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’!”

If, like me, you consider that the genres of black metal and grunge have little in common besides key figures in both having blown their heads off with shotguns, you may be surprised to learn that a project exists claiming to mix those disparate music forms together.

Or probably, you wont be surprised in the least, if considering the fact that almost every single other music genre has by now been incorporated into a bastardised gimmick-laden form of black metal disguised as unique originality by some clueless hivemind drone peons hoping to gain their 15 minutes of fame.

Well without further ado, here’s what I’ve been building up to, it’s my fail of the week: Ea, Lord of the Tapes (that’s the cutest, most self-referential, ironic and hipsterish label name I’ve heard in a while) release #1: HØST (on kvltsette of corpse!).

Here’s the record label (I don’t know why I call it a record label, it’s just some bored dude with a tape deck who wants to be part of something, anything, to stave off existential fears of the futility of existence) description:

By mixing the sounds of grunge and black metal together, they end up having a very unique and incredibly fresh sound. This 7 track, self titled album is full of RIFFS, catchy bass lines, rockin’ drums, and Burzum grunts. This is black-’n-roll at its finest.

If you like black metal but you want something entirely different, check out HØST.

Oh dear. Take a minute to fully digest this abominable description. Maybe do a few bench presses or go for a quick run to stave off those horrible homosexual vibes from ruining your morning.

If I liked black metal but wanted something entirely different, I guess I’d listen to music that still had the same spirit communicated through different means. I’d try Dead Can Dance or Tangerine Dream or a myriad of classical composers. Not Kurt Cobain with corpsepaint.

KILL ALL HIPSTERS.

Yep, exclusive to Antihumanism.com, we’ve got the skinny on Darkthrone’s new audio turd.

See below for a full track from their new album, “Total Deaf” (uploaded to youtube for convenience and so you won’t have this crap saved onto your hard drive).

Tracklisting:

1. No feelings (no ideas)
2. Nostalgic nerd
3. Rehashed trash
4. Mailsorting post office punks
5. Park benches and cheap slags
6. Fuck Off and Buy
7. Total contempt, norse norse norse

Lyric excerpt:

“No Feelings (No Ideas)” from the album “Total Deaf” (Peaceville 2009)

No feelings inhabit my dark soul
No feelings, just Rock ’n’ Roll
I can’t think of anything to say
But I’ll fucking say it anyway
…
No feelings
Dead inside
No feelings
Like I died
No feelings
Hide the tears
No feelings
No ideas

Thanks to Cargést

Some of you may sadly remember a highly derivative and tedious US black metal band called Ritual who released some stuff on Wild Rags a few years back. Probably most of you who’ve actually heard of them only know them through a Xasthur cover version, which was just as dreary as the original.

At the time of their activity the band were derided for their laughable attempts to not only copy the Norwegian bands in sound, but also in action. But whereas the Norwegian bands made supreme music and burned churches, Ritual only made dire music that had next to no connection with the music of Immortal, Burzum et al beyond shallow surface aesthetic, paving the way for hordes of other hopeless “me too” black metal. And their “heinous, shocking crime” that they still make so much of today was to merely spray graffiti on a church like some retarded ghetto kid from a broken home.  

Anyway, we got wind recently (a distinctly pooey wind) that the mediocre fools were back in action, and trying to reinvent the past with themselves as some sort of “cult” and “legendary” band, ho ho. So it seemed only right that we subject them to our usual rigorous interview process!

1) Are you still spraypainting churches in a rather dismal attempt at emulating the Norwegians?

(A) If I were to vandalize churches these days. I would spray paint violent bible passages so that believers would question the insanity of the book they follow. True Satanism/Luciferianism is a spiritual rebellion and not against Christians, but rather the restrictions placed on the mind by their beliefs. We seek to transform the individual through magick into something better. The Norwegian kings sold out for more wealth and their mothers were tired of seeing their sons killed in battle. Returning to their Pagan past would never work because they would sell out again.

2) I take it you’re working on new material, is it as boring and generic as the debut?

(A) Generic compared to what? The sell out Life Metal being released every week! Ritual’s debut is considered a classic. You obvioulsy were not around to appreciate it back in the day and compare to the countless clone bands of today. The new material will be unlike anything heard as it follows no rulebook and brings many new sounds and atmospheres into the songcraft.

3) Are you going to keep making a big deal out of the vague Xasthur connection for promotional purposes and so as to interest hipsters in your music?

(A) Hipsters are fair weather fans and we don’t have enough emo parts to our music for them so no. Xasthur has covered Ritual and has been a friend for 15 years. We simply listed every ex member of the band and their work outside of the band so no one would bitch. Are you a fan or an internet tough guy? I’ve faced numerous attempts on my life in prison and would gladly print my address for you to ask me these questions in person if you’d like.

