My case against Babymetal.

So the most "controversial" metal band in 2014 is a trio of young Japanese teenagers who sing J-pop.

Oh wait, not this.

I meant this. This is Babymetal.

Seriously.

By now I'm assuming everyone reading this has heard Babymetal, which as much as I can tell is the brainchild of a pop music producer ("Kobametal", according to wikipedia ) who thought he was creating a new subgenre of metal by combining "cute Japanese girls" with angry metal music. The result being Babymetal, and their musical product is unfortunately less original than I think he intended.

Add some J-pop vocals and guitars, and you basically have the themes from Street Fighter 2.

By now it's probably obvious that I am not a fan, and even if Jeff Walker and Bill Steer from Carcass give Babymetal their blessing, that doesn't mean I have to embrace it. However, my disapproval of the band doesn't necessarily come from a metal purist perspective, at least not entirely.

I do confess to disliking the fact that the girls hadn't even heard metal music before being recruited to this band. This particular circumstance doesn't jibe with my idea of what metal is, which to say an authentic form of musical expression by angry, ugly people for angry, ugly people. I appreciate the desire to cross boundaries and redefine what metal can be, but it just seems that every time a band reaches for something commercial (even if it means "commercial in Japan") or "happy" sounding, I feel like it utterly sucks. Babymetal is no exception.

This isn't to say that I'm completely opposed to schtick or gimmicks in metal. Immortal is a freaking meme. King Diamond has been doing the facepaint thing since Mercyful Fate. Ghost, who was the most debated band prior to Babymetal, certainly has gotten mileage out of their quasi-religious imagery and hidden identities. 

Because Immortal never gets old. Just kvlt. And grym. And tr00.

Perhaps Ghost is a great point of comparison. Yes, Ghost is heavy on image, and their music is often derivative of  Deep Purple, Mercyful Fate, and metal of the late 70's. But ultimately, Ghost has also written memorable songs like "Ritual" and "Year Zero". And the whole "Satan" thing, while tongue in cheek, is definitely not commercial in the sense that "Gimme Chocolate" is (because who gets offended by teenagers who want chocolate?)

Nothing sells records like this guy!

Not to mention every song sounds like "Gimme Chocolate". Do you really want to hear this over and over again? It stops being ironic or funny after the second time.

I think that's the biggest problem I have, actually. It's not that they are a gimmick, or that they perform a style of music that I'm not particularly into. It's that everything is the gimmick, and beneath the gimmick there is nothing of substance. Yeah, it's got a slick production, impeccable musicianship by the hired guns, and the girls are choreographed, but do you remember any of their songs the moment they're done? Are we even talking about this band this time next year?

My guess is no. 

Dammit MDF!

"VIP/Backstage tickets for the Edison stages: 

Every year, people ask if we will have something like this available, but we never have until now. A limited amount of 50 weekend (Fri-Sun) VIP/backstage tickets valid ONLY for the 3 stages at the Edison Lot will be available on our website tomorrow, February 26th at 2 PM (EST). This is a separate ticket that is needed in addition to general admission tickets for the Edison Lot. When you receive your VIP wristband at the entrance when you arrive, you will also be given vouchers that can be redeemed for 3 free drinks and a MDF T-shirt in the design and size of your choice."

 With this announcement, the Maryland Deathfest has officially “jumped the shark.” 

I trust that y'all understand the reference.

I don’t make this, or other criticisms regarding aspects of the festival, with the intent of being an overly negative keyboard warrior or backseat driver who somehow thinks he could do it a million times better. I certainly have ideas that I think would improve the festival but I can’t say that the organizers haven’t also considered the same ideas, weighed pros and cons, and determined them to be less than feasible. They invented the thing, so that’s sort of their right. 

But I am someone who has been to at least a few days of every edition of what’s America’s biggest metal festival; corporate rock touring fests like the Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Fest notwithstanding. I’ve seen the event grow from its origins at the Thunderdome through the House of Rock in White Flint to its time at Sonar in downtown Baltimore. It’s always been a good time despite occasional miscues such as when Pestilence couldn’t make it (extra Bolt Thrower appearance that year!), Dismember getting cut off early by city curfew, the pepper spray incident, and I managed to even survive last year’s issues with the frightening security hired to basically beat and rob the festival attendees.

