Black Metal!

Graveland is the only actual NSBM band I could name. Will never listen to them though.

i always got the impression that that dude just hates everybody. except viking ghosts. and wolves.

i think i read a varg interview somewhere where he seemed to hate everyone inc nsbm guys and especially "the jews running the world". He hasn't mellowed, he's still a racist anti-semetic prick. If that kind of thing was in his lyrics im pretty sure Burzum would sell about as many records as graveland. I cant imagine NSBM being that big a scene, though apparently there's a lot of polish/russian/ukrainian NSBM acts. Doubt they're very well known though.

Of course there's some "heritage" acts that seem a bit dodgy and are being evasive about it all. Cant help feeling it's because they're not daft and know it would hurt their sales and gigs would be banned in most places.

but you cant prove that they are racist or nazi pond scum either. So you kind of either give them the benefit of the doubt (like most do with drudkh as they at least made a statement denying it) or you ignore them completely if you're not sure about them.

Can anyone remember when the black metal bands went beyond the satanism & church burning stuff and started embracing extreme right wing ideology? or was it always there? I knew quite a few people into Burzum etc at the time and none of them are anything other than lefties. Infact every single Burzum fan i know is left wing, some aren't white either. Did the whole thing start when varg was imprisoned?

Grand Belial's Key! I've heard them. when i first went on last fm i was struck by the selections they had of some of this stuff. i'll bet that's the first place a lot of people heard Hate Forest. every time i searched for metal on there they popped up!

btw I have an anecdote for you via a former ilxor who, whilst born in Poland, but moved to Canada as a kid, went back to visit family in Poland in the 90s and he said that back then you had black metal kids walking around with SWORDS. Fucking swords!!! That's hardcore shit. Fuck your gun culture - SWORDS!! How mental is that?!
Now he's moved to Poland to live he says it's calmed down a bit and no BM swordsmen are to be seen. He says it is very NSBM country though. Eastern Europe must be crazy.

What would you do Scott if some crazy longhaired dudes with swords came into your shop looking for black metal albums?

nordic bm has always been pretty aryan. since bathory. as far as bm having the race theme. singing about vikings all the time and a wintry pagan past is "race" music of a sort. if you are from there.

swords? i dunno. if they had money i'd probably be good. i never have any black metal records though. i would have to go out of my way to get them and they cost too much. and they just cost more used. way more.

I thought you were going to say you would just check to see if it was Dan :)

dan my brother? he's crazy but he's not graveland crazy. i feel like i do give the graveland dude a pass of sorts because he's so nuts. but that's not right. but sometimes people that nuts do end up going further. i don't know. i'm not really one of those people looking for crazy outsider art all the time. but there is no denying it when you do hear or see something that was created outside of society. normal society? i don't need nazi stuff though. it should be about freedom not fascism.

no i dont mean that, i just mean he might turn up with a sword!

i know hes not graveland type guy (spoke to him in ilxchatz enough to know hes a good dude)

do you sell much metal btw?

This is an extremely silly thread and I shouldn't even weigh in, but I will. If you don't like Pantera, you don't like metal, and any opinions you may have about metal will fall on deaf ears with me. Everything from Power Metal (have you actually heard it, or just snickered at the cover?) through Reinventing the Steel is as metal as it gets. (Burzum, on the other hand, barely qualifies as music, let alone metal. Even if I had no idea what the guy believed about anything, his music would still be worthless. And anyhow, of the three extramusical reasons I'm anti-Burzum, RACIST comes in a fair distance behind ARSONIST and MURDERER.) Any fuckin' feeb who wants to whine about Phil Anselmo being a lunkhead who hangs Confederate flags up and pulls out the "Why isn't there a White History Month, maaannn?" card - can have at it. I've interviewed Phil Anselmo. I've watched him ramble drunkenly onstage. He is every bit the lunkhead you say he is. But Pantera's music is pure fucking metal. Loud, aggressive, ugly, crass, played with rare talent and skill. And that's my final word on this subject.

for whatever measly bit it's worth:

http://www.invisibleoranges.com/2010/07/interview-phil-anselmo/

If you don't like Pantera, you don't like metal

Sorry Phil, but that is nonsense. I already explained why i didn't like them musically, Phil Anselmo could be the nicest bloke in the world and i still wouldn't like their music. But I dont care if people say im not metal, never claimed to be and there's plenty of people who have said im not metal over the past 20 years, just like there's some who actually think all i listen to is metal, some think i only listen to funk & electronic music. Even jazz. But not liking Pantera will never be the reason "why I'm not metal".

and any opinions you may have about metal will fall on deaf ears with me

I'm sure that will have always been the case in that I doubt you have ever trusted a recommendation from myself but I really hope you're not making it personal against me. We're all entitled to our opinions.

