mementomori

Thanks to everyone. @zaireeka: you see, I first ventured onto Debaser two or three years after its inception, and most of the albums and artists I love had already been reviewed. Since I intend to make a positive contribution to the site and not clutter it with duplicates and triplicates, I imposed on myself a sort of completionist activity. If I come across as monotonous, it's because certain genres (like, for example, apocalyptic folk) were practically left uncovered. So those are the ones I found myself focusing on more. That's why you find me talking about certain groups rather than artists like, you know, Cohen or Cave, who have talked about death extensively but are already well represented on the site. (And by the way, I want to clarify that death is not the only theme I'm interested in, and rest assured that in my collection you'll find stuff that has little to do with death, like the Beatles, Zappa, or Jefferson Airplane!) However, if you go check my reviews, you'll find, albeit in varying quantities, a bit of everything (metal, avant-garde, industrial, singer-songwriters, jazz, indie-rock, progressive, electronic, ambient, drone music...), not shying away from artists outside the genres like Nico and Diamanda Galas. In short, to each their own, and I’m happy to communicate and share my "knowledge" about certain groups that are rarely talked about, thus enriching the collective heritage of Debaser, rather than writing about artists that have already been discussed (and well) on this site. After all, like everyone else, I don’t have unlimited knowledge nor have I reflected in the same way on all the artists I listen to. But the beauty of Debaser is precisely in giving what one feels like giving, spontaneously, and building a beautiful communal experience, which I would say is rare in a world that's so self-serving, where people only look out for their own interests, and doing something for free or completely selflessly has become an activity for foolish time-wasters...

@zaireeca: well, how to respond. 1) From a purely artistic point of view, I don't see any negative message in this music. It's simply an aesthetic that resonates with a certain type of personal sensitivity. It's like saying, it's a matter of taste. And just as a horror film doesn't encourage murder, similarly, this music doesn't seem to lead to suicide. You listen to it, and that's it, if it gives us pleasure. 2) From an existential perspective (I’m also a passionate reader of Camus), pondering the meaning of life remains a speculation in itself: it can be discussed for the sake of discussion, but without implying certain automatisms (not understanding life/disdain for life = suicide). We live, most of the time, with contradictions and not with rigid logic. Of course, it’s useful to ask what meaning life itself has, and the contribution of a certain philosophy can help us see and evaluate life stripped of a cultural "sacredness" that makes it untouchable (and consequently makes death a taboo). Biologically, for instance, life is merely a reproduction of cells without any purpose. If one chooses to embrace a materialistic view (and thus postulates that life can only have meaning culturally), one can finally look in the mirror: life is a span of time: is it excessively burdensome to go through it? If so, then what am I living for? Are the sufferings greater than the positive aspects? Since no one forces us to live, well, contemplating suicide is the next step. One can, within the limits of human rationality, weigh the negative and positive aspects and thus judge life as one evaluates everything else on a daily basis, and possibly decide to end it (if a love story wears you out, it ends; if a job is unenjoyable, one might change it: why, pushing the analogy to the extreme, shouldn’t a similar discourse apply to life as well?). 3) From a personal viewpoint, I think it's legitimate to commit suicide if one is not happy with their existence. But killing oneself, as determined as we might be, is not so easy. Will alone is not enough; it takes guts, the physical and intellectual strength to cross what Battiato calls the door of supreme fear. Not only for the physical pain involved in such an act but also for the idea itself, for the assumption of a responsibility that's simply too great: that of committing an irreversible act, impossible to correct afterward. I, for example, don’t have the guts; I just can’t do it, and even in my darkest moments, I always find a reason why life is worth living. Or at least I discover that it’s more desirable than throwing myself onto the tracks and being crushed by a speeding train. Between a life one enjoys and death, between everything and nothing, therefore, there are many shades. I place myself in one of them, ultimately happy to live, through ups and downs, through indignations, frustrations, and unexpected joys, a bit like everyone else, after all. This doesn’t prevent me from indulging, at least from an intellectual and artistic perspective, in my propensity and interest for certain themes. There are those who love football and don’t play, and there are those who are interested in death and aren’t dead... so go where your heart leads you...

interesting...but I couldn't quite place them...do they do stuff like sopor aeternus?

