I know this is generally Talya's domain, but I recently saw two movies that can't escape comment
FANTASTIC PLANET A weird French sci-fi animated movie set to a prog-rock soundtrack. Not only is the animation really bizarre but the film is supposedly an allegory for the Soviet invasion of the Czech Republic: what?! Maybe this is just the present talking but cartoons as serious socio-political dissertations?! Ignorant
CONQUEST I generally go in for this kind of crap, CONAN is definitely a favorite of mine, but this is just terrible. Now when I heard Lucio Fulci directed this I was excited by the sheer absurdity of such a concept, but I really should have given it more thought. This is definitely a Fulci movie, confusing "plot," ridiculous gore, and no character development at all. One can argue whether or not Fulci actually knows how to make movies, but he definitely has no clue how to make fantasy pictures. Fulci is so out of his element here it's ridiculous. First off this is more along the lines of CLAN OF THE CAVE BEAR, CONQUEST can't even be called a swords-and-sorcery movie because no one even has swords! The non-villains in this movie are all cavemen, oh and every woman in this movie walks around topless. Even more bizarre is that even though the villains wear metal (in the stone age no less) they are mystified by the hero's special weapon, a bow and arrow! Whereas Fulci can get away with confusing plots in his horror pictures it really doesn't work here, so many plot points are left completely unanswered: why is the hero even here? How did he finally figure out the special power of the magic bow? and what's up with the main villainess turning into a coyote at the end?! The plot can be summed up thusly: some guy arrives from a faraway land with a magic bow, meets up with a weird freegetarian animal-lover/Fabio look-alike; the two walk around in circles arguing whether or not to destroy an evil sorceress; get into random battles with evil dudes, and finally destroy the evil witch-woman. Fulci obviously just threw together everything he thought consisted of a fantasy picture together into one big mish-mash of a cash in. AVOID AVOID AVOID
So yeah, when I was planning to do my zine two years ago I interviewed a couple bands via e-mail, one of them being Satanic Death. It's sort of embarrassing to re-read this interview now, due to the fact I never really got my zine off the ground* and realizing how my views on metal/music have changed. I don't know what happened to the band, I think they're still active and there was talk of a 12-inch awhile back, hopefully they'll release something new 'cause the 2nd demo is really good.
1. Hails Black Winged, how is life in Argentina?
Hail! pretty fucking boring, its raining the sky is black and im hungover...at least beherit sounds through my speakers
2. How did SATANIC DEATHform? What were your reasons for starting the band? Influences?
well...at the time i was playing in another band and iwas so bored with it and the whole scenes and atittudes towards metal and all, so i thought fuck it im doing it my own way and whoever doesnt like it can blow me...so i hooked up with those guys wrote some songs rehearsed and we recorded a rehearsal and cutted it as first demo,the demo was raw as hell and we were really shitty players too,but it had conviction and was agressive i still like it alot,some people noticed that and word got spread
3. What responses have you gotten for the demo so far? How has the local scene reacted to your formation?
Black Mass demo got a great response or so ive heard ,its all over europe, the local scene???well Satanic Death is the band everyone heard of but never actually heard
4. Satanic Propaganda seems to be a fairly new label, how did you get in touch with him?
saw the advice of a new label that was looking for bands,so i got in touch with him,showed him the first demo and we worked something out 5. South America had one of the most dedicated and extreme metal scenes of the late eighties (acts like HOLOCAUSTO, MUTILATOR, SARCOFAGO) how is the scene today? Also why is it that South American bands always seem much more exrtreem and over the top musically and in their presentation (old SARCOFAGO photos come to mind)?
it's true southamerica used to have kickass bands and scene,now i dont know that much,i know for instance that in brazil and chile you have amazing huge scenes ,argentina is a piece of shit when it comes to extreme metal...only power metal scene and they suck about the extremecy of the bands... dunno it has a lot to do with culture of violence,but musically is because bands dont limit themselves
6. I know you played live recently, how was it? Do you have any more shows planned for the future (possibly in the US)? Ever since the '90s the Black Metal scene has carried with it an ideology that is against playing live, what is your opinion of this attitude?
i hate that anti live shit its an excuse for pathetic idiots that cant play well or fear crowds,although there is some music that is not for live performance our gig went quite good,yes we are planning more gigs and touring,,about playing in the US we would for sure do it if someone has the balls to fly us over there and put a few gigs together
7. Recently there has been a movement of Black Metallers reclaiming the metalness of the genres. I mention this in reference to the demo because you play in a style that is neither "suicidal" or "avante-garde," and is decidely influenced by thrash metal. Do you consider your choice of sound a statement against non-metal black metal? Do you feel that black metal's rejection of death metal's stupidity puts it in danger of being overrun by goths and psuedo-intellectuals?
