Metal Hall: Classical Forum

The net’s oldest metal site has created a forum for classical music only.

As many of you know, classical and metal are similar through their use of narrative composition, where riffs fit together to form motifs and communicate change in experience.

This is why there is significant overlap between metal and classical fans, and why both musics have a stormy, powerful yet sensitive approach.

We are looking forward to connecting more of these fans with each other and more music they’ll like, even if to outsiders it appears radically different.

For more information:

* Classical Music for Metal Fans
* What makes heavy metal heavy?

I went from being a metalhead who had a couple classical albums to a classical and metal listener. The two musics are really similar: like metal, classical strings together a series of riffs to tell a story.

My favorite composers are:

• Franz Schubert
• Ottorino Respighi
• Gustav Faure
• Anton Bruckner
• Camille Saint-Saens
• Ludwig van Beethoven
• Robert Schumann

All of these dudes are extremely “metal”: stormy, powerful, dark and lawless music.

Some of my transition was inspired by the Talk Classical metal forum and “Classical Music for Metal Fans”.

Anyone else listen to classical?

This is one of those rare progressive and/or “weird” death metal bands that not only holds together, but generates an atmosphere. Unlike bad prog bands of all varieties, who patch together different artistic impulses in the same key or tempo and call it a song, these riffs are made to work together as if part of a continuing dialogue within each song.

Comparisons to Demilich, Voivod and Gorguts would be appropriate. Cosmic Atrophy do not try for the killer awkward and difficult riff, but fit together a series of smaller, eerie riffs that comprise an overall attitude or spirit to each song. The 2009 teaser track you can hear on their myspace represents not a new direction but a clearer vision of the same direction they showed on 2008’s Codex Incubo.

Cosmic Atrophy — Progressive Death Metal from Houston

This August, Averse Sefira will make their first ever appearances in Central America:

Friday, August 14 – La Bode – Ruta 2 3-47 4 Grados Norte Zona 4, Ciudad Guatemala, Guatemala

Saturday, August 15 – Museo de Antropologia e Historia – 3 Av. y 4 calle San Pedro Sula, Honduras

Sunday, August 16 – Bar Buhoos – San Salvador, El Salvador

http://www.aversesefira.com/

Jason Healey of Atomizer is writing a book about the meaning of black metal. He wants to get bands, labels, zines and fans to contribute their impressions of the meaning behind black metal and its quintessence.

When I first discovered Black Metal in the early 90’s it was as though some invincible force confronted me. Never had I witnessed a sound so primitive and raw, yet so atmospheric and bombastic. An essence that ran so much deeper than its fiendish visual and caustic tone would alone suggest. A bizarre paradox of ugliness, contempt and barbarism awash in philosophical revelation and profane religious fervor. Life, death, salvation and sacrifice – Black Metal truly is the malignant paradigm.

The Stench of Black Metal will attempt to corral the seemingly divergent positions its legions have granted it and provide what is hoped to be the definitive statement. This is not to suggest that the words of any one individual will bestow this, though readers may find divinity in a single declaration. It is not intended to be a guide or an explanation; rather a gateway to the determination of what dwells at its core. The quest to unveil its quintessence.

You can send in your statement on his website for the book, The Stench of Black Metal.

The Hessian.org guys have put together a list of the most influential current bands and albums, with mp3s. The idea is not to list bands of the week, but the “new classics” that are defining the genre right now. You can listen to the MP3s from your browser.

http://www.hessian.org/music/

Celebrate the International Day of Slayer, a holiday for all metalheads and those who like Slayer! Every other culture gets its time in the spotlight so it’s time for metalheads to get the same. This June 6, starting at 6 AM (get it, 6/6:6?), do no work but listen to Slayer instead.

Originally designed to mock the “National Day of Prayer,” the International Day of Slayer has grown through a groundswell of public support. Slayer CDs have been mailed to the White House, politicians pressed to make the holiday legal, and finally, Slayer themselves responded with a video message of support.

Join us… in listening to Slayer. June 6, all day, listen to Slayer, or we’ll eat your immortal souls.

http://www.nationaldayofslayer.org/

From another blog:

For a long time, it seemed like the newcomers triumphed. Metal was bigger than ever before, in the numbers of fans and CDs sold. But a problem kept cropping up: it had produced no great works, only lots of “good” CDs. People bought “good” CDs and forgot them a few months later because they were not particularly distinctive in content, even if they were distinctive in form. Nothing quite made it to the epic stage of being timeless.

Starting in 2006, and slowly accelerating, this trend — which is as old as the hills, since the first thing that happens to every new genre is that they hybridize it with rock music — began to fade as labels found they couldn’t pump out the new music fast enough because within weeks its novelty wore off and it was forgotten. Profits turned to losses, and then in 2008, a recession hit, driving many labels and zines out of business.

This lucky break helped traditional metal come back into the spotlight. Over the last two years, band reunions and the formation of new bands by old school personnel have become commonplace. Many of the results at first were bad as old school metallers tried to compete with the new sound; however, over the last six months, the balance has shifted and now old school bands are making old school music.

As the Maryland Death Fest illustrates, the crowds are turning out for the old bands and old style bands, even the youngest audience members. They’re looking for a substantial musical experience and are tired of buying an underground version of the same thing they get on the radio.

The linked article illustrates the revolution that is happening in metal: younger people, newer fans and older fans alike are wanting the genre to uphold the styles and tradition of quality it once had. They’re tired of disposable garbage and endless hype that just leads back into the same blender of all quality that is commercial rock music. Bring back the metal, they say, and people are listening.

ANUS predicted this trend in the middle 1990s, and made comparisons to hardcore and past generations of metal, and now we’re being proven right. We knew that there would be a surge of newcomers, and then their lack of ideas would catch up with them, and people would abandon their contentless music for something more substantive. It just took a dozen years to manifest itself.

Here, I can leave off the lengthy lead-in that explains metal’s history, context and all that good stuff. Any readers I have here already know that stuff.

There’s been a shift over the last few years. Metalcore and nu-metal are the same thing: an attempt to hybridize metal with rock music, punk and any other trendy genre out there.

The default state of humanity is to mix everything together so there’s no clear voice. It makes us feel like rodents hidden under hay in a barn, safe with the world far away, and we’re just fine until we have to go seek seed.

When death metal and black metal slowed to a trickle but new fans came in a flood, the genre got overwhelmed with their demands. People always know one trick well: make the same old stuff but make it look new.

So they did, and the result was metalcore, including stuff like Behemoth and Necrophagist, and nu-metal, which is an abomination unto all. But now that stuff is fading out, which is a victory for taste.