Operation: Ümlaut

(We're an underground revolution working over-time.)





Queensrÿche's 'Operation: Mindcrime' is a peculiar album in some ways. Firstly, it takes on a tone more akin to 'pop music' than previous efforts, while remaining a concept album with many sides involved. Secondly, it draws on a mode of 'dystopian' art (alluded to in Dr. X) which is conventionally associated with novels rather than music. This adaptation brings with it several 'problems,' but these are also the most interesting part of the album.

The connection to previous art is established in the title, which connects to the Orwellian term 'thoughtcrime.' However, it is slightly critical of the theme, portraying the hope of organising around 'thoughtcrime' as itself a dystopian mechanism. The title is represented further in the humorous image of Dr. X as a 'doctor,' who 'cures' with an operation. It also locates the 'dystopian' environment in the location around it, as Orwell tried with 'Ingsoc,' although it might seem more direct in this than Orwell. It attempts to locate this 'dystopia' directly, as it has a musical format that does not favour sketching outlines to the same extent. Nonetheless, it is not literature and cannot sketch out an overall story and setting as easily, and hence has to draw on literary analogues so that readers can get a sense of the context. There is some interaction with their previous album, 'Warning,' as we shall discuss soon.

However, 'dystopian' art is a peculiar genre in some ways. Despite its apparent orientation, it has to rely on the posited 'dystopian' rule and its actions for the drama, atmosphere and appeal of the novel. This is where the primary dynamic and character of the novel appears. Further, the novelist of course has freedom to manipulate characters and fictionalise things freely, so could it be that the 'dystopian' enemy is merely the author themselves? Characters have little freedom, anyway, as the novelist does what they want with them - and are doubtless aware of this 'authority' in writing the novel. In that sense, 'dystopian' non-fiction like Marx's 'Das Kapital' is generally more coherent as a style, in their case expressing a cynical take on Hegel by suggesting that their structure of transhistorical categories is actually based in the categories of the current system. Karl Marx speaks of their place in a given society, rather than instating themselves as hypothetical dictators of a fictionalised and freely manipulated society. All novels are fictions, set in fictitious places where the novelists could if they wanted have everyone walk upside down, convert to Norse religions and fly to the moon. Queensrÿche have some analogues to 'non-fiction' analogues, as they open 'in media res' and have a less clear setting, meaning that in some ways they are attempting to discuss the location surrounding them and possibly the listener.

Nonetheless, these problems take on a different form in a dramatic and musical context. This album has the challenge of making tracks which are simply an expression of the 'dystopian' actors of from their reported perspective. Hence, rather than just drawing on them, here they have to be actively portrayed, and hence allowed to promote themselves. The artists hence have to make themselves vehicles of this 'dystopian' enemy, and promote them. This renders their project ambiguous. In a more pop-directed album, these songs will also attempt to draw in people who aren't as familiar with the band, and songs 'stand-alone' rather than being like A Pleasant Shade of Gray and requiring listeners to listen through the whole thing at once. Hence, listeners might instead just get a stirring song about Dr. X and their plans, with a sing-along theme. This turns the album into something potentially slightly sinister.

One of these songs, dealing with Dr. X (possibly a snipe at Karl Marx, which despite their virtues is quite amusing), is the title track. The title itself is something that audiences are to be made enthusiastic about, but nonetheless is here a sinister plot by the good doctor. The song has a 'catchy' chorus of 'Operation: Mindcrime,' but this is actually to be stated by the sinister and manipulative Dr. X as a means of self-promotion, rendering the chorus slightly ambiguous. The track can be slightly ambiguous, then - it postures as an attempt by Dr. X to drum up enthusiasm, and seemingly is alright with this. The following tracks are also along similar lines. Hence, by that point if the audience is still getting enthusiastic about these tracks or singing along, they hence have to draw on the enthusiasm of Dr. X's manipulation and not necessarily what they would expect. The album hence turns out to be manipulative, but covertly and in some ways despite itself.

