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LITURGY is fixing heavy metal, and there's nothing you can do to stop them
Johnny C:
i mean "look at this american guy from brooklyn who spoke about his music in public at a symposium in academic terms" is basically the gist of it and you can probably guess the top three reasons at least that i'm uncomfortable with that being a problem with a musician
KvP:
I am actually seriously astounded that you're calling me an anti-intellectual for making fun of this guy. I really am.
David_Dovey:
And I mean it's established fact that metal is ridiculously exclusionary and insular and elitist which just comes along with the territory and I don't think we have to take it all that seriously in that respect. I try to be as aware of that as possible and I feel more than a little self-conscious at appearing to be falling into that whole trope of the "that shit's not metal, fag" guy on like such as metalsucks.net or Encyclopedia Metallum or whatever but in this case Hunt-Hendrix is actually being really loud + proud about the fact that he is subverting a lot of the basic identifying marks of black metal.
The problem with this is how he thinks he is being revolutionary and, yes, improving or transcending the limits of what metal as currently constituted is capable of, but what he's actually doing is neutering metal's appeal and power. I think maybe he's not realising that the genre didn't come by it's conventions by accident? As I said before, second-wave black metal sounds the way it sounds for very deliberate reasons, because that is what the pioneering practitioners of the style felt was the most effective way of conveying what they wanted conveyed. And as the genre aged, other bands made music that shared very little of those stylistic markers (or none at all), but was still recognisably "black metal" based on a shared foundation and desire to evoke certain moods and responses. When Hunter Hunt-Hendrix plays desolate, grim, dark music and later intellectualises it as being about "life and hyperthrophy" or whatever his quote was, it just comes off as being pretty confused and conflicted and at cross-purposes to itself and yes, stupid and ripe for parody.
--- Quote from: Johnny C on 06 Apr 2011, 21:34 ---that it's a thing that basically makes black metal special and privileged? that it's a thing of exclusion that basically doesn't make any sense cause it has nothing to do with like the music itself? the idea that saying "you can only be grim to make it" is non-controversial should precisely be a thing of controversy because it implies that you can't challenge norms within it which is like total baloney.
--- End quote ---
This is a weird thing to say! Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't we just recently have the conversation about how punk rock can be an awful lot of things musically, from one acoustic guitar to the standard electric guitar-bass-drums thing to like a whole fucking gypsy klezmer ensemble but they're all united by an ethos or an attitude? Once again, my memory may be misleading me here but I seem to remember we were in agreement on that point. Black metal isn't privileged in this position at all.
David_Dovey:
Hey fuck you guys for posting so fast, all my shit be redundant now fuck
David_Dovey:
--- Quote from: Johnny C on 06 Apr 2011, 21:46 ---also a lot of the argument against this dude's idea that he's making black metal boils down to a "no trve scotsman," you guys realize that right
--- End quote ---
No you're totally correct and I feel a little ashamed that that's what the conversation degenerated to because it's tangential at best to the actual heart of this, which is as such: Hunter Hunt-Hendrix is an incredibly silly motherfucker and that is not because he is making music that he calls black metal but really isn't, but because he is making music which superficially resembles black metal music but lacks any of the heft which made black metal vital and interesting in the first place, and then proceeds to deliver lectures and manifestos about said hollow, overwrought pantomime in which he strongly implies that his method is actually the most valid expression of the form to date, and does so in language that is self-consciously "intellectual" and needlessly opaque in extremis, once again in direct juxtaposition to everything that is interesting about black metal. Like, he couldn't have missed the mark any more if he tried.
And that is fucking HILARIOUS
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