Nachtmystium - Addicts: Black Meddle Pt. II
June 18 2010 at 01:02:22 AM
Remember Keith Butler? It’s OK, few to none do. Those still hunting for public castigation of artistes need look first back to Butler and ahead to the great void. Listening public hasn’t punished musicians since Dixie Chicks went viral with their like, “dislike” for Dubya. Decades prior to the American Reichstag, Dylan took it on the chin for trading hobo blues for Levon and electricity, a rock ‘n’ roll ironically rooted in the same strains of rabble his “historical music” roused. Infamous Royal Albert Hall show, remembered primarily for messiah becoming his own Judas, is perhaps most potent display of fan disdain for a musician “drastically” changing course. Those who are predisposed to oversimplify complex situations would say he just wanted “to rock.” (Then again, maybe he did.) Nachtmystium, first Black Metal, then psychedelic Black Metal, and now psychedelic Indie Black Metal Rock, own a rollicking transformation far more bizarre than Dylan’s. But there are enough gooseflesh-inducing similarities: (a) awkward, hypocritical responses to obvious, utterly banal interview questions; (b) “flagrant” switch from one genre of music to another, each entrenched in its own palpable aesthetic criteria, but both operating in parasitic ways amongst two ostensibly dissimilar modes of music; (c) art, packaging (and re-packaging), image, etc. Fans used to resort to fistfights over the latter. Now they just tweet it out, outwitting every other drooling clicker gone bored with updating his/her Facebook status every six seconds. Nachtmystium’s proprietor, Blake Judd, apparently never gets bored. (He probably just wants “to rock” too.)While Dylan grabbed his electric geetar and burrowed into the cunt of American mythos to birth The Basement Tapes, Judd glommed the ephemeral. Like Dylan & The Band’s Basement Tapes, most of the songs on Addicts: Black Meddle Pt. II sound too familiar, eerily commonplace. We’ve heard them before, no? Standards? Rites of the public domain? Sure. Anyone who’s turned on their TV for half hour has seen some suburban teen drama involving vampires and love triangles, haircuts and pursed mouths, songs very much like Addicts’ “Nightfall” or “No Funeral” or “Ruined Life Continuum” blaring around impeccably svelte teen bodies doing teen things and trying not to give their cherries up to some ultra-slim, moody ink-blot who’s not seen the sun in 17 years. Judd, who once said he “doesn’t make music for other people”[i] is actually making music here for anyone with a medicine cabinet full of Axe and a predilection for any piece of ass that looked like it once auditioned for Charmed. Yes, this is not the Black Metal incarnation of Nachtmystium. This isn’t even the psychedelic Black Metal incarnation. Judd’s “departure” from previous work (i.e. a complete and total unabashed rehash of Grand Belial’s Key, Judas Iscariot, et al.) is as well documented[ii] as whatever knob the Kardashians have managed to shine in the past decade. Said “departure” wasn’t so much questioned as it was praised. Here was a musician unafraid of what critics or fans thought about his music or how said music should be made. He was, after all, making music exclusively for himself. But what does Judd mean by this exactly? He only makes music for himself? Then why record and sell it? Aren’t “other people” buyin’ your records, made by you for you and not the paying public? Is this only an unfortunate byproduct of the artistic process? Like the Nachtmystium moniker, this “stance” conveys (a sort of) message, but means (exactly) nothing.[iii] More confounding is Judd positing the alternate view only a year before he bear-hugged Ars Gratia Artis’ destiny of destitution. “I have a vision and I want people to listen to my music and experience something unique,”[iv] said Judd, holding out both hand and hat in the same breath. It’s difficult for me to imagine Dylan configuring his propensity to make money from music making in such starkly naked terms. Like Judd, Dylan also struggled with notions of “success,” snarling beneath the brim of his leopard skin pillbox hat, anxious to gnaw on the hand that feeds him. “I’m not interested in myself as a performer,” said Dylan in midst of his split from folk “pickers” and their (tiresome) political proclivities. “Performers are people who perform for other people. Unlike actors, I know what I’m saying. It’s very simple in my mind. It doesn’t matter what kind of audience reaction this whole thing gets.”