This past Thursday, July 29th in a secret location in London (as if anyone in their right mind would want to attend anyway), the tiresome annual Kerrang! Awards ceremony took place.

The festivities, featuring a sodomy theme and attended by utter wankers from around the world, were hosted by vacuous idiots Slipknot / Stone Sour (huh?) frontman Corey Taylor and Anthrax guitar wimp Scott Ian (who had nothing better to do presumably).

At the ceremony, rock music’s version of Heat magazine paid tribute to the drugs Morphine and Fentanyl, a cocktail of which happily killed late Slipknot bassist Paul Gray in May, awarding the meds with the golden K! for Services To Metal. Taylor accepted the award on the pharmaceuticals’ behalf to a standing ovation.

After the awards, ITN (on what must have been the slowest news day ever) spoke to Corey about what the award symbolized to him and how it felt to accept the award for his beloved drug of choice. You can see the poignant interview somewhere else you fucking retards.

Bayusik, yesterday

We contacted Mikael Bayusik to get the low-down on what really went on with the Night Conquers Day keyboard player. Here’s what he had to say:

I found this on the Metal-Archives page for black metal band Night Conquers Day and it’s somehow funnier than anything that’s been posted here (not difficult you may say). Presumably it’s from some interview or other with mainman Mikael Bayusik, though I can find no confirmation.

“Raistlyn did some session keyboards on “The First Snowfall” album, most notably was the great Intro that he recorded for that debut CD. He mysteriously disappeared during our debut CD recording sessions and has not been seen since. Once in a great while he will call (randomly) and play some amazing keyboard piece over the phone for me, but never say who it is. He then just hangs up. “

*ring ring*

“Hello, Night Conquers Day residence.”

*tap tap, click*

“Uh, hello?”

*Doo. Da dum. Dala la da da*

“Raistlyn for fuck’s sake it’s Sunday morning, I’ve gotta take the kids to football practice.”

*Da la dum dum DUM dum di dum*

“Look, that sounds great but…”

*Do li tum ti tum la la la fa li dah*

“Can we please just talk about this? Maybe you can come play on the next Tearstained album?”

*Do dah dah dah prom pom pom di doo*

“At least let me know why you…”

*click*

“Goddamn it”

Scooby and the gang were taking vacation in Sweden. As usual, Scooby and Shaggy had wandered off by themselves and were about to get into some spooky trouble at the local recording studio!

“Say Scoobs, why’s that freaky dude over there like staring at us like that?”

“Rhy ron’t row Rhaggy!”

“Zoiks! He’s coming over!”

Scooby shook nervously all over as a creepy looking midget with long, badly dyed, greasy hair approached the two friends.

“What are you two doing here?” he said in a high pitched and rather gay voice.

Laughing in that rather irritating way that he does, Shaggy scratched his head as he replied, “Like, I don’t know, we just got like lost I guess, we’ll be on our way! Sorry!”

“Rhat’s right! Rorry!”

“Wait a minute. If you want you can come in and watch us playing one of our new songs. You see, my name’s Erik and I play in a really happening black metal group called Watain. In fact, it’s the most evil and blasphemous band ever!”

Scooby placed his paws over his eyes as Erik bustled the two chums into the recording studio. Inside, a fat man was sweating behind the mixing desk and was pale with fright.

“W-who are th-these g-g-guys Erik?” he said in a terrified voice.

“Just some… aquaintances of mine” he said with an evil cackle, “they’ve come to listen to our latest black metal record! Bwa hahaha! It’s the most evil and darkest and sataniest album ever recorded! It’s going to destroy the whole world! Hahahaha!!!!”

As Scooby and Shaggy watched, Erik ordered the fearful record producer to play back one of the songs off their latest album “Lawless Darkness”.

“Rhaggy! Ro romething!” Scooby howled in terror.

“Like, I don’t know what to do old buddy! We’re like, doomed!”

Suddenly the music began to play at deafening volume. Scooby and Shaggy cowered, then slowly uncovered their eyes and looked at each other in bewilderment.

“Rhaggy, rhat’s rappening?”

“I don’t know Scoobs, this music like, totally sucks! It’s just lame rock/heavy metal music with harsh vocals. It sounds like a Judas Priest tribute act performed by a bunch of like, Down’s Syndrome children or something.”

Erik angrily slammed his little fists on the mixing desk and tried to run out the door, but tripping over his ego, he fell flat on his face and was held down by several police officers who appeared out of nowhere.

“Well done you two” said one of the senior officers, “we’ve been watching this little villain for a while now. If you hadn’t stopped him, this crap would be all over MTV by now.”

One of the police officers grabbed Erik’s head and pulled upwards. His face stretched until his face came off altogether.

“Zoiks! Scoobs! It’s like, Blacky Lawless out of WASP!”

“That’s right! I used the kvlty trappings of underground black metal to pass off terrible music on moronic people who don’t know any better. And I would have got away with it too, if it wasn’t for you pesky kids.”

“Like, what’ll happen to him now chief?” Shaggy asked the senior officer as Blacky was led away.

“Don’t you kids worry, we’re going to take him out to the woods and shoot him in the back of the neck.”

“Well Scoobs, I guess that’s what you get for being a Lawless Blacky (Darkness)! Ha ha! I don’t know, make your own lame ending joke up.”

“Scooby dooby dooooo!”

Having badly upset Fenriz of Darkthrone merely by presenting him with an unpalatable truth, it’s come to light that Robert of criminul gangsta black metal act Ritual is still rather pissed off at us as well.

Check this out: Ritual interview

It doesn’t bother me that people like antihumanism.com think I am a retarted ghetto kid from a broken home

It doesn’t bother you, yet you mention us several times in a single interview? Even Fenriz only slags us off once every few months or so.

I read an interview on a web site a few weeks ago and, well, it was extremely unprofessional (to put it mildly…)

Yep, Mr. Metal Crypt is talking about us, and Mr Ritual still thinks we’re this Prozak dude. Honestly, we at Antihumanism.com think well of Metal Crypt as a website, but calling us “unprofessional” is downright slander my friends. Last time I checked, our entire site had 2 less typing errors than Terrorizer’s latest issue, so put that in your metal crypt and entomb it. Metal Crypt writers please note sarcasm, thanks. ;)

I noticed that the comments on the web site were pretty inflammatory, and rarely in your favour.

To be fair, most people were jumping on the bandwagon, kicking a man when he was down, which is easy to do. But it was still funny.

Anyway, Rob, just let this bitterness towards us go mate. It’s unbecoming of you. And take solace in the fact that you will never be as absurd and pathetic as Fenriz has become.

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!

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.