Sunday, July 21, 2013

The Black Halo: New TURISAS Song, New WATAIN Song, and Varg Vikernes


This entry was supposed to be finished and posted three days ago, but I got wrapped up in other things and never got around to finishing it. Sorry for the delay, and I'll try to have another quality post by the middle of the week, as well as my next album review.

I can't think of a clever or informative introduction to this post, so let's just get right to it, shall we? 

New TURISAS Song-“Into the Free”

We’ve got another one!

Yes, Finnish metallers Turisas have recently released another song from their upcoming album, Turisas2013 (still a really silly name). This one is called “Into the Free” and was made available for public listening a few days ago on July 15th. Since I enjoyed the last one they streamed, “For Your Own Good”, I had some pretty high hopes for this one. I decided to, as I usually do, take to Twitter while I listened to the brand new song for the first time.

This is how it went (read from bottom to top):


Those “eyes of disapproval” in the first tweet are basically how I looked while listening to this song for the first time. It was completely unexpected in a bad way. It sounded extremely jumbled in the beginning with all instruments trying to be heard over each other without much coordination. There is a right way and a wrong way to do this kind of thing. If you’re familiar with my last review, Vesania’s Distractive Killusions, the song “Of Bitterness and Clarity” is the right way to have all the instruments fight for dominance. All very clear and well thought-out so that the mayhem is coordinated. Turisas’ “Into the Free”, however, is the wrong way to do this, with all instruments clashing with each other to create a border-line irritating sense of chaos.

Of course, I give all things a second chance or more, so I did listen to this track more than once. Here is one of those other times (a few days later, on July 18th):


It didn’t really get any better after the first attempt…as a matter of fact, since it was not my first time listening to it after that, I ended up getting a bit more judgmental and was able to point out specific things that annoyed me. Here are a few more, some of which were mentioned above:

-The drums played the same thing practically the entire song and you can blatantly hear the “BANG BANG BANG BANG” throughout. It drives me nuts.

-The guitars and bass felt lifeless and boring.

-Again, is Olli even anywhere on this track?

-What the hell is that “vocal” catastrophe following Mathias’ growling around the minute-thirty mark?

-The lyrics seemed pretty elementary with mediocre rhymes, as if catchiness in lyrics now serves precedence over them having a point

-The “woah-oh” choir and sprinkled-in trumpet was unnecessary

After hearing “Into the Free” (what does that even mean?), I’m going to have very mixed feelings about this album when I get to listen to the rest of it. Hopefully, if everything is going to be this different from their previous albums, the songs will sound more like “For Your Own Good” rather than this…utter disappointment.

For anyone who hasn’t had the displeasure of hearing this track yet (honestly, I wouldn’t suggest you put yourself through it):

TURISAS-Into the Free (link)



New WATAIN Song-“The Child Must Die”

On a brighter note, Swedish black metal masters Watain also released another new song! This one is called “The Child Must Die” from their upcoming album The Wild Hunt. I was pretty excited when I heard they released a new song, as I must admit I haven’t been listening to Watain for a very long time. They are, however, I must say, a phenomenal band that I’ve quickly grown to adore (especially Casus Luciferi). That didn’t change a bit when I heard “The Child Must Die”.

This track has everything that makes me love a song. All instruments are well balanced, it has plenty of variety, nothing sounds forced, it isn’t too slow, it isn’t try-hard fast, the vocals have the perfect amount of nasty guttural goodness – one can always count on Erik for great vocals, and the production well-done and clear without at all sounding over-produced…it has just the perfect level of rawness to it.

I didn’t really say too much about this one on Twitter besides that I didn’t understand why some people were complaining over it. I understand that not everyone will like everything a band does (surely you just read my opinion on Turisas’ new song a minute ago) but this song is phenomenal! It isn’t exactly the regurgitation of anything they’ve previously done (who ever really wants that?), but it isn’t drastically different, either. It’s still very Watain, and very good. So much so that I really can’t pick out anything to give negative critique to, only praise.