4) Are you going to fix the Ritual logo so that it actually works on a black background? The wing is fucked at the moment because you’ve just made it a negative image, you see.

(A) That is the site created by Ian Fleming (guitarist). I’m not aware of the wing being fucked up but I will take a look at it. Are you going to fix your myspace page and add more than 24 people and post a picture of yourself so I can buy you a drink when we meet? I’m sure this is some jealous asshole from the past who never made any music of his own.

5) Any last words?

(A) Do you have any last words?

Well, seeing as you ask:

1) Don’t believe the inevitable hype kids, Ritual’s debut was NEVER considered a classic album. Sure, it gained them a brief popularity due to being in the right place at the right time (the mid-90s when black metal became increasingly popular and therefore eventually populist in outlook, and in the relatively black metal-free US). Ritual were one of the earliest bands from the US to start cloning the Norwegians and they even failed at that. Ritual were soon forgotten once I Shalt Become achieved Ritual’s pathetically low ambitions far more successfully. People who knew the US underground at that time were aware of acts like Havohej and Profanatica, you know, bands that actually had their own voice and good music and stuff. So Ritual were ever so slightly redundant even then.
The band later came back to people’s attention after a Xasthur cover version, much like how Nargaroth brought a couple of forgotten mediocre bands like Lord Foul into the kvlt limelight. They were quickly forgotten again however, as the music was DULL and BORING.

2) Accusing us of being “internet toughguys” seems a bit rich coming from someone who goes on to utter this classic of keyboard warriorism: “I’ve faced numerous attempts on my life in prison and would gladly print my address for you to ask me these questions in person if you’d like.”

3) You’d think someone stupid enough to spraypaint their own band logo on a church and expect not to get caught would be somewhat embarrassed of their actions. But not Ritual, they’ve tried to build a career out of it. Hilariously, the official Ritual myspace now classes the band as “Criminal Black Metal”, even going so far as to print t-shirts bearing this idiotic slogan. Yo nigga, Ritual in da house!!! We done time for dat badass spraypaint job we did on a church! Dat makes us fuckin’ tuff!!!! And not at all stoopid! Hip hop gangsta black metuhl muthafuckas!!!!

A representative of the band then contacted us again with a further message with a link to the Ritual myspace page, as if to placate us or make us change our minds:

“This is the real Ritual page established by the creator of the band Robert 1993. Ian has created a page of his own and may write music here and there as he is busy with other projects non related to Black Metal. New Ritual music is on display here. If you don’t like it so be it.”

Amen!

German born artist Johann Joachim Püschel claims that the designer of Mayhem’s iconic logo plagiarised a detail from his work, The Keeper of the Infernal City, that he engraved way back in the mid 18th century.

During a chance encounter with founding member Euronymous in the afterlife, Püschel recognised the batwings on the deceased guitarist’s Mayhem logo t-shirt as being eerily familiar.

He told us: “I saw zis strange longhaired midget standink in ze dark corner of der avterlife with ein schwarz candle all drippink wax on his hand. He vass vearing a garment of clothink emblazoned with vot looked like ein detail from mein artvork. I demanded to be knowink from vhere he haf obtained der garment from. Der svine dropped der schwarz candle und ran avay screamink like ein girl.”

The dead kraut artist continued, “but then I am bumpink into notorious evil kinder vinkle-touchink dancer Michael Jackson, who ist tellink me der logo was ov his favourite musik group – ein schwarz metals band from Norvay called Mayhem.” 

Speaking from his ivy and moss covered grave yesterday, Püschel’s badly decomposed skeleton slammed the cult black metal band: “das designer of der Mayhem logo haf totally ripped off mein engravink of a demon that I haf painstakingly engraved in der year of der lord 1755. If you are lookink closely, der wings are almost exackly der same. Ach! The svinehund!”

Having recruited a lawyer specialising in back-from-the-dead-artist-and-underground-metal-band-logo-plagiarism claims to represent his case, Püschel now hopes to get his bony hands on several ten’s of euros backdated to the mid-1980’s which he believes are owed to him.

In response, the original designer of Mayhem’s logo, “Nella”, issued a flustered statement from his woodland cabin in Norway: “This is complete bullshit, I have no idea who the hell this Johann dude even is and I’ve never met this Keeper of the Infernal City guy either. Anyway how can he sue me or Mayhem if he’s dead? Things might be different in the afterlife and Germany but there’s a law against that in Norway.”

A spokesman for Mayhem’s record label told us that the band were too drunk on their own sense of self-satisfied smugness and artistic bankruptcy to make any comment on the subject whatsoever, though it’s understood that Hellhammer confirmed he would indeed play the drums “for any cunt wot asks me, yeah?”

