dorian gray
Returning videotapes
- Apr 8, 2004
- 21,258
- 489
- 83
Black Metal and Hipsters
- Thread starter lurch70
- Start date
Ars Magna
Ars Magna Recordings
Phoenix is a pretty damn cool town. It's been 3 years since I've been there but I really enjoyed it. I was always there (more in Scottsdale) for work so I never really had a chance to explore as much as I wanted but we were usually there for a few days at a time and I could easily see myself living there. You're a short drive from some amazing hiking spots and there is at least one really good strip club! hahaha.
dorian gray
Returning videotapes
- Apr 8, 2004
- 21,258
- 489
- 83
I desperately wanted to move to Phoenix back in the early 2000s. I can't for the life of me remember why now lol
dorian gray
Returning videotapes
- Apr 8, 2004
- 21,258
- 489
- 83
dorian gray
Returning videotapes
- Apr 8, 2004
- 21,258
- 489
- 83
Krilons Resa
Jerry's married?!
Ars Magna
Ars Magna Recordings
Not so much about hipsters as it is about...well...yeah...
http://www.invisibleoranges.com/2011/03/black-metal-where-it-shouldnt-be/
http://www.invisibleoranges.com/2011/03/black-metal-where-it-shouldnt-be/
Reign in Acai
Of Elephant and Man
Reign in Acai
Of Elephant and Man
I'm ashamed to be an American.
It has been a long, long time since we last opened up the Not Fit vault and let one of its hoary denizens wing its way across the waters of your mind.
The following treatise was sent to us by a member of the band Liturgy and belongs to a rich, collegiate tradition of taking a movement or piece of art that you enjoy and writing about it in a way that suggests you take no enjoyment from it whatsoever. Like most representative examples of the genre it features heavy adjective-invention, arbitrary capitalization, and limited forays into French.
We present it to you in its entirety as a stark warning of what happens when you approach the most inherently comical form of metal with absolutely no sense of humor or fun.
PROLEGOMENON
One could propose a new meaning for black metal along with a new
array of techniques to activate that meaning. The meaning of
Transcendental Black Metal is Affirmation, and its new technique is
the Burst Beat.
The will to power has two stages. The first may be called Fortification;
the establishment of a paradigm or set of rules and the ensuing
exploration of potential that lies within those constraints. The second
stage may be termed Sacrifice; an auto-destruction, a self-overcoming
whereby the initial rules, having been fully digested and satisfied, are
thereby mutilated. They are transformed into the basis for something
new and unprecedented.
Transcendental Black Metal is black metal in the mode of Sacrifice. It
is a clearing aside of contingent features and a fresh exploration of the
essence of black metal. As such it is solar, hypertrophic, courageous,
finite and penultimate. Its tone is Affirmation and its key technique is
the Burst Beat.
The black metal that was born in Scandinavia in the mode of
Fortification can be termed Hyperborean Black Metal. Hyperborean
Black Metal is lunar, atrophic, depraved, infinite and pure. The symbol
of its birth is the Death of Dead. Its tone is Nihilism and its key
technique is the Blast Beat.
Today USBM stands in the shadow of Hyperborean Black Metal. The
time has come for a decisive break with the European tradition and the
establishment of a truly American black metal. And we should say
American rather than US: the US is a declining empire; America is
an eternal ideal representing human dignity, hybridization and creative
evolution.
The act of renihilation is the betrayal of Hyperborean Black Metal and
an affirmation of Transcendental Black Metal. And it is at the same
time the constitution of an apocalyptic humanism to be termed
Aesthethics. As such, the question of Transcendental Black Metal is
only the tip of an iceberg at the base of which is hidden a new
relationship between art, politics, ethics and religion.
PART I
THE DEATH OF DEAD
THE HAPTIC VOID AS FINAL CAUSE
The history of metal can be considered in terms of levels of intensity.
Considered in this way, black metal shows itself to be a culmination or
endpoint of this history, and also a dead end.
The historical development of extreme metal is not a chance series of
stylistic shifts. It is teleological - governed by a dimly understood but
acutely felt Ideal, or a final cause. This final cause is named the
Haptic Void.
The Haptic Void is a hypothetical total or maximal level of intensity. It
is the horizon of the history of metal.
Orientation towards the Haptic Void is expressed as feeling. The
feeling is a unity, but in thought we can break it down into four
elements:
There is first of all a certain muscular clenching, a constriction of the
jaws, fists, arms and chest.
