LIFE IS ALL DYNAMICS

 Mosh Pit  20 Responses »
Jan 152014
 

(In this post, our man Andy Synn provides observations about the so-called Loudness War.)

The so-called “Loudness War” is an interesting – if ill-defined – phenomenon. Granted, it’s not a real war (as far as I know, no-one has died, nor have any regimes been overthrown or countries subjugated purely because of differences in mixing/mastering preferences), but it’s still a source of conflict among listeners, bands, and engineers.

To those of you unaware of the term (possibly due to being prematurely deafened), it is:

“a pejorative term for the apparent competition to master and release recordings with increasing loudness.” (Wikipedia)

And the main complaint about it is that it reduces/compresses the dynamic range of music, so you’re left with something aggressively homogeneous – with neither ups nor downs, neither highs nor lows… something actually less than the sum of its parts. Continue reading »

MERRY AND BRIGHT

 Free Shit, Mosh Pit, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  22 Responses »
Dec 252013
 

I have my own opinions about Christmas and the whole holiday season surrounding it, the kind of opinions that used to provoke an annual rant on this site (such as this one, which still receives new visits at this time of year despite its age). But there will be no rant this year.

Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t changed my opinions. However, it has dawned on me that spewing vitriol about the holiday is somewhat inconsistent with what we stand for at NCS. Life delivers more than enough frustration, aggravation, hurt feelings, pain, sorrow, loneliness, parking tickets, and bad food without us adding to the negativity. I like to think that what we’re about at NCS is delivering things that make life better, e.g., some daily metal and generally good-humored prose.

Despite its shortcomings, Christmas does make life better for some people (though certainly not all). Some people hold the holiday as a sacred occasion. It gives some people an occasion to enjoy the company of family and friends. For others, it evokes warm memories of years gone by. Some simply enjoy the pretty lights and the chance to stuff themselves with yummy eats. In general, I think it’s wrong to put down activities that make people happy, as long as they’re not hurting themselves or others in the process, even if such activities don’t do much for me. So, this year I won’t be complaining about Christmas. Continue reading »

THE LATEST SORRY NEWS ABOUT FACEBOOK

 Mosh Pit  35 Responses »
Dec 192013
 

For you readers whose first language isn’t English and for you native English speakers who are under the age of… I don’t know, 30?… I’m using the word “sorry” not in the sense of “apologetic”, but in the sense of “inspiring scorn or ridicule”, as in, “what a sorry state of affairs we’re in now”.

It’s been a while since I’ve written about Facebook.  This is because I prefer to stay happy as long as possible. Even after I noticed that the percentage of our site’s Facebook followers who were seeing NCS posts on Facebook was growing smaller and smaller in recent months, I didn’t try to find out why. And then, while I was on vacation recently, I heard from a fellow metal blogger with a poplar site who I respect, asking whether our Facebook page views were dropping. Of course, they were, and they were for his site too.

So I decided to try and find out why. I didn’t do as much research as I have in the past when I noticed such changes (e.g., here) — because I’m trying to stay happy as long as possible — but this article discusses what I found. I guess there’s some kind of lesson here for people in the metal community who rely on FB to stay in touch with their fans. But it’s a lesson that will be meaningful only until the next time Facebook changes its news feed algorithm. In other words, life is still full of pain, and then you die. Continue reading »

HIPSTER?

 Mosh Pit  81 Responses »
Dec 172013
 

I’ve sure been seeing a lot of “hipster” the last few weeks, as year-end lists of metal have been rolling out and people have been commenting on them. There are certain albums, mainly Deafheaven’s Sunbather, that routinely get blasted with the “hipster” label. Earlier today we even got a “hipster” comment on one of the lists we posted at NCS — applied to Ghost BC’s Infestissumam.

“Hipster” is a word I almost never use, mainly because I’m not sure what it means. I do know that it’s a disparaging, belittling, derogatory label of some kind. As used in the metal community, maybe it’s supposed to mean “not true metal” or “not good metal”. But the sense I get is that it’s used most often to mean “metal that people who aren’t metal heads like” — and apparently, the more non-metalheads who like a metal album, the worse it must be.

I definitely get the sense that Deafheaven have been victimized by that latter situation. The album is showing up on all sorts of year-end lists at big entertainment web sites, often mixed together with music from other genres such as indie and hip-hop. For some people, that seems to be enough to brand Deafheaven’s music “hipster metal”. I suspect something similar has happened to Ghost BC (I even wrote about the phenomenon here). This bothers me. Continue reading »

FIVE THINGS LAYMEN WHO DON’T GET EXTREME METAL SAY ABOUT IT

 Mosh Pit  38 Responses »
Dec 132013
 

(Here’s another guest post from Dane Prokofiev, who writes everywhere and has his own blog at Zetalambmary. It’s a year-end list of a different kind.  As always, Comments are encouraged — maybe you’d like to add to this list?)

People who listen to and enjoy extreme metal have met these people before – be it in the form of perplexed roommates at university dorms or the curious and inquisitive stranger on the train who happens to see you listening to Flagitious Idiosyncrasy in the Dilapidation on your iPhone and feels compelled to ask you about your strange taste in music. Listed below are five things people who are not into extreme metal often say about a form of underground music that never ceases to confound their expectations of what can be considered good.

1. “Why do the vocalists scream? It’s so pointless – you can’t even make out the lyrics like that!”

