There are some genres of music that do different things. Rap, for its own part, is full of actually interesting lyrics and really incredible metrics, in its poetry, while jazz is tailor made for hanging out, although as the great movie Whiplash showed (there has never been a movie that found me crying more openly over simply the pursuit of greatness, and the way the coach works like the universe itself, digging at, digging at, each little part of Miles Teller until he blows), it also seems that jazz can be a show of intensity and predetermination that rivals metal music. Folk music often has just the same type of appeal, its poetry, as rap does (which is perhaps why the Uncluded album by rapper Aesop Rock and “neofolk” (?) singer Kimya Dawson worked so incredibly well as literal folk music with rapping parts, over it), with some more numerous stretches of, well; well I guess the style is, itself; singing, rather than rapping or chanting. And yet, as with many of the songs in the great Hejira, by Joni Mitchell, the singing often takes strange forms that feel more like reading blank verse for the first time.
Anyway, what metal does is sort of similar to the vocal illustration of folk music along with the cadences, heavy and dense-packed, of rap (in the instrumentals, I mean, and actually for both of these, although every once in a while you’ll get a Bruce Dickinson painting word pictures on “Hallowed Be Thy Name,” to some extent, at least, or Slayer’s Tom Araya basically just rapping in every song of his entire career), and the intensity of jazz, but also, sometimes, its serenity—but metal does basically everything, as I’ve already sort of been hinting at, with its instrumentation, with the vocals taking a far back seat, even if they are great, which, like anyone who’s ever listened to any Blind Guardian album after the third or fourth knows, is very possible, in metal (I don’t think I’ve ever heard a better voice than Hansi Kürsch’s), but. Yeah, metal can be a hallucinogenic experience, sometimes.
This can take many forms. The other day, for example, I was listening to Those Whom the Gods Detest by Nile, a death metal band of the new school, or at least the second-or-so school, where they take the grinding guitars and groaning, growling vocals and give them an aesthetic of, I kid you fucking not, an Egyptian death ceremony, of some kind. The first song repeats, over and over, again,
“There is no God but God
There is no God, There is no God,
There is no God but God.
There is no God, but the One True God.”
—my off-the-cuff memory of the lyrics, “Kafir!” Nile
It’s fucking insanity. And the whole time, the vocals and the guitars and the ceremonial drumming basically sound like a ritual, to the point where I myself didn’t like the album very much, beyond being shocked by how good “Hittite Dung Incantation” was when Questy played it [in this videono Stream], and I think you actually hear him read my comment saying this was the best song I had ever heard [edit: Looks like he took that stream down]. Anyway, I didn’t get into the album because, as Questy said in another video, or more than one, it’s a slow album. And I’m usually at least identifying as someone who gets into sort of unapproachable stuff, but like with Supreme Clientele, which I’ve talked about elsewhere, this album took a while for almost anything to appeal to me, even the very song there is evidence online on a fairly popular metal channel of loving, the first time I heard it [edit: no]! Anyway, I have, with some help, perhaps, from Questy’s description of it as “Slow,” realized how good it is, by finding my way into its rhythm.
Matt is a guy who listens to the whole album, damn it, these days. If over a period of days, but I keep the album playing on whatever phone app it’s playing, and then I listen through it, generally, before switching to another thing, although there is a Gallery full of screenshots, at least some, of the Skyrim soundtrack, or something, playing, to indicate which song I left off on. Anyway, this one, for which I suppose the approach I used for might work on something like the Greek, actual Satanic ritual of Crossing the Fiery Path, by Necromantia, which I still haven’t gotten into, would work, but anyway: Once I really got into this album, at least a little bit more, I realized that the guitars sound like a big, black cloud coming through the sky, kind of holding itself up one stilt at a time, over the ground.
These are more like that one.
Spiritual Healing, by Death
Another death metal band, although many would say, and do, seem to, say progressive metal. You could really say that about Nile, too, maybe, at least in the sense that they sound as ritualistic as Tool, in that album. But with Death, it’s more—well, let’s put it on a listen, and see what’s what.
Well, before I get into the music, I will say that this album also has a song that I argued with someone on Reddit over, and then realized and proclaimed they were right, about: “Altering the Future,” which I thought came off as an anti-abortion (i. e., baby killing, with all the mangling) but realized did seem to be potentially the reverse, of that. As added to by Chuck Schuldiner, the hero of the band, and the writer, I think, of the lyrics, generally, seemingly being pro-baby-killing.
Anyway, that’s aside from anything else. The album itself, while containing a little bit of that, is generally a sonic experience, for the most thing, and then the lyrics being shouted in Chuck’s signature thousand-cigarettes rasp, probably working on some kind of subconscious, Tavistock level, but still not edging out the music. Which is a stew of surging, dark guitars guiding you into the center of the vortex. This is one of those albums that sounds like the same song nine times in a row, but like others like that, it contains sort of a forward movement into deeper, and deeper territory. The songs feel like just solid bricks of darkness, but the more you listen to them, the more you will realize they’re glimmering.
Ich hatt einen Kameraden, Minenwerfer/1914
No, I don’t just go around spewing the title of that album out. I actually went into the iTunes album information and copied and pasted it. But that album, up there, on the line above the first line for this one, paragraph—that album is by, primarily, for me, a band named Minenwerfer who have been immortalized as, as Questy, again, said it, being one of those black metal albums “that’s gets shown, fucking loads, on YouTube” rather than knowing about them beforehand. And boy, with an album cover like Alpenpässe’s, you want to listen to the album, anyway.
This album is not that album, although that one is very hallucinogenic (imagine screaming out at the sky from the top of a mountain, with clouds going past you like snowbanks), from the opening section of some German recording from seemingly World War 1 (or 2, but this guy’s theme tends to be WW1, so) to the blasting out of the slow, atmospheric guitars (or, if they are fast, seeming to go fast like churning through butter, in the sky—very congealedly) like a whole landscape of nothing but air, all around you, but anyway, what about the actual album I’m talking about?
That one is a split, or basically just, as far as I can consider it, or have, the album where two one-man bands make one side of it, on each side one man’s half-album being. And Minenwerfer’s half, the first one, sounds like screaming the entire time, as if this is a story where he gets trapped in the back of a hallway and is shot to death by the gunfire of the enemy. And he’s just screaming, wailing, out to the sky, as the fires just come into him, and he is sending, some out, and maybe, he will win. He does something better than anyone I have ever heard do it, here, and that is something he does in Alpenpässe: This sustained blast of a shout that comes out, after a long buildup, just as the guitars come out, with the exact same energy.