VaccZine #6: STEAMING HOT IRON MAIDEN TAKES
The Hot Take Empire, Antro, Tentacle Centipede
Iron Maiden released “The Writing on the Wall” on July 15. It’s the first single from the forthcoming Senjutsu, the 46-year-old English heavy metal institution’s 17th full-length and its first since 2015’s The Book of Souls. In four days, the official video racked up an insane 3.7 million views on YouTube. It’s a hit. Iron Maiden is back, baby. And the Hot Take Empire is ready.
In the wake of “The Writing on the Wall,” there are already tens of reactions to Iron Maiden’s new single on YouTube. Loudwire even broke down all of the video’s references not unlike a Rick and Morty recap. And you can feel that outsider opportunists, awed by the big numbers promising an expanded feedback loop, are swimming in like lame-ass remoras. We’ve seen this before — think this Spiritbox session or this Unleash the Archers video — and “The Writing on the Wall” seems to be doing it again, burning through the rest of the reactor channels because it’s a proven winner. So, it hasn’t even been a week yet and we’re already drowning in supplemental, ephemeral, barely considered content churned out solely for the sake of content.
Things have been building this way for a long time, but it’s depressing to see the Hot Take Empire so fully infiltrate metal like it has in every other aspect of life. This is just culture now, a perpetually running engine of engagement operated by accidental street teamers trying to wring some secondhand view-bucks out of an event’s runup.
The byproduct of the Hot Take Empire is that nothing real matters anymore. Instead of considered analysis of the end product, that being the real song or real album, the Empire, in lockstep with whatever algorithm governs engagement, looks to artificially inflate and elongate sustained interest in the event itself, which, to be clear, is imaginary. That is to say, it doesn’t matter if Senjutsu ends up being good or bad when all 81 minutes of it drops in September. The only thing that matters is that people maintain interest in the illusionary hype cycle.
NEW MAIDEN? WOW, I BETTER SPECULATE ABOUT THIS TO GET NEW FOLLOWERS AND KEEP SPECULATING ABOUT THIS ENDLESSLY TO KEEP THOSE FOLLOWERS. Blergh. It’s like a check box that can never be checked. Find SEO-optimizing tour dates below. All of this, and this is an industry term, fucking sucks.
I’m not telling you anything you don’t know because you’ve been living in this hellworld born out of bad algorithmic decision making and Final Fantasy-esque corporate atrocities like Facebook just straight up lying about video and ad metrics. You also know that this isn’t really the fault of any content creator. It’d be nice if everyone with a voice could decline membership in the Hot Take Empire and steer content creation back to something more meaningful, but…lol. If you want to have a voice, you’re stuck doing this.
All Caps’s “take-a-pede” lays this out well. While the take-a-pede is NBA-specific, you can easily plug in aspects of underground metal into it. At the forefront of the take-a-pede are the few remaining glossy magazines and the promo cartel, the various PR houses that always seem to get their “highly anticipated” releases — because new releases are always “highly anticipated” no matter if anyone is actually anticipating them — into those pages. Next, the poor souls who do interviews that provide grist for news aggregators like Blabbermouth and The PRP. Then, any number of monthly metal listicles that the mainstream music websites commission in order to check the box of metal coverage. Reactors, influencers, social media gadflies, etc., follow. This zine is somewhere near the end, mainly because I want to opt out of all of it — my only skill is helping you find music you might like! That’s all I endeavor to do! And yet…how could I possibly opt out if I want anyone to read this? That’s the insidious shit. Removing yourself from the Hot Take Empire means removing yourself from discourse completely.
While I’m permanently welded to my navel, I don’t think I’m the only one burned out by this shit. Sure, the past…I don’t know…50 years of entertainment marketing has increasingly relied on the event rather than the product in order to sell units. That’s marketing 101, to an extent. Still, it feels different now, way more craven, especially as more and more fans have been infected with late-stage marketer-think, not unlike how the modern sports fan dreams of being a stingy owner rather than a player. Now, if you position yourself as an influencer or a reactor, it’s less about the quality of your content and more about how deftly you’re able to market yourself as you either intentionally or unintentionally perform guerrilla marketing for a corporation. That performative fandom capitulates to the demands of capitalism is…man, what the fuck are we doing.