I find myself repeating variations of this line ad nauseam to laymen who like to be able to figure out what the lyrics are just by hearing music: “You’re not meant to make out the lyrics; the voice here is just treated as another musical instrument.” Just as certain Classical music composers made certain orchestral sections play dissonant chords on purpose at certain parts of a piece of music (or even throughout) to create an aggressive feel or disturbing mood, harsh vocals often serve this purpose as well in extreme metal. Continue reading »

METAL AND MATURITY

 Mosh Pit  37 Responses »
Dec 122013
 

(In this post Andy Synn expresses some opinions that I suspect will not be universally shared. Sound off in the comments… )

Metal and the concept of maturity, if you believe all that you’re told, don’t exactly make for the most common of bedfellows.

Even the kindest of mainstream media outlets still have a tendency to treat the genre as one solely of interest to angsty teens, disaffected Gen-X types, and adults stuck in a perpetual state of arrested development.

I can’t entirely blame them. After all, the majority of metal that hits the mainstream does dwell on the same sort of vapid and generic themes that most narcissistic pop/rap music features as well (raising the question, of course, as to why these genres aren’t also singled out as “just for kids”… liking something “ironically” is no excuse, nor is it believable to be honest).

Still, it’s even more galling when the same sort of questions and vague insults come from inside the scene. Continue reading »

CROWDSOURCING: THE FUTURE OF MUSIC?

 Mosh Pit  21 Responses »
Dec 102013
 

(Alain Mower returns with another guest post designed to stir up some discussion.)

Who’s up for a debate?

While the countless broken bodies of ‘could-have-beens’ and ‘never-weres’ lay strewn under their feet, the creators of successfully crowdsourced albums have sent out ripples that have quickly become tidal waves, and – at least for this moment in time – it seems as though crowdsourcing is here to stay.


$375 poorly hand-stenciled “metal” jackets from Urban Outfitters, also here to stay?

But is it the future? Continue reading »

AND VIDEOS FOR ALL…

 Mosh Pit, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  11 Responses »
Dec 092013
 

(In this guest post, our friend Booker both features some of the metal videos he has enjoyed most during 2013 and offers opinions about the evolution of music videos generally and about their proper use — and misuse.)

Okay, so I’ll warn you up front, I don’t know where I’m going with this post. Also, it contains some NSFW imagery. Blind leading the blind through the land of boobies? Or probably more likely: a rambling fool preaching to the much more knowledgeable choir? Sound good? Okay, let’s go…

This all started with a few videos I’ve seen that stuck with me recently, which set off that dangerous process called “thinking”; particularly hazardous in the hands of the uninitiated. First up, there’s somewhat of a process of déjà vu here, in that Andy Synn has previously posted a foray into the art of the music video about 2 years back which is still just as relevant today:

https://www.nocleansinging.com/2011/11/07/f-videos-how-do-they-work/

Let’s get into some of the video goodies that perked my interest – some of these have featured on NCS before. Continue reading »

WHY I THINK MASTODON’S THANKSGIVING SHIRT IS HORRIBLE EVEN THOUGH I’M NOT A NATIVE AMERICAN

 Mosh Pit  30 Responses »
Dec 062013
 

(In this post, guest writer Tal — whose own blog is here — forcefully expresses some opinions about the shirt emblazoned with the above image released by the band Mastodon for this year’s Thanksgiving holiday. As always, Comments are welcome.)

In case you haven’t been on the internet since before Thanksgiving, Mastodon decided to mark that holiday by putting out a really tasteless shirt. The shirt, which shows a male Pilgrim pointing a musket at a kneeling, scantily clad, stereotypical image of a Native American woman holding up a turkey, has drawn outraged responses from members of Native communities (for example here and here). The band seem to think that they are doing something to raise awareness; they wrote on Facebook:

“Regarding our thanks giving shirt, whether you choose to believe or not, the American Indians were massacred by the white settlers who became the Americans we are today. this shirt represents this atrocity and celebrating in the face of this atrocity is chilling.”

They felt the need to add: “we may have a sick sense of humor, but we are far from being ‘Racist’ as some of you who might not get it are calling us.” (What’s actually chilling is that this post had over 4,000 likes as of the writing of this article.)

Mastodon in effect dismisses the criticisms leveled at their choice of imagery by implying that the critics don’t “get” the shirt or somehow don’t believe that Native Americans were massacred at the hands of white settlers, when this is not the problem at all. The problem is not their message, but the way they’ve chosen to execute it, and the band’s response just makes it worse. Continue reading »

WORKS OF ART

 Mosh Pit  20 Responses »
Nov 302013
 


Photos by me.

I may have mentioned that I’m on vacation. “Active” is not the word for my vacations. More like “slothful”. I sleep like I’m in hibernation, eat a little, drink a lot, and talk with people unlike any I know at home. I swim with fish that make rainbows look drab, stare at turquoise vistas, and photograph dramatic clouds that leave me silent in awe (yes, silent, it’s a miracle!), every vision unlike any other, never to be repeated.

And I read a lot. I’ve read a few things during my trip that made me think about metal, even though I haven’t been listening much since this vacation began. For example, I read this final sentence from a movie review by David Denby:

“It’s a film devoted to inanition, made with considerable artistry, but it’s far from a work of art.”

My first thought was, “What the fuck does ‘inanition’ mean?” But even before finding the answer, I was thinking about whether the statement was relevant to metal. Probably a poor allocation of limited brainpower, because over-analyzing the things you enjoy is usually a mistake. But I decided yes, it might be relevant, perhaps especially at this time of year when people are compiling their Best of 2013 lists. Continue reading »

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