[v]Prognosis? Fundamentally similar to Judd’s initial stance, but with an oily logical changeup mid-breath. Dylan strangely doesn’t classify musicians as performers, but equates performers with “actors.” He also believes actors simply “perform” and cannot quantify their experience, perhaps because it is not theirs. For Dylan, their experience is artificial—scripted. Conversely, Dylan is able to intellectualize his experience because he “knows it.” Whether or not others “get it” is not only secondary to the experience of art itself, but also incompatible with Dylan’s notion of art as “wholly personal experience.” Simply talking/writing about it cheapens the currency of language exchanged in vain attempt to quantify/own artistic experience. I believe Judd genuinely thinks whether or not others “get” Addicts is secondary to the experience of “art” itself. But I’m not thick enough to suggest he understands—or even could consider—what sort of caustic “defamation” of art ensues when musicians begin to flap their gums about said experience. Judd’s online interviews are point in fact. That we treat Addicts as a histrionic jeweler would a lump of painite, demonstrates how little innovation is required of modern music. It also shows that Black Metal, once inchoate, shadowy genre obfuscated by impenetrable mythos and ironical religiosity, is now outdated currency. Stripped of its trappings and catalytic gumption,[vi] Black Metal is as pervasive—and meaningless—as pop. Confused and opportunistic people, very much like Blake Judd, have come to the genre for the same reason Hollywood’s golden age screenwriters once pined for noir; for within the confines of the genre, anything came and went—more often than not without explanation.[vii] Dylan may not have had any business sticking his uncircumcised dick in rock ‘n’ roll’s eye back in 1966, but the results suggested goddamn otherwise. Cavalier invasion from the disheveled folkie was treated as hostile act by his concertgoers—and in print. Music mag jockeys and newsprint Arts pages aimed low and pelted often. High road barren of travelers, and Dylan stood before the lights, camera, action explaining his explanations for leaving the acoustic with the Kumbaya crowd. The man wasn’t to blame, really. Point the finger at his persona, a 20-ton monolith carved from folk revivalist bedrock[viii], and jack-hammered to wee pebbles for Albert Hall’s SRO devotees. One blurt from the tube amp and they plugged their ears with protest. Did “the switch” discredit Dylan’s music? Did it tarnish his notorious chameleon character? “Right” to herald answers to those kinds of questions was bandied about in rock press. “Rockist” emeritus Greil Marcus (much later, mind you) offered compendium of various replies as well as crime recounting, and premeditation ensconced in rambling rock ‘n’ roll animus as not-so-secret history of roots Americana.[ix] Marcus is still fucking writing about it. Honestly, not surprising. This was no “disaster of celebrity.” This was a public stoning. A diaspora of disaffected fans pissed that Dylan embraced Humean argument and showed ‘em there’s no good goddamn reason to believe the past can/will resemble the future. Nothing to count on. Everything changes.[x]And it’s OK to change. But Judd has rifled through the epistemological wardrobe far more than Dylan, and to exponentially greater detriment. To wit: Nachtmystium was conceived as Judd’s de facto “Black Metal outlet” built on personal “feelings of hate, rage and intolerance.”[xi] Of course, not simply an end unto itself, but a means to a certain kind of ends, specifically to instill “pain, sadness, fear, hate, anger, disillusion, and all other negative entities that formed within [Judd] into the heart(s) of the listener(s).”[xii] Double-talk, ironically, did not configure in Judd’s initial audio assault, even though he envisioned Nachtmystium—at the time—as “unique,” as something not following “paths others have already paved.”[xiii] If indeed the case, he would have been better off heralding Golden Rule ethos, and earnest conversation amongst fellow mankind in lieu of the adolescent journalese re: Acute destruction of all who fail to enforce a specific[xiv] Weltanschauung. (Hackneyed purview includes anti-Semitic gobbledygook provoked at apt mention of The Cure, where “Zionist means of demoralizing young Americ[a]” serves accoutrement for Judd’s [previous] fashion sensibility.[XV]
When the dust clears, and after everyone’s piled on with their threadbare opines (including yours truly), the common defense is, ‘It’s only music,’ which is to say, ‘It’s only [entertainment.]’ Where “it” is Addicts and “entertainment” (née “music”) is the act of listening to Addicts, we’re privy to modernity’s consequential substitution. No surprise “entertainment” usurped (long ago, right?) Big A Art’s place. Listening to (popular) music: Now no different than playing Wii. It’s a content-less, uncommunicative act. Aesthetic qualities once prevalent in art forms allowing others to recognize their selves in the very creation are (mostly) extinct. Aristotle’s notion of art as imitation combining greatest similarity in form with the greatest difference in content has been subverted entirely. The greatest similarity of content with the greatest difference of form reigns supreme!