our music is a statement against that wimpy cry baby "black metal",and yes there is definitely a thrashy edge to our music its a sad thing that people have forgot about the word METAL in black metal ,people need to wake the fuck up and pull their heads out of their arses and start headbanging again to the devils music
8. There seems to be a lot of dead weight in the nowadays black metal scene. Please list your top ten most overrated bands/ records? top ten???
i dont know but all that mutiilation, deathspell omega, katharsis stuff is totally overrated..im not saying its bad music,but stupid fucks that pay 500 euro for a mutiilation lp should be shot
9. On a related note, what have you been listening too lately?
death,destruction,the first 4 megadeth records,order from chaos
10. While the style of SATANIC DEATH is reminiscent of early BEHERIT, I wouldn't classify it as war metal or a BLASPHEMY clone. Do you feel most people today only pay lip service to great records like The Oath of Black Blood? Is the term BEHERIT-esque used far too loosely as a companion piece to the term "BLASPHEMY clone?"
people classify everything as a beherit/blasphemy band,there is no more originality anymore although i dont find that much beherit on our music ...i think we are coming up with something quite unique ,but its true that at the time of the first demo the only thing that i was listening to was beherit...
11. I notice you don't include lyrics on your demo, how come? Are the song titles fairly self-explanatory?
we never really thought about it ,we were more focussed on the demo being released because it took some time for the label to put it out... some may be self explanatory some not,anyone that wishes to get the lyrics just write to me
12. With the increasing popularity of black metal among trendies (see ruthlessreviews.com), do you think black metal has a future, or will it stagnate like death metal? What do you think black metal will look like in the coming decades?
i think that the trendy idiots will move to the next trend and leave black metalbe pure again ...years of glory await
13. How has DISCHARGE influenced your sound?
HA! a litle bit more raw maybe,although gg allin,rattus,misfits and sex pistols are the best punk. we had real good times getting drunk and listening to rattus and tervet kadeet in the old drummers house
14. Thanks for the interview, any closing comments? How should interested parties contact the band? May poseurs be crushed under your heel.
thanks a lot for the interview we are negotiating for new releases so labels interested in real offers ( not that shit 200 copys in cdr and 12 for the band,we dont need that shit) write to us , and meurtre noir records (usa)is doing some t shirts of the black mass demo so you might want to check that out hail and kill we might try to play up there
Additional notes -Isn't it funny how the dudes in Satanic Death look like generic members of a norse-core band, when Satanic Death is anything but
*The crux of it rested on a large article on French black metal I was going to write but never finished.
From the cover-art you'd think you'd be in for some good folk- or country-rock along the lines of CCR's first record Wrong, this band sounds like bad Tom Jones or Scott Walker*. Don't be fooled, avoid! If you want good folk-rock buy this record instead.
So I’ve been listening to a lot of Death In June and Current 93 lately, bands which I never thought I’d like, and while I like them, I still have a few reservations about the neo-folk scene. Now initially I considered Death In June to be some weird industrial/ ambient variation like how I imagine Blood Axis sounds or like those Brian Eno/ Robert Fripp ambient records. My impression of Death In June sums up how I viewed the neo-folk scene as a whole, an industrial/ ambient offshoot that was all about “reinterpreting conceptions of music and sound, etc. etc.” which really had no interest to me. I find ambient, industrial, and noise music boring and pretentious, so I really had no desire to ever listen to any neo-folk. This impression was also fostered by the praise of neo-folk by people like Vijay Prozak and Michael Moynihan; Death In June to me was another non-metal “Prozak band.” It wasn’t until my friend Mark burned me some Death In June albums that I decided to give the band a chance, and I was pleasantly surprised by what I heard: Death In June actually plays folk music. In a reductionist sense Death In June sound like Joy Division, if Joy Division played folk music: the vocals resemble Joy Division and Death In June utilize a lot of electronic effects as a back drop to an acoustic-folk base. This use of contemporary electronics is rather striking, considering folk musicians generally value traditionalism and frown upon contemporary music. The neo-folk scene is breath of fresh air in the contemporary folk-scene since in recent times folk has largely degenerated to a bunch of old people playing bland covers or near covers. The fact that neo-folk is equally informed by Comus and Love as it is by Joy Division and Throbbing Gristle means that it is able to reinvent folk, as shoe-gazing did for psychedelic music, while capturing the spirit of what made folk enjoyable in the first place. In theory I should love neo-folk since I love both Love and Joy Division, however it is the seeming pretension of this scene that bums me out. This pretension is evidenced both in its common lyrical/aesthetic topics (death, fascism, paganism/ occultism, and symbolist literature) and in the company it keeps. Now while I find the topics neo-folk covers