Removed Forms (Until the Light Takes Us Thoughts and Ideas - Film #5)

Until the Light Takes Us, Aites and Ewell, 2008, 9.2/10
"In our contemporary society, youth are pretty much lost.  They have no direction, nobody's telling them what to do.  That is, people are telling them what to do, but the youth have an instinct telling them this is wrong, you know?  People are telling them that Christianity is good, people are telling them that the USA is good, NATO is good, our democracy is good.  But we know if not intellectually, we know instinctively, that this is wrong."
Varg Vikernes, from Until the Light Takes Us
Cut to a series of advertisements and people engaging in consumer culture, and we have a pretty good context for the film.  But it's hard to define black metal with one voice, and so we have myriad ("myriads" as Fenriz puts it) others.

"Let's make one thing clear: The world you live in is hollow.  It is plain and simple and contains only matter that in itself does not possess anything of lasting value.  The only way to create something of dignity and true beauty in this world is by looking beyond its borders, to search outside of the mundane and to enter into connection with that which lies beyond the safety of established form.  To step into the realm of liberated wilderness, of untamed fire, and of that ancient chaos for which every true and potent artist has been a mouthpiece.  There is a great abyss between this world and that place.  An abyss which very few are ever able to cross.  But by means of magic and communication with the divine there are ways to penetrate to that vast darkness, to that which lies beyond.  To build bridges and open gateways to that terrible and wondrous place that lies outside the borders of the world.  This is the way we have chosen to look upon the spiritual characteristics of our work and this is why it is divine.  It acts as a mediator between high and low, a link between two worlds, and we have chosen to call it Watain."
From Opus Diaboli, A musical documentary of Watain
Music has always been like this to me, a holy thing, difficult to break down, assess, and analyze.  I somehow lasted a full year of music theory at college, but found way too much of the learning to be tedious.  I'm not sure if music is quite as arcane as Erik Danielsson is making it sound here, though.  More quotable phrases are interesting as well, but they begin to talk about silly concepts of death, corpses, drinking blood, showing bones, animal and human sacrifice, and all of the silly things that make up a lot of modern black metal, most recorded metal for that matter, and I quickly lose interest.

The same could be said about my attraction to the anti-religious nature of Black Metal.  I find it inspiring, especially as practiced by bands like Wolves in the Throne Room.  I'm just at the tip of the iceberg here, so I'm not going to elaborate too much, but this element of BM makes me sad when I think of all of the churches burned in the name of it, all of the violence enacted against Christians at the hands of devout followers of the music.  Don't get me wrong, I fully understand the violence that Christians wreaked upon countless cultures and continue to wreak upon minds of innocent children everywhere.  We must take a more intelligent approach to try and counteract this.  Violence will breed violence.

"People don't want to be European, they want to be Finnish, or Norweigian or whatever."
From Pagan Metal: A Documentary

Until the Light Takes Us raises some incredibly good points.  Is Christianity founded upon the myths of older mystical worldviews? Is trying to create an anti-commercial scene a valid goal? Should we strive to have integrity in our artistic endeavors? That is, should our lyrics match our actions? Are there any evolutionarily salient points made here? These questions and more are worth considering in relation to "Until the Light Takes Us" but also in relation to music itself, of course including metal music, Norwegian black metal, and contemporary American black metal, especially of the atmospheric kind.

References
Film
-Black Metal University by Fenriz, Aites and Ewell (Special Feature on Until the Light Takes Us), Available, respectively, in parts 1 and 2 via Youtube (here and here)
-Metal: A Headbanger's Journey, Dunn, McFadyen, and Wise, 2005
-Once Upon a Time in Norway, Aasdal and Ledang, 2007, via Youtube here
-Opus Diaboli, Documentary about the band Watain, 2012, via Youtube here
-Pagan Metal: A Documentary, Bill Zebub, 2011 via Youtube here
-True Norwegian Black Metal, a Vice Video, via Youtube here
-Until the Light Takes Us, Aites and Ewell, 2008

Literature/Websites
-CVLT Nation (http://www.cvltnation.com)
-Lords of Chaos (2nd Edition), Moynihan & Soderlind, 2003
-Music and Dance as a Coalition Signaling System (click for full text), Hagen & Bryant, 2001/2002.