Secondarily there is an affect: a certain aggression or brutality, a
paradoxical sense of power, destruction, fullness and emptiness.
Thirdly it features a primordial satisfaction relating to the affect
which acts normatively. Good metal produces a satisfying bouquet of
clenching, constriction and brutal affect.
Finally there is a barely discernable je ne sais quoi that says not
enough. A complementary dissatisfaction as though no brutal
breakdown can be quite brutal enough. It is a fissure, a crack, a lack of
being. An insufficiency compared to the promised plenitude. Maybe its
the inability of any concrete song to measure up to the inspiration that
gave birth to it. Paradoxically this dissatisfaction is felt in direct
proportion to the level of its complement.
It is this dissatisfaction, this fourth element, which causes extreme
metal to develop new styles over time. This is the pull of the final
cause. This opening, this fissure, is the angel that guides metals
history. We see metal march towards the void, leaving thrash, death
metal and black metal, successively, in its wake.
But the promise made by the Haptic Void is a lie. Only its absence is
ever present.
TRANSILVANIAN HUNGER
Hyperborean Black Metal is the culmination of the history of extreme
metal. Hyperborean Black Metal was born in the Arctic Circle, which is
traditionally known as the Hyperborean realm. The Hyperborean realm
is a land that is fallow because it lacks periodicity. There is no birth or
death there because the sun neither rises nor sets.
Hyperborean Black Metal is the culmination of the history of extreme
metal (which is itself the culmination of the history of the Death of
God). The subject of this history may be compared to a mountaineer,
maneuvering over and across the various terrains of thrash, grindcore
and death metal or rather, carving these terrains into the
mountainside - and striving to reach the Haptic Void, dimly understood
but strongly felt, glimmering brightly at the summit.
Hyperborean Black Metal represents the moutaineers arrival at the
peak and a supposed leap off of it, directly into the Haptic Void. A
total, maximal intensity. A complete flood of sound. An absolute
plenitude.
But there he learns that totality is indistinguishable from nothingness.
He learns that it is impossible to leap into the horizon. And he is left,
crestfallen, frozen and alone, in the Hyperborean realm. It is a dead
static place, a polar land where there is no oscillation between day and
night. But stasis is atrophy. The Hyperborean realm is dead with
purity, totally absolute, selfsame and eternal. The mountaineer
undergoes a profound apostasy that he cannot fully understand and
arrives at nihilism.
The technique of Hyperborean Black Metal is the blast beat. Pure
black metal, represented by Transilvanian Hunger, means continuous
open strumming and a continuous blast beat. But the pure blast beat
is eternity in itself. No articulated figures, no beginning, no end, no
pauses, no dynamic range. It is a bird soaring in the air with nowhere
to perch even for a moment. What seemed at first to be a great
clamor dwindles to an atrophied hum. Having climbed to the peak of
the mountain, the mountaineer lies down and freezes to death.
PART II
THE AFFIRMATION OF AFFIRMATION
AMERICA
Transcendental Black Metal represents a new relationship to the
Haptic Void and the self-overcoming of Hyperborean Black Metal.
It is a sublimation of Hyperborean Black Metal in both its
spiritual aspect and its technical aspect. Spiritually, it
transforms Nihilism into Affirmation. Technically, it transforms
the Blast Beat into the Burst Beat.
Spiritually we acknowledge Nihilism, and we refuse to sink into
it, impossible as the task may be. Transcendental Black Metal is
a Renihilation, a No to the entire array of Negations, which
turns to an affirmation of the continuity of all things.
Transcendental Black Metal is the reanimation of the form of
black metal with a new soul, a soul full of chaos, frenzy and
ecstasy. A specifically American joyful clamor which is also a
tremor. Or maybe it is the opposite act: a peeling away of the
husk of convention, the dead skin of clichés and a fresh
exploration of the living soul of black metal, with the aim to
reactivate its purest essence and produce something that grows
from it but does not resemble its earlier incarnations because it
is built from the ground up in a different time and place. Built in
America. An America that has never existed and may never
exist. The America that represents the apocalyptic humanism of
William Blake. The America celebrated by Aaron Copelands
Appalachian Spring or Ornette Colemans Skies of America.
This America is a metaphor for pure unrestricted creativity, the
courageous exercise of will and the joyful experience of the
continuity of existence. A celebration of the hybrid and of
creative evolution.
THE BURST BEAT
The backbone of Transcendental Black metal is the Burst Beat.
