Review Response: Should I Write All My Metal Reviews Like This From Now On?

just wondering...

This review gets me psyched, it makes me want to accomplish a lot of things in my life. However, none of them really include listening to the Caina record.

i'm heavily influenced by Andrea Dworkin:

http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/AndreaonCrete1966M.jpg

"A book is at once connected to eternity and to one persons mortal flesh. It is whatever this flow is that connects us one to the other throughout human time, but it is also the fruit of one persons specific moment. It is the present, just as the ocean, whatever it was before, whatever it will be later, exists for the one who sees it when she sees it. Think of it, each book is what it is for one person to be alive, in her particular present, what it is, anguish, joy, fear, duration, process, hope. Each person asks the question of her time and place. Each persons life inhabits and informs every word written. Sitting somewhere, ancient Greece or Manhatten 1974, hoping that the words will come and make the feeling in the body bearable, fill the need, make the day or night endurable, that one will be able to give shape to the chaos of feeling, needing, not knowing. The world takes form when one writes, for the writer. The world becomes knowable, its meaning revealed and affirmed. Struggling with the present, with death, with pain, with love, articulating the present, imagining it as it is and as it might be, asking every question but also taking time itself and giving it shape, substance, weight: revealing it to those who share it."

and jiddu krishnamurti, of course:

"The mind, both conscious and unconscious, is a bundle of memories, and when the mind says to itself, ‘I must be free of memory in order to understand reality’, that very wish to be free is part of memory. That is a fact. Therefore the mind no longer wishes to be anything: it merely faces the fact that it itself is memory; it does not wish to transform, it does not wish to become something else. When the mind sees that any action on its own part is still the functioning of memory, and therefore that it is incapable of finding truth, what then is the state of the mind?"

http://www.katinkahesselink.net/kr/k-bw4.jpg

No.

I love Dworkin's criticism. But unlike the above, you're writing about a specific CD, not what makes CDs or books in general important. She wrote for everyone, too, not just insiders: Who is Andrew Curtis-Brignell?

Andrew Curtis-Brignell is the one-man band known as Caina.

To suggest the obvious: I doubt you'll find much else that affects you the way this record has, so it'll be tough to write all your metal reviews like this from now on.

Unless you mean "should I affect my writing in this way from now on," in which case I agree with the chorus of "no"s.

Is Caina anything like Katatonia?

(And: YES.)

No, I don't think anybody should write all their reviews the same way, no matter what that way is. But always in terms of how it connects or doesn't connect with things that are important to you, to what makes it worth your time and the reader's time, or not. "How" should determine, or have some say, in how the review is written, just whatever's most appropriate. Otherwise, it gets too predictable (like, "Oh, Scott Seward, I know what he's like"--yay/boo/ho-hum--like the kind of music that's hard to really hear, past the initial presentation of sonic ID) Also, the above could use some examples:"When this happens in {song/guitar solo/singing/etc), then I realize..." Otherwise, it's great to have your vision of his vision, although I wasn't that crazy about Caina, but maybe I should have listened more.(Might be a good guy to interview?) Second graf reminds me of Leroi Jones, in Black Music, I think, re "what we once called pastoral but now know to be objective life," something to that effect (this while he was listening to Coltrane's breakthrough albums). The last graf gets a bit scary, Mansonish, but entirely possible that Charlie read some Krishnamurti in stir (not *just* Mansonish, but takes it further than any K. I've read)(metal-appropriate!)

Katatonia fans would dig Caina. This Katatonia fan does anyway. He's more formless and arty.

Damn, I should have made this a poll.

Der Hoos is probably right though. I doubt I could write like that on a regular basis. And I'd get bored probably. it was fun to write though. Absolutely no thought involved. It wrote itself. I just typed it and I was done. And I liked the results.

"but takes it further than any K. I've read)(metal-appropriate!)"

yeah, it's a little more bleakness on top of metal mountain.

true story: years ago, i was rushing around like crazy cuz i had to catch a train to connecticut and i was all worried and anxious, etc. so i just make it in time, sit down in my seat and start to read some krishnamurti and he's going on with one of his "don't sweat the small stuff" all the little things that we think are important and worry about aren't that important in the grand scheme of things spiels and i'm thinking: sheesh, he's right. why did i get so worked up and anxious about the train and all that. it doesn't matter in the end. AND THEN he ends his spiel with something like: *but of course i'm not talking about day to day matters and responsibilities that we all must deal with. we have to attend to these things, or we will miss our train.* For real! hahaha, that killed me. i'll never forget that.

"bleakness on top of metal mountain" but with exhilaration along the way (orig. explication of the sublime aesthetic re the Alps, prev mostly associated, by UK travellers, with avalanches, etc)

I think it would be improved if you inserted "COCAINE" every sentence or two, sort of like that Eric Clapton song.

No, but nice job on that thud-rock list.

thanks! that was fun too.

and so was the blackmetal.com round-up i did. so much utterly freezing blackness to get through.

Hurting 2 OTM.

oh great THUD list, i'm gonna check those out for sure! just a random question, do any of those sound like Circle's 'Misheritage'?

I have never heard Misheritage. Maybe!

no listen to that song, crazy psych/cosmic hardrock stuff. over the top vocals....i know i need that Road album

So, Circle are a hardcore band now or something? What's up with that new album? I haven't heard it.

Panic is half avant ambient noodle stuff and half craaazy hardpsychrocking madness....its on that album...its great

oh i know something else, which albums sound like High Rise? i know you got one High Rise record on there, and i love that one

haha fuck me, its High Tide you have! wouldnt High Rise fit in?

I think High Tide and High Rise would get along just fine! They both made a racket.

yeah i love rackets. what albums on that list would fit that description?