Liturgy

honestly if they had made a whole album of "fanfare" I would be repping hard for these guys as an interesting (if not really related to metal) act - it develops really nicely, strikes me an an honest piece of "modern classical" writing

the rest of this is really pretty unoriginal to my ear, there are a ton of black metal bands from finland and norway and france who've been covering this kinda ground musically for ages. the one thing that's different is the indie-rock horns, or soft-horns, which I rather like in terms of what they're doing musically - but this whole Brooklyn approach to metal -- "it's black metal...plus horns! it's black metal...plus shoegaze!" is so tiresome. maybe just write good black metal and quit gunning for that BNM by being novel with the kitchen-sink biz?

but less bad than the other liturgy records

I like the two previous albums a lot, but I haven't even made it through this one.

the other two felt like (per jd) brooklyny genre exercises while the new one is at least kind of absurd in its blog-bait nature (or whatever the 2015 equivalent is).

i think it is a little strange that for all the goofy black metal appropriations and corpse paint minstrel show stuff of the past 10 years no one has decided to mash up "good production" and "black metal." all the liturgy stuff sounds almost as crummy as some one man ukrainian nazi bandcamp shit despite having an infinitely larger recording budget.

despite having an infinitely larger recording budget

Where's your evidence for this? They're on Thrill Jockey, not Roadrunner or even Metal Blade.

Also, there are plenty of black metal bands with good production! The French bands sound amazing, as does Satyricon (who just made a double live album with a fucking orchestra) and probably a million others, going back to Dimmu Borgir and Cradle of Filth in the late '90s/early '00s.

idk i feel like there are bands on thrill jockey that manage to record on a drumkit that's not made of papier-mache.

point taken re: french bm bands and the dimmu/cof type bands, though that stuff veers closer to over- rather than well-produced

i just want drums that sound good tbh. that cheesy deafheaven album has good drums

Seriously, this record is not popular. On RYM it has 2.71 out of 5 - for comparison's sake,

"Seriously, a site that thinks Madvillainy is one of the 100 greatest records of all time doesn't like this album"

there are a ton of black metal bands from finland and norway and france who've been covering this kinda ground musically for ages

to an extent, but I do often try to listen to such music and to my ears this sounds like it is genuinely up to something different, both in the use of shifting rhythms and the chiming rasping electronic textural overload - it is euphoric art-rock more than BM perhaps but this does not invalidate it

maybe just write good black metal and quit gunning for that BNM by being novel with the kitchen-sink biz?

I believe HHH when he says this is the closest he's gotten to recording the sound in his head. I don't suspect he'd be good at just good pop black metal because his heart would not be in it. he is a precocious little shit who's biting off barely as much as he cam chew - he is shooting at the moon because he can't see anywhere beneath it. I can well empathise with this - leave prudence and timeworn craft to those who have the patience to make such music. we need our stubborn innovators too, even if they're really truly in actual fact making 2007-era indie rock (comparable examples please)

also his songwriting narratives are p exciting to me - the way follow ii builds and then dissolves over and over again into the abyss - that is spectacular imo and I have heard an awful lot of spectacular music

Whiney yr not srsly going to make me cherrypick something worse outta the Acclaimed Music top hundred right

it's crude but it illustrates just how much antipathy the metal community, very many of whom post to RYM, has for the album

What other albums does this sound like? I thought it was fairly unique which is why it's been singled out for hatred. I mean if there's other stuff like this out there I want to hear it

I just wish all the huffy dismissal that H3 gets was directed at Deafheaven tbh

the two bands aren't really anything alike, which is why their mention rankles

but yeah, Deafheaven are turgid dullardry, I get the sense that Liturgy are seen as more 'anti-metal' though, which is a shame, because I thought the point of metal was to be extreme

because I thought the point of metal was to be extreme

only 15 year olds say that

ok, I thought the point of metal was to convey the extremities of human experience, especially viz à vis death and the infinite

anyway, that isn't the post you all have to answer. the two posts in response to JCLC and Whiney are the ones you have to answer, not the sidetrack shit dissing deafheaven who shouldn't even be in this thread

I'm not sure you know much about metals history

why did I give you all an easy tangent with which to berate me

state of music discourse on here I swear

which black metal albums pass the bechdel test?

I'm not sure you know much about metals history

― Cosmic Slop, Sunday, 18 October 2015 21:02 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm not being funny but how does this even matter?

If extreme metal's not forging onwards and upwards what's the fucking point?

I trawl through so many mediocre metal albums on a weekly basis I really wish metal wasn't so in love with it's own shitty "heritage."

well imago tried to tell us that metal is supposed to be extreme etc yet he admits he has no interest in its history and hasnt listened to many old bands; so how does he know?

if he wasnt trying to tell some lifers what metal is about of course it wouldnt matter.

fwiw i prefer bands these days who do like to push on with the genre and if that includes 'brooklynisation' then so be it. imago and i like a lot of similar things, it just annoys me when he dismisses some stuff that at times is better than the examples he gives.

but i will defer any more replies to smithy as he puts it a lot better than I ever could.

