November 2020 Feature Release - The North Edition
It's now November which of course means that we'll be nominating a brand new monthly feature release for each clan. This essentially means that we're asking you to rate, review & discuss our chosen features for no other reason than because we enjoy the process & banter. We're really looking forward to hearing your thoughts on our chosen releases so don't be shy.
This month's feature release for The North is the highly regarded fifth album from Swedish depressive black metal giants Shining entitled "V - Halmstad".
https://metal.academy/releases/2800
I intend to write a review for this shortly, so I'll just post a quick reaction here for now. I've avoided Shining for years due to an adverse reaction to one of their earlier albums. However, I must send you my profuse thanks, Daniel, for selecting this as this month's featured release because this has absolutely floored me and I would never have listened to it otherwise. It has got to be one of the most profoundly affecting releases I have heard in a good while and one I really found myself relating to, so great job with this month's selection.
Glad you liked it Sonny. I hadn't listened to it for more than a decade but quickly remembered why I found it to be such an interesting listen. It really asks questions of your average depressive black metal fan as it goes against the grain in many ways. Firstly, the production is crystal clear which is directly opposed to the lo-fi approach that most of Shining's peers take when attempting to create atmosphere & I think it works beautifully here. Perhaps it's due to the fact that it highlights the exceptional level of musicianship for a black metal outfit & a much more diverse & progressive musical palate. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that it's debatable as to whether "V - Halmstad" is even black metal in the traditional sense of the term. Despite the fact that Shining utilize traditional black metal tools fairly consistently throughout the album, the production, musicianship, experimentation in style & unusual vocal techniques never allow them to sound like a black metal band in the purest sense. (I feel similarly about Primordial's classic releases actually.) Post-black metal is perhaps a more accurate tag for "V - Halmstad" than anything else but it still doesn't fit all that comfortably.
Regardless of what most reviews say, I actually don't find "V - Halmstad" to sound all that depressive in a musical sense either. I think people are mainly led down that path by the samples, cover art & lyrics (which are in Swedish) as well as the insane & overthetop vocal delivery & stage antics of Kvarforth but it's also possible that I simply can't relate to these sort of feelings & therefore aren't able to connect with the music in the same way. Kvarforth's vocals are a bit of a struggle for me at times to be honest. At his best his blood-curdling howls & croaks remind me of Mayhem/Aborym/Tormentor/Sunn O))) front man Attila Csihar but at his worst he sounds pretty similar to Zed from the Police Academy movies. Some of the suicidal & depressive movie samples are very effective but I do think they go too far with pushing these themes at times as there are one or two sections that are simply too miserable to make for enjoyable listening, instead making the listener feel significantly uneasy. The first two tracks are spectacular & I always feel like I'm heading towards a very high scoring result early on but, even though there are no weak tracks on offer, the middle of the album sees a decline in overall impact before taking an upwards turn & finishing with a couple of very solid & effective pieces.
Overall, this is a high quality & ambitious piece of work that should appeal to fans of Silencer, Forgotten Tomb & Bethlehem.
4/5
Interesting that you mention Silencer there at the end, Daniel. Now, just for the record, I am not a massive fan of DSBM particularly, but V-Halmstad and Silencer's Death Pierce Me are two of the most interesting and emotionally resonant black metal releases I have ever heard. Although it is true that Silencer divide opinion, especially with respect to the vocals, personally I love that album. Considering BM can be so hokey at times with it's satanic and evil imagery (and don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking it) these are two albums that actually seem to mean something deeper and I find I connect with on another level. Again, great choice.
Review is done. Frankly, a masterpiece of creativity and subsequently a masterclass in how to write songs that are personal and able to effortlessly articulate the challenges of mental illness without coming off as attention seeking or just being miserable for the sake of a band image. Production job is great but the talent of the guitarists in particular frame the perfection of the album to me as they create consistency of performance alongside varied outputs across the album, touching on many different styles.
4.5/5
Fantastic review there Vinny. One of your best.
I have to ask guys, what are your feelings on DSBM as a unique subgenre of black metal? I have to say that I struggle with the concept of differentiating most of the DSBM releases I've heard from traditional black metal as the differences are mostly thematic rather than musical. Sure there are some musical differences with certain strains of DSBM but those differences don't seem to have become unique characteristics of the entire subgenre so I treat them as a fresh takes on black metal rather than a new subgenre & this Shining release is a prime example of that. Perhaps it's just that over time the DSBM tag has been afforded to releases that never really claimed to conform with the characteristics that led to the tag being penned to begin with so the subgenre has become less defined as a result?
I also find that the whole concept of basing your lyrics & image around depression & suicide is very much against the core of what made black metal so appealing for me in the first place. Black metal has always been about empowerment & I-don't-give-a-fuck attitude in my opinion. It's simultaneously a celebration of its own self-imposed isolation from society's chosen path & a call to arms to like-minded individuals around the globe. I struggle with the self-pity that DSBM seems to use as its thematic platform as it's just so far removed from those ideals & I more often than not find that the instrumentation doesn't really work to create all that depressed an atmosphere anyway. I want to be uplifted by my black metal via raw brutality & a cold atmosphere that takes me to dangerous & desolate places from the comfort of my car or lounge. I don't want to be encouraged to take my own life because I can't bring myself to get out of bed. It's the opposite extreme as far as I can see.
