, 28 May 2006 23:33 (nineteen years ago)
― Rickey Wright (Rrrickey), Sunday, 28 May 2006 23:37 (nineteen years ago)
― scott seward (scott seward), Sunday, 28 May 2006 23:37 (nineteen years ago)
i think yer thinking of cheech & chong.
― Rickey Wright (Rrrickey), Sunday, 28 May 2006 23:38 (nineteen years ago)
"'We're a hard rock band,' Mr. Heppner declared as his fellow guitarist Dan Watchorn, 27, nodded in agreement. Still, the band, which was formed in 2003, sets itself apart from its peers by infusing songs with a healthy dose of melody . . . "
― Rickey Wright (Rrrickey), Sunday, 28 May 2006 23:43 (nineteen years ago)
― scott seward (scott seward), Sunday, 28 May 2006 23:44 (nineteen years ago)
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Sunday, 28 May 2006 23:45 (nineteen years ago)
even dumber than dumb.
― scott seward (scott seward), Sunday, 28 May 2006 23:45 (nineteen years ago)
― scott seward (scott seward), Sunday, 28 May 2006 23:48 (nineteen years ago)
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Sunday, 28 May 2006 23:50 (nineteen years ago)
W-to-the-T-&-F
― GOD PUNCH TO HAWKWIND (yournullfame), Monday, 29 May 2006 00:11 (nineteen years ago)
Yes, that's why this story will be in Da Capo's best rock writing thingamajig book next year (that and because every editor-at-large likes to apple polish the right newsies), edited by someone who is thought to be hot now but will be found to be phony the year after.
sets itself apart from its peers by infusing songs with a healthy dose of melody . . . "
Just like the Scorpions who sold a paltry number of records in the Eighties. Ha-ha.
Next up for the Times, perhaps a feature on Wolfmother? They sound like Zeppelin and Black Sabbath but aren't stupid like those same bands that your granddad liked.
Hey, we ragged on the Times six months or so ago when it ran an earlier piece on smart metal not like the dumb metal your brother liked. Even the ragging on the NY Times for its incompetent and lackadaisical but fashionable and life-styley coverage of metal is a meme that's old.
― George 'the Animal' Steele, Monday, 29 May 2006 00:11 (nineteen years ago)
― Abbadavid Berman (Hurting), Monday, 29 May 2006 00:30 (nineteen years ago)
you caught me. i never tire of it though. some cliches are timeless.
― scott seward (scott seward), Monday, 29 May 2006 00:39 (nineteen years ago)
yeah, this is just weirdly inexplicable. "or the beatles, or the kingston trio, or the mormon tabernacle choir, or les brown and his band of renown..."
― scott seward (scott seward), Monday, 29 May 2006 00:44 (nineteen years ago)
― scott seward (scott seward), Monday, 29 May 2006 00:48 (nineteen years ago)
I bought the Wolfmother CD at Target tonight, for $9.99. So far, I've only listened to the first song, which was garage stoner rock that gets better as it goes along, and the first bit of the second, which aped the semi-acoustic guitar sound of the soft stuff on Led Zeppelin III. But I don't hate it yet.
― pdf (Phil Freeman), Monday, 29 May 2006 00:50 (nineteen years ago)
Here he goes off his rocker again with no editor to correct him. There was nothing "straightforward metal" about Thorr's Hammer and Burning Witch. They were both doom noise bands. Anyone who expect's "straightforward metal" can't listen to them. Do you think the writer listened to them or is he faking it?
And the bands themselves are more likely to discuss Satan as a social construct
Repeat offender, NY Times being self-referential without clueing in the reader. Satan discussed as a social construct in the New York Times last piece on smart metal for you not your older dumbass relatives and siblings six and some months ago in the Sunday Arts section. Probably uttered by someone from Boris, if I remember correctly.
The band members first met at art school, so I asked whether visual art had influenced their music.
The band members of Boris have lungs, so I asked whether, indeed, they did breathe air.
Atsuo considered this for a moment. "Air, now that's a mixture that did not have much influence in Japan," he said finally, bringing his fingers thoughtfully to his chin. "But air is basically what we all breathe and does Boris. Our goal is to make people breathe — to bring about a change in their consciousness, to make them think about air and Satan as a social construct..."
Then he took a sip of tea in between mouthfuls of cheesecake.
― George 'the Animal' Steele, Monday, 29 May 2006 01:01 (nineteen years ago)
― Stormy Davis (diamond), Monday, 29 May 2006 01:02 (nineteen years ago)
― George 'the Animal' Steele, Monday, 29 May 2006 01:04 (nineteen years ago)
― Stormy Davis (diamond), Monday, 29 May 2006 01:08 (nineteen years ago)
― George 'the Animal' Steele, Monday, 29 May 2006 01:13 (nineteen years ago)
Doesn't anyone on here have anything better to complain abt? It's great that Sunn & Boris are getting such attention. (Oh, & guy who used the phrase "actual metal" in all seriousness: it must be tough being the last unembarrassed fallguy for authenticity. "Actual metal." Jesus. Grow up.)
― Murk Plectrum, Monday, 29 May 2006 01:14 (nineteen years ago)
― renegade bear shot by cops on frat row (vahid), Monday, 29 May 2006 01:14 (nineteen years ago)
― scott seward (scott seward), Monday, 29 May 2006 01:16 (nineteen years ago)
He really said that.
― Murk Plectrum, Monday, 29 May 2006 01:16 (nineteen years ago)
right this minute? no.
― scott seward (scott seward), Monday, 29 May 2006 01:18 (nineteen years ago)
Yes. I'm glad you asked. Here I complain about something related to the Dixie Chicks.
http://www.dickdestiny.com/blog/2006/05/rebels-who-share-tour-bus-toilet.html
When I asked Natalie Maines about her coming gigs, she sat back in his chair and laughed quietly, looking something like the well-intentioned wench of a pirate.
― George 'the Animal' Steele, Monday, 29 May 2006 01:21 (nineteen years ago)
― Stormy Davis (diamond), Monday, 29 May 2006 01:21 (nineteen years ago)
You don't understand. This is standard treatment for any music article published outside of a blog.
― fyi, Monday, 29 May 2006 01:22 (nineteen years ago)
― Stormy Davis (diamond), Monday, 29 May 2006 01:23 (nineteen years ago)
sorry. i should have said outside of a blog and the village voice.