However, a representative of the Centre for Hessian Studies defended the adaptation of the 18th century artwork in Mayhem’s logo: “metal music like that of the old Mayhem (pre-1994) harks back to a time before the comfortable and safe plastic world of today. Like Püschel’s engraving, it depicts and even glorifies the horrific and fantastic to stimulate our dormant imaginations and so that we might remember to appreciate existence to its fullest extent, no matter how harsh the reality may be.”

Typical brainless Michael Jackson fan’s twitter/blog etc comment: “may God bless you in Heaven! Michael Jackson, forever king of pop”.

Typical kvlt black metal kiddie’s twitter/blog etc comment: “may Satan’s blackwinged angels guide you to the infernal realm! Steingrim Torson, forever king of darkness”.

Since 1993, black metal has been full of laughable people wanting to be the next icons of the scene (that latter word pronounced with an effeminate lisp) as an ego boost and affirmation of importance and self-worth. Most try to impose this dubious honour on themselves by acting in a manner likely to be perceived as “kvlt” by the kidz and those of low intelligence. Still others face attempts to have it imposed on them by outside parties desperate to be part of something they believe to be cool.

One individual I recall being eager to be crowned “king of black metal” was Paul “Typhon” Thind of notorious alleged rip-off label Necropolis (or Negropolis as some later dubbed them). Probably most famous for releasing the Nordic Metal CD in tribute to Euronymous, Thind made much of his tenuous connections to the glamour of the Norwegian movement, mostly for various money making schemes and enticing bands to work with his “Norway-approved” label.

Claiming a close kinship with Oystein “Euronymous” Aarseth, he felt entitled to a special place in the growing (and soon to be quickly decreasing in quality) black metal scene. Of course, his “closeness” was nothing of the sort, Aarseth being eager to write to anyone who wrote to him especially if it meant possible new avenues of promotion and distribution for “his” bands.

The fact that the Nordic Metal CD was released on Thind’s young label was a matter of mere business expediency than anything else. A compilation CD had already been planned with most of the artists who eventually appeared on the tribute album. Thind couldn’t resist the opportunity of declaring in the Nordic Metal booklet that “Euronymous’s memory has spawned an entire series”, a thinly veiled proposed business plan attempting to cash in on the death of his “brother”. The series of compilation albums did not take off however, though the original tribute sold well and exposed many to the Scandinavian style of black metal.

Thind’s label lasted several more years until collapse, surrounded by rumours and tales of swindling, rip-offing, talking in a fake British accent (no one knows why Thind adopted this, possibly he was coming out of the closet) and declaring himself king of US black metal, to much amusement. His whereabouts are currently unknown, though it seems unlikely that he sits atop a throne of skulls being sucked off by satanic sluts wearing a crown made from the melted down mastertapes of “De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas” and “The Return”.  

And then we have the unfortunates who find themselves being put forward as new icons of this once potent music. Of course, this is rarely out of any real adulation for the individual as such, but more as a vicarious means of being involved in something “significant”. Usually those responsible for this nonsense became involved with black metal well after the blood fire death of the early 1990s and as such feel they somehow missed out on the genre’s defining non-musical events. By “defining”, I mean in terms of the mainstream media perception, from which the majority of modern black metal listeners derive their flawed understanding of the genre in the first place.

One such potential icon is of course Jon Nodtveidt of Dissection, but another more recent example is Steingrim “Shotgun Gutsfuck” Torson of Celestial Bloodshed and numerous other 2nd rate new wave of vaguely-alright-I-suppose Norwegian black metal bands.   

Even before his absurd accidental death at the hands of a friend, Torson’s bands and those of his close colleagues were hailed and hyped as the “next big thing” by scenester types, eager for Norway to produce something half-decent again so they can say in later years that they “were there” when it all went down. Or at least, that they were posting comments on blabbermouth when this massive non-event took place.

When news spread of Torson’s violent death, these desperate people clasped their hands together with joy as they hoped that finally the kvlt crowd-appeasing era of black metal had its very own Dead or Euronymous figure. This needy and pathetic desire for new icons to venerate quickly began to manifest itself in the actions of numberless aimless morons.

In various blogs, myspace profiles, facebook groups and forums, idiots are making cute little photoshopped In Memoriam (using Latin instead of the plainer “in memory” is more kvlt) pictures much like “bereaved” Michael Jackson fans are doing, because their lives are empty and need injecting with surrogate meaning. The crowd are always the same, no matter if they make their icon a not especially talented singer with a gruesome white face or a… well, you get the picture.

Footnote 28.07.2009 – Since this article was published several of you have written in ”to confirm” that Necropolis Records did indeed “rip you off” and that there’s nothing “alleged” about it.

Well, aside from the fact that it has little or nothing to do with the article, I’d like to state that I couldn’t care less about you losing $15 over 10 years ago, which probably helped to fund a few good albums anyway.