I like “The Writing on the Wall.” It’s fine. I think it sounds like Richard Thompson decided to start a metal band and thus it’s the most interesting Iron Maiden has been in a bit. But, again, my opinions about the merits of the song are beside the point. The Hot Take Empire simply demands that I engage with it in a way that extends the event. This is not Maiden’s fault, either. I don’t want to speak for the band, but I don’t think it wants this. But, by simply releasing music, it’s not really Maiden’s call anymore. Maiden belongs to the Hot Take Empire’s domain, like we all do. Maiden’s hard-won standing as one of the most popular metal bands is now a vector for unrelated entities to make money.
You could make an argument that same as it ever was. Glossy mags, websites, radio stations, etc. have been locked in this parasitic relationship forever. But those are, like, businesses…with overhead. That people without that overhead are now forced to act like those businesses — which, I might add, have mostly been decimated by this shift in gatekeepers — in order to make a dent in the discourse sucks. Proponents will position that as a democratizing effect, that “everyone has a voice,” but it’s false. Those with the voice are the ones in a position to be able to work the most. Not only does that lead to burnout, but generally shitty content. Thanks to the eternalism of the internet, instant reactions — the bread and butter of the Hot Take Empire because they’re easy to make quickly — have just of long of a shelf life as highly considered and painstakingly researched ones. In the grand scheme of things, showing up with as little information as possible is just as powerful.
The most annoying thing about all of this is that, more often, what we’re engaging with doesn’t even exist at all. Take this from “All Work and No Play,” a great piece by Sam Adler-Bell in Dissent on video games:
The critic Michael Thomsen compares video games to prayers. “They have the most promise when they are the least specific,” he writes. This dynamic reaches its most extreme form in what games journalists call the “hype cycle.” A new game is announced years before its intended release, often with a trailer containing no footage of actual gameplay. (Sometimes, as with a new God of War game anticipated this year, it’s merely a spare title screen with music.) The imaginative work is undertaken by the prospective player herself; YouTube comment sections fill up with delighted speculation about what the game might be — story, setting, mechanics. These fantasies are encouraged by game developers, who leak enticing little nuggets of info to advertisers, journalists, and Twitch streamers.
The hype cycle works because gamers enjoy it. Imagining the perfect game is pleasurable in a way that’s distinct from the pleasures of gaming. As Thomsen writes, “Thinking about games when they are still pristine and unsullied by actual play can be revelatory, inspiring future desires on the verge of becoming nameable.” For Thomsen, video games “promise various forms of wish fulfillment,” but more significantly, “they offer reassurance that wishfulness is still worthwhile, that some mechanism waits out there to receive wishes and will at least consistently respond to them.”
From there, the piece examines video game labor conditions and how typical game design choices influence its players. Good read. But, I can’t get over those two paragraphs and the knockout follow-up: “At the end of the hype cycle, there is usually only a commodity, a game world filled with rote, time-wasting tasks and derivative mechanics, which pales in comparison to the dream — a disappointment that sometimes ignites resentment and backlash.” Still, is backlash bad for the Hot Take Empire? If something sucks, it seems like it tacks a few weeks onto the event. Success?
Again — and I sound like a broken record here which is…almost the point? — the thing being sold is engagement in the event and that’s propped up by wishfulness, potentiality, and promise. And because that wishfulness sets such a high bar, mainly because the Hot Take Empire NEEDS it to be high in order to stoke engagement and mint maximum view-bucks, the end product is bound to disappoint no matter what it is. I mean, look at Nintendo fans that have deluded themselves into believing hype that the company never actually announced and then act aggrieved when the company doesn’t deliver on the things it never promised.
Of course, this perversely looping bullshit isn’t limited to the arts. Sports enjoys its own hype cycles. The draft, free agency, transfer windows, etc. Fans love this shit because it’s pure potential — “Oh man, we might be good this year!” says a Mariners fan, wrongly — but it really means nothing. The games and matches haven’t been played. It’s all event. But, the result of the games are the only thing that matters! I can’t say this enough: It’s the only real thing that happens in any of part of that hype cycle!
The thing that sets underground metal apart from the parasocial nightmare that’s, say, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, where overly sensitive normie bullies try to act like they’re not one of the dominate forces in pop culture, is that underground metal isn’t equipped for the Hot Take Empire. There aren’t enough of us around to sustain it. I mean, Metallica is currently the biggest rock band in the world and 99 percent of underground metalheads hate its post-’80s output. That’s how much we don’t matter. The underground metal feedback loop is like eleven idiots on a message board that hasn’t been updated since 2003.
To wit, while “The Writing on the Wall” has done numbers, the Hot Take Empire hasn’t yet. The biggest reaction currently belongs to Alex Hefner. “THEY FINALLY RELEASED NEW MUSIC AFTER 6 YEARS! | IRON MAIDEN - ‘The Writing On the Wall’ (REACTION)” has been seen 48,000 times. Considering Hefner has 684,000 subscribers, that’s a pretty bad conversion rate. No offense, Alex. Again, not your fault! It’s 48,000 more than will read this. Your influence is unarguably bigger than mine, it’s just that…I mean…there’s just not much to influence in this space.
That’s kind of the thing: None of these reactions really do numbers. Carcass released “Kelly’s Meat Emporium,” the lead stream from Torn Arteries, on YouTube on June 18. It has done a respectable 187,000 views. No reaction has even cracked one thousand views yet, but there they are, growing by the day. It’s people shitting them out into the ether, forced into a permanently broken model in a space that can’t support it. They do it because this is just what you do now. Woof. If you want to have a voice, though, I don’t think you have much of a choice.
Yeah, sure: Old man yells at cloud. Or…am I screaming all the way to the promised land, perhaps?
NEW ARRIVALS
SPOTLIGHT
Antro - Demo (Lower Class Kids Records)
Can’t tell you a lick about this German band except that its demo is out on the always solid Lower Class Kids Records (check out BORF, Kobol, and Thin; they know what’s up) and it received a write-up in the always miles-ahead Machine Music. Pretty good indicators of goodness. And, yep: good. Imagine a crusty hardcore band birthed in the gutter that just discovered Terrorizer or Righteous Pigs. The guitars nail that corrosive ‘80s tone perfectly, the vocalist’s punkish yips and yelps always seem to fall in the right places. And then Antro let’s loose with the metal. Blasts, grinding riffs, speedy thrash. Some of this stuff even sounds appropriately necro, the kind of decrepit crossover that Darkthrone wouldn’t mind ripping off. Hell of an introduction. I bet we’re going to get to know Antro real well.
HIGHLIGHTS
Bræ - A Thousand Ways to End it All (Amor Fati Productions)
Pretty miserable! I probably shouldn't have waited until summer to check out this highly atmospheric DSBM downerfest. Two songs, each a side-long 21 minutes. “Part I” starts slowly, really building up that depressive grandeur. Sick riff, mentally sick vocals. Relatable. It then goes dungeon synth for a stretch, leaning on a Casio preset that has a VHS wobble to it. Finally, all hands are on deck for the crescendo. “Part II” pulls the same trick, with a slightly faster riff and more despondent outro. I don't think you're gonna blast this while tearing down the freeway. But, if you've got time to stare at a wall after being paralyzed by the midnight sads, this'll help you survive until dawn. If this band could cover “Opus No. 1” of Cisco hold music fame, that would be sick.
Civerous - Live Promo MMXXI (Transylvanian Tapes)
I’m out on Inclonetations. Way too many of them. And so many of the too many hover around the 0 mark of VORB. (That would be “Value Over Replacement Band,” a highly scientific measure.) While the sound fatigue is a bummer since I dig me a slow death metal crawl, it does provide an opportunity to figure out which bands have “it” since, thanks to overpopulation and sound standardization, talent level can no longer be obscured by aesthetics. This is a long way of saying Civerous has “it.” The 30-plus minute Live Promo MMXXI is pretty much everything I could want from a workman death metal set. Good riffs, good vibe, good pacing. Even the dynamic breathers, when the band spins some arpeggios in the Corrupted-esque quietude, is good. If this is an accurate representation of the LA quintet’s gig, count me there whenever we’re doing shows again.