― fyi, Monday, 29 May 2006 01:26 (nineteen years ago)
― George 'the Animal' Steele, Monday, 29 May 2006 01:27 (nineteen years ago)
― Abbadavid Berman (Hurting), Monday, 29 May 2006 01:34 (nineteen years ago)
it's possible he might have meant BANDS THAT ACTUALLY CONSIDER THEMSELVES METAL BANDS!!
DUDE FROM SUNNO))): "I mean we’re not just a… we’re not a metal band, but we’re also not a doom band, we’re not a experimental band, we’re not a electronic band, but all these things exist in our music."
DUDE FROM BORIS: "People often mistake us for an ordinary metal band. We're not."
― scott seward (scott seward), Monday, 29 May 2006 01:37 (nineteen years ago)
http://www.matadorrecords.com/images/fullsize/ole-584.jpghttp://www.epitonic.com/art/artists/oxes/selftitled_cover250.jpg
― Abbadavid Berman (Hurting), Monday, 29 May 2006 01:54 (nineteen years ago)
― scott seward (scott seward), Monday, 29 May 2006 01:58 (nineteen years ago)
― Abbadavid Berman (Hurting), Monday, 29 May 2006 02:01 (nineteen years ago)
― scott seward (scott seward), Monday, 29 May 2006 02:05 (nineteen years ago)
― Abbadavid Berman (Hurting), Monday, 29 May 2006 02:09 (nineteen years ago)
― Abbadavid Berman (Hurting), Monday, 29 May 2006 02:11 (nineteen years ago)
Ha, that was a funny inadvertent way to phrase it.
― Abbadavid Berman (Hurting), Monday, 29 May 2006 02:13 (nineteen years ago)
― Shoes say, yeah, no hands clap your good bra. (goodbra), Monday, 29 May 2006 02:29 (nineteen years ago)
― Shoes say, yeah, no hands clap your good bra. (goodbra), Monday, 29 May 2006 02:31 (nineteen years ago)
― schanden (ritual), Monday, 29 May 2006 02:35 (nineteen years ago)
I highly doubt many yuppies will get into these bands. Nice try though -- your generic *seeing through the bullshit* comment might have made sense if this were Devendra Banhart or something.
― Abbadavid Berman (Hurting), Monday, 29 May 2006 02:38 (nineteen years ago)
― schanden (ritual), Monday, 29 May 2006 02:39 (nineteen years ago)
― helix aspersa (Jody Beth Rosen), Monday, 29 May 2006 02:40 (nineteen years ago)
Heh. I'm a yuppie who likes Sunn O))). Take that, gutter slime!
― Shoes say, yeah, no hands clap your good bra. (goodbra), Monday, 29 May 2006 02:45 (nineteen years ago)
― Abbadavid Berman (Hurting), Monday, 29 May 2006 02:47 (nineteen years ago)
I like Sunn0))), I saw them when they played here last week. It was quite the endurance contest -- O'Malley directly acknowledged that aspect of their shows in the article.
― NoTimeBeforeTime (Barry Bruner), Monday, 29 May 2006 02:47 (nineteen years ago)
― schanden (ritual), Monday, 29 May 2006 02:48 (nineteen years ago)
Goddammit. Saw right thru my bullshit, didn't ya?
― Shoes say, yeah, no hands clap your good bra. (goodbra), Monday, 29 May 2006 02:48 (nineteen years ago)
― Abbadavid Berman (Hurting), Monday, 29 May 2006 02:52 (nineteen years ago)
otm! jbr's genius shines like a beacon.
― scott seward (scott seward), Monday, 29 May 2006 03:20 (nineteen years ago)
Bacon & Egg to thread. Rolling Metal 2006 revive, revive!
cheese cake IS the most un-metal of cakes allright,,just, which kind of cake would be metal?
But ice cream and cake are great with heavy metal, I said, between sips of tea. And I have a studious devotion to music, often listening to it with my eyes tightly shut and lips pressed together so I don't get blown sideways by the mighty wind.
― George 'the Animal' Steele, Monday, 29 May 2006 03:22 (nineteen years ago)
― scott seward (scott seward), Monday, 29 May 2006 03:29 (nineteen years ago)
wawa? nope.
― scott seward (scott seward), Monday, 29 May 2006 03:40 (nineteen years ago)
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 29 May 2006 03:43 (nineteen years ago)
"ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH!"
*MOOOOOOOOOOSH...*
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 29 May 2006 03:44 (nineteen years ago)
walt whitman (screamo)
j. fenimore cooper (leatherstockings)
thomas edison (limited-edition wax-cylinders in an edition of 666)
joyce kilmer (pagan forest doom)
new jersey turnpike rest-stops that are not metal:
clara barton (red cross? please.)
molly pitcher (water bearer and cooler of hot guns? i don't think so.)
grover cleveland (mugwumps, despite the name, not actually that scary.)
― scott seward (scott seward), Monday, 29 May 2006 03:45 (nineteen years ago)
Somehow, it would have to figured out how a Cadillac hearse could be gotten into it, too.
― George 'the Animal' Steele, Monday, 29 May 2006 03:50 (nineteen years ago)
― NoTimeBeforeTime (Barry Bruner), Monday, 29 May 2006 03:56 (nineteen years ago)
― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy (Kerr), Monday, 29 May 2006 10:48 (nineteen years ago)
http://206.225.86.190/cs/forums/2290490/ShowPost.aspx
― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy (Kerr), Monday, 29 May 2006 10:50 (nineteen years ago)
― ((((((DOPplur)))n)))u))))tttt (donut), Monday, 29 May 2006 10:57 (nineteen years ago)
― ((((((DOPplur)))n)))u))))tttt (donut), Monday, 29 May 2006 10:59 (nineteen years ago)
Night donut!
― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy (Kerr), Monday, 29 May 2006 11:04 (nineteen years ago)
― le hague, Monday, 29 May 2006 12:56 (nineteen years ago)
― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy (Kerr), Monday, 29 May 2006 13:04 (nineteen years ago)
a) pretty shitty articleb) mediocre bands that don't "consider themselves metal" being presented as some exciting new vanguard of metal? c) didn't we just do this with "folk music" a couple of years ago?