Music
-Bathory, Bathory, 1984
-Black Metal, Venom, 1982
-A Blaze in the Northern Sky, Darkthrone, 1991
-Burzum, Burzum, 1992
-Celestial Lineage, Wolves in the Throne Room, 2011
-Dead As Dreams, Weakling, 2000
-Deathcrush, Mayhem, 1987
-Diadem of the 12 Stars, Wolves in the Throne Room, 2006
-Satanic Rites, Hellhammer, 1983
-Under the Sign of the Black Mark, Bathory, 1987


The Last Films I've Seen
1. Mrs. Miniver, Wyler, 1942, 4.8/10 (See Last Week's Review)
2. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans, Herzog, 5.5/10
Nicholas Cage is a strange guy.  His acting goes from good to hammy to just plain bad.  This film has him at all stages.  The story is lacking, and if this ever becomes a franchise, I would lose yet more faith in humanity.  That being said, it's rather entertaining.

Anima Mundi (A Look At The Week Ahead #7)

No real plans.  Become more secure in myself.  Send off info for the renewal of my tech license, do laundry, end being suspended.  Watch film, and write a couple of great essays.

It starts tomorrow with my review of Until the Light Takes Us and continues with whichever album I choose to review on Wednesday.

(Weekend Review #3)

I got suspended from work Friday. I have had a pretty chill weekend so far. The only thing of note that I've done is watch the Ducks game with bad hat and his family. It was a great game against #22 ranked Arizona.
We won 49-0.

I am trying to write more in-depth film and album reviews.
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Location:W 18th Ave,Eugene,United States

(Saturday Life #7)

The appropriate disposal of expired or unused medications is a significant issue both for the pharmacy and for society.
You think?
Haha that's the understatement of the year.

Going back on Sunday to add a bit more to this, due to the paltry nature of the original.

Some thoughts on football. It's a violent sport that will never be very safe, no matter how many regulations are added, but I love the game and any effort to help that aspect of the game should be adopted.

Vocab Practice (Friday Life #3)

When I was a junior in high school, I decided that I was going to be the smartest kid on my block, and I was going to be morally righteous.  I started examining everything I had once taken for granted and relearning how to live.  I grew up really religious (Baptist with a very southern flair) and had given up on it by my junior year.  I had sort of shut off inside and felt like I was hibernating inside.  I was bitter and had many unexamined feelings toward my upbringing and the community that I lived in.  I spent ages 11-16 dead inside, locked in a hiemal state.

"Hold your Light, 11, lead me through each gentle step, by step, by inch by loaded memory."

"Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed." -Herman Melville, novelist and poet (1819-1891)

Nirvana and Alice in Chains were the 1st key, Tool was the 2nd key, Rage Against the Machine the 3rd. Let me elaborate. Tool gave me a voice with which to critique my upbringing, after Alice in Chains and Nirvana allowed me to confront and own the wall of depression I had built around myself. Rage Against the Machine proved I had to do something for the world at large.
I will write all about this at a later time, but for now, a bit of meandering. I became fascinated with words and their meaning. I read Huxley's Brave New World and Island (still my favorite book) and Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment with a verve I'd not experienced since my early childhood conversion and acceptance of Jesus Christ into my heart. I had page after page of words and phrases I had never encountered before, which I dutifully defined, writing their meanings and where in the book I encountered them. My stepdad would quiz me with a list I brought him.

"Not that I want to be a god or a hero. Just to change into a tree, grow for ages, not hurt anyone."-Czeslaw Milosz, poet and novelist (1911-2004)

The liberal dreams of immortality.

Anyway, where were we?
I've been suspended from work for a couple of days so I get more writing time.

"To blame the poor for subsisting on welfare has no justice unless we are also willing to judge every rich member of society by how productive he or she is. Taken individual by individual, it is likely that there's more idleness and abuse of government favors among the economically privileged than among the ranks of the disadvantaged". -Norman Mailer, author (1923-2007)

I've sniped all of these quotes from wordsmith, a daily email group that sends out an email every day with the word of the day, and it's a great way to wake up!

