(An old subject, and probably not much new to say about it. I get like this when I’ve had too much to drink. At least there’s some good metal at the end.)

We’re not an overtly political site. I emphasize the word “overtly”, because if you’ve been paying attention, you can probably figure out that we have our views, and they influence what we write and what we write about.

But it’s not the result of any kind of editorial edict. We all write what we want to write about. There are no assignments here, there are no litmus tests. Maybe that’s a strength, maybe that’s a weakness. But somehow, I think we do have a basic world view, one that all the writers subscribe to. It’s a minimalist communion, because we are far from clones of each other. The only communion is the worship of art. Our goddess is The Muse, our god is Pan. Except, those are metaphors — we have no god in what we do here, we praise the achievement of human inspiration and talent.

Up to a point. For many music fans it’s impossible to separate the creator from the creation. And to varying degrees, we have trouble doing that, too. Ninety-nine percent of the time, it’s not an issue — 99% of the time we don’t really know what bands believe, and 99% of the time their music isn’t dedicated to any controversial philosophies. Resistance to authority, rebellion against the imposition of structure by people who mean nothing to you, revulsion against religious dogma — those really aren’t radical views, and they’re increasingly less marginal, even in society as a whole. That view of the world might be a revelation to 18-year-old’s, but it’s old hat to most 40-year-old’s. It means very little in judgments about the quality of metal. Continue reading »