More From Iraq

More news from Iraq's only heavy metal band.

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The Essence Of Doom

For those of you who didn't catch it the first time, pay attention! C'mon! Wake up! Read this! You need to know why doom metal is so fucking cool.


I thought this was an incredible description of doom and one I heartily agree with. Very inspiring.

What Is Doom? (from a statement by John Del Russi of Hierophant)

Doom-metal... probably the most extreme and most misunderstood forms of music. What is doom-metal? Creating a fitting and accurate description can be a long and arduous task, but I shall attempt to give my views on the subject of doom.

Doom, as I've always felt, is something to be experienced; not just a form of music. It is a transcendental experience into the darker, mysterious realms of being; of sorrow and hopelessness, hatred and despair; even a 'gateway' into otherworldly realms. Doom is intrinsically perhaps the most extreme form of music, being both agonizingly slow and monolithically heavy, and therefore has never become a mainstream form of listening among the masses. Its emotionality is such that, for the average person no matter their self-professed darkness, is very often misunderstood for what it truly is, or shunned out of the sheer unnerving atmospheres it evokes. In truth, doom (when done the way it should be) is the darkest, most emotional music on the planet.

Doom is extremely 'spiritual' in experience; being mysterious, dark and esoteric in its purest form. Doom is, in its own way, a very 'majestic' form of music. With the use of a wide array of accompanying instruments, from violins to keyboards, doom creates atmospheres that no other form of music can offer. Doom is extremely intense, due to its emotionality, atmospheres and heaviness, and should not, despite its sloth-like pace, be deemed as 'boring' or 'simple'. Quite the contrary, doom requires one to be a much 'deeper' soul to fulfill its compositional requirements. It cannot just be simply 'written', but must be composed; the entire artist's personal essence and emotions being expressed through every note. In truth, it is perhaps one of the hardest forms of music to compose and perform, First, to play at such slow tempos can be difficult in the aspect of timing. Second, to keep the atmospheres and emotionality of the music at a level that maintains the 'concept' of the songs is no easy feat. It takes great talent to achieve and maintain the level of power, emotionality and quality that not only express the 'concept' of the composer, but also keep the attention of the listener. Perhaps this will dispel the long insulting and ignorant prospects that doom is 'easy' to play and/or write.

I believe that doom should evoke the deepest of essences through the creation of almost otherworldly, emotion-laden notes utilized in combination with an earth-shattering heaviness that should rarely (if ever) be strayed from. To evoke the deepest emotions and atmospheres possible, I believe is the genuine purpose of doom; to create for the listener and experience like none other.

Though there are, like everything else in life, many people who view things differently, I stand firmly in my resolution that doom should always maintain the earth-shattering heaviness the likes of diSEMBOWELMENT, Evoken, Thergothon etc. While there are those who strive to achieve a more 'serene' form of doom, attempting to express purely the sorrowful side, I find it most lacking in power in the absence of the pulverizing heaviness of the afore-mentioned pioneers of doom. The majesty and mystery, sorrow and despair, I feel are delivered with much more power when backed by the heaviness of the afore-mentioned bands. While I have no qualms with 'calmer' moments throughout the journey of doom, which genuinely add to the atmospheres of doom, I believe there should be a quality of 'brutality' to its composition, which drives deeper the experience (especially as doom is, by definition, a brutal experience in itself). Along the same lines, it should never (or rarely) stray from
the slow-as-death pace that also creates the power and driving force that doom delivers which such punishing relentlessness.

Over all, doom is something to be experienced, as I stated earlier. It IS an experience, in the truest sense of the word. An expression of the 'darker', shadowy sides of the human self, sorrow, despair, mourning, hatred, emptiness, misery and mystery, doom-metal is something one needs to submerge one's self into, as opposed to
simply listening to it. It is perhaps one of the most majestic forms of music in existence, despite of (if not due to) its extreme form of expression of these essences and emotions. A journey through realms, which would otherwise remain unbeknownst to man, doom takes one into the deepest of depths both within themselves and external realms.

