Metal, Punk, Noise

[Soper]

a God that, according to a fansite,

- screwed more than 3500 women in his life
- drinks a bottle of whiskey per day
- is addicted on speed
- has made a promise to the world to die on stage (beats crucifixion really !)

If this is religion, then maybe I will consider having a faith


@ SirHamish : Within Temptation before they went commercial are brilliant, Mother Earth is a great album.
And yeah, Nightwish, that singer has it all (especially those... ah you get it allright ). For metal babes, also check Lacuna Coil (from Italy) and Epica (also from the Netherlands)



What is remarkable: metal seems to be an all-germanic style of music. You hear lots of bands making this music in English, and some in Scandinavian languages or German. But hardly any metal band chosing a Romanic language... Which is a shame because I think French is the most beautiful language there is.
Am I right or wrong here if I'd state Germanic languages sound a bit harder and colder (maybe more aggressive if you chose the right words) while languages such as Spanish or French sound too poetic and romantic for a style like metal ??

Only exceptions I know: Noir Desir sings in French (though this is more hardrock than real metal), and there's the famous Mexican black-metal band Brujeria.
Brujeria... They are very mythological, as some believe they are involved in drugs traffic from Colombia as main profession, and there's the usual sh** about being involved in Satanism and such ; and they sing in Spanish only, and it sounds hard and agressive, one of the hardest bands I know really. Check www.brujeria.com

I listen to a few French hardcore bands, and really, imo, the vocals, despite being very aggressive, still come off in a softer way than german or english etc vocals would.

[Gerrit]

well, they have a few filthy songs. Songs such as "Buck dich" (which is a rather direct request for anal intercourse - probably your nephew bounced on that translated lyric ?) are rather sleazy indeed. But that's a minority, they have some quite serious lyrics as well, such as "Engel" (Angel). The most Rammstein songs however are in my opinion not lyrically interesting, it's mainly about the music (and must say I like the sound of it, but they're a bit repetitive in my opinion).

They have lots of spectacular effects in their shows, such as firespitting. Maybe we should not take them too serious. They have a sort of neo-nazi image and it is a fact that part of their fanbase is quite fanatically right-winged, but the band itself has no nazi background or ideology at all and indicate themselves that it shouldn't all be taken too seriously.

And yeah, their singer has the perfect voice and face for it. and the German sounds hard and agressive indeed, compare this to a French rock record by for example Indochine or Johnny Halliday and you hear how the French just sounds less harsh. Again, if you want an exception, check Brujeria, very brutal sounding despite the use of Spanish. (not a Brujeria fan myself, but it just happens to be the one perfect exception to the rule)

[paul_oshea]

For metal babes, also check Lacuna Coil (from Italy) and Epica (also from the Netherlands)

gerrit, you are a repressed hornball!!! this should be renamed the "metal babes,how to get your leg over with a broken leg thread"

i have actually seen lacuna coil, in eammon dorans gerrit, she is very small altogether, but still you wouldnt kick her out of the bed for leaving crumbs.

check out slayers decade of aggression, its got the best of from the 80's to early nineties ken, its very good.

if one of ye set up a metal babes thread i will post some quality metal totty. ye never know even the mainstream-indie-loving-lads-with-hair-neither-one-way-or-the-other-wide-trousers-with-too-short-tight-skin-tshirts on this forum may appreciate.

[sadloserkid]

In a fight between Lemmy and God who would win?....

Lemmy or GOD????

Lemmy? eh wrong

It is a trick question because Lemmy is God.

Awwww... another 'Airheads' fan. I'll even overlook the plagerism!

[paul_oshea]

yes good man, i thought i had quoted that, was waiting to see how long it took someone to actually cop that!

[ken foree]

Ouch, that must have been a nasty appendix operation Ken Foree. But, more importantly, did you get any chance of a legover with any of the nurses? SOME of the nurses in that hospital are real party animals. I was in for a broken leg in 1981 and made a date with a lovely blonde from Longford whilst still a patient When I got out, leg still in plaster, I met her in a local boozer and eventually discovered she was bisexual! To be more accurate, she was 80% lesbian, 20% hetero. And I didn't even make much progress in the 20% depatrment. I'm still getting slagged by my mates over that to this day. So. how did you do get on, give us all the dirt!!!

i was ten, so i had this one nurse bent over a defibrillator, g-force was on the telly, and..

[sadloserkid]

yes good man, i thought i had quoted that, was waiting to see how long it took someone to actually cop that!

