Straight Outta Stockholm: Like an Eazy and Ever Flowing Stream

[DBB]

"Culture of sleaze."The Independent July 31, 1992.

This week the courts have been dealing with two cases brought under the Obscene Publications Act. The first concerned the Swedish ''death metal'' group Dismember, whose latest record was seized by Customs last October. One track celebrates the sadistic murder of a ''whore'' skinned alive for the pleasure of the experience. Magistrates at Great Yarmouth ordered the return of the albums because they had been given no evidence that they would deprave or corrupt. The second case--an appeal that is continuing--involves a seized novel, Lord Horror, an anti-Semitic fantasy of extreme violence.

Those who have advocated the relaxation of censorship laws over the past quarter century have usually done so on the ground that works of serious literary or social importance were being suppressed and that adults were being treated like children. It is hard now to believe that novels as serious in intent and as innocuous as Lady Chatterley's Lover were banned along with the cheerful (albeit sexist) bawdy of Henry Miller, or that Nabokov's elegant satire, Lolita, was the subject of legal action.

Critics claimed that liberty for the high- minded would soon degenerate into licence for the hustler. The market-place would be flooded by deliberately perverse, offensive and exploitative material. Magazines on open display on the top shelves of local newsagents suggest that the critics had a point. These publications are not quite as extreme as those lawfully on sale abroad, in that they do not depict penetration or ejaculation. But they contain explicit photographs of female genitalia and crude tales of sexual encounters. At best, such stuff insults and degrades women. At worst, it encourages men to think of them as sex objects. Hence the growing demand for censorship from some feminist groups that would generally describe themselves as radical.

Similarly, the albums released in this country by some Afro-American rap groups and white American heavy metal bands revel in foul-mouthed tales of gang rape and sexual violence, or include diatribes of hate and violence against women, gays, Jews, Asians and the police. The record division of Time- Warner has come under criticism from the Republican Party for releasing the rap artist Ice-T's inflammatory song, ''Cop Killer''.

It is important to disentangle a number of different threads. Most contemporary test cases do not involve work of any particular merit. (Lord Horror might prove to be an exception. Its authors claim seriousness of intent and say, further, that they do not share the views expressed by their characters.) As yet there is almost no unambiguous evidence to indicate that violent pornography or sexually brutal lyrics, although obnoxious and insulting, provoke consumers to outrageous acts. Finally, racist or anti-Semitic calls are already covered by incitement and public order legislation. The Obscene Publications Act is the wrong statute to invoke.

Those who advocate a return to harsher censorship should recognise that they are doing so primarily because they do not like the culture of commercial sleaze that has emerged. Similarly, those who seek greater freedom of expression should realise that they are, by and large, defending the right to publish filth, not works of art. The battle to publish art, which should not be fought again, was won a generation ago.

Jeff Clark-Meads “U.K. Court OKs Controversial Album: Death Metal Set's Lyrics Depict Violence.” Billboard August 15, 1992.


The British courts' tradition of refusing to brand any record as obscene has been continued with the clearing for release of a death metal album depicting pleasure gained from violent murder. The decision means that, despite dozens of works having been examined before magistrates and judges, not one has yet been deemed to contravene the Obscene Publications Act.

The latest court action concerns "Like An Ever Flowing Stream" by Swedish band Dismember in a case that has strong parallels with the legal debate surrounding N.W.A's "Efil4zaggin." Indeed, N.W.A's label, Island Records, offered advice and assistance to Dismember's U.K. distributor, Plastic Head Music Distribution.

When "Efil4zaggin" first appeared at PolyGram Distribution's warehouse last summer, it was seized by police who then applied to have the confiscated copies destroyed. Island sought to demonstrate to magistrates at Redbridge near London "good reason" why the product should not be forfeited.

The record company argued that the album did not advocate violent behavior, it merely documented some philosophies prevalent in parts of Los Angeles. On Nov. 7, the magistrate saccepted the view and cleared the album for release.

Following Island's advice, Plastic Head adopted the same stance when the case against "Like An Ever Flowing Stream" came before magistrates July 30 at Great Yarmouth on England's east coast. Customs officials, making a routine check for drugs, had confiscated 800 copies of the album as it landed in the U.K. Plastic Head challenged the seizure.