Doom shall forever remain a mystery, as that is its nature. It is intrinsically mysterious, and not for everyone. But for those who crave the most extreme experience of the deepest emotionality, atmospheres and essences possible to be expressed through music, doom-metal is the one and only path for the sullen few, who are
truly "evolved" enough to understand it and who are fearless of journeying into unknown realms of darkness.

Mourners in darkness gather, and lament your sorrows through the monolithic force that is doom.

My own inner journey has been influenced much by the experience of doom, since, as a lad of fifteen, I heard the earth-shattering power of Black Sabbath.

Z

Mammatus

I just discovered another good psychedelic/doom/stoner group called Mammatus. Check them out. They remind me of Earthless, but more stoned. Here is their MySpace page.

Iraq's Only Heavy Metal Band

Acrassicauda claims to be the only heavy metal band in Iraq. I don't know if it's true, but their music is pretty good. I like the name too. Acrassicauda is a Latin term for one of the most dangerous and unique kind of black scorpions lives in the Iraqi deserts. That alone is very cool. They sound a little like Slayer. The song, Massacre, is somewhat doomesque. Check out their MySpace site here. This is from their site:

Born out of a basement rehearsal space in Baghdad, Iraq, Acrassicauda (the scientific name for black scorpion) is the country’s only heavy metal band. Tutored by local guitar virtuoso Saad Say—the Yngwie Malmsteem of the Middle East—and inspired by Western bands like Metallica, Slayer and Slipknot, they began writing and playing their own music in 2001. They quickly learned though, that their simple goal of performing live was going to be no easy task. Original members Firas (bass), Tony (lead guitar), Marwan (drums), Faisal (rhythm guitar) and Waleed (lead vocals) played three shows together before the beginning of the war in 2003. Shortly after the invasion, Waleed fled the country, leaving Faisal to fill the void of lead singer. Because of the security situation in Baghdad, setting up shows or even just practicing together became increasingly difficult. Aside from the basic danger of walking the streets in their hometown, the band received death threats from fundamentalists and insurgent groups who thought they were devil-worshippers or simply didn’t like them playing Western-style music. Eventually, it became completely impossible to find anywhere they could safely play.

Is Doom Music High Culture?

I realize one could make a pun from my question above, but, seriously, can doom music be considered on the same level of art as, say, the music of Berlioz, Beethoven, or Strauss? I recently found a discussion on one of Hellride's forums where this question was discussed. Here is an excerpt which I found to be particularly poignant:

doom metal, when it is played properly and with sincerity, plumbs the same depths as a poem by holderlin, rilke or early goethe for me. it is the most poetic medium in heavy music, the most introspective, the most introverted (in jung's terminology at least), the most pensive. of course all this can, if taken too far, become lachrymose mawkishness, but i do think that great doom, like poetry, demands a great deal from the listener as it siphons and communicates sentiments that we try to obscure in our quotidian existences, doom makes you look inwards. as john has suggested, i think something like the new WARNING album crystallizes an ephemeral sentiment and transmutes it into sonic poetry..i think there is something aeschylean about this, it's the courage to stare deep into the chasm of human experience and embrace it. that's why the new WARNING album is so cathartic, it's simultaneously affirmation and unfettering, nietzsche's ''yes'' and reconciliation with suffering.

in contradistinction to this you can compare something like thrash, which often involves itself in (sometimes poorly phrased and arbitrary) socio-political concerns or black metal, which is mired in imagery that has become so threadbare it has been lampooned. the primary reason why heavy metal has become an object of derision for so many is because it can so often seem inauthentic (in heideggerian terms), it operates within a circumscribed set of norms (ie black metal bands have their own uniforms and jargon, not to say that doom metal is exempt from this) and can come across as disingenuous with its slew of inherited opinions, ideologies, posturing, etcetera. real doom metal is sort of like the phenomenologist's heavy music- getting back to the ''things in themselves'': pure sensation, all the pain of personhood, alienation and mortality, a priori afflictions that come before our secondary concerns with politics, religion and the like.

i don't think you can be apathetic towards a song like ''the skull'', ''spectre'', ''dying inside'' in the same way that you can be indifferent towards the politics, redundant sacrilege and abstruse mystical mumbo-jumbo of some other heavy metal. form and content are indivisible in truly great doom music, they are inextricably interwoven. i think a lot of music (and a lot of other media like bad books and bad movies) is unilateral- the listener stands back and consumes the music passively, like a receptacle for sensory stimuli. doom demands something from you, because its voice is so naked, immediate and so honest. it is like a wholly present Other that REQUIRES you to respond, to reciprocate, and that's why one cultivates such an intimate relationship with his favorite doom records, and why one feels like he KNOWS the lyricist involved after some time.

in all of music i think only wagner (though not all wagner) and beethoven have touched me so much, like i've had a truly personal communion with the artist, as though the art has been conceived specifically for me. i don't know if this makes it ''high culture'', and i guess i've gone off on all sorts of tangents here, but i have tried to articulate just why it remains my favorite form of music.

think of rilke's nineth elegy:
"Here is the time for the Tellable, here is its home.
Speak and proclaim. More than ever
Things we can live with are falling away, for that
which is oustingly taking their place is an imageless act.
Act under crusts, that will readily split as soon
as the doing within outgrows them and takes a new outline...

...These things that live on departure
Understand when you praise them: fleeting, they look for
rescue through something in us, the most fleeting of all.
Want us to change them entirely, within our invisible
hearts,
into- oh, endlessly- into ourselves! Whosoever we are."

for me, doom rescues us from ''acting under crusts'', the carapace of insincerity and inauthenticity. it is the DEMAND for honesty, first of all with ourselves and the transience of things. it rescues the ephemera of emotions from being forgotten, transmutes them.

and "To Music"
"Music: breathing of status. Perhaps:
Stillness of pictures. You speech, where speeches
end. You time,
vertically poised on the courses of vanishing hearts.
Feelings for what? Oh, you transformation
of feelings into...audible landscape!
You stranger: Music. Space that's outgrown us,
heart-space. Innermost ours,
that, passing our limits, outsurges,-..."

i feel like that poem was written for doom metal!
pardon the prolix and arty response.
__________________
No change, no pause, no hope! Yet I endure.
I ask the Earth, have not the mountains felt?
I ask yon Heaven, the all-beholding Sun,
Has it not seen? The Sea, in storm or calm,
Heaven's ever-changing shadow, spread below,
Have its deaf waves not heard my agony?
Ah me! alas, pain, pain ever, forever!
- Shelley
Last edited by Equimanthorn666 : 11-17-2007 at 01:45 PM.

Read the entire discussion here.

Z

New Bands

I'm constantly looking for good doom bands to plug on this blog, so here are a couple I've come across today:

Blutch, from Mons, Belgium. Very heavy, very sludgy doom. Excellent! Check them out at their MySpace site.

Kongh, from Sweden. Doom/drone and doom/death genres are prevalent, but many styles of doom are present. You WILL like it. Listen to a few tracks here.

A Message From Lord Vicar

From Lord Vicar's MySpace site:

As the final nails were hammered to the coffin of Reverend Bizarre (1995-2007, R.I.P.), guitar player Peter Vicar started to follow his vision of a new True Doom Metal band. He felt forced to fulfill his need to compose and play this most arcane form of metal in the way it was meant to be, full of intensity, cruelty, heaviness, and force. Still firmly walking in the footsteps of Saint Vitus, Trouble, Witchfinder General and Pentagram, this new band brings together an international lineup of four devoted metalheads.

The first release will be a 7” EP The Demon of Freedom, released by heavier than life Swedish label I Hate Records (http://www.ihate.se/). The EP will be based on an old werewolf legend from the island of Hiiumaa, as narrated by Finnish author Aino Kallas (1878-1956) in her novel Sudenmorsian (The Wolf’s Bride, 1928). The EP will contain three songs, “Hiiumaa”, “Becoming One With the Spirit of the Forest”, and “Running Into a Burning House”, recorded in London, Stockholm, North Carolina and Turku respectively.

Stranger passing by, hear my advice… Look forward to this offering for the Elder Gods, and then remain on your knees until the first Lord Vicar full-length albums Fear No Pain and Signs of Osiris are revealed to this world.

Fiat Ars, Pereat Mundus!