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deehollowaywrites · 4 years

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Title: Doomed to Fail: The Incredibly Loud History of Doom, Sludge, and Post-Metal

Author: J.J. Anselmi

Release: February 11, 2020

Genre: music, nonfiction, memoir

Order here!

When I first heard Metallica’s “Battery,” I knew I’d found the real shit, J.J. Anselmi’s newest states in an early chapter. The social alienation, the depression, the anger, and the preoccupation with death: it was the music I needed, right when I needed it. Similar stories abound in volumes like Jon Wiederhorn’s Raising Hell and a recent academic anthology of gender, sexuality, and heavy metal analyses; the typical pathway to extreme music, it seems, is youthful aggression, disaffection, or malaise. It’s not very cool to recall that your teen rage was tempered rather than catalyzed by religion. Even less cool to admit that if you are currently swimming in doom’s murk, you only took the chilly plunge because of boys and men.

A few antecedents, then: The Minutemen. Captain Beefheart. Def Leppard. The Mars Volta.

Edgy enough, weird enough, almost metallic enough, nearly harsh enough. It’s easy to see the slippery slope, to hear my mother’s voice in my head. If that’s what you want to spend your money on, she said of The Mars Volta’s full-length debut, I guess it’s your money. A year or so later, she would be interrogating me about certain media downloads to the family desktop--not because I was infringing copyright via poorly-labeled LimeWire files, but because the music was the sort that drove away the Holy Spirit (to be fair, Master of Puppets didn’t inspire any epiphanies). Mormons are very concerned with the Spirit’s presence. Movies and music are the fastest and most seductive shortcuts to becoming lost in a mire of worldliness, spiritual miasma, and sin. Interestingly, my mother was less perturbed by my weekly emails to a much-older dude I’d “met” on a geek forum, he of the curly beard and Captain Beefheart appreciation. For a suburban teenage girl reading SPIN in 2003, music in particular seemed a clear Point A to ineffable cool’s Point B, as evidenced by--although at the time I wouldn’t have phrased it thus--fuckability. Whiteboy music journalists, from Klosterman with his contrarian hair metal love to Azerrad deifying The Minutemen, had Ideas about what made rock music good. It was a trail of breadcrumbs that could be followed by anyone, so maybe I’d start off as me and end up as Brody Dalle. Of course, wanting to be punk is proof that you're destined to remain square, so the guy in the homemade Leftöver Crack t-shirt likewise stayed a mystery. Meanwhile, I made a fansite about The Mars Volta for my web design class, wrote an AP essay about why filesharing is good, actually, and counted the days ‘til graduation.

Euro-style power metal is romantic. Good make-out tunes. The fine art of getting into something that someone you fancy is into, well, that’s bog-standard for a huge swath of humanity and I’ve never been above it because I do like exploring new things. However, there’s a certain flavor of man who encourages women to listen to music he likes not out of genuine enthusiasm and desire to share, but because filling up a vessel with water from your spring means that you, yourself, will never be thirsty. There’s no rearranging of boundaries necessary for the recommender, no exchange of gifts, no call to reassess your favorites in light of new information. Where things get hairy is when women take what is conferred and make it their own. The vaguely fringe music that had already primed my eardrums led away from flourish-laden prog and high-camp power metal, into weirder and uglier places my boyfriend at the time had no interest in traversing. It stings a bit to realize that your heart is big enough to hold all the loves that comprise the person you love, that your desire is malleable and open, and that they have always been enough by themselves, fully-formed, unswerving as a highway through the desert. It hurts to hear that you’re not doing the thing (metal or comics or horse racing) in the way that was shown you, properly. This might be when the rage starts to seep back in, poisoning the spring. But solo concert-going is only lonely until you make it past the venue’s threshold. After that, the Spirit is always with you.

Myself, I’ve seldom found the divine in places it was supposed to inhabit.

The thing about The Mars Volta that embedded itself in my ribcage seventeen years ago wasn’t their tight jeans: it was how they seemed to have misplaced all their fucks. Prior to Sacha Jenkins’ 2003 SPIN review, the ugliest thing I’d sought out of my own volition was an Anti-Flag album, a suitably edgy move in George W. Bush’s America. Deloused in the Comatorium did not care if you understood what it was going for; an impetus existed behind the unexpected time signatures, dog-bothering vocals, and salsa moves that was alluring in its opacity and bloody-mindedness. A bunch of weirdos recorded a fuck-you in album format because they wanted to. Atmosphere, emotion, tension could all be far more important to a song than melody or lyrics. Listenable was up for debate. Art formed its own excuse. In this way, although the two groups couldn’t be further apart sonically, my heart was made ready for Katatonia. Then Oceans of Slumber. Torche. Black Castle, Thou, Bell Witch, Cult of Luna, on and on, an endless sinkhole opening up.

A great and appealing contrast of doom metal lies in the apparent dumbassery of its sound. This is broadly true of all metal, of course; Coal Chamber or Megadeth, Black Sabbath or Pantera, metal was music for drop-outs, stoners, school shooters… the purview not only of miscreants, but of boys and stupid boys at that. Punk seemed the smarter option, if you had anger issues, had heard of feminism, or tended toward hobbies like trying to form a Young Democratic Socialists chapter at your school. For older me, trying to rewrite a religious mind into a liberal and cosmopolitan one, prog metal was defensibly slick and impressive, while power metal seemed less openly hateful toward women. All the while, doom lurked beneath layers of nay-saying. Adult men I’ve known, talented guitarists with good ears and smart hands, have sneered at all the seeming lack populating the slower subgenres--lack of beauty, skill, or even aggression in its most recognizable and masculine forms. Yet, for a listener whose favorite pastime is intellectualizing everything in sight, doom is the other side of the sun.

I don’t… really… understand what a tritone is. I know it’s important, and I could do a bad approximation of the opening of “Black Sabbath,” but definitionally I’m at a loss. Often I have no idea which instrument is making the sound that I like. I don’t know anything about music theory or how to talk with authority about what makes music good, important, or even what differentiates music from other sounds. Maybe a drone metal track is a collection of sounds, rather than a song? My Dream Theater-enthusiast ex figured since I was a nebbishy bespectacled geek, prog would be all I needed. The thinking man’s metal! No one has ever felt threatened by Steven Wilson. You can remain Smart™ while listening to assorted finger-wanky Europeans. In contrast, kicking it with a Texas weed-cult at the skatepark is stupid. Obviously, every genre of metal contains its geniuses, and one of doom’s most lovable qualities is how often unquestionable finesse arrives wrapped in brutal, bizarre, counterintuitive paper. But beyond the plausible deniability of technique and philosophy found in groups like Neurosis is something even more compelling. Sometimes, it just fucking sounds cool.

It sounds like that because someone did it intentionally, gleefully. I wrote a novel like that because I liked how it looked, sounded, felt.

One of the birthrights of normative (white, cis, straight, abled) masculinity is feeling. If you turn out queer, or are socialized as female, or live with the massed connotations of a racist culture written over your skin, overt and violent emotion may be anathema. The power of accessing a fully human emotional spectrum for the first time should not be underrated. The doom bands I grew into loving, independent of the people closest to me who putatively liked similar music, are into feelings. Even, or maybe especially, the ones authority figures wish you didn’t have (and those aren’t always the bad ones. Authority hates it even more if you feel good). If there’s a thing Mormons don’t countenance, it’s feeling bad things and informing people of them, or feeling the wrong good things. Doubt is a big no-no. It’s always better to feel shame when possible. If the Spirit isn’t telling you what you know it should, it’s on you for not listening enough, praying enough, being enough. If the Spirit’s voice isn’t soft and gentle, if it instead materializes in the best growl this side of Obituary, well, Satan quotes scripture too. Meanwhile, doubt--lack of clarity, spiritual and emotional murkiness, bone-deep ambivalence--is doom’s molten heart. Meanwhile, shame--at the self’s fondled hatreds, as C.S. Lewis has it, for things desired and things questioned--is shunned by doomsayers.

The body experiences advance warning. Fury, fear, arousal. Sure, I attribute my openness toward weird music to frustrated teen lust. Sure, I owe Roy Khan and Tony Kakko for first love and redrawn horizons. When fire dies, what’s left is not absence but ash, fertile and generative. Doomed to Fail recognizes that continual plumbing and revolving in uncertainty for its beauty and possibility. Whatever formed my rage and love, those two sides of the same forbidden coin, they belong to me now.

#Doomed to Fail #J.J. Anselmi #diana reads

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mytrashylove · 5 years

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Castiel’s music taste + Crowstorm’s sound: a headcanon by moi

alt title: i was bored

ok so this is my first time doing something like this, and english is not my first language so pls bear with me

the other day @mycandylavynder asked what Crowstorm would sound like, and then @principalshermansky made a post with examples of what type of music they think the characters listen to (check it out! it’s great), which got me wanting to compile everything i can find regarding castiel’s music taste and crowstorm, to see what the game points to as castiel’s music

disclaimer: this is not to say that one headcanon is more valid than other, because at the end of the day everyone can think whatever they please, specially about a fictional character in a fictional band. i just thought it would be fun to do this.

let’s take a look at Castiel’s room as seen in episode 40 of high school life:

there are three bands that can be easily identified:

Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side Of The Moon poster on the wall

Never Mind The Bollocks, Here’s The Sex Pistols album by Sex Pistols among the cd’s on the shelf

The Rolling Stones logo on the pillow

according to the My Candy Love wiki page, Castiel’s favorite music genre is grunge. tha trivia also says that his favorite band is Winged Skull, but since it’s a fictional band there’s no way to know which kind of music they play, although i’d guess it’s a heavy metal band due to the name and logo.

let’s break the four bands we know he likes (and the albums that appear on the picture) down to the basics:

PINK FLOYD (UK, 1965-1995) album rock, progressive rock, art rock, hard rock, british psychedelia, psychedelic garage. - The Dark Side Of The Moon (1973) hard rock, progressive rock, psychedelic garage.

SEX PISTOLS (UK, 1975-1978) punk, new wave punk, british punk. - Never Mind The Bollocks, Here’s The Sex Pistols (1977) punk, new wave punk, british punk.

THE ROLLING STONES (UK, 1962-present) album rock, british invasion, contemporary pop/rock, hard rock, regional blues, rock & roll, british psychedelia, psychedelic garage, blues-rock, british blues, dance-rock, early pop/rock, am pop.

based on the information so far, we can assume a few things about Castiel’s taste

he seems to like rock music from the 70s

there’s a prevalence of british bands, but that might just be a coincidence

his taste might be summed up in the following genres, since they seem to be the most relevant ones: - punk, new wave punk - hard rock - blues-rock - rock & roll - psychedelic garage, british psychedelia - dance-rock - album rock - grunge

but what do all these genres mean? good question:

the 70s & rock music

aside from disco, funk, smooth jazz, jazz fusion, and soul, which remained popular throughout the decade, rock music played an important part in the Western musical scene, with punk rock thriving throughout the mid to late 1970s. other subgenres of rock, particularly glam rock, hard rock, progressive, art rock and heavy metal achieved various amounts of success.

highlights: (aside from the four bands already mentioned) Led Zeppelin, Queen, Kiss, David Bowie, Aerosmith, Joy Division, Fleetwood Mac, Black Sabbath, The Velvet Underground, Alice Cooper, The Ramones.

punk

a simple melody with three chords, but louder, faster and more abrasive than any other rock genre at the time. although bands like The Velvet Underground and The Stooged had a similar sound in the mid 60s, punk didn’t become its own genre until the mid 70s.

highlights: The New York Dolls, The Misfits, Generation X, Blondie, Talking -Heads, The Ramones, The Jam, Buzzcocks

new wave punk

where post-punk was artsy and difficult, new wave was, simply put, pop music that retained the vigor and irreverence of punk music.

highlights: The Police, The Cars, Blondie, Talking Heads

hard rock

hard rock is loud, aggressive guitar rock, but it isn't as dark and menacing as heavy metal, and it's rarely influenced by punk. it is (for the most part) exuberant, party music.

highlights: Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Aerosmith, Janis Joplin, Van Halen, Jimi Hendrix, Guns N’ Roses, Queen, Pink Floyd, The Rolling Stones, Queens of The Stone Age

blues-rock

blues-rock didn't fully develop into a subgenre until the late 60s. it emphasized two specific things: the traditional, three-chord blues song and instrumental improvisation.

highlights: Fleetwood Mac, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, ZZ Top

rock & roll

in its purest form, Rock & Roll has three chords, a strong back beat, and a catchy melody. it drew from a variety of sources, primarily blues, R&B, and country, but also gospel, traditional pop, jazz, and folk.

highlights: Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, The Who, The Beatles

psychedelic garage

instead of the concise verse-chorus-verse patterns of rock & roll, artists used free-form, fluid song structures. they also incorporated elements of Indian and Eastern music and free-form jazz to their sound, and experimented with electronically altering instruments and voices.

highlights: Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, Jefferson Airplanes, Grateful Dead

british psychedelia

british psychedelia was more whimsical and experimental than its American counterpart, and it tended to work within the pop song structure.

highlights: Pink Floyd, Cream, The Beatles

dance-rock

dance-rock was born in the mid 70s, when bands experimented with the simpler rhythms and heavy groove of funk and disco. they relied on keyboards and drum machines or used the standard guitar-bass-drums format of most rock bands, but they were performed many songs in a way that made them apt for the dancefloor, with simple, heavily repetitive choruses or hooks.

highlights: Queen, David Bowie, INXS, Duran Duran, Eurythmics, Talking Heads

album rock

the one thing that tied all album rock artists together was their dedication to the album as the vehicle for their music, as well as certain artistic aesthetic and constant exposure on FM radios. this broad criteria made it a fairly diverse genre.

highlights: Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith, Pink Floyd, The Who, Queen, Janis Joplin

grunge

hybrid of heavy metal and punk, grunge music adopted the lyrical approach and musical attack of punk. it had three waves: the first one was heavier, drawing from early 70s metal; the second one began with Nirvana and it’s more melodic sound, as well as distorted guitar sound that became a genre convention; and the third wave that came with Nirvana’s mainstream status, when grunge lost many of its independent, punk connections and became the most popular style of hard rock in the 90s

highlights: Green River, Soundgarden, Mudhoney, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains

to be clear, dividing music into genres is a complicated matter, and even more so is trying to reduce someone’s music taste in genres, since it is entirely possible to like wildly different music as well as dislike certain bands that fit the same category or certain songs from the same band. this is all just meant to show an inclination that Castiel seems to have in order to see what kind of music Crowstorm might be influenced by.

that said, let’s get down to businees. what do we know about crowstorm?

popular and well-liked

has music videos that sometimes feature actors

at least one of their songs involves a piano (according to candy on ep3)

people dance to their music

the members (or Castiel, at least) have given interviews on radio

based on that, we can say that Crowstorm:

has mainstream appeal

has at least some danceable songs

taking into account the info about Crowstorm & Castiel’s inclinations that might influence his music, here are a few examples of what i think some of Crowstorm’s songs could sound like

(danceable songs, “mainstream” radio music)

Head Staggered - That Petrol Emotion // Blue To Black - That Petrol Emotion (this band is influenced by The Beatles, Buzzcocks and Public Image Ltd., all of them from the 70s/80s and within the genres Castiel seems to like)

Some Like It Hot - The Power Station // Murderess - The Power Station (influenced by Led Zeppelin, similar to INXS and associated to Duran Duran)

Never Let You Go - INXS // Mystify - INXS (popular dance-rock band)

Are You Gonna Be My Girl - Jet // Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is - Jet (influenced by AC/DC and The Beatles)

(hard rock/blues rock songs)

Young Lust - Pink Floyd

Voodoo Child - Jimi Hendrix

Whole Lotta Love - Led Zeppelin

this is just my headcanon based on what the game says tho, but i am someone who personally believes that canon and canon “evidence” don’t really matter in the end, so although Crowstorm’s music seems to fit the dance-rock criteria, i ultimately prefer to think of them as a hard-rock/blues-rock band with a bit of punk and psychedelic garage influence.

so why did i even do all of this if i don’t really care in the end? i don’t know, but it was really fun and it kept me busy.

anyway, if you got to this point you might as well tell me your own personal headcanons regarding Crowstorm’s music! feel free to reply, reblog, tag me in your own post or hit me up via inbox

TL;DR: based on what seems to be Castiel’s music taste and what we know of Crowstorm, the band might make dance-rock/hard-rock music and might be heavily influenced by bands from the 70s. but at the end of the day canon doesn’t matter as long as you are having fun, so if you want Crowstorm to be a goth-rock, nu metal band it might as well be!

#my candy love #mcl castiel #mcl #mcl crowstorm #mclul #mcl headcanon #.text #long post

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mineofilms · 3 years

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Call It Heavy Metal Noise

I just listened to the new EVANESCENCE last week. The album is called “The Bitter Truth.” It’s not bad. It’s more than I expected from them and/or her. She is a great singer, but I am not sure if her vocals work for “really, heavy” music over the alternative pop metal she has been doing. I really had not listened to the band since they broke out in 2004.