In court, Stephen Harvey, attorney for the customs authorities, said, "The lyrics are hideous, frightful, and repulsive to the senses. They are liable to inspire a sense of violence in the listener."

Among the tracks is "Skin Her Alive," which contains the lines: "I slaughtered the whore/Skin her alive/I did it for the thrill/I never dreamed it was nice to kill."

For Plastic Head, counsel Andrew Nicol said the song was written by lead singer Matti Karki following the murder of a woman in an apartment near his own in Stockholm. Said Nicol, "He wanted to put himself in the mind of a man who did that awful crime and somehow express something about those thoughts through the lyrics. It was not his intention to inspire people to do something similar."

Called by Plastic Head, music writer David Toop likened the lyrical content of death metal to "a Greek or Jacobean tragedy," and compared its intensity with Stravinsky's music.

British obscenity law says published items must not have the power to deprave or corrupt; on this basis, the magistrate cleared "Like An Ever Flowing Stream" for release.

After the case, Karki commented, "This is a victory for freedom of speech," while a spokesman for the customs authorities said, "It's a worry for us that this sort of music can now be heard by teenagers in Britain."

However, the British Phonographic Industry is gratified by the universally tolerant attitude of the courts. Though some records have been removed from the market because of cover art deemed to be offensive, none has yet been banned on grounds of lyrical content.

Says BPI director general John Deacon, "That's an encouragement. The courts do seem to take a very sensible view, generally speaking. They are very loath to give a clear-cut view on what is obscene because it's a very difficult thing to do. Just how do you define what is obscene and what isn't?"

Retailers face a similar dilemma. W. H. Smith declined to stock "Efil4zaggin" though subsidiary chain Our Price -- the U.K.'s biggest music retailer -- did so. Says a Smith spokesman, "That is the beauty of having Our Price as part of the group. Our Price and Smith cater for two different sectors of the market; the only reason Smith didn't have the N.W.A album was that our customers would not expect to find it in the stores. It was a purely commercial decision."

Smith, with 320 record outlets, did, however, carry Body Count's "Cop Killer" when it was released in the U.K. in the spring.

The spokesman says the company's attitude was the same toward the album as it would have been toward a book with a similar theme. He says that, within certain parameters, Smith -- the U.K.'s biggest book seller -- would not decline a novel on the strength of its subject matter and feels the same about music.

The release of "Cop Killer" in the U.K. in March went entirely without challenge or comment from either the authorities or the Police Federation, which is effectively the trade union for police officers.

Zoe Heller “Teenage Monsters.” The Independent September 6, 1992


A few weeks ago, at a court in Great Yarmouth, magistrates presiding over the case of Plastic Head Music Distribution Ltd versus Her Majesty's Customs and Excise, were played a 40-minute compact disc entitled Like an Ever Flowing Stream. This was the work of a Swedish band called Dismember. It included such songs as ''Dismembered'', ''Bleed For Me'' and ''Skin Her Alive''. According to the customs officers who had seized 800 copies of the CD during a routine drugs check the previous October, it was obscene.

Dismember, the court heard, were exponents of ''death metal'' music, a sub-genre of rock, characterised by its exceptional volume and speed and its macabre lyrical content. Stephen Harvey QC, for Customs and Excise, described the band's song lyrics as ''hideous, frightful and repulsive to the senses''. They were, he added, ''liable to inspire a sense of violence in the listener''.

The words to ''Skin her Alive'' (''I slaughtered the whore / Skin her alive / I did it for the thrill / I had never dreamed it was nice to kill'') did cause something of a stir in court. But Andrew Nicol QC, for the distributors, explained that Dismember's lead singer, 19-year-old Matti Karki, had written the song after the murder of one of his neighbours in Stockholm.

''He wanted to put himself in the mind of a man who did that awful crime and somehow express something about those thoughts through the lyrics,'' said Mr Nicol. ''It was not his intention to inspire people to do anything similar.'' He also pointed out that tracks from Like an Ever Flowing Stream had been played on Radio 1 by Tommy Vance and John Peel, to no obvious ill effect. Dismember were, he suggested, pretty tame as death metal bands went.