Away back to your non false metal of manowar and beloved 70s heavy rock bands.
oh dear, 70s heavy rock band hatred! my world is crumbling!
― GOD PUNCH TO HAWKWIND (yournullfame), Monday, 29 May 2006 14:26 (nineteen years ago)
― GOD PUNCH TO HAWKWIND (yournullfame), Monday, 29 May 2006 14:29 (nineteen years ago)
― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy (Kerr), Monday, 29 May 2006 14:32 (nineteen years ago)
― max (maxreax), Monday, 29 May 2006 14:38 (nineteen years ago)
The heavy-metal-not-for-stupid-people meme, just change the name of the bands, from the Times
You might not have known it from looking at the audience, but when the Chicago instrumental band Pelican performed at the Knitting Factory in New York in late July, it was playing metal. Instead of long hair and all-black outfits, the crowd was displaying the trappings of brainy, slightly nerdy indie rock. Young men wore artistically cropped hair and tight-legged jeans, and there was even a smattering of young women in librarian glasses and worn-out Chuck Taylor sneakers. This is not your older brother's metal crowd. "I've been wearing my Def Leppard T-shirt on tour recently," said Laurent Lebec, a guitarist in Pelican and a fan of that archetypal 1980s metal band
===Metal not for idjits anymore, or until we run the next article with the same meme!
"Metal in general has long been unjustly maligned as solely the province of knuckle-dragging meatheads," said Aaron Turner, a founder of the influential Hydra Head Records, which has released three CDs by Pelican, including, recently, "The Fire in Our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw." "That said, there's never been a group of musicians like there is now, who are helping to advance the form."======
Say it again and again: Thinking Man's Metal or Heady Metal.On records, Sunn 0))) haunts. In concert, its members, who perform in druid-style robes and typically use industrial smoke machines, alter the feel of the room. "In that way, the entire space becomes the performance," O'Malley said. For a time, as if to drive home its conscientious-objector status, Hydra Head even used the slogan "Thinking Man's Metal." "It was self-deprecating, but it also exemplified what we wanted to do," Turner sai========
Now I'm going to go and brew some tea.
― George 'the Animal' Steele, Monday, 29 May 2006 15:56 (nineteen years ago)
― marc h. (marc h.), Monday, 29 May 2006 17:20 (nineteen years ago)
― Josh in Chicago (Josh in Chicago), Monday, 29 May 2006 17:25 (nineteen years ago)
The two pieces show ways in which the NY Times is internally lazy. Sections don't communicate with each other and one presumes they don't even run as elementary a check as to put "Sunn0)))" or "Boris" into their terminals to see what they've actually written on the bands in the last year. If they had, then someone with a hair of a critical sense might have said (and maybe they did and were ignored): hmmm, this looks repetitive. Or, hey, there's that Boris dude with the Satan/pseudo-intellectual thing.
So it could have been done with less pomposity -- easy on the assertions of non-traditionality and total noval uniqueness to gild the lily -- or taken less of the air of look at the brains we've dug up for you from the mushroom pile this Sunday afternoon. Like the same mushrooms in September on a Sunday afternoon.
One of the challenges of writing well for a newspaper audience is indeed telling the story to the disinterested layman, not writing it for the obsessed enthusiastic, and avoiding dressing up the story with what will appear to the reader to be the same thing, bon-bons of meaningless jargon meant to sound impressive like "the Indian santoor player Shivkumar Sharma" just because it came out of the mouth of one of the subjects.
Since I spent a lot of time interviewing people who were often like this at a daily newspaper, there is a way to keep the story perking without passing on all the phlogiston of the interviewed.
― George 'the Animal' Steele, Monday, 29 May 2006 17:46 (nineteen years ago)
1) People who will tolerate this type of repetitive, pedantic writing because after all, it's mainly intended for the general, interested music reader who won't remember (or care) that the same paper wrote about the same bands in the same way just last year.
vs
2) People who prefer that the paper maintains its self-continuity and keeps its facts+opinions straight without always assuming that the reader is a moron who doesn't know any better.
I can see both sides of the argument, although I'm more partial to #1 myself.
― NoTimeBeforeTime (Barry Bruner), Monday, 29 May 2006 19:33 (nineteen years ago)
Sunn o))) C/D, S&D.
It just never goes anywhere.
― George 'the Animal' Steele, Monday, 29 May 2006 19:43 (nineteen years ago)
― scott seward (scott seward), Monday, 29 May 2006 19:51 (nineteen years ago)
― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Monday, 29 May 2006 20:38 (nineteen years ago)
― m coleman (lovebug starski), Monday, 29 May 2006 20:46 (nineteen years ago)
― scott seward (scott seward), Monday, 29 May 2006 20:51 (nineteen years ago)
― scott seward (scott seward), Monday, 29 May 2006 20:52 (nineteen years ago)
Refried pseudointellectualism or not, I found that to be a striking statement, and not one I'd come across before.
― registered ratty (registered ratty), Monday, 29 May 2006 21:09 (nineteen years ago)
― Murk Plectrum, Monday, 29 May 2006 21:34 (nineteen years ago)
― Abbadavid Berman (Hurting), Monday, 29 May 2006 21:36 (nineteen years ago)
I don't mind the diversion at all! I was just noting that these criticisms of NYT-style feature writing seem to come up in a lot of other threads.
xpost
More boring than complaining about people complaining about the NYT?
― NoTimeBeforeTime (Barry Bruner), Monday, 29 May 2006 21:48 (nineteen years ago)
And we never resolve anything because nobody is right or wrong about the issue (IMO). Carry on.
― NoTimeBeforeTime (Barry Bruner), Monday, 29 May 2006 21:49 (nineteen years ago)
― Abbadavid Berman (Hurting), Monday, 29 May 2006 21:52 (nineteen years ago)
― registered ratty (registered ratty), Monday, 29 May 2006 21:55 (nineteen years ago)
To others it is the staff of life, an avenue to humor, a tried-and-true method of thread invigoration, a way to inject energy and heat into cold and small affairs.
I found [the Devil statement] to be a striking statement, and not one I'd come across before
I read it in a Scott Peck book a long time ago. The Boris fellow probably stole it from him.
― George 'the Animal' Steele, Monday, 29 May 2006 22:10 (nineteen years ago)
― scott seward (scott seward), Monday, 29 May 2006 22:47 (nineteen years ago)
Weird.
