Grim dawn blood harvest4/9/2023 This is the NSBM so often alluded to, and so little discussed, in the metal press. ![]() Second, there’s stuff that has always existed on the margins, and should remain on the margins, because it is played by Nazis and their fellow-travelers. At worst, this is what I call “LARPcore” – cheap plastic power metal with death-growl vocals, a keyboardist playing shitty flute sounds, and lyrics about clinking tankards with dwarves, or whatever. At best, this includes beefy Viking death metal bands like Unleashed, Amon Amarth, and Wolfheart, none of whom pretend to make Great Art, and all of whom are masters of their craft. First, there’s the “fun” and/or “cheesy” stuff. ![]() That’s because it tends to fall into one of two stylistic ghettos. If you tell a serious metalhead you like “pagan metal,” there’s a good chance they’ll chortle dismissively or raise an eyebrow in distaste. Indeed, paganism has always had a whiff of the disreputable about it. Paganism in metal is as old as 'The Immigrant Song' and 'Stairway To Heaven', and has figured prominently in the work of a few canonical bands (Amebix, Neurosis, Bathory, Burzum, Enslaved, Absu, Solstice, maybe Agalloch and Primordial if you’re into that sort of thing), but it’s actually been pretty marginal to the main currents of extreme black/ death/ doom metal. Indeed, one tendency I’ve been following, and want to highlight in this column, is the development of a “new pagan metal.” I know that’s a horrible journalistic buzzword, and I wish I could’ve thought of something better (NWOPM?), but bear with me. If you’ve been following this column, you’ve probably noticed that my aesthetic leans strongly towards that sort of thing – music that is pagan, in a loose sense of the word – telluric, atavistic, and barbaric. ![]() There was a time, a millennium or two ago, when these movements in the sky would have been omens. And the other day, as I was walking home past a fancy yuppie ice-cream store that always has a line a block out the door, I looked up to see great, dark wings circling overhead - a few of the vultures that roost in the bluffs overlooking the Huron River. A couple weeks ago, I saw two peregrine falcons fighting over downtown Ann Arbor, flapping hard to gain altitude, swerving past one another, and diving in tandem. Sumer is icumen in, as they say in The Wicker Man, and the warm winds of May carry birds of prey.
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