I vow to relive those days that have become marmoreal in hindsight. What positive memories don't? We cling to the banister, going down with the band, and only our memories of love avoid the mouldering of natural entropy. Even the dementia of old age is probably a result of this clamoring, this mendacity of mind that Robert Wright writes of.

"If, every day, I dare to remember that I am here on loan, that this house, this hillside, these minutes are all leased to me, not given, I will never despair. Despair is for those who expect to live forever. I no longer do." -Erica Jong, writer (b. 1942)

So says the writer, but I will never forget the psychologist I spoke to after being diagnosed with migraine-like symptoms. In lieu of having money to afford counseling, I was given some armchair advice over the phone: "remember, nothing goes farther in our sense of well-being than a healthy dose of denial." At the time, I couldn't express how ludicrous or true this turned out to be.

Our ability to tune out truths and lies is quite possibly the most important element of human nature.

On The Road Again (A Look At The Weekend #5)

"One scholar, Gordon Wasson (1957), has written a provocative account of the important role that widespread hallucinogenic mushrooms (the fungi of various forest trees such as the birch and fir) must have had in the development of supernatural beliefs in early man. Whether or not we agree with his thesis that the ubiquity of belief systems concerning the supernatural is due to man's primordial encounter with mind-altering plants, nonetheless the worlds of heaven and hell opened to man by the visionary content of such infusions may have played an important part in stimulating his
mythologies and legends concerning otherworldly lands and peoples, demons, devils, and the like." from Visionary Vine, pg. 30

Today I board the greyhound north to Salem, to re-sit for my national certification, which had lapsed in 2010. I am here, on the bus now, at 740am.
I work Saturday, ostensibly the last for a good while. The duck game is at 730 on Saturday, so I am hoping bad hat can come and get me for it and he will prepare us a tasty dish.
No trivia Friday night or any plans
Sunday, so it might make a great weekend to get caught up on things I have continually put off: laundry, cleaning, and organizing the chaos that is my studio apartment.
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Location:E 10th Ave,Eugene,United States (On the greyhound headed to Salem

Adrift in the Ocean (Music #6)

Today I am going to write about an album that changed my life: Atma.

Yob seems cult (cvlt?). Not concerned with hooks or singles, accessibility or smooth production, they would rather chug and churn along, building steam with a grain of sulphur. Singer/guitarist Mike Scheidt is a smart (and extremely kind) individual who has Motown in him - granted it is the train that built the town, not the silky voices that ironically defined it, and far from the record execs whose early brand of disaster capitalism bred the m entality that later drove it off the cliff. All hail Ayn Rand!

Anyway, somehow Yob has become a bit of a critical darling, and I personally think that is awesome. Doom metal getting a decent amount of mainstream exposure. There was a bit of critical craze during the Victorian age that found works irrelevant if the artist lived in an unsavory manner. If he was known to be rude and deny attention, the critics would say the same of his work. Scheidt then, to make a roundabout point, would be a successful artist, even under the auspices of such a rule. The guy will talk to you endlessly.

Let's consider the music itself. Doom tends to be incredibly slow, dark, and with long song lengths. This is no different. Consider bands like Sleep, Boris, Candlemass, and Electric Wizard. There is some early influence in bands like Pentagram and of course Black Sabbath as well.

Atma is dark, it's dense, it's hard to take in one sitting. It's metal the way it should be. Metal should offend us. Great metal would have moments that would offend metalheads, and that might be the slight letdown here: it doesn't offend, if you already concede to your metalness.

I am a late arrival on the doom/stoner scene, having grown up on Kill 'Em All, Iron Maiden, and so on. Slow music came in the form of Alice in chains. Why would you throw gnarly distortion on a guitar and blast cymbals at a snail's pace? Well at the ripe age of 32 (almost 33) it begins to make sense and become clearer (more hazy for most, eh?). Different times call for different tempos. I would much rather drink a dark port, smoke a clove, and feel Yob's music in my belly than a speed, thrash, or power metal band.
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Location:W 18th Ave,Eugene,United States (Starbucks benches in Albertsons)