Alternative (to) Metal

U.M.A. (Progenie Terrestre Pura) 

Rammstein- Mutter (2001)

Revisting this today I realized it’s the only album by Rammstein entirely composed by great songs. All the other albums from theirs have their fair share of “filler” songs. But this one, from My Herz brennt to Nebel, is simply perfect, and contains at least 5 of the band’s absolute best songs: Mutter, Sonne, Ich Will, Spieluhr and Adios.

Some people seem to feel obligated to demand total authenticity from the artists they pay respect for. Some people just need to believe what they listen to in their leisure hours come from an authentic and trustworthy source.

However, art is [always and necessarily] a product of our imagination. Art is always fake. Art is a falsehood.

A true artist manages to use his abilities to create things which better embody humankind's need for delusion, pleasure and diversion. Metal music is not, and has never been, exempt from this rule. On the contrary, some of the best subgenres of this musical realm leads us to the farthest corners of fantasy and imagination.

Think of ambient black metal. What is it but a pleasant dream of perpetuity, a dream of sempiternal contemplation, a fantasy of an insane man who dares to think he can freeze a moment of time and make it eternal?

Even the [purposefully] disgusting images of goregrind are nothing but imagination: a bleak fantasy where all the [bad] aspects of life are enormously exaggerated. Exaggerated to induce pleasure hormones in a teenage mind. A teenage mind who wants his death metal idols to be authentic, whereas at the same time appreciating the falsified reflection of reality they offer him.

Art is falsehood. Art is a dream. Our idols exist solely in our heads. And if we indulge in placing them in a pedestal [where they more than certainly don't belong] it's because they are most successful in creating in ourselves that desire for the delusions that make life tolerable.

Rivière du Nord- Ce vent glacé (2012)

Gorguts- Colored Sands (2013)

Moëvöt- Èzlèyfbdréhtr Vèpréub Zuèrkl Mazagvatre Èrbsèdréa (1994) 

The guy behind this project [Vordb] is alive and well, even making music with other musical projects of his. 

This music, however, is lost somewhere in time, possibly the Dark Ages, and every time you listen to it it threatens to drag you along with it, to a lost place of desolation, sorrow and bleakness, where the mere possibility of light is unthinkable. 

And guess what, once you're there, you don't want to come back. 

Burzum- Filosofem (1996)

In a single album, the whole spectrum of black metal summarized: the passion for loneliness and distance from mankind, the contemplation of distant landscapes, the pervading ambience which engulfes you in a solitary world, the absolute rejection of this world you did not want and to which you do not want to belong, and the HATRED, the absolute, uncontrollable, all-encompassing HATRED against everything, that hatred that, while not serving to destroy this goddamn world once and for all, at least serves to keep you spiritually separated from it...forever. 

Yes, this IS my favorite black metal album.