Though Thind was undoubtedly a somewhat absurd and ridiculous character (thus why I used him to illustrate a point), his label did at least release a handful of classic releases, which is more than can be said for most record labels nowadays, “rip off” or not.

Not satisfied with not killing a drug-crazed armed robber in a Clint Eastwood style convenience store shootout (as reported elsewhere), Malevolent Creation guitarist Phil Fasciana now claims to have destroyed an entire PLANET!

Speaking to us via phone in a deep, muffled voice and breathing heavily, Fasciana announced that he wanted to be referred to as “Darth Fasciana”, and that he was even channelling the Dark Side of the Force to create the most evil death metal album ever.

According to the truth-dodging death metaller, he was standing on the bridge of his Toyota Deathstar when his communications officer received a transmission from a nearby planet. “I was giving orders for the navigation officer to set a course for the Intergalactic Grocerystore for some tampons” he lied, “when we got an urgent distress call. Apparently a horde of crack-addict Ewoks was attacking an Imperial outpost with little nigga spears and rap music, led by Max Cavalera, the leader of the rebel alliance.”

The fork-tongued guitarist continued: “obviously as the Emperor’s servant and a rabid death metaller, I’m a pretty fucked up dude. I’ve been in loads of hardcore life and death situations before and I played a really hard guitar solo once as well, so this was nothing to someone like me.”

“I considered sending an elite force of Stormtroopers down to the planet’s surface to support the outpost, but as my mom will tell you, I’m a pretty brutal motherfucker so I fired up the Deathstar’s VVT-I, 16 valve engine and blew the whole fucking planet up instead” he bullshitted. “It was pretty messy, but I have no remorse for Cavalera at all. Or his stupid Ewoks. Or the outpost I was supposed to be helping. Look, I’m an American, you have to allow for a bit of collateral damage.”  

“Anyway the Emperor said it didn’t matter too much and didn’t want to make big deal out of it. He said I could even have my own custom built pimped up Tie-Fighter if I wanted, all in black to match my outfit. Never in my life have I lied about anything as stupid as this before, but I really had to stop that dreadlocked twat Cavalera from overtaking the outpost. Not to mention stopping him making any more music, that alone was worth killing several billion people in a cataclysmic Toyota powered holocaust. Ha Ha!”

In related news, it’s been reported that the bounty hunter Glen Benton from Deicide died after falling into a gigantic vagina in the desert. There are unconfirmed reports that Profanatica’s Paul Ledney slammed the huge vagina as “disgusting”, before saving Princess Frost (the really queer one out of Satyricon) from a slobbering, enormously fat Imperial the Pizza Hutt out of Krieg.

When Blasphemous of Veles said he preferred to write lyrics reflecting the harsh realities of existence rather than compose “fairytales about elves or knights and their cocks”, he could have been talking about an intertard black metal band I’ve unfortunately discovered called Moat.

Observe the following Moat lyrics (and I promise you these excerpts have not been edited or altered in any way, check Metal Archives for reference):

History shall be changed forever
Thoughts of darkness won’t leave his head
He leaves nothing for the better
Evil shall rule the land
So join him and take his hand
(The Knight’s Return)

So there’s this really evil knight dude, right? Probably all in black armour with red eyes glowing out of his shiny helmet and shit, and possibly a time-traveller as well according to the first nonsensical line. Sounds pretty kvlt, if not for the fact that he apparently minces about holding your hand while he commits all these badass knightly deeds. Thoughts of darkness won’t leave his head? Holding other men’s hands? What is he, an Aspie Emo Gorgoroth fan or something?

I summon upon thee
To misguide the light
I summon upon thee
To bring in the night
As the night begins to lose
The light withers away
There shall be no more moonlight
However, it shall return tomorrow to stay!
(As Moonlight Glows Over Murky Waters)

Make your bloody mind up! You summon some unnamed thing to bring in the night, but the night “loses” somehow yet the light withers away too? The light goes away, ok fine, that’s your typical black metal lyric, but even the moonlight? The moon is pretty kvlt you know, missed a trick there. But then it comes back again! TO STAY! Scary shit!

As I walk through the bleak forest of time
I see a troll chanting a rhyme
Upon my approach, he doesn’t seem to mind
What is the matter if I may ask
The time has come for you to pass….
(A Troll Led Me to my Demise)

Quite frankly, something like this is far beyond parody, though I suppose it must take a degree of talent to write in the style of a Downs syndrome child.

This article is vaguely inspired by an amusing forum post of an Anti-Humanism.com colleague, originally trolling an internet bedroom black metal retard called Pasha “Warharan” Kebabarab, who has a series of ridiculous “bands” with increasingly absurd names. Perhaps you’ve heard your friends laughing about them or read a flame war between Warharan and every other poster on a forum. They include the likes of Darkness Ravening, Achaemenid, Luftwaffe Raid, The Doctor (the almost inevitable debut album title: “The Doctor is In”) and of course, fucking Moat, with whom you’ve just become uncomfortably familiar with above.