“Part of Me” is a great song and in tone the album is a little bit heavier than the band’s previous works. Like, if you take what she was doing back in the day and compare it to now, it is much more heavier a record. So, I would say less pop and more rock, but it’s still very tamed down by today’s “Heavy” Metal Standards. It’s not Jinjer. No one is Jinjer…

However, this got me to thinking about music, metal and classifications. We call these Genres and Subgenres. If you all have not seen “A Headbanger’s Journey.” I recommend you all see it. It’s great. A little dated by today’s standards as metal had grown so much and changed in the past 10-15 years that it is hard to have conversations about what has/is happening to metal since the turn of the century…

It’s a tough thing to label what is really Heavy Metal and what is Pop/Rock. I am stickler for labeling bands in the correct subgenre of Heavy Metal. It’s all “Heavy Metal” and Pop/Rock is a subgenre of the main genre of Heavy Metal. This perspective is if you are the Metalhead and are creating an outline and/or timeline of bands in Heavy Metal and what Subgenre of Heavy Metal you believe they belong in.

This is completely objective. It’s all opinion based, but there are some rules for saying a band is this style or another style. Criteria is really the only way someone can say this is that and that is this, within Heavy Metal labeling.

Take Nu Metal as an example. What is Nu Metal? The easy answer is Nü Metal is Rap Metal… Well, that is a very incomplete definition, but to someone that doesn’t know metal all that well or at all that would be an “alright” answer; I’ll except it... A better definition of Nu Metal is, taken from Wiki: (sometimes stylized as nü-metal) is a subgenre of alternative metal that combines elements of heavy metal music with elements of other music genres such as hip hop, alternative rock, funk, industrial, and grunge.

This definition actually works for me, accept it is missing one very important part of the conversation about criteria. That is time period. Nü Metal isn’t just all those things in the Wiki take, it is also talking about a specific time period from 1993-2003. Now this doesn’t mean that some bands weren’t doing Nü Metal’ish / Fusion Rock based material before 1993. Red Hot Chili Peppers and Faith No More had all sorts of stuff in their music that could include them in the Nü Metal subgenre, also what about Stuck Mojo? Hip/Hop and Hardcore, yeah, they were doing it too.

However, for the most part, most would say 1993 is a fair estimate for a start date as to when you started seeing bands that would be later labeled as Nü Metal started to show up. However, by 2003 the style was in decline and you had a lot of bands from the subgenre either flat out change their sound or packed it in as a band and went onto do other things. Like father all those babies they made on the road, backstage and on the bus…

Now, Nü Metal was still doing things after 2003, but was actually anyone listening to these bands anymore? All the bands that had one or two LPs come out, had a few singles on the radio and were/are still actively touring bands… Yeah, those bands… Did anyone even notice them still around or gone for that matter? I think not.

Flaw, 12 Stones, hell, even Finger Eleven? Anyone screaming for new records from these bands? If so, then Nü Metal is still around, its not, and hasn’t been for a long while now. Post-Nü Metal for me started around 2005…

This is sort of important as some of the bands we listen to today were not even out yet and there has been a resurgence in the style. However, I cannot call it Nü Metal as Nü Metal also has the time period as part of the criteria. I am calling this Nü Wave Metal, but it’s all objective. Call it whatever you want to, but if you get into a conversation about this topic with someone that is very passionate about Heavy Metal Culture, they might embarrass you and take your girl or guy. Now, that’s metal hahhahahah….

Some examples of subgenres:

Metallica… From Genre.Fandom.com; Metallica is considered: Thrash Metal, Progressive Metal, Hard Rock, Alternative Metal. They can be put into other categories, but for the sake of not giving anyone a headache we will just stick with this. It should be noted that a lot of Metallica’s labeling changes from album to album. It is widely argued that Metallica’s 1st 4 LPs were straight up Thrash while everything after “…And Justice For All” is not Thrash Metal. I tend to agree… To me, though, Metallica is still a Heavy Metal band.

Another Example is Lamb of God. Taken from Google; Lamb of God is considered: New Wave of American Heavy Metal, Groove Metal, Death Metal, Thrash Metal, Metalcore, Black Metal, Melodic Death Metal, Grindcore, Alternative Metal, Speed Metal…

For me, Google can be hit or miss. They got 2 right out of gates. I agree that Lamb of God is “New Wave of American Heavy Metal” and “Groove Metal.” Personally, the others are a stretch. I guess they fit there, but if I have to look up bands of a specific subgenre and I am left scratching my head then I do not include said band in the labeling.

Like I said, this is completely up to you, but use some logic and critical thinking when you do it. These are my rules… What are yours??? Sometimes it is easy. Limp Bizkit is easy to call Nü Metal like Anthrax is to Thrash Metal.

One of my favorite bands as of late is Winds Of Plague, formed in 2002. They use a lot of different elements, but came out in 2002. Do we call them Nü Metal? I am sure people did, especially back in those days. In those days the band sounded more like a Hardcore band over a Nü Metal band, but that was what was happening then.

If you were heavy, metal, and came out during that latter Nü Metal years, you were called Nü Metal. I absolutely do not agree with that, but I understand the logistics of it. I was dying a little bit inside when I was reading music people calling “Shinedown” a Nü Metal band? Wait, what???

Winds Of Plague is considered Metalcore, Hardcore, Deathcore, Death Metal, Symphonic Metal, Melodic Death Metal, Avant-garde Metal, Symphonic Black Metal.

Some other bands I love… All labeling from Google… I agree with some, but not all. I do not know how they handle this, but I am not really feeling some of these secondary, third and fourth choices.

As I Lay Dying - Metalcore, Thrash Metal, Melodic Death Metal, Christian Metal, Melodic Metalcore, Christian Hardcore, Swedecore…

Dream Theater - Rock, Progressive Rock, Progressive Metal, Hard Rock …

Machine Head - New Wave of American Heavy Metal, Thrash Metal, Death Metal, Nü Metal, Groove Metal, Metalcore, Progressive Metal, Alternative Metal, Speed Metal …

Pantera - Rock, Thrash Metal, Power Metal, Hard Rock, Glam Metal, Groove Metal, Traditional Heavy Metal, Speed Metal, Sludge Metal, Southern Rock, New Wave of American Heavy Metal…

Scar Symmerty - Melodic Death Metal, Progressive Metal, Power Metal, Death Metal, Black Metal…

Sevendust - Hard Rock, Nü Metal, Alternative Rock, Alternative Metal, Post-Grunge, Industrial Metal…

Twelve Foot Ninja - Experimental Metal, Djent, Alternative Metal, Jazz Fusion, Acoustic Music, Experimental Rock, Avant-garde Metal, Funk Metal, Dub…

I get most people do not want to label their music like that. However, Heavy Metal is a family of music genres that is in a class all by itself. The numbers differ, but you can have as many as 75 different Subgenres of Heavy Metal.

While writing this I could only find 54. Again this is all objective. People make them up every few years. There is a subgenre called Nintendocore and all it is people creating music which sounds like the music on the old NES gaming console. Why this is a thing I couldn’t tell you. Some people want to feel important I guess. We live in a very confused INTERNET fueled culture these days.

This isn’t a blog about human behavior in relation to Heavy Metal and 8-bit soundtracks. Now, if someone told me August Burns Red’s cover of the Legend of Zelda theme was Nintendocore and I didn’t already know what Nintendocore was then I could agree that this song is Nintendocore. It isn’t, but again how are you or I associate Heavy Metal music to other Heavy Metal music is opinion based. Most agree that a subgenre has its own rules, but bands flip flop and/or are interchangeable more than the Politicians of this country do.

It’s all just objective perspective… Some will say Pop/Rock is whatever Rock song/album/band is popular. I only agree with that a little bit.

I say POP/ROCK has 3 main criteria that work together, but are also mutually exclusive;

1) As a form of music that one cannot put a label on, specifically.

2) Has different elements from other musical genres.

3) Happens to be a popular song/songs.

So POP/ROCK is more like a label given to bands/artists that do not fit in a “specific” subgenre. I actually call this “Fusion.” Now, more or less this is talking about how Metalheads may think of it. This by no means is a judgement and/or based on any fact. There are no facts in music. It’s all objective. I do not deny. I am a snob when it comes to this, I am…

I was into Trance back in the day, Paul Oakenfold. I like Dubstep style music too. Dubstep is literally Heavy Metal with electronical instrumentation. There are a lot of similarities. Plus, you are seeing a lot of dubstep style sampling used in more extreme metal these days. The subgenre of Metalcore has a lot of these elements; Asking Alexandria, Attila, Skip The Foreplay, I See Stars, Capture the Crown, Make Me Famous. It was big in the latter 2000s and early 2010s… I still see this trying to push through to the front of Heavy Metal, but bands like Asking Alexandria and Attila no longer sound like what they were when they first started getting big. Asking Alexandria is basically a Pop band now and Attila would rather do Porn videos and be a marketing machine on Twitter than writing great Metalcore music. Things have changed… Not just with those bands, but bands in general.

The whole industry has shifted since the Pandemic started, but there was a lot of evidence that the typical Garage Band Journey of starting from nothing and becoming a house hold name was in decline.

When I took over logistics for the band I manage now after the first 3 or 4 months I was open to a lot. Once we started pulling local band grind of driving across the state for no money, no fans, which means no merch sales, means no money.

Now, locally we are good with that. We’ll play shows like that, here, but not 2 to 3 hours away in 3 beat up vehicles, cramming 10 people into a shitty hotel room, gas, booze, food, child care, scheduling conflicts. Before we know it we are pulling monies out of the band fund just to play a show.

We do not pay to play, especially in front of no people accept the other bands and their girlfriends. Jammin’ in 7-8 bands in a small ass bar with little to NO PAY, but the bar made their money that night. That isn’t a show that is band practice… There is one exception and that is when opening for a national.

Bands are on YouTube now, doing streams, covers, different takes of songs. Content is being streamed now more than ever and if bands are not willing to change with that dynamic then they are behind the times.

Being a garage band and playing shitty bars for no money and expecting record executives to be there to sign the band, well, that doesn’t exist anymore. It hasn’t in a long time actually.

The music is changing too… It’s all about tuning down, low tones and 8-string guitars, sometimes 2 of them. Now, older school guitar players will fight this and call it cookie cutter and/or basic, but the metal community has accepted this is the direction styles are moving metal forward.

Vocally you have people like; Tatiana Shmayluk of JINJER. Probably the hottest vocalist on the market next to Alex Terrible of Slaughter to Prevail. Tatiana is the best of both worlds with a soft voice and a scream that will make any metalhead smile wider than the Joker…

She can scream like a man, clean, but yet also pull off Gwen Stefani harmonics without all the synth bull crap. She does this with little to no effects and absolutely no Autotune. A lot of metal singers cannot go from scream to melody on a dime, but she can and it’s amazing. Also this is a great example of what 8-string tuned down guitars sound like with someone that can actually sing along with screaming. That is why Jinjer is doing so well right now. Rumor has it they are playing Janus Live in December in Saint Petersburg, Florida…

What Alex Terrible is doing/using is called “false vocal gutturals” and many of metal singers have damaged their vocal cords, seriously and permanently, trying to sing like this incorrectly. It took him 12 years of being coached and practicing for him to be able to do this the way he does and not damage his vocal cords. What is amazing about this is he does this with no added digital effects. Maybe some eq’n and your standard clean up filters, but nothing is added here to make him sound like this. It’s all him. He also sells these crazy demon masks that are always sold out and he will do hip/hop covers using only his false vocal cord gutturals. (Very entertaining)…

Closing…

All I am doing with this BLOG, and a really long one, is to show the difference between some of the labeling styles between popular Heavy Metal Subgenres. Just imagine if Lady Gaga did a real Heavy Metal record? Using her dance/pop style with an 8-string tuned down guitars, inverse bass drops, keyboards, LP turntable scratches, false vocal cord singing over just making a rock version of a pop artist.

That would be a very interesting sound I would love to hear. Now if Lady Gaga just did her normal sound with just some “rock” guitars that is exactly what someone would do if they said they wanted to go Metal, but truly do not know what metal is. Like the IG model that wears an Iron Maiden shirt but cannot name one single song of the band.

That isn’t new or pushing the elements. I get it, but whenever I hear a pop/rap artist take a stab at Heavy Metal they tend to show they do not know what Heavy Metal is. The only artist I have heard consistently over the years that can do it is Ice Tea’s “Body Count.” All black rap people making real, Heavy Metal records. And they are good… That’s what I am talking about… That’s love… That’s coming together…

I can just see some hotshot Producer saying “let’s do a metal song,” but it’s not metal, it’s barely rock, but Producer dude doesn’t know what real metal is nowadays. Metallica BLACK wouldn’t be called Thrash Metal nowadays, even Disturbed to me really isn’t “Heavy” Metal. So if you are not sure how heavy you have to be to be called “Heavy” Metal… Well, tune it down…

The Heavy Metal community is a huge group of people that come from all sort of backgrounds, places, colors, sexes, creeds, tastes, but we all tend to LOVE HEAVY METAL and that brings us all together. Man. I can really go and find wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy more examples of Metalheads being people with huge caring hearts than the latter.

Call It Heavy Metal Noise by David-Angelo Mineo 5/11/2021 2,806 Words

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doomedandstoned · 6 years

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Papa Paul’s Groovy Reviews!

Our resident retroist is back to finish the year with a hot handful of hits for the tune toking delight of Doomers and Stoners alike! Give ear...

PAGAN ALTAR

The Room of Shadows by Pagan Altar (Official)

One of the many surprises wrought by the year 2017 was a new album from legendary English doomers PAGAN ALTAR, who fittingly saved their best for last. You may ask why I say "their last"? Well, sadly, their vocalist Terry Jones has passed away since recording this album. I say "fittingly," because everything the band had done to this day has been outstanding. The abstruse history of the band is a story in and of itself. I don't fully understand it, so I won't go too far down that rabbit trail. Suffice it to say, I've been following Pagan Altar from the moment their first album was pirated by an infamous bootlegger. I heard it was from the '70s, I heard it was from 1982. I always struggled with what to believe. One thing for sure, their official releases on shadow Kingdom Records are top notch and I recommend them to you highly, along with the rest of their catalog, which has (as the band's clippings rightly proclaim) influenced "a whole generation of doom-obsessed fanatics."

Pagan Altar are considered both a doom and NWOBHM band. I won't argue with either, as elements of both are surely alive in their music. What interests me most are the ever present elements of progressive hard rock strongly rooted in the band's genesis, circa 1978. Pagan Altar is often compared to Jethro Tull, owing to Terry's vocals sounding eerily similar at times to Ian Anderson and also to the boundary-pushing complexity of their songs. It is here, in 'The Room of Shadows' (2017 - Temple of Mystery Records), that those seeds of Jethro Tull sprout to life in a series of seven weird and wonderful creations. Truth be told, this is the kind of album I wished Jethro Tull recorded. I always wanted the band to be a mite heavier, overall (don't get me wrong, I loved them as they were). As I listen to The Room of Shadows, I can almost see Ian Anderson dancing around, flute in hand and posing on one leg, his knee held high. The only thing lacking is the flute! Pagan Altar achieve their progressive majesty with a happy marriage of guitar, bass, and drum.

Photo by Temple of Mystery

Apart from Jethro Tull, it's hard to find an apt comparison. At times, I hear hints of Tales of Creation era Candlemass, elements of Cirith Ungol in some of the heavier riffs, and plenty of Celtic folk music and poetry throughout, transporting the listener clear back to the early Renaissance. Such is the depth of writing and musicianship on display. If you only give this a casual listen, you will miss most of the album. The Room of Shadows should be -- nay, must be -- savored like a fine wine or, in my case, a deftly crafted beer. Let me tell you, friends, there are some meaty rifts just waiting for you to sink your teeth into (or your ears, as it were), but the riffs rightfully serve as foundation for the band's tell-tale melodies and harmonies, which are, as always, haunting.

Fans of newer bands like Beelzefuzz and Blues Funeral need to give Pagan Altar a spin. Maybe it's because the new Blues Funeral album was released just a day before this that I'm thinking of them. Though the two albums are separated by a span of 13 years, both conjure a similar vibe. You might say that Blues Funeral is America's belated answer to Britain's Pagan Altar. All comparisons aside, Pagan Altar's last record is a masterpiece, crowned with cover art that in a single frame so aptly pictures the artistic mood of the album and the band. I thought it might have been a repurposed painting from some classic English painting. No, this, as it so happens, is another stunning masterwork by Portland artist and doom metal musician Adam Burke.

One last note: the album was once slated for release under the title Never Quite Dead. Indeed, Pagan Altar's sound and legacy lives on, loud and proud, in The Room Full of Shadows.

Get It.

PANTANUM

Purple Blaze by Pantanum

Anyone in the mood for some Italian doom by way of South America? That's what we have with 'Purple Blaze' (2017), the latest EP from Curitiba, Brazil trio PANTANUM. Old farts like me will recognize this right away. The artwork confirms that this is, indeed, a tribute to legendary Italian doomer Paul Chain -- more specifically, a nod to his great album, 'Violet Art of Improvisation' (1989). Pantanum make a play on "violet" with the word "purple" and use a similar layout for the album art. It's a great to see a young band paying tribute to an old school legend, one that I'm sure is a new name for fans of doom who came here by way of bands like Sleep or Electric Wizard.

