tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-355108483588914160.post4083567374866607763..comments2023-10-24T00:24:11.707-07:00Comments on Poetry of Subculture: True metal, false metal and no metal at all.Helmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00584102280299430293noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-355108483588914160.post-12668170523168707772012-01-16T01:38:08.262-08:002012-01-16T01:38:08.262-08:00You are probably right about his getting happier, ...You are probably right about his getting happier, beneath the deliberately inciteful language there seems to be an undercurrent of twisted humor I can admire. I can definitely say that I don't agree with his political agenda at all, at least the bulk of it. Certainly his political observations are astute, at least before he began merely demonizing the left, praising some mainstream conservatives/institutions and dictators (the kim jong il thing was probably just trolling, but I believe he reveres such figures to some degree). Certainly his brilliance and 'damage' shows through immediately in his writing, I can assume that is why I identify with him so much. It is just such a loss to me because before adopting a partisan political agenda (and thus abandoning it's detached, nihilistic outlook) the site acted as a sort of apolitical, amoral window on a two-party dominated system, or every democracy as far as I can tell. Thus, a relatively unique/neutral perspective where dichotomous division (us/them or black/white morality) reigns supreme. I suspect he began adopting ideology as his frustration with the impotence of the observer and the need to act/connect grew. At any rate I suspect like you I do not look to changing the outside world to reconcile internal reality, at least not beyond the outside world I immediately inhabit.JooPehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03571562021154382076noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-355108483588914160.post-6806595752912087602012-01-11T02:12:05.723-08:002012-01-11T02:12:05.723-08:00Actually what I think you mean when you say he'...Actually what I think you mean when you say he's been getting stupider is that I think he's been getting happier. The contradictions you spot are related with that he's functioning better, getting older, having a more stable life (I theorize, of course), so his anti-human, anti-modernist concerns, products of a disfunctional teenage life not not jive as well with that he's increasingly becoming : a middle aged conservative.Helmhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00584102280299430293noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-355108483588914160.post-46001526697950771702012-01-11T02:06:29.971-08:002012-01-11T02:06:29.971-08:00Ideology != politics, in a dry sense. Ideology can...Ideology != politics, in a dry sense. Ideology can be and often is 'a way of conduct'. Ethical positions, when defended and when they're put in a consistent framework become ideology. What Heavy Metal often lacks in what it preaches is consistency, yes, but the listeners try to bring in this consistency themselves.<br /><br />As to Prozak, I wouldn't say he's gotten 'stupider'. A lot on the site is written by other people, and what he's writing himself has always been political. It's impossible to agree with him 90% on matters of aesthetics and philosophy of art and to not agree with his political agenda to a similar degree, as one flows from the other, one services the other. I find some of what he has to say fascinating, but I do not agree with him often. I can understand his language but following his system of thought brings me against the 'elephant in the room', which is how profoundly socially disfunctional and unhappy thre man seems to me. It permiates his writing.<br /><br />I do not claim to be Mr. Happy nor do I always function in society but against internal sorrow I have a very different language that has nothing to do with politics and the shaping of the outside world. It's too late to consider his.<br /><br />With Prozak I - unfortunately ? - have to take the stance of 'I am reading the words of a brilliant yet broken person, adjust expectations accordingly - which doesn't put him in bad company necessarily, but I haven't taken what he has to say literally for many years. He says 'half of the world population must be destroyed for the benefit of an elite' I read 'today has been a difficult day'.Helmhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00584102280299430293noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-355108483588914160.post-2628649012186599802012-01-10T06:54:48.695-08:002012-01-10T06:54:48.695-08:00Certainly metal is not 'evil' in the sense...Certainly metal is not 'evil' in the sense of something which is universally unnecessary and/or malevolent/harmful, any number of metal bands which express any degree of positivity in their music are proof of that. I just meant that to me metal and ideology are diametrically opposed, although metal has values and indeed, culture, at the very least I would consider it inherently apolitical, therefor attempts to 'merge' or associate it with any form of ideology seems like a 'corruption' to me. I don't mean metal is mere reactionary contraryanism, in fact I am finding it impossible to articulate what I mean.<br /><br />And in regards to Vijay Prozak/anus.com, it seems either his IQ has dropped substantially given the degrading quality of his posts and resorting to censorship to avoid debate, or there was a change in site management, or he has adopted malicious intentions. Certainly he has contributed to metal culture (I discovered the site years ago upon typing 'philosophy of heavy metal' into google), but I think the site operated much better when it had a philosophical agenda and not a political one. Personally I agree with 90% of what he says philosophically, politically it seems blaming <em>all</em> the worlds problems on one ideology ('liberalism', which is defined as an assumption of false/mechanical equality which defies all scientific knowledge) simply does not equate with the inherent complexity of reality. Plus the whole contradiction of 'we reject christian black/white morality/neurosis because it is too simple' only to unconsciously replace it with the 'left/right' dichotomy/neurosis, as well as loving black metal yet desiring a totalitarian/fascist society is absurdly amusing to me, if a little disturbing. Very kafkaesque. Polarised partisan politics leaves little room for critical analysis of complex socio-political stuff.JooPehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03571562021154382076noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-355108483588914160.post-80240618115464039262011-12-24T02:26:29.664-08:002011-12-24T02:26:29.664-08:00I really do not think Heavy Metal is as 'evil&...I really do not think Heavy Metal is as 'evil' as it pretends to be, nor do I think its evil is undefinable at all. I find that such a position makes Heavy Metal even less useful as a method of natural explanation than those of bankrupt metal-philosophers. Also 'it's just evil, man, you wouldn't understand. Either listen to it and love it or fear it and stay away' is a perfect description of a capitalist product, which should always be suspect.