Metal Reviews

I didn't take that seriously, but I'm getting sick of the constant bashing. Woohoo, someone discovered that Cradle Of Filth and Dimmu Borgir are not true BM, how impressive!!!
Yeah, Graveland are a tad overrated (I just find they haven't been progressing at all with their newer stuff, though The Fire of Awakening is a brilliant album IMO), but defining them "poser synth BM" is ridiculous - following this train of thought, we'd have Summoning being the next to be cast into the trashcan, and other interesting acts such as Nokturnal Mortum as well, probably.

But again, I didn't take it all too seriously; also, you have correctly pointed out the astonishing absence of some pretty essential names, therefore I can safely say I'm done with this.[/i]

yeah, fuck off immortal and there is far better stuff than graveland around. but that's just a matter of taste, i'm sure he hasn't heard all of it, so it's logical he can't include all. the same goes for us.

yeah, fuck off immortal and there is far better stuff than graveland around. but that's just a matter of taste, i'm sure he hasn't heard all of it, so it's logical he can't include all. the same goes for us.

Yeah, why do I care what this idiot says about Graveland? He obviously hasn't heard everything. Really, I don't care, but sometimes people just say goddammed retarded shit, and what he said is, not just that he didn't like Graveland, but that along with not liking them, Rob Darken and everything associated with the bands discog is poser-ific, culminating in synth garbage. THAT'S a good reason to vent. And, aside from you, Gast, I bet every BM head here would put something shitty like a DSO album before Thousand Swords, so why should I even try and defend a good band when they've already condemmed it to make room for acts I would rather see disbanded. Hell, maybe even YOU would put DSO before Graveland, but it'd be rather surprising to me. Matter of opinion, in all cases, but yeah... no one's heard everything, and I'll ALWAYS fight for Graveland's validity amongst the greats. So I did, and now I'm done.

The reason why bands like Dimmy and CoF are bad is because they suck, they reek of pomposity and pretentiousness, it just so happens that they are not true Black metal.
And it just do happens that the so-called True, raw black metal is superior in every aspect and is called true because it lives up to strict aesthetical criteria. Take the list for example: the first slot went to Tenebrae in Perpetuum, and they are a perfect exmple of the "true" aeshetic.
The main problem with the underground is the saturation of bands that think just because you don corpsepaint and play raw minimalist music, it is automatically aesthetically true Black metal... this is of course false. That makes it more difficult to seperate the wheat from the chaff, but it is well worth it to find the few exalted examples of what the art of Black metal is SUPPOSED to be..
CoF and Dimmy (and many others), call (or used to) themselves Black metal,
and they just aren't, thereby earning the scorn from those that know the underground... the equivalent of poseuerdom, if you will. Black metal is necro, grim, minimalist and raw. And hearing bands like Dimmy and CoF and their ilk referred to as Black metal is the same as a typical metalhead hearing somebody claim that Guns and Roses is Thrash. Maybe not the best example, but you get my point.
Should anybody refuse to listen to them because of their "falseness"? That is a personal decision, of course, but if they are given the proverbial spin and deemed as a waste of time,
that is just the way it goes... I have given all of CoF's and Dimmy's albums a chance and they all failed... miserably. I like a few of their respective tracks (Queen of Winter, Throned) but that is all.
It is well known that the Black Metal underground is oftentimes accused of elitism, and rightly so; we want our art to be preserved undefiled, if that doesn't sit well with some, thats too fucking bad, I personally couldn't care less.
I do agree that good music is good music, though, and listen to other styles, notably true Batcave/Deathrock (Dead Roses Garden, Cinema Strange), a smattering of Punk (Discharge, Dr.Know), Horrorpunk (The Crimson Ghosts, Calabrese, and of course the Misfits/Samhain) and Psychobilly (Asmodeus, Damage Done By Worms, Godless Wicked Creeps) and even a little '80's pop haha!
V.

That's all well and good, and I know how you feel to an extent.

But for me, "strict aesthetical criteria" and the like simply don't belong in music. I don't want to see music genres "preserved undefiled" for all of time. Defiling music excites me a great deal in fact . Many of my favorite bands just so happen to be bands that have come from the black metal scene to do something far different, and for me far greater, than 'true black metal'. A Blaze in the Northern Sky is absolutely phenominal, but that was 14 years ago. I don't see the need for a band like Sin Origin, who are simply attempting to recapture that earlier sound and failing to produce any of the magic (for lack of a grimmer term). There is of course still great music coming from the depths of utter grimness, but I obviously don't feel the same ties to certain aspects of the scene as you and others do.

Haha... not me my freind. Deathspell Omega are more overrated than Graveland. Graveland is good and hardly a poseur band, but people deem his work as masterpeices of Black metal, and to me, at least, that is a little much.
V.

That's all well and good, and I know how you feel to an extent.

But for me, "strict aesthetical criteria" and the like simply don't belong in music. I don't want to see music genres "preserved undefiled" for all of time. Defiling music excites me a great deal in fact . Many of my favorite bands just so happen to be bands that have come from the black metal scene to do something far different, and for me far greater, than 'true black metal'. A Blaze in the Northern Sky is absolutely phenominal, but that was 14 years ago. I don't see the need for a band like Sin Origin, who are simply attempting to recapture that earlier sound and failing to produce any of the magic (for lack of a grimmer term). There is of course still great music coming from the depths of utter grimness, but I obviously don't feel the same ties to certain aspects of the scene as you and others do.