Just a typical experience for concert goers on Day 3 of the Maryland Deathfest.

Accordingly, as someone who could be considered a repeat customer, I think I do have a right to voice my complaints and concerns on a public forum if I so chose, and this happens to be my forum and this is where I draw my line. First of all, I can’t fucking stand the whole VIP tickets thing that has swept across the scene in recent years. I get that record sales are down and bands have to make up revenue in order to keep functioning as a touring act, but it seems grossly anathema to everything the underground metal scene is supposed to be to offer “VIP tickets.” It creates a class distinction between fans based on their ability/willingness to pay extra for spending 15 disinterested minutes with and getting an autograph from a particular band; something that historically has always been as simple as waiting by the bus after the show or going over to the merch table and chatting up a member of the band while buying a t shirt or CD. I don’t see why underground metal musicians are supposed to be treated like fucking rockstars as though they’re Aerosmith or the Rolling Stones or some fucking shit. These dudes shop at the same stores we as fans do and they work in the same shitty fucking jabroni jobs that we do; the only difference is that they happen to play instruments and create music that we’re willing to pay to hear. Fostering and creating these kinds of distinctions makes the underground metal scene no better than any other music scene. When I think back on all of the cool experiences I had growing up literally just bumping into dudes who play in some of my favorite bands, I think it’s a tragedy that we’re turning those experiences into a commodity that can be bought and sold. As M told me, “VIP ain’t metal.”  No, seriously.  VIP ain't metal.

My other fault with this goes more specifically to the organizers of MDF themselves. They have very consciously attempted to make the festival bigger over the last few years; fucking Carcass and Down played last year. I actually think that it was cool to get to see those bands, so I’m not complaining about that. Yet at the same time it’s become a logistical clusterfuck of multiple venues, unprofessional security,and tent stages. The inability to manage the moving parts resulted in last year’s final headliner, Venom, having their set cut short and a near riot breaking out as result. All the while the organizers were more interested in playing damage control on Facebook and online media than actually…managing the operation!

Ticket prices have also crept up aggressively each year; I understand that 2014’s edition of the festival would never be as affordable at 2003; when a 3 day pass to see almost exclusively American death metal bands cost me $40 bucks. Still, to attend every venue this year where bands are playing costs $255 bucks per attendee; since those passes sold out obviously the market is willing to bear that cost. Even for three days at the main stages (which are in an outdoor parking lot that’s a 15 minute walk away from the other venues, wtf?) the bill is $160 per fan for Friday-Sunday. The math for M and I= $320 bucks before parking, food, etc. Even with higher profile bands, that’s way beyond any rate of inflation.  I might have the means to pay, but that's merch I'm not buying, beer I'm not drinking, and other shows in 2014 I won't be attending as a result.  And that fucking sucks.

Now tack on the idea that for an additional $100 bucks per fan, you basically get to go backstage at the main venue (where I imagine therewill be a “lounge” tent or area for the bands), 3 free tickets for watered down macrobrews in a plastic cup, and a t shirt. Even the most appealing aspect of this, access to a clean bathroom, is bogus: this is a parking lot and your bathroom is probably a porta-potty.  But you get to sport a “VIP wristband” and act like you’re better than other fans. It’s both a bad deal AND fosters the bullshit rockstar/diva attitude that I say has no goddamned place in the scene. 

Typical Metal Divas being all VIP-like.