Also, no one in journalism thinks the NYT is the best paper in the country. Most would give the Los Angeles Times that distinction, & some the WashPost.
I don't think anyone's said anything abt "picking on" the paper. I don't give two shits about the Times. Nor do I think I implied that it was a good or bad thing for the Sunn/boris article to be geared toward a mass audience. What I said was that that is the way things work in mass journalism. It's disingenuous to gripe abt it, as if you expected better. What the fuck do you think we're talking abt? It's a NEWSPAPER. Maybe where you come from folks expect intelligently informed, complex arguments to appear in such forums. But I've never heard of such a thing.
― murk Plectrum, Monday, 29 May 2006 23:05 (nineteen years ago)
― schanden (ritual), Monday, 29 May 2006 23:19 (nineteen years ago)
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=%22gold+standard+of+american+journalism%22&btnG=Search
― scott seward (scott seward), Monday, 29 May 2006 23:41 (nineteen years ago)
― scott seward (scott seward), Monday, 29 May 2006 23:43 (nineteen years ago)
As for this story, I'm not sure why people are getting worked up about it. Look, I was a metal fanatic for most of my life, having followed "extreme" metal with intense scrutiny from thrash and NWOBHM through black and death metal, and I found nothing to be offended by in the article. The artcile certainly overstates its case, generalizes and oversimplifies, but it's an article by outsiders looking at something from a distance- it's a personal interest story that may or may not appeal to a certain readership. It neither confirms the value of or sullies the NYTimes.
I personally found the story OK. I could have bitched about the absence of any mention of Neurosis, the band that made all this pretentious "art" shit ok to metalheads in the first place, or the offhanded Dissection mention. (The fact that few here even know anything about doom or black metal doesn't bother me either) But why bother? It's a decent article that will be read with curious amusement by a segment of the paper's readership. Why should I be offended by it?
It's better than dropping Adorno into every discussion about music. ;)
― James Slone (Freon Trotsky), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 00:25 (nineteen years ago)
― James Slone (Freon Trotsky), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 00:30 (nineteen years ago)
Nothing disingenuous at all. "Not candid or frank; insincere." There's not a disingenuous bone in Scott's body, virtual or otherwise.
Maybe where you come from folks expect intelligently informed, complex arguments to appear in such forums
Sometimes, yeah, it happens. It happens in the NY Times. Not quite as often in the LA Times and I'm a subscriber. No Pulitzer's this year.
The criticisms leveled at the piece are legit. It worked too hard at the cliches, it was lazy, it spent more time trying to look smart than being smart. Less of the "the Indian santoor player Shivkumar Sharma" & the "I'm into Ethiopian blues"-type shtick taken seriously, maybe some relation to niche music P.T. Barnums.
― George 'the Animal' Steele, Tuesday, 30 May 2006 00:33 (nineteen years ago)
x-post
― scott seward (scott seward), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 00:36 (nineteen years ago)
new super-duper deluxe reissue coming out from The End this year. As well as The Somberlain. And if the new album doesn't hit the same heights, it's still worth a listen.
― scott seward (scott seward), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 00:39 (nineteen years ago)
― James Slone (Freon Trotsky), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 00:44 (nineteen years ago)
― Je4nn3 ƒur¥ (Je4nne Fury), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 01:23 (nineteen years ago)
pfft. there's only one logical choice for the honor:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/3c/Batchild.jpg
8th highest circulation in the world, baby!
― latebloomer (latebloomer), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 01:31 (nineteen years ago)
I'm quite happy to agree that Borisbloke didn't think of the idea, that M Scott Peck thought of it, or picked it up himself from some apochryphal gnostic source or other.
What interests me more is the proposition itself - the assertion of the identity of satanism and personality change. That's an interesting viewpoint to be propounded in the world of heavy metal - normally it's throw the HORNS and DEFILE the Christians and EXCORIATE the poseurs etc - which is a thoroughly acceptable hedonistic/nihilistic spin, nothing wrong with it at all (unless you're on the receiving end of course).
Borisbloke's view, which is perhaps at odds with the view implied by album titles like 'Don't Break the Oath' or 'Defenders of the Faith' embraces something a good deal more psychoanalytic in orientation. It also seems to suggest that there is some merit to the theatre of fakery - it is not only OK to change your persona, but, far from making you a poseur or faker, it is actually the cornerstone of the whole process.
These issues, and how they relate to the fairly pointy headed (pointy-bearded even?) characters involved in Southern Lord, are quite interesting in their own right. Or, perhaps, they're only interesting to me - in which case, carry on.
― ratty, Tuesday, 30 May 2006 01:40 (nineteen years ago)
http://www.mlo-scandinavia.net/
― scott seward (scott seward), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 01:54 (nineteen years ago)
http://www.dissection.nu/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=5&sid=e889d883f1d874ffb9226cd2720ca069
― scott seward (scott seward), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 01:55 (nineteen years ago)
hahaha awesome
― latebloomer (latebloomer), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 02:02 (nineteen years ago)
― Thomas Tallis (Tommy), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 02:13 (nineteen years ago)
― Thomas Tallis (Tommy), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 02:18 (nineteen years ago)
― 6335, Tuesday, 30 May 2006 02:22 (nineteen years ago)
snicker. lol. lmfao.
― boy child, Tuesday, 30 May 2006 02:22 (nineteen years ago)
If there's a feature-length article on SunnO))) (besides this one) that actually has a half-decent lede, talks about music in the first paragraph, let's the band's quotes anchor the piece instead of half-baked critical suppositions about spirituality and drone and bleakness, I would LOVE to see it.
― Whiney G. Weingarten (whineyg), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 03:01 (nineteen years ago)
― Whiney G. Weingarten (whineyg), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 03:02 (nineteen years ago)
it's okay. it doesn't knock my socks off. every time i play it it just makes me want to hear something else that i like better. it makes me want to go buy a high rise record. i think they are talented. but in a jack of all trades master of none kinda way. i'm just talking about this album though. i don't know their old stuff at all. their crazy freekbeat stuff isn't the craziest. their doom isn't the doomiest. their shoegaze isn't the gaziest. i'll bet they are way fun live though. plus, the lo-fi prod isn't fucked up enough either. it makes me itchy. to turn it off. hah! yikes, sorry. just one man's opinion. i dig the drummer. i can't stop playing the new agalloch album.
