Fortune Small Business and... The End Records

[Scourge of God]

There's no serialism in Demilich's music. Odd chord voicings, yes. Chromaticism and dissonance galore, yes. But not serialism (Schoenberg's signature). Chromaticism and dramatic dissonance, on the other hand, were Wagnerian stocks in trade...

 

[Helm]

Name a single Beatles song that ISN'T a simple verse-chorus arrangement.

Uh. Um. Revolution #9 You're becoming a bit insulting.

How about one that uses counterpoint, polyphony or modalism

If you knew the first thing about canon counterpoint, you'd know that outside of learned musicicians, there's NO COUNTERPOINT in almost 99% of music today, because Bach had created specific laws on counterpoint that are complex, interfacing and systematic. There are so few metal bands that have written proper counterpoint, save from actually through directly covering Bach (Cirith Ungol). My unschooled friend, you are referring to counterpoint, like your other unschooled friend the anus.com guy, as 'various voices going on at once'. That's what we call with my friends 'metalhead counterpoint' for fun. That's awesome of course, and when done right I love it, but 'counterpoint' of that level uh, well While My Guitar Gently Weeps has various voices at once. That including the chord structure, the prominent lead inside the chords, the voice, and the additional instrumentation by Clapton and such. I propose 'While my Guitar Gently Weeps' is more harmonically composed than Demilich's catalogue, and I love Demilich, while the Beatles aren't to my taste.

You are just throwing terms you understand little about, I'm sorry to say. Modality? You think diatonic scales aren't used in pop music? The major and minor scale that's used far and white is diatonic. My small cousin when she sits at the piano and plays with the white keys on the keyboard is doing the diatonic thing. That's how difficult it is. There's too much modal jazz that does nothing in particular, but it sure as hell is made by darkies, which might upset you.

Polyphony? What? What? The single second there's more than one instrument playing you have polyphony! Besides in vocal acapella or an unassisted flute solo, all of modern music is polyphonic. You're not a musician, are you?

Alternately, it could be because Demilich and Wagner share a common idealism, structural lexicon and occasional tonal references, while Wagner and Fleetwood Mac share, well, nothing.

Please tell me more about the common idealism of a band of teenagers from finland and Wagner. Tell me exactly wha the common lexicon is, no peeking at the anus.com website from where you're regurgitating. What is a 'tonal reference'? What common 'tonal reference' do Demilich and Wagner have?

 

[Helm]

Also

Krautrock emerged from the ambient movement, which, like the best metal, draws heavily on classical influences.

Krautrock predates any ambient music. Faust set the foundations for things Eno did later. You should check up on your musical history. Of course it'll turn out when you say 'ambient' you mean something else etc etc etc

There also was never any 'ambient movement'.

 

[Zealotry]

There's no serialism in Demilich's music. Odd chord voicings, yes. Chromaticism and dissonance galore, yes. But not serialism (Schoenberg's signature). Chromaticism and dramatic dissonance, on the other hand, were Wagnerian stocks in trade...

The most impressive thing about this post is that you managed to pull so many big words out of your ass without first standing up.

 

[Zealotry]

And FYI there are no odd chord voicings in Demilich's music. Harmonic dissonance and atonal note progressions, yes. But when they played chords, they were only using fifths and fourths.

 

[Helm]

There's nothing atonal about Demilich's music either. There's lots of chromatic stuff, which is the result of the 'slayer fucking around with a minor scale' I mentioned above. To put the signifier of atonal to a piece of music, the artist must have paid specific attention in destabilizing the tonal center of the piece. Now there's a few ways to do that, the most prominent in classical composition to give every single note in the twelve tones available equal weight in terms of where a phrase starts, where it ends and where the accents are. Usually people do this by constructing twelve-tone-rows, in serialist tradition. If someone wants to know more they can just wiki 'serialism' and whatnot. Other ways to make something atonal is to - in Xenakis tradition - play in microtonal intervals, between the traditional twelve tones, which is something folk music does all the time, and metal almost never, but I forgot. We like folk music now so let's say metal is the 'link' between folk integrity and classical vision. *sigh*

As odd as Demilich riffs are (mostly rhythmically, they're like chopped up codas of riffs, played 16 times in a row, then played with the arsis as accent, It's fun, they're great!) the tonic of each phrase is very firm and repeated, and while there's some venturing on the macrostructural level (usually I ->V or VI though, nothing really mindblowing) usually the songs have a firm tonal.

That a band plays four frets in a row doesn't make them atonal. It just means they used a chromatic phrase.

It's these metalhead ignorant definitions, like how some people can't stop saying 'caustic dissonance' about their metalcore reviews when they don't mention that 99% of the music of these bands is very strictly consonant. It's like 'dissonance = cool' and 'consonance = I don't know what this is'.

 

[DBB]

Slayer plays a melodic minor scale on a song. Slayer then, without clear concept of traditional composition at all messes around with it to make it sound more 'evil', adding a few accidental steps between the scale, a tritone here, a diminished second harmonic there. Suddenly they're the heirs of Bela Bartok in a proud tradition of this magical classical music made in the service of SPIRIT and never of profit that doesn't even exist in the first place. ?

At this point, Slayer is more concerned about Hot Topic's quarterly earnings than any spirit or minor scales.

 

[Helm]

I hope it was clear I was talking about their relevant era in the slayer example and not about their recent stuff. I never saw much of interest in Slayer generally, but my point didn't rest on liking them anyway.

 

[DBB]

but my point didn't rest on liking them anyway.

Neither did mine. I was not using “Hot Topic” to describe Slayer’s recent affinity for Mudvayne stylings that have been submerged but not entirely effaced of late. I literally meant that they were concerned more about the profit margins of the corporation.

I am also not as big a fan of Slayer as many people I know and never really have been for many reasons. I have heard all the albums, own a few, and the only one I listen to on a somewhat regular basis is Reign in Blood.

I was just tossing out that tidbit to see what would happen, though. I have no larger argument to trot out.

I do find it strange that you would not consider Slayer to be “relevant” anymore. There is also an ironic aspect to this statement, because the “anus.com guy” you were arguing with would make the exact same claim using almost the same terms and method of measurement.

I would argue that they are more relevant than they have ever been. But we are talking apples and oranges here in a certain sense. Still, Slayer has recently won a Grammy, toured with Lamb of God and Mastodon, and Christ Illusion debuted in the top ten charts in countries across the Western world.

I would not call them an irrelevant band by any stretch of the imagination. If you consider them to be a band that is not relevant now, I think that you are very close to being irrelevant.

I also don’t think the standard and threadbare musical argument about establishing new frontiers and remaining cutting-edge holds much water in this case either, but I’m too tired to point out why right now.

 

[Jim LotFP]

I do find it strange that you would not consider Slayer to be “relevant” anymore. There is also an ironic aspect to this statement, because the “anus.com guy” you were arguing with would make the exact same claim using almost the same terms and method of measurement.

I would argue that they are more relevant than they have ever been. But we are talking apples and oranges here in a certain sense. Still, Slayer has recently won a Grammy, toured with Lamb of God and Mastodon, and Christ Illusion debuted in the top ten charts in countries across the Western world.

I would not call them an irrelevant band by any stretch of the imagination. If you consider them to be a band that is not relevant now, I think that you are very close to being irrelevant.

There are others of us here that revel in that irrelevancy...

 

[Helm]

I do find it strange that you would not consider Slayer to be “relevant” anymore. There is also an ironic aspect to this statement, because the “anus.com guy” you were arguing with would make the exact same claim using almost the same terms and method of measurement.

That is not ironic, I can and have in the past agreed with anus.com guy on a number of things. But as it usually is, the road through which I arrive at the same conclusions being vastly different, makes a vast difference. I am not afraid to find myself at the same side as racists, or generally people with agends I do not share.

Irrelevancy of Slayer: in terms of genre innovation. Reign in Blood is extremely influential, along with Dark Angel's 'Darkness Descends' they solidify a lot of the methods of expression of a few young genres. They have never had this effect, as strong, since then.

I was not talking about their industry success or visibility.

I think that you are very close to being irrelevant.

To the industry? Certainly.

 

[DBB]

Irrelevancy of Slayer: in terms of genre innovation.

I think it is fair to say that Slayer is still having a profound effect on metal. The argument that metal develops in a rigid linear fashion is a bit strange to me. Some of the most complex and convoluted ideas about metal are very simplistic since they treat it as if it operates like a train traveling on rails. First stop: NWOBHM, Second stop: thrash, Third stop: death metal etc. etc. etc. There are innumerable young people who are hearing Slayer for the first time and not processing the albums in the same way that people did in the '80s (different ears hear things differently anyway) and using Show No Mercy or Hell Awaits as inspirational material to create someting original.

I was not talking about their industry success or visibility.To the industry? Certainly.

I'm not only talking about success or visibility.

Slayer is a very "big pig" as you put it, and metal is an ecosystem of sorts, so to dismiss the effects a band has on a genre because they are popular or prominent seems a wrongheaded to me. They shape the entire terrain by the choices they make, and many people from the newbie to the old contrarian who doesn't think they have produced anything of note since Seasons in the Abyss still look to the band as a barometer. All of the excitement and speculation surrounding Lombardo's return and Illiusion that exploded all over the place is proof positive of this fact.