My guess is that the real reason that the organizers are doing this is because in booking so many high profile foreign bands with high dollar up-front guarantees for coming to the festival (I’m sure My Dying Bride and At The Gates don’t perform for cheap) that they need to actually raise more revenue in order to break even. Which brings me to the idea that best thing about MDF isn’t necessarily that huge (in the underground) international bands play but that it’s a 3 (or 4) day weekend of celebrating beer, metal, and meeting decent people who are fellow fans. My opinion here (forgive me for being a backseat driver), but maybe they should avoid booking so many international bands that cost too damn much money. For example, you can probably book Brutality from Florida for a lot less money than Cancer from England (not to mention, Brutality is a better band and actually released something new not too long ago!) And does there really need to be what's basically a second festival for grindcore and hardcore bands happening at another venue?  Maybe there's too much of a "good thing" here....

I’ll still end up going to this year’s festival because I dunno when I’ll have a chance to see My Dying Bride, At The Gates, or Unleashed any other time in the near or distant future. But looking at the direction the organizers want to take things, I unfortunately imagine that the Maryland Deathfest is going to implode in the next few years; destined to fall by the wayside just as the Milwaukee Metalfest before it.

Promoting the 2016 edition of the Maryland Deathfest?

 

Adam "Nergal" Darski: Winning at Metal.

Depending on your perspective,this guy is either going to hurt your feelings or validate your poorly justified sense of elitism over fans of other subgenres of metal.

I haven't ranted online about metal in a few...months I suppose.  So what motivates me today? Adam "Nergal" Darski and some recent comments he made in published interviews that managed to stir up the metal scene who otherwise would be having yet another pointless debate about "Pantera vs Metallica vs Iron Maiden" or upsetting themselves over why, one again, the Mayhem tour only has 3 quasi-listenable bands on it. For the sake of me throwing my opinion out there about a week after this was truly relevant, let's examine the pair of "controversial" quotes.

 “Extreme art should be shocking and provoke a reaction. I really hope we are viewed as more than just a Black Metal band. We are an extreme band that can communicate our ideas on so many levels. Extreme Metal music these days is often only extreme by definition. It is a never-ending process of striving for perfection. Too many bands are chasing this and the scene is becoming like the X-Factor for Black Metal. There is no danger and unpredictability anymore. The majority of Death Metal bands from the U.S.A are so generic, they all sound perfect. It is fast and technical but there is no substance. Bands forget about emotion when they strive for perfection. You should be driven by your intuition and not just be concerned with shredding on your guitar. Perfection is boring and uninspiring. When people listen to The Satanist, it will stimulate them in many different ways. I saw Cabaret at the theatre recently and it was extremely moving. Extreme art must make people uncomfortable whether it is music, art or films. It has to be thought provoking. It takes a lot of energy for me to do this. I remember after my transplant when we started playing shows again. There was a time I thought I was going to pass out on-stage because it was so taxing playing the show and I did not have as much energy as before but now I am ready. I know I can give my all to this.”  

I guess this comment got some peoples panties all wadded up since he appears to be taking a shot at American bands and American death metal in particular.  Other people have used it as an opportunity to point and say “neener neener, Nergal agrees! Death metal blows d00d! I’m gonna listen to Finntroll and dress like a confused mess of a pirate…er…viking…er…Peter Pan!”  Honestly, I don’t think he’s doing either.  I don’t think all or even most American death metal is in a race to see who the most technical, or fastest, etc is.  I do think there’s a massive amount of overly similiar sounding bands that (predominately) emerge from California, signed to either Unique Leader or Sumerian Records (or perhaps Prosthetic?), all of whom seem to be playing a style that’s pointlessly technical and way too digitally enhanced.  Bands from that scene that sound like a cross of Suffocation and Deeds of Flesh (such as Inherit Disease, for example) I can totally dig on, but it doesn’t make Nergal’s assessment invalid; those bands are generic, seemingly a dime a dozen, and largely without personality.  If someone plays you Carnophage or Severed Savior, do you really know the difference?  And Brain Drill, for all of their hyperspeed, is boring as fuck.

That doesn’t reflect the whole American death metal scene, however.  Besides Malignancy and maybe Immolation, the bands from New York don’t play a super technical style.  The Florida scene, decrepitly old as all of those bands are, doesn’t fit Nergal’s profile, either.  And I don’t think he meant for them to; it was merely an off the cuff comment focusing on what does appear to be popular among the youngest generation of fans these days.

