Fun Stuff > BAND
LITURGY is fixing heavy metal, and there's nothing you can do to stop them
JimmyJazz:
--- Quote from: JD on 06 Apr 2011, 22:43 ---what the fuck does liturgy mean anyway
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Viola.
KharBevNor:
The thing I really love about this is that it seems, from the stuff the guy is saying, that he really isn't keeping up on what's been going on in black metal in the last decade. Legions of black and post-black metal bands have been doing everything he says (even with regards to the America thing, look at the cascadian scene). I mean gods, USBM has been around almost as long as Norwegian BM.
With regards to what black metal is, I'd say that the idea that black metal is ideology is false. Black metal is about atmosphere; it's almost more of a mode than a genre, a texture that can be added to other things quite freely. There are many indicators that build into it; certain guitar tones, certain riffing patterns, a particular quality of vocals or of production, none of which have to be present.
Also, what exactly makes the metal scene exclusionary? The fact that its supporters insist on clearly defining what metal is? The fact that you are expected to have some sort of basic knowledge before you start shooting your mouth off? How does this make it different to any music scene, except for the fact that metal is an enormously broad church. You'll find someone who'll scoff at anything, but an overarching genre that can pull in material ranging from Saint Vitus to Finntroll, Aborym to Moonspell, Mekong Delta to Gnaw Their Tongues, Orange Goblin to Vlad Tepes is hardly the most exclusionary going. If the term metal can be stretched to mean anything, then it is a meaningless term; to make the term meaningless denies its deeply meaningful connections with the international metal community, with the people who sustain it. The reason the 'metal hipster' (a sterotype made flesh in this guy) is reviled is because he is a cultural appropriator; he takes things from the metal community and doesn't give in return. He destroys the meaning we hold dear.
David_Dovey:
--- Quote from: KvP on 06 Apr 2011, 22:43 ---
--- Quote from: Johnny C on 06 Apr 2011, 21:50 ---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
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Like I never brought up the fact that this guy was from Brooklyn, or an American? Neither of those things really matter. Dovey brought up Brooklyn and so did Tommy, but I didn't. I'm pretty taken aback by your lack of reading comprehension here.
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And I was definitely very conscious of the can of worms I was potentially opening by even mentioning Brooklyn in the parenthetical but I stand by it based on the context in which it was brought up, namely that;
-Liturgy is one band of many from the area that are engaging in the appropriation of black metal tropes while blatantly (or iconoclastically, if you listen to what Hunter Hunt-Hendrix has to say) refusing to engage with the genre's less obvious but arguably more important signifiers, as well as the site of a fucking symposium in black metal
- Brooklyn seems to specialise in this sort of thing, and it's not like black metal is the only style that gets this treatment from Brooklyn-types. It's probably more embarrassing when you've got private-school educated white kids donning Native American head-dresses or doing chopped-and-screwed minstrel shows, but not by much.
sean:
oh geez i havent read this whole thead (im kinda drunk) but i skimmed the beginning posts and feel i have things to say, sorry if this has been covered.
first off, the dude who fronts this band is fucking retarded. i watched a video of the dude who fronts this band talking the other day (sam posted it on fb) and holy fuck he is goddamn retarded. he was talking about his "band manifesto" and how he feels his music is analogous to "orchestral string music" due to tremolo picking, which is enough to convince me this dude has no fucking clue about what he is talking about. i mean, the point of white metal i noticed was made (pussy black metal, black metal implies certain themes+whatnot) which i totally agree with. i dont necessarily agree the core themes need to be honored (nihilism, anti-christianity, whatever) but i feel, as is with the punk rock community, there is a certain degree of respect of yr own personal ideologies and knowing about them and not sounding like a fucktard if you choose to express those ideas, which the guy who fronts this band is incapable of doing. really when he talks about his "band manifesto" he sounds like a fucking idiot. WHO HAS A FUCKING BAND MANIFEST REALLY ARE YOU TRYING TO SOUND LIKE A COMPLETE DOUCHE BAG. i just have a lot of issue with the guy who fronts this band because he has terrible opinions about ideas and his music and oh god it just irritates me to no end. AND THE STRING ORCHESTRA THING OH GOD. can bands please stop comparing their music to classical composers jesus fucking shit this irritates me to no fucking end. im sorry yr band doesnt sound like bethoveen or wagner or whoever, fuck the hell off. yr in a band with guitars, not a full symphony, and yr not using the same harmonic language as whoever composer yr trying to imitate is so fuck off. (sorry, bands that say this really piss me off). plus romantics suck, dont try to be like them they are terrible.
I'm sorry if any/all of these points have been made/refuted, i saw this thread and felt a need to speak my mind. i just fucking hate this band.
David_Dovey:
--- Quote from: KharBevNor on 06 Apr 2011, 23:09 ---With regards to what black metal is, I'd say that the idea that black metal is ideology is false. Black metal is about atmosphere; it's almost more of a mode than a genre, a texture that can be added to other things quite freely. There are many indicators that build into it; certain guitar tones, certain riffing patterns, a particular quality of vocals or of production, none of which have to be present.
--- End quote ---
I kind of cringed a little every time I found myself using the term "ideology" in this thread because it's definitely a loaded term but on the other hand I wanted to shy away from leaning too heavily on something like "atmosphere" too because it's inexact and such a hard thing to quantify.
And I think that the basis of black metal as commonly constituted is ideological, although probably not in the way most people would assume (i.e; something to do with Nazis or burning churches or Asatru). I mean more in the way that black metal was very consciously a response to the direction of other prominent metal sub-genres. What's the line? "No fun, no mosh, no 'core"? Something like that? The way that black metal interacts with the wider metal/heavy music world in general in itself is very much an ideology, and it very much informed a lot of the other things that we now consider to be indispensable characteristics of the style, both aural and otherwise.
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