Any one of these bands epitomises the worst of modern “black metal”. Taken as a whole, you’d almost believe it was some kind of joke like Nargaroth, but no. Has even Nargaroth sunk so low as to trawl myspace for desperate sluttish women to use as a poor gimmick by posing naked and “singing” for him? Or to release concept albums based around trash Hollywood films like Tom Hanks vehicle The ‘Burbs?

Warharan is comparable to Finnish scenester Werwolf of Satanic Warmaster, but even more laughable. Both of these clowns participate in “the scene” solely for the sake of participating and being seen to participate. They have nothing to say and have created absolutely nothing meaningful despite having about a million bands and side-projects between them.

The only difference is that, whereas Werwolf is a cunning businessman able to form a sellable kvlt product engineered to foster a status for himself amongst the dullards that mainly comprise black metal listeners nowadays, Warharan has no aesthetic sense (or indeed, common sense) whatsoever.

Imagine a child drawing a house. Poking his tongue out with concentration, he carefully puts the sky at the top – a narrow band of blue and a crude sun with little lines emanating from it underneath. Then comes the house, a couple of blue windows, red roof and maybe a little stick figure family arranged on either side. It has no relation to a real house apart from the fact that you can say, ‘it’s a house, badly drawn by a child’. It says nothing, it’s just a literal depiction of an object. Warharan makes music in a similar fashion. All you can say about it being: ‘someone has superficially observed black metal music and they have badly emulated it’. Werwolf of course would steal a more talented child’s drawing of a house and xerox it several times for kvlt.

At one time our talentless friend tried to be kvlt like Werwolf, releasing CDR albums entitled “As Night sets over ARYANA” (ooh, you racist!) at the height of the NS trend (swiftly followed by Luftwaffe Raid, arf arf) and Moat’s generic classic taken from the reject bin of overused directionless kvlt: “Black Fucking Metal”. He proudly presented these turds to the users of various forums and to his incredulity was mocked mercilessly. With his scenester aspirations dead in the water, he laughed it off (though he was crying behind the monitor) and began taking a different, uniquely stupid approach to his (f)art: ‘well I didn’t mean it anyway, being kvlt is gay’.

And now I understand from the official Moat myspace (as if there would be a fan site) that Warharan’s changing Moat’s name to the kvltier moniker of “Naturgeist”. WoooOOOoooOOOOOooooo!!!! Scareee! Not just a ghost…a NATURE ghost! Perhaps the ghost of a fallen tree, haunting the forest until it avenges itself on those it holds responsible: soil erosion and a strong gust of wind. Of course Warharan had to wait a reasonable amount of time to prevent his losing face and caving in to the obvious fact that Moat is a stupid name for a band of any genre.

I leave you now with the original forum commentary (slightly edited for context) that inspired this little article:

Hey Warharan, about that lovely picture/avatar of yourself. What is it supposed to do? Are we supposed to laugh? Be scared? Be impressed? Frankly you look like a real idiot. I can picture the scene though:

Once the corpsepaint is applied, you walk smartly up to the mirror and give yourself a once over. You practice a few grimaces before achieving the “right” look. You hold your hands up in the air ala Werwolf of Satanic Warmaster or maybe a spastic t-rex, but decide against it. You smile once or twice to see how it looks to smile in corpsepaint, then you get serious again. Stepping away from the mirror, you start to wish you had some kvlt props like a swastika flag or candles to pose with, but you think the swastika is an insult to your arabic race, and the candles are just too dangerous. Finally you grab the camera and with trembling hands take a couple of photos.

You quickly run to the computer and upload the images. In one of them you’re looking a bit gay, and in the other one you’re looking really gay. So you take the gay one and photoshop it a bit to reduce colours to b&w (as your neck is arabic brown and isn’t very black metal) and to edit out the arm holding the camera. Finally you upload it to your forum profile and smile to yourself. Now with every post you make, your grimness will be plain for everyone to see and admire. “Yes”, they will say, “that’s Warharan, of Moat”.

You utter retard.

Morgan Steinmeyer Hakansson, guitarist and founder-member of Swedish black metal band Marduk, wistfully blew a smoke ring into the air, contemplating the fine curves of his Harley Davidson from the lounge window. With a sigh he stubbed out his cigar and drained two fingers of whisky as he sat heavily into a dark leather armchair, dislodging a signed Pantera CD from the armrest with a clatter. That cunt Satyr had left it at his house after Frost’s birthday party (it read: TO MY MATEY SATEY, HEIL HITLER, LOVE PHIL with a badly drawn swastika underneath). He felt down the side of the chair and found a little marzipan demon – all that remained of the cake he’d carefully baked the day before. Of course, Frost had been drunk and had wiped his limp penis all over the icing, the ungrateful dubiously gendered twat. Morgan closed his eyes and sank deep into thought as he usually did at this time of day.