The two songs on the 7" are from the horror-style doom playbook the Italians were so famous for in the ‘80s and ‘90s. In fact, the 8-minute bonus track sounds like something you’d hear on a horror movie soundtrack, which is also the mood lit by Violet Art of Improvisation. If Pantanum got my attention with their first album, ‘Volume 1’ (2015), their follow-up EP has me all ears!

Get It.

THE SHELTER PEOPLE

The Shelter People -EP by The Shelter People

Fans of '70s acid rock are in for a real treat with this release. I give this a confidence rating of 100% on the authenticity scale for sounding like something from a lost FM radio transmission. THE SHELTER PEOPLE are from Tulsa, Oklahoma, but do a fine job of channeling the vibe of legendary blues-soaked acid rock bands from Japan, like Flower Travellin' Band, Blues Creation, Chinki Chen, Too Much, etc. I'm sure a good number of our readers don't know these bands I've mentioned, so a more accessible description of The Shelter People would be Black Sabbath meets Jimi Hendrix, heavy on the Jimi. This band is, in a word, tight -- excellent guitar work, riffs that are downright funky, and passionate vocals. This is the trip you're searching for.

Get It.

THE SONIC DAWN

Into the Long Night by The Sonic Dawn

I have to thank Billy for his allowing me to stretch what used to be normal strictly a stoner-doom webzine. I appreciate his wisdom and ability to see the correlation between the retro scene that was emerging a few years ago and that of the still evolving stoner-doom scene. I recognized this movement early on and have been feverishly documenting this return to roots movement ever since.

Fast-forward to present day and the retro sound is as fresh and vibrant as ever, with bands like Denmark's SONIC DAWN now carrying the baton. Their beauty of a record, 'Into The Long Night' (2017), landed #16 on the Doom Charts in April. I can't tell you how happy this made me. In all actuality, this isn't doom at all. No resemblance to Black Sabbath, no downtuned guitars, no thundering pounding of the drums. No, this is laid back, seventies-style psychedelic rock. The look, the feel, the attitude -- it's all there. Make no mistake, Sonic Dawn have captured something very special here, capturing the essence of the scene in psychedelic rhythms, swirling leads, and ethereal vocals. I personally find this music enjoyable in the early morning or late at night. If laid back psychedelia is normally your thing, consider that. This has probably been my most played album since its release.

Get It.

WATCHER'S GUARD

Watcher's Guard by Watcher's Guard

Riding over the hills of Glasgow, comes WATCHER'S GUARD armed with a doom-laden three song battering ram of a debut. I was blown away at first listen, so you can imagine there's some retro, old school, traditional doom action to be had here, with a slight touch of NWOBHM for good measure. Watcher's Guard are the doom masters. This EP covers just about every early subgenre of doom you can think of: biker doom, epic doom, slow doom, you name it. If you pinned me down to one band it most sounds like, I would have to say Revelation from Baltimore. But Watcher's guard is a bit more uptempo over all. The clear standout for me is track two, "The Ruiner." An epic just shy of 12 minutes long, this one is destined to be crowned a classic. It's easy to make the Candlemass comparison, but Watcher's Guard bring so much more to the table. The complexity of their songcraft, with psychedelic twists and turns, take you along for an heroic journey that runs you through the gauntlet of emotions. What will these four dark knights have instore for us in the future? Time and fate will tell. For now, the path to oblivion has been lit. Let's follow and enjoy the apocalyptic fireworks.

Get It.

WITCHERS CREED

Depths of the black void... by Witchers Creed

Earlier in the year, I introduced you to WITCHERS CREED, a doom-touched acid rock band from Katrineholm. We've been audience to the band's creative output with a pair two-trackers released months apart. With four superbly recorded songs to their name, I think have a pretty good read on the band now and have this suspicious feeling that they are trying to become my favorite band! That's no small statement, as you know how many killer bands I've reviewed and raved about in these pages over the years. Regulars know I am vigilantly scouring the globe in search of that authentic psychedelic sound that stole away my heart as a teenager and reporting on the unfolding saga of the retro revival in these pages. Witchers Creed are have been apparently drinking freely of the magical stream flowing through Sweden, from which springs one magical musical act after another. Nay, they are baptizing themselves in it. Even their instruments and gear bear the vintage stamp of the glory days.

I have been told I nailed down the Witchers Creed sound my review of their March release when I said they sounded like Mountain meets Sabbath meets your favorite underground seventies band. You can pick the loudest and heaviest of them, Witchers Creed is right up there with the best. They have perfected their craft with a powerful rhythm section, notable for its thundering basslines. The guitar leads are no less mind-blowing -- more than just short bursts, this soloing goes on and on, soaked with fuzz and venturing into Dave Chandler territory. You know, the master of feedback from Saint Vitus. These demented leads are brought sailing over the top by one groovy rhythm machine, accompanied by dual harmonized vocals. Imagine Leslie West of Mountain harmonizing with Gregg Allman of the Allman Brothers with wild occult lyrics, when suddenly the music stops and you hear the words: "You're all doomed!" Now that you have a visual idea of this band's irresistible charm, it's time for you to get plugged in yourself and give it a listen.

Get It.

ZEREMONY

Soul of the Zeremony by Zeremony

We're down to the last lap of 2017 and, suitably, also at the last letter of the alphabet. I think I can count just about all the "Z" bands I know on two hands. To call ZEREMONY a grower is not quite adequate, more like instantly addictive. 'Soul of the Zeremony' (2017) blew me away first listen. Yet it keeps growing on me every listen .

Photo Credit: Umsonst-und-Draussen Festival/Würzburg

You may remember hearing them as the captsone to That Seventies Compilation, which I organized last year. I heaped high praise on the the authenticity of their sound when they released that wonderful organ-driven demo that same year. Two of those three songs were deemed worthy of joining the fold of seven in this album of obscure, dark, and heavy organ-driven rock. Zeremony fit right in with my treasured favs.

Hailing from Würzburg, Zeremony seem to bear the influence of the Krautrock scene, which was erupted in the late '60s and early '70s and remains a stylistic pillar to this day. One band I hear as I listen to Zeremony is a band called Irish Coffee, just a few doors down from Germany in Belgium. They are similar in the heavy use of organ and gruff vocals. For modern comparison, try Golden Grass or Siena Root.

Listen for "She Sang a Song To Me." It is gloomy, yet earnest number with a sing-along chorus that would have all the makings of a hit single in the seventies. I've been raving about authenticity a lot in this piece and bands like Zeremony are setting a very high bar.

Get It.

#D&S Reviews #Papa Paul's Groovy Reviews #Doom #Metal #Stoner Rock #Pagan Altar #Pantanum #Siena Root #The Shelter People #The Sonic Dawn #Watcher's Guard #Witchers Creed #Zeremony #Doomed & Stoned

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thisaintascenereviews · 7 years

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[R]Evolution Radio: Change Is Permanent

An Essay by Bradley Christensen & Jake Higgins

During my sophomore year of high school, which seems forever ago now, my English teacher told me that “change is the only thing that’s permanent.” You can apply that to many things. Hell, I’d apply that to music, especially, because it’s in a constant state of flux. Ever since the emergence of rock music in the late 50s, music is constantly changing. Every decade seems to have something new, if not multiple new things. The 60s gave birth to folk-rock, hard-rock, psychedelic-rock, heavy metal (at its earliest stages, anyway), the 70s gave birth to funk music, soft-rock, and country-rock, the 80s gave us new wave and glam-metal / hair-metal, whereas the 90s gave us hip-hop (it did start in the 80s, but hip-hop’s popularity happened in the 90s when gangsta rap became more prevalent), and grunge. The 00s and 2010s have given us a lot as well, but the moral of the story here is that music is always changing. There’s always something new happening, and there’s a cycle that happens in response to this. You have something new coming out, or a new genre of music making traction, and while you have people that love it, the people that hate it are more vocal, because their bitching is louder, essentially talking about how this new style of music isn’t “real music,” and it’s making a mockery of music that came before it, or they don’t “get it.” Eventually they get over it, but the people that loved the new style of music seem to repeat the cycle, because they’ll hate the next new style of music to come out. The cycle just keeps on going, and the current trend to hate is “mumble rap,” or “SoundCloud rap.” Truth be told, I think a lot of this stuff is awful, but I don’t care if people like it. Listen to whatever you want, and my personal thoughts on that aren’t what this about.

The point is, that’s the current style of music that people love to hate. People hate that kind of music for a reason, at least most people, but you do have a lot of people that hate it, solely because it’s cool to hate, and they don’t actually understand its artistic value, let alone why people like it. I also wonder if people hate every new style of music that comes up, because they can’t come to grips with the realization that their precious genres are desperately trying to hang onto relevancy, even though they’re not adapting whatsoever to the changing landscapes of music. That’s what this piece is about here today. Music is in yet another transitional period, and tons of genres are experiencing shifts in their sounds, but a lot of music fans don’t want to accept that. Two genres in particular have been changing a lot the last few years, those two genres rock and country, so I thought I’d talk about that. I’ve noticed that a lot of rock band nowadays, especially ones that make it big on the rock charts, are adamantly stuck in the past, and they always brag about how they’re not “sellouts” or they use “real guitars and stuff.” Country music is a bit different, because ever since the bro-country explosion died down, something else has taken its place that’s definitely got “tr00 country” fans riled up. I wanted to talk about this, but I don’t want to talk about this alone. You saw his name, folks. I brought along my best friend Jake, someone that you might recognize from other collaborations we’ve done, to talk about rock music. He’s more into rock music, and has been more into that side of rock music for a very long time, so I feel like he’d be more qualified to talk about that genre more than I would, so I’ll be tackling country music, because that’s what I’ve been listening to lately. Speaking of which, would you please care to elaborate on your “history” with rock, Jake?

I've been a music fan for probably eleven years now, and while I've gotten into plenty of different genres since then, the main genre I've been into for the majority of that time is hard-rock/alternative metal. I know there are countless other subgenres of rock, but our problems with the genre mainly lie in this particular sub-set, and I'm more experienced in this end anyway. For starters, my favorite album of all time is Three Days Grace's magnum opus One-X, even to this day. I also love bands such as Chevelle, Thousand Foot Krutch, and Breaking Benjamin, to name a few. Here's the thing about those bands, though; they all bring something unique to the table, or they're just damn good at what they do. Unfortunatelly, that really isn't the case these days for a lot of newer bands. I just listened to the new album from Nothing More, to name an example. To keep it short, it was an awfully cynical and pretentious attempt to be the most "true" rock band imaginable, with an added dose of infuriating self-importance. Seriously, that album really blows, but if anything, it further reinforced a nagging problem I've had with this genre. Simply put, hardly anyone wants to expand and evolve their sounds, and instead, they rely on such tired and played-out formulas. It's either extremely douchey "bro-rock" that panders to your drunk cousin who thinks sex memes and Buffalo Wild Wings will woo the ladies, or you have the pretentious nonsense that your metalhead roommate won't feel too guilty for liking, because it's just pretentious enough for their prog-metal friends to not bat an eye at. Regardless of which side it falls on, it's the refusal to progress and evolve that's making me slowly lose interest in any new bands coming up. There's just nothing there anymore, minus a select few, like Starset. Now there's a new band doing things right. I'll get more in-depth on why this is as we go along, but I'm going to hand it back to Bradley here. He's going to tackle a different side of this coin; a genre that's evolving, but having fans that won't go along with it.

Thanks, Jake, but the genre that I’ll be tackling, if you couldn’t already tell, is country. What’s interesting about country is the shift that it’s been going through within the last few years. I mentioned bro-country, and that’s the best place to start; bro-country was the sub-genre of country that was the equivalent of bro-metal. It was obnoxious, in your face, edgy, and trying really hard to be “hip.” Bro-country was despised by a lot of people, mainly critics, but it did well for a few years. Artists like Florida Georgia Line, Luke Bryan, and Jason Aldean were the ones that kept it alive, but it’s completely gone away now. Those artists still exist, sure, but they switched gears in their sound. Bro-country gave way to pop-country, and the genre’s in a weird state of limbo. The one thing that bro-country brought to pop-country was the idea of adding drum machines, hi-hats, and a more R&B/pop-laden sound. Personally, I’m all for the genre evolving, especially taking in more influences, because that’s what country originally did. It was a combination of folk, blues, rock, and tons of other genres, but it hasn’t evolved in a long time (bro-country aside). I can understand if people aren’t into this sound, but I see a lot of people that act like it’s a crime against humanity. As Jake mentioned, rock music is infamous for fans being very close-minded, ultimately refusing to progress, and that’s why it blows my mind that country fans and non-fans are up in arms over this new era of pop-country. Bro-country was terrible, but the way that artists are combining pop, R&B, rock, and country together nowadays is interesting, whether you like it or not. I love that country is evolving, because it’s doing what rock music isn’t – changing. Change is the only thing that’s ever permanent, after all, so I’m all for country music that’s evolving. Simply put, I’m more interested in the genre that way, because I love pop and R&B music, so hearing those styles of music being intertwined with country is interesting to me.

While I’m personally for it, and there are some albums I could immediately name-drop that hooked me into the idea that R&B and pop can work with country. Maybe I’ll talk about those in a second, but the question is why are people so against it? I bet it has something to do with bro-country. Bro-country, as I mentioned, was the first style of country that brought pop, hip-hop, and R&B elements to the genre. It brought drum machines, trap hi-hats, and blatantly pop and R&B grooves. Country, well, isn’t the most popular genre with music fans. It’s the highest selling genre of music, aside from hip-hop, so the “mainstream” loves it, but diehard music fans don’t seem to listen to it, so when you combine country with another unpopular style of music (mainstream hip-hop), that’s a double whammy of awful to people. I feel like that’s where the backlash is coming from. People don’t want to accept this new era of country, because they feel like it’s just continuing where bro-country left off, and I don’t think so. Bro-country was onto something, but not in the way you might think. Lyrically, no, it was not onto anything, but musically and tonally, it was, because the idea of pop and country going together was something that interested me into listening to country. I never listened to country until a few years ago, even though my folks listen to it, but I love pop and R&B. Hearing those styles put together made me more curious about the genre, so that’s why I’m fine with this shift in country, because it brings a breath of fresh air to a genre that has been on the steady decline, mainly thanks to bro-country. That leads me to a question that I have for you, Jake, because I feel like this is where the conversation is headed – why do rock fans, as well as the bands themselves, seem to refuse progression? Permitting that someone has never listened to something like Starset, what makes them stand out among the rest?

Before I get into the meat of this issue, let's take a step back and play a bit of devil's advocate. Traditionally, rock music is built on an organic sound of guitar, bass, drums, and vocals, with lyrics that are usually meant to invoke some sort of feeling in the listener. I know that's one reason I gravitated to a lot of these bands in my younger years; they cut you down to your core and made you fee something, whether it be sadness or a sense of empowerment. With a lot of pop music, you don't tend to get that substance, instead opting for a more light and fluffy afair, for lack of a better term. I think that can scare a lot of rock fans away, and honestly, I get it. Granted, I'm speaking in very broad terms here, but when a rock band pivots towards a poppier sound, or really any major style change, oftentimes, that band is in danger of losing what made people fall in love with them in the first place, and rock fans especially aren't particularly open to change.

With that said, though, I fundamentally disagree with a lot of these fans, because very rarely does that worst-case scenario actually happen. Yet, I think a lot of bands in this genre are still very much afraid to step out of line. That's why Starset is a breath of fresh air, to go back to one specific example. They're a band who isn't afraid to embrace their pop and electronic side, and in fact, it works perfectly with their whole sci-fi theme. Just because they do this doesn't mean they've sold out, or forgot they're a rock band. They're just trying to stand out in an increasingly crowded and samey field. Now, does that worst-case scenario happen? Of course it does. Look at Linkin Park. They're a band who tried their damnest to survive the end of the nu-metal craze, but nothing quite worked, so their most recent album, One More Light, was a pretty blatant attempt at aping mainstream pop sounds. That album honestly blows, but not because it's a pop album. One More Light is a terrible album because of how incredibly shallow and uninteresting it is, and how little effort the band put in to making this sound work for them. And that's the ultimate problem I think both rock and country fans face; they use an example like One More Light, or whatever awful bro-country album came out in 2013, and use it as a benchmark for everyone else who tries to experiment with their sound. They don't take a step back and realize that as long as an artist doesn't fundamentally lose their integrity as an artist, good music is good music regardless of genre, and I think if they weren't so stubborn, they'd be more willing to go along for the ride.

I think that’s the same case for country music, too, because country fans are worried that these artists are selling out, or that they’re defacing the genre by adding outside influences, ideas, and sounds, but music changes over time. It’s always done that, no matter what. People don’t have to like it, because you’re not supposed to like everything you hear, but people also shove unique, different, and new things to the side. I don’t understand that. I’m not the wildest fan of country music, but I’m all for artists adding more pop, R&B, rock, and soul to their sounds, because they can play with more ideas that way. Change is a permanent thing, and I think to close this piece out, I’m going to leave a quote that I’ve posted many times before. It’s from the 2007 Pixar film, Ratatouille, and it’s from a character that was essentially meant to be a snobby restaurant critic. Ever since I watched this film, this quote has really stuck with me, both as a music fan and a music critic, so I wanted to share it another time, because it really does apply here: “In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the *new*. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations. The new needs friends.” You may not like what rock and country music are becoming, but at the end of the day, the change is still happening, regardless of what you think.