"One of the factors that makes this record so different, and also I really hope it's something that distances our new record from the majority of extreme metal albums in the market these days, is that most of the music that is offered by so-called extreme metal bands is not extreme. The paradox is that the average extreme metal band these days is just another friendly band, which actually pisses me off, because that's not how "extreme metal' — black metal, death metal — was meant to be. 

How fucking spot on Nergal is here.  These days anything with double bass drums and some variation of screaming/growling vocals is automatically considered “extreme”.  Am I supposed to think Killswitch Engage is “extreme”?  Slipknot? In Flames?  Perhaps in the 1980’s, playing a thrash beat and having a bit of gritty snarl in your vocals made you “extreme”, but these days grindcore has fully evolved.  Shit like Kill The Client or Wormrot is as fast, unrelenting, and anti-melodic as anything I can imagine this side of pure noise or some insane sort of electronic music.  Playing fast and growling isn’t extreme except to neophytes to the genre.  Behemoth has been around since the early 1990’s; Nergal has more perspective on this than I think he gets credit for since Behemoth never really gained a high profile until the “Demigod” album in 2004 or whenever it came out.

I think what irks people is that it seems like Nergal is being quite full of himself at the same time he’s become something of a celebrity in Poland; doing energy drink commercials and judging contestants on reality shows and dating super models.  

Face it, metalheads; you're just jealous because he's living the life and you aren't.

Guess what?  You release a record like “The Satanist”, and you get to talk all of the shit you want.  I’ve had some time to let this record sink in, and I’m convinced this is the best album to be released since Opeth’s “Blackwater Park” dropped in 2001.  I don’t think there’s any one element that’s revolutionary about “The Satanist”, but Behemoth draws from enough varied influences to liven up what had become, over the last few albums, a predictable Polish style of death metal not dissimiliar from Lost Soul or Vader.  It’s the most adventurous album I’ve heard from a death or black metal band that didn’t go completely lame (I’m talking about you, Shining) since Akercocke’s “Words That Go Unspoken, Deeds That Go Undone.”  

So if y’all wanna get pissed at Nergal for speaking his mind, fuck off.  At least he’s interesting and provoking debate instead of the hippie love fest that the metal scene is starting to become, where fans are accused of closed-mindedness if they dislike nerd-metal approved releases such as Opeth’s “Heritage” (which still sucks) or a recording of Devin Townsend reciting feminist poetry inside of a porta-john.

Remember, no matter how much smarter and more sophisticated you think your choices in the music and media you consume makes you, you still look like these dorks to the rest of humanity.  Get over it.

Top 10 of 2013

I’m reasonably confident I won’t hear anything else in the 3 days left of 2013, so it should be safe to finally compose and produce my own year-end list for this year.  Ultimately opinions and tastes in the genre are subjective, but here’s what I thought.

For fun, you can also revisit my 2012 and 2011 lists.
 
10.) Imprecation Satanae Tenebris Infinitas

I’m a sucker for the Incantation sound, and I don’t mean that to lump a giant swath of bands into being Incantation clones, but when bands have low vocals and muddy low tuned guitars and the music churns a certain way, I get the warm and fuzzy feeling all over.  2013 saw the release of a debut by a band who released their demo back in like, 1993 or something?  At any rate, the theme for this year has been older, established bands producing some of the best music of their respective careers, so it would only make sense that a band like Imprecation finally emerges from the depths of obscure demo world to join the fray.

9.) Darkthrone The Underground Resistance

When I was really beginning to discover the metal underground in my late teen years I wasn’t much of a fan of Darkthrone; part of me wonders if today my opinion would change if I revisited Soulside Journey or A Blaze In The Northern Sky? That said, at some point Fenriz and Nocturno Culto evolved well beyond black metal into something 80’s inspired, celebrating crust punk and classic heavy metal.  And they didn’t do it in a faux ironic way or in an attempt to get cool points by being retro.  It has been authentic, genuine, and dare I say tr00?  The Underground Resistance, with its dirty Mercyful Fate in a garage vibe, is the peak of the path they’ve been on.

