Yet again it’s been brought to our attention that Fenriz is still cut up about Antihumanism.com’s strong criticism of “new” Darkthrone.

In the official Darkthrone myspace blog, he says:

anyone remember that lowlife who took a month of his spare time just to make a FAKE dakthrone mini-site with fake album cover and fake songs? well, let’s just say if I was like that guy, I understand why he is ANTI-HUMAN, HAHAHAHA!!

Official Darkthrone myspace blog

Fenriz mate, it took about 5 minutes all in all. If I remember correctly, the guy who made the “fake” song (though it was at least as “good” as your current ”official” material) spent less than an hour making it.

It seems that you’re still pissed at us because so many people thought our parody was REAL (the thread at the Nuclear War Now forum was especially hilarious before it was deleted) and that must have really hurt your ego…

The mysterious Nodnol Tohder, who allegedly did the typesetting for Emperor’s 1994 classic album “In the Nightside Eclipse” layout (see the original booklet liner notes, or google him) does not actually exist!

Read back to front, Nodnol Tohder = Redhot London, and is the name of a gay strip club in Norway where Samoth (owner of the record label NAP) discovered future signing Limbonic Art, who were the house band at the time!

Next week: Frost of Satyricon reveals the professional make-up techniques used for the band photos in “Nemesis Divina” and tells us of his agonizing decision to endorse Rimmel lipstick instead of Zildjian cymbals!!!

Someone was telling me the other day how “great” the death metal band Morbid from Sweden were. Of course everyone knows about them and has probably heard their “December Moon” demo. This is because the infamous and revered Dead performed the vocals and possibly, at a push, because it features soon-to-be members of Entombed.

But Morbid, even on this “cult classic” recording are far too “rock” oriented, too simplistic to be a great band (or even to really show hints of being one), despite the easy charm of the songs and the mostly excellent and unearthly vocal performance of Mr Dead. Indeed, Ohlin was recruited into Mayhem on the strength of his performance here, as Attila later would be from his work on Tormentor’s “Anno Domini”. It was apparent that the obvious talents of Dead would be better utilised elsewhere.

Later Morbid material (after Dead left) moved further in this rock driven direction, and Entombed would eventually move even further into good old rock ‘n’ roll before being consumed by it utterly.

So ultimately we’re left with a decent(ish) and somehow quaintly enjoyable but otherwise totally forgettable recording, made famous and selling many copies merely by virtue of the iconic status of one of its more talented contributors.

And then there’s Burzum’s new album, “Belus”.

A lot has already been written and said about Vikernes’ comeback album and without exception it all comes back to his previous, undisputed classic albums of the black metal genre, the likes of “Det Som Engang Var” and ”Hvis Lyset Tar Oss”.

Without doubt, Vikernes is an iconic leading figure in black metal and the monumental status that Burzum maintains within underground metal means that any new work he creates, especially after a gap of many years, will cause angry and heated debate as to its merits, or lack of.

Now let’s be brutally honest, “Belus” isn’t great. It’s barely even good. It certainly isn’t the equal of any of the previous albums (no, not even the ambient works, you philistines).

Let’s also get something straight, I really wanted to like this album. At a time when almost nothing of real quality is released anymore, I desperately wanted this album to be something special, for it to have the almost magical power of being able to transport the listener to fantastic realms of imagination, to take you on a mysterious journey of unexpected discoveries as the music gradually unravelled.

All that I found in “Det Som Engang Var”. It was only with a reluctant, grudging realisation that I found this was not the case with “Belus”. As much as I wanted to love this new album, I couldn’t find it in myself to pretend that it’s somehow as good or even better than his previous works. 

For a band like Taake, whose music verges on the sweetly fluid emo-melodious side of black metal, “Belus” would be a good album. For any band playing what people mockingly call norsecore, “Belus” would be a good album. And when I say “good”, I only mean in terms relative to the bands in question.

But when we talk about Burzum, listening to “Belus” is a bit like opening a fine bottle of a good vintage champagne and finding it filled with cheap lemonade. And no amount of self-delusion on the part of disappointed fans can hide that.

It seems our last little article on “orthodox black metal” stirred up a bit of angry debate. Here at Anti-Humanism HQ we received a large amount of emails on the subject, mostly in defence of Watain et al.

A common thread running through most of the critcism was “Watain and Ofermod are the best in the scene today, why slag them off when there’s so many other, much shittier bands out there”?

Well, I can say that I’ve observed the career of the likes of Watain since they were self-proclaimed underground heroes (from about the year 2000 kids) and although their debut work was admirable in intent and ambition, it was still miles from the cohesive and stark brilliance of a Mayhem or Immortal (both heavily referenced throughout “Rabid Death’s Curse”).