OK, that's my two cents. What are your thoughts?
DSBM, another reason for me to avoid black metal. As I've mentioned in an earlier thread (https://metal.academy/forum/17/thread/468?page=2#topic_3966), it's kind of the second wave of black-doom with dark suicidal lyrics of death, depression and human suffering over the lo-fi high distortion and fast tremolo of black metal alongside the droning low distortion and slow timbres of doom metal. I think that subgenre and funeral doom are the two most depressive subgenres of metal and other popular genres. While I do listen to The Fallen genres like doom metal and gothic metal that are depressing in a cool way to impress some of my peers, DSBM is obviously depressing in a "f*** my life, I wanna die" kind of way. I never have that kind of attitude. I love my life, I would never kill myself and break the hearts of all my family and friends, whether by choice or being encouraged via a certain metal subgenre. I wanna sleep in my bed and wake up a happy normal fellow carrying on with my pleasant life, not with a weapon, a noose, or poison next to me. I wanna live and avoid a subgenre that threatens to send me to suicidal Hell. DSBM is not the genre for a happy optimistic person like me! However, there might be some DSBM fans out there who really do get suicidal, I should point out DSBM is not, and I mean NOT responsible for any suicides link to that subgenre or any metal subgenre for that matter (remember a couple incidents involving Ozzy Osbourne and Judas Priest?). And I'm not saying DSBM should be banned or illegal or anything, artists of the subgenre just have to find the right audience, and clearly some of us members are in that right audience. In conclusion, despite its sadness, depression, and suicide results, anyone can handle DSBM just fine if they have the right mood, and if not, they can just avoid it and live their life. You may listen to a suicidal subgenre, but please don't commit suicide yourself. Just keep living!
This is a tricky subject and conversation to have on a music website forum, to be honest. I agree with Daniel on a purely musical basis that for the vast majority of DSBM the differentiation is purely thematic and I also agree that a lot of it is self-pitying. However, I disagree that it doesn't fit in with the black metal aesthetic. BM has long been about negativity, misanthropy and hatred so surely the ultimate expression of that aesthetic is self-hatred and self-destruction. It's easy to hate something else, much more difficult to hate yourself.
A lot of DSBM however sounds disingenious and is made by people who have probably just latched on to the themes with no real understanding of depression and mental illness, like a majority of black metal bands who sing about Satanism aren't actually Satanists. For me, this is why albums like V-Halmstad and Death Pierce Me are so affecting, because they get under the skin of those issues and through their music a listener who suffers from those same issues can connect more deeply. Sure to those never affected by those same issues they may sound lame or inexplicable and if that's the case then I'm made up for you, but those records can also mean a lot on a personal level to others for their ability to show a certain type of listener that they are not alone in their thoughts and feelings. Also no one would ever kill themselves because of a record, despite what Tipper Gore and Mary Whitehouse would have had people believe in the 80s. I know many will probably scoff at these comments, but frankly I don't give a shit!
I agree with the theme in this conversation that there's too many "pretenders" in the DSBM scene who just latch onto a scene for attention and make a mockery of mental illness as a result, for this reason I don't actively seek out content of the sub-genre. As someone who spent several years of my life looking after a variety of age groups, hospitalised with various mental health problems the concept of any attempt to glorify depression or suicide is not one that sits well with me. In short if your going to deliver a record based on the themes of mental illness you simply have to represent the challenge in full in order for it to be a success. Yes, the image of a young woman with a gun in her mouth on the cover of the album could be deemed as pure theatre but with the context of the music itself I believe V-Halmstad to be one of the most honest iterations of the real challenges of mental health problems.
Depression, anxiety, personality, psychotic, eating and post-traumatic stress disorders etc are crippling and that's what comes across on this release. It doesn't focus on sadness in singularity (you can be in a very happy place and be struck by depression for no obvious reason/s), instead it focuses on the dramatic shift in mood that occurs with mental illness and as such presents a real journey over the six tracks. As Sonny says, this record gets under the skin of the issue.
That having been said, I disagree that fans of the genre are all sat there with scars of self-harm visible and that they are all seeking the misery promised by the sub-genre tag. I think as Daniel says, there's often not much difference to other iterations of bm and so I suspect that it a lot of people don't actually they know they are listening to a DSBM record without looking up further detail.
DSBM is a really tough subgenre of music for me to listen to or even discuss. I have listened to, at most, three DSBM album in my entire life, and all of it has been pretty forgettable to outright bad. Shining are within the former of those two categories. While the music is produced well and very dreary to match the atmosphere, the compositions are really weak. Not helped at all by some honestly painful sounding vocals. I understand why they sound the way that they do, but it doesn't take away from the fact that they sound very amateurish. Not to mention the fact that Kvarfoth is an absolutely reprehensible human being (I only just discovered this after completing my review). Shining have no stakes in the content and it shows.
6/10
Going back to this topic, here's a little something based on a Pearls Before Swine comic, when I realized the acronym DSBM sounds similar to a different inappropriate one:
