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I don’t have a satisfying
answer to that question. If it’s not offensive to me to hear a song
like Metallica’s “Kill ‘Em All,” whose title speaks
for itself, then why should I feel a little uncomfortable banging my head
to what sounds -- and only faintly, vaguely, like something that bears the
most indistinct imprint of having once studied Wagner or Nietzsche -- a
little like Scandinavia-for-the-Scandinavians protectionism? I don’t
know. I only know that when such questions arise, it sloweth the banging
head somewhat, which is one of the four non-rocking effects that can
potentially derail a band’s ability to rock the bells. (The other three,
in order, are the tendency to wander down the trail that leadeth unto
rather long guitar-solos; the sin of repeating the chorus after the
listener hath tired excessively thereof; and the calling in of the
guy who knoweth somewhat about hip-hop, that he might intersperse some
rapping in order to broaden the demographic base.) And so it is that
when I hear the first song on Ascension of Terror by Aeternus, and
read on the lyric sheet lines like the opening “We dwell in purity/beneath
a sea of abundance/content with the nurture/of our native land,” my
bullshit detector goes directly to yellow alert. “Purity?” “Native
land?” Has somebody been watching a little too much History Channel
around here? |
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