The album hence starts to take on some of the characteristics of this 'dangerous' figure, at times despite itself. This applies in other areas as well. The main character seemingly is afflicted with amnesia, but if you look more closely the somewhat invasive-sounding album title, when combined with the band name, can also sound like amnesia - Queensrÿche's 'Operation: Mindcrime.' Hence, this can all make the album sound rather sinister. It can also sound like 'Wrestlemania,' of course. The album cover involves a few strange and out-of-place symbols, along with the image of a person being  shocked by the ears - which is of course where music operates. The rest is a bunch of strange and convoluted imagery, which might seem akin to the manipulative tactics of figures in the album. It can come across as warping things slightly. Further, many of the figures are vaguely sketched - it mentions a 'revolution,' for instance, but differentiates it from the Soviet Union without precisely locating it politically. Hence, it comes across as a bunch of manipulative patterns which are given a conventional and innocuous rendering, without the rest of the story being given as much definition. Of course, an album which is also a vehicle for the 'sinister' must also attempt to convey this, and hence is rendered ambiguous. Nonetheless, this means that it can be eerie at times.

This album also interacts with their previous album, Warning. Compared to that, it takes up a more dramatic and pop-directed sound - although Warning was in this direction already. However, despite this, it is also slightly critical or cynical about that album, and gives sinister figures more space to speak and influence instead of just a hopeful resistance. While that album concerns an uprising, here the uprising is itself used as a trap. It involves people who are easily influenced, and they hence easily fall into this scheming. Violent and cynical figures intrude while the past album had hopeful but pessimistically rendered characters.

It notably says, 'Speak the word / Revolution.' 'Revolution' is an interesting word, people tend to assume that it is positive and stirring when it could denote even cynical changes or ones they would not approve of. It is often used as if it's a slogan in itself, with movements self-congratulatorily branding themselves 'revolutions.' Why? Perhaps they have listened to this album, and are so pessimistic about everything around that revolution sounds good to them. It also, as a joke recounts, resembles 'revolting,' a possibly negative epithet, so shouting the word 'revolution' as some do when drunk seems to risk an easy 'slurring' of the term. In addition, it is also a word for circular motion, which seems quite counter to the point. 'Revolution' is a word besieged by the language, which nonetheless tends to demand being shouted or accompanied with flamboyant gesturing. So expecting the word to immediately connote something stirring presupposes something of an artificial context for its usage, and indeed it is appropriate to movements with a few 'revolutions' that have been summarily disregarded by its seeming purveyors. However, this album is rather hushed about it, and the word is only whispered there. This gives it a more sinister tint on this album. Further, the figure behind the movement is quite aware of the connotation of circular motion, not necessarily intending the suggested change and using it manipulatively. When it's said, 'The word is all of us,' or that they are subsumed to the word, this also includes its various senses and the intention that their movement end in a circle. Hence, the word is slightly more significant on this album.

However, in general the instruction to speak it represents a fundamental part of this album. If it has conventional choruses and sing-along sections, these are sometimes represented as being by sinister manipulators or expressing their influence. It's like a pop album with dark, covert manipulations super-imposed on it. Due to the many contrasting things that it has to represent, it is suspended in a continual dynamic, and hence is unique and deceptively difficult to follow up on. While Queensrÿche have other, more sophisticated albums, like 'Promised Land' or 'Rage for Order,' they also draw on a sense of a mechanical or heartless society grinding people down. They hence have something in common with Mindcrime. Nonetheless, with that album cover, when things turn out convoluted and you have catchy songs about sinister plots, clearly something strange is afoot. And this is part of why Queensrÿche were often capable of putting out decent albums, in their more progressive moments.

Death Metal and Black Metal: Themes

So what's death metal about? Usually, answers tend towards aggression and anger, with perhaps the occasional band looking at things from a slightly angsty perspective. Aggression and anger presuppose an obstacle, which is to be got past.

Alright, but aggression and anger at what? This is usually important - it conditions the form in which the anger is expressed. If aggression is central to a musical form, generally, then an obstacle is also central to this musical form - if this musical genre is to be fairly unified despite this, the obstacle hence has to be also fairly uniform.

