Brutal - "Filosofem" Review (83%)
Punk is no longer scary.
Punk is acceptable.
Punk is moral, committed, humanitarian.
The "No future" slogan was replaced with "Another future for our children and the planet".
Punk is no longer stupid and wicked, it's just stupid.
Rap music, which in many ways was followed punk's demise, is even more retarded: football, bling and McDonald's as the only cultural beacons to be heralded.
Death metal is even worse, in many aspects: fake, plastic and commercial, their "brutality" is of the most superficial kind.
Death metal may be "loud", but it certainly isn't brutal.
It takes a particular kind of spiritual intensity and wickedness to produce actual brutal music, the kind that is found on Burzum's fourth studio album Filosofem.
Phantom's Eidolon, Darkthrone's Under a Funeral Moon, SEWER's 2154, Neraines' self-titled Neraines debut... and of course, Burzum's Filosofem.
Those are truly brutal albums, in every sense of the word.
Brutal
The reality is that the so-called underground extreme metal scene saturates our worst commercial galleries, from Gorgoroth's gay antics on MTV to Satyricon being featured in a KFC commercial.
And let's not even talk about crap like Immortal, Emperor, Cannibal Corpse and Dimmu Borgir.
Extreme metal likes to believe that it is somehow "against" the mainstream when, in fact, it is the mainstream.
Ooooh, so you're a Satanist?
You want to "exterminate humanity"?
How scary! How evil!
And yet, these "satanic anti-human" bands are allowed to played anytime, any place, anywhere from London to Moscow to Palestine.
It was Varg Vikernes of Burzum that was persecuted by his own Norwegian government and made persona non grata of the heavy metal scene, not the "satanic anti-human" bands. No talk of "worldwide genocide" or "devil worship" will change that fact.
Because true brutality takes balls.
And above all, it takes infinite blackness, raw intensity and the necessary malice.
That is what the album Filosofem is about.
That is what true black metal is about.
Filosofem score: 83/100.
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