#rock #rock music #country #country music #starset #vessels #linkin park #sam hunt #florida georgia line #jason aldean #thomas rhett #nothing more

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cnox · 5 years

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Rowen for Distant Mirror Zine #1.* ROWEN is a project between Cristahel and Cantrith Knox. They play a subgenre of the dark ambient / dungeon synth movement they call Mythical Electronic. They have years of experience and also operate Hollow Myths in New England. I thank them for their contribution to the first issue of Distant Mirror. First, Rowen is a collaborative effort between Canrith and Cristahel Knox - do you have specialties which you like to focus on when creating (someone runs the drums and arrangement, someone finds the melodies)?

Eve, Thanx for the interview. We both play synths, drum machines and write together. As of now, when playing live, Criss handles the synths, vocal whisperings and I play the electronic drums. Along with our visuals, fog and lighting. We are introducing more vocals on some new songs. In the studio, we also add our field recordings and percussion as part of composing. We sit and mix each song side by side.

Tell us about your musical histories before forming Rowen, because its somewhat obvious you both have experience which maybe led to the result of what Rowen is on "Ashen Spirit"!

Both of us have electronic music in our past. Cristahel with Minimal Synth and I with Darkbeat. One of the first ideas we had for Rowen was to start all over. As part of the experiment, finding ourselves and each other through making music anew. See and hear our music become it's own entity. We started developing the concept in '14, in '16 we began recording and had our first release in '18. We set out with a clear vision of what we want to do with Rowen.

Also tell us how you discovered music and what your first true love in music was... How did you come to find music that would lead you to this underworld of music culture?

Canrith: I discovered music on a radio at age 3. First, second and third grade, I would stay up nights crashing on Ritalin (due to being diagnosed as Hyperactive) watching the first ever music videos on a UHF channel in Colorado called FMTV which predated MTV by a year or two. Laurie Anderson - O Superman, Kraftwerk, Barnes & Barnes - Fish Heads videos all had a great impact on me as a kid. During that time, late 70's - early 80's, I was hooked on the music and image of both Kiss and Devo. One of the first albums I owned was AC/DC - Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap on cassette that I purchased at K-Mart. Summer '81 NYC, I saw the first video air on MTV. Later, watching another UHF channel out of Boston called V66. Heavy Metal led me to the Black Metal and the dark electronic music underground. Dark Ambient and Dark Dungeon Music have always been a particular interest of mine. Mail order distro tapes and free box extras in orders started my collection as far back as the mid 90's. In the late 90's, I got really into BM, then obsessed in '03 onward, as many UGBM labels and distros were rising on the web. We are also into Minimal, Martial, Electro, Techno, New Beat, Cosmic, Italo, 8-bit, Video Game, Soundtrack, Old School Dungeon Synth, Winter Synth and so on...

Cristahel: My first exposure to music as a child was through my grandfather, who began teaching me to play classical piano by ear at the age of four. We would sit for countless hours at his black upright Steinway as he would play Chopin, Bach, Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky etc. a few measures at a time for me to memorize and string together until I had the whole piece memorized. His love and enthusiasm for music, and the time he took to develop that in me, is something I will always be grateful for. Also my cousin Sue was a few years older than me and was like some kind of magical mixtape faerie, forever bestowing masterfully crafted gems upon me filled with things like Lush, Kate Bush, Cocteau Twins, and Mazzy Star that served to mold/blow my little mind.

By my late teens it was the late 90's/early 2000's and I was immersed in a maelstrom of kraut/prog, electro, early new wave and electronic/industrial, shoe gaze. I was fortunate at the time to have a lot of friends with varied tastes and massive record collections they wanted to share with me, because back then there was like, only Napster to try and download music off this nebulous internet thing they had just invented.

I spent a lot of time not doing my homework and dancing around my room on speed and/or klonopins listening to things like Tangerine Dream, Cluster, Miss Kittin & The Hacker, Dopplereffekt, Chris and Cosey, SPK, early Human League, Slowdive, Clan of Xymox... all of which in their own ways began to inform the atmosphere of the music I create now, warped and haunted meandering electronic melodies, analog synths, string machines and rhythm boxes, pounding 303s and 808s, tape echoes, analog delays, layered sounds lost in chasms of reverb...

I moved to NY and started making music, playing shows and djing a bit (mostly playing gabber techno synth new age sets at London squat parties to kids who wanted to hear nu rave), getting into minimal synth, and beginning my love affair with collecting and recording with analog equipment.

Of course now anything you want is available immediately online, compared to how the 80’s and 90’s crowd discovered music. I’ve asked the other artists a similar question - how do you feel about the loss of mystery these days and what will happen in the future to return to that?

I feel the ability for creating mystique is greater now thanx to the internet. Almost anyone can record some music, upload it to bandcamp, make artwork, physical releases, open an online shop, start a label, etc.. If one is good at what they do, be it a hidden persona or being a face, presenting a strong sound, image and aesthetic, either way, when done right, it works. In some ways even mystery can be a gimmick.

You both are lucky to have grown up in the best time period for music. But what about movies and books people should check out?

I collect children's books, read a mess of olde and new Black Metal zines, Books about Black and Death Metal. Sexy comics about Vampiress and Faeries. Presently reading The Devil's Cradle, a hard back about The Story of Finnish Black Metal. It was a gift from Criss. Everyone should read Lords of Chaos '98 (then '03) and Lucifer Rising '99. I still need a copy of that leather bound Mortiis - Secrets Of My Kingdom book '01.

As for films, we watch obscure horror, foreign horror and documentaries.

Here are some if you have not already read or watched them;

Read: Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs ('78) James and the Giant Peach ('61) Masquerade ('79) The World of the Dark Crystal ('82) The Book of Alien ('79) Moebius - The Collected Fantasies of Jean Giraud Series ('87 - '94) Flowers in the Attic - Dollanganger Series ('79 -'86) Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo ('78) William Klein: Films, 1958-99 ('99) Wreckers of Civilisation: The Story of Coum Transmissions & Throbbing Gristle ('99)

Watch: Christiane F. ('81) Out of The Blue ('80) Deadbeat at Dawn ('88) Combat Shock ('86) Street Trash ('87) Brain Damage ('88) Zardoz ('74) Excalibur ('81) Emerald Forest ('85) Wicker Man ('73)

If atmosphere seems to be a heavy orientation for your creative drive, is your local landscape an important part of this? or is it personal experiences driving the music towards such a dark and melancholy place? something about Rowen is both light and dark.

We live on a island North East New England and seldom see others. Most of our time is spent outside, alone with the wind, the trees, on the marsh, in the mist and rain, sea side mornings, hawks at dusk and in the woods every evening. Pretty, evil and sad is what we do. We are hoping folks will also consider us in the Nature Synth category.

New England must be a very interesting place to live... what is your favorite time of year there, and what is your favorite part of the landscape there?

We love the woods, day hikes, mountain tops, swimming holes, water falls, gorges and quarries. Small towns, old houses, fields, orchards, pumpkin patches, bonfires. Train tracks, trestles, towers, castles, monuments and graveyards. I was born in October so naturally I love the fall. Hallow's Eve and all into November. Leaves turn, death comes and things change. There is nothing like a cold moonlit night in the snow. I appreciate being where we can really experience all four seasons.

Also You are so fortunate to live on an island.. That’s amazing. It’s cliche to talk about misanthropy with dark music but is this the reason for being secluded? What do you feel is the best thing for people could do with themselves in (what is in my eyes the end of the world?)

We made the decision to come here for a time of research, get to know each other, talk about our dreams, foster our ideas. Focus on only that of which we love and gives us purpose. Live away from it all. If everyone did what was the most important to them, a different world this might be.

Rowen is listed among other trees in occult literature as a tree of magical powers... Is this the reason for using the name? Is there personal beliefs at play in Rowen?

As a band we have our own ideologies, as musicians, our own theories, as artists, our own creative processes and as members, a belief system. These are shared between us and are expressed through the music, words and imagery of Rowen.

The Greeks, Norse, Celts and Druids all told mythology of the properties and significance of this mystical tree. The Greek Goddess of youth who lost her magical chalice to the demons. An eagle was sent to retrieve it. From battle, it's blood splatter on the earth grew Rowan trees. It's leaves as feathers, it's berries, the blood. The Norse myth speaks of the tree from which woman was made. And man, from a mountain ash. Saved Thor in the underworld. Runes are burned on Rowan wood. In the British Isles they tell of the folkloric tree which protects against witchcraft. The red berries of fall make up the 5 points of the Pentagram. Goes also as the Goddess or Faerie tree. The Druids used the bark and berries to dye the garments worn during lunar ceremonies black. Rowan twigs were used for divining, particularly for metals.

I had no idea the importance of Rowen to ancient people. Yes, it is true that Norse belief teaches humans were originally trees before given life and awareness by Odin, Vili and Ve. Is there any interest for you both to express your philosophy on things in the music or is this an affair of escapism and pure magic.

"The Past is not Dead, it lives on in a Woeful Drift." We are connected to our roots, our family trees, where we came from, our heritage and lands. We could only hope that our music would offer an escape. Magic is the only way.

If you could live in any time period, what time period would you live in and what would you be doing?

Canrith: I feel lucky to have been a child of the 70's and we grew up in the 80's, 90's & 00's. We were there, I wouldn't change it. I would love to live in some medieval castle in the mountains, riding a black Clydesdale, wielding a mace, reeking havoc across the land.

Cristahel: Same as Canrith but on a white Clydesdale with a halberd.

What's the most important part of the creative process for Rowen - is there a certain revelry for using old mysterious pieces of synthesizers or do you enjoy the vast possibilities of computers? There's always the game of analog vs computer in the electronic scenes, what is your thoughts on this?

For us, again, the most important part of the process is the experiment. We use all analog synthesizers, drum machines and record live. Roland, Korg, Yamaha. Same goes for our stage show. We have used and are not opposed to using digital synths on recordings and live. Casio & Yamaha synths, Simmons drums. For instance, "In Another Dream, You Were Mine" from "Ashen Spirit" was made almost entirely on a Casiotone. We record and mix on a desk top home computer.

What are you both really enjoying listening to at the moment?

Listening to cult 80's video Game music on YouTube while answering these questions.

do you have any thoughts on where this rising momentum will lead as far as the dungeon synth genre is headed, and do you feel proud of your place in that? am i wrong in assuming you both also run Hollow Myths?

We are proud of our place in DS. Though we set out to make our own mythical electronic music. And think the genre is progressing as it should. We have been very active in the scene going on six years now this November. As supporters, label, distro and band. We are most appreciative of the support we have received. And from the Black Metal Underground. Our first demo was released on pro-tape by Personnel Records, a sub-label of Seedstock Records ran by Marco Del Rio of Raspberry Bulbs aka He Who Crushes Teeth of Bone Awl. We are finishing our second release that will be out on CD & Cassette this time.

Hollow Myths, the label and distro, is the work of us two. Releases, artwork, layouts, Photography, bios, press, promo, videos, zine, jewelry, leather work, patches, we also offer clothes that we call Cryptic Raiment for After Dark. Official Dungeon Synth, Dark Ambient, Black Metal, Hollow Myths* Shirts, Long Sleeves, Hoods, Record Bags, Altar Cloths...

Correct me if I’m wrong, but Hollow Myths has had to dig deep into the underground and re-release old gems, which is like reissuing from the archives.. many people don’t really appreciate that, can you tell us about what that’s been like and if anything else like that will ever happen?

Hollow Myths* have re-released limited special versions of cult classics in a row of how I first discovered them back when. Being also from Dallas, TX, Equitant - The Great Lands Of Minas Ithil (City Of Isildur) '94 was one the first tapes I owned of the genre (and our first release from H/M* on cassette) after I found a copy of the Mournlord - Reconquering Our Kingdom Demo from '95 (SE) for a $1 in a bargain bin. These strange and very limited cassette releases helped crystallize what Dark Dungeon Music was to me. Like hearing the Caduceus - Middle Ages Demo '95 (LT) for the first time or later with the Corvus Neblus - Chapter I & II - Strahd's Possession tapes from '99 / '01 (LV). Our second re-released offering was Equimanthorn - Entrance To The Ancient Flame on cassette, another Texas born Ritual Black Ambient project with both Equitant and Proscriptor of the Mythological Occult Metal band Absu as members. After which, we made a chain of very special limited re-releases from; Gothmog, Depressive Silence, Solanum, Lunar Womb, Cain, two from Aperion, Arthur as well as Xerión with more to come. At the same time, we have introduced many new Dungeon Synth artists, some with their follow ups; Isåedor, Wyver and Wizzard to name but a few. We began in '16 and have 43 releases to date. Some mentioned above will see second pressings in the near future.

What has been your favorite release to work on this past year and what sort of artists does Hollow Myths look for?

We focus on outsider music and art and put our blood, sweat and tears into every release. Since we are primarily a physical label and distro (Tapes, CD's, Vinyl, Merch, etc.), it has been interesting to curate and mix the last three Shadowlore Compilations.

Each run over 2 hours long and feature new and exclusive songs by legions of Dungeon Synth artists from around the world. Being Digital, we offer it for Free or name your price for those who want to add it to their collections. Corresponding J-card "tape trade" layout print outs are included in the download, so one can make their own 2x cassette version. To be shared with friends, to inspire tape trading, for more reach and exposure for the artists' projects. Shadowlore Four will be released this Summer Solstice.

Other releases from last year we are very proud of: Apeiron - Stardust / A Separate Reality. Cosmic / Dark Ambient / Black Metal from Austria. '95 & '97 and featuring a never before heard hidden track from '96 titled "Dimensional Chanting" exclusive only to this release. Xerión - O Espírito Da Fraga / O Trono de Breogán. Black Metal / Dark Ambient from Spain. The first two demos from '01 & '02 with 3 new songs recorded exclusively for this release including a Windir cover. Galician Mythology and Folklore. Wyver - Tragedies of Lost Village (Demo II). Dungeon Synth / Fantasy Music follow up. (PDX) Hypogeum - S/T. Introducing outsider, Raw Black Metal from the woods of Oregon. Wizzard - The Cauldron Descent. Cryptic Dungeon Synth follow up from Sweden. Morihaus - The Empty Marches. Eccentric Dark Ambient / Dungeon Synth debut from Kentucky.

Tell us about Rowen’s plans to start touring.

We just played our first show at the Northeast Dungeon Siege MMXIX festival. Now we are working on piecing together a tour that will begin this summer in the north east coast with the plan to then head down, across the south to California, up the west coast, pacific northwest and back across the north and through the mid-west to return late fall. We recently put the word out that we are up to perform anywhere, anytime and received an overwhelming response. If we can get on tour, stay on tour, get back to Europa without haste, we would be more than pleased.

The first two shows will be outdoor camping events. Mythical Electronic, Dungeon Synth, Black Metal, Acoustic Black Metal, Death Metal, Doom, Crust, Folk, Country, . . . Both are on private land, in the forest and BYOB. Bring a tent, water, food and supplies. Crossbows and throwing knives.

Rowen Seasons of the Savage at The Sonorous Glade June 22nd Topsham, VT w/ Haxen, Sombre Arcane, Fed Ash, Gorcrow, Melkor, Black Axe, Void Bringer, Acid Roach and Wild Leek River

Rowen Woods of Gallows II August 17th West Chazy, NY w/ T.O.M.B., Worthless, Sombre Arcane, Ordeals, Malacath, Lightcrusher, Hræsvelgr, Graveren and Callous

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songwriting-analysis · 7 years

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Stoner/Doom Metal legends Sleep played two nights at Pioneer Works over the weekend as part of the Grand Ole Opera exhibition. The sparknotes synopsis of Sleep is that they broke up after their record label refused to release an hour long record about weed which went on to become a lost classic. More dedicated fans know that their entire discography is raunchy but that didn’t stop obnoxious fuckwads from yelling out, “Dopesmokerrrr!” after every song during the first night. The band reacted by opening the second night with a half hour long rendition of the song.

Sleep was broken up a good ten years before reuniting sporadically for the occasional show and recording. Its members stayed busy with projects like Om and High on Fire. In the past year, Sleep has gigged more frequently and started working on a new album but even with renewed attention, both nights at Pioneer Works were sloppy at best.

This was my first time seeing Sleep or any of its members live (excluding youtube) so I can’t compare but I’ll say that I’ve seen younger, less established Doom bands in far shittier venues that played tighter and sounded better. The other bands had something to prove, a hunger and a desire to crush skulls with riffs like an avalanche. There were moments of the Clarity where this nefarious will to power came across (goosebumps at the clean section of “Holy Mountain”) but on the whole it was as if they were either resting on their doomy laurels, playing through the fog of rustiness, or battling something worse.

Drummer Jason Roeder is quite good and was probably the most on-point performer both nights. He doesn’t lay into the grooves with the same laid-back ferocity as Chris Hakius but he’s a solid addition to the band, much more audible the second night due to better micing. Cisneros was solid, a few flubbed notes on his part but on the whole his tone was monstrous. Even though the Dopesmoker-esque growl of his singing voice is gone, it’s almost more menacing now as a throaty whisper.

