Metal Riot

photo by Snorri Sturluson

In support of their exceptionally good Beredreyminn release, Icelandic post-rock band  Sólstafir have released a characteristically cinematic video for “Bláfjall” via Classic Rock Magazine HERE.

Twilight Fauna have released That Old Time Way (Live Acoustic), an intimate new direction for the generally black metal project. Check it out and support HERE. 

A side of this band that no one ever gets to see is me sitting quietly on my porch, playing acoustic versions of my songs. That’s such a huge part of my life and to what I do in this band. Also starting around 2018 I’ve played a few acoustic shows of different material here and there. So I decided to merge those two ideas and do a live acoustic ep. These songs were recorded live on my porch in one take. No editing or studio tricks, and just a bit of mastering, just enough to resolve issues with getting it onto vinyl. It’s all there, the missed notes, the wind in the trees, my dogs bumping into the mic stands. All the things that make life beautiful. This is the closest I can get y’all to being there with me in that moment. I hope you find something worthwhile in it. -Paul R.

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Okay people, soon comes a new serving of Darkthrone! So get ready for the arrival of the Old Star. It’s like the 80s never left!  We are back with the RIFFS and more metal than EVER!!! Mixed by Sanford Parker & mastered again by our good friend Jack at Enormous Door. The stellar cover artistry comes courtesy of Chadwick St John, titled “The Shepherd of the Deep”. Released 31st of May. Click the link in our bio to pre-order a copy https://darkthrone.lnk.to/OldStarIN #Darkthrone 01. I Muffle Your Inner Choir [06:26]  02. The Hardship Of The Scots [07:36]  03. Old Star [04:28]  04. Alp Man [05:27]  05. Duke Of Gloat [06:49]  06. The Key Is Inside The Wall [07:24] / @roger_mb_hoglund

A post shared by Darkthrone official (@darkthroneofficial) on Mar 20, 2019 at 10:01am PDT

Very cool news today as Darkthrone , aka the best of the old school grimies, are back with an album announcement for Old Star, and Sanford Parker was involved! Radness. Can the “Duke Of Gloat” stop the Duke of Earl at last? Only time will reveal! This sounds like it is gonna be a very metal affair, regardless.

A rare happy moment of human connection in ‘Lords of Chaos’

I interviewed Black Sabbath’s most underappreciated vocalist, the great Tony Martin once years ago. A real thrill. I forget the exact question, something about reconciling the more evil songs with the ones with subtle Christian themes or something. I remember Tony taking the wind out of my sails like a pro and sort of gently needling me with the common sense revelation that a lot of heavy metal is theater. This doesn’t mean that some people don’t live it to the fullest (the proper way to do so being highly debated daily since forever across sub-genres) and that it isn’t a genuine source of being able to work out dark and light feelings and to suss out solutions for yourself that hopefully aren’t ‘suicide solutions’, etc.

I saw two movies last night amidst a snowstorm on Fandango Now (a pretty great service). Jonas Akerlund’s take on the controversial Lords of Chaos and the somewhat slept on, but I thought fucking fantastic, Mary Queen Of Scots (2018). Both took some historical liberties – LOC glosses over the singers before Dead and the Deathcrush-era to get to meatier terrain and Mary Queen Of Scots fabricates an incredible in person meeting between Mary and Elizabeth that I wish really happened and (plausibility points to the writer) Elizabeth DOES tell Mary never to speak of it, so who knows? Both also feature violent stabbing scenes of a queer person. I was expecting it in Lords Of Chaos and the movie makes it very graphic, disturbing and not lightly glossed over – thankfully. You know at that point beyond a doubt that part of the souls of these people are very broken. David Rizzio in Mary Queen Of Scots came as a shock since I had forgotten about him historically. Like, fuckin’ hell, another poor murdered innocent for the sake of sick designs?!

Look, I think it is fine Lords Of Chaos is a movie. I was against it at some points but as edgelordery under Trump is worse than ever and there are no sacred cows generally worthy of enabling any cult of personality from critique, fuck it. It was a milestone time period in metal so why shouldn’t it be examined? The thrust though is will it seem apologist and MTV stuff that was meant to be less palatable or fast edit flashy and romanticized or would it have some bite and objectively show the shittiness of a lot of what happened? Thankfully, I liked a lot more about it than I disliked. The cast did an excellent job with what they were handed and as Jonas told Decibel recently ,”There’s a lot of things we’re not supposed to do, but black metal bands break those rules every day. They all sell merchandise; they all do gigs; they all have Instagram…”

It’s funny, I remember when X-Men became a movie everyone wondered if Wolverine would wear yellow spandex. Some things that look cool in comic books can look very dorky in movies with live-action. A corpse-painted dude trying to look vampiric under a dead tree is much the same, looking pretty cool on a badly reproduced lo fi record sleeve but generally funny in broad daylight. This film certainly wins at showing how the scene’s members one upmanship could only insulate them so long from realizing they weren’t bad asses and actually had some real fucked up insecurities as people, no matter how cool the music was. They also, underneath it all, were kind of dorky and trying to seem cool, like any group of young rockers.