The burst beat is a hyper blast beat, a blast beat that ebbs,
flows, expands and contracts, breaths. It replaces death and
atrophy with life and hypertrophy. This transformation is
accomplished by two features: acceleration and rupture.
The first feature of the burst beat is acceleration. The burst beat
accelerates and decelerates. It has an ebb and a flow. This flow
both mirrors life and stimulates life. It expands and contracts
like the tide, the economy, day and night, inhalation and
exhalation, life and death.
The second feature of the burst beat is rupture. The burst beat
features sudden ruptures or phase transitions. Just like all
natural systems, it breaks suddenly from one state to another.
Consider the horse as it switches from walk to trot to canter.
Consider water as it switches from ice to liquid to gas. The
moment of the rupture is the moment of transcendence. What is
holy if not the moment that water turns to steam? Or the
moment that a walk turns to a run?
The burst beat expresses an arc of intensity. It responds to and
supplements the melodic flow rather than providing a rhythmic
container or backdrop. The rate of change of the tempo, whether
positive or negative, corresponds to a level of intensity. Any
static tempo is a zero degree.
The burst requires total expenditure of power and its very
exercise fosters growth and increase of strength. And yet the
burst beat never arrives anywhere, eternally not yet at its
destination, eternally almost at the target tempo. Like a
nomad, the burst beat knows it will never arrive.
By mirroring life, the burst beat stimulates and fosters life. By
fostering life, Transcendental Black Metal affirms life.
PROPERTIES
Transcendental Black Metal exists as a unity, but in thought it
can be analyzed into six properties.
Why is Transcendental Black Metal affirmative?
Transcendental Black Metal is in fact nihilism, however it is a double
nihilism and a final nihilism, a once and for all negation of the entire
series of negations. With this final No we arrive a sort of vertiginous
Affirmation, an Affirmation that is white-knuckled, terrified,
unsentimental, and courageous. What we affirm is the facticity of
time and the undecidability of the future. Our affirmation is a refusal
to deny.
Why is Transcendental Black Metal hypertrophic?
Growth is life, stasis is decay. We are committed to striving eternally,
living a sort of permanent revolution. Just as a well exercised muscle
is beautiful and powerful, so we will be beautiful and powerful. In
truth, there is no stasis. The only choice is between atrophy and
hypertrophy. The celebration of atrophy is confused, weak, and
neurotic. The celebration of hypertrophy is honest and alive.
Why is Transcendental Black Metal solar?
Transcendental black metal is solar in three respects, following three
aspects of the sun: periodicity, intensity and honesty. The sun lets
things be born and grow, so that they may die. The burst beat is
periodic because is rises and sets like the sun. The sun mesmerizes
and burns. We participate in
It has been a long, long time since we last opened up the Not Fit vault and let one of its hoary denizens wing its way across the waters of your mind.
The following treatise was sent to us by a member of the band Liturgy and belongs to a rich, collegiate tradition of taking a movement or piece of art that you enjoy and writing about it in a way that suggests you take no enjoyment from it whatsoever. Like most representative examples of the genre it features heavy adjective-invention, arbitrary capitalization, and limited forays into French.
We present it to you in its entirety as a stark warning of what happens when you approach the most inherently comical form of metal with absolutely no sense of humor or fun.
PROLEGOMENON
One could propose a new meaning for black metal along with a new
array of techniques to activate that meaning. The meaning of
Transcendental Black Metal is Affirmation, and its new technique is
the Burst Beat.
The will to power has two stages. The first may be called Fortification;
the establishment of a paradigm or set of rules and the ensuing
exploration of potential that lies within those constraints. The second
stage may be termed Sacrifice; an auto-destruction, a self-overcoming
whereby the initial rules, having been fully digested and satisfied, are
thereby mutilated. They are transformed into the basis for something
new and unprecedented.
Transcendental Black Metal is black metal in the mode of Sacrifice. It
is a clearing aside of contingent features and a fresh exploration of the
essence of black metal. As such it is solar, hypertrophic, courageous,
finite and penultimate. Its tone is Affirmation and its key technique is
the Burst Beat.
The black metal that was born in Scandinavia in the mode of
Fortification can be termed Hyperborean Black Metal. Hyperborean
Black Metal is lunar, atrophic, depraved, infinite and pure. The symbol
of its birth is the Death of Dead. Its tone is Nihilism and its key
technique is the Blast Beat.