― scott seward (scott seward), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 03:18 (nineteen years ago)
― scott seward (scott seward), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 03:33 (nineteen years ago)
― Whiney G. Weingarten (whineyg), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 04:08 (nineteen years ago)
The suppositions in the NYTMag Sunn0))) thing are only partially baked. It's about absence, just residually baked ideas, the ghosts of them.
― George 'the Animal' Steele, Tuesday, 30 May 2006 04:43 (nineteen years ago)
― George 'the Animal' Steele, Tuesday, 30 May 2006 04:54 (nineteen years ago)
(btw, sorry for offtopic shit, but Aborym's Generator has arrived at the local record store but still haven't bought it - seriously, is a genuinely wonderful record, cos I only have $30 to spend, I'm more of a fan of Attila than Aborym, and it's either that or the Cathedral rerelease or the new Celtic Frost thing, or even Hellfire Club by my favourite band Edguy. Help me spend my meagre wage wisely.)
"The Black Flame and Concepts of Spiritual Inequality"hahaha awesome
-- latebloomer
Yes, completely awesome!
― ratty, Tuesday, 30 May 2006 05:55 (nineteen years ago)
I left about halfway through their set when I saw 'em at the Knit. I'm over seeing these trance-metal behold-our-awesomeness gigs anyway. I saw a killer show last night - Necrophagist, Arsis and Neuraxis at BB King's. "Night of 1000 Guitar Solos" - nothin' but technical death metal (except for Cattle Decapitation, who were also on the bill, for no reason I can understand). Necrophagist had sound problems - the bassist's amp kept dying just in time for his solos. Arsis were kinda boring and motionless - that's what happens when you've gotta sing and play those guitar lines at the same time. But Neuraxis fuckin' killed it. Their frontman is a cross between Barney from Napalm Death and Till Lindeman from Rammstein, with some Phil Anselmo leaps thrown in. During the solos, he'd air-guitar and make ape faces at the audience like Jay from the Kevin Smith movies. They played for a half hour, but they owned the gig. After their set, I went upstairs and bought both their CDs - their new album, and a 2CD set that has their first three albums on it. When you get tired of drone, check these guys out. They'll eat your brain.
― pdf (Phil Freeman), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 13:14 (nineteen years ago)
― scott seward (scott seward), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 13:34 (nineteen years ago)
― schanden (ritual), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 13:43 (nineteen years ago)
Infernum - The Curse (really really good polish black metal. and sad too, cuz the lead singer killed himself - on Walpurgia Night! how metal is that? - in 2004. The album is only being released now. very creepy doom-ridden stuff.)
Carpathian Forest - Fuck You All!!!! (a truly rocking album)
Ancient Rites - Rubicon (epic dramatic war metal. very melodic. great production)
Fleshgore - May God Srike Me Dead (demented grind from poland. the kind of stuff that makes you say, "wait, was that a guitar solo, or did something just fly into my ear?")
Celestiial - Desolate North (seriously chill depresso one-man funeral/forest doom. completely ambient with lots of nice bird sounds)
Incarnated - Pleasure Of Consumption (see Fleshgore)
Black Cobra - Bestial (great and catchy two-man - just drums and guitar- sludge/doom/punk by ex-members of cavity and 16)
Tristwood - The Delphic Doctrine (techno + screaming death metal)
Zao - The Fear Is What Keeps Us Here (monster xian noize + albini)
Dissection - Reinkaos (the swansong. it definitely grew on me. two american shows and then bye bye dissection)
Voivod - Katorz ( i dig it. hard rock riffs and all)
Summoning - Oath Bound (Napalm is my label of the year. Tyr, Korpiklaani, Summoning, Falkenbach. I can't get enough. Summoning make synth-heavy Lord Of The Rings metal. i love it.)
Agalloch - Ashes Against The Grain (the greatest metal band from Portland, Oregon? maybe. love the harmonies on the new one. and the Katatonia-esque guitar tones. Epic American mountain metal that never once reminds you of Neur/Isis. A feat!)
Urgehal - Through Thick Fog Till Death (great rockin' norse black stuff reissued by Southern Lord)
Craft - Fuck The Universe (again with the Southern Lord distro. so very good. and again, hard rockin'. the black hordes are seriously kicking out the jams)
If someone asked me what one album they should buy this year it would have to be celtic frost. without a doubt.
besides celtic frost though, the two albums that impressed me the most by bands that i sorta/kinda had given up on: moonspell and sepultura. and if you really really love great production, those two albums are the ones to beat. they both sound amazing. sepultura especially, really blew me away. great stuff. and no jello biafra or any tired 90's goop to be found on it.
― scott seward (scott seward), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 15:36 (nineteen years ago)
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 15:38 (nineteen years ago)
― scott seward (scott seward), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 15:48 (nineteen years ago)
― pdf (Phil Freeman), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 16:11 (nineteen years ago)
― gear (gear), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 16:15 (nineteen years ago)
― Roque Strew (RoqueStrew), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 16:37 (nineteen years ago)
Because their phlogiston detectors were all broken. Don't forget the pillars of salt, hydrophilicity, the santoor-playing Shivka Shivarooni, Ethiopian blues, goatlike beards, not playing in the same room so as to have the music suggested through a wall, lips pressed together and eyes tightly shut. It happens when you're up there too high where the air is so crisp.
― George 'the Animal' Steele, Tuesday, 30 May 2006 16:52 (nineteen years ago)
― Whiney G. Weingarten (whineyg), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 16:59 (nineteen years ago)
― Whiney G. Weingarten (whineyg), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 17:03 (nineteen years ago)
Please to recommend some High Rise that doesn't make my eyes glaze over. I've been hearing the High Rise/Pink comparisons for a while now, and decided to dig up as much stuff as I could find by them. the only High Rise song I can even remember two minutes after it ends is "Wipe Out" on II. Seriously, what High Rise songs/albums/EPs make you say that Boris is pulling a "bad" High Rise impression?
― josh in sf (stfu kthx), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 17:12 (nineteen years ago)
And if High Rise sees this, they'll be cursing their bad luck at missing out.