interesting it is the embarrassing seriousness with which they embrace these topics and the goth outlook that informs their approach that I find off-putting. The neo-folk scene also has connections to the goth/industrial scene*, and I find the inability or unwillingness of neo-folk to fully break from the industrial scene highly suspect. These connections also largely determine the audience of neo-folk, industrial fans, an audience that would shape interpretation of the neo-folk scene and constitute future neo-folk bands, as most audiences do. In short neo-folk is the music I can imagine early-90’s goth college students listening to, and we don’t need Seth Putnam to tell us what we think of them. This pretension also relates to another gripe I have about neo-folk, and while it may be minor, one complaint that I have about neo-folk is how expected many of its topics are. While a band like Comus was completely unexpected within the 60’s folk scene, in neo-folk a band with the same musical and lyrical idiosyncrasies as Comus is quite de rigueur. One of the joys of Comus is the oddity of a FOLK band singing about rape, murder, and insanity. Comus almost reaches a level of absurdist comedy with its demented style, but within neo-folk this humor is replaced with a deadly seriousness that takes some of the fun out of listening to the music. Maybe I should be stoked that there is a scene (as opposed to just one band) that further develops the sound of folk, acknowledges bands outside of traditional folk, and covers topics I’m interested in. Maybe my complaints are all for nothing. I’ll still listen to the music, but my advice to the bands, “get over yourselves!”
* Many of the early neo-folk bands in fact started off as industrial bands, which could be part of the problem
I recently made a remark to a few friends of mine that it would be interesting to re-watch Mel Gibson's films to try to find any anti-semitic undertones; mainly whether Braveheart can be viewed as Mel Gibson's struggle against ZOG. I'm sure critical analysis has started on Mel Gibson's oeuvre already, so I'll just mention my impressions of the two Mel Gibson movies I saw recently.
Gallipoli- Peter Weir seems to have abandoned the mystical approach he took in Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Last Wave in favor of a more direct approach. Like Samurai Rebellion, the expected violence in Gallipoli is held off to the very end. This prolongation works to the films advantage in that it avoids any glorification of war common to many anti-war films, Apocalypse Now comes to mind. When the violence comes it's particularly powerful, but man, having to wait around so much, you start to wonder what this movie is really about: war or a bunch of dudes clowning around, Samurai Rebellion had a similar problem. Of particular note is a beautiful underwater scene towards the end of the film, not to be missed.
So I just went through that review without mentioning Mel Gibson, here are my impressions of him in the film: -I was surprised to see that Mel had established his character type and mannerisms so early on. Maybe I'm more surprised that he's been playing essentially the same character for over twenty years -Mel didn't actually direct this picture so the cause of WWI wasn't blamed on the Jews
Verdict: not anti-semitic, more anti-British
Braveheart- I'm sure everyone else has seen this movie so I'll be brief. -In the beginning Edward I is described as pagan, now I'm no English history scholar but I doubt Edward I was pagan; according to wikipedia the last pagan Anglo-Saxon king died in 655 AYPS. -Jews are again not blamed for this war, I get more of a sense of Gibson's Christianity and anti-English sentiment. -Edward I actually expelled the Jews from England, but Mel has nothing positive to say about him. Maybe Mel's silence on this issue in the course of the movie says something, but I don't see how this subject would really relate to the movie.
Verdict: again not anti-Semitic, but anti-English.
I don't know the history of Mel Gibson's opinions of Jews but it wasn't until The Passion of Christ that his anti-Semitism started to become evident. I don't think someone could have predicted Mel Gibson's anti-Semitic tirade until The Passion of Christ. One could point to Mel's strong Christian beliefs, but that is not really an indicator of anti-Semitism in this day and age: Jack T. Chick loves Jews*, even going so far as to see African famines as God's wrath against the tribes who mistreated Jews in the Bible. With Michael Richards recent outburst some comparisons have to be made and here are my thoughts. -Why is it that the Michael Richards outburst seems more the more offensive of the two? -Is it because there is no video tape of Mel Gibson slurring Jews? -Is it because Mel Gibson was drunk and Richards was not? -Is it because Gibson's rant was the more expected of the two? Considering the buildup from Passion of Christ, to statements he made about Jews, the drunken outburst was as expected as the Jen and Vince break up. If one looks through Michael Richards filmography one can see evidence of his racism, Whoops Apocalypse, but it still seemed less apparent than Mel's -Richards is being more active in apologizing but he still is the less liked of the two: a friend told me of a segment on Howard Stern where Stern interviewed people in Harlem on their opinions of Richards and Gibson; Richards was universally hated while interviewees stated that they would still watch Gibson's movies -Finally, is anti-black racism a bigger issue in America than anti-Semtism?
