Metal Jew

Interview for student film

A few weeks ago I received an e-mail from someone wanting to interview me for a postgraduate film project. I accidentally erased the message without reading it properly - if the person concerned sees this post, please get in touch.

Three songs that I forgot

Further to my last post, Jo rightly pointed out in the comments that I forgot Dancing (Lasha Tumbai) by Verka Serduchka, the splendidly nutty 2007 Ukrainian Eurovision entry.

I also forgot Bolt Thrower's 'Inside the wire' and Melechesh's 'Rebirth of the nemesis': the opening riffs on both of these songs would be strong contenders in a 'riffs of the decade' competition.

Songs of the decade (full version)

I've contributed to 'best of' lists when I wrote for Terrorizer. While it's a thrill to have a voice in these processes of canonisation and memorialisation, I also find coming up with my choices eye-wateringly difficult. The problem is that my listening doesn't work on an annual basis and I've never liked the relentless process of listening to every latest release. The other issue is that in recent years I have become more attached to individual songs than to albums. This is partly because mp3 players and youtube have eroded my attention span, but it's also because an individual song can approach perfection, whereas most albums tend to sag and lose me at some point. Another problem is more prosaic - every time I decide on a list I invariably forget something. So those caveats aside, here's an unordered list of songs that have given me a great amount of pleasure over the last ten years (no time to insert links I'm afraid - most are on YouTube and iTunes):

Outkast 'Hey Ya'

Electric Six 'Gay Bar'

Jennifer Lopez 'My love don't cost a thing' [I'm not joking - it's a cynical lyric in many ways but the tune is stunning]

Hatebreed 'This is now'

Sunn0))) (featuring Julian Cope) 'My wall'

Celtic Frost 'A dying god coming into human flesh'

LT United 'We are the winners' [Lithuania 2006 Eurovision entry]

Pirates of the Sea 'Wolves of the sea' [Latvia 2008 Eurovision entry]

Ruslana 'Wild dances' [Ukrania 2004 Eurovision winner]

Akerkocke 'Verdelet'

Finntroll 'Trollhamaren'

Clutch 'Burning beard'

Kylesa 'Unknown awareness'

Laibach 'Tanz mit Laibach'

Melt banana 'Shield your eyes, a beast in the well of your hand'

Hammerfall 'Hearts on fire' [The best video of the decade, witht the Swedish women's curling team]

Muse 'Hysteria'

Rammstein 'Feuer Frei'

Bubba Sparxx 'Ugly'

Goldie Looking Chain 'Guns don't kill people, rappers do'

Nile 'Lashed to the slave stick'

The Streets 'Fit but you know it'

Portishead 'Machine gun'

System of a Down 'Toxicity'

Meshuggah 'I' [okay strictly speaking it's a mini album - but it's all one track]

Andrew WK 'Party hard'

Velvet Revolver 'She builds quick machines'

Boris/Sunn0))) 'Etna'

Now I know that it's a pretty bizarre list and that as a mature academic I should have a more considered list of thoughtful albums. Of course I do have albums I've loved this decade (e.g. Celtic Frost 'Monosheist', Sunn0))) 'White One' and many more) but the fact is that none of them have given me as much pleasure as even one of these individual songs. 

What the list reveals is that there are two styles of music that I love more than anything: novelty songs and extreme metal. What the connection is between the 2 I'm not sure. Maybe it's one for me to ponder with a therapist.

If I was more energetic and I had more time I'd make a mix tape of this selection for download, but it's pretty easy for any reader to do so - go on, you know you want to.

Black metal theory symposium

The 'Hideous Gnosis: Black Metal Theory Symposium' has just been held in New York. The theory part seems pretty heavy duty, but undoubtedly playful. As a simple-minded sociologist I wasn't there but lots of the papers are available on the site as audio or texts for download. Enjoy!

Self promotion

A few bits of self-promotion:

• My personal website kahn-harris.org has been revamped and has a lot more up to date links to my various publications.
• I've self-published a collection of my journalism, reviews, essays and music criticism. It can be downloaded here or you can buy a copy at the same location.
• The book blog Podularity asked me for my top three books of the decade.
• There's a new article by me on Comment Is Free 'Bring back rejection letters'

Transexual metal

Further to my recent post on a transvesite metal zine I received, I see via Invisible Orange that the band Cretin has a transexual post-op female singer. The links in the blog post are well worth following up.

Strange diagram: metal releases 1980-2009

I found a strange diagram on Stephen O'Malley (of Sunn0))))'s blog:

It purports to track metal releases - broken into 'full lengths' and 'demos' - between 1980 and 2009. The diagram shows an accelerated increase since around 2000 followed by a precipitous decline in the last two years. It's unclear what counts as 'metal' and indeed what counts as a demo.

In fact the diagram is almost certainly made up. I checked with Stephen O'Malley and  he doesn't know who authored the diagram (he got a copy from a friend) and it only seems to appear on one other place on the web (although I didn't search that hard).

So it's all a bit of a mystery. Still, I'd love it if it were possible to produce a diagram of this kind accurately, or even a reasonable estimate. 

It reminds me of the criticism of over-production in metal in the incomparable fanzine Isten 100. Might the bubble have burst now?

UPDATE: An anonymous commentator pointed out that the diagram comes from Cosmo Lee's Invisible Oranges blog, compiled from data from Metal Archives . This is embarassing - I do read that blog but I've got a bit behind in my RSS reader recently so I didn't see the post when it came out last week.

More 'black' black metal

Further to my posts on metal in Africa here and here, Justin Davisson alerted me to the forthcoming release schedule of Legion of Death Records, which includes stuff from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and most intriguingly, Sasamo from Madagascar and Orisa Shakpana from Jamaica. Both of the latter appear to be 'black' (although I loath such crude terms). Check out their listings at Metal Archives. The Jamaican act - a one man black metal outfit - seems particularly intriguing, here's what Legion of Death say about them:

ORISHA SHAKPANA is Jamaica’s premier Black Metal band, which has been compared to bands like ORDER FROM CHAOS, BLASPHEMY, SARCOFAGO, VON and Norse Black Metal. Lyrically, it is about the dark history that Jamaica and the rest of the Caribbean has and shares. It is also about Jamaican superstitions of the night and mythology that has traces back to Pre-Columbian Jamaica. The Orisha are types of gods, and Shakpana is the god of diseases and insanity. Olokun is the elder god of the Orisha, lord of the ocean and earth’s depths. Also there is the tradition of misanthropic lyrics as the only warrior behind ORISHA SHAKPANA, Lord Ifrit, is a misanthropist. The themes also deal with Jamaica’s geographic nature.

As far as I can remember, this is the first time I have heard of a band drawing of black African-originated mythologies (although Sepultura did use Afro-Barzilian themes). It's certainly the first I've heard of that draws on Carribean mythology.

What it proves of course is that practically any region has a 'dark side', an occult mythology that can be used to create syncretic black metal.