I found that on DVD a few months back for next to nothing. I was the happiest boy in the whole wild world that evening.

[Gerrit]

gerrit, you are a repressed hornball!!! this should be renamed the "metal babes,how to get your leg over with a broken leg thread"

"repressed hornball" ? Apart from the fact that I know what hornball means and that I know you're just joking, I'd like to know the meaning of the word 'repressed'... Help this non-native speaker out please


Heard a cracking good Nine Inch Nails song today. Trent Reznor is great, I haven't heard the entire NIN collection but every new song I hear from them has pleasantly surprised me so far. Trent's very creative with synthesizers and his voice is grand. Lyrically sometimes shocking and very in-depth, but at least he turns his depressions into something creative, something of beauty.

[paul_oshea]

who said i was messing???

repressed means basically, held back.

www.dictionary.com

[Gerrit]

Just heard Judas Priest song "Death row", at least a sample of it. Man, that was good ! Powerful guitar riffs, Halford at his best (is he the only homosexual in the metal world ?? Kudos to him for coming out for it in a sometimes macho genre), great lyrics as well even though it is not very clear for me if it is intended as supporting death penalty ( ) or critisising it in a sarcastic way.
Would like to hear the full song, but can't find it...

[CollegeTillIDie]

Just heard Judas Priest song "Death row", at least a sample of it. Man, that was good ! Powerful guitar riffs, Halford at his best (is he the only homosexual in the metal world ?? Kudos to him for coming out for it in a sometimes macho genre), great lyrics as well even though it is not very clear for me if it is intended as supporting death penalty ( ) or critisising it in a sarcastic way.
Would like to hear the full song, but can't find it...

Gerrit

Key in www.bbc.co.uk and then click on Music you will get a dialogue box
Enter Judas Priest and then you will be shown a biography and a discography. Keep going through the Album titles till you find the right one. Click on Death Row, there will be a 29 second extract from it there. It will at least give you a taster of it. That will enable you to get the title of the CD and then you can look for it on www.amazon.co.uk or www.gemm.com both of which are excellent places to source music. You could also go into HMV and see if it is available to order still.

P.S. Did the search myself for you.... CD is called "Jugulator" on SPV Records and was originally released in 1997..

[Gerrit]

Then was it with Rob Halford or was that one of the two albums they made before the re-union ??

Halford was very brave to out himself as being gay in a rather macho genre as metal. I still hear some metalheads referring to him as "that queer" or "that homo" - bit respectless if you know what the man did for the development of metal

[paul_oshea]

try cradle of filths version of iron maidens:

hallowed be thy name.

very good, very quick.

[ken foree]

Heard a cracking good Nine Inch Nails song today. Trent Reznor is great, I haven't heard the entire NIN collection but every new song I hear from them has pleasantly surprised me so far. Trent's very creative with synthesizers and his voice is grand. Lyrically sometimes shocking and very in-depth, but at least he turns his depressions into something creative, something of beauty.

ever heard wolf eyes? i think they're from chicago. they sound basically like a trip through a psychotic dentist's nightmares. all drills, squeals, shrieks, and then a beat comes in and they sound not too dissimilar (at times) to NIN. fairly.. out there.

[hamish]

in my best gaaaaaaaalllllwaaaaaay acccccceennnnt..

hes from new yaaaaaaaarkkkkkk

Not from Galway ?- explain yourself young man!! Ya have to be from Galway to have a best Galway accent.

[Gerrit]

ever heard wolf eyes? i think they're from chicago. they sound basically like a trip through a psychotic dentist's nightmares. all drills, squeals, shrieks, and then a beat comes in and they sound not too dissimilar (at times) to NIN. fairly.. out there.

Sounds interesting. How are they lyrically ? Any good ?
Will see if I can find a record of them (seems so strange in an era where downloading is the first resource...)



You may know the most extreme black-metal band on earth: Abruptum. Consists of two men, of whom the singer is a dwarf, IT. He has this nickname because he "is too demonish to have a human name"... This sort of tales is usually well-swallowed in the black-metal scene.
The music is... well, not really songs. It's a sort of collades or plays of sounds that don't really form one piece together, it's basicly a collection of unstructured samples that all sound as scary, horrific and deathly as possible. The band also self-mutilate to scream as demonish as possible in between those horror samples. So you can see it's quite a weird thing. Their 'songs' often last up until 15 minutes a piece.
Recently, IT mysteriously disappeared (kinda like Richey Edwards ) and to date there is still no trace of him. This makes the myth complete of course.

