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Originally Posted by demonrail666
I increasingly find extremities quite dull, if that's all they are. That whole association of extremes with some kind of 'truth' when in fact the 'truth' is usually a lot greyer, more subtle, and as such FAR more interesting.
I find Burzum interesting in this respect because while the music is this quite bombastic Wagnerian stomp, Varg's vocals have this weak, wounded, defeated, almost pathetic sense to them. The genius is found somewhere in the grey area of that conflict/contradiction.
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I agree with this a lot. It was always the thing that fascinated me about metal - while the rhetoric surrounding it always talks about extremities and anti-isms, the actual music is incredibly formulaic and often very rigid. Even worse with anarcho-punk, which often follows exactly the same musical format. This isn't a criticism - there are good and bad in both (I expect, can't stand punk myself) - but the rhetoric never lives up to the music.
Burzum are just a good band, I doubt there are many who would be genuinely disturbed by it. There are a few records that, usually musically, are really difficult to listen to, and incredibly harrowing. I adore Schnitkke, but there's records of his that are so bleak I can't listen to them too often. But that's different to finding something genuinely challenging to step away from lyrically - I don't/ can't hear Burzum's lyrics, and I expect he's pretty bad at them, but I'll stick with my first example and say Randall, I find, is exceptionally difficult to step away from, to intellectually distance myself from. It's entirely incidental, non-important music that is in many ways shite, but the content is so wrong, or worse, so
effective in its aims of being wrong, I can't even laugh at it any more. Which is what I find more worrying.