The real LVP was Matt Pike. Pike is a guitar god. He’s the star of the band in spite of Cisneros being both bassist and vocalist. (Poor bassists never get any credit.) Pike was playing better solos at age 19 than most people can, period. It’s all the more impressive that while he had the chops to do things like High on Fire, he opted for the plodding, meditative patience required for Doom metal, only revealing his true power level in soul-searing solos. I heard he was trying to quit drinking recently and his personal situation isn’t my knowledge or business but especially during the first night, he started out in awful shape and came into his own as the show went on, leading me to wonder if there was more of an element of sobering up rather than just warming up.

Doom riffs may be simple but to play them articulately through a wall of amps ready to squeal feedback at any second is harder than it looks. I’ve seen younger bands do this with flawless execution and yet here was the godfather of 2nd wave Doom half-assing his way through his own legendary songs. It created this effect where I’d realize a minute or two in that I was hearing a song I know like the back of my hand on record. On the whole, I was listening to a band sporadically clicking into alignment but mostly playing at a disconnect. Due to all the unison parts, Doom probably requires the best ensemble playing of any metal subgenre. Any serious musician will tell you that slow music is far harder than fast music. It’s also no small feat to stay consistently in the pocket on music so slow. When done consistently, it’s skull-bludgeoning, when done sloppily, it’s mush.

Part of the issue was the wall(s) of amps. Pioneer Works is a cavernous venue with good acoustics but Cisneros had 4 8x12s and Pike had 8 4x12s. I stood near Pike the first night and while I could hear the sub frequencies of the bass, the guitar created a wall of flat, mid-rangey mush that rang out over everything. The second night, I stood on the Cisneros side and the bass sounded great but the guitar was overpowered. Only when I went to the very back of the venue was I able to get an accurate sonic picture, albeit a bit muffled by the crowd. That that much competing amplitude isn’t going to allow for a balanced sonic picture without ample space to spread (but don’t tell that to Doom metal musicians!)

All of this led me to question the rock scene in general. There are bands out their cutting their teeth, trying to put their best riff forward every second of every night while placing their lives on hold and slogging it through the discomfort of touring… and then here’s this established band who’ve been minted as legends for almost 20 years that barely played their songs with passable accuracy. Matt Pike probably would have failed some of his songs if this were guitar hero but the crowd didn’t seem to notice or mind, they were just so excited to see this legendary band whose music meant so much to them. Shouldn’t there be something negative to say about such blind adherence though? Sleep could have taken a shit on stage and at least 60% of the audience would have eaten it with a spoon. Maybe some people are okay with that (and to be fair the tickets were very affordable) but as musicians, it shows a lack of respect not only to the fans but to the music.

I should also mention that the audiences were pretty terrible. People were so fucked up they had to be escorted out by EMS before the show even began. Others tried to mosh every time a riff picked up steam (who the fuck moshes to doom metal?) and there was a song with a quiet, clean intro that the audience talked loudly through. (So what, you showed up to hear the heavy parts but the soft parts are just filler to you?) I don’t think it was general rock n roll douchery that caused Pike to close the show by leaning his guitar against the wall of amps and leaving the fans with a piercing squeal of feedback but a statement of distaste toward the audience.

The playing was tighter the second night and the highlight for me was hearing songs that were either unreleased or will be featured on their new album. Though not revolutionary like Dopesmoker, they suggest that their new album won’t just be a nostalgic cash grab, but a legitimately nasty cut of sludgey goodness. Okay, no more spoilers.

Sleep is my favorite Doom metal band. I take no pleasure in speaking poorly of them but I’m also not going to say they were great just because they’re legends. They displayed one level of disrespect for their fans by playing an hour and twenty minutes late both nights (classic rock par course) and another level by not doing their own music justice. In spite of the shakiness of these performances, I hope the fever pitch of interest in their music inspires them to keep jamming, keep recording, and to continue being the sentinels of what stoner/doom music can be for the rest of us mere mortals. The Doom scene wouldn’t be one iota of what it is today without their contribution. Hopefully like Sabbath and Saint Vitus before them, their story has only just begun.

#sleep #dopesmoker #holy mountain #doom metal #stoner metal #brooklyn music #pioneer works #matt pike #al cisneros #sleep band #sleep's holy mountain #don't mosh at doom shows you pretentious fuckwit #doom #sludge #metal #brooklyn metal

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nerdymetalhead · 7 years

Text

Warrior’s Blood chapter 2

Chapter 2

The next day

Ellie and Kane got enrolled into Echo Creek Jr. High, mostly for protection from the mob. Thoughts of how they were going to make money ran through the minds of Kane and Ellie throughout the school day, making them unable to concentrate.

“Ellie are you still listening to me?” Star asked after telling Ellie a story about one of her adventures.

“Yeah I’m listening.” Ellie replied while picking up her backpack to leave school and get some rest or ideas for what to do for money at the Diaz household.

“Well it seems that both you and Kane were out of it today.” Star implied, looking at Ellie with worry in her eyes. Ellie met Star’s gaze and gave her a small nod.

“We’ve been trying to think of how to make money here is all.” Ellie reassured Star, knowing that Star was worried about her well being.

“Oh, okay.” Star replied with more joy than sadness in her tone.

At Marco’s house

“Well I guess we could always try and get another band together.” Kane insisted to Ellie as soon as she came through the door.

“We need a good drummer ya know.” Ellie mentioned, giving Kane a smile in return.

“Well let’s put up some posters or something around town.” Marco stated.

“Good idea.” Kane and Ellie replied in unison.

“Marco could I hang up the posters with Kane?” Star asked.

“No.” Marco answered.

“Pleeease Marco, I’ll be good.” Star pleaded, putting on a puppy face for extra effect.

“Fine but please don’t cause any havoc.” Marco replied.

“Yaaaaaay!” Star yelled out in joy. The four of them made the posters for a new drummer. As soon as Kane and Star walked out the door to go and hang up the posters Star decided to start to get to know Kane better.

“So you’re into that metal music right?” Star questioned him.

“Yeah, sure am.” Kane replied.

“Could I possibly look at the bands on your jacket?” Star asked.

“Sure thing Star.” Kane said while taking off his jacket and revealing more tattoos on his chest and upper arms.

“The big patch here is Metallica, this patch here is Pantera, that one is Megadeth, this one is Slayer, this one’s Black Sabbath…” Kane stated while pointing out all of the patches on his jacket. After about 5 minutes of pointing out bands Star asked some more questions about metal and why Kane liked it so much.

“So there are many different subgenres of metal that can, in themselves, have subgenres?” Star asked to see if she was correct.

“Yeah, and the types I like are old school heavy metal, Thrash, Speed, some Nu, and Glam.” Kane stated.

“So do you think I could possibly try out the drums?” Star asked.

Kane stopped and turned around, “What makes you wanna try the drums out Star?” Kane was now interrogating Star to see if she had what it takes.

“It sounds fun and I wanna help you guys get onto your feet.” Star replied and straightened out her back to make herself look bigger.

“Fine, but I wanna see what you’ve got on the drums.” Kane said. The two turned back and walked to Marco’s house to get ready for whatever will come next. Meanwhile back at the Diaz house, Marco was asking most of the same questions as Star.

“So can I see the patches on your jacket please?” Marco requested.

“Yeah, if ya don’t know any of the bands then ask me okay.” Ellie said while taking off her jacket. The jacket was hiding some tattoos around Ellie’s shoulders and neck, a small dragon covering each shoulder while a small Celtic cross was on the back of her neck. Marco asked about the musical process, the genres and subgenres, and just her favorite songs.

“I see, this is a very complicated form of music.” Marco stated.

“Yeah.” Ellie replied. Before Marco could say anything else Kane and Star burst through the door and scared both Marco and Ellie.

“We got us a new drummer!” Kane shouted as he pointed at Star.

“WAIT WHAT?!” Ellie screamed.

“Well I think I can learn the drums fairly easily…” Star said looking down at the floor.

“Well if you think you can do it Star,” Marco reassured her, “then you should at least try it out.” Star looked up at Marco and gave him a small hug before magically making a drum set. She got a quick lesson from Ellie and then started to play. After the performance Kane, Ellie, and Marco stared at her in shock at the perfectness of her playing style and everything she did.

“Damn you’re a quick learner!” Kane exhaled.

“Wow…” Marco said in complete shock.

“We’ve got ourselves a drummer then.” Ellie decided.

“R-r-r-really?” Star asked, puzzled by her decision.

“Yep.” Ellie reassured her. Star jumped up and gave Ellie a gigantic hug, almost crushing Ellie into bone dust. Kane looked at Marco and gave him a pat on the back.

“So we need to get a venue to play at.” Kane reminded them.

“I think there might be a bar that has small bands play.” Marco stated.

“Ok let’s go and check it out.” Kane stated. They all looked around town for a bar that would allow them to play. 10 bars said that they would allow them to play there, a mix of their popularity and Star’s helping them in their quest. They would play at the first one in a week, giving them time to choose their songs and anything else they needed. They got back home as quickly as possible to write out the plans for the concerts.

“We need the setlist for the first concert.” Kane ordered.

“I can get the songs, Kane you should go practice, and Star could you possibly upgrade our guitars?” Ellie asked.

“Sure, what do you need?” Star wondered.

“Can you make Kane’s be able to like make skeletons and make bones shoot up from the ground while making mine able to make demons and shoot fire?” Ellie requested.

“Fine.” Star accepted the small challenge.

“Demon releasie fire controlly.” Star yelled while a small light came from Ellie’s guitar. Ellie picked up and started to play, fire came out of it after she shredded long enough.

“Okay now,” Star said while turning to Kane’s bass, “skeleton controlly bone makey.” The bass started to glow when Kane picked it up. He played the bass riff from “Seek and Destroy” and made a full skeleton appear.

“Okay now that’s all.” Ellie stated.

“Thank you!” Kane yelled.

One week later at the first bar.

“I’m really nervous.” Star said, looking around at the crowd that just came in. Marco counted about 300 people that somehow fit into that bar.

“It’ll be fine Star.” Marco reassured her. Star looked down at her current outfit, a shirt with fake blood on it, ripped jeans, and a battle jacket with multiple bands on it.

“Okay so now, the band you’ve all been waiting for, BLOOD OF A WARRIOR!” the bar owner yelled into the mic. They all got into position and Ellie played the opening riff of “Before I Forget”.

“Go!” Kane yelled into the mic. Ellie, Star, and Kane perfectly timed each note.

“Stapled shut inside in an outside world I’m

Sealed in tight, bizarre but right at home

Claustrophobic, closing in and I’m

Catastrophic, not again

I’m smeared across the page, and doused in gasoline

I wear you like a stain, yet I’m the one who’s obscene

Catch me upon all of your sordid little insurrections,

I’ve got no time to lose, and I’m just caught up in all the cattle

Fray the strings

Throw the shapes

Hold your breath

And listen!

I am a world before I’m a man

I was a creature before I could stand

I will remember before I forget

Before I forget that!” Kane sung in a deep voice. They played the riff and Kane came back into the singing

“I'm ripped across the ditch, and settled in the dirt and I'm

I wear you like a stitch, yet I'm the one who's hurt

Pay attention to your twisted little indiscretions

I've got no right to win, I'm just caught up all the battles

Locked in clutch

Pushed in place

Hold your breath

And listen!

I am a world before I am a man

I was a creature before I could stand

I will remember before I forget

Before I forget that!

I am a world before I am a man

I was a creature before I could stand

I will remember before I forget

Before I forget that!” Kane sung and then started to play his part in the solo.

“My end

It justifies my means

All I have to do is delay

I'm given time to evade

The end of the road is my end

It justifies my means

All I have to do is delay

I'm haven't time to evade

The end of the road!

I am a world before I am a man

I was a creature before I could stand

I will remember before I forget

Before I forget that!

I am a world before I am a man

I was a creature before I could stand

I will remember before I forget

Before I forget that!

I am a world before I am a man

I was a creature before I could stand

I will remember before I forget

Before I forget that!

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

Yeah, yeah, yeah, oh!” Kane finished.

The next song up was “Paranoid”

Ellie opened with the riff and Kane and Star followed along as planned.

“Finished with my man 'cause he couldn't help me with my mind

People think I'm insane because I am frowning all the time.” Ellie sang. The small solo started then she continued the lyrics

“All day long I think of things but nothing seems to satisfy

Think I'll lose my mind if I don't find something to pacify

Can you help me, occupy my brain?

Oh yeah!” Ellie sang before starting another small solo.

I need someone to show me the things in life that I can't find

I can't see the things that make true happiness, I must be blind.” Ellie sang before starting the true solo.

“Make a joke and I will sigh and you will laugh and I will cry

Happiness I cannot feel and love to me is so unreal.” Sang before starting the riff again.

“And so as you hear these words telling you now of my state

I tell you to enjoy life I wish I could but it's too late.” Ellie sang before finishing the 2 minute song. Kane took initiative on the next song and began playing “Inside the Fire”.

“Oh Devon

Won't go to Heaven

She's just another lost soul, about to be mine again

Leave her

We will receive her

It is beyond your control

Will you ever meet again.

Devon

One of eleven

Who had been rendered unwhole.

As a little child,

She was taken

And then forsaken

You will remember it all

Let it blow your mind again.

Devon lies beyond this portal

Take the word of one immortal

Give your soul to me

For eternity

Release your life

To begin another time with her

End your grief with me

There's another way

Release your life

Take your place inside the fire with her.” Kane sung as a small solo started, right then Ellie’s guitar shot out flames.

“Sever

Now and forever

You're just another lost soul about to be mine again

See her, you'll never free her

You must surrender it all

In your life to meet again

Fire

All you desire

As she begins to turn cold and run out of time

You will shiver

Till you deliver

You will remember it all

Let it blow your mind again

Devon lies beyond this portal

Take the word of one immortal

Give your soul to me

For eternity

Release your life

To begin another time with her

End your grief with me

There's another way

Release your life

Take your place inside the fire with her.” Kane sang before starting the solo, he started to make bones come from the ground and make a small cage around himself.

“Give your soul to me

For eternity

Release your life

To begin another time with her

End your grief with me

There's another way

Release your life

Take your place inside the fire with her

Devon

Among the livin'

Who had been rendered unwhole

As a little child

She was taken,

And then forsaken

You will remember it all

Let it blow your mind again.” Kane finished the song with an evil laugh to top it off. Ellie started her next song quickly, she played to opening riff to “Don’t Tread On Me”.

“Liberty or death, what we so proudly hail

Once you provoke her, rattling of her tail

Never begins it, never, but once engaged

Never surrenders, showing the fangs of rage

Don't tread on me

So be it

Threaten no more

To secure peace is to prepare for war

So be it

Settle the score

Touch me again for the words that you'll hear evermore

Don't tread on me

Love it or leave it, she with the deadly bite

Quick is the blue tongue, forked as lighting strike

Shining with brightness, always on surveillance

The eyes, they never close, emblem of vigilance

Don't tread on me

So be it

Threaten no more

To secure peace is to prepare for war

So be it

Settle the score

Touch me again for the words that you'll hear evermore

Don't tread on me” Ellie sang before playing the solo.

“So be it

Threaten no more

To secure peace is to prepare for war

Liberty or death, what we so proudly hail

Once you provoke her, rattling on her tail

So be it

Threaten no more

To secure peace is to prepare for war

So be it

Settle the score

Touch me again for the words that you'll hear evermore

Don't tread on me!” Ellie sang for her final song. Kane’s final song was up next “Raining Blood”.

Star did the opening drums perfectly, while Ellie and Kane came in with the guitar and bass for the song perfectly as well, by now the crowd was going nuts. Everyone was singing along as well as moshing.

“Trapped in purgatory

A lifeless object, alive

Awaiting reprisal

Death will be their acquiescence

The sky is turning red

Return to power draws near

Fall into me, the sky's crimson tears

Abolish the rules made of stone.” Kane screamed into the mic.

“Pierced from below, souls of my treacherous past

Betrayed by many, now ornaments dripping above

Awaiting the hour of reprisal

Your time slips away!” Kane, Ellie, and Star all perfectly timed their parts and sounded perfect even if the solo was difficult.

“Raining blood

From a lacerated sky

Bleeding its horror

Creating my structure

Now I shall reign in blood!” Kane finished the lyrics while the rest of the song went on. The finale was chosen by Star, and she wanted to sing it herself. She chose “Legion of Monsters” to finish off the concert. Ellie started up with the riff, and Star and Kane followed along.

“The monster shattered the day

In a place where innocents play

I was mourning as the headlines shouted his name

They didn't waste any time

I was disgusted when the madman's image appeared at the top of the screen

Some were barely alive

Too many didn't survive

Still they kept repeating headlines shouting the name

Do they not realize

The future demons with the hope of becoming the one at the top of the screen?

They've thrown morality away

With such depravity, I must say

You made sure the world will remember the name

But didn't the thought even enter your mind

You'd give a new legion of monsters a reason to take your life?!” Star sang as the next part of the song started.

“The pictures drove me insane

Can't get them out of my brain

You made certain they were right at the top of the page

You disrespected the dead

When the only name was of the one who committed the murder at the top of the page

The madman watching with glee

As the herd of innocents flee

They saw it all unfold right on the face of the screen

Perhaps they could be the one

Who'd become famous for the acts of terror reflected on the face of the screen?

