New MGŁA album

[Ollkiller]

Not sure I'll bother to check this out, despite being a big fan for most of this decade.

The recent gig here was probably the final nail in the coffin and the magic for me is gone. Rammed in surrounded by people whooping, dancing and holding up their phones.

Aura of the band shattered.

I'll never watch them live again but maybe over time if I just listen to their records I can build up that connection again as in the early pre-live era they were a brilliant coherent package. But for now I associate them with frivolous displays of humanitarian joy which is obviously fine in context but Mgla is the wrong context.

Not grim and frostbitten enough for ya. You're right though. People enjoying themselves at a gig just takes the joy out of gigs.

[Eoin McLove]

This goes back to a point I made before.  Certain bands lose part of their mystique or identity by performing live.  Or maybe all bands do,  but some bands gain from the transition and others lose out  from it. Dead Congregation are a great example of a band who have carved a niche making excellent,  dark,  atmospheric death metal and who manage to take things to another level of intensity on stage, whereas Dødsangel are captivating on CD but become utterly banal when experienced in the flesh.  Everyone will have their own opinion on who benefits or loses,  depending on their biases and I have seen Mgła live a few times and enjoyed them,  but I can understand how the misanthropic facade they present through their music and lyrics could be regarded as being at odds with the drunken party vibe of a gig.

Of course flinging out the old 'grim and frostbitten' insult just highlights that you don't get BM.

[Ollkiller]

Of course flinging out the old 'grim and frostbitten' insult just highlights that you don't get BM.

Lol. Actually I'll bite. How do I not get black metal.

[Kurt Cocaine]

Of course flinging out the old 'grim and frostbitten' insult just highlights that you don't get BM.

Lol. Actually I'll bite. How do I not get black metal.

How many Vietnam veterans does it take to change a Black Metal record?

You wouldn't know man, you weren't there!

[Ollkiller]

Of course flinging out the old 'grim and frostbitten' insult just highlights that you don't get BM.

Lol. Actually I'll bite. How do I not get black metal.

How many Vietnam veterans does it take to change a Black Metal record?

You wouldn't know man, you weren't there!

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

Everyone will have their own opinion on who benefits or loses,  depending on their biases and I have seen Mgła live a few times and enjoyed them,  but I can understand how the misanthropic facade they present through their music and lyrics could be regarded as being at odds with the drunken party vibe of a gig.

I think what's perplexing is what would seem to be someone blaming a band for how the audience were behaving at one of their gigs. Apparently, in the abstract, there was no problem with them playing live, otherwise Mr.Reality surely would have had the common sense simply not to attend himself. So, once the gig was happening, and the audience were behaving in a way "contrary to the aesthetic of the band" (or whatever), what would Mr.Reality have wished to happen? That the band stop the gig? I wonder what his post-mortem of the concert would have been if Mgla had stopped playing and announced, "Sorry scum, we cannot keep playing - you people are ruining our image!"

[Juggz]

I wonder do the lads keep their faces obscured in work too? I'd imagine, as a fan, it'd be a real buzz kill to recognise the voice of Paul MGLA asking if you wanted fries with that and see he was just a regular bloke underneath it all.

[Eoin McLove]

Says it all really. 

[Eoin McLove]

I think the metal scene has become so normal that the people who are making up the scene now expect things to be perfectly normal and treat anything that attempts to pervert the norms or achieve something slightly left of field with suspicion or bland derision. The prospect of  engaging with a gig on a level that doesn't simply equate with a typical Friday night pints with the lads scenario is beyond the pale.  That a crowd might go and watch a band who put forward a misanthropic and mysterious image and hope to engage with the music on another level than they might by watching Buns N Noses or whatever rock tribute act is playing in their local boozer is beyond the realms that the too cool for school,  cynical social media age allows.  Go to gig,  take selfie throwing devil horns,  video half a song and upload it to Instagram.  Cult! The entire black metal movement was a reaction against the same blandification that they felt was eroding their scene back then.  The question might actually be, should black metal gigs actually happen at all or should the scene sink back into the shadows? I'm a dreamer so I'll go with the latter option,  but it seems too good to be true.

[Juggz]

It is possible to exist in the space between the can-crushingly moronic and the pompously preposterous. Getting upset that the reality of a group of musicians doesn't quite match the illusion and mystique their carefully manipulated image portrays is hard to fathom. Every band releasing anything is saying "LOOK AT ME!!!" no matter how kvlt they try to be about it, often especially when they're making out they're mad mysterious and aloof. If you buy into it and get a kick out of it, great, but if the music loses its appeal once the bullshit disappears, you have to wonder what it was you actually liked in the first place.

[Eoin McLove]

That's true.  The music has to do the talking, and that should hold up in the end but what is wrong with allowing yourself to get swept up in the experience and taking it for what it is? A huge part of what makes BM so potent (if you are into it) is that it takes itself seriously and views itself as being elitist to and separate from the frivolous aspects of the rock and metal scene.  When I say someone doesn't get it,  I'm not saying they are incapable of making a deeper connection with the music as such,  I'm saying they are perhaps too cynical to allow themselves to get lost in the experience.  All of the baggage that comes with black metal is part of its charm. 

[Eoin McLove]

And that includes the naughty aspects that Kim Kelly and her cohort are so desperate to expunge from the scene.  It is what it is.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

Your logic follows perfectly Andy, but it's fairly ironic that it leads you to the most cynical ones being those who are left outside of BM, rather than those inside it!

And as I said above, it's one thing turning your back on a band who "sabotage" their own image, quite a different thing to turn your back on a band because of a live audience committing some kind of "sacrilege" towards it!

[Eoin McLove]

You could argue that emotion is a separate beast to logic.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

And that irony occurs in the mating of the two?