Metal Reviews

It goes without saying that themes like "Satan, Darkness, Evil, Anti-Christianity, Destruction, Hate, Misanthrope" etc... Are constantly and most typically a recurring theme in BM today as it were 25 years ago. There is a very strong notion that BM in general represents the strict individuality in men and the hatred for mankind comes from irrefutable harm that humanity has done upon themselves that is truly unforgiving. Becoming one with Darkness, becoming one with the occult wisdom and of the ancient time, the pure anguish of death, the despair and boredom of life in general, the mysticism in nature, the pure and nude notions of "kill for Satan" have been themes of much meaning and a lot misunderstanding by artists in the BM scene.

The Metal world is the only genre in the world of music that has so much diversity in its lyrical content. Everything mentioned above and also themes like satanic spirituality, mysticism, and esotericisim, the occult world and the followers (or maybe admires) of figures such as Alesiter Crowley and Anton Lavey have been constantly observed in the Metal world. All things that have been written in this very paragraph are merely observations that I have perceived in the Metal world. I believe the main hatred towards religion is basically a very dominant notion of “serving God versus serving oneself” and the commonality in the BM world and the notion of "rule in hell rather than serve in heaven" as Rotting Christ and Sakis puts it to be which is an amusing notion and an entertaining fictional one of that matter.

The embrace of all aspects of the human nature is a massive part of the Metal world but I personally think there has been an immense amount of misunderstandings in it as well. A prime example is Crowley. Crowley and his magical rituals and their main goal was to gather darkness and turn into light rather manifest “darkness.” Many scholar in the Gnostic world believed Christ was a false messiah and some others believe that Christ was merely a man that sought enlightenment in his own way and advocated it for his disciples but did not intend it to be for the rest of humanity to follow him as a result. I certainly do see the point of this pure hatred for humanity as a result because of their pure and unforgivable ignorance.

What I am trying to pose as a question is the matter of how do you think artists in our beloved Metal world are rightful to say about the truthfulness and genuine aspect of their lyrical content? How much do you as a listener connect (and embrace) or take to be absurd and childish and much rather just enjoy the music?

i use to be kind of a satanist and i mean the lyrics did take a part in my life. But soon after i realized how fuckin stupid it was. Better to be just a straight up atheist then one with a fancy name. Now i don't really pay attention to the lyrics, i just enjoy my music and thats all that matters to me. And thats what it should be. I mean most of us listen to black metal and we are most likely the nicest and most accepting people in our respective towns. We dont try hurting others, were not really dicks to people. But do correct me if im wrong and this doesn't apply to you.

The whole point of me posting this topic was to see how fair or unfair statements made in Metal truly are. Fanaticism exist in everywhere and it certainly exists in Metal and especially BM. People that indorse in satanism as a religion and by that I mean a true satanist (which I am not one) are genuinely nice people to communicate with. If you look at an early interview done with Anton Lavey he revealed himself as a modest and very nice man (and I'm quite sure it was genuine). Satanism is not at all about being a hateful person, whatsoever. The essence of Satanism is freedom in both sexual and moral. Crowley's statement of "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law" has always been and will always be the "higher truths" to achieve; not the ordinary ways of truth and reality. So even the pioneers of freedom have had morals and limitations. They can also be easily misinterpreted and can be also be manipulated to an artist's own particular interest which is usually negative. You mentioning being an atheist (and I have no idea how much you have investigated upon the matter) has nothing to do with your humanity. A prime example of a prominent atheist is Richard Dawkins who is also an advocate of being a humanist.

oh, my bad. Well to me people will make judgements on people who are into metal, especially BM, will always assume the worse of that person because they honestly don't know you at all and assume things about you just based on your music taste's. People are just ignorant and will never know how us metalheads truly are. To me yes we listen to some really evil and sadistic music but as you were saying, we are actually nice and accepting people. Hell every metalhead ive meet is like this, except some trolls ive found on other metal forums.

bloodpet, you were no Satanist if there is ever any question what that entails. Born, not made and will always be.