This last point was pretty much unarguable. Compared to some of the other death metal outfits already performing and selling records in Britain, Dismember start looking kind of cuddly. If you want real nastiness, try listening to Deicide, a group of self-professed Satanists from Florida, whose lead singer has an inverted cross branded on his forehead. (Their songs include ''Behead the Prophet'', ''Unholy Sacrilege'' and ''In Hell I Burn''.) You might also want to check out Morbid Angel, another Florida-based band specialising in blasphemy.

(''Destroy Jehova's church / Vomit upon the cross / And burn the book of lies''). And to guarantee total outrage and disgust, you should probably experience the work of the New York band, Cannibal Corpse. Their new album, Tomb of the Mutilated, features artwork and song titles so horrible it has been banned from Virgin Megastores.

Until now, at least, it is America, and Florida in particular, that has monopolised the really sick-making end of the death metal spectrum. But this country has a thriving and ever-grosser death metal scene of its own. British bands include Cancer, from Telford (whose first album cover, featuring a man with an axe in his head, was banned in Germany), Napalm Death from Birmingham, Carcass from Liverpool, and a huge number of smaller bands who aren't signed to a record label but are written about in death metal fanzines and distribute their music on demo tapes.

Mr Nicol QC told the court that death metal fans weren't much interested in lyrics anyway - a claim the magistrates were disposed to believe, since they had been unable to make out most of the words on the CD, even with the song sheets in front of them. In any case, it was clear by this point that outlawing Dismember would either provoke a tidal wave of similar cases, or prove an irrelevant gesture.

The court ruled that the CD was not obscene and awarded Plastic Head pounds 7,500 costs. A spokesman for Customs and Excise said an appeal was being considered: ''It's a worry for us,'' he said, ''that this sort of music can now be heard by teenagers in Britain.''

THE LEAD singer of Incarcerated grasps his microphone with both hands and holds his elbows akimbo, like someone drinking cocoa in a corny commercial. Dry ice swirls about him. ''This one's our ballad,'' he says, tossing back his gingery mane. ''It's from Umbilical Cord and it's called 'Charred Remains' .'' He nods his head and the drums and guitars slam into a riff of traumatising speed and volume.

You know those vintage bits of 1950s American documentary in which some fat old guy with a microphone wanders up to a crowd of teenage boys on a street corner and says to one of them, ''So, young fella, explain to me, what is the appeal of this 'rock 'n' roll' music''? Well tonight, in the slippery, black-walled cave of the Marquee Club, I am that fat guy. There are three or four hundred people gathered here for a five-band, death-metal bonanza. And I'm the only one who can't play air guitar.

''Charred Remains'' is well underway now and the lead singer has begun to emit a horrible, low, warlock roar. All death metal singers sing this way, which is a great help when one is trying to distinguish death metal from other closely associated heavy metal off-shoots.

The musical origins of death lie in thrash, a hybrid of punk and heavy metal that emerged at the beginning of the Eighties. But thrash has several variants and, as a novice, it's easy to think you're listening to authentic death when really you're dosing yourself with ''blast beat'' or ''melodic thrash'' or ''industrial grindcore''. The trademark death vocal, sometimes referred to as ''doom tongue'', is often your only guide through this elaborate taxonomy.

Doom tongue seems to have been inspired by the sound a record makes when it is being played backwards for hidden Satanic messages. At its most vociferous, it reproduces almost perfectly, the burping, basso profundo of a vomiting fit in its final stages. It is quite difficult to do and requires, I am told, a lot of practice to perfect. But practically all death metal fans, singers or not, can achieve some variant of it. (How to tell if your child has got death metal: does he spend hours locked in the bathroom, roaring experimentally at himself in the mirror?)

In front of the stage, a herd of boys and girls - none of them much older than 15, some of them positively pre-pubescent - have commenced ''moshing'': hurling themselves about in arrhythmic abandon, slamming into one another and falling down. Across their little adolescent chests are printed words like, ''Carcass'', ''Cannibal'', ''Corpse'' and ''Death''. Behind them, slightly older teenage males are diligently headbanging. And further back, by the bar, there are people standing motionless, studying the stage with narrow- eyed concentration, as if they were at a very subtle mandolin recital. This is where I am lurking. Earlier on, I tried unsuccessfully to speak to one of the moshers - a dwarfish, pink-cheeked boy with ''Reek Of Putrefaction'' inexpertly painted on his leather jacket. He just sort of shrank from me. Damn, I knew I shouldn't have worn gingham this evening.