― George 'the Animal' Steele, Tuesday, 30 May 2006 17:16 (nineteen years ago)
HFS wow.phanthom of the paradise's list!
reading it feels like holding cronopios y famas for a buck.. iggor cavalera's iggor cavalera///can't wait to get some through my ears.thank you schweets.......;)
― schanden (ritual), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 17:46 (nineteen years ago)
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 17:48 (nineteen years ago)
― scott seward (scott seward), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 17:51 (nineteen years ago)
You should have DJ'ed with it.
― Whiney G. Weingarten (whineyg), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 18:10 (nineteen years ago)
― Roque Strew (RoqueStrew), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 18:43 (nineteen years ago)
― schanden (ritual), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 18:55 (nineteen years ago)
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 18:56 (nineteen years ago)
A lot of Acid Mothers Temple stuff is more of a rip-off of High Rise than most of the new Boris, methinks...
the only High Rise song I can even remember two minutes after it ends is "Wipe Out" on II.
DUDE, High Rise are fahking AWESOME
― Chris Bee (Cee Bee), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 19:01 (nineteen years ago)
The best High Rise albums IMO are "Live" & "PSF"
― Chris Bee (Cee Bee), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 19:03 (nineteen years ago)
― larssen (larssen), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 19:29 (nineteen years ago)
― George 'the Animal' Steele, Tuesday, 30 May 2006 19:30 (nineteen years ago)
― schanden (ritual), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 19:30 (nineteen years ago)
Gosh, both of these bored the shit out of me - Aura Noir ('til the accident) were doin' a way better blackened thrash than CF, and Ancient Rites wakes up all my No I Do Not Wanna Go To The SCA Party impulses...just ponderous, in Casey Kasem's phrase
I've been listening to and championing death metal for years and I still think Pink is just awesome from beginning to end! It's just, like, no dudes, this isn't "the new metal" or anything, it's just kinda the conscious-rap version of metal (which haha there're some parallels to non-comm rap's treatment at the hands on rap heads on ilm here, eh)
xpost Jesus would people quite foisting onto Pink ridiculous this-is-my-baggage expectations like "not raw enough"? Boris has never been even remotely about anything in the same aesthetic universe as "raw" (neither is doom in general for that matter)
― Thomas Tallis (Tommy), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 19:33 (nineteen years ago)
― larssen (larssen), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 19:43 (nineteen years ago)
― schanden (ritual), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 19:52 (nineteen years ago)
Ha! tell that to south america and asia.
― scott seward (scott seward), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 20:22 (nineteen years ago)
― Thomas Tallis (Tommy), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 20:27 (nineteen years ago)
they don't bore me at all! especially the ancient rites. i liked that right off the bat. i should'nt really call it war metal either. war is more the theme. i think. they are just metal metal. and the carpathian forest really did rock me in the same way that the craft album did. i dig those riffs.
i really don't want to harp on the boris album. it's not bad. i can certainly see why people like it. some things hit you and some things don't. i guess i want to be hit HARDER by stuff like that. and the production kinda prevents that from happening a little too.
― scott seward (scott seward), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 21:16 (nineteen years ago)
― registered ratty (registered ratty), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 21:20 (nineteen years ago)
― schanden (ritual), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 21:22 (nineteen years ago)
John Wray is the author of the novel "Canaan's Tongue."
― scott seward (scott seward), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 21:23 (nineteen years ago)
― schanden (ritual), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 21:23 (nineteen years ago)
― scott seward (scott seward), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 21:24 (nineteen years ago)
― registered ratty (registered ratty), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 21:37 (nineteen years ago)
As far as Boris goes, if they did a lot more songs like "Intro" on Akuma no Uta, they would be one of my favorite bands ever.
― josh in sf (stfu kthx), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 21:50 (nineteen years ago)
yeah ancient rites are one of those bands I really want to like but they just leave me cold...I'll give it another shot
― Thomas Tallis (Tommy), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 22:48 (nineteen years ago)
― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy (Kerr), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 22:50 (nineteen years ago)
― pdf (Phil Freeman), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 23:07 (nineteen years ago)
"best room-clearers in the business" hahaha no shit. I walked through the "grimmfog" on the way out and bumped into no one0))))"
hahaha, come on, that's funny.
― scott seward (scott seward), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 23:44 (nineteen years ago)
The band dont come out of that thread well at all though.
― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy (Kerr), Tuesday, 30 May 2006 23:58 (nineteen years ago)
― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy (Kerr), Wednesday, 31 May 2006 00:01 (nineteen years ago)
whoa. i need to keep up, i thought taur-nu-fuin was their only release (second only to veles' black hateful metal in the polish garage nsbm sweepstakes).
― GOD PUNCH TO HAWKWIND (yournullfame), Wednesday, 31 May 2006 00:11 (nineteen years ago)
http://www.dickdestiny.com/blog/2006/05/p.html
― George 'the Animal' Steele, Wednesday, 31 May 2006 00:17 (nineteen years ago)
― schanden (ritual), Wednesday, 31 May 2006 02:33 (nineteen years ago)
Sun0))) was like a hot girl staring at your crotch and chanting "come. come. Come. Come." progressively louder for about an hour.
Not exactly the kind of thing you'd want often, or even twice; but a nice thing to mark off the list.
― Forksclovetofu (Forksclovetofu), Wednesday, 31 May 2006 05:05 (nineteen years ago)
Speak for yourself!
― ratty, Wednesday, 31 May 2006 05:14 (nineteen years ago)
― Forksclovetofu (Forksclovetofu), Wednesday, 31 May 2006 05:28 (nineteen years ago)
No shit! Metal is pretty much a global form of music. Even in the urban areas of the southwestern United States, most of the kids showing up at metal shows are Mexicans, Central Americans, and 2nd generation kids from said immigrant groups.
― James Slone (Freon Trotsky), Wednesday, 31 May 2006 05:32 (nineteen years ago)
― James Slone (Freon Trotsky), Wednesday, 31 May 2006 05:33 (nineteen years ago)
An anti-recommendation, a parody for a blue comedy. Mel Brooks to thread.
― George 'the Animal' Steele, Wednesday, 31 May 2006 06:34 (nineteen years ago)
I'm just starting. Superficially, the line art was aiming for a shallow Pettibon feel.