One of the best scenes is a post-jail Varg (played very well by Emory Cohen the whole movie as an ego wounded insecure kid who nonetheless does major harm trying to find validation while pretending otherwise and makes you really dislike him…going from being bullied to being the worst, smug self-serving piece of shit) yelling at Euronymous as played by Rory Culkin. Culkin really carries a lot of the film, and in this scene he tells Varg he made up a lot of stuff about never touring and being as evil as possible to basically drum up marketing buzz. Varg is still seemingly scarred for life that Euronymous shamed him initially for having a Scorpions patch once and so it feels like his life mission is to become more kvlt now, the never ending bottomless quest of every true edge lord.

First, I wanna say fuck VICE for firing so many brilliant writers lately. They backed this film. Nonetheless, while the pacing (much like Mary Queen of Scots, actually) rushes very fast sometimes through historical events for the sake of modern attention spans, a lot of it resonated with me, despite the flaws. An imperfect vessel, perhaps. I don’t think I could have made it better, though. And Sky Ferreira, for all the shit talk people gave her for being casted, was fucking great.

It’s disturbing at one point to see Sky’s character get bullied by Cohen into stripping for him and Rory’s characters, showing the weak sexism and desperation that hides behind what a lot of people in metal find to be transgressive. Knowing also how much Sky values her own agency as a woman, it was pretty emotionally effective seeing her deal with internalized misogyny in the black metal circles but end up being probably the best anchoring voice of reason in Euronymous’ life later in the film. We stan (looking forward to Masochism and also thank you for being kind to my gf Globelamp recently).

Anyway, I have a lot of thoughts.

More Below.

Woe

Thanksgiving is a time when many people look past the hideous aspects of history and focus instead on their stomachs, so what better way to spend the holiday than to pay attention to real world issues and promote a festival showcasing some of the best talent fighting fascism in metal? We are grateful to anyone who doesn’t have blinders on! A massive threat to society that edgelords and gaslighters try to pretend isn’t a problem so as to transparently help entrench the power of the at fault “alt-right” further, fascism has no place in any world that doesn’t want to destroy itself.

We are grateful for powerhouse and metal tastemaker/activist Kim Kelly for all the work she does, shots she takes and fucks she doesn’t give in pursuing what is right with the goal of making metal more inclusive and relevant in 2018. Suffice to say it is rad that the awesomely named Black Flags Over Brooklyn fest she has started has announced an initial lineup of Nazi detesting bands for a flagship 2019 kick off festival. This is sure to be amazing and powerful so stay tuned! Some of our favorites like East Coast black metal titans Woe and our #2 album of the year winners Vile Creature are already on board!

Announcing BLACK FLAGS OVER BROOKLYN 2019, an anti-fascist metal festival to be held at @BrooklynBazaar on January 25-26, 2019.
It's time to take our scene back.

First bands:@DawnRayd
Ragana
Woe@vilecreature666
Chepang
Whitephosphorous

More info: https://t.co/MXoRGdz6S6 pic.twitter.com/zZjPVnpbv1

— Kim “Union Goth” Kelly (@GrimKim) November 21, 2018

Scotland’s Bitter Lake is doing things right. The one man black metal project is slowly building up buzz, focusing on releasing cool music rather than hype and improving with each passing moment. I like the cold and methodical yet emotional nature of the project, like impending entropy captured in a burst of constrained, conflicted emotions.

This is an exciting time in metal as a lot of bands are shrugging off genre constraints and finding out who they are for themselves. The left wing black metal coming out is exciting and more than overdue to surpass the tired edgelord tropes of the genre that have always ben laughable if they weren’t so harmful.

Let’s get into the interview with Bitter Lake (who is also running a microphone raffle HERE) and talk about new song “Siberia”, Veganism and more BELOW.

“What is this “Shiny Happy People” you speak of?”

Ex-Gorgoroth black metal pioneering legend Gaahl has a new project called GAAHLS WYRD and they have signed to Season Of Mist. The 2019 Northern Ghosts Tour has been announced with Tribulation and UADA. The band have recorded their debut album at Solslottet Studios with producer Iver Sandøy (ENSLAVED). The forthcoming album is set for release next year.

Regarding their signing, the band comments, “It’s always been of outmost importance for us to work with people that we can relate to, trust, and will understand our creative and professional vision. Season of Mist feels like home to us and we can’t wait to start what hopefully will be a long and rewarding relationship for both parties.”

The band consist of Ole Walaunet (THE BATALLION, GOD SEED, GRIMFIST), Frode Kilvik (KRAKOW, AETERNUS) and Kevin Kvåle (HORIZON ABLAZE).

Tour dates BELOW.