it takes a phil to know a phil. i've never had any problem with people who like pantera. i can see why people like them. i've just always found them really easy to avoid. even phil anselmo has plenty of friends who don't dig pantera! pantera definitely inspired a lot of bad music, but you could say that about a lot of people.

a few thoughts

1. thx to this thread i hauled out slapshot - blast furnace and it holds up - thx scott!
2. (prob going to deindex this thread thx to this) as a dude who sold a lot of gear to p4nz3rf4aust dudes and still deals with the main dude in b0und f0r g10ry on a regular basis thx to being in mn, i want to say that A) this shit makes me uncomfortable and i think the vagaries of this kind of money changing hands can be very uncomfortable if you are a guy that uh doesnt really hate anybody B) I know for sure that 4ns3lm0 was very down with b0und4g because dude from b4g was very proud of the handwritten letter that was uh completely overt and ended with a keep up the good work, phil. also, according to same dude, there was def some $$$ changing hands, and iirc there were references to funding in the same letter.
3. aside from all of that, i'm kinda assuming that unperson is kinda fucking w/us, because i am pretty sure i like metal and racism aside, pantera leaves me totally cold.

don't necessarily think you have to love Pantera's particular brand of metal to be a true metalhead, but I liked unperson's rant anyway. Pantera is on the opposite end of the metal spectrum as whatever art-metal band is the current flavor of the month, and I can get an old school metalhead's frustration seeing the same people talking up one metal-for-people-who-don't-like metal shoegaze groups on one thread, and then slagging on Pantera on another.

I do remember living in Houston at the time Pantera was getting huge, and the guys who hosted the death metal show I listened to religiously fucking despised them, and had about 50 different nicknames for them (mostly having to do with their glam roots).

re: Graveland.. I didn't realize he was straight up NSBM... was under the impression he was more of a right-wing Polish nationalist nut-job who likes swords and shit. I love the triumphant war hymn vibe of his music - it's great music for working out.

i think was going to add a "so YMMV" type of thing after 2nd paragraph. drunk.

don't necessarily think you have to love Pantera's particular brand of metal to be a true metalhead, but I liked unperson's rant anyway. Pantera is on the opposite end of the metal spectrum as whatever art-metal band is the current flavor of the month, and I can get an old school metalhead's frustration seeing the same people talking up one metal-for-people-who-don't-like metal shoegaze groups on one thread, and then slagging on Pantera on another.

This is my real point here. Pantera are a point on a line that runs from Judas Priest and Manowar through Morbid Angel, and if you can't get down with what they're doing on a musical level, you can't get down with metal's cardinal virtues and are better off listening to Agalloch or Liturgy or Jesu. I don't wanna get all Philip Larkin up in here, but I feel that a lot of black metal is actually anti-metal, intent on denying the cardinal virtues of the genre - bigness, loudness, crassness, chest-thumping and howling at the moon. Real metal is not about wandering the wintry woods (or huddling in your basement) feeling sorry for yourself. Real metal is always pointed outward, never inward.

i don't agree. metal has never been one thing and one thing only. metal is lots of things. and always has been. for the most part big and loud, but not always crass, chest-thumping or howling. and plenty of inwardness from sabbath to priest and on and on.

maybe we can all just agree that some metal fans are more conservative than other metal fans.

As I sit here, looking over the Lucretius I am going to teach my grad students tomorrow, wearing a Bloody Panda t-shirt, and remembering that I left my Immortal/Absu tickets for the show tonight in my office on campus, I wonder, "Am I the part of the problem that unperson is complaining about? Does going to see Weedeater count?"

But then I think about the sheer number of heavy metal songs about solitude- from Black Sabbath's "Solitude" to Candlemass and on and on- and Scott's point seems OTM to me- it's not that there isn't a huge/hefty portion of heavy metal that fits the "outwardness" claim- it's just that it's not the whole story, and it never has been.

off topic, but do you think pornogrind fans are so obsessed with porn that they actually want their MUSIC to be porn too? i mean, its possible that they just want everything to be porn. like the sandwich that they are eating. they might even wish that the moon was porn. and they probably wish that their mom was porn so that when she was talking to them about boring stuff they could look at porn.

"maybe we can all just agree that some metal fans are more conservative than other metal fans."

I think we can all agree on that.

it's not the whole story, and it never has been

Of course not. But "Solitude" and "Fade to Black" and other such songs are the exceptions, which is why they stand out from the discographies of the bands who record them. It's why not every Pantera song sounds like "Cemetery Gates." When you make that sort of drown-in-my-own-tears wallowing your primary musical raison d'etre, you are setting yourself up in opposition to metal's core aesthetic principles. Which is fine. Go do that, if that's your thing. But just as a lot of indie rock should not use the term "rock" to describe itself, because it does not, in fact, rock (rocking being a definable thing having everything to do with rhythm sections), a lot of black metal and art-metal should not call itself metal because it abandons core principles in favor of moroseness and attempts to trance out. Metal isn't about trancing out, it's about screaming catharsis. And if that's the kind of "metal" you like more than all other kinds, well, you don't really understand (maybe a word I should have used instead of "like" in my initial post) metal.