You've thrown morality away

With such depravity, I must say

You made sure the world will remember the name

But didn't the thought even enter your mind

You'd give a new legion of monsters a reason to take your life

And I call you a pimp, as you whore the insane

The damage you caused, you cannot rectify

You've inspired new legions of monsters determined to take more life!” Star sang as she got ready for the fast verses.

“Take a look around

Listen to the sound

Feel it on the ground

Fear has come in a wave

Just another gathering of helpless innocents forced into the grave

Listen to me now

Are you with me now

Can you tell me how these vultures still glorify them

Lets defy them

Take a look around

Listen to the sound

Feel it on the ground

Fear has come in a wave

Just another gathering of helpless innocents forced into the grave

Listen to me now

Are you with me now

Can you tell me how these vultures still glorify them

Lets defy them

You made sure the world will remember the name

But didn't the thought even enter your mind

You'd give a new legion of monsters a reason to take your life

And I call you a pimp, as you whore the insane

The damage you caused you cannot rectify

You've inspired new legions of monsters determined to take more life

The monster shattered the day

You're giving a legion of monsters a reason!” Star finished off the concert with a strong song and a great voice. The crowd went wild, throwing the horns up in the air along with praises for the whole band. Star, Kane, and Ellie all took a bow as they left the stage.

“Well kids you’re getting paid a few thousand for that performance.” The bar owner stated.

I just wanted to quickly say that all rights go to the respective record companies and bands (Slipknot, Black Sabbath, Disturbed, Metallica, and Slayer. The last song was also by Disturbed.).

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post-post-goth · 7 years

Text

the angelic process interviews sourced from some anonymous dude

Black Doom With White Curtains

The Angelic Process Gracefully Walks the Ambient Metal Tightrope

Oil and water. Orange juice after brushing your teeth. Conscience and the Bush administration. Some things just don't go together, no matter how hard you smack the square peg into the round hole. Most bands realize this and safely stay tucked into their little niches. Understandable. Others attempt fusion, and the few who achieve a modicum of success are rightfully hailed as awesome. From Miles Davis to the Jesus and Mary Chain to Kevin Federline, there are varying degrees of fusion as well as realization. Apart from silly matches like vegan hardcore and classical piano, perhaps the most delicate balance an artist can strive toward is that of ambient music and metal. It's a bit of an understatement to state that it's a thin line where the two meet. On the one side sits ambient music, defined by its master Brian Eno as "aural wallpaper," meaning that while it can be deeply absorbed through close listening, it also serves a secondary purpose by pleasing the ears in a background role as white noise. It's music to read to, condoning both zoning out and blissing out. On the other side crouches metal, particularly doom. The past couple of years have seen metal open up a lot of doors, and no other subgenre has gained more than avant metal. Alabama's The Angelic Process has for six years been striving for just that balance, and with increasing rewards. K.Angylus and MDragynfly were kind enough to give me some of their heavenly time recently, and expounded upon the art of mixing volatile cocktails of powerful music.

Flagpole: I understand you have a soft spot for Athens.

MDragynfly: While not an Athens native, I spent a good deal of time there and eventually ended up moving to a sweet little house off Chase St. There's nothing spookier than walking down Boulevard at 2 am, but I think some of my best soul searching was spent pounding the pavement, trying to find myself. It was a rough period of time for me, but Athens will always be my true home. I moved to Alabama to be closer to my family and stayed after getting a great job there. (Laughs) Not that I didn't love working at Taco Stand; it's the kind of thing you have to do in a college town. After moving, I met K and everything with the band came together. We still spend a good bit of time in Athens when possible, and I stay in touch with a lot of my friends there.

Flagpole: I'm a huge fan of ambient music, first and foremost. Before I get to the subject of metal, how much of an influence does ambient/drone/etc. play in your music? I'm fascinated with how two extremes such as this and doom metal can meet in the middle and create such a wondrous maelstrom. The two make strange but hot bedfellows. What is your purpose in blending these two genres, among any others? It's a feat very few can pull off. Could you describe how you go about balancing the delicate with the brutal while avoiding the cliché soft-loud formula?

K.Angylus: The use of drone plays a very important part in The Angelic Process' sound. Drone is a very primal sound element that can be found at the foundation of most all ancient cultures. We take drone and instead of just letting it drift like a lot of ambient music does, we harness it, give it a charged emotional connection to the song. Drone is such a powerful thing and most bands never properly recognize that. When we first applied that idea ofdrone, with the heavier, more extreme end of metal, everything just fell intoplace.

MDragynfly: I generally tell people that we're not as much composers as we are translators. It's more stream of consciousness than method or formula. We like to show the full spectrum of emotion or state of being, everything from hate and anger, hopelessness, to absolute joy and epiphany. To us this is what living sounds like, and when we write something it is obvious if it is an Angelic Process song or not. Our purpose isn't to play with our audience like puppeteers, leading them forward quietly and then slamming them into a wall. It seems that some bands are going for that. What I want is something that a person can wrap themselves up in and then ride the wave, whether it is through joy or pain. I always hope that our music is an experience, perhaps even a spiritual one, as it is for me.

Flagpole: Avant metal has received an enormous amount of fanfare in the last couple of years, due to the dominance of the mighty Sunn O))), the reemergence of the mighty Earth, as well as many others. It's fertile ground right now, to say the least. How does it feel to be part of it? Why do you think this fairly young genre (or subgenre, if you prefer) has ratcheted up so much interest? I'm speaking of doom in particular, but also Jesu-type shoegaze metal and black metal, which has surprisingly crept into new corridors.

MDragynfly: I am so excited for our genre right now. Around the world people are discovering us (collectively) and can't seem to get enough. I think part of that is due to bands like us and like Isis who seem to bridge the gap and make a smoother transition into doom, black metal, and other more extreme genres. Many people are becoming disenfranchised with pop music, not only the sound, but the attitude and the way it makes (or doesn't) make them feel. They need something deeper, and with the internet all kinds of music are accessible to people who might have never encountered it otherwise. MTV is losing its stranglehold over what people will be exposed to. I can't wait to see how things change over the next few years.

Flagpole: Obviously like everyone else you guys love My Bloody Valentine. Would you say shoegaze is on par with drone and doom on your influence list?

K.Angylus: I always loved the experimental attitude the shoegaze bands had toward the guitar and that they never lost sight of using it as a songwriting element. Obviously, My Blood Valentine was something extremely special and stood well apart from its contemparies. Loveless was one of those albums that, when I heard it, changed the way I thought about music. That fluid guitar sound really resonated with me. Combining it with things I liked about other bands seemed like a natural response.

Flagpole: How does your sound translate to the stage?

K.Angylus: Extremely well, we believe. Most people think we layer everything on the records a million times to get that sound, but it's not nearly as much as one might think. We build our own FX pedals and modify all our gear. That combined with my playing guitar with a cello bow created much of that sound. So live, we use volume and our absoultely HUGE bass sound to fill in the spaces, along with a laptop for the drums and additional atmospherics.

Flagpole: So what are your plans for the near future?

MDragynfly: We've got a lot of exciting things going on this year. Our new album Weighing Souls With Sand will be out on May 15th on Profound Lore Records, and then Sound Devastation in the UK will be releasing it on vinyl around mid-July. We will be touring as much as possible in the US and Europe to promote these releases and are really looking forward to meeting everyone who has given us such great support. We feel extremely fortunate.

"How It All Started" 06/07/06 Rockbeast.com Interview

The Angelic Process have just released their harrowing EP ‘Sigh’ and re-released their phenomenal conceptual album ‘Coma Waering’ and are causing many utters of interest in the murky undergrowth of the doom/drone scene. Whilst delivering blissful melancholic ambience and sporatic waves of intensity, The Angelic Process are an act that can take you on a journey of emotional perils whilst leaving you wholesomely naked in the end. I got the chance to join the journey with K.Angylus and M.Dragynfly and let them tell me what their process is all about.

Lee - How did The Angelic Process come together and what were the initial intentions for creating the band?

K.Angylus - The Angelic Process came together in April of 2001, when we wrote and recorded our first 4 songs that were released as 'theangelicprocessep'. As Swans were/still are my favorite band, those initial songs took a lot of influence from late era Swans, in the use of crescendos, transitional structures, and that overwhelming aspect that was so much a part of them. The desire to move away from typical drumming, into a more tribal, tom and crash heavy area came from listening to Neurosis's 'Times Of Grace'. My Bloody Valentine's experimental guitar sounds rounded everything out. I began to play my guitar with a violin bow, to achieve a more textural sound, allowing the bass to anchor everything down. We wanted to create the music we weren't hearing others make and wanted to hear ourselves and I wanted to make music that might mean to others what Swans music had meant to me.

Lee - How would you define the progression of your music from the first initial release to now?

M Dragynfly - '...And Your Blood Is Full Of Honey' (our debut album from 2001) is more doom oriented, seeming to find different ways to express the same kind of emotion or state of mind. Our second full length from 2003, 'Coma Waering' is more dynamic, expressing a myriad of emotions... definitely more melodic... picks you up and carries you along on this warm, intense wave.

K.Angylus - From a technical stand point, we have learned how to better write and record Angelic Process songs. 'Coma Waering' took a huge step forward be ditching the drum machine of '...And Your Blood' and using live drums. As M said, the melodic aspects were greatly increased and really helped us define our sound...and the ambient drone metal subgenre.

Lee - When it comes to the creative process do you have an initial idea of what you're heading for in terms of sound and dynamics or do you just go with the flow as such and let it all come naturally?

K.Angylus - We've been doing The Angelic Process for over 5 years now and have over a half dozen releases, so we have that history to draw upon. A lot of songs begin out of drum patterns we record or specific melodic progression we are going for. We're lucky to have reached a pont where we can plan out to a certain point and then let the songs build themselves naturally.

Lee - What Influences The Angelic Process?

K.Angylus - That feeling I get when I listen to Swans...those moments where they will build things up and up and then change chords and you just feel it in the pit of your stomach. I want The Angelic Process to be for others what Swans are for me. That transcendental place where you lost yourself and let go. We aspired to those lofty musical ambitions from the very beginning and that's what still keeps us going.

Lee - You've recently just released an EP called 'Sigh', the music flows almost conceptually, is it meant to? If so what thematically ideas are incorporated into 'Sigh'?

K.Angylus - 'Coma Waering', which was recorded right before 'Sigh', was a concept album about a person lapsing into a coma and eventually dying. I think the resonance of death and transcending life carried over to 'Sigh' and influenced the atmosphere a great deal.

Lee - You've had a couple re-releases of earlier material, any plans for the next full length album?

M Dragynfly - We've actually already finished writing and recording the next full length and are playing some of those songs live, but with 'Coma Waering' finally seeing a proper release and the success we've already had with 'Sigh', we want to take the time to properly promote everything and not just skip over them for the new record.

Lee - For such a chaotic yet blissful sound, how do you manage to incorporate the atmospheres into a live setting?

K.Angylus - Live, I play guitar and sing, M plays bass, and we have the drums and ambient effects coming from a laptop. This is the first time in our history that we've actively pursued playing live and this setup works the best for properly presenting The Angelic Process' music. Live, our sound is clear, loud, and maintains that balance of beautiful and noisy that the records have. To the point that someone at our last show was so overwhelmed, that she just started crying and couldn't explain way. To move people in such a physical and emotional way...it really is just amazing...

Lee - Do you plan to come to the UK at any point soon?

M Draygnfly - With 'Coma Waering' being reissued on London based Paradigms Recordings and the overwhelming interest and support we're receiving in Europe, we are doing everything we can to coming to the UK as soon as possible. Financing a tour is the only obstacle we currently face and as soon as we can manage, we'll be there!

Lee - Where do you stand on the whole doom/drone culture that seems to be taking off now (after many years)?

K.Angylus - It's both good and bad, just like when anything starts to break out beyond it's initial stages. A lot of really interesting bands are finally getting heard, while at the same time, there are a lot of people who totally miss the point of the doom/drone idea, that create terrible, derivative music. For every one band that creates something powerful and moving, there are 10 that just copy Sunn O))). M said it best when she said, "good music is good music, but do something creative, do something that is your own."

Lee - For any fans reading this on ROCKBEAST, what would you like to say?

M Dragynfly - Thank you very much for the support and we hope that everyone continues to enjoy the music as much as we do.

VERSUS MAGAZINE INTERVIEW OCTOBER 2006

THE ANGELIC PROCESS: Maximum Volume Yields maximum results

“The Angelic Process was started in April 2001 and we were quickly picked up by Crucial Blast Records, K.Angylus remembers, they issued our debut album '...And Your Blood Is Full Of Honey' as a limited edition cassette. The music was much more doomy than it is now and had a heavy "Swans, with My Bloody Valentine guitars" vibe.” ‘Coma Waering’, their 2nd and more melodic release that came out in 2003 and got recently reissued by Paradigms (go and see the review in this issue), keeps the nearly-physical impact of a thick wall of guitar sounds, but with live drums that show more subtlety. Then, the ‘Sigh’ EP which was composed last year hammered it in. After that, TAP took a break until last year when bass player MDragynfly joined K.Angylus. Soon, the duet plays live and takes a new beginning.

LIVE VS STUDIO

“we finally played our first live show in January and have played quite a bit since, MDragynfly remembers, The first show was amazing...a huge rush that lasted for days. I think we've become quite addicted to playing live. When you see someone moved to tears by your music...I don't know. You can't beat knowing that for a space of time, you connect with someone like that. For us, playing live is not only thrilling but a spiritual experience as well”. K.Angylus adds : “We're extremely happy with our live sound. Live, it's M playing bass, me playing guitar and singing, and all the drums and atmospheric sounds coming from a laptop. This is the way we've found it works best, allowing everything to come through very loud, but also very clear. It was very important that everything be as clear as possible, so it wouldn't just be a big mess of sound. Best of all, you can FEEL it! At shows, the volume is very high and you can feel the sound and the bass pushing against you, but you can still hear all the melodies and little atmospherics that make the records so special. We also change some of the songs up while rehearsing, making them different from the recorded versions. It's always fun to reinvision something you're created and lived with for a while...there are actually several songs that I like the live version more than the record.” At first a strictly studio project by obligation, TAP has turned live (too), but without forgetting the old good habits, just like MDragynfly explains: “We pretty much never stop recording (Haha)! So, we're constantly throwing new songs into our sets to see how they go over. We can then take the feedback we get from the audience back into the studio. It gives us an outside perspective that we wouldn't have otherwise. For me personally it is difficult not to release music right away, just as soon as it is done. I love sharing it, and having unreleased material feels like having to wait 6 months to give someone a present. I want to know if it makes other people feel the way I felt writing it. That's how I know a song is really right. “

WORK IN PROGRESS

K. Angylus: “Swans, My Bloody Valentine, Neurosis...those are some bands that directly influenced us in the early days”. MDragynfly adds: “I think that people don't necessarily pick up on the classical influence in our music. Transitional structures, movements, the layering of sound that builds to a huge overwhelming climax. In centuries past you needed an orchestra to be able to achieve that.” And one’s wouldn’t think about contradicting them when one’s considers the epic dimension of crescendos and other sonic storms, which can also conjure up an affiliation with the Swans by the way, while the ‘shoegaze meets metal’ thing can evoke Jesu. And finally, this duet reminds us of another one, Loveliescrushing, in a more hammering and heavy way… almost post-apocalyptic. Thus Athens, with its creative vivacity, finally turns to be a place that’s great for the band and its original mixture, just like MDragynfly explains: “Athens has always had a very dynamic scene. A lot of the trends there depend on the students at The University of Georgia, so it is interesting to see the progression when new students come in. There is a constant flow of creativity from the full time residents of Athens, and the locals can give you a taste of just about everything from blues to punk, southern rock to black metal. The experimental scene seems to be making a comeback with the help of Paul Thomas and our friends at Xray Cafe, which has been the underground home of experimental music and art for several years.”K. Angylus: “Recently, our biggest project has been taking over Decaying Sun. It was a label we've worked with a lot and released our 'Sigh' EP and reissued '...And Your Blood Is Full Of Honey' through. It is a small label and the people involved decided they no longer had the time to invest in it and since our records were selling the most and keeping the label afloat (as well as it being named after our logo), they offered to hand over full control to us to do with as we pleased. We will continue to release our "official full lengths" with other, larger labels, but Decaying Sun will allow us to release limited edition Angelic Process records directly to our fans. Within the next month, we plan to release the first of 2 or 3 limited edition EP's centered around some of the songs from the next full length. Since we've been playing some of these songs live, fans have been asking us to release them. We ended up recording a lot more than will be on the record, so we'll be throwing a few songs people have been asking for, with some that will be exclusive to the limited EP's. Each copy will be numbered and signed by us, will come in a special made box, and be decorated differently to make each one unique. We will also be including a few little extras in each box.”. To finish with, let’s hope that this band, which has been skilfully dealing with reissues so as to make them a new beginning, will then move from the ‘ultra underground but praised’ status to the ‘recognized jewel of the post-doom/noise scene’ one.

Will be in a few pieces so bear with me.