I went to go see The Brian Jonestown Massacre Sunday when they played in New York, and really enjoyed it; they played a bunch of good songs and Anton, the bandleader, went off on some really funny rants. Modern indie rock can be such a dicey topic, that I feel a little explanation should be provided to why I not only like the BJM but why they are one of my favorite bands. Since The Brian Jonestown Massacre is described as indie rock I must also include my own views on indie rock as a whole and my own reductionist comprehension of indie’s history and development. Indie rock is a genre where it is very difficult to have good taste. This difficulty is due to indie rock’s very poor quality control and in this respect indie is not far removed from mainstream rock: consider the cases of Black Sabbath and Guns N Roses only one of said bands is good yet both are spoken of in reverent tones by the mainstream rock press, one could even argue that Guns N Roses is the preferred band. The reasons for such low quality control come from two sources, the love of a gimmick and big money. The ahistoricism, love of the new, and insatiable appetite for irony that largely guides indie rock circles means a low quality band with a cheap gimmick can easily become highly regarded by the indie press, see Blood Brothers. The other reason is due to the big business indie rock has become, it means major and major affiliated labels and rock press largely control the public perception of what indie rock is and what indie bands are important. Indie rock has a longer and more varied history than what I’m about to present but I’m most concerned with how indie rock is largely defined in America and how the elements of that definition were shaped by the time The BJM started. The elements which came to dominate the definition of indie rock in America (Pixies, Sonic Youth, Fugazi, bands which I feel either indifferent towards or hate) created a very skewed perspective as to what said sound constituted and the influences new bands would incorporate in the US: consider how many American bands, until very recently, credit My Bloody Valentine, the Jesus & Mary Chain, and Spacemen 3 as influences, compared to Fugazi, Sebadoh, and The Pixies. The popularity of indie among the 15 year-old to 20-something masses starting in the late 80’s/ early 90’s also meant major label interests, causing the focus of what constituted indie to shift from something fairly broad and obscure to bands that were either on major American labels or affiliated with the popular “Sound of Seattle.” The loosely defined nature of indie rock also made it even easier for major magazines like Rolling Stone and Spin to swoop in and posit their own definitions of indie rock as correct and viable. Unlike punk or hardcore, indie never had a clearly defined ethos of sound or business ethics, nor did it have a major voice or guide such as punk does with Maximum Rock and Roll. This takeover became easy to enforce since even magazines like NME and radio like John Peel did not exist in the US, and the influence of the major music press outlets such as MTV and Rolling Stone could quash/ drown out any objections to their viewpoints. Coupled with the tendency of American musical culture to forget about large chunks of music’s past, it is particularly amazing a band like The Brian Jonestown Massacre could of come into existence in America during the early 90’s. That an American band could come along in the early 90’s, aggressively promoting a concept of 60’s style that relied heavily on the period of 65-67 in America and particularly in Britain and Europe for inspiration, is striking. In America still, the concept of the sixties is narrowly defined; the range of musical styles (mod, psyche, folk) and culture is overshadowed by Woodstock, by the culture of 1969-era Haight Street, by dirty hippies. The BJM appeared promoting Brian Jones at a period when most pre-80’s and 70’s Rolling Stones music had been forgotten or ignored in America. The BJM musical style was informed by the music featured on the Nuggets and Pebbles comps before those comps became wildly popular. While now it is not so odd to see people dressing in a mod/ freak beat revivalist manner, the BJM were doing it at a time when bands like Pearl Jam and Sonic Youth were immensely popular, so they must have looked completely alien to most people. While the bands that have their roots in such bands/artists as Love, Donovan, Bert Jansch The Byrds, mid-period Kinks, early Echo and the Bunnymen, The Creation, Spacemen 3, are fairly de rigueur now, for a band to be playing in such a style back then sounds completely unheard of, pre-Hives, pre-White Stripes, and pre- that goober Devandra Banhardt. While their had been garage rock revival bands such as the Fuzztones, the musical style of the BJM is a lot broader than just 60’s garage. Musically the BJM offer up a style that is not just revivalism but is also informed by bands which were greatly inspired by the psyche bands of the 