Rant, rave & summer break

Morning,

I am Mithras Sol Invictus, and this is "South Hessian Black Metal, fuck everyone!!"

Well, almost... we played two more gigs in Göttingen and in Mannheim, which went very well, and now we're back to working on the album. I've been practising my ass off for the fucking solos, studio is coming up next month, and the artwork is on its way as well.

That being said - I recently noticed my blood pressure levels went far down, back to a healthy level, when I blocked almost everyone (except for a few musicians I know) who has anything to do with black metal from my facebook feed. What the fuck is wrong with black metal these days? The first thing may be that it takes place on facebook, and now I start sounding like Grandpa Mithras, but some trends still piss me off. First, to get this out of the way, can we stop discussing the political affiliation of EACH AND EVERY BAND?! We don't support right wing extremists and will speak out on that as well, but this is currently being taken much too far, from both sides mind you. All these connections "around three corners" are fucking meaningless - try this with Fallen Tyrant, and you'll probably end up convinced we're antisemitic pro-Israel islamophobic muslim-loving nazi communist fundamentalist Christian theistic pagan Satanists. And we fucking watch our backs who we associate with already, but you can construct something like this for each and every band.

And while I'm at it: Fuck the hipsters. Since when has it become the norm for "black metal" bands to use tonloads of heart emoticons in their posts and use slang like Moneyboy (the guy who's been taking the piss out of German Hip Hop for the last years)? I know it's supposed to be "funny" and "edgy," but it's not. Stop it and think about creating a coherent concept for your art, will you? Even if it's extremely outlandish: At least Sunshine & Lollipops (check them out!) mean what they say and do, which I can't say for most of those pretentious wannabes. And hey, I'm completely fine with not wearing warpaint and looking like art students while playing black metal, as long as there's something sincere to it and some quality to the music, but stop the bullshit. Just stop it. And stop pretending "hipster black metal" is something new, unique or innovative. Just because your core audience has absolutely no clue who Emperor or Ulver are, doesn't mean your stuff hasn't been done before. Have you looked at and listened to fucking Ihsahn or Garm?!

The "trve" community can stop to label everything they don't like "hipster" as well, and I know I've been guilty of that as well. You know, there's American black metal made by American black metal people that happens to sound vaguely similar to German hipster BM, but that doesn't mean the attitude behind it may not be completely different. Hell, there's German "hipster black metal" like Ultha, which isn't "hipster" at all, but full out black metal.

More of this: If you play in a black metal band, wear corpsepaint and claim to be hardcore satanist (yeah right), that's perfectly fine as well, we understand, we're kind of in the same boat. But can we at least stop to call everything "orthodox" and "occult," and most of all, can we stop calling every fucking concert a "ritual"?! This is turning into being the "new hipster," to say it with a friend's wise words, and very, very few performances are actually ritualistic in any way. I'll tell you, if we wanted to do a ritual, it would certainly not involve a bunch of drunk metalheads - and those people ARE the audience at most concerts, however "trve" and "elitist," and it's alright. A Fallen Tyrant show isn't a ritual: However we're painted up and however much of our inner darkness we spit out at the audience, it is and will always remain a pure balls-to-the-wall, hand made and heartfelt rock performance. Just with a different tone and maybe a slightly different attitude behind the music. And as I said, we might be doing something very ritualistic at some point, but that will involve very little audience, if at all.

Then again - in the end, we're all artists and have the freedom to do whatever the fuck we like. But we also have the freedom to criticize it when other people are completely full of crap and try to pass it off as legitimate art, either to pretentious wankers who pride themselves in being overly "unique" (hipsters) or to weaklings who can't find their own identity and thus need to belong to a "elitist scene" (and you know who those folks are.) And remember, everyone is full of shit, even us, only the filling level is different - I have a feeling next to everyone in the black metal scene scores pretty high here.

That's it. We keep working behind the scenes, and we'll be back on stage in autumn 2016.

Worst,
Mithras

More updates

Morning,

by the holy grandmother of Satan, it's been three months since I updated this page? Well, time flies... and we have, as usually, been quite busy in the meanwhile. First of all, we drove to Lörrach, near the Swiss border, on a short notice, to fill in for some band that had to cancel for health reasons. So, Fallen Tyrant played at a concert with a bunch of thrash metal bands, which turned out to be a good thing - worked quite well, obviously also for the reason that we just look a lot better on stage than a bunch of thrashers in street clothes. ;-) Quite a good live start for the year. There's also a video, with inferior sound quality, which you can check out below: We're actually playing an unreleased song there, so if you're REALLY interested...

After the gig, we drove home in the ice rain, which was also an experience - but we made it home safe.

Next in line was Hofheim, on February 20th. Large event with 6 bands, we turned out to be more or less the soundcheck, with PA speakers constantly dropping out and stuff like that. Did probably turn a few people off, and somehow, connection to the audience didn't seem to happen. However, we got a) a few nice reviews, b) sold quite a lot of merch and c) got the video below, which is actually good! Sound is from the studio though...

Next up: Saarbrücken, March 19th. This kind of took me back to the olden days, as we played at the Devil's Place, where I played one of my first gigs with my main band Wight. Nice little gig with Sunshine & Lollipops (yes, that's a black metal band - check them out if you like a mix of Celtic Frost and total complete madness, their new album is actually surprisingly good!), us in the middle and then Carn Dum from Saarbrücken. Well, despite some organisational difficulties beforehand, Unholy Constellation Concerts managed to pull off a good concerts with a good audience. Speaking of audience, here's to the worthless motherfucker in the first row who kept messing with our stage props, drinks and pedalboards:

a) If you want to get drunk as fuck and mess with the band, you're not only wrong at a black metal concert, you're wrong at any concert.
b) Don't be surprised if a band member jumps off the stage to get on your ass - especially if you have been warned repeatedly and your last reply was "Shut up and play!"
c) Going on about it the entire evening and going so far as calling us "NSBM assholes" doesn't make you look any better.

Apart from that cunt, I quite liked this gig.

Only a week later, Bobstadt. Nice gig, shit sound, some nice pictures, all around a good evening with our friends from Hyems. A fair bit too many skinheads in the audience for my taste...

Hyems decided our drummer looks like Mark Wahlberg...

... while Nihlathak is always good for some grim pics...

... and Mithras couldn't find the non-existant whammy on his new guitar. Pics by Somna Artifacts.

So, here we are now, looking at two more gigs in the coming week:

Saturday, April 23rd, JUZ Göttingen, with a few Death Metal bands.
Thursday, April 28th, JUZ Mannheim with Yellow Eyes from the US (who are supposed to be some secret tip these days, so check them out if you like.)

After that, we'll retreat from the live front for a while to finish up the album.

That's it.
Mithras.