"If extreme metal's not forging onwards and upwards what's the fucking point?"

fat beats. tasty likks. i will listen to all these mediocre metal records. okay, maybe not mediocre. but i will listen to all these par for the course metal records.

do you know how many garage band hendrix covers i've heard in my life? 4,039,939. very few of them elevated the discussion. kinda love them all.

i do not care for liturgy. the vocals really bug me though. i like the new ghost bath album! that's an album godspeed you black emperor fans would like. or agalloch fans. i dunno, they are just dorks from north dakota that pretended to be from china, but i dig it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wnz7lcei1IA

why is it people still buy into the myth of progress in music when it's been thoroughly debunked everywhere else

autopsy has been spinning their wheels for twenty years and are considerably better than any dozen BUT LOOK HERE, THEY PLAYED AN OUD ON THEIR METAL ALBUM bros

why is it people still buy into the myth of progress in music when it's been thoroughly debunked everywhere else

Yep. Go "onward and upward" your own ass all you want. I'll be over here with my Obituary albums.

there are a ton of black metal bands from finland and norway and france who've been covering this kinda ground musically for ages

to an extent, but I do often try to listen to such music and to my ears this sounds like it is genuinely up to something different, both in the use of shifting rhythms and the chiming rasping electronic textural overload - it is euphoric art-rock more than BM perhaps but this does not invalidate it

maybe just write good black metal and quit gunning for that BNM by being novel with the kitchen-sink biz?

I believe HHH when he says this is the closest he's gotten to recording the sound in his head. I don't suspect he'd be good at just good pop black metal because his heart would not be in it. he is a precocious little shit who's biting off barely as much as he cam chew - he is shooting at the moon because he can't see anywhere beneath it. I can well empathise with this - leave prudence and timeworn craft to those who have the patience to make such music. we need our stubborn innovators too, even if they're really truly in actual fact making 2007-era indie rock (comparable examples please)

also his songwriting narratives are p exciting to me - the way follow ii builds and then dissolves over and over again into the abyss - that is spectacular imo and I have heard an awful lot of spectacular music

this was my first impression on hearing the Ark Work, haven't listened since (and in fairness, I should):

First time listening to this band. I've heard the drummer Greg Fox a few times, mostly improv stuff, and was always really impressed. Saw him do a trio with Trevor Dunn (Mr Bungle) and Colin Stetson on sax, and it was totally engaging, like a weird cross of extreme metal and free-jazz.

This, on the other hand, is pretty bullshit as far as I can tell. A lot of stroking and never cumming. Minor modes get pounded for scores of minutes a time, and never really pay off to anything worthwhile. The singer has a monotone whine that not only doesn't service the music, it actively dissuades me from believing any of this is more than a project of desperate boredom, of someone trying in vain to force blood out of a particularly bland turnip. By comparison, stack it up against the Dodheimsgard record, which has the exact opposite problem -- LOADS of ambition and originality that might turn folks off because it has too many disparate ideas. Liturgy sound like they don't have enough, and (over) compensate by banging the shit out of them.

Who knows, maybe if I listen more, stuff will seem better.

and yeah, the talk about Deafheaven's drummer on the other thread relevant here, because Greg Fox really is one of the more interesting drummers working today, and I wish this band was anywhere as interesting as his playing

autopsy has been spinning their wheels for twenty years and are considerably better than any dozen BUT LOOK HERE, THEY PLAYED AN OUD ON THEIR METAL ALBUM bros

otm

Oh, I think the Dodheimsgard album is significantly better - I think it's one of the best metal albums of this century so far if not ever, for what that's worth

I also listened to Orthrelm's OV in its entirety earlier, just for fun so bear THAT in mind too, yo

It's just...yeah, there's a melodic theme which 4 or 5 of the songs return to, but it's rendered differently each time - it's better to think of the album as a single piece, really. It doesn't have nearly so many ideas as Dodheimsgard but imo it has a very vibrant and original character; sure, it is the insistent hallelujah of the irksome prig who knows he is saved, but to me there is something wonderful in how much conflict and sonic rancour he must fight through to achieve his epiphany. In some ways, also, it is a subtle album (don't laugh!) with very slight shifts in momentum that add up to more than bland repetition

I did used to love that Orthrelm record a lot when it came out, haven't heard it in a while -- but I suspect I'd at least like it now. Offhand, the main striking difference between it and Liturgy is that Orthrelm aren't dramatic (and certainly not melodramatic). They do their thing, and you can take it or leave it -- it only gets annoying if you can't hang with really high pitched repetition, which is almost a physical barrier for listening. The barrier I had with Liturgy was more artistic in nature. (and if I was going to have issues with Dodheimsgard, they'd also be artistic rather than physical -- but I don't have those issues for whatever reason)

A lot of stroking and never cumming.
it's 2015 can we stop saying stuff like this?