IN TRUTH, I am not hating this event as much as I thought I would. It's probably something to do with all the bouncy boys and girls up by the stage, but there is something rather innocent about the proceedings. The audiences seem to derive a certain pleasure from the macabre song titles, but aside from the occasional phrase (usually something to do with ''Dyi-i-i-ng'' or ''De-a-ath'') you really can't hear any of the lyrics.

After a bit, the moshers begin ''stage-diving'' - crawling up on to the stage, waving a little Junior-Show-Time wave at their friends, and then throwing themselves headlong into the audience. This is not how I thought a death metal gig would be. This is rock's answer to the bouncy castle. When the lead singer of a band called Decomposed growlingly announces a song called ''Procession of the Undertakers'', you can spot the sinister intention, but the stage is swarming with these fresh-faced teenagers, looking like extras from a Roger Whittaker Special.

''Nah, I don't care about the words,'' a girl called Trish screams in my ear. ''It's the riff. As long as it's got a good, grungey riff, I'm gonna like it.''

''The riff and the darkness,'' her German friend Lotte adds. ''Oh yes?'' I shout encouragingly. ''You're keen on darkness then, are you?'' She twists her skull ring round her finger and smiles sweetly. ''Yes, I like darkness,'' she admits, ''but I like it when there are other people around, otherwise I get scared.''

It is tempting, given the presence of all this cute youth, to retract one's initial dismay about death metal, to chide oneself for getting old and alarmist. But perhaps it is more worrying than less that death metal devotees should turn out to be sweet girls and boys afraid of the dark. Why are Trish and Lotte getting their kicks listening to songs like ''Multiple Stab Wounds'' and ''Meat Hook Sodomy''?

After the Marquee gig, the band members, all aged somewhere between 17 and 20, gather in an upstairs room for a party. They are likeable if rather gormless boys, from places like Croydon and Scarborough and Henley-on-Thames. I ask the singer from Decomposed, a smiling, gappy-toothed 18-year-old called Harry, why he chooses to sing about such macabre subjects. ''Oh, everyone thinks we're satanists,'' he says, ''but we're not. Not all death metal bands believe in the devil and all that. We write about how it feels to die. And the way we sing - well, it's like an aggressive sort of scream, because if you think about it, when you die, you're not happy about it, are you?''

Mike, the guitarist from a band called Gomorrah, says that although he plays death metal, he has wide-ranging musical tastes. ''I listen to all sorts,'' he claims, ''Slayer, Megadeth, Mozart, Van Gogh . . .'' There is a short pause before Harry speaks up: ''Van Gogh was a painter, you silly wanker.''

''Yeah, yeah,'' Mike says, recovering quickly. ''But what I'm saying is, that just because you listen to death, it doesn't mean that you're going to go and kill yourself, does it? I mean how can people have a go at us, just because we write about depressing things - funerals and stuff - when you can go to the pictures and see people being decapitated?''

The comparison with schlock-horror films seems to be a standard part of the death metal defence. British death metal lyrics, which tend to favour gore and aggression over specifically satanic themes, often take direct inspiration from

such films. Indeed, fans commonly describe death metal songs as the musical analogue of video nasties. ''If Hellraiser is the movie, Cancer is definitely the music,'' an A & R man at Vinyl Solution, the band's record company, told me proudly.

We were sitting in a pub on the Portobello Road, with two members of Cancer, the lead singer John Walker and the bass-player Ian Buchanan, who had journeyed down from Telford to explain death metal to me.

''Our lyrical topic is exploring all the aspects of death,'' Walker said, sipping a vodka and tonic, ''But we base most of our lyrics on the gore side of things. We grew up with splatter flicks, so we just thought it was something to write about.''

He twiddled with his long blond hair. ''We write about it to shock people and sort of as a form of escape. It's like when I see politics on television every night - I want to get away from it. So I just put on a gore film or listen to some cheesy lyrics instead. I think the Nine O'Clock News is more disturbing than the average gore film. What we put out as artists should be taken as face value - it's art - and I don't think art needs a justification.''

