I’m honestly not sure if you people are feigning ignorance for kicks or if this is genuine.
Quote:
We basically like this because we don't understand how bad it truly is. You claim that there are three ripoff riffs which I can't dispute the Enslaved or Folklore ref. having not heard them but the Emperor reference is a stretch. Vocals suck; I disagree. The album lacks any goal which I can't dispute the fact that you don't see how it comes together. You call the last track chaos, so how can we argue you're lack of seeing any semblance of merit in it? What a silly argument in my opinion. I'm taking it out of context, ie: summarizing, so you'll just disagree.
If you’d actually read Tyrion’s post you might notice that the argument is not simply “It sucks, I’m right, that’s it”. Instead of making childish little sarcastic remarks why not address points such as:
“It could be argued that that the song does finish on a strong, even passionate note (starting at around 10:00), but unfortunately, there really wasn’t much there worth actually listening to until that point in the song let alone something that really builds into something worthy of a dramatic climax. Worse still, they clearly didn’t know how or when to end the song as everything after about 14:05 should have been cut.”
There is an argument here that the album as a whole is quite directionless, that it attempted to copy and paste the basic elements of black metal but had very little of an idea of what it was aiming for. If you wanted to prove Tyrion wrong you might attempt to counter his argument by trying to indicate the direction and purpose of the album beyond what he has outlined. What makes this album “great” or “good” according to you?
As for the point on the climax without an ascent toward it, it could be viewed in the same way as one might view a solo that is simply plugged into a song with no rhyme or reason, that has come from nowhere and leads nowhere. For example, if you look at Det som en gang var (song). The song begins to ascend toward a preliminary head until 2:48 where the pace picks up, the main riff setting the stage for the rest of the song but it doesn’t hit that peak yet. While acting as a sort of mini climax it continues to ascend upward, then inserting the phrase from earlier back into the song, which continues to lend a feeling of progression or building toward something greater. The soon after inclusion of vocals then begins to lend to an increased urgency in the song, which basically all keeps building until 8:58 when it all slows back down again for a few seconds until about 9:19 when you get the climax. Personally, I consider it to be spine-tingling, but if I had just started listening to the song at 9:19 without ever knowing what came before, or if Varg had taken the song up to 2:48 and cut out the rest and just kept playing that original phrase throughout the entirety of the song until 9:19, the power of the climax would have been diminished because it would be stripped entirely of what it is that made it so powerful to begin with; the anticipation, the build up.
Weakling seems to try to mimic the atmosphere created by bands like Burzum or Emperor, but are completely oblivious to what it is that creates that atmosphere or what lends power to those climaxes. While some songs lack a climax or much of a structure while still maintaining atmosphere, often the appeal of that atmosphere is subjective since there is nothing particularly tangible that can lend credence for its atmospheric significance. Weakling’s songs progress toward nothing and attempt to manufacture atmosphere, if that makes sense. Its like powder milk in a can vs. real milk. They seem to think that one riff alone without anything else has the power to create the amazing atmosphere many of the early bands produced, when simply making atmospheric riffs was far from the case, whether we’re talking Burzum, Emperor or so on. So instead of saying “no you’re wrong”, why not try to explain why you think so?
“That seems to be the argument. They can see how bad this is, the rest of us are obviously ignorant.”
When it comes down to its not about whether the music is inherently bad, since establishing a piece of art as bad must often rely on a popularly agreed upon structure that is either followed or improvised upon or that a band failed to utilize properly. This moreso about recognizing what’s actually going on in the music and how arrangements in musical composition can be made as such that they project something more than reality of it technicality “progressiveness” and so on. I’ll try to draw some parallels. If we think of isometric projection, every elementary school kid at one point figures out how to draw an isometric cube but they don’t mistaken it for a real cube, furthermore, their cube is only a child’s imitation of the extensiveness of blueprint drawn by a trained engineer, which is still only meant to lend an indication of what the final, concrete product will look like. In that case, the illusion’s purpose is to be suggestive enough of the real thing but does not require the same skill to create. In a similar fashion, Impressionists sought to create paintings that mimicked reality to a greater degree than previous artistic traditions by blurring or eliminating lines through more evident brush strokes among other techniques. While a person can both appreciate the art as its own kind of reality or dissect a work and see through the “fantasy” created by the artist to the techniques necessary for creating such an effect.