60’s, it’s a hypothesis of what would have happened had the Psychedelic and Folk styles of the 60’s developed further and in a different direction than of the prog-, hard-, and country-rock styles of the 70’s. Indeed the BJM took the underlying psychedelic influences of the shoe gazing and early indie-rock bands like My Bloody Valentine and exposed them outright, and directly played them up so that they look like true revolutionaries in sound and don’t look dated to the 90’s style, compare that with the videos of My Bloody Valentine which look like Sonic Youth. Brian Jonestown is able to cover a range of musical styles without sounding scattered, it all fits within their particularly weltanschauung, whether it be county-blues, Thank God for Mental Illness, mod rock, Take It From the Man, or early 80’s indie, Bravery, Repetition, and Noise, the music doesn’t feel like a deviation from their core style or ideology. I really admire honesty in people and people with a strong sense of self/ philosophy, who adhere more or less to that philosophy for their life, where any change in this philosophy is only further development or modification of previously held beliefs, not their complete abandonment. The antithesis to this model would be someone like Madonna. This is not to be confused with a pre-set belief system or a prefabricated image, but a personal philosophy that is a natural extension of the self. The Brian Jonestown Massacre and Anton Newcombe, the band’s leader and main songwriter, greatly embody my ideal because they are not only embracing something I think is cool: 60’s music in many of its forms, mod/mod-hippie style, but they’ve also largely stuck to their aesthetic choices, they still wear Indian shirts and their music has not taken any drastic turns. Compare this devotion to aesthetic and honesty with one of BJM’s cotemporaries The Dandy Warhols, who incidentally ripped off the BJM numerous times. First off not only is a name like The Dandy Warhols irritating and unimaginative but it is completely unrelated to the band’s sound and aesthetic. Even within the confines of the movie Dig one sees that the Dandies do not try to sound like the Velvet Underground or bands that would have played at the Factory, and if they do it is only for a passing song. Musically they laughably trend hop, trying to sound like a shoe gazer band on one song, The Pixies on another, a hard rock psyche band on one album, and an electro-clash band on the next. They do not dress like they came from the Factory, rather they just look like generic indie rockers of the period, and in Dig we witness their dated choice of multiple body piercing and Courtney Taylor’s embarrassing mohawk. There is no comprehension of Warhol’s aesthetic evident in The Dandy Warhols either, the only attempt they make is on the album art to Welcome to the Monkey House of a peeled banana with a zipper on it: did they not realize that Warhol’s banana artwork was already phallic? This reference to Andy Warhol comes off more as a Carlos Mencia joke than anything remotely intelligent. Any reference to anything dandy or Warhol this band does make is purely superficial. Whereas the name The Brian Jonestown Massacre presents a clear statement of sound and aesthetic, which is duly carried out by the band, the name Dandy Warhols signifies nothing. The band’s only real outlook is an embarrassing irony and attempt to look cool that is profoundly irritating in its lack of both self-effacement and any grasp of aesthetic sense (The Odditorium? Give me a break). I read an interview* with Anton Newcombe and in it the interviewer remarked how honest Anton was being about his band and beliefs, whereas when the interviewer talked with The Dandy Warhols they just gave ironic answers and tried to look cool. This quote encapsulates why I prefer one band to the other. So my reasons for liking The Brian Jonestown Massacre are simple, the music is good and well informed, they have good and developed aesthetic choice (except for some occasionally bad cover-art) they are honest, they are consistent, they are innovators in a sense, and they are varied in sound. I respect this band so much, that I consider calling them indie rock derogatory.
So sorry Indie friends, but The Brian Jonestown Massacre is far superior to Xiu Xiu and Blood Brothers.
Additional Notes: -Indie Rock Sucks -Miranda Lee Richards is hotter than Zia McCabe -Thanks to Mike Dowd for letting me stay at his place over the weekend and for first showing me the documentary Dig -Favorite song titles: Whatever Hippie Bitch, If Love is a Drug I Want to OD, (David Bowie I Love You) Since I Was Six, Time Is Honey (So Cut the Shit), God Is My Girlfriend.
so yeah, I started up a blog, I'll mainly talk about music (not just punk and metal though both will be covered) and movies and maybe some opinions/ insights I have had lately. I'm only doing this blog for the following reasons: 1. my friends have blogs 2. it's trendy 3. I'm too lazy to do a zine 4. the phrase "see blog"