8.) Officium Triste Mors Viri

Probably the first underground subgenre I really took to as a teenager (approximately 1996?) was doom/death and the big three British bands (Anathema, My Dying Bride, Paradise Lost.)  Mors Viri, with its massive crushing distortion, emotive guitar harmonies, tasteful and subtle keys, and grisly low growls takes me back to that time.  Not a particularly trendy subgenre in 2013 when most bands want to rip off early Katatonia, but this is the peak moment in the career of this longstanding Dutch band.

7.) Wormed Exodromos

It had been nearly 10 years since this Spanish band had released Planisphaerium, and the wait had been worthwhile.  Full of jagged time shifts and almost djent style riffing, Exodromos is one of the most unique sounding slam death albums to have ever come out.  And absolutely sick sick sick vocals.

6.) Carcass Surgical Steel

The most important album to come out in 2013 ended up being one of its best.  While certainly I would have preferred a little more of the goregrind era, I cannot dispute the quality of the songwriting or the execution of Surgical Steel.  Carcass immediately re-established themselves as one of the kings of the metal genre and proving that the old guys can strike with more venom than any of the younger bands borrowing their ideas.

5.) Jasad Rebirth of Jatisundra

Indonesia might be the next hotbed for brutal music, and if there’s justice in the world, Jasad will be the band that makes it big.  Another band with a huge gap since their last album, Jasad came back pissed off, brutal, and raw as ever.  This is raw, primitive death metal not too dissimilar to Japanese Slam, only better.  Sevared Records is distributing this one here in the States, so hopefully that’s a sign that Jasad is about to get a bigger profile in the near future.

4.) Suffocation Pinnacle of Bedlam
 
The reward for keeping my faith in this band, and a giant “I fucking told you so” to those who wrote them off.  Suffocation’s reformation was always going to be a difficult proposition; both Pierced From Within and the Despise The Sun EP are among the most lauded releases in the history of death metal and would represent a hell of a legacy to try to live up to.  Unfortunately, the albums that came were uneven at best, and suffered from a terrible production/mix that made the drums sound way too upfront and the music ploddingly slow.  That all changed with the replacement of drummer Mike Smith with Dave Culross (ex-Malevolent Creation, played on Despise The Sun) and Pinnacle of Bedlam is the result.  Sounding like logical followup to Despise the Sun, this is a leaner, cleaner, slightly thrashier Suffocation, yet it may have stayed in my car nearly all year long.  This album needed to be good if Suffocation was going to remain relevant in the scene, and it more than re-established them as lords of the genre they helped create.

3.) Defeated Sanity Passages into Deformity

Intense.  The fourth album by this German band is a relentlessly brutal yet technically exhilarating roller coaster of slams, breakdowns, and blasts.  I believe that Passages Into Deformity will be remembered as the album where Defeated Sanity emerged from the bowels of the underground scene to the big time.

2.) Vreid Welcome Farewell

The best melodic black metal album since Rotting Christ’s “A Dead Poem”, this is an album that should have had a lot more mass appeal than it ended up having.  The black metal snarls, tremolo picking, and grim vibe are all here, but so are the guitar harmonies and solos and big catchy riffs that would transcend that genre.  Another album that lived in my car for almost all of 2013.

1.) Gorguts Colored Sands

I don’t know how often I agree with the metal consensus, but there is no disputing that Colored Sands is a massive and epic listen.  I think what makes this album so awesome is that plenty of bands have tried to do the noisy, discordant sound but so few of them can do it with the focus and purpose that Luc Lemay did here.  This isn’t Ulcerate worship (I do like Ulcerate, btw); this has movements and a nearly orchestral sort of flow.  The way those clangy riffs synch up with John Longstreth’s double bass is extremely Immolation-like.  Yet among the dense and harsh sounding cacophony, there’s moments of classic death metal release too (that solo in “Enemies of Compassion” is a good example.)  Hopefully there isn’t a 12 or 14 year wait before the next one.