*rolls eyes*

*rolls eyes*

At which part? I'm saying exactly what I think. If you wanna disagree, show your work.

You're free to think whatever you want, but I think this kind of bizarre rule setting around what constitutes a genre to be pretty tiresome small-minded stuff. I'm not invested in being or liking "real metal" though so whatever.

imo if you dont like Hanoi Rocks go home

"Metal isn't about trancing out, it's about screaming catharsis."

see, there you go again. metal is ONE thing. metal can actually walk and chew gum at the same time. exhibit a...black metal! a genre filled with trance-inducing screaming catharsis!

If this were the middle ages we'd be arguing about whether the humoral temperament of metal is really sanguine or really melancholic or really choleric or really phlegmatic.

Unperson I'm glad you bring up Liturgy because to me their work exposes the contrast between "rocking out" and "trancing out" that you propose as a false choice. When I listen to Liturgy on headphones they are intense and immersive and completely attention-seeking- I am not ignoring it and treating it as ambient muzak- I'm totally propelled by it in a way that feels aggressive and intense to me. Since it's anchored in riffs, it sounds like rocking out to me. I went to see Liturgy's last show in Baltimore and they fucking bring it. I was banging my head, people were getting really into it, it wasn't people sadly staring at their shoes. Their drummer is sick as hell, and the big riffs on the new songs they played were directly related to a long history of metal that certainly precedes just black metal (honestly- one of the new ones was weirdly Zeppelin-esque in places). So, while I would grant that there are all sorts of demographic and sensibility differences along a spectrum of metal from aggressively attention seeking to wispy and inward (i.e. from Accept to Xasthur, say), I don't buy into the essential premise here. For that matter, consider the way that individual metal songs have different sections- fast parts, mid-tempo moshy bits, intros, outros- which arguably position the same song along different points on that spectrum. Another way to think about this would be to say that people who like metal like it because they are seeking "intensity"- some people experience intensity through Morbid Angel, others through Khanate, others through Sombre Chemin or Striborg. There is a family resemblance among these groups, but it's not narrow. Obviously, "intensity" spreads outwards beyond metal and is an aesthetic value that's present in just about anything people care about- it's a marker of affective investment rather than a primary quality inherent in things.

"metal is about stuff i like, and not about stuff i don't"

"metal is about stuff i like, and not about stuff i don't"

I haven't cited a single band on this thread that I don't listen to for my own pleasure.

Except Burzum, of course.

while I accept that the actual truth-value of "if you don't like Pantera, you don't like metal" is negligible, I would offer "if you are the sort of person who tut-tuts/takes issue with/gets sandy-buttcracky about statements like 'if you don't like [band], you don't like [genre]' then you yourself aren't very metal" as an alt

I mean seriously the whole genre is built on flipping off dudes with new wave hair and yelling "slayer"

yeah metal fans never get sandy-buttcracky about ANYTHING. they never debate or question statements about the genre. and they never get mad about sweeping statements about metal.

metalheads are generally why I dislike going to metal concerts anymore. they're often one level above knuckledragging

but uh anyway black metal is awesome. like seriously gimme Taake, Darkthrone, Abigor, Emperor, Immortal, all that shit, and I'll fuck with it.

also gimme old Bathory and old Celtic Frost and I'll get a metal boner every time.

80's metal!1111!!!!!!!11!

liturgy's an interesting case because they fulfill all of unperson's weird criteria in ways that drew does a great job of outlining. hunter from liturgy thinks about this shit a lot, and he's consciously making non-introverted black metal, he thinks american black metal should be aggressive, ecstatic and cathartic in contrast with european black metal.

on the other hand they are def not metal dudes. I've seen them open for white mice, tyvek, they're doing some dates w/ the ex, and they feel out of place on pure metal bills. so in that sense they are not "metal", but if you're gonna pass by some great musicians because they don't fit yr narrow genre tag, well rock on with yr death to false metal steez...

itt the BATTLE for the SOUL of METAL will be fought

there was a time I cared about being a 'real' metalhead. now I'd rather think of myself as a music lover whose collection just happens to be 56.5% metal.

i hate pantera but i love helloween - does that cancel out my shameful unmetalness? or do i have to go to the reeducation camp and get ludivicoed with Manowar videos until i see the light?

but um when ppl say bad things about slayer sometimes i black out and wake up in a pool of blood hours later with no memory of prior events

Helloween is awes, at least Keeper of the Seven Keys era. I also like Angra's first two albums!