I have a theory (which is personal and doesn't intend to offend anyone): Moore, despite being an immense musician, is an incomplete artist on his own; in my opinion, he made sense only as a keyboardist in DT, and I say this not because I want to be an incurable nostalgic (I’m not even a fan of DT!): Moore was the reflective and intimate rib of DT, giving them a formal rigor, a synthesis, a sense of wholeness, a real experimental streak, and an existential penetration that today, without him, lost among acrobatic exercises of style and quotations, they have definitively lost. But without DT, all these good qualities don’t seem to have the right container: his art is indeed incomplete, there is always something missing, it doesn’t fully satisfy: as a mere intellectual burst, it is surpassed by billions of other artists, and as an emotional impulse, too. His art seems like a pleasant intimate parenthesis: truly little for a musician at that level.

He's great, the album a bit less so... noteworthy is the presence of Zonder and Vera from Fates Warning, who liven things up a bit (even if some jazzy moments here and there don’t really elevate an album that’s, all in all, flat... yes, there’s class, there’s technique, there’s feeling, but in the end, it’s just a drag...) And yes, nothing will be the same again, the DT without him, and him without the DT... both idiots...

Well, in truth, the double bass of AC Wild (formerly Running Wild, the flagship band of the most uncompromising Teutonic power metal) sounds quite metal to me. Of course, one has to see what is meant by metal: Lacrimosa are certainly not Slayer, but the riffs, solos, melodic refrains, and drumming passages (steady, heavy, precise) of Inferno undoubtedly belong to the metal grammar (which does not mean that Lacrimosa play metal... I'm talking about the adopted language) and bring the band closer to certain doom-gothic bands of the mid-nineties (like Theatre of Tragedy, for example, who made the opposite journey: from metal to dark) rather than to bands dedicated to simple gothic rock (which I consider to be populated by people like Fields of Nephilim). It's no coincidence that Lacrimosa’s CDs can be found in metal sections of stores and their albums are reviewed in metal magazines. In short, I don’t think I’ve made an outrageous claim. And then I don’t understand why they would have started doing metal with Echoes, which instead marks an exacerbation of the symphonic element and a recovery of the electro-dark infrastructure... I don’t know, I disagree with your correction... it’s probably a matter of labels...

terrible album... bought blindly just for the musicians involved: you can imagine the disappointment! I hated it so much that after the purchase I resigned myself and definitively decided to give up on the '80s prog (prog???)... since that day I have voluntarily confined myself within the boundaries of 1969-1974, for the rest I prefer to continue with Eno and Kraftwerk...

I hate dancing too, the thing is that music like this forces you into it... well, here the boundary between dance and industrial is very blurry... let's say it's dance weighed down by industrial infrastructures... or industrial in a soft-dance version... I couldn't tell you, "war" is a pretty heavy track, but the rest is more techno-trance... if I were you, I would give it a listen, overall it's not bad, regardless of whether they do industrial or not...

I will definitely try Death; after all, I’m not crazy about EBM either, and rather than extreme, I see it as a lively music to listen to at the beach...and indeed, I've decided to review them right in summer...

Fidia, I don’t know if it’s the best because I haven’t heard the entire discography, which, between remixes and various nonsense, is really something vast... I can tell you that it’s very valid and contains all the elements of both the band and the genre... so it’s an excellent first step to get to know the band and the genre. Sfascia: Rudy Ratzinger and the (tragically) famous Joseph are the same person: bored by the routine of music, he decided around 2004/2005 (I don’t remember exactly) to be the Pope in his spare time... it’s one of his many side projects...