So what about black metal? Well, usually it's held to be more atmospheric in inclination. This atmosphere can be variable, but it frequently involves more occult themes or landscapes, or if you wish to be brief zones which drift somewhat far from the norm. Alright - but even indie pop can do this. However, indie music about the countryside might take the countryside and write a song about how they went on a visit there and it was nice, but black metal generally speaking takes this location - Satanic or otherwise - and turns it against something else which is prevalent where the music is made. Hence, it is so to speak an invocation: something far away is conjured and tries to make its way into the place the music is made.

So then both of these genres seem to confront obstacles directly - death metal is generally against a certain obstacle, while black metal draws on something which is generally disliked or which is far away, and attempts to import this into a different place. Music doing this tends to fall within these musical styles. This is in some ways different from other styles of metal, which if they do deal with these subjects tend to have to get over their rock elements first, and the encouragement provided by their music. Iron Maiden, for instance, could try to express anger in a similar sense to black metal, but would have to avoid the fact that their music is trying really hard to turn this into a rousing song about albatrosses. In a sense, black and death metal can use rock elements, but they tend to assume this lack of rock elements rather than necessarily enacting it - as such, listeners of these genres are expected to presume that the music isn't rock-oriented because the rest of metal can eschew these, but nonetheless it can wheedle its way in through the back-door in a way which makes black metal seem more respectable as a genre to people more used to rock. In general, a lot of metal can vary between an honest effect, and an effect which is just assumed because it's in a certain genre.

If music is in a metal genre, you might assume that notes which counter the image associated with this - with more pop or rock tendencies - are somehow in harmony with this genre or are more critical of these other genres than they actually are. This usually helps the metal in question. However, in some cases, it can avoid certain things which would actually make things more appealing for the pop cultural environment they were in, as for instance with Candlemass' 'Seven Silver Keys':



While the album was generally touted as highly 'retro,' albeit in a limited manner, this song is slightly more 'current' than one might suspect. If one observes the initial riff in terms of its rock elements as well as the doom 'atmosphere,' it actually resembles in some ways a doom and undercutting version of Paramore's 'Misery Business' opening, to give an example of some of the pop music current at the time. In this sense, it's quite an effective counter to such musical tendencies, and in general the contrast makes the doom metal elements stand out. Instead of just automatic positivity, it takes its more negative approach to offer up an image of hope from a dark situation, which is in a way more powerful but due to its critical premises - images of darkness are generally critical of something, in this case of more than people are comfortable with - it is unlikely to catch on.

Of course, Candlemass could also use rock elements in a way which was far more likely to get in the way of their 'doom' aesthetic, as occurs at times on 'Assassin of the Light' or 'Dark are the Veils of Death.' In these scenarios, while their identification as 'doom metal' can obscure these tendencies in the music, this is ultimately misleading. Past a certain point, a form of music being part of a 'genre' means that listeners are also constructing an artificial version of the album which is in harmony with this genre or sub-genre's associations, rather than listening the music with its many issues and so on.

Ultimately, death and black metal can be quite obscure, because to produce an atmosphere involving an obstacle of some sort involves continually relying on this object or renewing it, and hence this becomes disruptive towards the music if it becomes their 'thing' over time. While there are many popular forms which use death metal trappings, this is in a sense something that death metal doesn't do much to avoid, because in a way bands are attempting to prop up things which oppose it, which does lead to compromised tendencies which less metal bands can easily latch onto. While death metal opposes various things, pop music will generally tend to be the form in which these are glorified, and hence forms like melodic death metal are possible in some way due to tracing this conflict in a way which suits the forms.  It can very easily come across as slightly stilted in its treatment of each form, however, and makes more sense as a result of death metal than something which exists elsewhere.

Bands in death metal can also use this general format of opposing an obstacle to offer general reflections on suffering, etc. This kind of thing generally tends to be slightly slower than other death metal bands, and tries to leave more space for the topics to be conveyed. It also tends to be atheistic in tone, as with Immolation, because God offers up a general and all-pervading image of an obstacle which can therefore easily be opposed. These bands are, so to speak, adversaries, not typically flag-bearers for some religion's 'God.' Black metal is slightly more constrained to what is found in a given location, and hence bands there which go in this kind of direction tend more towards the image of this location - satirically or not - than otherwise. Death metal is generally more compatible with lyrics-based music - it is somewhat textual in nature. Black metal can be lacking for musicians who wish to convey some sort of message or view in detail, like Varg Vikernes - nonethless, lyrics-based black metal would be a fairly impressive feat if carried on coherently, and not falling into being primarily death metal in the process.