And from there, it went downhill. Badly. And it seems people don’t want to accept this rather sad reality. Many needy people out there apparently want to believe that the era of Watain is a new golden age for black metal. Perhaps they feel they missed out because they weren’t around in the early 90’s, or want to relive their youth.

It’s a bit like with the proto-emo singer Morrissey, the singer whose fanatical fans project onto him their actual desire to see the Morrissey figure of his former band The Smiths and not the paunchy and boring Morrissey of 2010. Such is the case with Watain. “E” aka Erik has made a career out of fans projecting the ancient skin of Mayhem onto his tiresome Dissection-Swedecore.

In any case, let me ask you something, and I hope you ponder it as you listen to your latest kvltest black metal ever, or the latest br00tulest death metal ever, or whatever is flavour of the month right now.

WHY DO YOU LISTEN TO METAL? Seriously, think about it.  Is it because you like to keep up with the latest coolest bands? Do you like to consume everything new in the genre, whether you think it’s really all that great or not? Are you in fact, like a 17 year old prom queen in a clothes shop?

According to some, the likes of Watain are above criticism because they are “the best in the scene today” (which I wouldn’t agree with in any case). But you know, why support something at all if it isn’t truly great? Something isn’t good just because it’s less crap than everything else.

I suggest a shift in attitude is required. Being a metalhead, a hessian, a black metaller or whatever you want to call it, doesn’t mean you’re a constantly active consumer like some fat idiot in a shopping mall who needs all the latest gadgets/clothes/music all the time. Let’s face the harsh reality that most metal just isn’t very good, and that has always been the case, even more so today.

Praise the good, condemn and ignore the weak, even if this means not buying any new “exciting” CDs every month. Rediscover old classics that you missed or go back to the ones you love. Don’t sit there listening to the latest gimmicky garbage just because it’s new, trying to convince yourself that you enjoy it.

I listen to metal because the heights of the genre surpass or equal any other form of modern music out there. At once of the spiritual and the divine yet of the harshest denied reality, metal at its best takes the listener on a journey of many moods - triumph, fear, horror but always alive and coursing with energy. There’s probably only a couple of hundred albums out there of this quality, but who the hell needs more than 200 albums just so you can say you’re down with what the kids are listening to?

“Orthodox” black metal is very popular at the moment, though is rapidly reaching saturation point if it hasn’t already done so. The likes of Watain and Ondskapt have signed to major labels (relatively speaking, that is) and there are countless imitators of the imitators.

Scientists at the Ohio State Institute of Metal Fail have been studying this tiresome phenomenon since about 2004, and have discovered a succinct formula and breakdown of “orthodox” black metal (concentrating on the main Swedish exponents), which is as follows:

Dissection + Mayhem 1989-1993 + misused Latin + random bible quotes x “orthodox” image + 70’s heavy metal/rock + any old random shit (artist’s choice) = orthodox black metal.

The Institute’s experts have also calibrated a detailed breakdown of “orthodox” black metal in terms of percentages:

25% (the trve) Mayhem, 25% Dissection, 10% random shit, 20% image,  10% Marduk, 5% homosexuality, 5% tracing paper.

The scientists also noted that the percentage quota may vary slightly between individual bands, especially in the case of Mortuus (of Marduk) aka Arioch’s band Fragrant Mist, where the “random shit” percentage may be as high as 60-70%.

Dr. Marcus She-Ra, head of the Ohio State Institute of Metal Fail said: “Bands like Watain, Ondskapt and probably Ofermod, who started this whole thing in the first place, had a certain potential, but they did not live up to it. Our research indicates that these so-called ‘orthodox’ bands do not really understand how an album like ‘De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas’ is constructed and merely seek to emulate it in as simple a way as possible, adding other random elements to widen audience appeal or just because the artists are fucking idiots. In other words these bands know how to appeal to the aesthetic sensibilities of 2nd wave black metal fans, however musically they only graze the surface without ever attaining the heights of their influences. In short, I would say ‘orthodox’ black metal on the whole is nothing but a sham, creating a very marketable product sourced in the kvlty aura of former underground teen-idols like Watain, but having no deeper essence or meaning. It’s all about the image, baby.”

When asked, the Watain camp refused to comment on the research, but did state that they had a lot of merchandise available (beer bottle openers, belt buckles, fan boy picture disks for each member of the band etc), hilariously quoting the following from the Temple ov Watain website:

Remember that wearing Watain merchandise means showing your support towards a divine form of art that has been and will always be rightfully feared and hated by humanity. It is a sign of loyalty or belonging to the hungry ones, the fearless and feared, the enemies of the world as we know it. Support the War!

Controversy has struck Facebook again as thousands of users have voiced their fury with the latest changes to hit their favourite social networking site.