''Death metal should never have existed, it shouldn't exist in a civilised society,'' Buchanan said, ''but we're not a civilised society. It's about anger and aggression and our way of letting off steam in a world that is corrupt and where evil is the dominant factor at the moment. We're not political. It's a lost cause. But if we sing about the darkest things that can possibly happen, then the reality of life looks a little bit rosier. That's our idea,anyway.''

I suppose the notion of video nasties providing ''escape'' from the Nine O'Clock News was pretty depressing to begin with. But it was when I sat down later, and studied the lyrics on Cancer's first album, Death Shall Rise, that I got really sad. The following is an extract from the title song: ''. . . Skin falling to the ground / In a decomposing mound / Their organs building up with pus / They're decaying in front of us.''

The evident determination to be revolting is somehow not half so disheartening as the ineptitude of the attempt. I moved on to ''Corpse Fire'': ''Naked flame, gasoline / No tomorrow, no more dreams / Charred bodies, fried meat / To burn in hell, such a treat.''

Meat - feet? Meat - neat? You can really hear the pencil being chewed on that final couplet. ''Our audience is mostly aged 13 to 15,'' Walker told me towards the end of our conversation, ''but the thing about a young audience is that it can grow older with the band. We don't know yet how we will mature musically. There's still a lot to explore lyrically and musically in death metal.''

''Yeah'' Buchanan agreed, ''I mean on our new album, we've got a song about electro- convulsive therapy and we've actually interviewed a schizophrenic for the lyrical ideas - so it's quite serious.''

My journey into death metal ends at a rock club in Nottingham the night before the heavy metal festival at Castle Donnington. The dance floor is packed with metal types of all descriptions - rock chicks in basques and super-lacquered Joan Jett hair-dos; tough girls in leather jackets and dirty jeans; weedy little guys in Axl Rose bandanas and torn vests; chunky machos with Lady Godiva hair-dos lapping over their tree-trunk thighs.

In a tatty set of rooms away from the main club, I find the private party. And here, with a drunken group of men from various heavy metal publications and record labels, I enter into a discussion about death metal. The mood is not very pleasant.

They know, they say, that I'm going to write ''another stitch-up of the metal scenario''. One of them keeps leaning into my tape recorder and shouting sing-song obscenities.

''You take that song, 'Skin Her Alive','' a reporter from Kerrang! says. ''You probably think that's really horrible don't you? But it was about something real that happened in the guy's flats.''

''He was living above it!'' the editor of Raw magazine shouts. ''I mean what is he meant to do? Are you always Mrs Happy?''

''Anyway,'' the Kerrang! reporter says, ''are you telling me, you don't find mass murderers like Ed Gein slightly interesting? Slightly? In a morbid way?''

The man from Earache Records pitches in: ''It's a well-known fact that people have got a morbid fixation with death. I mean we're all going to peg out at the end of the day . . .''

The Kerrang! reporter thinks about this for a moment. ''Yeah, well,'' he says finally, ''I personally would be perfectly happy living forever. But I've still got a lot of books about mass murderers. Personally, what I think it comes down to, is when you turn on the TV news, you see Serbia, and the Gulf war about to start off again, and there are a lot of people out there who want to get the hate out of their systems.''

''Listen,'' the Raw editor says, turning on me with a snarl, ''people are interested in thinking about the way death occurs, all right? Just answer this one question and then fuck off. Why do you think Murder Casebook sells 60,000 copies a month?''

I don't have the answer and if I did, I'm not sure that it would cheer me any. Death metal is definitely beginning to get me down. I leave and wander back to the city centre to my hotel. As I unlock the door to my room with its hospital green walls and its grim little tray of tea- things, I find that I'm humming a Tamla Motown tune.

.

 

[Jim LotFP]

It's a scary thing when government decides to double as a judge of what is or is not art.

That third article was entertaining. It's upfront about its perspective, and while I'm sure quotes were cherry-picked for effect, the people he talked to certainly didn't help the cause.

 

[Lee_B]

I was working at Plastic Head when this all kicked off.

It wasn't a particularly big company at the time, maybe 6 staff in total (now it's about 50). I think the reason Customs and Excise picked on PHD was because they thought they couldn't afford to defend themselves. Luckily for the death and black metal fans of the UK, Steve the owner decided to take it all the way and won it. It was a pretty scary at the time though.

 

[BenMech]

Interesting reads.

 

[Fando]

Thanks for digging these up.