Posts matching tags 'metal'
2008/2/6
A survey of music sales from HMV outlets has revealed variations in mainstream musical tastes across the UK.
According to this survey, music tempo increases the further north one gets, with the west country (birthplace of trip-hop) still chilling to downbeat ambience, while Scotland gets down to 190bpm happy hardcore, which The Times reports as "a musical experience more akin to being trapped inside a tumble-dryer with a power drill". Meanwhile, Northern Ireland is big on country music, Birmingham has kept its historical associations with heavy metal, the mainstream in London and the south-east is R&B (I wonder whether this includes grime and dubstep), Manchester is a stronghold of "indie" (by which presumably means of the NME/Carling/Xfm variety, given that this is a HMV sales survey), in Yorkshire they're into "goth", and in Leeds they don't like trendy NME bands.
2006/1/5
On New Year's Eve, Malaysian police raided a rock gig over accusations of "Satanic black metal" activities, detaining numerous fans, who were then drug-tested and paraded before tabloid journalists. (It appears that Malaysian tabloids look like the Herald-Sun or Daily Star, only written in Malay; I guess some things are universal.) It is unclear what the attendees are being charged with, though the tabloids have recounted all sorts of sensational stories of Devil worship, sex orgies and fanzines with "elements of violence, pornography, Judaism, and curse words like 'fuck'".
The bands insist that they weren't "black metal", though, to be fair, given the fact that they had names like Force Vomit (who are from Singapore, of all places; is potentially offensive music actually legal over there?), Devilica, Triple6Poser and 360 Degree Head Rotation, it's probably safe to say that they weren't easy-listening or inoffensively sugary pop. What it looks like is the local wowsers and busybodies using religious legislation to crack down on any subculture with a whiff of adolescent rebellion and shock value about it, such as all forms of metal, punk and That Godawful Racket Kids These Days Listen To.
(via bOING bOING) ¶ [no comments]
2005/11/24
In January 1998, two teenage death-metal fans in Milan disappeared after drinking at a pub popular with the local metalheads. The father of one of them started making inquiries at concerts and festivals, and uncovers a Satanist death cult in the metal scene, one which has been linked to a number of murders (mostly of other teenage headbangers, by the sound of it):
One of Fabio's school friends, Mario Maccione, confessed to having beaten Fabio to death with a hammer. He also revealed that the boys had been part of a wider satanic sect called the Beasts of Satan. It was revealed Andrea Bontade, a drummer, had been terrorised into committing suicide. Soon, other mysterious deaths were being linked to the Beasts.
2005/8/24
(The other) 10 Most Ridiculous Black Metal Pics Of All Time. Pure comedy gold; may not be worksafe, though:
And the original 10 are here.
(via 
rhodri) ¶ [1 comment]
2005/7/12
Impaled Northern Moonforest is an Acoustic Black Metal act, and has songs for downloading, with titles like "Lustfully Worshipping The Inverted Moongoat While Skiing Down The Inverted Necromountain Of Necrodeathmortum" and "Entranced By The Northern Impaled Necrowizard's Blasphemous Incantation Amidst The Agonizing Abomination Of THe Lusting Necrocorpse". They sound exactly as you imagine them to.
(via uon) ¶ [5 comments]
2004/6/16
A Norwegian black metal musician is reportedly dismayed after discovering that there is a Bollywood romance with his stagename. Magnus Torbjornsen, who plays bass in Oslo band Immortal Mutilation, says he came up with the name Kraath five years ago in school, because it sounded "evil". Kraath the film, released a month ago, is the story of two Bombay taxi drivers in love with the same woman, told with lavish song-and-dance numbers. Torbjornsen is reportedly considering changing his name to Kharaoth.
2004/5/30
A recollection of growing up as a heavy-metal fanatic in the British Midlands in the 1980s:
The drummer was called James and the singer was called Jez. We met at the Bavisters' a few weeks later and, as they got out of their car and started unloading their gear, I froze. They were both wearing spandex trousers and had long, impressive mullets. I'd never seen anyone as cool as them in real life before.
When we first saw Kurt Cobain, it wasn't clear that he was the assassin who'd come to slit our throats. He had long hair for a start, professed a love of Black Sabbath and, with his grubby bandmates, had made a snotty but hardly radical debut album called Bleach. That was OK; metal was assimilating the nascent grunge movement pretty well. There certainly weren't any lines in the sand - until Nevermind.