Facebook users have for some time been campaigning and petitioning the site’s administration for a “dislike” option, so they could indicate their distaste for a linked article, update or photo upload. Previously, users were only able to indicate that they “like” something. Caving in to popular demand, Facebook finally added the option last week, but did not stop there. Andy Cocke, a senior technician who worked on the latest update told us:

“We decided that the next probable cause of complaint among our moronic users was the desire to express a dislike or like for other people’s dislikes and likes. So we pre-empted this by adding that feature straight away.”

Those signed up to Facebook are now able to like or dislike another user’s like or dislike, and can even go as far as to like or dislike the fact that someone liked or disliked someone else liking a dislike of someone’s like for a dislike. 

But now users complain that their update pages are filled up with endless lines of likes and dislikes. Mr Cocke admits that this is a serious flaw.

“As impossible as it may seem, we hadn’t foreseen the sheer anal stupidity of many Facebook users. In theory it’s possible to go on liking and disliking indefinitely, which causes problems for people who just want to read what John Smith’s been doing, and not whether John Smith is liking a dislike of a like of a dislike of a dislike of a like.”

One regular user of the site said: “I’ve lost friendships over this new feature. I got real angry at a guy I’d known since High School and disliked their dislike after they disliked the fact that I disliked someone disliking a favourable article link about President Obama that I liked. They said they’d gotten confused and had meant to like my dislike, but the damage had been done. We haven’t spoken on the internet since.” 

Plans to enable users to become fans of themselves and others becoming fans of something have now been shelved after a test run crashed the entire World Wide Web. In under quarter of an hour, six million people became fans of each other becoming fans of becoming fans of a user from New Zealand becoming a fan of quilted toilet paper.

Running a website allows you to have access to lots of interesting information about the people who visit you. Where they come from, what pages they spent most time looking at, their sexual preferences etc. You can even read through lists of the search terms they clumsily typed in before stumbling across the apparently much despised haven for savage mockery that you now find yourself trawling through.

The search terms below not only reveal the idiocy of a great proportion of web users, but also their base preoccupations with the trivial, the useless and the irrelevant. One wonders what the buggery fuck was going through their slovenly bovine minds when they rattled some of these little retarded word clusters out. One also wonders what the hell they expected to find at the other end…

All of the following are genuine search terms that somehow led people to this site, lovingly handpicked by me from a list of thousands over a period of about 6 months, believe it or not!

Fenriz girlfriend
Mortuus girlfriend
Favorite color fenriz
Fenriz heidi klum
Ted bundy sexy
Bundy bit my ass
How big was ted bundys dick
Satanic warmaster naked
Kebab murder cumfest
Satanic warmaster gay pics
Who is antihumanism.com
Marzipan euronymous
Poo of satyricon
Portuguese shirt midget

The latest in a long line of increasingly tiresome “viral ad campaigns” is gathering momentum, this time originating from thisman.org, a crappily designed website purporting to be gathering “evidence” of a man who is allegedly manifesting in the dreams of unrelated people across the globe.

Hilariously and apparently without any sense of irony, one suggestion cited on the site as a reason for this made-up epidemic of dreamstate breaking and entering is that there’s a gifted individual out there somewhere “surfing” people’s dreams.

In any case, we can now reveal from leaked sources the actual product that this campaign is promoting: a new penis enlargement pill. The staple of a million spam emails is now being hawked around by the face of a hermaphrodite.

Confused? Consider the mugshot image (above) of “this man” as being spread by viral street campaigners. Then consider the photo of the hermaphrodite below, which is soon to be released worldwide.  Yup, the strength of the pill is so immense (the makers claim) that even a woman (albeit a very ugly and sinister looking one) will sprout a throbbing member within days.

Mystery solved. Spread the word guys!

Does a Morrissey shit in the woods? Why yes, yes he does, at least according to the newly unveiled album cover for lame singles compilation cash-in “Swords” (Polydor). That’s right, another collection of sub-par songs, this time B sides from recentish singles, as if the A sides were any bloody good in the first place.

Still trading on his iconic 1980’s status as indie rock legend with The Smiths (“indie” as a term was intended to denote the independent nature of the record label upon which an artist was signed, not a genre of music kids), the hilariously misjudged photo that will adorn the as yet unreleased album seems to suggest that the quiff-haired crooning moaner has just taken, or is perhaps about to take, a large dump. In his expensive vintage jeans.

Look at that straining face. There’s some serious pushing going on there, and as a militant vegetarian (Meat is Murder, remember) let’s face it, when it does finally drop, it’s not going to be pleasant is it? And why the hell he hasn’t dropped his pants to clear the way for his steaming Anglo-Irish turd isn’t clear, unless perhaps he has a fetish for self-shitting.

Or, maybe I’ve misread this. Morrissey is known for writing songs about the exploits of various criminals (the Krays, the Moors Murderers etc), perhaps this image is in tribute to the infamous Green River killer, Gary Ridgway, who dumped his strangulated victims in remote woodland.

