From its headline, I figured Ben Ratliff’s recent New York Times article “Jazz and Metal, Riffs in Arms” would be just another author happily pointing out jazz’s influence on metal music to people who don’t know any better. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but Ratliff goes further, asserting unequivocally that “Jazz is metal.”
Ratliff then goes on to explain his reasoning by pointing out that, aside from the mainstream artists in each genre, both metal and jazz are largely underground movements that contain large amounts of diversity and experimentation, not to mention superbly talented musicians. Seems pretty obvious to me, and I’m sure most metalheads with any kind of knowledge about jazz wouldn’t find anything to disagree with, but then I’m pretty sure us metal fans were not the intended audience for the article. Nevertheless, it’s an interesting read and definitely refreshing to see an article talk about jazz and metal without focusing on the music.
Until The Light Takes Us, a full-length documentary by Audrey Ewell and Aaron Aites, gives audiences an unprecedented look at the foundations of the Norwegian black metal scene through the eyes of some of its founding fathers. It covers the most infamous events in black metal’s past: the church burnings, the murder of Euronymous by Varg Vikernes, the murder committed by Bard Faust, the formation of Helvete, and the early black metal bands that came from the norwegian scene. It would’ve been easy for the filmmakers to stop there and just make a movie about crazy Norwegians burning down churches and killing each other as part of some twisted subculture they created, but instead the producers chose to delve deeper. Two years of exhaustive research later, they’ve instead provided a detailed but very human look into the minds of some of the most infamous personalities in black metal.
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A new PSP game called Undead Knights will heavily feature three California-based metal bands: Lightning Swords of Death, Endless Blizzard and Valdur each have several tracks featured in the game. Endless Blizzard is the solo project of Lightning Swords of Death’s guitarist, and Valdur seems to have some ties to the other two bands as well, having just released a split with Lightning Swords of Death last year.
screenshot from Undead Knights
I don’t have a PSP myself so I won’t try to make a guess as to how good or bad the game looks, but apparently it involves creating your own armies of zombies and then commanding them to overcome obstacles and violently dispose of other creatures that get in your way. In other words, it’s pretty much full of the type of activities you’d expect to go along with a soundtrack of underground metal.
Check out the Undead Knights website for a bunch of screenshots and previews of all the metal tracks in the game:
» Undead Knights Website
If you’re in the Seattle area and haven’t already seen it, come check out the black metal movie Until The Light Takes Us this Sunday. It’s showing as a special feature during Seattle’s Maelstrom International Fantastic Film Festival.
Until The Light Takes Us @ MIFFF
Sunday, September 20, 2009
6:00pm - 8:00pm
Seattle International Film Festival Theater
321 Mercer Street, Seattle, WA
For full details and info see the Facebook Event page
Mastodon recently confirmed rumors that have been circulating about them scoring the upcoming Jonah Hex film. They are indeed assisting with the movie’s score along with composer Josh Powell and director Jimmy Hayward. This is not some crappy movie that no one will see either; it’s based on a DC Comics character, will be released in the middle of the 2010 summer movie season, and will star Josh Brolin, Megan Fox and John Malkovich.
I’m looking forward to seeing what these guys can do with a movie score. It seems unlikely that it would actually happen, but but wouldn’t it be sweet to see Mastodon tearing up the Kodak Theatre performing a song at the Oscars? That would be the day…
Horror movie fans should head over to Fangoria.com and check out the “Lists of Doom” section. The lists feature metal musicians detailing their favorite horror movies, and the picks range from pretty standard (“The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” “Halloween”) to the fairly obscure (“[Rec]”, “Frontière(s)”, “The Dentist”). Some of the musicians interviewed so far include members of Amon Amarth, Psyopus, Napalm Death and Hail of Bullets.
Decibel Magazine has begun making a “Hall of Fame” list of landmark metal releases. Overall it’s hard to find fault with the choices they have so far, and the fact that it’s an unordered work-in-progress rather than an absolute top 50 or something means they can always make up for mistakes later. For example, I might’ve chosen Incantation’s “Mortal Throne of the Nazarene” and Emperor’s “Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk” instead of “Onward To Golgotha” and “In The Nightside Eclipse,” but maybe those will appear on the list later, who knows?
Right now the list is at 48 albums and counting, and they’ve already included several classic albums and personal favorites of mine: Katatonia’s “Brave Murder Day”, My Dying Bride’s “Turn Loose the Swans,” Botch’s “We Are The Romans,” Brutal Truth’s “Need To Control,” The Dillinger Escape Plan’s “Calculating Infinity,” Meshuggah’s “Destroy Erase Improve,” Opeth’s “Orchid” and Mastodon’s “Remission”, among others.
I’m sure the selection of Metallica’s “…And Justice For All” over “Master of Puppets” is going to piss a lot of people off, but then it’s almost impossible to make any sort of metal album list without angering somebody. Overall I think they’ve done a great job of selecting a good variety of albums to make most metal fans happy. This would be a great list to give to someone who is just starting to get into extreme metal.
» See the full list of Decibel Magazine’s Hall of Fame
Belgian black metal band Gorath, whose “Misotheism” was among the better albums of 2008, recorded a black metal cover of Britney Spears’s song ‘Toxic.’
As bizarre as this sounds, the song actually shreds pretty hard and sounds nothing like the original. When compared side by side you can see the similarities, but if you weren’t told the origins of the song I don’t think you’d guess where it came from. The cover was originally released as a bonus track on the band’s 2005 album “Elite.”
Listen to Gorath’s version of ‘Toxic’ on iMeem:
» Gorath ‘Toxic’ cover
For reference, here’s the original:
» Britney Spears’s ‘Toxic’
Be sure to check out Gorath’s “Misotheism” release as well. You can stream a few of the tracks from Gorath’s MySpace page.
If you’re wondering where the great sample from The Ruins of Beverast’s ‘Between Bronze Walls’ came from, then you have to watch this movie. Aside from that particular scene, the movie is about a Voodoo cult trying to sacrifice Martin Sheen’s kid, so really it’s a win-win situation.
You can also find the full quote on IMDb.
MetalKult.com has posted a useful and highly amusing video featuring members of Amon Amarth explaining how to brew your own mead with just a few simple household ingredients. We’re not talking fancy equipment and fine-tuned recipes either - grab a gallon of water, throw some honey in, add some yeast and some fruit, and shake it up! It’s pretty obvious these guys have been doing this for awhile so I trust what they say, and actually now kind of want to try it myself.
» Brewing Mead with Amon Amarth video at MetalKult.com