<br /><br />My thoughts on the anus.com *guy* are that he is very smart and that he has contributed to Heavy Metal culture. His anus drones which repeat what he's saying in variable ways with decreasing returns... not so much.Helmhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00584102280299430293noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-355108483588914160.post-15570753719231754582011-12-24T01:54:40.843-08:002011-12-24T01:54:40.843-08:00"I think there is a way to navigate through t..."I think there is a way to navigate through this minefield between intent and failure, and it's a broader concern on the merit of ideology. Taking philosophical concepts and thinking them binding, internalizing them and making them part of ones belief system. Any ideology is unbearable in this respect, people become neurotic in their inability to traject according to their moral vector. Heavy Metal is no better or worse an ideology than most in this respect, that is to say, they're all a pathway to failure-induced neurosis. What I try to do with romance is neither to deny its call nor to embrace it as an ideology. Ideas are something small, but human beings are infinitely profound. Those that seek to become ideas seek to become something smaller than they are, something that will confine them to their breaking point."<br /><br />Interesting, although I have always considered metal at it's core or 'essence' a genuine anti-doctrine, or like 'evil' impossible to define in a classical sense, Slayer's 'God Hates Us All' being the purest expression of this. Btw is this a reprise against sites like anus.com, who try to co-opt metal into an ideology? If not, what are your thoughts on them?JooPehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03571562021154382076noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-355108483588914160.post-21033852062707547232010-10-17T11:29:59.808-07:002010-10-17T11:29:59.808-07:00That very well may be. What my personal anecdote w...That very well may be. What my personal anecdote was describing was more the concern of the younger listener about his special subculture and its evolution, as a means of remaining personally relevant to the culture at large.<br /><br />The way I see it now is that Heavy Metal exists, I have a personal interaction with it and it doesn't matter what it will become next if anything, because I have what I need right here, the tools to arrive at my destination. The records exist, I do not need more. I don't need to keep consuming new music, the body of work is here, its heart is beating and the head is severed and bleeding in its arms. I'm tracing concepts and theories in the gore, you see.<br /><br />I no longer care about what the new form for metal will be or if it'll be relevant to my interests. It might be regardless of whether I care about it or not, but it is besides the point. I have what I need right now, in my hands. I've been given back what I always possessed.<br /><br /><br /><br />To the degree that it fascinates me, the pertinent question is 'why are these new forms of music that no longer are metal, want to be called, and respond to the call, of metal? What do they gain by the association?'<br /><br />I have theorized briefly on that on the end of the original text.Helmhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00584102280299430293noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-355108483588914160.post-27006947553022031262010-10-17T04:52:52.705-07:002010-10-17T04:52:52.705-07:00"It was within that mindset that I was most c...<i>"It was within that mindset that I was most concerned with what 'the next step for Heavy Metal' would be. I remember listening to Pelican's album 'Australasia' when it came out, specially the riff-salad instrumental composition 'Drought' and thinking - with complete seriousness and if I recall, some elation - 'so that is the next step for metal!'. A step out of the dark ages of the late 90's. As if there was a problem waiting to be solved. There were many that felt the same way then."</i><br /><br />It's quite natural for a musical form to evolve over time. The multiplicity of sub-genres in heavy metal attest to that. It's also quite natural for a musical form to evolve to the degree that it blurs the lines of the genre. Genre hybridization can blur the lines even further. Pelican is an example of this since their music is a hybridization of post-rock, a sub-genre which in itself lies upon the outermost fringes of rock music, and a couple sub-genres of heavy metal such as doom metal and sludge metal. Their sound shouldn't be representative of where heavy metal is evolving to since heavy metal has branched into many sub-genres, some of which are evolving into what I imagine to be separate entities from heavy metal. Just as heavy metal is no longer strictly rock, these newer forms that are emerging seem to be evolving into genres that are no longer strictly heavy metal.A Pitcher of Summerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17131050113339613309noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-355108483588914160.post-33222170455780722092010-10-13T16:25:47.727-07:002010-10-13T16:25:47.727-07:00If it is so, it's worth wondering on why bands...If it is so, it's worth wondering on why bands would go to such significant trouble and put in so much effort (because even in the age of the Hobby Digital Sound Workstation it is a great amount of pure work to make a metal record) to craft what amounts to an obfuscatory cloak of antiquity to hide behind. What is it they're hiding and what are they getting from their ultra-conservative historical reenactments?Helmhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00584102280299430293noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-355108483588914160.post-74027203758052948402010-10-13T09:37:34.172-07:002010-10-13T09:37:34.172-07:00Interesting, engaging as always.