Is the past-it proto-emo squatting down as he inserts a rock into a dead prostitute’s vagina? Or regaining his breath after a nasty necrophiliac rigor mortis sex sesh? Whatever the explanation for the bizarre photo, Morrissey himself issued the following statement via his manager:

“As usual, everyone hates me. I love that photo and am quite unconcerned by any negative reaction, I’m quite used to it, believe me. But it hurts sometimes. Oh the pain of it! Well, laugh all you like, I will be, all the way to the bank! Now, if only someone would love me. For ME.”  

It’s traditional to write articles about the likes of Morrissey using various lyrics and making puns from his song titles, however, I’ve decided to close with two recent witty and quintessentially Moz quotes from the past week:

“I can smell burning flesh, I hope to god it’s human.”
Uttered to the crowd at a gig last week before storming off stage in protest at someone cooking meat backstage.

“This charming man…cough cough, shit I can’t breathe. Aaaaaaaaggggggghhhh.”
Uttered to the crowd at a gig last night before falling to his knees unconscious and being rushed to hospital. He should consider himself very fortunate he didn’t die, it just would not do to have died in Swindon Leisure Centre. That would have been vulgar in the extreme!

NEXT WEEK: Morrissey takes a piss up against a lamppost for front cover of C side single compilation, “Whores” (Polydor), then collapses and dies at Grimsby Conservative Club.

It was a cold, misty morning, and Johan Lahger entered his dark and mouldy woodland bedroom deep within the depths of somewhere or other in Sweden.

He turned his moss-covered laptop on and plucked his New York Yankees baseball cap from his head. On a shelf above his desk, next to a radio controlled Dalek toy, lay his legendary troll mask, buried beneath almost 10 years of dust.

In the blue green glare of the Microsoft Windows logo, Johan reverently lifted the garishly painted papier-mache mask and attached it to his grinning face. Johan had magickally transformed into his infamous stage persona. He was once again the almighty SHAMAATAE!!!

“Fuck, the elastic’s really tight, I must have put on weight” he muttered as finally he logged on, scratching thoughtfully at his crotch.

Ding!  Aha, an email had arrived! Shamaatae (for it was he) clicked on the icon and read with impatience the typo-ridden news from his record label. The artwork for Arckanum’s comeback album, “ÞÞÞÞÞÞÞÞÞÞÞ” was ready at last. Excellent! He quickly downloaded the image files, the Great God Pan helping them speed through the okkultik broadband in a digital dance of flowing 0’s and 1’s.

“What the flying FUCK!??!!!?!!” Shamaatae gasped as he gazed upon the projected front cover of his forthcoming album. Instead of eleven Þ runes invoking some kind of mysticness, a crudely photoshopped line of plain old alphabet “p’s” had been hastily pasted across the bottom of the cover.

The woodland troll grabbed his i-phone and immediately rang the label boss.

“Hell-o? Johan?” came the cheery answer.

“It’s Shamaatae actually, I’ve got the mask on. I’ve just received your email with the cover art…”

“What d’you think? Looks good eh?”

The troll huffed. “No it bloody well does NOT. You’ve totally fucked up. I wanted a little line of RUNES for the album title, you’ve just put a load of sodding p’s on there!”

“Yeah I had some trouble with that, I don’t really know how to type runes. It took me 6 years to find out how to do umlauts for christ’s sake. I thought using p’s was a good compromise.”

“But those fucking little p’s don’t have any occult significance you fuckhead! What mystic relevance do a line of p’s add up to? It looks like something from Sesame Street!”

“Look I’m sorry alright? How about I just remove the lettering altogether? It’ll look better like that, I promise. Okay?”

“Okay. Good then,” sulked the mighty troll.

“Just one other thing. The CD pressing plant called this morning. They’re not able to spread the tracks over 11 CDs like you wanted…”

“Oh for fuck’s sake!!!! I knew I should have gone with Osmose! Those guys have custom keyboards with “666” keys so you don’t even need to press “6” three times! AND they know how to do runes AND sodding umlauts too!”  

Shamaatae hung up and threw his i-phone across the desk.

Snap! The elastic holding the troll mask onto Johan’s face snapped and Shamaatae fell lifeless to the floor. The raging troll had turned back into mild-mannered Johan once more.

“Bollocks, the sun’s come up” observed Johan ruefully as Shamaatae’s grotesque features grimaced up at him.

“Oh well,” Johan sighed as he reached up, carefully pulling another rubber mask down from his shelf, “I’ve still got you Ronald.”

He attached the rubber, factorymade mask to his face and squinted through the eyeholes into an ornate trollish mirror. Ronald McDonald stared back.

“I’ve gots me some hamburgling to be a foilin’!”