It wasn’t fair. He’d done everything he could to make Marduk what it was, admittedly more through sheer bloody-minded persistence than any real discernable talent, and deep down he knew that it had never been enough. Sure, they had a relatively big fanbase and made a more than comfortable living from their music, but most of their fans were total idiots and there was always the nagging doubt that they were far from equal amongst their contemporaries. Ivar from Enslaved had pissed all over Morgan’s shoes on tour once and on demanding an apology, Ivar simply farted and walked away without a word.

The likes of Emperor, Darkthrone, Mayhem, or those freewilly fuckers in Enslaved had all quickly started making crappy albums after 1995 or so, but at one point they had all released bonafide, influential classics hailed to this day by sensible metal fans the world over. Where was Marduk’s classic album? Morgan sighed again and thought back to the early days of the band, trying to figure out for the millionth time where he’d gone wrong.

With the original (failed) intention to form “the most blasphemous band in the world”, Marduk started off playing death metal as most soon-to-be black metal bands did in those times. They relatively quickly signed to a record label and a young Morgan felt his blasphemous (tee hee!) band was really going somewhere. But doubts had already formed in his mind even before the release of ‘Dark Endless’ in December 1992, as he realised Marduk’s form of death metal was outmoded, generic and uninspired. It added nothing to a burgeoning genre that had already seen the release of absolute timeless classics (that damned word again, Morgan thought) like Deicide’s first album and then the legendary ‘Legion’ six months before Marduk’s own lame debut. Not to mention Morbid Angel’s ‘Blessed are the Sick’, released a year earlier. Morgan could hear the precise writhing riffage of Trey Azagthoth and Richard Brunelle playing dimly in his head and wished he could completely erase his own sub-standard first effort ‘Dark Endless’ from the dank corner of his memory where it sat, mocking him with its garishly painted cyclopean eye.

Still, those stupid Americans could keep their death metal, black metal was where it was at in Northern Europe and Marduk could become legendary in that revitalised genre instead! So Morgan quickly began the writing of material for ‘Those of the Unlight’, a black metal masterpiece that would seal Marduk’s place forever in the… oh shit. Already those Norwegian wankers Burzum, Immortal and Darkthrone had released veritable milestones in metal, making ‘Those of the Unlight’ look almost totally redundant by the time of its release in 1993. Yet again, others were taking giant leaps in innovation and evolution while Marduk slowly plodded along behind like the class retard on a school trip.

Frustrated and depressed with his lack of acclaim and feeling left out of the media furore surrounding the death of Euronymous and various other events, Morgan strove to create a truly dark and furious recording more in the vein of his Norwegian neighbours. With ‘Opus Nocturne’ he hoped he could create an album to finally raise Marduk to what he saw as their (his) rightful place in the black metal pantheon. Working as he’d never worked before, Hakansson finally saw the release of his masterpiece in December 1994. It was the absolute best he could do, he’d literally burnt himself out creatively giving birth to the album and… it fell short by quite a way. Although it was easily Marduk’s best album so far (and remains so to this day), it was also occasionally verging on being unadventurously simplistic, unambitious and lacking the genius intensity, compositional awareness, epic vision and mystical atmosphere of several key albums from around that time: ‘Pure Holocaust’, ‘Transilvanian Hunger’, ‘Hvis Lyset Tar Oss’, ‘De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas’ and ‘In the Nightside Eclipse’. In short, despite their best efforts Marduk had yet again failed to meet the standards set by others and Morgan had nothing left to offer.

At this point, despite having made a half decent album, Hakansson was at his lowest and felt a great ineffectual angsty rage building inside of him. The whole world should be made to suffer for not bowing to the might of Marduk, he seethed. In frustration he began to write even simpler, angrier music for a new album which after a great deal of thought he decided to call ‘Fucking Fuck Off You Ungrateful Scum We’ll Kill You All’. Arranging the artwork, Morgan requested that it depicted an army of loyal Marduk fans all bearing official Marduk merchandise emblem shields, preparing to attack those failing to appreciate his beloved band. The other members were somewhat sceptical about this and in particular took issue with the title, suggesting instead the only slightly less impotent rage sounding ‘Heaven Shall Burn When We Are Gathered’. Morgan sulkily accepted this compromise, retaining the naff artwork, though in later years with a clearer head it was altered to something more kvlt for the reissue, along with that of ‘Dark Endless’. He at least had the last laugh over that stupid eye!