In general, then, an image of these genres could be formed in terms of obstacles which are both part of the music, and which are also tackled or cleared out of the way in some form. The genres offer different takes on this general format. Hence, black metal tends towards the occult and pagan or things like NSBM, while death metal can often incorporate horror elements and so on. However, what is the nature of the obstacles faced by each genre? While death metal can default to anti-religious themes, it needn't always do so. In general, then, death metal involves themes of an obstacle to be faced, which is the general thematic basis of the genre, but the nature of this varies. It is something that can be taken on directly, and is hence something which appears, but it needn't be a single thing and must present itself directly if the music is to portray it as well, and hence death metal can be summarised as opposing itself to an image, albeit not a static or silent one. The images are something protected, or something which must be attacked and taken on, and likewise something which does not simply stay still be impinges on their space. Conversely, black metal, as we've noted, opposes itself to a landscape or area - but which one? Generally, it is a Christian form, but nonetheless this Christianity is something diffused rather than being kept within a specialised format - it is hence a Christian city rather than a church, a place where Christianity of some form is the predominant religion in a not specifically religious area. Hence, black metal generally seeks a 'religious' view if it needs one which is far from this area, set in natural places, but this could mislead - to make nature an object of religion is not necessarily to view it as more than exotic. Of course, these places are in a sense Christian by accident rather than inherently, and as such black metal's ties to the Satanic aren't always strict.

In general, then, while the choler the leads unto death metal is one of being impinged upon by some or other aesthetic object, or something which is straightforwardly presented and forces a response, black metal is a genre which attempts to find some form of shelter among the intrusive aspects of city culture. Different bands can integrate elements of both, as they are similar genres. Nonetheless, in a sense black metal is also a genre which is highly vulnerable to incursions of rock tendencies, and in a sense is similar to ambient sound, but played in the form of a song. If you attempted to play an old vinyl record in a similar pattern to an ambient or dark ambient record, you would probably end up with something resembling black metal.

Behind the times

Why is it that the ‘top 10 albums of the past year’ are almost always by bands which the author knew of already and wanted to check out beforehand? Perhaps because they’ve actually listened to them. ‘There were thousands of albums released this year, but fortunately enough eight of the best ten were released by bands which we already knew of and wanted to listen to.’ (‘It’s amazing how the Big 4 continue to release the best thrash [sp.] albums on a yearly basis!’) I doubt that most of us have sorted the wheat from the chaff in 1996, let alone 2011.

Still, the whole ‘top 10’ business is pretty perplexing. I can fully understand wanting to share some bands which seem promising from a given year, or who you’ve been listening to quite frequently, but I’m not certain how in less than one year you’d have gotten to know all of these albums well enough to not only state that they are quality, but quantify this quality in comparison with other good albums from the year. Perhaps if you haven’t listened to any other albums from the year, and have been very sparing with albums from earlier years, but in the first case it wouldn’t render the claim of being a yearly top 10 very convincing, while in the latter case it wouldn’t exactly say much for the value of your esteem for albums. Still, though, I suppose that 1-listen reviews are a common enough occurrence, so it shouldn’t be too surprising by this approach that 2 listens are enough for a precise ordering of albums in accordance with their inherent merit.

Nonetheless, as far as 2011 albums go, I… haven’t listened to that many? Of those which I have, there’s still only one or two which get regular circulation. That’s by no means going to be the final story, though, as generally the albums which I’ve listened to most from the years around 2008-2010 have only been discovered a few years or so after the fact. It probably has to do with my general band-seeking habits, which involve occasionally stumbling across a band somewhere in relation to a subject or style which I’m interested in, or just having them mentioned in an interesting context. There’s no real temporal tilt to it, is what I’m saying.