In fact, taking a close look at all the hoopla surrounding Illusion reveals a lot about the state of metal today--on musical, financial and industrial levels.

Relevant merely means having some connection to the matter at hand or social significance, and Slayer in 2007 is still a very relevant band for anyone attempting to understand metal as a genre in its totality--not just as some abstract and arbitrary pattern of musical development.

 

[Helm]

I think it is fair to say that Slayer is still having a profound effect on metal.

On this your guess is better than mine, literally. You are well-versed and follow various aspects of the Heavy Metal 'scene' more than I have or will, and when I say they're irrelevant I am talking irrelevant largely to the sounds that reach my ears. I don't think any of the bands I am interested in have been affected by Slayer after Undisputed Attitude or thereabouts, and those that have been certainly not in a positive way... in that some bands might have gone 'well if Slayer becomes softer to make it and still retains their 'cred then maybe I should as well!' for all I know. It may not be scemantically sound, but I use 'relevant' as a positively charged term.

Where we end up talking about two different things is that I am not looking at the whole of the Heavy Metal scene, my eye is simply not wide enough nor do I have the time or inclination to really know to what extent the new record by a useless to me Slayer is relevant to useless to me bands. I appreciate that a holistic point of view, that includes the crap in the equation is probably more representative and useful for historians and people who want to have a clear picture of what happened, when, and why. I appreciate that you do this. I certainly reap the rewards of such a thankless task by reading and learning from people such as you far more about the industry of metal than I ever could have known otherwise. But I certainly keep an ear on good metal much more than I do on the industry on the whole. I don't read blabbermouth, I don't listen to new stuff unless reliable sources tell me it's worthwhile, or it's something I know I'd be interested in (I have specific metal kinks, like technothrash) and so on. I function in the 'scene with another metal credo: the bad or mediocre music can all go to hell.

There's just no time for me to analyse a bad track by Slayer, its social ramifiations and the scene status that surrounds it. I'd much rather do it for a good track by a good band.

The argument that metal develops in a rigid linear fashion is a bit strange to me. Some of the most complex and convoluted ideas about metal are very simplistic since they treat it as if it operates like a train traveling on rails. First stop: NWOBHM, Second stop: thrash, Third stop: death metal etc. etc. etc.

I understand you might be talking a bit wider here than with me directly, but I haven't thought there was a clear progression of metal for a long time. I am well aware of at least three different eras where 'power metal' ment something almost completely different, sometimes at the same time, and I've been 'dissed' by younger listeners when I've said Nevermore were a power metal band, or that Mercyful Fate were a black metal band, so on.

The clear 'Heavy Metal genre lexicon' I think solidified out of the rise to prominence of popular metal press. It's helpful to 'sell' people similar-sounding bands, and as a self-fulfilling prophecy, once very clear genres were there, people started making bands that sounded like 'generic genre example'. I think this is because if you try to sound like Mercyful Fate, chances are you'll end up sounding quite different to them in the end of the day. A lot of old Heavy Metal bands had the same influences but didn't sound the same at all. But if you try to sound like a 'thrash metal band' you can take equalized, dumbed down, basic elements of the sound and indeed arrive to sound like a generic thrash band.

I started listening to metal while reading Metal Hammer GR back in the day and when Hammer said Hallow's Eve is a thrash band, I knew that Hallow's Eve is a thrash band. It took a lot of years and personal interest in metal of old to realize that things were not once as clear as they appear now, and Hallow's Eve have very little to do with Anthrax after all.

Any way you look at it though, just through sheer number of interview references to Reign in Blood, that album has been extremely influential inside metal and outside of it (hardcore punk). This doesn't support any railroad genre argument, it's just a general observation.

Slayer is a very "big pig" as you put it, and metal is an ecosystem of sorts, so to dismiss the effects a band has on a genre because they are popular or prominent seems a wrongheaded to me.

I am dismissing later Slayer because it is BAD, you know? It's a metalhead instinct. From my point of view, I don't concern myself with bad music, why would I? Simply no time. I appreciate those that do it for some point or another, to fuel an end I might enjoy. But I won't listen to bad Slayer. I don't particularily enjoy Reign in Blood either, but it's a bearable record for me. I prefer South of Heaven. Later stuff simply started to become less and less interesting.

 

[DBB]

I function in the 'scene with another metal credo: the bad or mediocre music can all go to hell.

Fair enough.

I've been 'dissed' by younger listeners when I've said Nevermore were a power metal band, or that Mercyful Fate were a black metal band, so on.

I hope they didn't kick your cane out from underneath you and beat you with it.

Yeah...the evolution of these terms is very interesting, but a story for another day.

 

[Helm]

Thankfully not. Being at the fragile old age of 23 surely that would have been fatal.