2004/5/27
Cookie Mongoloid are a band who do speed-metal covers of Sesame Street songs. The singer sounds like Cookie Monster, though that could probably be said of many metal vocalists. (via bOING bOING)
2004/5/3
Band name of the day: Knorkator. They appear to be some kind of German industrial/metal/mook outfit...
2004/2/5
What do Norwegian Black Metal and American Neo-Conservatism have in common? See here.
The similarities dont stop there. Whereas Vikernes and other Black Metalists saw heathen Norway in a life-or-death struggle for existence with the Semitic tribes Judeo-Christianity, Perle and Frum see Judeo-Christian America under threat from Islam. And both have the same solution: War, dude!
To be fair, Vikernes and another Black Metalist murderer, Hendrik Mobus, come off as far more interesting, intellectual and complex with their second-rate Nietzschean ideas mixed up with D&D mythology, whereas Perle and Frums war manifesto is surprisingly dull and sparse. Indeed, on each page the words are spaced so far apart you could drive a fertilizer-packed white van between each line. I read it in one sitting and came away with only one memorable line, in which they disparagingly called Belgium "Frances pilot fish." On the other hand, Perle and Frum have used their influence over Bush to rack up a far, far higher corpse-count than the hapless Norwegian dirtheads, so they more than make up for their lack of aesthetic flair or stylized corpse paint with genuine blood on their hands.
2003/11/7
And continuing the strange-music theme recently dominating this blog: someone's putting together theme recently dominating this blog: someone's doing an elektro tribute to Iron Maiden. By the look of the page, I'd guess that their definition of "elektro" would be the sort of sternly Teutonic industriogothic EBM that grew out of youths in depressed German industrial cities playing with Amigas a decade or two ago. It could be amusing, or it could be dourly monotonous, or some combination thereof.
2003/9/15
When Johnny Cash passed away, I noticed how he had virtually been claimed by the industriogothic scene as One Of Their Own, because of his dress sense and melancholy themes. (Though his covering Nine Inch Nails and Bad Seeds songs probably helped too.) It's funny, as I'm fairly sure that when Siouxsie Sioux and Andrew Eldritch were inventing what was to become 'Goth", they weren't heavily influenced by Johnny Cash, or indeed much country music at all; I doubt that Throbbing Gristle and their ilk were either.
It appears to be a rule that any vaguely dark, ethereal or otherworldly eventually gets lumped into the "Goth" genre, even if it starts life a million miles from goth's tightly circumscribed perimeter. It happened to Depeche Mode (in the 1980s they weren't goth, but now they're Goth As Fuck), and in the U.S. it seems to have partly happened to the shoegazer genre. (In Commonwealth countries, shoegazer is firmly ensconced in the indie-rock tradition, however.)
To wit, a list of artists and genres who might be filed in the "Goth" sections of record shops in 10 years' time:
- Radiohead
- Portishead
- Sigur Rós
- Godspeed You Black Emperor, and related outfits; in fact, all gloomy post-rock
- all Norwegian Black Metal
- various German/Austrian laptop glitch techno
And some things you probably won't find filed under "Goth":
- Architecture In Helsinki
- the Dixie Chicks
- The Vines/The Datsuns/Jet
- Kid 606's Missy Elliott mash-ups
2003/8/24
A death metal cover of the Stallman Free Software Song, by someone named Jono Bacon. As metal as you can get with a drum machine, anyway. (via jwz)
2003/6/3
Authorities across the Middle East are cracking down on music subcultures: form heavy-metal fans in Morocco to gay disco-dancing "Satanists" in Lebanon to anything to do with Michael Jackson in Saudi Arabia.
Among the objects exhibited in court as being contrary to good morals was a black T-shirt with heavy metal symbols on it. This prompted the judge to comment that "normal people go to concerts in a suit and tie".
Lebanese devil worshippers are easily recognised. According to one security official, they are young men with long hair and beards who "listen to hard rock music, drink mind-altering alcoholic cocktails and take off their black shirts, dancing bare-chested".
