Time is precious. The more it passes the more precious it is. Moments are also precious. Some years ago I rarely felt the need to 'capture' moments, either by technical means (cameras and stuff) or by saving moments to my memory and thus to my heart and mind. As time goes by I feel this need more often. I don't know what it is with time and its whole concept that fascinates me but the fact is that I constantly find myself toying with ideas and facts that are relevant with time. The first thing that triggered my interest was some years back when I realized that time can by very relative. I remember the brief talk that me and my (drunk) group of friends had with a 10 year old kid. The kid was talking about a habit he used to have, 'back in the day'. When we asked when exactly this 'back in the day' was he told us that it was seven or eight months before. The general initial response was one of amusement and superficial 'teaching'. Which means a bunch of drunk elders explaining to a kid that eight months is as recent as yesterday. Yet it only took me a moment to realize that the kid was actually right. Or maybe both sides were right. In the life of a ten years old, one year is 10% of his life, which is a lot. In the life of a fifty years old, one year is only 2% of it. So the absolute amount of eight months time was really so much relative. Now that I summarize things I see that it took plenty of alcohol and a small kid to give me a new interest in life.
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The amount of new music I listen to everyday is threatening to burn me out. I don't know how things came to this point, but when you listen to at least three or four new records a day, your favorite habit becomes a race against...whom? The obvious fact is that the listening of music is superficial to say the least. There's absolutely no time to digest what you listen. The worst thing is that there's no time to listen to some of your favorites. The exact same thing happened to me in the late 90s and resulted to a six years withdrawal from the underground and music in general. So, less is more and I hope I will stick to this decision as I wish to take the full from the records I choose to listen.
The thing is that this is also the problem with the music 'journalists'. (I always thought this term is ridiculous, hence the quotes). No one can write a record review after listening to a record just for a couple of times. I know none will admit doing so but I'm sure that 90% of them don't give more time than this to the records they write about. This also leads to the oversimplified and shallow reviews that plague the underground (and not only) that are plain descriptions of each song. Also the saturation of the scene with worthless and invalid subgenre tags cannot be irrelevant to this phenomenon. The shallow approach to a record leads the 'reviewer' to playing it safe by inventing his own genre like 'depressive ambient blackened doom death metal' in order to include everything he thinks he heard in 40 minutes and that's it.
A brief reference to records I listened to and left a mark on me lately...
StarGazer - A Great Work Of Ages
This is not the first time I refer to one of the greatest death metal bands of the decade. I had praised their first record and I will praise this one even more. This is much more mature and varied and it is also much more focused. It is actually so varied that now that the mainstream is discovering them I expect to read the most ridiculous descriptions a moron can invent. You'll see 'avant garde' or 'jazz' referenced a lot but fear not. This is death METAL with innovation and talent that is brutal as much as it is full of imagination.
Wolfshade - When Above...
This is a french band and their third full length is my first contact with their music. You'll see 'suicidal' or 'shoegazing' and other crap referenced a lot about Wolfshade but fear not. Their black metal is maybe more doom metal at its core emphasizing to atmosphere and creating an aura of mysticism that is calm and relaxing in the outside but there's a sense of danger lurking in its shadows. Occult black metal you imbeciles.
The devil will come...
Grave Miasma - Realm of Evoked Doom
Hallow's Eve - Tales Of Terror
Griftegard/Count Raven - Split
Uriah Heep - Abominog
Hooded Priest - Devil Worship Reckoning
Satan is real...
