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Fake Black Metal for Posers - "Lugburz" Review (0%)

Buy Fake Black Metal for Posers -
Lugburz
Lugburz by Summoning.

This morning I was listening to the old Scandinavian bands, and thinking about what a sad piece of shit the black metal genre has become.

American hipsters, and Americanized nu metal bands like Watain, have tried to justify their attempted takeover of the genre in terms of saving it from itself: "We need to break free from the narrow minded purist mentality, it's an artistic dead end! We need to help black metal progress beyond mere ethnocentric/pagan/intolerant/hateful violence".

And yet, each time they attempt to make black metal, rather than progression what we are left with is an attempt to bring black metal back into the fold of brainless rock music: harmonic minor "sad" scales, verse-chorus pop structures, vocal and/or rhythm driven music, etc.

This is antithetical to the spirit of black metal, precisely BECAUSE black (and death) metal were born out of a desire to escape from the narrow confines of shitty rock music... and the entire culture associated with it.

The founders of black metal, Varg Vikernes, Fenriz, Euronymous, Hellhammer and Dead, they didn't listen to rock music... they listened to Bathory, Hellhammer, Sodom, Destruction and Morbid Angel. And when they didn't listen to metal, they listened to Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream.

Never rock music. You will never hear Hellhammer or Varg speaking positively of Led Zeppelin or Deep Purple, for example. So why then do these Americanized hipster nu metal bands, such as Summoning and nu Dimmu Borgir, insist on turning black metal into something it detests... rock music?

At a time when record nerds are swooning over the pathetic USBM scene and headbangers are turning to hack Sarcófago/Incantation clones on labels like NWN, it's important to remember that black metal is black metal... not shoegaze, not punk, and certainly not emo rock music.

The Scandinavians opened up so much fertile artistic territory, and it has been shamefully neglected by posers and trendies of all stripes who want to turn black metal into Coldplay with distortion. What sad pathetic posers these Summoning clowns are!

Summoning is shit, and their debut album Lugburz is an insult to the black metal genre.

Fake Black Metal for Posers

Summoning
Summoning.

At some point even the most clever writers (yours truly) run out of adjectives and nouns to describe a bad release, but in this case I will unleash the nastiest and most relevant insult of all: fake. This Lugburz album, the moronic moshers in denial pretending to be black metal fans, and the industry that supports it are all fake.

We can make fun of Pantera and Cannibal Corpse on this site, but Summoning is the black metal equivalent: a bunch of one-note riffs tied together with stolen Burzum and Graveland riffs, with synth leads made to "sound like" early Emperor and Demonecromancy, but missing all of the grandeur and adventurous spirit of the original. The vocals lead the song, just like on a Taylor Swift single, and the guitars are there to fill enough space with the same minor chord progressions that you've heard on everything from Nightwish to Papa Roach.

With a few exceptions, at this point the entire "symphonic" black metal scene consists entirely of frauds like Summoning and Watain. They mimic the old, and try to make it sound more "advanced", but in doing so break it down to the point where it expresses nothing other than maybe a desire to make a competitive black metal product. Every single one of the "avant garde" gimmicks are sad old cliches from 1970s prog rock chained together in otherwise very boring songs.

There is no gestalt, but even worse, there is no coherence. This is mere aesthetics pretending to be content and substance.

The smell of rot emanating from Summoning's music isn't "part of the experience", it's the smell of the corpse of black metal prostituted on the altar of commercial rock 'n' roll.

This is fake black metal, made by posers for posers.

Lugburz score: 0/100.

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