― George 'the Animal' Steele, Wednesday, 31 May 2006 06:55 (nineteen years ago)
It would be great to read, one day, a mainstream newspaper article that didn't read either like this, or "I was a teen-aged metalhead, laugh with me @ my juvenile folly", but instead "metal is fucking great, if you think all it's bands and fans are meatheads, that just shows YOU up as a moron!"
― Pashmina (Pashmina), Wednesday, 31 May 2006 08:24 (nineteen years ago)
― rizzx (Rizz), Wednesday, 31 May 2006 09:10 (nineteen years ago)
― schanden (ritual), Thursday, 1 June 2006 16:35 (nineteen years ago)
The Thinking Reader's Guide to Fear
Reviews by TERRENCE RAFFERTYPublished: June 4, 2006
"BECAUSE most right-thinking — i.e., literate, educated, professional-type — people consider horror fiction repulsive, juvenile or plain stupid, it's probably a good idea for me to acknowledge from the start that the genre's respectability deficit is fully deserved and even fundamental to its nature. The emotion horror stories strive to evoke — fear — is one that civilized folks are inclined to think of as low, primitive, animal. And it is, just like hunger, thirst and sexual desire. These are impulses that in most religious and many intellectual traditions derive value only from being controlled in the pursuit of piety or reason or whatever higher ideal of human behavior you happen to aspire to. Horror is, it's fair to say, pretty determinedly nonaspirational, which is perhaps why it appeals so strongly to teenagers, slackers and fatalists, and hardly at all to normal, functioning adults, who are busy keeping the more pressing everyday anxieties — disease, financial ruin, loss of love — at bay and who may fail to see the benefit of adding vampires and zombies and poltergeists to the list.Enjoying horror stories, as I do, or finding them inherently pointless, silly and unwholesome, as many others do, is largely a matter of taste and temperament and is therefore unarguable. So rather than attempt to convert anybody, I'll just try to explain, with as little defensiveness as possible, what attracts me to this often indefensible genre."
― scott seward (scott seward), Sunday, 4 June 2006 11:16 (nineteen years ago)
and here I though that heavymetal rockcrits had the market cornered on modifier-pileup trainwrecks...
― m coleman (lovebug starski), Sunday, 4 June 2006 11:34 (nineteen years ago)
― Keywords: revenge, knife, granddaughter, demonic-possession, rock-star, eel (Aus, Sunday, 4 June 2006 11:41 (nineteen years ago)
― scott seward (scott seward), Sunday, 4 June 2006 11:52 (nineteen years ago)
― m coleman (lovebug starski), Sunday, 4 June 2006 12:00 (nineteen years ago)
I don't see ONE mention of Lee Ving in that. RIPOFF.
So Clive James, then.
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Sunday, 4 June 2006 12:01 (nineteen years ago)
― scott seward (scott seward), Sunday, 4 June 2006 12:04 (nineteen years ago)
― mike powell (mike powell), Sunday, 4 June 2006 12:39 (nineteen years ago)
― pdf (Phil Freeman), Sunday, 4 June 2006 13:18 (nineteen years ago)
If you like schlock horror you're non-functioning and abnormal.Did you know I stutter uncontrollably and have incurable halitosis?
Standard NY Times sweeping statement by the ersatz intellectuals they love so much. Except the writer who gets a bye for the sake of the story in which one must have a polarity, otherwise the telling of it gets too complicated and lacking in tension. And here I am, slogging through grinders and B-movie schlock on the Sci-Fi channel every Saturday night, no matter how bad, and sometimes even making microwave popcorn.
George. Why santoor in quotes
It could have went either way.
Anyway, it's a thing with newspapers, not just the New York Times. The Los Angeles Times often collects the same kind of reporters and writers to do the ersatz intellectual thing in which the standard received wisdom is that no one smart enough to read a newspaper would like something in its standard form because it's too middle,low or of beetle brow -- but it's cool to like it if there's a corner of it which can be held up as clever.
My blog entry for yesterday talked about the same thing with an example from the LA Times. In this case, the Times gourmand had dug up a cut-and-mix-paste of GG Allin and Twista put together on computer by some dimbulbs, suitable for praise alongside the usualupscale bon-bons.
― Urnst Kouch (Urnst Kouch), Sunday, 4 June 2006 16:35 (nineteen years ago)
There's a bit more to the NY and LA Times than their art sections.
― James Slone (Freon Trotsky), Tuesday, 6 June 2006 00:09 (nineteen years ago)
― James Slone (Freon Trotsky), Tuesday, 6 June 2006 00:11 (nineteen years ago)
Julian Cope 'explains' Sunn0))), plus Wolfmangler and other dimly connected bands, to Grauniad readers
― DJ Mencap (DJ Mencap), Friday, 18 August 2006 08:32 (nineteen years ago)
― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy (Kerr), Friday, 18 August 2006 09:26 (nineteen years ago)
― Pashmina (Pashmina), Friday, 18 August 2006 09:28 (nineteen years ago)
― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy (Kerr), Friday, 18 August 2006 09:42 (nineteen years ago)
― GOD PUNCH TO HAWKWIND (yournullfame), Friday, 18 August 2006 11:03 (nineteen years ago)
― Urnst Kouch (Urnst Kouch), Friday, 18 August 2006 11:17 (nineteen years ago)
This band has been peddled relentlessly, locally, in e-mail for the last few weeks. Worthy of a horselaugh. They've bought into the idea that spam e-mail is superior to sending a review copy.
99.9 percentage they're shit. And I have -every- 16 album and like every one. You're fucked now, dudes. There will be no avoiding this in Google. Change your name, fire your altie record company and press person. Start over. Sie sind kaput!!
How to alienate potential friends and scotch the meeting of new people.
― Urnst Kouch (Urnst Kouch), Friday, 18 August 2006 12:07 (nineteen years ago)
― NickB (NickB), Friday, 18 August 2006 12:30 (nineteen years ago)
― Pashmina (Pashmina), Friday, 18 August 2006 13:57 (nineteen years ago)
― scott seward (scott seward), Friday, 18 August 2006 13:59 (nineteen years ago)
― scott seward (scott seward), Friday, 18 August 2006 14:00 (nineteen years ago)
Um, does does the Arch Doid mean death metal here?