And so, after good album sales of ‘Heaven Shall Burn…” Hakansson realised the key to the band’s future commercial success: lowest common denominator appeal. Fuck trying to create something meaningful, he could attain respect and a real position of authority by appeasing the tastes of people who vaguely liked the idea of black metal but couldn’t stomach the intricate complexities of its leading artists. He would write “extreme” and “br00tuhl” music so bland, so dull and generic that even a Cannibal Corpse or Pantera fan could get into it, with a bit of luck. Add a bit of black metal cliché lyrics / imagery and voila, easily accessible pseudo-black metal for the peasants to enjoy and throw money at so they can be part of it.

With each new Marduk album released, their popularity increased exponentially and Morgan laughed to himself as he thought how much easier it was to lower black metal for the consumption of idiots than try to equal the achievements of his contemporaries as he’d attempted back in 1994. After releasing ‘Panzer Division Marduk’ in 1999, the culmination of his tried and tested “duh duh duh duh at 350BPM” technique, it dawned on him that even the most brainless Marduk fan was slowly realising how limited their music actually was. As he began to believe his own hype and buoyed with a false sense of his own greatness Hakansson made an attempt at a “heavy”, slower record to counterbalance what had tediously gone before. It failed utterly. His grunting monkey fanbase wanted something fast and broootuuuhl and no one else even cared anymore. The only thing he could think of doing was to go back to what Marduk did best, yet conceal it behind a gimmick of some kind. All it had to do was serve as a distraction for the majority of moronic modern black metal listeners, which wouldn’t prove too difficult. At first he flirted with the idea of a science fiction themed album called ‘Star Destroyer Marduk’, where the war film samples on “Panzer Division…” would simply be replaced with Star Wars sound effects. But as it turned out, he discovered an even better solution to his problem, and it would also provide Marduk with the scene credibility Morgan had so longed for all these years, no matter how artificial and fleeting it would eventually prove to be.

Of course, he had known Belfagor of Ofermod for years, here was someone who had actually looked up to Hakansson and hung out with the band trying to look cool, an impressionable kid who’d even formed a band, Nefandus, to try and impress him. Later, Morgan had heard the kid’s EP, Ofermod’s ‘Mysterion Tes Anomias’ and felt a surge of panic. It was nothing amazing, it was just above average “Swedish black metal” ™, but it showed that there was a potential rival to Marduk’s position as kings of not-quite-good-enough. Then, a few years later many younger Swedish bands claimed to have been largely influenced by Ofermod’s “religious black metal”, much to Morgan’s chagrin and hurt feelings.

One of these bands in particular held Hakansson’s attention, a kvlt underground entity known as Fragrant Mist. He listened to their debut full-length album ‘Salvation’ with both awe and intense jealousy. Yet again, it was nothing really worth listening to, its genericism was cleverly hidden amongst production techniques, effects, samples and some absurdly over-the-top vocals, but that was where its genius lay, Morgan thought. This album could indeed be Marduk’s salvation. He quickly got hold of Fragrant Mist’s mainman Arioch and outlined his plans for a born again Marduk. Arioch would be to Marduk what Dead had been to Mayhem, and as such Arioch even changed his name to Mortuus, or “Dead” in the kvltest language of all: Latin. Lyrical / album concepts mostly changed to overtly religious ones and when combined with production techniques, effects, samples and those over-the-top vocals concealed the fact that underneath it all lay the same old Marduk that everyone knew and loathed. Unlike Dead-era Mayhem, Mortuus-era Marduk simply became Fragrant Mist-lite, yet were a major band with the underground credibility of having a kvlt personality as vocalist. Morgan rubbed his hands with glee as he contemplated the new glorious era for Marduk that awaited him…           
   
Morgan opened his eyes with a start as Mortuus nudged him gently.
“Thou must awaken,” said Mortuus, “verily I say unto thee, we hath many dreary and generic riffs of various genre origins to compose and fit into thy patented template for thy new opus, before entering ye studio and speed tremolo picking an angry faux-black metal song out of it. I thinketh the new album should be christened ‘Korinthianzzz PraYer Ritual Angel ov Poo’. I heareth that the cooleth thing in the scene now is scatoliturgical misspelt album titles. Amen”.
“Fucking hell I hate you,” said Morgan wearily.

Epilogue:

Satyr and Frost announced their engagement in 2007, marrying a year later in the ancient spectre ruins inspired by overflowing medieval belief and vikings and shit. A majestetic hail in honour of Peter Tatchell and their spiritual brothers in Stonewall. Hail Satan!

Mortuus / Arioch released a nu-black metal album with his religious circus troupe Fragrant Mist called ‘Maranatha’ in 2009. It is already considered black metal’s answer to Sepultura’s ‘Roots’ by many metal fans.