THE ANGELIC PROCESS

"There was a moment while working on our 3rd full length 'Weighing Souls With Sand' that I will never forget: I was looking at the big marker board we have in the studio that has all the songs titles and categories for guitar, bass, drums, vocals, atmospherics, etc [to show what has and hasn't been done] and I realized there were 15 songs and every category was checked. Another Angelic Process album was nearly complete."

Formed in 1999, and hailing from the Athens Georgia realm, the husband-and-wife duo of K.Angylus and MDragynfly have been known to create some of the most mesmerizing and moving music within the ambient drone-metal musical realm... Garnering already a huge response with the 2006 re-issue of "Coma Waering" [Paradigms Recordings], a recording that is actually four years old, The Angelic Process now deliver said album's follow-up, namely "Weighing Souls With Sand."

The Angelic Process Centering around a concept that continues the story begun with "Coma Waering", "Weighing Souls..." is the inevitable aftermath as the band explain:"'Coma Waering' is a concept record about a man falling into a coma and eventually dying.'Weighing Souls With Sand' is the follow up to that concept, this time about the man's wife trying to deal with his death and failing, eventually committing suicide."

Sound-wise picture the wall-of-sound through the fuzzy celestial grace of My Bloody Valentine, the tribal ritualistic pulsations of Neurosis, the emotional fervor and bloodletting of Swans, and the powerful grace of Jesu, and here you'll get a glimpse of what "Weighing Souls..." shall offer. And then some...

Roadburn Records is proud to present "Weighing Souls..." on vinyl [a limited edition up to 500 copies: 300 black, 100 yellow, 100 red].

Words | K.Angylus

Following up a record as loved by our fans and widely acclaimed as 'Coma Waering' was never gonna be easy. Every time I start a new Angelic Process record I always wonder if the songs are going to be there this time. I think a lot of musicians go through that, but for me, it had been 4 years since I wrote 'Coma Waering.' The flood of reissues [Coma, our debut '...And Your Blood Is Full of Honey', and the 'Sigh' EP) at the beginning of 2006 garnered us a lot of buzz and it was clear people were wanting to see if we could top ourselves. MDragynfly had just joined the band [who is the perfect sounding board and an amazing musician] and we were finally able to play live, so pretty much everything had changed from when 'Coma' was written.

I think it was playing live that most influenced WSWS. With 'Coma', we had established our sound. Playing those songs live required use to alter some of the arrangements and strip the songs down. The new songs we were writing followed that line and had less repetition, more parts, and faster mouvement between those parts. We stripped away some of the ambient noise that 'Coma' used so heavily and increased the complexity of the melodies we wrote. But most of all, we were able to tighten up the arrangements by playing them live and seeing what worked and what didn't.

Having our own studio is very important. While the initial arrangements are worked out beforehand, most of the texturing and ambient atmospherics have to be worked out while recording. We build our own FX pedals and modify our gear, so we have a large number of sounds and textures at our disposal. We very rarely use synths or electronics, preferring to use guitar, bass, drums, vocals, keeping everything as organic as possible. We also master our albums to tape and not just in the computer. We use computers to sequence tracks, but everything is run back out onto tape. Maybe this is how we keep so much warmth in our sound. Another thing I would like to mention: all the drums are live, mic'd drums. A lot of people seem to think we use a drum machine, but we don't, not since our 2001 debut. I had a custom kit build before I started recording 'Coma', the toms are bigger than normal, so we get a deeper resonance and bigger sound. Same with the crash cymbals...we just like big, deep drums.

So, after 8 months of writing and recording, we had a finished album. A lot has already been written about the extremely personal nature of the concept that runs through both our 'Coma' and WSWS. I've decided not to address it here and talk more about how the songs came together and little stories that come to mind about them in this track by track account:

The Angelic Process The Promise of Snakes

This was the last song written for the record and the only song where there was no bass on it until everything else [except vocals] was finished. M and I did the intro and the first two riffs and just continued to write new sections around permutations of those riffs. After everything was written, I recorded all the drums and guitars in one day, then we didn't touch it for a while. We were at the point of having to many songs to fit on the record anyway, so including a 9+ minute song meant we would definitely have to cut a song or two that we already liked. So it remained unfinished, until one day M grabbed her bass, came in, and nailed a quick take of the whole song. We went driving around and listened to the vocal less version and it just crushed! So I went back in, hammered out the vocals, and ended up with my favorite song on the album.

Million Year Summer

After we restarted the band and had been playing live, we realized we didn't really have any songs that were just full blast from start to end. We have a ton of 7+ minute mini-epics that take you on a roller coaster ride, but nothing we could throw into a set to shake things up. It was the third song M and I wrote together and was put immediately into our live set. It has been played as either the first or second song at every show we've done since. At under 4 minutes, it's the shortest 'song' we've ever done and one of the best. It also sound great on just acoustic guitar...

The Resonance of Goodbye

The second song M and I wrote together, 'The Resonance of Goodbye' is one of those songs where the title and music fit together perfectly. Such an incredibly emotional and just plain heavy song, we played it live for a while, but had to stop because of how difficult the vocals are to perform. For whatever reason, certain notes in it just shred my vocal cords. But I really love this song. The little shimmery melody that follows the bowed guitar in the intro, then leads to the feedback fade in of the massed guitars never fails to get me right in the gut. One of the most powerful songs we've written by far.

We All Die Laughing

One of our most popular songs and one that almost wasn't a song at all! We were in the middle of writing for the album and I had demoed the first 3 minutes or so and hated it. It just wasn't coming together at all for me, but I played it for M and she loved it and made me promise not to trash it. The Angelic Process Everyday, she would come in and listen to that first 3 minutes and make notes about what could follow it. We then took those notes and continued to write until we reached the version that is on the record. Definitely a song that would not have been at all if M hadn't worked so hard to make it come together.

Dying In A-Minor

The second to last song written for the record. By that point in the writing, we had established the concept for the album and had a basic running order, so we knew we needed a song to bridge the first half of the record to the second half. I had written the middle section in rehearsal one day and kept coming back to it. Something about the movement of the chords really struck me. M and I worked on it without drums, just guitar and bass, and wrote the end section. I then mixed some heavily filtered guitars with a washy synth for the intro. When I put down the first layer of vocals, you could just hear the backing vocals in there, so I put those instead of layering guitar melodies like I did on most of the other songs. In the end, it's the least complex song on the album, but it's all the more powerful for that simplicity.

Weighing Souls With Sand

One of those songs that comes together quickly and is done. I did a lot of weird vocal layering on this one that most people don't pick up one. I really like the flow and forward momentum this song has. It really gives the album that push into the end. After about 2 weeks of talking it out, we decided this would be the album title. It just has that certain something. That right combination of words that envokes images and emotions, especially within the context of the album.

Mouvement - World Deafening Eclipse

Since the flow of our albums is EXTREMELY important, we use shorter tracks to bridge the gap between certain songs. I knew in the beginning that I wanted to do this, but also wanted to make sure that listeners knew these weren't suppose to be viewed the same as the actual songs. So, since I am a fan of classical music and the transitional structures we use are based off of the way classical music is sometimes arranged, I called these tracks "mouvements". We wrote several that didn't make it onto the record. Being bridge tracks, they have to be just right and really highlight the songs their between. It has some great flitered guitar atmospherics and nice chord changes in the middle. M really loves this one and we plan to play it live.

Burning In The Undertow of God

I love the dissonant notes during the first loud section and the ever shifting chord patterns throughout. The more open chord voicings allowed me to use a different approach to the vocals and use more circular guitar melodies underneath. We did a lot of guitar arranging in the studio, after the drums and some bass were tracked. A lot of little subtle things are going on in the guitars, lots of harmonic elements that create little melodic things that weren't intended, but sound great. As soon as we wrote it, we knew it would end the record. A great song, this was featured on Terrorizer Magazine's cover CD.

Mouvement - The Smoke of Her Burning

This was actually written and recorded as the original ending to 'Burning In The Undertow of God', but we decided to split it into a separate mouvement to help give the album a more defined ending. In the original version, it was much longer and had a vocal section, but it seemed to slow the pace of the album down to much. When we cut out those sections and added the more ambient outro, everything just fell into place.

How To Build A Time Machine [Hidden Track]

We left tracks 10-16 blank to give a little separation between this song and the last mouvement. To me, this song feels like the summation of the record. It was originally intended to be somewhere in the middle of the album, but ultimately just sounded to out of place. But still, a great song that I am really proud of. It's always nice to include some kind of little hidden/bonus thing at the end of a record, but we wanted to make sure that the hidden track we chose wasn't just some throwaway track and still related to the record.

#doom metal #doomgaze #interview #the angelic process

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mr-popo-little-green-blog · 7 years

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FUCKING METAL ELITISTS

Never have I seen a group of people in a musical group more spiteful, more narrow minded and long winded than metal elitists. I love heavy metal. I love all things dark and extreme and out there artistically. Something seems to be lost in understanding though. People get so caught up in genres and labels that they overlook the treasure within. Also, people see a band's fan base and assume the band is like their fans. This is doing a great disservice to yourself and how others see you. Essentially, all people do in these groups is shit talk music they don't like saying "Oh My Chemical Romance is garbage" and "suicide silence is for bitches" and my favorite "deathcore and metalcore aren't real metal." I'm sorry that you don't see the that deathcore actually turned screaming into an art. Not just growling and sounding like a snake choking on a watermelon. Yes, there are vocalists who got screaming done right before this new age of metal and core subgenres manifested. But have had only ONE major issue with Black and Death metal above all else and that is vocals. I'm sorry that you lack emotional intelligence to see why lyrics alone can be extreme enough for some people to be attracted to them and still love metal. I have loved metal since before my strict Christian family let me listen to it. But I have hated, loathed and spoken out against people who make a genre seem like a bunch of assholes. (Local hardcore scene a few years ago being a major highlight and they made me dislike much of the music I now love based on a negative predisposition) Black Veil Brides is pretty fucking decent. Along with Sleeping With Sirens, Pierce the Veil, Falling in Reverse, Escape the Fate and so on. But their fan base makes people want to commit homicide. My Chemical Romance is one of my favorite bands of all time. Their fans are more united and helpful than any group I've ever seen. And yet all these cats want to jump on Ghost's dick like they are some hot shit. Guys, Ghost sounds like 80s new wave and all they write about is Satan and how awesome it is to hate religion. I like ghost. Don't get me wrong. But you can't tell me MCR sucks when you're jamming to Scooby Doo chase music! I only truly dislike a band when their lyrics are below a third grade reading level, when they promote ignorance and/or outright hatred and when they seem overall disingenuous. I may not like them myself. But if they rock for a purpose, their fans are chill, they wish the best for everybody and put their heart and soul into their music, I cannot logically find fault in their work. Just motherfuckers WANT to be hateful and spiteful and I'm so sick of that shit.

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rockrevoltmagazine · 6 years

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The Crown Remnant Interview

All photographs by Curious Kat Photography

Senior journalist Anabel DFlux caught up with metal act The Crown Remnant, upon the release of their debut album The Wicked King (Part 1). The Crown Remnant is an exciting metal act hailing from Los Angeles, California. Priding themselves on bringing in a variety of musical backgrounds together to create this bad-ass group, this band of friends are here to take over the city of angels. It was a pleasure to pick the brains of members Geordy Shallan (lead vocals), Will Ash (lead guitar), Jorge Lopez (rhythm guitar), Josue Lara (bassist), and Art Ramirez (drums).

RockRevolt: Hey everyone! How are you all doing?

Art Ramirez: I’m great, thanks for asking!

Jorge Lopez: Personally I’m doing great! Any day I am not being terrorized by Josue and Geordy is a great day. (laughs)

Josue Lara: I’m doing great too!

Geordy Shallan: I’m feeling amazing, we just put out our first record, so there’s so many emotions running through me right now (laughs). Will, how are you?

Will Ash: Hello! I think I speak for all of us when I say, we’re feeling fucking fantastic. We’ve got a new album, live shows in the future, and we get to do this awesome interview with you!

RR: It’s great to get the whole band together here for an interview. Tell me, what’s your favorite thing about engaging in a musical endeavor together?

WA: (Laughs) trust me, getting all of us boys together in one place is always a good time. Or an actual disaster, either way, we like to do things our own way. I’d have to say that’s one of my favorite things – we do things our own way. Every member of this band is creative and inspiring and when you’re working on a project with such talented people without any misconceptions of who you are or what you’re “supposed” to be, you tend to get some great stuff out of it. I think that’s a problem with the metal community sometimes and I love that we’re confident enough to be unique and Fleetwood Mac the whole process.

GS: Basically what Will said, we do things our own way, and we have the best time doing so! We’re real with each other, we know how to have fun together, and we inspire one another like no other. I think there’s this unique bond of personalities that really allows this band to shine.

JOS: These guys are great and talented; I love exploring genres I normally wouldn’t on my own. It’s quite a different experience going from Jamming and playing with a couple of friends to finding something that is so much more real and professional, it still blows my mind sometimes! I love it!

JOR: Being in a project that everyone is involved in and dedicated to is amazing. My favorite thing about it would have to be going on this adventure together with such wonderful friends!

AR: Quite simply, for me personally, it’s our chemistry as a band.

Artwork by Gray Eldritch

RR: What is your music writing process?

WA: So our latest record was penned completely by Geordy and I. Our writing like anyone else’s goes through a bunch of stages but I think that we approach it all in a really healthy way. Our creative process happens in a lot of different ways but I think typically the first step is when one of us just has a great, awesome idea. You know when it happens because you can feel it itching to get laid down, tracked or recorded somehow. When that happens, we’ll take it to each other in whatever stage creatively it’s in – it can be just a single riff or the backbone of an entire song.

From there, just about a million things could happen but I’d say wherever we decided to take it, it’s always super collaborative. We have a really open rule about criticism because both Geordy and I love hearing it, we think it’s the best teaching tool. If there’s anything we’re not 100% on, we rework it, play around with it, structure it in different ways. The greatest thing about our writing process is that literally anything can happen at any time with a song, as long as we agree that it follows our vision. We don’t feel held back by convention or some sort of “ruleset” for our songs, we just write what’s in our hearts and try and make great stories and experiences for the listener.

GS: Will nailed it on this! There’s no one “right way” that we have when it comes to writing. For example, our track “Burn the Throne” started with a backbone of riffs and a song structure I had written where Will then threw on some crazy leads and a classical guitar solo, and we were done, but then our track “From Damnation to Deliverance” started from about 30 seconds of riff ideas I brought to Will, and the rest of the track came from Will and I just bouncing ideas of one another and jamming it out until we had a full song written!

RR: Let’s chat about the new album, The Wicked King! What part of the recording process was most memorable to you?

GS: There’s a tough question, it’s all so memorable. I think the most memorable part for me personally was leaving the studio after finishing vocal tracking for Burn the Throne with our vocal producer Tyler Ruehl, sometime around 11:30 PM, the day before my birthday, and Will turned on my favorite song from the new Mastodon record right when midnight hit on our drive back home, and I couldn’t help but think “Holy hell, we’re doing this! We’re actually freaking DOING this!! I get to make the best music I’ve ever made with one of the coolest people I know!”, and I was just so unbelievably excited. What a freaking journey it’s been.

WA: The Wicked King: Part I has been the craziest journey since it started roughly a year ago. We’re very fortunate to have a lot of friends to help us out in this industry, so when we came to them with a rough draft of what turned out to be our first record, they’re were super supportive. We wanted this whole record done professionally so we ended up taking it to a few great engineers all in different places and I think that was the most memorable part to me. The Wicked King for us was a journey around California, a journey of great engineers and people, and a journey of the Southern California music industry. It was an epic in every sense of the term.

JOS: I stepped into some sessions during the last bit of tracking with Geordy and Will, since I joined the band in the middle of the recording process, but as far as the most memorable moment in that time frame, would be when Jorge brought sweets for us (laughs).

JOR: Getting to watch the tracking and gain some real experience in a more professional studio was very educating for me. I realize the importance of simple things like a metronome or a click track much more now.

RR: You know I have to ask… favorite song?

AR: I have to say Light The Flame!

JOS: From Damnation To Deliverance, hands down. If I had to choose another one…maybe Burn the Throne.

JOR: From Damnation to Deliverance is a very dynamic song and is so close to being my favorite, but I am going to have to vote for The Execution for my favorite just because it is so fun to play.

WA: You know, if those words just disappeared from the English language, I don’t think I would feel bad one bit. The Wicked King is such an amazing record because Geordy and I paid so much attention to every single song. Every song has its own story and meaning, and they’re all unique to each other – to me there’s no “dead spots” whatsoever on this record, it’s a blast all the way through. However, if you want the short answer – From Damnation to Deliverance (The Journey).

GS: Yeah, I’m with Will, it’s hard here! It’s like picking your favorite child as a parent. If I had a gun pointed at my head and had to choose, I’d go with either The Execution or From Damnation to Deliverance as well. Coincidentally, The Execution is also my dad’s favorite (laughs)!

RR: How do you describe your music to people?

JOR: I always tell people that if Avenged Sevenfold and Killswitch Engage had a baby we would be that baby. We are heavily melodic with crushing riffs that will melt your face, in a good way!

WA: With a mouthful of misnomers honestly. Since our music ends up taking so many different risks with a “no holds barred” approach to creative ideas – like adding classical guitars or a brass section – it turns out it’s hard to spit out a short, defining phrase of our music! I’ve been going with “melodic heavy metal band” as my go-to, because I think that describes us best. I describe our music to people as a creative attempt at reviving the modern metal scene. We love metal so much and right now, I think we’d all agree that outside of the underground, music in general has been missing a lot of heart lately. We want to bring metal back to the people of SoCal and beyond.

GS: Yeah, I’d agree about the heart in music missing, and also that I’ve had the same freaking issues with genres! We span so many sub-genres of music, it’s near impossible to pick just one. In the time since the record has come out, I’ve had people call it everything from “Metalcore with a mission” to “Power Metal-y Melodic Death Metal”. I tend to describe it as what I want modern metal to be, where the songs are both rhythmically and melodically interesting, while embracing that “no holds barred” approach Will mentioned, implementing everything we think can add to the songs we write. The line I always tend to give people is our music is “what happens when you combine the Gothenburg sound with early 2000’s metalcore, with elements of emo, hardcore, and groove metal”. I’ve been using the “melodic heavy metal” moniker as well, it’s a lot easier than saying “a bit of almost every metal subgenre you can think of smashed together in a unique way”.

AR: Three words: Powerful, meaningful, and passionate

JOS: I’m a man of few words, so I’d say metal, and I’ll let you guys decide what kind of metal.

RR: What are your musical backgrounds? Tell me your history as a musician!

GS: Well, I grew up as a weird mix of being a band guy and a theatre kid. One day you’d catch me as doing a matinee musical, the next I was in the pit at a Trivium show. I started singing as a kid in 7th grade, when I got put into my second choice of middle school elective, Performing Arts, against my will. I thought I’d hate it, but the second I gave it an actual chance, I fell in love with it. I’d discovered Green Day the year before, and that mixed with watching my grandpa play, led me to guitar. By 8th grade, I’d found Escape The Fate, Atreyu, System of a Down, and Avenged Sevenfold, which all made me want to get a drum kit, and to learn how to do screamed vocals. By 9th grade, I had my first band, by senior year, I was on my 3rd. Outside of bands, I was still doing a bunch of musical theatre as well. Honestly, I think my love of theatre and literature definitely lent itself well to a lot of the lyric writing on this record.

Fast forward to my second semester of college, and I’d moved back to California and started studying at Loyola Marymount University. That’s where I met AJ Minette, who was not only one of my favorite guitarists of all time from his work with The Human Abstract, but who also was a professor there. He not only mentored me in guitar and songwriting, but inspired me to write a lot of my contributions to this record.

So yeah, ultimately, I’m a weird blend of singer, screamer, guitarist, bassist, and drummer who started doing all this stuff in middle school because I didn’t get my first choice of elective!

WA: My life has been its own little musical journey so I’ll try to keep this brief. I’ve always loved music since I was a kid, as a baby I would only fall asleep to big band and swing music like Benny Goodman. As I grew up, I was still in jazz bands all throughout school but I also got a taste of classic rock and roll, blues rock, and eventually metal. I’ve studied music a lot on my own and in school. Beyond jazz band, I also participated in a lot of music events, including classical ensembles, guitarist for the pit orchestra, Battle of the Bands style contests, and performances for school events. I have almost always had a band or project going on since I started playing guitar at the age of 9. When I was a teenager, I got my live legs under me with a bunch of shows throughout the year with a punk band I was the lead guitarist for, that experience and everything from school has prepared me to be the musician I am for The Crown Remnant. A lot of people don’t know this, but I also play piano, bass, drums, I sing, and I like to compose orchestral music. A lot of that made its way into our latest album.

AR: I’m a versatile drummer, I love exploring new things and playing them. No prejudice! One minute you’ll see me playing Death covers, the next I’ll be playing Dream Theater!

JOR: For me I started playing in high school at the age of 13. Mostly to find a niche I could feel a part of. One of my closest friends at the time was a great guitar player and I would always look at him with such awe that I went and got my own guitar to start learning. It was fun to play some of my favorite songs and meet new people. Shortly after, Josue got a bass and by junior year we were the best of friends playing music in various bands together.

JOS: I started playing bass because of Iron Maiden, and a lot of other classical metal bands like Motorhead and Megadeth, and they also have the biggest influences on my playing. This all around 10th grade for me, so about 7 going on 8 years of playing and I haven’t looked back! I love learning new play styles and grooves and that has kept me pretty busy the whole time, I wouldn’t call myself an expert in any genre, but more of decent player in many genres.

RR: What made you gravitate towards the instrument you play?

JOR: As I mentioned a minute ago, a close friend from my childhood was a huge influence in my decision to play guitar. I always thought it looked so cool, and it was very convenient having someone to show me the ways in the beginning and keeping my morale up!

GS: I have a fairly musical family, and I think they always inspired me to follow in their footsteps. My grandpa, my dad, and my sister in particular all have amazing singing voices! As for screamed vocals, I remember the moment I screamed correctly for the first time, when I was covering old Escape The Fate songs in my garage with my friend Thomas, who’s now actually the vocalist of a super sick metalcore outfit called Lady Violet, and that emotional catharsis was undeniably amazing. As far as role models that inspired me, I can definitely say Troy Sanders and Brann Dailor, M. Shadows and The Rev, Alex Varkatzas and Brandon Saller, Anders Fridén, Jesse Leach, Howard Jones, Serj Tankian and so many more made me want to sing in a band.

WA: When I think back to how I got my first guitar, my main instrument, I don’t know if I can honestly remember the reason why. I think it was a mixture of things. I looked up to a lot of rock stars and guitarists in the music that I listened to, I was awed and inspired by the virtuoso guitar players I found throughout different genres. I knew I wanted to be able to do that. My father is a guitarist as well. He’s big into country, old rock, blues, and used to be in his own bands. I didn’t grow up with him but I got to visit him every now and then and I’ll bet that rubbed off on me. All of that aside, whatever the reason was for me picking up my first Epiphone SG guitar for my 9th birthday, I think I stuck with it because it assuaged something deep inside me. It feels good to play, and it’s just so damn fun.

JOS: I just love playing bass and holding down the groove with the band!

AR: The feeling it gives me, plain and simple.

RR: Fondest musical memories?

WA: It’s funny you should ask, an old friend of mine from school recently reminded me of some great times I’ve had. I have too many fond memories to count, but one of the highlights had to be my band’s first place win at a Battle of the Bands contest that went all the way up to Paramount Picture studios. I adore playing live and some of my fondest memories are of playing in front of a thousand people, or performing in contests like this as a kid. So we beat out everyone in our performing arts school, went to Paramount and performed our own re-scored rendition of “Radioactive” by Imagine Dragons, complete with guitar solos and more. We thought we had gotten outdone by the group after us but when they called our names up to the stage, we just went wild. It was a great feeling with those guys, and a great day for me as a musician.

JOR: I would have to say just hanging out with the guys. In my last band we had some of the funniest time writing in his garage. We would set up, get “prepped” to play, and just jam riffs out until we liked something. To this day most people I’ve had the privilege of playing with became very good friends of mine. It was amazing to go over to a friend’s house after work or school and just jam for hours

GS: That’s really hard to answer, because there’s so many! But the first one that pops into my head is probably when I played “Come Together” by The Beatles for a charity thing that Loyola Marymount puts on yearly. First off, I loved that it was for a good cause, but secondly, I got to teach a friend of mine, who’s now actually my roommate, how to drum in order to play the song, and I got to teach another friend bass! Something about playing with your friends is undeniably magnificent. Probably another reason I love playing in The Crown Remnant too!

JOS: My fondest musical moment was when I was asking Jorge how to play bass and he said, “well just get one and play” that sentence literally changed my life because I kept bugging my parents until I got one and without that, I wouldn’t be here with the boys doing what we all love!

AR: Playing for the Arts Academy for the Boys and Girls club. It just really meant a lot to me.

RR: What would your desire for this band be?

WA: Oh this band is destined for greatness, (laughs). I’m so excited about this band. I’ve never been able to flex my creative muscles in the same way as this band has afforded me the opportunity. My desire for the band would be for us to bring back the passion, creativity, solos, and heavy fucking metal to the people that are ready to see a metal revival. One of the things that makes this band so great is that we’re unique and unflinchingly unafraid to take risks and be a pioneer of things that maybe people don’t think belong in metal music or whatever. I want this band to show that you can become big and you don’t have to lose your heart, creativity, or soul in the process. Metal – the anger, the intellect, the drive, the passion – is something I think this world needs more of especially in today’s day and age.

GS: Will pretty much nailed it! We want to be able to support ourselves as musicians, playing what we not only want, but what we feel the world could really benefit from. This is our passion, our livelihood, and we’ll stop at nothing to make our dreams come true. We want to grow as musicians and people, with a group of friends we’re lucky enough to call a band.

JOR: This band is crazy good! My desire is to go on and play fantastic shows with these guys. I feel we have a bright and shining future ahead of us. My deepest desire is to travel and see the world together with great company. It’s about the journey for me and the adventure waiting to unfold.

AR: I’ll keep it to three words again here: Success, prosperity, and perseverance!

JOS: My desire would be to be the greatest band of all time, somewhere in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame! To showcase good music and people to the world.

RR: What does success mean to you?

JOS: Right now, I’d say we’re successful in that we have our first album out, not many people can say that, but for me…I don’t really know, I guess I’ll know a better definition later after some time to take a look back and see what we either did or didn’t do.

AR: To me, it’s achieving a goal… your dream.

GS: Ultimately, success to me is us being able to support ourselves as musicians and creatives, to love being able to do what we do, being able to create something we love. It’s being able to make ourselves proud of who we are, and what we’ve become. Based off the record and how things seem to being going right now, I’d say we’re on the right path to being successful in every way I just mentioned.

JOR: If I sustain myself doing what I love, then to me I am successful. I don’t want to wake up every day, and be going through my boring routine, to a job I barely like. I would rather be out enjoying my work and doing what I love.

WA: It’s all baby steps for me. Success is going to mean different things for me at different times in my life. Right now, all success is to me is being able to afford to not work two or three retail jobs just to survive in L.A. I, like everyone else, am ready to be able to do what I love for a living. I think overall though, success to me is just happiness. I’m happy when I’m productive on projects that I care about, and when I’m working towards something; something that can impact the world or just my best friends. We just released our first album and that makes me very happy. So today, I feel pretty successful.

RR: Any last words for your fans before we conclude this interview?

AR: I love each and every one of you. You’re in for a blast!

JOR: I just wanted to thank you and everyone that made this interview and entire record possible. I hope everyone in the scene is ready for The Crown Remnant. We are going to blow your minds! I want to hear the crowd chanting “For The Crown” one day.

JOS: I want to give a huge thanks to everyone who made this album possible, from recording, mixing, and mastering, to everyone involved. I came on board later but I was able to see everything that had to go into making the album, lots of people doing great work at all times of day! And I personally want to thank everyone in the band, Geordy for starting something amazing, Will for putting more time and effort that I could ever imagine in making the music we hear, Jorge for inviting me to join this band of merry men, Art for adding a little of spice and flair to the group.

WA: I just wanted to thank you and everyone at Rockrevolt for the attention and opportunity you’ve given us here. As one of the first publications to ever interview us and see the potential in us as a band, we can’t thank you enough. We’ve got a bright future ahead with some really great music that’s out now (and you should go check out if you haven’t!) and we’re proud to start off on the long road with you guys. I’d also like to thank my band members – best group of guys in the world. Thanks.

GS: Similar to what Will said, thank you so much for taking the time to interview us! To people reading this because they checked us out and like what we’re doing, I can’t thank you enough. Your support is not only appreciated, but integral to what we do. If you love what we’re doing, please share it with your friends! And to people who don’t know us or our sound, thanks for taking the time to read this interview, and please go check out our new record, “The Wicked King: Part One”. It’s available on all major streaming services and online music retailers. And to echo Will once more – I’d like to thank the guys. Josue, Jorge, Will, and Art, you guys are amazing. I couldn’t have followed my dreams without you, and I appreciate each of you more than you’ll ever know.

RR: Thank you!

GS: Thank you Anabel! Always so much fun talking to you!

CONNECT WITH THE CROWN REMNANT HERE:

The Crown Remnant Interview was originally published on RockRevolt Mag

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visualpopcorn-blog · 7 years

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Metal Maketh Man

by Lexee Carlota

The song above is a metal cover of a song from a popular video game called Undertale. (One of my favorites, by the way.) But! I’m not here to talk about video games. I’m here to talk about music! Specifically, metal music.

So, what did you feel while listening to the song? Did you feel happy? Excited? Inspired? Or perhaps…

Angry?

Probably not! Surprise! It is a long-standing prejudice in our society that metal music (and other “extreme” genres, such as punk and subgenres of metal) make for aggressive people. But I will tell you just in a bit why this isn’t necessarily true.

First of all, the impression is not completely without basis, of course. Something we know about emotions is that they’re not just in our head; they’re actually all over our body! When we are feeling something strongly, it evokes even a physiological reaction out of us—I’m talking heart rate, blood pressure, temperature, skin conductance, you name it! These things fluctuate in tandem with our emotions. Seems like we can lie up and down till our eyes cross, but our body is incapable of telling anything but the truth. Huh.

Furthermore, on the topic of physiological arousal, we know that music can have quite a profound effect on us. Think about the last time you listened to a song that really got you pumped up. Think about a song that left you feeling really down. Chances are, these two songs were very different from each other.

This phenomenon was actually studied by Dilliman Carpentier & Potter in 2007. They wanted to see if the physiological reaction of a person would change based on a song’s genre, using one’s skin conductance response as the basis. As it turns out, it does change! But not in the way that the researchers expected. Whereas most of us would probably expect the faster the tempo, the higher the skin conductance response, this was actually not the case for all music genres—classical music, to be specific. Aside from that, they observed that familiarity with the genre and even the content of the lyrics also play a part in how a person responds to the music. As the study only explored three music genres (namely, classical, rock, and swing music), it is not an exhaustive resource by any means, but it is enough to confirm that both psychologically and physiologically, different music genres elicit different feelings out of us.

Now, it’s easy to get ahead of ourselves here (as most people would) and say, ‘Aha! That’s why metal music fans are aggressive!’ But note that all I’ve really said so far is that emotions have correlated physiological responses, and that music can elicit signs of physiological arousal as well. But there aren’t any hard and fast rules to these things—someone having an elevated heart rate and skin conductance level could mean anything, really. It doesn’t immediately point to any specific emotion.

But, okay, let’s say metal music does have a direct relationship with aggression. What kind of relationship would it be, exactly? Does metal music make people aggressive, or do aggressive people listen to metal?

According to a study by Sharman & Dingle (2015), it’s actually the latter!

Before anything, let me preface this by saying that ‘aggressive’ is quite a heavy word! It ascribes a personality trait to these people right off the bat. In this study, we look at people who are angry, not aggressive. Anger is a state, which means it comes and goes, and it’s a state that influences us to display aggressive behaviors.

In this study, the researchers asked people who were already fans of “extreme” music to come in with their music players. They then asked the participants to think about recent events that made them angry. Following that, half of the participants were left in silence for ten minutes, while the other half were asked to bring out their music players and listen to any songs they’d like for ten minutes as well. Almost all of the participants in the second group listened to extreme music (metal, punk, scream, etc.).

Most people would probably expect that the ones who listened to music became even more stimulated, and therefore angrier, but this was actually not the case! In the study, the level of arousal gradually went down for both groups, and at the same rate, which suggests that the fading away of the physiological arousal is just a function of time. However, the ones who were allowed to listen to their music came out of the experience feeling happy and even inspired, significantly more than those who had just sat in silence.

The fact that physiological arousal was a function of time rather than of any music implies that the metal music had nothing to do with the anger—it faded away naturally, both for the ones who had listened to music and for those who hadn’t. As for the rush of positive feelings after the experience, it can be concluded that listening to music that matched their mood actually helped these people calm down—it provided them an outlet by which they could internalize the anger they were feeling and therefore process it more effectively, compared to the ones who were not given the opportunity. It’s the same mechanism that explains why we tend to listen to sad music when we’re feeling sad: it lets us process our sadness better. In both cases—for both anger and sadness—we choose music that suits our mood, and it becomes a cathartic experience.

Of course, it can be argued that there are a lot of factors at work here—remember, these are people who already like metal music. Perhaps they felt happier after because they were able to listen to music they like? And what of Mast & McAndrew’s (2011) study in which violent lyrics in metal music caused previously calm males to put more hot sauce in a drink they were told would be given to someone else? Was it just a function of the lyrics or also of the quality of the instrumental music itself?

These, of course, are only a few of the questions that still remain unanswered. But until we know the answers to those questions, let’s focus on the answer we do have, and that is:

Metal music is not inherently bad, and it does not make for aggressive people!

So if you like metal, you do you! Keep on rocking out, man.

References:

Dilliman Carpentier, F.R. & Potter, R.F. (2007). Effects of music on psychological arousal: Explorations into tempo and genre. Media Psychology, 10 (13), 339-363.

Mast, J.F. & McAndrew, F.T. (2011). Violent lyrics in heavy metal music can increase aggression in males. North American Journal of Psychology, 13 (1), 63-64.

Sharman, L. & Dingle, G. (2015). Extreme metal music and anger processing. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 9.

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