What is probably the most bizarre heavy-metal-and-satanism case occurred in Egypt in 1997 when state security police, armed with machine guns and satanically clad in masks and black uniforms, dragged about 70 youngsters - some as young as 16 - from their beds in a series of dawn raids. They took away posters from bedroom walls, CDs and tapes ranging from Guns 'n' Roses to Beethoven's fifth symphony and, in one household, a black t-shirt with a Bugs Bunny design.
"In the 1980s," Mohammed continued, "Saudis started dressing like [Michael Jackson], copying his hairstyle and doing moonwalks on the roundabouts. This is the reason most people give me about why his stuff is not allowed here.
2003/5/30
A look at the Iraqi death-metal scene, or in particular, the Iraqi death-metal band; a group of five young men who sing in fluent American (learned from TV shows) and have ambitions of moving overseas: (via NWD)
"Iraq, man, there's nothing here," Moudhafar says. "The scene is in other places. Life is in other places."
All their songs are in English. Heavy metal should be either in English or German, says rhythm guitarist Faisal Talal. "Arabic doesn't fit." Moudhafar interjects with sudden hauteur, "We don't want just anybody to listen to our music. It should be, like, an educated person."
(I'm not so sure about the you-can't-rock-in-Arabic thing; I've seen it done. And if they're not at least using Middle-Eastern scales in their music, they're missing out.)
2003/5/16
The Howard Era's paternalistic censorship regime strikes again. A Tasmanian band were fined for importing their own CDs to Australia. Customs officers seized 207 copies of the latest album by Intense Hammer Rage (let me guess: they're a metal band of some sort). The CD is released by a US label and is legally available over the counter in the US; in Australia, it is a prohibited product, because it contains "offensive lyrics".
(Offensive lyrics are banned in Australia? They should go down to the Arthouse some evening.)
2003/5/4
The BBC has a guide to current teenage subcultures. Interesting that in the UK, mooks are called "nu metallers", Ben Sherman shirts are considered a clubber thing (I suppose that's because the '90s Britpop Mod revival is ancient history), and Camden is considered a "Goth Mecca". (When I was in London last year, I saw all of about two goths in 3 weeks; I thought that particular meme-complex had died out through overexposure over there by now.)
They're listening to
- Independent 'Alternative' Music, from small independent labels in pressings of say 100 straight out of Reykjavik
- Garage Rock like The Strokes, The White Stripes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs
- Old indie classics - The Velvet Underground, The Smiths, Nirvana, The Pixies
2003/2/20
Via MeFi, reviews of heavy-metal musicians by groupies; and they're not concerned with their musicianship here, but rather their physical endowment and sexual performance, all laid out like so much meat in a butcher's window. (And not just metal musicians either; basically anyone with mook appeal will do. The likes of Eminem and Trent Reznor make appearances.)
2001/10/19
I don't think that means what you think it means: Perhaps those stories about abysmal education standards in America are true; how else would one explain having named a street Anthrax Street? Apparently, the story goes, some low-ranking staffer suggested the name of his favourite heavy-metal band and the supervisor, not being into either heavy metal music or microbiology, approved it as it was "unique and different". Now the residents, having abruptly learned what 'anthrax' means, are none too pleased.
(I wonder whether they have had problems with teenage metalheads stealing their street signs; I recall hearing that the street sign for a Nirvana St. in Melbourne's inner south-east is the highest street sign in Melbourne; the local council made sure of that after replacing signs stolen by grunge fans in the early 1990s.)
2001/10/18
Capitalising on the anthrax scare (part 2): Pharmaceutical giant Bayer has approached aging metal band Anthrax (possibly soon to be known as Basket Of Puppies) about advertising its anti-anthrax antibiotic on their web site, which happens to be "anthrax.com".
2001/8/6
A new menace is threatening the impressionable youth of Malaysia; the menace of black metal, heavy-metal music with Satanic subtexts. It is not clear how Malaysian Black Metal differs from the Norwegian variant (presumably it'd be more anti-Islamic than anti-Christian, for one), or whether the menace is so far just headbangers getting down to imported Burzum CDs, but clerics say thay have found evidence of heavy metal fans being involved in Satanic activities. the Malaysian government, meanwhile, is taking firm steps to nip the problem in the bud, including ordering radio stations to play less heavy metal and requiring touring bands to submit videotapes before playing concerts. A committee of government-appointed clerics has called for a total ban on black metal music and associated imagery, and some schools have reportedly began strip-searching students for tattoos linked with the subculture.