Morgan Hakansson continues to release Marduk albums tailored to the current middle-of-the-road “extreme metal” prevailing trends at a rate of one per financial year, to general apathy. Merchandise sales are doing well, with plans to release official Marduk plastic swords and shields bearing their logo in 2010.

Guest article by Wooden Artifact.

The city of Bristol, England. With large areas having been bombed flat in the war, it was decided to build a tribute to that versatile substance the romans apparently loved and knew how to utilise so well: concrete. Unfortunately, lacking any kind of artistic vision whatsoever, a new hellish canyon of jagged edifice and cliff emerged from the bloody churned sea of blitzed devastation.

The purpose of this new-fangled development of abomination was to provide the perfect natural habitat for numerous species of large corporate “shops”, or “stores” as Americans called them. People could peer in through the windows and imagine owning the products enticingly displayed within, memories of war, maimed loved ones and thoughts of death growing more distant with each new product desired. Most shops not owned by major conglomerates were thus forced out into the wilderness, and in later decades those seeking underground metal music were therefore required to cross dangerous rivers of effluent, brave urine stinking burrows under roads and to smile or scowl at drunken beggars and other human refuse as necessary.

Such was the case with Replay Records. Having reluctantly visited Bristol city with parents as a child, no intelligent person would be eager to return, however, I’d seen a small advert in a local newspaper which promised a large secondhand record shop; vinyls, CDs, magazines and, YES, a wide selection of independent music. For a young man with not many other options at the time, it seemed like a worthwhile adventure. As I had thought, the city centre was bad, very bad. Seeing as I’d grown up in a small rural town with a population barely pushing 20,000, it was still always an unpleasant culture shock to descend into cities of surging crowds and heavy traffic fumes.

A brief walk out of the centre’s limits, a few wrong turns and several subterranean tunnels later and in front of me lay a pair of small shops both adorned with graffiti covered metal shutters, one of which sold paraphernalia pertaining to sexual gratification, and finally, the aforementioned Replay Records. As I entered the dimly lit, never been cleaned, stale smelling premises, I espied two large racks of CDs and another longer rack filled with LPs spanning the wall.

Somewhat self-consciously I began carefully flicking through the CDs while a fellow metaller nearby ran an expert hand quickly along the rack, scanning for any new stock. To my surprise, as he came nearer he looked up, and dismissively brandishing a copy of Metallica’s “Black Album” said “cool shirt mate, look at this shit, must be about 15 copies of this”. I nodded in amazement, in agreement with his assessment of Metallica’s icon of final artistic doom but also in shock of even being addressed in such a casual, natural manner. This was England, in a large city, in the late twentieth century and this sort of thing just wasn’t done. As I visited more frequently over the next couple of years, I learned to accept this behaviour and met a variety of interesting people, some of whom went on to form bands active in the “scene” even today, years later.

As the WWW became more ubiquitous, record shops lost a lot of business to downloads, internet sales and auction sites, with even major companies facing critical difficulties in the physical retail sector. Although independent record shops should manage to stay open in theory, due to a loyal clientele often travelling some distance just to visit them, they often close down anyway (including all those I was eventually familiar with), most likely never to be replaced. For those still lucky enough to have such a shop near them, perhaps you will still be familiar with the arcane, slightly redundant knowledge collected below.

For me it is as distant a memory as that first trip home to my rural town, tightly holding a large yellow bag filled with several LPs and CDs, looking very conspicious and faintly ridiculous against my black jeans and jacket…

Thee arcane knowledge and etiquette of secondhand independent record shops:

- Don’t steal. There’s no point in stealing anyway, only the cases/sleeves are on display, the discs themselves are filed away behind the counter. Independent secondhand shops can’t afford to security tag their stock. The shop needs every penny they can get just to stay open.
- If you’re looking for something specific, remember that the shop is probably only very loosely arranged in alphabetical order and you may need to look carefully around the adjacent letters as well. You could also try asking the staff if they aren’t busy. They’ll probably have a list of stock and could check it for you.
- There’s a reason why there are 10 copies of a certain album on their shelves, it’s rubbish awaiting removal to the landfill.
- The condition of the booklet is quite important. If it’s badly bent, creased or waterdamaged then chances are the previous owner didn’t care too much for the disc itself either. Most shops claim to test all stock before putting them out on the shelves but it’s best to err on the side of caution and not risk a purchase, unless it’s a particularly rare or sought after record. 
- If you see something you really want, pick it up there and then, or someone else may take it before you. You can sometimes ask shop staff to hold items for you behind the counter so as you can buy it another day. Though if you haven’t returned before a certain date it goes back on the shelves again.
- There are usually classified advert boards on display which are useful for selling old instruments, seeking band members, promoting gigs and such like. Independent record shops are often focal points for local “scenes” and musicians, the Helvete shop in Norway being a well known example. The members of bands such as Sadistik Exekution also got together from an advert placed in such a shop.