'Subterranean Metal' primer in the Wire

Remember that Phil Freeman said he was wanting to do this, too bad we never got to read that...

I haven't heard "White 2" by Sunn O)) But I dug out "White1" the other day and it's pretty good. Just guitar and bass feedback but I like the way they're trying to get away from the "Earth-tribute" tag by getting people like Julian Cope to do monologues and stuff.

Abruptum is just a horrible horrible noise - but i think that's the point.

Pouncey's choices are very drone/doom-centric (and fairly Southern Lord-centric, at that). When I pitched a version of this piece, I listed the following, among others, as possible entries:

Last Exit - everything
Pain Killer - everything
Ice - Under The Skin, particularly ".357 Magnum Is A Monster"
Fushitsusha - The Wound That Was Given Birth To Must Be Greater Than The Wound That Gave Birth, Gold Blood, Withdrawe, This Sable Disclosure Ere Devot'd
Gorguts - Obscura
Obituary - Slowly We Rot
Naked City - Leng T'Che
Abruptum - everything
Eyehategod - Dopesick
Teeth Of Lions Rule The Divine - Rampton

A bunch of other stuff, too, but I can't remember it all now. Anyway, it was much more of a links-between-metal-and-the-"avant-garde" rather than a metal-avant-gardists-would-like piece, in my head.

The Goatsnake reissue is OK to good. The cover of a Free song shows a direction they could have taken out of the micro-genre.

A lot of the selections are extreme, slow, down-tuned, sludge and black mood music just for the sake of the same. Which is another way of saying "shtick."

I really like this album, but there's really only one track on here that could be considered metal.

I really don't like Gorguts - the singing is atrocious. It sounds like a whistling kettle.

The John Zorn inclusion screams "hey! WE'RE THE WIRE".

Funny this comes after dissing the metal riff the other month.

good to see some gravitar love. i've always found it irritating that they seem to be rejected out of hand by every genre they touch on - not linear enough for metal fans, not noisy enough for the pissy 'real noise' dudes, not free enough for improv heads...

I've been writing for the Wire since August 2002, and have been reviewing metal with what I consider reasonable frequency the whole time. In fact, in the same issue as the Pouncey piece, I have a review of Pig Destroyer's Terrifyer. So there ya go.

Yes, I've been meaning to check out some of their more recent albums. For some reason I always assumed they were SF-based, since they originally came out on Charnel, but it turns out they're actually from Michigan.

Strangely enough, however, said individual now lives in SF, so there you go.

You're really up the creek when you're too -something- for multiple niches. You can't get any pissants to argue for you or spread word of mouth.

Why? They sound pretty blatantly Sabbath-indebted to me, albeit fucking with the template pretty spectacularly.

Goatsnake and Sleep (in the case of 'Holy Mountain' at any rate) seem to be on there for who they are rather than what they do. Both great records but both played with a straight doom bat. Good list though, respect to Mr Pencil

Although Burning Witch has no noticeable rhythm section, no capacity to write songs or even memorable riffs and no real singer -- yeah, if you rule all that out, of course, they're exactly like Black Sabbath.

I think people get distracted by the fact that it has one of the greatest album covers in the history of music, and forget to actually listen.

YES. I like the new one better as well.

I really don't like Gorguts - the singing is atrocious. It sounds like a whistling kettle.

But.. the one guy who sounds like an angry old man!

Eh, getting into noblesse oblige here, which can turn out badly. Speaking from practical matters, when I did daily newspaper writing for features, they paper was overwhelmingly interested in what was coming through -locally-, not what was trendy or necessarily popular universally.

This meant metal and varieties of punk rock which were the only regularly profitable draws in clubs and mid-sized venues. And the fans that went to those shows didn't read the newspaper, for the most part, and nothing was going to make them read it.

However, it was not unreasonable to assume that subscribers might be interested in reading about metal even if they never would listen to or buy it, if it were written about in a stimulating manner.

And that turned out to be the case. But to make it work you had to blunt and call crap crap and do it in an entertaining style. Just writing about metal for the sake of it would've backfired.

And no Meshuggah?

Yes, definitely worth a mention and I'm not even a fan. Heck, I'd pick Meshuggah over Sleep anyday, who've always been a waste of time beyond a one-line joke about the zenith of dope obsession and heavy metal, anyway.

Now I get ya. I'd actually like to see more metal covered in, for example, the bicoastal big dailies. The Los Angeles Times never has anything on it. Virtually zero for the last ten years. After the fact concert reviews by free-lancers sneak in on some of the stadium shows and the FOzzyfest but that's uninteresting knee-jerk obligation. Plus, proportionately it doesn't add up to much in column inches.