From what I have listened to, it’s mainly more or less established bands, or at least returning ones; Satan’s Host, Manilla Road, Arch/Matheos, that kind of thing. Satan’s Host don’t quite seem to have gained an ethos yet, so I’ll still have to wait for the album which illuminates to me their deep thoughts about Satan, while the Arch/Matheos hasn’t really done a lot for me as yet, though I’m still listening to it from time to time to try and see if it clicks. For now, it feels a bit like the two are still finding their feet with each other, and can definitely do better with time. I’m sure I’ve listened to a couple of the Portraits and Ghosts and the like, and this time could have been better spent.  In any case, though, the point is that I haven’t listened to that much music from 2011, and most of it hasn’t quite impressed. You wouldn’t necessarily expect it to, however, given that these are basically just the albums which I’ve heard of, in other words the reunions and more hyped up bands, and neither hype nor reunion are generally good signs for a record’s quality. (But they are good signs for ubiquity on Top 10 lists.)

One album which did surprise me a fair bit, however, was ‘A Scarcity of Miracles,’ by Jakszyk, Fripp and Collins, known also as a King Crimson ProjeKct. Now, it’s definitely closer to the Crimson of ‘I Talk to the Wind’ than that of ‘Red,’ in other words on the softer side of things, but at the same time a lot more elaborate in style compared to the simplicity and minimalism of songs like ‘I Talk to the Wind’ or ‘Islands.’ It’s a pretty distinctive record, in a way, and does a lot of interesting things which I’d like to write a post about in the near future, such as in its use of silence. In addition, it features the vocals of Jakko Jakszyk, who is not only very good, but also often reminds me of Ray Alder both in terms of sound and the use of subtle tone changes, and that’s always a good thing. I’ve been listening to this one a fair bit since discovering it, and I think it may well have the compositional nuance to last a while longer, although ultimately we’ll just have to see.

Say not what you are…

So, have you found anything interesting in the last year, which you could see yourself liking for a while to come? If so, it’d be nice to know, so feel free to discuss what you’ve found interesting in recent times. It may even help me to stop being trapped in the Middle Ages.

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In any case, though, the end of 2011 also means the beginning of a new year of metal (and, well, prog), and it seems a pretty promising one. OSI’s album sounds like it should be solid, and they’ve commented that it feels like one of their most coherent efforts. Fates Warning probably won’t match them, but freed from the necessity of creating an album of shorter songs for live performance, they should be able to improve and make something pretty interesting. If Cyriis’ SETI project was somehow released this year, by some faint chance, that would form a pretty great addition to what we already have. More quirky speedthrashprog metal!

(Also a DVD!)

A release which could well give any of these a run for their money, however, is this. The band, Ions, seems to have uploaded some pretty extensive samples in 2004, and then disappeared. This is quite unfortunate, as the samples which they’ve given seem to testify to a very high level of prog metal songwriting, especially on songs like ‘Orca,’ ‘Morphos,’ and ‘Matter.’ The ‘lighter’ (ie. simpler, not less serious) songs like ‘Crying’ and ‘Away’ also seem pretty tightly composed, while I like the almost Synchestra-esque passage which opens ‘Beneath my Feet.’ Their website title is also fabulous. In case you don’t recognize the personnel, it’s basically a project of some of the former members of the APSoG-loving prog band Greyhaven, featuring members such as their vocalist Brian Francis, who seems to have strengthened even further since then. The other main solo project emerging from the remnants of that group was Ethan Matthews’ Echo Us, although I believe that there was also some interaction between the two, such as Brian Francis helping Echo Us with their album covers. (Their thematic content is very similar, as well.)

It wouldn’t really surprise me if a project like this had ceased to be in the early stages, but in this case they at least sounded like they had some pretty decent recordings of their songs already down, or at least knew quite well what they were doing, which makes one wonder where they went. If anyone knows what’s going on with these guys, it’d be nice to know. If these guys were to release an album, it sounds like they have all the ingredients to make something rather special.

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In any case, though, I have a new Vektor album to listen to.  See you.

I’ll rise again, Resurgam

It’s been a rather busy summer, but I seem to have returned now, and finished off a piece on Psychotic Waltz which I started, as you can see, back in July. Nonetheless, other than just giving a status update, I thought that I might as well use this soapbox to provide some profound platitudes concerning heavy metal, such being my general inclination.
Percy Shelley once stated that, “I think one is always in love with something or other; the error, and I confess it is not easy for spirits cased in flesh and blood to avoid it, consists in seeking in a mortal image the likeness of what is, perhaps, eternal.” Perhaps this is why bands like Redemption find it so easy to offend in their love songs, when they refer to calls from ‘restaurants’, and otherwise take an overly terrestrial and trivial focus. Even ‘A Pleasant Shade of Grey’, which is quite down-to-earth in terms of theme and story, has in terms of effect some of its closest parallels in more spiritual bands like Echo Us and, occasionally, Holocaust. There is the same sense of the intimacy, the connection with the ‘other’ of the lyrics, being in essence an expression of one’s own soul, and this forming an important part of the appreciation; ‘this music is me’, in other words. Despite its outwards direction, the soul is not sacrificed by these ventures, but rather characterized by it. The external object of affection or reverence is not ourselves, so that our love is not simply self-love; however, neither is it absolutely separate from and external to us. ‘I had a dream I was you.’
What does heavy metal have to do with the eternal? Well, that varies. Some bands, like Psychotic Waltz, are concerned not with positively establishing the eternal but in leaving behind the rest of the debris. However, what heavy metal, in its most basic manifestations, has, is a sense of power. Not, however, a concrete form of power, that of the strength to beat somebody up, or to rule a nation. Indeed, heavy metal often enough goes far past this, to exaggerated images that hardly anybody would consent to perform in real life, as for example in Lamp of Thoth’s ‘I Love the Lamp’. The power is not one of worldly concern, but of, so to speak, ‘not giving a fuck’; we are, for a moment, free from Earthly bounds, and the pleasure comes not from the thoughts of doing nasty things (yes, I know, ‘speak for yourself’), but from the fact that the music completely abstracts from real life and real power to offer something far more eternal, the power to leave behind our concern about the physical world for a moment. The moral principles of Christianity? Hey, whatever man, I’m killing virgins.
It’s not that we would do any of this, nor necessarily even that we could, or want to; it’s rather the image of doing it itself which is significant. It’s not that it’s a good thing, it’s that we’re free from such judgments. Such, then, is the first form of freedom represented here. This is one which abstracts from the world, one which does not even acknowledge it in its premises. It faces the problems of the world and goes, ‘Well, you can’t touch me, I’m a soul.’ (with rock and roll.) Hence, here heavy metal comes to represent the eternal, the essential freedom which, with its bass, wipes away the world; Hegel’s destructive, abstract ‘I’, in a sense.
This, however, is in the last instance only a beginning; for all of that abstraction, we must still live, in a world which seems to restrict this ‘I’. How are we to manage this? Well, albums like ‘The Spectre Within’ and ‘A Social Grace’ enter in here; they face the world which seems alien, and they realize that the soul may only be asserted through its negation, and is otherwise neglected through absorption with the material, the endless treadmill of physical pleasure. However, these albums have no answers, but simply declare the truths of finitude, and hence establish that it cannot satisfy the soul; they establish its pleasures as illusory, as ‘semblance’, and hence something which must be transcended, but no more. It is, rather, the preserve of albums like ‘Awaken the Guardian’, APSoG, ‘Tomorrow will tell…’, and so on to take a closer look at our concrete humanity, and at how we live and feel, to return the world of dreams to the concrete world and hence give it substance, and give us action; to let the soul move beyond itself and still be maintained. We live in a finite world, in shades of grey, but this is inevitable and we must make them pleasant. We shall look at this aspect in more detail when we investigate the albums themselves, and elaborate upon the roles of ‘The Spectre Within’ and ‘A Social Grace’ in more depth shortly.
Of course, it is worth noting that heavy metal is not philosophical treatise, but more akin to a picture, and only as such can convey what it will. However, so long as the description of heavy metal in philosophical terms and concepts is also taken as essentially a picture, we should be alright. Even if Greek tragedy and its gods would be incompatible with a modern society, strictly speaking, we can still appreciate it from within its immanent paradigm, not as philosophical treatise but as art; and ‘when we understand everything, we will forgive everything.’