Mouth of Empty...

Yesterday I came across this interview of Bloodbath’s and Katatonia’s Anders “Blakkheim” Nyström. I was struck speechless by the following comments:

-  First of all, thank you so much for taking your time to answer me. The album hasn’t been released yet, but there is already a few reviews and two songs on streaming. How is the fan reaction going so far?Blakkheim: It's kind of a mixed bag! We have the enthusiastic people, who are instantly embracing the album just because Bloodbath is back. We also see the older generation getting triggered because they were part back then and remember the past. But then we got the conservative "fanboys" who just want it to sound a certain, very specific way and if it doesn't, everything alltogether [sic] sucks ha-ha! More or less lumped together with them, at least in terms of negativity, is the new generation of stubborn kids with limited or no connection to the old school scene what so ever [sic]. They just tend to follow the stream of what everyone else says (depending on whats [sic] in majority).

- Talking about death metal in general, I think it’s a genre that has been exploited to his limit. What is your opinion about the style and the scene nowadays? Do you have any favorite new metal bands?New metal bands? Sorry what was that? Ha-ha, well seriously, I don't really have any favorite new metal bands, I know there are tons of them out there in this oversaturated scene and I can even appreciate and respect them as musicians and performers being good at what they do, but the problem is that the "magic" isn't there anymore. Todays [sic] scene is more about software, gear and youtube. People rather talk about Pro Tools plugins than talk about cemetaries [sic] and graveyards if you know what i mean? For me that long gone "magic" is 50% of the whole experience with death metal. Luckily, it still exists with all the classic albums released back in the day and they're just within an arms [sic] reach to enjoy at any time.

I can’t for the life of me get a grasp of what Blakkheim is trying to say here. Death metal scene I’ve been following for the past years has been very vital and the last words to pop into my mind about it are “Pro Tools” or “softwares”. Ok, “gear”, fine, since you like, uh, use gear to play the music. But you get my drift, right? No one in their right minds could say that today’s death metal is polished or overproduced. So what is Blakkheim’s deal?

One logical explanation, in my humble opinion, is that Blakkheim has so totally and utterly alienated himself from the underground that he doesn’t actually know what is really going on in the scene. Katatonia and Bloodbath are both big names, so for the past ten years or so he has spent in the mainstream. And that’s completely fine; Katatonia for instance has been one of my favorite bands for many years now, and it seems I can’t stop enjoying their music no matter how polished or “pop” they sound. What is not fine, though, is blurting out statements undermining something you obviously have no idea about or connection to. That is called being a total jackass. To top it all off, Blakkheim himself seems to suggest that the young people don’t have any connection to the old school, and therefore aren’t entitled to have an opinion about Bloodbath. Yet he obviously has a right to his opinion, since he was there back in the good old days. It doesn’t really matter, if he has no clue of what’s going on nowadays, he has a gut feeling about the matter and that should be enough! Oh, Anders, you remind me of someone with your know-nothingess.

   Anders "Blakkheim" Nyström.

I sure hope Blakkheim doesn’t live in some sort of a fairytale world, where Bloodbath represents “true” and “honest” death metal. I’ve enjoyed some of their albums in the past, but let’s be honest here: “supergroup” consisting of guys whose days in the scene are long gone with their walk down the memory lane doesn’t exactly qualify as my idea of today’s death metal. Not when this year alone has seen the spawns of loads of good death metal albums. For fuck’s sake, if you haven’t noticed, most of this year’s best albums have been death metal! And yes, I strongly doubt Bloodbath’s new album will end up on my list of albums of the year. I would recommend Blakkheim to listen to some Dead Congregation, Domains, Teitanblood or Corpsessed, to name a few bands which have released an album this year, and are from the scene which is “about software, gear and youtube”, but I guess it would be caviar to the general.

Hey, Anders, did you happen to notice that Dead Congregation released an album which is so far the best of the year? I guess not, since you were too busy having your head stuck up your arse. Well, here's a YOUTUBE link for ya!

Am I overreacting? Well, let’s say if Blakkheim had simply said that he doesn’t enjoy death metal nowadays, my reaction would’ve probably been something along the lines of “ok, weird, but to each his own”. But no, he had to pretend to know something about the matter he obviously has seen no effort to look into. And that type of behavior really bugs me. I have no problem with people who don’t get the music and say that it’s just racket. But unfortunately, there are a lot of people like Blakkheim in the metal scene. The last time this kind of people felt any sort of contact to death metal was when Death’s Symbolic (one of the greatest albums ever made) came out. Then they hear The Black Dahlia Murder or some shit like that and they make the conclusion that “Hey! This sucks!” And they would be right. But what follows next, is a totally illogical conlusion of “This sucks! That means all of the death metal nowadays must suck!” and never bother to dig into things beneath the surface. Does anyone else see a fundamental problem in this trail of thought?

Well, I guess that’s enough ranting for now. I’ll spin Domains’ Sinister Ceremonies and try to forget the Anders Nyströms of this world.

Yours truly,

Emplate

I had Domains' Sinister Ceremonies delivered to me just today. I suggest you look into it.