Eternal Sword - The Cursed Land (self-released)
Eternal Sword is an “epic raw black metal” band swathed in mystery. Who is it? Who knows. Where is it from? UNKNOWN. This might all be an exercise in demonstrating that good riffs are the most important thing in metal. These riffs? Like a cross between Weakling and the more widdly strain of medieval evilness from France (Aorlhac, etc.). And the riffs are great. They don't do anything you haven't heard in this space, but they do them well, rising and falling in an extremely pleasing way. Not to mention, whomever is playing them has a great feel and sense of space, a storyteller in trem form. Which, you know, covers up for everything else. The drums aren't quite there and neither are the vox. The theme here seems to be battles, specifically...Game of Thrones battles since there's a quote from A Feast for Crows on the Bandcamp page. That stuff might make you tap out in other circumstances. Instead, you stick around for 17-minute stretches just to hear where these riffs go.
Fange - Pantocrator (Throatruiner Ṙecords)
It has been fun watching Fange become more accessible and experimental without losing its key trait: sick, buzzy sludge riffs that brutishly crawl along at a perfect beatdown pace. Pantocrator is just two songs, but each are over 15 minutes. And yet, if there's a Fange record poised for a breakout, it's this one? Despite the song length, this is the most uncluttered that the French trio has been. And Benjamin Moreau's “machines” are the best he has programmed, adding a little bit of swing to the industrial stomp. When the band is really cooking, it sounds like Godflesh t-boned Entombed. Granted, that's probably not gonna hook a lot of your normal friends, but it'll get some. Gym-ready.
General Surgery - Lay Down and Be Counted (Self-released)
General Surgery, back on the operating table. First platter of splatter in, jeeze, a bit over four years? And this sounds legit, a nice...uh...counterpoint to the messiness of Pharmacist and the overly clinical leads of the others. Heck, it'd be great if Carcass could also reclaim some of this edge and grit when it resurfaces later this year. Anyway, Joacim Carlsson is your last remaining Necrology pathologist — although most of the rest of the band have been around for well over a decade — and his riffs sound delightfully rotten. Of course, it certainly helps to have Urban Skytt as your six-string twin. Skytt joined in 2015, but duder has been around forever: Regurgitate, Crematory, Nasum, to name a few. He can still nail those slightly behind the beat grooves like few others. I miss Regurgitate, man. Anyway, I'd hesitate to call this a classic, but it definitely hits a spot. These are the dealers. They give you everything you need.
Molis Sepulcrum - Left for the Worms (Pulverised Records)
Gotta fall for at least one HM-2 stomper every year and I guess this is the one. Pulverised Records is pushing this as Dismember/Grave plus early Cannibal Corpse and that’s not wrong. Not unlike the aforementioned, the best thing this Hungarian troop has going for it is that it can rip a riff. Really, when you’re in the HM-2 zone, that’s all you can really hope for. I think diming an HM-2 is probably like DJing: easy to do, hard to do well. It all comes down to artistry. Molis Sepulcrum nails it and, thanks to its tunnel vision M.O., that being “we came to whip ass, coherence be damned,” it sounds exactly like some teenage spuds in the early ‘90s. There’s some curveballs on Left for the Worms, too, such as some messy songwriting that doesn’t quite work, but the misses end up making it sound all the more ‘90s anyway. Let’s get this band on a split with Brutally Deceased and Wombripper and take care of 2022’s HM-2 standout early.
Nekromantheon - Visions of Trismegistos (Indie Recordings)
One of the great mysteries of metal: Nekromantheon is good but Obliteration is boring. Someone greenlight an In Search of... episode on that, please. Part of the reason why Nekromantheon crushes is that no one does thrash like the Norwegians these days. I feel like all of these bands — the Kolbotn Thrashers Union and other countryheads — are locked in a friendly game of one-upmanship, kicking each other's asses to thrash harder. Nekromantheon seems to be the one with the clout, the most known, though I’m basing that off of the predilections of my friend group and a Beaten to Death song title. Anyway, Visions of Trismegistos, the trio’s third full-length and first since 2012, once again justifies Nekromantheon's standing. It goes hard, ripping through the kinds of riffs that Slayer forgot how to play after the ‘80s. While I find Aura Noir a little more interesting, Condor a little more frenzied, Nekromantheon is pretty much a thrash ideal, especially in the 21st century. If I have a quibble — and when something is so solid, you can only really quibble — it’s that Nekromantheon only has one gear. Probably not a problem for many, but the back half of Trismegistos starts feel a little one note. Still, a good note.
Nyctophagia - Terrified of Tomorrow (self-released)
After a heavy flow of EPs and splits, here's the El Paso goregrinders' first full-length. 17 songs, 18 minutes. The headline is longtime member Dylan Phagia has surrounded himself with a badass crew of North American sickos. Isaac Horne (Sulfuric Cautery, Lurid Panacea, Raw Addict), Cody Davidson (Dyskinesia, Sanguisugabogg), Joe Warkentin (Raw Addict, session work for Agathocles). The songwriting is line with past work, a purer version of Roskopp with some slight feints towards br00ful riffs (“Christian Cop Organization,” “Puncture-Pull Feeding”). But the intensity of the performances have been turned up a notch. While it's not quite the peaks of Horne's Lurid Panacea work, the drumming is a consistent highlight, tossing in all kinds of neat flourishes and the kind of swing that only a human can bring. Dig it, real solid way to burn through a work break. Hopefully everyone sticks around for round two.
Paysage d’Hiver - Geister (Kunsthall Produktionen)
A word of warning: The first track blows. I don’t know if Wintherr purposely sequenced it that way as a trvness test to see who can hang, but, man, it is a mess. The drums drag, the wandering bass more so. Zzz. Not sure what the gameplan was there, especially since the rest of Geister is fine. That said, for a project with such a high ceiling, “fine” might not be what you’re looking for. I wonder if that was also by design. Like, I didn’t think I’d ever hear Paysage d’Hiver be this stripped down, this necrotic, this punk, but hey, here we are. Poking around the net, the big complaint appears to be that Geister isn’t a blinding blizzard of ensorcelled frosty tape hiss like Wintherr’s past demo epics. I don’t even know if Wintherr was going for that, though. The fairer complaint is that tracks two through ten are pretty much the same exact song. Charred vox, punk riff, groove riff, rinse and repeat. Like, I can’t imagine listening to Geister intently, but, as background noise, it’s fine. I’ve listened to worse during work hours. Best track on here, by a mile, is “Geischtr,” though. A neat bit of repetitive dark ambient with a slight industrial touch.
Urged - Elimination of the Symbolic (New Standard Elite)
This will either mean everything or nothing to you: Urged is staffed by Peter Sengvixay (Dissevered, Perpetual Gestation), Januaryo Hardy (Cadavoracity, Perverted Dexterity). and Polwach Beokhaimook (Biomorphic Engulfment, Cadavoracity, Ecchymosis, Smallpox Aroma, Theurgy). This is exactly my level of dumb. Nary a track breaks four minutes. All of them have slams that have been painstakingly crafted to adhere to the following thought process: “You know what would be cool here? A slam.” Slathered on top are vocals that range from death rattle to garbage disposal. Love it. Also love that Urged does the damn thing and then moves on. It gets you in and out in an extremely replayable 28 minutes. From an artistic perspective, there's probably better BDM out there this year. Will this be the one I listen to the most? Probably. Kind of reminds me of Urosepsis in approach if not sound. In other words, perfect driving music. Just, uh, don't let your passengers look at the album art. Or...do? Maybe this is the first-date litmus test you're looking for. Weed 'em out early.
Yautja - The Lurch (Relapse Records)
Good title. There have been a few releases this year that have kept the spirit of '90s-'00s core Relapse alive — Handsome Prick, Bridge Burner, Seputus, etc. Yautja gets points for doing it on Relapse. I'm certain there was some Relapse exec holding a moneyphone to their ear that was like, “Are you SURE you don't wanna turn into Red Fang?” Anyway, your points of comparison here are still the chunkier moments of Burnt by the Sun mixed with the subtle experimentalism of Coalesce. Fans of this Nashville trio's previous works — crazy that this is only its second full-length — will be satisfied and surprised in equal measure. Satisfied: riffs. Surprised: the length. Yeah, there's not a song under three minutes. The best stuff sinks into some early Swans trudgery, not unlike Halo, the band that everyone was introduced to via Relapse mailorder freebies. There's just a ton of variance in the repetitions via the rhythmic interplay and metalcore guitar fuckery. TAKES ME BACK. LET’S REMEMBER SOME GUYS. HEY KID, COME HERE. HAVE YOU HEARD TURMOIL?
Zeegang - De poëzie van vallende sneeuw (Relapse Records)
Zeegang is back in toOoOoOoOoOoOown. (Zeegang is back. Zeegang is back.) Zeegang is one of a few one-man bands from R.v.R., this one “dealing with the exchanges between man and the sea.” De poëzie van vallende sneeuw — “The Poetry of Falling Snow,” per Google Translate; a title Agalloch should be pissed it didn't use first — has the melancholic black metal grandeur of other Dutch artists like Turia, Fluisteraars, etc. Zeegang, though, is way more meditative. The steady drum beats, which sound like they're coming from a basement two houses down, kind of remind me of something like Scorn, providing a steady pace while everything shifts around on top of them. And there's some neat stuff swimming around there, like interweaving trems and patient basslines that could all serve as leads but unite to form these heaving waves. Neat shit. I've doomed a ton of bands with the “I bet this is gonna be big” tag (my eternal apologies, Relic Point), but I feel like this should be more known than it is.
Want to keep up with what I think is good this year? Follow my lists on RateYourMusic: 2020, 2021.
FROM THE VAULTS
Tentacle Centipede - Keichitsu (2017)
Tentacle Centipede is from Kanagawa, Japan and formed in 2007. In that time, the two members, Jun (guitars) and Rin (vocals, bass), have released one full-length and one split. Judging by the song titles that are mostly double digit numbers (the second track on 2017’s Keichitsu, the aberration, is titled “Intro.” It’s a good gag), one would assume that they have more material at the ready. The highest number so far is “97,” which is on a 2019 split with Lancaster, California’s Nihilith.
So, does Tentacle Centipede have 97 songs? No. In reality, its discography only measures 14 tracks, adding up to a smidge over 30 minutes. Heck of a way to spend your last 14 years. Of course, it’s not like many people have been paying attention. At the time I’m writing this, Tentacle Centipede has 67 monthly listeners on Spotify. (That metric is always inflated, too.) You’re going to want to make sure you’re the 68th.
This rules. While the sheer blasting miasma that’s similar to Animals Killing People is the on-the-surface appeal, the true hook is that the appropriately named Jun is blessed with prime slam riff powers. I even have a feeling that these riffs are so good, so pure in their groovy chuggosity, that slamphobic listeners might even fall for this band. I mean, listen to “77” with its methhead Nile stomp. You’re considering the slam life now, right?
Beyond the quality riffment, it’s clear these two just know what they’re doing. The songwriting just flows, getting you from point A to point This Rules with nary any snags. The songs always feel like they’re moving towards something with urgency which, brutal death fans know, is not always the case. And then, Rin’s vox is consistent as heck, always there as an engaging rhythmic counterpoint, but never taking away from the showcase slams. Hey dudes, let’s celebrate your 15th anniversary with more music.
BUT I GOT ONE THING LEFT TO SAY
Be sure to check out the latest podcast with Seputus. Hello, new subscribers. I’m looking forward to losing all of you with the next podcast.
Speaking of podular activities, Steve Dave and I are preparing episode 4. I should also have a 2021 Top 20 So Far up in…August, maybe?
I think I wrote this last time: Three intros are in various stages of reporting. Hoping to unleash at least one soon. It’s…been a year.
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