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