In music we can look at something as basic as a military march and ask which elements of the music cause us to link a particular style of march to warfare. Often it superficially mimics sounds or resonates emotions humanly associated with combative maneuvers or warfare. We can also look at the presence of keyboards in metal. Many bands using keyboards often have the term “symphonic” tagged onto their sub-genre. Though we all know a keyboard and not a symphony orchestra is creating the sound, many listeners still seem to draw close parallels between their respective arrangements, giving undue praise of “genius” where it is not deserved, and when in fact the musician in the first case is only mimicking the basic process behind arranging a symphonic composition. The process is nowhere near as complex nor does it take anywhere near as much skill, but relies on the suggestive nature of the sample sounds and basic arrangements that will likely lead the average human mind to naturally associate it with a symphony at least to some extent. The musician may not be attempting to maliciously “trick” the listener, but relies on the human mind’s natural tendency to seek out patterns and to draw comparisons between two variables that share, at least superficially, certain defining aspects in order to produce a certain effect.
Similarly, a musician might take a chromatic phrase, a scale, or chord progression that in and of itself could be the beginning of an interesting technical piece or improvisation, but then he repeats it incessantly at high speeds, with the added distortion inherent to metal and “appropriate” production and mixing, a band can easily be considered “technical” or “complex” to the casual listener and by vague association. Not only this, but even when a musician crosses into the realm of technicality, what does he bring to the table? Does he shape or mould a piece toward an end or desired effect? If so, what is it? Additionally, a band might similarly take certain aspects occasionally associated with “progressiveness” such as lengthy ambient songs, vaguely straying from conventional song structures by breaking it down to a minimal or alluding to a freer structure without doing much at all, musically speaking.
We might then feasibly enter the realm of post-modernism and post-structuralism. F.ex., if we look at Jacques Derrida or his earlier forebears like Nietzsche, they presented a challenge toward accepted societal norms and the popular notion of absolute morality and truth, but Derrida himself, as much as he challenged societal structures and urged his peers to recognize the human fabricated nature of structure and morality, still recognized that structure was needed for society to function. When we look at the destruction or challenging of structure in art it has historically had a purpose, often aiming to expand a movement or genre outside the traditional box, however, what we start to see with many of these “progressive” or “alternative” metal bands is a non-purposive disregard for structure, or a superficial “disregard” for structure. An individual can seek to deconstruct their own personality or ideology by recognizing the discourses that make them up, but often the purpose then becomes to deconstruct for the purpose of reconstructing the self in a new, possibly enlightening way, or to the end of understanding the fabrications of human ideology. It also serves to understand that “meaning” is often subjective in the grand scheme of human life. This may seem like a “random” interlude on the subject, however, post-modernism and its purpose echoes throughout every aspect of contemporary human life, and so we can draw lines between post-modern thought and the current subject. So what then is the purpose of these bands that allude to minimal or superficial elements of musical “progressiveness”? Often it appears to only be for appearances’ sake, “progressiveness” by association, and more often than not their raving fans follow along and reaffirm the delusion. But progressive towards what, when often this “progressive” nature is just a vague allusion to previous movements or genres, or an attempt to mimic and “develop” superficially rather than purposively? And at what point does mimicking progressive elements established by early musicians enter the realm of a new tradition?
What, exactly, was Weakling attempting to achieve with Dead As Dreams? Did they really produce anything particularly groundbreaking in black metal or metal as a whole that you can legitimately claim makes this release the best black metal album of all time? That makes it even an outstanding release? I think not. All they did was cut and paste ideas from founding black metal bands while attempting to eliminate the structure present within the music of those founders in order to seem as though they’re building upon those foundations. Not only that but they attempt to fabricate atmosphere by copying and pasting then altering slightly certain riffs previously deemed “atmospheric”.
It doesn’t come down to who likes them and who doesn’t. If you like them go ahead and do so, it doesn’t mean shit to me. But liking an album is far different than claiming it’s the best black metal album of all time or even an outstanding album. I personally like plenty of bands that are not legitimately “outstanding” but I like them anyways. I might as well just go listen to Darkthrone but I still somehow enjoy listening to Godless North or Flagellum Dei alongside Darkthrone; that doesn’t make Godless North or Flagellum Dei the best raw black metal since sliced bread. Decent Darkthrone clones, arguably, but nothing more. I wouldn’t make a thread about them, that’s for sure.
There also seems to be a general view among the same individuals that weak vocals are “emotional” that I really fail to understand. If sounding like a mewing newborn kitten is “emotional” then you must all be right and I have no fucking clue what emotion or sounding “emotional” is…in fact if that were true I’m not even sure I’d want to know.
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Christ how much intellectual inflation do you need to prove yourself to be an idiot. You went from talking to German philosophers to Darkthrone, to kittens, to Post modernism. What about the big bang their buddy?