The "true&...Interesting, engaging as always. <br /><br />The "true" quality I've always measured minus any psychological subtext (which you've extrapolated on above). Any subgenre form participating in the "true" works from a severely limited pool of aesthetic criteria. That's why you have "true" Black Metal bands aping (early)Darkthrone/ (Dead era) Mayhem/ (Hvis Lystet... era) Burzum. Ditto for "true" Death Metal, where the pool consists of Morbid Angel, Autopsy, Abscess...<br /><br />What's interesting about these inauthentic authentic bands is their music is "thingified," dead, unknowable. It's constructed of lifeless matter, tropes excerised before they were even born.GSV JRhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05151693998976927921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-355108483588914160.post-66913094597713858442010-10-12T19:32:15.999-07:002010-10-12T19:32:15.999-07:00I can only guess that this is a symptom of alignin...I can only guess that this is a symptom of aligning one's personality with a 'scene' too much, especially when such a scene has a conceit of stone-faced seriousness and honor to some ideological cause. I have not ran across any person that would threaten me with violence until I indulged his musical tastes however. Closest I've gotten was being threatened over not being Christian in school, and of course, football team fanatics that habitually bully what they perceive as 'opposition'.<br /><br />Hooliganism I guess could fit something like black metal, but most of the individuals involved with that music I've met were introverts, so expressions of violence were not part of their vocabulary. Loathing and hate were, but I know what these mean. An otherwise sensitive and soft-spoken person I once met who listened mostly to black metal would be inoffensive as company until the point where he brought up 'the jewish problem'. You can imagine how that goes.<br /><br />See, about progressive metal, very few bands in the 90's *started out* as progressive metal bands, they were power, speed or thrash metal bands first going through techno-thrash to what became progressive metal. So it was when they hit that plateau in their fourth or fifth album that people considered them traitors to Heavy Metal. <br /><br />As such, nowadays when a band plays progressive metal there's always the stigma of that exodus, of not having any balls, so on. The people that listen to progressive metal now then, flock to it in full knowledge of its quasi-metallic nature at best. They pride themselves on being open-minded and outside the scene mentality, though they often are not, and are not.<br /><br />Most ponytail metal (other term for progressive metal) guys I know got out of the genre of metal per se via the scapegoat of bands like Tool, Pain of Salvation, Dream Theater and Radiohead. They can discuss with you for hours over bands like Lord Bane and Payne's Grey and they might go to metal shows, but they do not consider themselves metalheads proper. It's really a - tiny - separate thing, progressive metal. And it has mostly disappeared. Its biggest contribution was to create this outlet for those that wanted to escape metal subculture, and an inlet for outsiders to start playing distorted power chords and double-bass drumming.Helmhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00584102280299430293noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-355108483588914160.post-21497119605013396712010-10-12T11:27:43.253-07:002010-10-12T11:27:43.253-07:00"Progressive metal, unlike what you remark ab...<i>"Progressive metal, unlike what you remark above, is very rarely seen as 'false' for not being complex enough. It simply stops being progressive, metal, or both. There never was a more eager to jump ship type of metal than this."</i><br /><br />That's what I should have made more clear. When a band has been established in their genre of choice, even if it was only after one album, those that have invested in that album, or set of albums, would ostensibly feel disappointed that the band had jumped ship to a new genre. This would lead close-minded individuals to conclude that the band had failed them and is no longer true to the genre, or whatever conclusions they happen to reach. Since I am not such an individual, I cannot say for certain what exactly they feel, so take what I have said as informed speculation. What I have observed, both online and offline, tends to support this hypothesis. <br /><br />When I was in Secondary School, I had an acquaintance who listened to Black Metal exclusively. Whenever I would talk about any music outside of Black Metal, such as Jazz or Classical, he would instantly launch fiery diatribes about the superiority of Black Metal above all other musics. I ignored him and continued to discuss John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, and other Jazz luminaries. He was so thoroughly involved with this ideology that he had threatened me with violence on any occasion that I dared to bring up any music other than his beloved Black Metal. This sort of intolerance has always struck me as incredibly fascinating. When I did happen to discuss Black Metal his disposition had transformed to that of a young teenage school girl discussing shopping. For the most part, I have forgotten a large part of our conversations of Black Metal since most of it consisted of immature reverential gushing of emotion. On one occasion I had brought up Ulver to see what he would say--admittedly one of my favorite ways to kill time during lunch hour was to ask this individual's opinion of various bands, such as pop and so on--and not too surprisingly he said that he had enjoyed their albums at one point but would no longer listen to them again because they were 'blood traitors to the scene'. I think this illustrates my point on how genre shifting relates the perceived truthfulness or falsity of the band in context of it's genre.<br /><br />When I have some more free time there are few other things I would like to address in this post.A Pitcher of Summerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17131050113339613309noreply@blogger.com