Greg Fox really is one of the more interesting drummers working today, and I wish this band was anywhere as interesting as his playing
otm, he is the only reason i went to see liturgy

never said it before, but fuck off it was on a message board

wow
alright

Yep. Go "onward and upward" your own ass all you want. I'll be over here with my Obituary albums.

― the top man in the language department (誤訳侮辱), Monday, 19 October 2015 03:14 (12 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Niiiiice.

I will concede my last post was kind of stupid and badly put since I'd been down the pub and really should have gone to bed by then... but I AM genuinely tired of the way metal celebrates box-ticking supposed tradition. Metal's not alone in doing that I know.

I don't really think Liturgy is pointing the way to the future, and there are many valid criticisms of The Ark Work but I don't see why it can't exist alongside the many, MANY acts that for better or worse stick very much inside genre boundaries.

I AM genuinely tired of the way metal celebrates box-ticking supposed tradition

I get that. But I'm with JCLC in being extremely tired of rhetoric, particularly rhetoric from critics who review maybe three metal albums a year, about how important a given album is precisely because it's "metal-but-not-really" in one way or another. It's been going on for a long, long time at this point, and the idea that the tradition might have innate value - that it might be more than just a series of aesthetic signifiers for dorks who think they invented something to use as a springboard - gets more and more remote and impossible to even consider. (Of course, metal criticism has its own problems, like entire 20-to-50-album year-end lists that don't contain a single release with clean vocals, but that's something different.)

to further triangulate my appreciation of Liturgy, imo this year's Napalm Death album completely crushes it - it'll be somewhere in my year-end top twenty coz it is so good but I will cop to usually wanting greater sonic thrills allied to good songwriting which is why Liturgy and Dodheimsgard will be above it. Doesn't mean that the Napalm Death isn't brilliant, or that they're not making exactly the sort of music they should be. The same presumably goes for a lot of other trad-metal albums I need to check out (there are so many though! So much metal! I haven't heard the Skepticism yet for a start, and then there's Shape of Despair, Akhlys, Obsequiae...those are just the ones on my queue!)

what was the first metal-not-metal sensation? i mean, once "extreme metal" splintered off into discrete traditions there was still a lot of indie rock overlap in terms of unsane and amrep and shit. but once metal started to mean longsleeve tshirts with inverted pentagrams running down the sleeve i feel like the boundaries were pretty solidly drawn up until isis/sunn early-00s ascendance.

nb longsleeve tshirts with pentagrams are a wardrobe staple

nah there is a shitload of not metal that predates them

give a listen to OLD's album Formula for instance

"how important a given album is precisely because it's "metal-but-not-really" in one way or another."

this is forever and ever though. in rock crit. the first or second BOC album had a sticker on it with a quote from metal mike saunders saying how they had transcended the genre! literally decades of this.

I AM genuinely tired of the way metal celebrates box-ticking supposed tradition

I get that. But I'm with JCLC in being extremely tired of rhetoric, particularly rhetoric from critics who review maybe three metal albums a year, about how important a given album is precisely because it's "metal-but-not-really" in one way or another. It's been going on for a long, long time at this point, and the idea that the tradition might have innate value - that it might be more than just a series of aesthetic signifiers for dorks who think they invented something to use as a springboard - gets more and more remote and impossible to even consider. (Of course, metal criticism has its own problems, like entire 20-to-50-album year-end lists that don't contain a single release with clean vocals, but that's something different.)

― the top man in the language department (誤訳侮辱), Monday, 19 October 2015 16:08 (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That's all fair. No-one likes being told by dilettantes how they're Enjoying Metal Wrong. I get that, though I probably sometimes get dangerously close to doing it myself. I listen to more metal than anything else myself it's just that my taste's a bit peculiar and perhaps too swayed by perceived novelty.

I don't believe that "the idea that the tradition might have innate value..." is really under threat though. There will probably always be contemporary bands that sound like they're from different eras of metal, like retro-thrash and the like. I mean there are still new bands that rip hard on Black Sabbath and NWOBHM to this day. That's an aspect of metal that's not going away soon.

https://i.imgflip.com/ss9f7.jpg

the retro sabbath stuff is probably my least favorite current popular sub-genre. maybe because like black metal its easy to ape? i get a lot of haircut come lately vibes from some of those bands. their album covers always look good though. i have funeral doom for all my sabbath needs. and uh the rest of metal...

"what was the first metal-not-metal sensation?"

It was probably Napalm Death actually.