Judd may have once hoped otherwise… “This music is not here for entertainment; it’s here to make you feel something; it serves a purpose beyond humoring one’s self,” said Judd.[xvi] We are to suppose, of course, this is the Judd interested in making music for an audience and not for himself. Otherwise said music would exist in purpose to divert only Judd, which is not only entertainment, but also hobby-as-solipsism. There are times—few and far between, however—when windows of said solitary world are unceremoniously shattered. Keith Butler, our great protagonist, was not above throwing rocks. Dylan believed he truly was crafting art back in 1966; the crowd bolstered that belief. But when he opted for private diversion—playing for himself—said crowd abandoned him. Simple betrayal. Butler took it, of course, personally and screamed “Judas!” amidst the clang of electric tuning. Royal Albert Hall, once rung out with rock din, quieted. “It was not a premeditated thing,” Butler told the Manchester Evening News.[xvii] “I was swept along by the mood, which was chaotic. I was feeling disappointed and angry. I was just a 20-year old kid who shouted.” The difference here was Dylan addressed the heckler. And the addressing was recorded and distributed and soon everyone not present for that notorious Royal Albert Hall gig would hear. Dylan, who was ostensibly predisposed to answer an interviewer’s yes/no question with a study on the nature of Being, descended from on high and spoke, indirectly, in hopes of being direct.[xviii] (He may as well have asked who farted—it would have been more in line with his character.) Yes, Butler’s “Judas!” moment brought him close enough to smell Dylan’s bourbon breath. Criticism, incendiary maybe, razed boundary between artist and audience. They intermingled. Looked one another up and down. Spoke and misspoke. Crowd condemned Dylan not only for mucking around with genre he had no business with (viz., rock ‘n’ roll), but also for distributing the same content in barely altered form. Remember your Aristotle, folks… No one now reaches for rocks when their favorite band fails to keep the organ grinding the same ol’ shit. Maybe the wealth of music available today is to blame. It is utterly expendable. No one even has to buy it anymore. Its ubiquity is only matched by its worthlessness. Don’t like something? Move on to the next attraction. Read 10-15 word “review” on a site, Google band name and blogspot, and hit Rapidshare. Unzip. Upload. Use. Reuse. Recycle. So, no, it’s not surprising no one wants to go David v. Goliath on Judd from switching from derivative Black Metal to derivative Black Metal with psych leanings to derivative Black Metal with Indie Rock bent. Good God, why not? This is the shit Buffalo Bill was playing in the bunker. The tuck-yr-trouser-snake and mirror dance music. Sorta like Sparks, no, but way creepier and smelling of old people breath and menthol cigarettes with lipstick stains on their filters. Song titles avert criticism insofar as they ape “street artist” concision. “High on Hate.” “Blood Trance Fusion.” “Cry for Help.” Mallrat ennui’s packed tighter than preacher’s pecker in cow’s ass. (Dylan certainly had his Saved, but he’s yet to ape Interpol. Yet.) Ultimately boils way down to two camp appeal. First one hooked on listening public: Black Metal-for-people-who-don’t-like-Black- Metal. Second, on music writers so wedded to “analysis” they can’t stop referring to first two Maiden recs as “punk.” Mmmm, I’ll wager both factions are incontrovertibly fucked. Step back with me, sweets…. Before Dylan went on to record the salacious Blonde on Blonde (flawless fucking rec, BTW), Playboy asked him if what his (ex)fans were saying—that he’d “vulgarized” his gifts—was true. His response was Dylan channeling Mingus channeling Lautréamont. “I’d like to see one of these so-called fans,” says Dylan. “I’d like to have him blindfolded and brought to me. It’s like going out in the desert and screaming and then having little kids throw their sandbox at you. I’m only 24. These people that said this—were they Americans?” Haw, haw, haw…! I’m an American, and a fan of both Mingus and Dylan—and the Comte de Lautréamont. But not of Nachtmystium in any of it’s bullshit prêt-à-porter guises. And I’m not here to scream or throw sand (that’s obvious). But when it starts to stink, there’s only one logical option. It’s high time to take out the trash. [Stewart Voegtlin]
Nachtmystium
Addicts: Black Meddle Pt. II
2010
[i] “Metalsucks Interview Nachtmystium’s Blake Judd.” www.metalsucks.net. July 2008 www.metalsucks.net/2008/07/01/metalsucks-interviews-nachtmystiums-blake-judd/ [ii] At least on the Internet.
