Many people have high hopes for this release because they believe that if they support all metal, metal will be strong. I'm from the opposite camp, which says you should call a spade a spade, and by weeding out the bad metal, you'll make metal stronger. This CD is like a Roman prostitute: she puts on all the makeup she can, uses every trick in the book, and knows how to act sexy, but at the end of the day she's a fattish peasant girl with syphilis and you should avoid her. "Maranatha" fails in two crucial ways: (a) artistically, it has nothing to communicate; (b) stylistically, it's an attempt to integrate the last 30 years of rock and metal into black metal -- a sort of "black nu-metal." Since it's easier to communicate, we'll start with the style. A Summoning-style melodic black metal riff rises, repeats, and then we launch into an updated version of later Gorefest -- really rigid, percussion-heavy death metal riffs -- before diving into the main riff, a hybrid of Ministry and Pantera that rides a bouncy rhythm with a muted strum. This pattern repeats in every song, with frequent interruptions for "important" pauses and vocal interludes; the different pieces vary, but they are thrown together at random, and this is one reason why these songs resemble later Dimmu Borgir: they're carnival music that tries to distract you by being outlandish so you don't notice there's no agenda, nothing poetic or even nifty to communicate. That brings us to artistic substance. While old black metal seemed to dominate with new technique, that was quite wrong -- all of its technique predated it. What it did was create a language for a certain type of feeling, and the psychological and philosophical revelations required to be ready for that feeling appearing within oneself. As a result, there was something to communicate: the importance of fantasy, the poignant joy of winter which is both life and death, the lust for struggle, and the loneliness of facing mortality alone. There was poetry in that: it converted the mix of good and bad that life is into the beautiful by maintaining focus on its mechanical utility in maintaining the cyclic process of life itself. What does Funeral Mist have along these lines? Nothing. These are songs for their own sake, meaning that they communicate nothing except membership in a style and the desire to be a variation of that style. They are songs about being black metal songs, in a band that's essentially writing black metal "from the outside looking in," meaning that they understand the technique and aesthetic but not the substance and poetry of classic black metal. As a result, this CD is two things: distracting noise, and hollow art. It is as fake as a Hallmark card, as contrived as Britney Spears, as hokey as Pink Lady. It is distracting like Cradle of Filth -- the originator of the "carnival black nu-metal" style -- and as motivated by an ethic of convenience as a Roman whore. People will pretend to like it because it's later Dimmu Borgir dressed up in true kvlty clothing, but at its core, this album is devoid of meaning or particular musical recommendation. http://www.metal-archives.com/review.php?id=225598 Pretty accurate if you ask me
From listening to their Myspace- I agree. Hollow and un-interesting. But why single out this band?? There are hundreds of modern black metal bands that fail to do anything new in the genre, and just stick to traditional style of metal but try to make it appealing dressing it up like a whore.
Anyway, it doesn't sound too appealing for me because if the review is accurate it most likely will breath the same atmosphere as latter Dimmu and other industrial/theatric black metal. I also rarely dig large death metal influences in black metal. But I haven't listen to this album yet, so I can't properly judge it. Calling it fake for the reasons given here seems like someone's taking the genre too serious again. Another thing: although I understand where the reviewer is coming from with this "from the outside looking in" black metal, this doesn't have to mean it's not going to hit it on the nail. Many black metal musicians were getting into this genre because of the aesthetics of sound and atmosphere, and are not poetical wonders indeed. Doesn't mean they can't make intense pure black metal.
I have to disagree there. I think black metal places demands on its creators that speed metal, for example, does not. And I haven't heard any exceptions, sad to say. Life is short. Never waste it on mediocre music! :cheers2:
Nargaroth - Black metal ist krieg has no meaningful substance or poetry yet it's still typical black.
It's from the new school, and not all that good; it's also a ripoff band that borrows riffs from latecomers.
It's just one of many likewise examples, and I think it is good black metal. Just like with a subgenre like doom there's a terrible amount of specific substyles between a genre, each with it's own characteristics apart from the main genre. Which is only natural when it's still blossoming after a decade. It's also very natural for a metalfan to be selective in those subgenres, but it doesn't automatically makes one of the (bands of those) subgenres false or from the outside looking in. That's just the old school fans talking like always. Don't get me wrong, I do know what you mean when you're talking about Dimmu Borgir and Cradle of Filth nowadays, but it's just not always the case. Some old school isn't all that good neither by the way. Just like some of the newer school can be brilliant.
Nothing is 100% good. However, I haven't heard anything brilliant from the newer school, to be honest.
Well, I'm not actively dividing the genre in old and new school so I don't know if I can help you there. What about Keep of Kalessin? But of course my point was that both newer innovative or cliché black metal bands are not false because it doesn't sound old school enough.
The question has never been about sounding old school. It's been about being quality music/art. The new school stuff is random, but that's a result of, not the cause of, its musical and artistic FAIL. Not a big fan of Keep of Kalessin. I find them repetitive. What about? Immortal - Pure Holocaust Emperor - In the Nightside Eclipse Darkthrone - Transilvanian Hunger Enslaved - Vikinglgr Veldi Burzum - Hvis Lyset Tar Oss Ancient - Svartlvheim Anyone making music like that?
That's my favourite kind of black as well, and no it's not much made anymore. The genre has evolved. But the main things I was falling over in your first post are that Funeral mist in this case are looking from the outside in and are making false black metal. That's a silly vision, it's not fake for those reasons stated in the review and neither is there one vision needed to make good black.
I disagree. I think black metal is an esoteric art form, meaning that it's easy to fake it but hard to do it well. So few bands do that, and the ones that do not are rarely worth the time. They're like pop bands... you hear them for a month or two and then move on. Bands like Funeral Mist are trying to make black metal into the same crap as other genres, and that's stupid, since what made black metal distinct was what people loved about it: An esoteric vision of beauty in nature.
It's an esoteric art form and thus easy to fake? The black metal you like is not the only good black metal. There's not one way to make good black metal. And dude please, fake is just an ignorant statement in this case to put down the black metal that you don't see as 'true'.
All things esoteric are easy to fake by imitation, but hard to get right. The externality of anything can be faked. If it has no internal depth, then it has been imitated successfully. If its internal depth cannot be faked, one ends up with a hollow shell.
Black metal is not always about esoteric internal depth. And the old school riffs often doesn't sound original either. Just like a genre like power metal it's not in the first place about originality. Anyway, it doesn't make it fake.
While the origins of BM lie in Scandinavia (in particular Norway) and Northern Europe, I thinks the genre has not only evolved, but also moved. I like alot of the so-called "second wave" of BM in the early to mid 90's and listen to alot of Scandinavian bands, but sadly these bands either have died, or they no longer make music I enjoy, and I find it difficult to appreciate the modern BM bands that are coming out of these countries. But what I have noticed is I like alot of modern (1997- onwards) Eastern European BM bands. I find these bands have a lot of simmilarities to traditional black metal, but are more...quirky and less thrashy. Also many Eastern european BM bands dont suffer the common problem nowdays of 'over-production' so it still sounds raw and authentic.
Fully agreed! And for not so necessarily very raw and old school but still good and typical black metal Negura Bunget is a good example :cheers2:
