Liturgy

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.

don't need any more italian movie soundtrack metal in my life either...

Lot of rules Scott.

It was probably Napalm Death actually.

I doubt they would've called themselves a metal band at all until well into Barney's tenure... grindcore sort of aligned itself more with anarchist punk and crusty stuff early on, IIRC.

so i guess i should hear that new DHG album, huh? haven't listened to them in a long time.

I think we went through these same arguments on frobishers extreme metal poll

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVYwVQ8huzs

okay the new DHG is the first one since the last album i heard so i guess i didn't miss much! and listening to this on youtube i wonder if i would really need to hear this for an hour...pretty funny though.

"I doubt they would've called themselves a metal band at all until well into Barney's tenure..."

I think critics might have disagreed, but grindcore was not really one thing to be sure.

still love that dhg record, it's so weird

http://noisey.vice.com/blog/why-are-black-metal-fans-such-elitist-assholes

At their gig. They're on in forty minutes. Stoked, yah

HHH is on the arena floor, swigging some fizzy beverage. Guy in a Liturgy shirt next to me wandered over to say hi but the second he moved, HHH drifted off to the other side of the floor, without looking. I now think he was drinking a special energy drink that gives him ESP

He only notices you if you start chanting HE-EEEY HE-EEEEY HE-EEEY

Hahaha they are totally dressed to troll

hope youre enjoying it lj! Not seen them live, and despite having their first two albums I havent heard the new one yet as im skint.

Oh man that was rad

I was about 4 feet from Greg Fox

Can't hear anything except tinnitus now

Do we (gf + me) stay at the front now or let the Three Trapped Tigers fans have a go? We know nothing about them

Correction: "I've listened to two of their albums on Spotify!"

Well so-rry

The people behind us are very, very short. With a heavy heart, we're staying put

how straight fire does a band have to be in order to justify your tinnitus?

Fairly. They have to have guitar canons.

erm I own both their first 2 albums and the 12" (and the manifesto) why say i only heard them on spotify?

http://noisey.vice.com/blog/why-are-black-metal-fans-such-elitist-assholes

Because band like Liturgy, Deafheaven and Myrkur are thrust into our faces and we're told if we don't like them it's based on some kind of horrible, prejudiced elitism and not knowledge of the form that dates back to, you know, before last year.

However, at some point you need to just accept that the thing that you love may get more popular or have elements of it co-opted by other genres—and if you take a step back, that's part of what makes music or any other art form valuable to the culture.

"The culture." Yessss. Black metal is, traditionally, very concerned about the culture and integrating itself into it. That's why the word "misanthropy" figured into half of the early album titles in the genre.

"I don't understand metal at all, let me tell you metal guys why you're jerks."

lol that article is such garbage. p lol that somebody'd bother to write it and then somebody'd read it and go "this is good, let's publish this"

suspect it was more like "this is bad and will generate pageviews via its badness, let's publish this"

it is extraordinarily feeble though and I suspect the tone of wounded surprise to be disingenuous, which makes it worse

pretty sure i defended this album when it came out but with time and experience i realize that i don't even really get it. aesthethica was great though.

seeing these dudes tonight.

Mr. HHH, on the astronomically small chance that you read this, please understand that I genuinely love Liturgy, but goddamn it you make it so hard to defend you sometimes

https://kelvalhaal.bandcamp.com/releases

looool