[iii] Nachtmystium is a compound word built from the German “Nacht” (Night) and the ginned-up “mystium” that finds zero lexical mention, but could be a conflation of the Latin “Mysterium” (Secret Rite) and the Attic Greek “Mustikos” (Mystic). (You’re welcome, Rusty.) [iv] “Blake Judd Interview.” www.gravewithaview.blogspot.com. August 2007. http://gravewithaview.blogspot.com/2007/08/blake-judd-interview.html [v] “Playboy Interview: Bob Dylan.” Playboy Feb. 1966 [vi] I.e., Satan. (And don’t give me any of this shit about Black Metal not being a genre predicated on Satan or Satanism.) [vii] See The Big Sleep, et al.
[viii] Hanging with Joan Baez circa Bringing it All Back Home/Highway 61 Revisited didn’t hurt. Baez was so face-meltingly fine back then Liberace himself woulda sucked a fart from her keister. See also Don’t Look Back, which covers Dylan’s 1965 England tour. [ix] Published in 1997 under snappy name Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes. [x] Marcus has since (temporarily, methinks) abandoned the excavation, telling Perfect Sound Forever’s Jason Gross that he finds the “connections between Elvis, Jim Jones, and David Koresh much more interesting.” [xi] “Nachtmystium. Daniel interviewing Azentrius.” March 31, 2005. www. metalreviews.com. www.metalreviews.com/interviews/interviews.php?id=61 [xii] Ibid.
[xiii] Ibid.
[xiv] Read: Nihilistic. Also: Queue Wagner’s “Ritt der Walküren.” Now. [xv] How, exactly, is anti-Semitism compatible with Indie Rock-cum-“Black Metal?”(Or is it “Black Metal”-cum-Indie Rock? Don’t answer.) [xvi] Ibid.
[xvii] No author attributed to the piece and my clipping aint got a date, dig? Trust me. I’m good for it. [xviii] Dylan responded to the charge with: “I don’t believe you. You’re a liar.” And then turned to the boys and implored them to “Play it fucking loud.”
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And what was Buffalo Bill dancing to? Inna-godda-davita, right? My favorite songs from Manhunter were the Shriekback tracks, which is an odd tangent considering Judd, in recent interviews, jocks TVT and Interpol and totally ignores the post Joy Division wave of early 80s goth flavorings ala Shriekback, Sister of Mercy, Bauhaus, Gene loves Jezebel, etc.
It sucks to be musician and want to be an artist because at the most base level, your art IS the moment, your performance IS the art. There is no lasting record...unless you make a good record.
For 1000s of years, scores of musicians must have struggled with this issue (or ignored it). It is only recently, with the introduction of modern tools and techniques that we have started dancing about architecture.
Nachtmystium sucks...well, duh. they were never any good (tho ripping off GBK? careful with that hand Eustace) and now are hilariously awful. that may actually be progress. but condemning Blake for disloyalty is just silly. black metal was gnawed to tacky marrow YEARS ago. But now that Dissection is the new At the Gates, you can't blame the hopeless for hoping they can grub up into that corpse for the next 15 years while they drink themselves dead.
let me take off my shades, see what i'm saying is this a war that ended at about the same time poor Per redecorated the walls of his shitty 1/1 with his brains. energy expended disassembling Nachsfdkl and Wolves in the Guest Room is energy wasted - when you buy maggoty meat, who's to blame, you or the butcher?
"Talk nonsense, but talk your own nonsense, and I'll kiss you for it. To go wrong in your own way is better than to go right in someone else's."
Fucking sheep
Speaking of distributing the same content in barely altered form, it's kind of interesting to think back on Dylan's other on-stage quips to the ever-present hecklers on those early electric tours. There was a show in Britain on the 1966 tour where Dylan actually said to the audience, "Oh come on, these are all protest songs. It's the same stuff as always, can't you hear?" (from Nigel Williamson's "The Rough Guide to Bob Dylan"). Right there, he acknowledges that the content is the same as before. But he expects to gain their favor by pointing it out! If I had had a chance to respond that night, I'd have said the same as he did in response to Butler's "Judas!"