They're a rather mythological thing in the scene, kinda like Sopor Aeternus & The Ensemble of Shadows in the gothscene. But while I adore Sopor Aeternus, I don't really feel like checking out Abruptum in-depth. Maybe I'll change my mind someday, but so far it looks a bit over the top in a not that good way.

[ken foree]

Sounds interesting. How are they lyrically ? Any good ?
Will see if I can find a record of them (seems so strange in an era where downloading is the first resource...)

wolf eyes' website (sub-pop) or their bandsite should have a free download called 'stabbed in the face.' basically an unsettling, squealing thing with a beat. well i'd have to say lyrical content isn't their strongpoint. they more often use the vocals (heavily distorted) as just another assaulting noise on your ears. i guess they don't have 'songs' in the conventional sense, in fact they might have more in common with abruptum below.

You may know the most extreme black-metal band on earth: Abruptum. Consists of two men, of whom the singer is a dwarf, IT. He has this nickname because he "is too demonish to have a human name"... This sort of tales is usually well-swallowed in the black-metal scene.
The music is... well, not really songs. It's a sort of collades or plays of sounds that don't really form one piece together, it's basicly a collection of unstructured samples that all sound as scary, horrific and deathly as possible. The band also self-mutilate to scream as demonish as possible in between those horror samples. So you can see it's quite a weird thing. Their 'songs' often last up until 15 minutes a piece.
Recently, IT mysteriously disappeared (kinda like Richey Edwards ) and to date there is still no trace of him. This makes the myth complete of course.

They're a rather mythological thing in the scene, kinda like Sopor Aeternus & The Ensemble of Shadows in the gothscene. But while I adore Sopor Aeternus, I don't really feel like checking out Abruptum in-depth. Maybe I'll change my mind someday, but so far it looks a bit over the top in a not that good way.

sounds great! the whole self-mutilating midget-myth with IT has me really intrigued; you can't beat it when a band creates this kind of underground tale. an unfortunate ending for him! but more importantly their music (more important than life?). sounds like something i'd like - faust, an old german psych/experimental band created some dark collages too, and i like them a lot. they scored incredible instrumental music to Nosferatu, you know the old vampire movie ('faust plays nosferatu'). and abruptum sound like a very extreme version of some of that! great, thanks

[Gerrit]

well, check them out then ! Their most notorious album contains 4 songs, they all last 15 minutes however. It's a sort of sound mixture of very scary horror samples, sounds quite unique but not many would like it. Play it at night on a graveyard and you're probably accused of having some black mass ritual...

IT ? Ehm, I don't know if he all took it seriously or not. If he really sees himself as too satanic to have a human name, then something's not right in the head. If it's all an act, then it is a great one ! But I agree, it's kinda fascinating. A dwarf alone is rather special in music, and then add the whole bunch of myths...



If you like mythological bands, check out Mayhem. The band was founded to sound as extreme as can be, and then it went wrong when their leader Euronymous started to bring his satanic views into life. He founded 'the Black Circle', an anti-christian group of metal artists who wanted to chase away christianity and bring back the old Norwegian viking culture in the country. The black circle started doing some church burnings, grave mutilations, etc. Burzum, the one-man project of neonazi Varg Vikernes, used a pic of the burning Fantomekirke as album cover (the church was set on fire by the man himself !)

Mayhem used to have a singer called Dead, that was his nickname cause he was so depressed he just wanted to be, ehm, dead... At one moment he decided to shoot himself through the head seconds after also slitting his wrists. As the gunshot somehow missed target, half of his brain was blown out of his head. Euronymous found the body of his dead leading singer, and decided to cook the brain pieces and eat them, while their guitarist made a neckless out of Dead's scull fractures. They also used a picture of his corpse for an album of theirs.

The Black Circle got involved in some very serious crimes. One of the members murdered a gay man, someone else would have committed a murder as well. Then one moment Vikernes decides to break with the gang because he found Euronymous not nazi enough. Then they get into a fight over money, so Vikernes goes after Euronymous and kills him. He claimed self defence but after 23 stabbings, including some while chasing your bleeding victim trying to escape, the judge didn't really follow the self-defence story

Vikernes currently serves a 21 years jail sentence but made the news after having 'escaped'. He got three days off to visit his family and, surprise surprise, didn't return. They caught him a few days later in a car full of guns, while he was heading for some foreign paramilitary organisation

Black metal is really the genre to get into if you like wacked stuff. Mayhem however did some nice records including masterpiece The Freezing Moon. But their members were all sickos.