If you haven’t heard this song yet, I highly suggest you give it a listen, especially if you’ve never given Watain a shot before. I’ll most likely end up pre-ordering this album (alongside Labyrinth) and am even considering getting the exclusive box set edition. Not a half-bad price for it considering all that it comes with…

WATAIN-The Child Must Die (link)

For more info. regarding the mentioned box set, please go here.
For the other song recently released by Watain, "All That May Bleed", also off the new album, click here.



Varg Vikernes

So apparently Varg’s gotten into some trouble again…

But for what? Apparently, he and his wife were arrested in France after his wife, who is a member of a shooting club, bought four rifles…legally.

They both got arrested because his wife legally purchased rifles.

If that doesn’t make you say “what the hell”, then I’m not entirely sure what will. Aside from this, the only “evidence” the French police had against Vikernes was that they had the suspicion that he was planning a massacre. The suspicion, which basically had no grounds. The only thing they may have seen as a threat was that he received a 1,500+ page manifesto of Anders Breivik who was responsible for the Oslo bombing in July of 2011, as well as the shooting rampage of Utøya Island that resulted in 77 deaths. However, Varg openly denounced Breivik’s actions, going so far as to say he “hope[s] [he] kills [him]self” after what he’s done.

Of course, Varg is a racist…but that isn’t exactly illegal in France, is it? Just socially frowned upon, and such ways of life aren’t exactly valid reasons for arrest, nor is it reason to believe that someone with such views is planning a damn massacre, in which case I would be inclined to question exactly how the police manage to jump from point A to point B.

This can’t have anything to do with the death of Euronymous back in 1993, can it? He faced his trial and served time for that in Norway, willingly. I’m not a supporter of Varg’s actions in that case, as I’m not altogether a supporter of murder (self-defense is a different story and I really couldn’t tell you, much less myself, if what Varg did was in self-defense or not), but I am a supporter of fairness. If the French police had literally no solid evidence to back up their suspicion, and it seems to be that way, then he should not have been arrested. Period.

Aside from all that, I am so sick of seeing how he gets romanticized all the time. Fans of his seem to get a kick out of praising the fact that he’s burned churches and, for crying out loud, killed somebody. Self-defense or not, he murdered another human being. What the fuck must be wrong with you to be in full support of that? He literally stabbed a man twenty-three times and ditched his body in the stairwell of his apartment building. “So brutal!” What is wrong with you? These aren’t just lyrics to a song, this actually happened. I don’t give a shit how much you like Burzum or how much the sight of blood, guts, and bodies doesn’t bother you…Varg took the life of another human being, and there is no proof other than his word, which you can’t really trust because anyone who’s on trial for murder will say such, that it was in self-defense. I don’t care how brutal you think you are; you do not support the murdering of another human being

Of course, there are exceptions to this rule, like every other, such as Anders Breivik. Someone could walk up to him and put a bullet right between his eyes and I wouldn’t bat an eyelash because he is simply the absolute lowest form of an organism, lower than the scum of the earth for what he’s done.
Anyway, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen people, predominantly women, “*swoon*” over how Varg smiled at the camera while his sentence was being read aloud in court all those years ago. It is disgusting. “Never mind the fact that he stabbed another man in the head with a knife and is happy about it…his smile there is just so cute!!!” You are sick.

And just screw all those little 13-year-old “trve kvlt” bastards who support the church burnings. Yeah, he’s such a badass for destroying pieces of history and being an ass instead of just ignoring the existence of those religions. Hail Satan, right? Way to give metal-heads such a good image. And you people call Jehovah’s Witnesses annoying. At least they aren’t burning your fucking house down just because you don’t believe the same things as they do.

Well, I guess that concludes this blog post. Hope you enjoyed!

KAMELOT-The Black Halo


 
UP-COMING BLOG TOPICS
-*NEW REVIEW*: Atrocity-Okkult
-Wintersun
-Hate
-Dimmu Borgir
-That little girl on America's Got Talent
-"Irreligious" (a rant on obnoxious practitioners of their religions/lack thereof)
-My "Top 10" of last year
-Whatever else I feel like

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