Metal Reviews

Alright, thanks for the explanation. I did not understand a thing, so I'm just going to trust you on this.

I noticed all the "production problems" have ceased to exist on FLAC. I feel really positive about how inviting the music is to hear. Not harsh whatsoever or grating, but loud and clear as it gets. Every damn mix sounds golden, you know unless it's complete shit.

Yeah welcome to 2004 Steve. Dead as Dreams already influenced a fuckton of bands and almost defined the whole new USBM genre's sound singlehandedly. And they are fucking good.

Haha, a shit album that did what? Influence a few bands like WITTR, Krallice and Liturgy? Bands that have made many avoid the American black metal scene? But really, can we really say these are more than a handful of bands? Oh yes, what an influence that is. It also depends what you're choosing to classify as "the whole new USBM genre's sound" because there are a lot of American black metal bands out there that have not been influenced by Weakling at all (I'd argue that these are probably in the majority), but by bands more traditionally defining American black metal (Absu, Judas Iscariot, Krieg, Grand Belial's Key, Havohej etc. all pre-2000s and playing a larger role than Weakling did in 2000) not to mention the influences of Xasthur and Leviathan in mid-2000s, though I wouldn't call the material of these latter two classics.

A lot of those bands you mentioned started alongside, before or slightly after Weakling. However, the last four years has been dominated by bands that have taken up what Weakling was doing. Obviously, they couldn't instantly influence the whole genre but to deny that their sound hasn't shifted the sound of the genre over the last four years is ridiculous. I want to say of the bands of note in the USBM coming out now, it's mostly Weakling influenced.

*gets popcorn*

What's this?



Personally, I think that WITTR/Krallice style is totally where black metal is going right now. Actually, that kind of thing is the closest that "good" metal will come to breaking into the mainstream. Not many of you guys follow the indie scene, but i do, and several sites (NPR Music, Stereogum, Pitchfork) are recognizing how awesome bands like Agalloch and Liturgy are (I wouldn't group Agalloch in with those other bands, but they are USBM).

Also, what new American black metal bands haven't been influenced by that sound? Seems to me like all the important/good ones have...

EDIT: I should probably let trapt do this

That's precisely why I mentioned them. These bands started in the 90's or early 2000's and they had a greater influence on black metal in the 2000s than Weakling did.

Weakling, in comparison, influenced barely a handful of bands. And you state in the last four years? Ok, let's compare this to the birth of nearly every other genre/sub-genre or new wave of anything. In fact, let's compare this to the 80's and the birth of metal's primary sub-genres. During the time there was a process of bands not necessarily being entirely influenced by each other, but who fed off each other in some way or other while taking it a step further in whatever direction they were going in.

If we look at albums like Ace of Spades (or, heck even going back to the late 70's Motörhead albums) or Welcome to Hell as foundational albums in extreme metal as far as getting the ball rolling (though really metal had technically been steamrolling in all directions since the beginning), then we also see that within a year or so many of the bands that would begin to make up heavy influences for the three big extreme metal genres had already sprung up. By '81 there was already Metal Church's Red Skies demo that arguably holds the first bone fide thrash of the 80's. At the same time you already had bands like Sodom and Hellhammer releasing demos influenced by Venom by 1982 and 1983 respectively. In just two years to a year after that these guys were already taking metal by storm along with the likes of Bathory, Slayer, Celtic Frost, Exodus and others. Funny enough, bands had more immediate influences in the age of tape trading than in the MP3 age for Weakling-influenced bands.

Jumping ahead to the later spawn of this extreme metal madness you get the Norwegian scene. And how long until that Norwegian/Scandinavian scene influenced a lot of the early American bands? Not particularly long. And in far greater numbers than a handful of shitty bands that are only recognised as anything by certain people as doing anything interesting or new (which is their supposed claim to fame).

You can't really even begin to compare that to influencing 5 shitty bands.

Weakling has not influenced anything near as massive as the amount of bands influenced by Darkthrone, Burzum or Emperor alone (even looking at that influence in the 90's), or any sub-genre of black metal. This "influence" is restricted to a fairly small group of bands.



The thing is that they did not and, today, do not influence the whole genre of USBM, nor have they really shifted the sound of the genre. My argument with Weakling and bands like Krallice or Liturgy is that they do not actually create any sort of "new sound" for black metal. That's like saying Kvlt of Azazel created a new bm sound by simply playing what they were trying to immitate very poorly. And that's what Weakling did. There's an obvious influence from Norwegian and earlier USBM bands...but Weakling fails at actually figuring out how to play the black metal he's trying to immitate. But this is where personality/image takes over from the music, and I think it is that "alternative image" that has influenced bands like WITTR, Liturgy and Krallice, but when it comes to music they are nothing but poor immitations of an immitation. The "image" is something new, not the music. They bring nothing new to the spectrum of black metal beyond connecting the hipster indie scene to black metal. Really the only argument for how this is supposedly something new is fans saying it makes them "feel" different than what existed before it or along side it (zomg teh emoshunz!)...but technically there is not much that is actually different going on, beyond diverging away from black metal riffs entirely (probably because they wouldn't know one if it hit them in the face)...which then makes one wonder what the fuck they are actually playing beyond poor attempts at black metal.