― NickB (NickB), Friday, 18 August 2006 14:07 (nineteen years ago)
― GOD PUNCH TO HAWKWIND (yournullfame), Friday, 18 August 2006 14:08 (nineteen years ago)
― scott seward (scott seward), Friday, 18 August 2006 14:12 (nineteen years ago)
Where do you guys think it comes from though? Most "dedicated" metalheads who listen exclusively to the genre are "stoopid". Wikipedia nu-metal discussion page anyone?
― xave (xave), Friday, 18 August 2006 14:13 (nineteen years ago)
Most dedicated genre fans who listen to any genre exclusively are either stupid, or obnoxiously holier-than-thou and stupid, though! Why do metallers get singled out?
― Pashmina (Pashmina), Friday, 18 August 2006 14:34 (nineteen years ago)
― pdf (Phil Freeman), Friday, 18 August 2006 16:49 (nineteen years ago)
― xhuxk (xheddy), Friday, 18 August 2006 16:58 (nineteen years ago)
― scott seward (scott seward), Friday, 18 August 2006 17:05 (nineteen years ago)
True enough.
― xave (xave), Friday, 18 August 2006 17:06 (nineteen years ago)
― 6335 (6335), Friday, 18 August 2006 17:26 (nineteen years ago)
Right now I'm listening to the second half of My War, speaking of slow 'n' heavy.
― pdf (Phil Freeman), Friday, 18 August 2006 17:31 (nineteen years ago)
man, that's one more than i ever liked. excepting the s/t brain donor release, which is just kinda stupid aping of iggy/mc5 and winds up sounding like blackjack records stuff with a weird old dude singing. and "my pagan ass" sounds like the jesus lizard.
― GOD PUNCH TO HAWKWIND (yournullfame), Saturday, 19 August 2006 03:46 (nineteen years ago)
― Whiney G. Weingarten (whineyg), Saturday, 19 August 2006 05:07 (nineteen years ago)
― Telephonething (Telephonething), Saturday, 19 August 2006 05:21 (nineteen years ago)
I'd still feel like such a hipster getting into it now, as if I was suddenly going to immerse myself in gangsta rap about a decade after the fact... another genre where I struggle to get on the other side of the whole dominant-ego aesthetic thing.
― bad hair day house (fandango), Sunday, 20 August 2006 13:39 (nineteen years ago)
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Sunday, 20 August 2006 14:02 (nineteen years ago)
― scott seward (scott seward), Sunday, 20 August 2006 14:24 (nineteen years ago)
― xhuxk (xheddy), Sunday, 20 August 2006 14:29 (nineteen years ago)
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Sunday, 20 August 2006 14:34 (nineteen years ago)
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Sunday, 20 August 2006 14:36 (nineteen years ago)
Wasn't it george who coined that?
― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy (Kerr), Sunday, 20 August 2006 14:37 (nineteen years ago)
Pfunk -- that's why I linked George's response.
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Sunday, 20 August 2006 14:38 (nineteen years ago)
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Sunday, 20 August 2006 14:39 (nineteen years ago)
― xhuxk (xheddy), Sunday, 20 August 2006 14:40 (nineteen years ago)
The funny thing is all these bands have been accepted by the stoner rock community. before the "hipster metal" "types" did. So it's certainly not all people who don't like hard rock who are into them.
the whole "hard rock for people who don't like hard rock" is snobbish and elitist anyway.
I don't like wolfmother as it happens anyway hehe.x-post
― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy (Kerr), Sunday, 20 August 2006 14:41 (nineteen years ago)
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Sunday, 20 August 2006 14:42 (nineteen years ago)
x-post. Thanks Ned.
― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy (Kerr), Sunday, 20 August 2006 14:43 (nineteen years ago)
― scott seward (scott seward), Sunday, 20 August 2006 14:44 (nineteen years ago)
― scott seward (scott seward), Sunday, 20 August 2006 14:46 (nineteen years ago)
The witch ,Saviours, and Parchman Farm tracks I have heard sounded ok IIRC.Don't like Wolfmother as I said and the others I have never heard.
― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy (Kerr), Sunday, 20 August 2006 14:48 (nineteen years ago)
― scott seward (scott seward), Sunday, 20 August 2006 14:48 (nineteen years ago)
― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy (Kerr), Sunday, 20 August 2006 14:49 (nineteen years ago)
― xhuxk (xheddy), Sunday, 20 August 2006 14:49 (nineteen years ago)
― scott seward (scott seward), Sunday, 20 August 2006 14:50 (nineteen years ago)
― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy (Kerr), Sunday, 20 August 2006 15:07 (nineteen years ago)
fyi - i am definitely seeing the term "post-metal" pop up more in promo material. metal for tortoise fans! pelicans eat turtles, don't they? (not to say that "post-metal" is new or anything. but it's not as ubiquitous as its cousin "post-hardcore". or hasn't been, anyway.)
― scott seward (scott seward), Sunday, 20 August 2006 15:15 (nineteen years ago)
― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy (Kerr), Sunday, 20 August 2006 15:16 (nineteen years ago)
― xhuxk (xheddy), Sunday, 20 August 2006 15:25 (nineteen years ago)
― gekoppel (Gekoppel), Monday, 21 August 2006 19:10 (nineteen years ago)
"At this point, any sane adult tut-tuts the predictably lame outcome of two dumb subcultures commingling: When potheads try making heavy metal, nothing much happens — and too loudly."
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/24/magazine/letter-of-recommendation-sleep-dopesmoker.html?smid=fb-share
― scott seward, Saturday, 30 January 2016 23:08 (ten years ago)
David Rees is the author of ‘‘How to Sharpen Pencils’’
― just sayin, Sunday, 31 January 2016 10:20 (ten years ago)
... Among other things; he's an awesome guy & a Chapel Hill native! I had the opportunity to meet him in his Get Your War On/mnftiu cartooning days
― regular ass terrestrial radio (bernard snowy), Sunday, 31 January 2016 13:52 (ten years ago)
I love My Filing Technique Is Unstoppable
― lute bro (brimstead), Sunday, 31 January 2016 22:06 (ten years ago)
sry, My New Filing Technique Is Unstoppable
― lute bro (brimstead), Sunday, 31 January 2016 22:07 (ten years ago)
That's one of the best pieces of music writing I've ever read. David Rees is excellent.
― JRN, Sunday, 31 January 2016 22:37 (ten years ago)