I had a serious hatred of concepts that religions usually promote, but even now that I accept that death is impossible I still am a Satanist because it embraces magical concepts, which are the study of any concept that science can not explain. Satanists are not atheists. They are simply the first religion to acknowledge that each person is the master of their own destiny and their freewill can not be impeded by any other soul living or dead.Sataqn would never help any creature that disagrees with that, especially a groveller who doesn't have the ability to get what they want regardless. My opinion about death is simply outside of the scope of Satanism. At no time is any afterlife a part of it whatsoever, that's just my personal opinion. Just like the alien question. It simply isn't germaine to the discussion. If one needs to be told what opinion to derive from every esoteric topic in existence, then they need to join a cult or something else that dictates that sort of thing.

Anyway, I like lyrics about self-reliance, other dimensions, confidence in ones emotions, ect. Olaf Thorsen's lyrics have literally been a revelation. His music actually shoiwed me the fourth dimension (and possibly other, higher ones) when I was convinced there were only 3 spatial dimensions and I had the world basically figured out. Since then these other dimensions have been casually working their way into my perceptions and I have noticed a great many prog and power metal bands seem to be on the same wavelength (that is to say, vibrating sympathetically with my own frequencies) I am not alone, but it is certainly something one must experience if one has no faith at all.

"You know we are one. You know we are two versions of the same...but you do need some faith" - Vision Divine

So I took faith in Olaf's lyrics, because fuck it, music is the most ritualistic thing I have encountered thus far and THAT requires suspending disbelief. Once I let go and accepted what he (and others, later) would tell me and I'm sure many others have picked up on. The world looked different. Literally.

"The broken clouds become complete" - Serenity, 2007

Based on these facts, I either take it that only one of two possibilities exist. A) these people are writing lyrics that sound good and they have no idea what they are writing, but running with it anyway. A phenomena that has permeated humankind's existence or B) They are fully aware of what they are writing and sadly their fans aren't getting the message.

I tend to thing that well-written lyrics are "authentic" and poorly written lyrics are "inauthentic". (This is probably a fallacy but I don't care.) It all comes down to eloquence. Like Slough Feg sound cool writing about trolls and outer space because Mike Scalzi has a solid grasp of the language, whereas some Italian power metal band sounds absurd and childish writing about the same subjects.

imo in punk/metal pro-God lyrics tend to be a lot more thoughtful, personal, interesting and nuanced than anti-God lyrics. I'll take Extol or La Dispute's treatments of religion over some doof shouting "religion is a cancer" any day.

Never met anyone who's called themselves a Satanist. I'd probably laugh at them because I think it's a pretty terrible and silly spiritual position to take.

@Adveser: I have always preferred allegory in lyricism rather than simple and straight forward ones. Referring to the lyrics with the cloud symbolism, one can say, a deeper meaning might exist in an observation to the mysticism in nature.

Oh yeah, there is an absurd amount of allegory. Seeing through the facade is the hardest part. Once one becomes very familiar with the concepts these kind of things are extremely evident. That is the basis for writing esoterically. You're writing on one level for one audience and writing on another for another audience.

Just take the cloud lyrics: one with an intimate visualization of fractals and other spatial dimensions would literally see the part of the cloud that is not visually evident because he can draw the missing fragments based on the other formations of clouds and the effect the invisible area has.

However, I saw a movie called "Slipstream" written by A. Hopkins who is apparently oblivious to and completely cynical about the concepts presented in the film. Personally I don't think it matters if the author is aware of their own symbolism or the meaning that is obvious to anyone studied in the area they wrote in. I know I have written lyrics that wouldn't make sense to me until later. I have literally gone back in time and given myself the lyrics and literally perceived lyrics and songs that I know I was giving myself from the future. Whenever I come back to them the second time, ruffling through papers or whatnot. I always go to the same place and realize what I'm doing. Interesting.

Yes. The unconscious speaks very mysteriously. Esotericism has always been a major interest of mine. I forget which movement it was but I believe it was during the Romantic period that poets were sort of "free-writing" and wrote anything and everything that came to their mind; artistic creativity from the unconscious. You should also try to find a documentary called "colours of infinity" concerning fractal geometry (if you haven't seen it).

Hells yeah.

Elegance is crucial in any kind of writing. It is necessary for the writing to be infectious.