Today USBM stands in the shadow of Hyperborean Black Metal. The
time has come for a decisive break with the European tradition and the
establishment of a truly American black metal. And we should say
American rather than US: the US is a declining empire; America is
an eternal ideal representing human dignity, hybridization and creative
evolution.
The act of renihilation is the betrayal of Hyperborean Black Metal and
an affirmation of Transcendental Black Metal. And it is at the same
time the constitution of an apocalyptic humanism to be termed
Aesthethics. As such, the question of Transcendental Black Metal is
only the tip of an iceberg at the base of which is hidden a new
relationship between art, politics, ethics and religion.
PART I
THE DEATH OF DEAD
THE HAPTIC VOID AS FINAL CAUSE
The history of metal can be considered in terms of levels of intensity.
Considered in this way, black metal shows itself to be a culmination or
endpoint of this history, and also a dead end.
The historical development of extreme metal is not a chance series of
stylistic shifts. It is teleological - governed by a dimly understood but
acutely felt Ideal, or a final cause. This final cause is named the
Haptic Void.
The Haptic Void is a hypothetical total or maximal level of intensity. It
is the horizon of the history of metal.
Orientation towards the Haptic Void is expressed as feeling. The
feeling is a unity, but in thought we can break it down into four
elements:
There is first of all a certain muscular clenching, a constriction of the
jaws, fists, arms and chest.
Secondarily there is an affect: a certain aggression or brutality, a
paradoxical sense of power, destruction, fullness and emptiness.
Thirdly it features a primordial satisfaction relating to the affect
which acts normatively. Good metal produces a satisfying bouquet of
clenching, constriction and brutal affect.
Finally there is a barely discernable je ne sais quoi that says not
enough. A complementary dissatisfaction as though no brutal
breakdown can be quite brutal enough. It is a fissure, a crack, a lack of
being. An insufficiency compared to the promised plenitude. Maybe its
the inability of any concrete song to measure up to the inspiration that
gave birth to it. Paradoxically this dissatisfaction is felt in direct
proportion to the level of its complement.
It is this dissatisfaction, this fourth element, which causes extreme
metal to develop new styles over time. This is the pull of the final
cause. This opening, this fissure, is the angel that guides metals
history. We see metal march towards the void, leaving thrash, death
metal and black metal, successively, in its wake.
But the promise made by the Haptic Void is a lie. Only its absence is
ever present.
TRANSILVANIAN HUNGER
Hyperborean Black Metal is the culmination of the history of extreme
metal. Hyperborean Black Metal was born in the Arctic Circle, which is
traditionally known as the Hyperborean realm. The Hyperborean realm
is a land that is fallow because it lacks periodicity. There is no birth or
death there because the sun neither rises nor sets.
Hyperborean Black Metal is the culmination of the history of extreme
metal (which is itself the culmination of the history of the Death of
God). The subject of this history may be compared to a mountaineer,
maneuvering over and across the various terrains of thrash, grindcore
and death metal or rather, carving these terrains into the
mountainside - and striving to reach the Haptic Void, dimly understood
but strongly felt, glimmering brightly at the summit.
Hyperborean Black Metal represents the moutaineers arrival at the
peak and a supposed leap off of it, directly into the Haptic Void. A
total, maximal intensity. A complete flood of sound. An absolute
plenitude.
But there he learns that totality is indistinguishable from nothingness.
He learns that it is impossible to leap into the horizon. And he is left,
crestfallen, frozen and alone, in the Hyperborean realm. It is a dead
static place, a polar land where there is no oscillation between day and
night. But stasis is atrophy. The Hyperborean realm is dead with
purity, totally absolute, selfsame and eternal. The mountaineer
undergoes a profound apostasy that he cannot fully understand and
arrives at nihilism.
The technique of Hyperborean Black Metal is the blast beat. Pure
black metal, represented by Transilvanian Hunger, means continuous
open strumming and a continuous blast beat. But the pure blast beat
is eternity in itself. No articulated figures, no beginning, no end, no
pauses, no dynamic range. It is a bird soaring in the air with nowhere
to perch even for a moment. What seemed at first to be a great
clamor dwindles to an atrophied hum. Having climbed to the peak of
the mountain, the mountaineer lies down and freezes to death.
PART II
THE AFFIRMATION OF AFFIRMATION
AMERICA
Transcendental Black Metal represents a new relationship to the
Haptic Void and the self-overcoming of Hyperborean Black Metal.
It is a sublimation of Hyperborean Black Metal in both its
spiritual aspect and its technical aspect. Spiritually, it
transforms Nihilism into Affirmation. Technically, it transforms
the Blast Beat into the Burst Beat.
Spiritually we acknowledge Nihilism, and we refuse to sink into
it, impossible as the task may be. Transcendental Black Metal is
a Renihilation, a No to the entire array of Negations, which
turns to an affirmation of the continuity of all things.
Transcendental Black Metal is the reanimation of the form of
black metal with a new soul, a soul full of chaos, frenzy and
ecstasy. A specifically American joyful clamor which is also a
tremor. Or maybe it is the opposite act: a peeling away of the
husk of convention, the dead skin of clichés and a fresh
exploration of the living soul of black metal, with the aim to
reactivate its purest essence and produce something that grows
from it but does not resemble its earlier incarnations because it
is built from the ground up in a different time and place. Built in
America. An America that has never existed and may never
exist. The America that represents the apocalyptic humanism of
William Blake. The America celebrated by Aaron Copelands
Appalachian Spring or Ornette Colemans Skies of America.
This America is a metaphor for pure unrestricted creativity, the
courageous exercise of will and the joyful experience of the
continuity of existence. A celebration of the hybrid and of
creative evolution.
THE BURST BEAT
The backbone of Transcendental Black metal is the Burst Beat.
The burst beat is a hyper blast beat, a blast beat that ebbs,
flows, expands and contracts, breaths. It replaces death and
atrophy with life and hypertrophy. This transformation is
accomplished by two features: acceleration and rupture.
The first feature of the burst beat is acceleration. The burst beat
accelerates and decelerates. It has an ebb and a flow. This flow
both mirrors life and stimulates life. It expands and contracts
like the tide, the economy, day and night, inhalation and
exhalation, life and death.
The second feature of the burst beat is rupture. The burst beat
features sudden ruptures or phase transitions. Just like all
natural systems, it breaks suddenly from one state to another.
Consider the horse as it switches from walk to trot to canter.
Consider water as it switches from ice to liquid to gas. The
moment of the rupture is the moment of transcendence. What is
holy if not the moment that water turns to steam? Or the
moment that a walk turns to a run?
The burst beat expresses an arc of intensity. It responds to and
supplements the melodic flow rather than providing a rhythmic
container or backdrop. The rate of change of the tempo, whether
positive or negative, corresponds to a level of intensity. Any
static tempo is a zero degree.
The burst requires total expenditure of power and its very
exercise fosters growth and increase of strength. And yet the
burst beat never arrives anywhere, eternally not yet at its
destination, eternally almost at the target tempo. Like a
nomad, the burst beat knows it will never arrive.
By mirroring life, the burst beat stimulates and fosters life. By
fostering life, Transcendental Black Metal affirms life.
PROPERTIES
Transcendental Black Metal exists as a unity, but in thought it
can be analyzed into six properties.
Why is Transcendental Black Metal affirmative?
Transcendental Black Metal is in fact nihilism, however it is a double
nihilism and a final nihilism, a once and for all negation of the entire
series of negations. With this final No we arrive a sort of vertiginous
Affirmation, an Affirmation that is white-knuckled, terrified,
unsentimental, and courageous. What we affirm is the facticity of
time and the undecidability of the future. Our affirmation is a refusal
to deny.
Why is Transcendental Black Metal hypertrophic?
Growth is life, stasis is decay. We are committed to striving eternally,
living a sort of permanent revolution. Just as a well exercised muscle
is beautiful and powerful, so we will be beautiful and powerful. In
truth, there is no stasis. The only choice is between atrophy and
hypertrophy. The celebration of atrophy is confused, weak, and
neurotic. The celebration of hypertrophy is honest and alive.
Why is Transcendental Black Metal solar?
Transcendental black metal is solar in three respects, following three
aspects of the sun: periodicity, intensity and honesty. The sun lets
things be born and grow, so that they may die. The burst beat is
periodic because is rises and sets like the sun. The sun mesmerizes
and burns. We participate in
dorian gray
Returning videotapes
- Apr 8, 2004
- 21,258
- 489
- 83
Reign in Acai
Of Elephant and Man
dorian gray
Returning videotapes
- Apr 8, 2004
- 21,258
- 489
- 83
Dick Sirloin
please... stay safe
- Jan 6, 2004
- 7,237
- 41
- 38
- 39
Similar threads