As far as dominating...define dominate. The thing is that there is a "niche" for this sort of thing, but outside of a handful of bands it really has little to no influence. And I wouldn't take magazines as any real indication, since they pimp a lot of idiocy.[/i]

Dillinger Escape Plan. Any DEP could count as a classic to somebody.

I should probably let Kath do this.

I guess I should just let Sceadugenga this.

Listening to Heatseeker analyze black metal makes me chuckle.

As a nod to the American hipsters, I don't despise WITTR (or Panopticon) though.

Basically what she said.
Welcome back, BTW, I've always considered you to be one of the better contributors here.

USBM, by and large, is a very weak niche.
There are a (very) few exceptions, as always.

haha, hipster black metal.

I think you're reducing the influence quite a bit. I think their influence can already be seen but I'm not claiming they've taken root like Darkthrone but I think they might be in line to do that. USBM isn't talking about Krieg, Leviathan or Xasthur anymore. Liturgy, Woe, Panopticon, Krallice, Skagos, Ludicra, WITTR, Ash Borer, Fell Voices, Fall of Rauros, Lake of Blood (I'd even include Altar of Plagues, Fen and Terzij De Horde albeit not US). They're all obviously incorporating various degrees of hardcore, post-rock, Drudkh, Agalloch, but I think we can point to Weakling as being an influence. And honestly you say that Weakling do a shitty rendition of black metal, I think Venom did a shitty rendition of NWOBHM and look what it has influenced. I'll abstract from my dislike of Venom but no matter how shitty Weakling is or you think they are it is influencing these bands and these bands are the bands being talked about.

The problem I want to point out in your genealogy is that you're acting like Dead as Dreams has been out for twenty years. It is just now being taken up so to proclaim its lack of influence or even its influence beyond anecdotal lists is problematic. We need more time to make any broad claims but I think my claim is safe to make. Ace of Spades it may not be in terms of that instant success but people going back to it in time doesn't make it less of a classic. Artillery and other early power metal bands lacked influence but are finding a resurgence influence in stuff like Slough Feg.

We had the exact same discussion last time IronDu- I mean, Sceadugenga was here. Someone really doesn't like Weakling.

Well, you can not really compare the likes of Venom to Weakling. Because when you go so far back, all the way back to the 80's the influence of those bands will obviously be greater. This is only because there weren't that many bands or different music genres to begin with.

Influencing the birth of a subgenre is a wholly different thing and can not be really done in 2011 anymore. No one is saying Weakling did this. No one else did it in the last 10 years either. You are assuming we think Weakling is as influential as Darkthone? Look at my nickname man (edit: WOMAN!)! That is insulting. No one said that.

What Weakling did was influence a very well established genre, which is still pretty impressive, summoning a lot of bands like them in a short time. And those bands are making quality music and are getting more popular.

Earlier bands or the USBM, like Leviathan and Krieg you mentioned who you say weren't influenced by Weakling, went on to form Twilight and did exactly that.

Bands like Absu, Havohej, Von, Judas Iscariot and the like are and were great bands and I like them. In fact I'd take Absu and VON over Weakling themselves and most bands they influenced. But these bands have no influence in the new shitton of USBM bands that are spawning every day, and were just making Norwegian black metal in the US.

I thought I would show you what I saw that made me change my mind.

I don't know what that means, but Lost Horizon - Pure sounds a lot better than it looks.

Seriously what does it mean, in plain english if you can, that high frequencies are not rendered with the mp3 format ?

They are not. This graph doesn't have markers, but it appears to start rolling off at 15Khz and brick walls at 17Khz. The Wav file is slowly rolled off until it hits 22.05Khz as you can see.

I know how to stop the brickwall when encoding and because I did that I thought I wasn't losing the highs. Something just has to be extremely loud before the compression stops. It doesn't help for anything except cymbals. An acoustic guitar piece is still going to be capped at 10Khz, but again, the wav will resolve all the way to the nyquist of the format (22Khz)

I hope that is clear enough.

I see.

Yes it's clearer with graph + the explanations, thank you very much.

I don't know what to think of my shitload of mp3s right now...

(I promise I stop using the word shitload, starting tomorrow.)