In my own style, goth, we have a myth as well. Sopor Aeternus ('eternal sleep' aka Death) & The Ensemble of Shadows. The band is founded by Anne-Varney, a transexual who never leaves his house except for recording, and who has contacts with only 2 or 3 other humans. The guy is completely isolated and a long-term depressive. He is male, but after a (probaby imaginary) sex operation he took the name Anne-Varney. The band "The ensemble of shadows" represent the spirits that inspire him when writing music. The music is very unique: imagine a very threatening gloomy march like coming straight out of an Exorcist movie, combined with medieval instruments and horror samples such as a desolate church bell in a dark forest, and then Anne-Varney's voice. That voice is unique, it is so echoing that it could come straight out of a deep grave, and he/she often cries while singing. In fact it's more poems on medieval horror music than real singing. The lyrics are extremely gloomy (some would say depressed, although they're a bit too spiritual and unreal for me to take it as seriously depressing) and in almost all songs (s)he praises death and the wish to die. Then combine this with very scary gothic arwork... To complete the myth, the band never performs 'for human audiences', because Anne-Varney does not want to suffer on a stage in front of people who would never understand his/her depressions anyway.

This is my favourite SA song, one of my fav goth songs and one of my favourite songs ever in general, it's like a medieval poet telling an unreal horror story around the fireplace of a dark medieval castle:


Alas, let me tell you about the beauty of the tomb
The stained glass, all viole(n)t
enhancing the gloom
Dark flowers, all withered, fragile and old
Yet their perfume still lingers like a secret untold
Like a dream or a memory that floats in this vault
Waiting for a moment it shall be recalled
By some visitor maybe who is seeking relief
from a strange kind of sadness or some unknown disease
Its symptoms are madness ! Caught by the music in his head
sung by the endless choirs... called 'The Voices of the Dead' !

It's his longing for silence, or the absence of sound
That will lead him to hidden paths below the ground
Where he shall discover, through terror and through fear
Behind black pine doors... something is sleeping here !
A little dead baby, a young boy lies kept
So fragile and frightened, crippled and sad...

A lonely church bell conclude the gloomy march... This is the pure goth stuff, I adore it
For those interested (and those not easily scared): www.soporaeternus.de and www.sopor-aeternus.de

[ken foree]

oof. quite a post there gerrit, thanks for taking the time. i'd have a real big problem checkin out any of the blacker metal music that had any nazi affiliation whatsoever -i even feel a bit uncomfortable reading about it, though the extremity to which these nutjobs take it is... well, insane. can i ask a general style question: does the blacker/blackest metal pride itself on speed, like those other 'core' types? it's all very new to me (grindcore, black, death, doom, stoner, etc!). i have some doom metal (sunn, khanate) and some of it is great - - slow, atmospheric, like a scarred meadow settling after a fiery battle. the new goth stuff is completely alien to me! i don't think i've heard one track in this genre

[Gerrit]

Ehm, you ask the wrong guy here. I am not into metal very much, basically it's just Marilyn Manson and Ozzy-era Sabbath that float my boat.
The average Black Metal act is not really my style so I am not sure of what is common or not amongst the genre's fans. I show interest in the style's backgrounds, just like I do in every style, but apart from gothic subculture my knowledge of the subcultural behaviour in music is rather limited. The things I named there I know by coincidence because of a review on a book on black metal that I came across in a magazine.

Sick stuff indeed. I do seperate the music from the artists behind it. I have a record by Charles Manson. Out of interest. Does not mean I don't disgust what he did... You get my point I guess, showing an interest in the music or even liking the music (which is not the case with black metal for me) is something completely else than liking the musicians that made the music. Those guys from Mayhem were crazy, but that doesn't mean I can't admit that "Freezing moon" is a stunning song (I name this one always as an example, basically because the other of their songs I've heard are... well, let's say rubbish to keep it clean )

I don't know if drug use/abuse is commonly associated with the metal scene, and if yes, with which substyle. Sabbath and Manson are hardly hardcore metal acts, so I'm not really familiar with the fans of the more extreme metal. I take that there are clean ones and that there are drug users, just like in every subculture/religion/country/movement/style. Generalising is always dangerous. However, it's a fact that many metal artists frequently use or used drugs (Ozzy Osbourne - though claims to be sober nowadays, Marilyn Manson, Lemmy Kilmister, ... just to name a few well known lads)