On the other hand, like I said, there's a way to do it, and with their current staff and free-lancers, they'd make it dull and cliched really fast if they tried. So maybe they should stay away.

And, on the other hand, it's LA, for cryin' out loud.

The Sunday New York Times doesn't seem much better since Strauss left. Weird article about The Darkness early in the year, occasional paragraph recommendations in lists, like "Elefant." You can tell writers are thinking, "What's the most precious, odd or token thing I can find to recommend?" Or, like, the self-absorbed harangue about Rammstein that tries to gin up interest in the upper middle class by mistranslating their lyrics and drawing parallels, without laughing out loud, to German militaria.

re: Burning Witch

Yep, no mistaking them as an archetype for the perfect Southern Lord doom band. Thor's Hammer, all the other stuff that aims at taking it it down to three beats a minute or slower. I have trouble recommending these bands to people. They always sound better on paper and in description than in repeated plays.

a jeff foxworthy for the relapse set -- good luck and may you persevere my good man! -- keep reaching for the stars and someday it may be you on that stage in Branson, a rapt audience screaming" ... then you shouldn't be listening to metal!" in unison almost before you can uncork that next sweet set-up. Here's to prime-time sketch shows! And please, I'm slavering for more -- what other criteria may disqualify one from listening to metal? A nation waits with bated breath.

Also, I thought the list was pretty good.

Ironically the Southern Lord board types were extremely snotty about this piece. I've never seen "art fags" typed with such machine gun repetition.

I've always thought that label went out of its way to play down any "un" metal aspects of its roster. Their ads blithely describe Sunn0))) as heavy metal, which is fine by me

...but not about metal.

Age of Silence
Solefald
Arcturus
Zimmer's Hole
Asunder
Electro Quarterstaff
Enslaved
Antaeus
Dodheimsgard
and of course KHANATE KHANATE KHANATE. The only downside to SUNN's huge success is that there's less energy and sunlight available for the Khanate virus to culturate.

Anyway, I'm glad the Wire is going metal.

For the sake of whatever: Burning Witch recorded with Steve Albini. It's funny how people used to call Big Black a noise band, too. Hard to imagine now.

COULDN'T AGREE MORE.

I think it'd be great if they had a metal reviews page, as Martian suggested up there. It'll never happen, though

New issue of Terrorizer is a Black Metal special Part 1.

Merzbow is not guitar-based. But I would agree that Merzbow should not be included on a metal list. Zorn has done just about everything at one point or another, including metal. There is one track on the Zorn album they list that I would consider metal - listen to it, it's pretty much death metal from Mike Patton's screaming on down - but the rest of it isn't.

I'm gonna bug them about this a lot in the coming year. It's time the dub page went bye-bye.

OTFM

I'm glad to see Asunder and Enslaved mentioned. That Asunder thing from last year was one of may favorite things in a long time -- beautiful, I think -- and I'm in love with the new Enslaved. I can't wait to check out a bunch of the other stuff on Ian's list. Also good to hear some Terrorizer love -- as an overseas consumer, I'll admit I've alway kind of thought of Terrorizer as the Wire of metal anyway (that's meant as a compliment).

Good job. Between this line, and your support for the Fucking Champs, you have in only two sentences convinced me never to bother reading anything else you have to say on the subject of metal, ever.

as for metal mags, i've gone on about them on other threads. I like MOST metal magazines. Cuz I love reading about metal. And I always learn something I didn't know before. I like Terrorizer a bunch. And Brave Words & Bloody Knuckles too. And whatever SOD is called now. I haven't bought the pit in a while. and Decibel just asked me to write some reviews for them so i LOVE them. actually, i'd never seen it (no good mags on the island i moved to.) until i got some in the mail and i do actually like it a lot. especially the reviews which are funny as hell. i like the whole package. plus, you get a full page of john mountaingoat (who i miss on ILM and who also had different tastes then me, but, like phil, i enjoyed his posts all the same.)

A hybrid of Shakespeare, Hunter S. Thompson and Robertson Davies.

A hybrid of Shakespeare, Hunter S. Thompson and Robertson Davies.

-- George Smith (70743.171...), January 27th, 2005.

I know! Isn't it awesome!

Awful
Main Entry: aw·ful
Pronunciation: 'o-f&l
Function: adjective
1 : inspiring awe
2 : filled with awe: as a obsolete : AFRAID, TERRIFIED b : deeply respectful or reverential
3 : extremely disagreeable or objectionable
4 : exceedingly great -- used as an intensive (an awful lot of money)

so, necrofrost: they are fucking awful, and i love them.

Where do you find this? Sounds like Latin for something caught in your throat. Might be worth a review.

I just wonder if there will be letters about covering 'metal' by some snobby long time readers.