death metal - TL:DR (That's Long, DID Read)

Play For Today – current playlist 27 October 2016

Naturally some crossover with last week’s since my attention span isn’t all that horribly tragic…

1. Kristin Hersh – Wyatt At The Coyote Palace (Omnibus Books, 2016) Review here!

2. ThrOes – This Viper Womb (Aesthetic Death, 2016)

2. Black Angel Drifter – Black Angel Drifter (Bastard Recordings, 2016)

3. Daniel Johnston – The What of Whom (Stress Records, 1982)

3. Rachel Mason – Das Ram (Cleopatra Records/Practical Records, 2016) Review here!

4. Debz– Extended Play EP (Choice Records, 2016) Review here!

5. Suzanne Vega – Lover, Beloved; Songs from an Evening with Carson McCullers (Amenuensis Productions, 2016)

7. Eno – Another Green World (Island, 1975)

8. Jandek – Chair Beside a Window (Corwood Industries, 1982)

9. Public Enemy – Yo! Bum Rush The Show (Def Jam, 1987)

10.Kate Carr – I Had Myself A Nuclear Spring (Rivertones, 2016)

11.Rachel Mason – Gayley Manor Songs (self-release, 2015)

12. Lugubrum, Face Lion Face Oignon (Aphelion Productions, 2011)

13. Charley Patton – The Complete Recordings, 1929 – 1934 (JSP Records, 2008)

14. Esmé Patterson – We Were Wild (Xtra Mile Recordings, 2016)

15. Opeth – Sorceress (Nuclear Blast, 2016)

16. Neil Young – Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (Reprise, 1969)

17. The Mothers of Invention – Absolutely Free (Verve, 1967)

18. Miles Davis – Miles In The Sky (Columbia, 1968)

19. Suicidal Tendencies – Suicidal Tendencies (Frontier, 1983)

20. Absentia Lunae – In Vmbrarvm Imperii Gloria (Serpens Caput Productions, 2006)

Play For Today – current playlist

It’s been a while, so without further ado or elucidation, here’s some of what’s on the turntable (and equivalents) at present:

Kristin Hersh by Billy O’Connell

1. Kristin Hersh – Wyatt At The Coyote Palace (Omnibus Books, 2016)

2. Jingo de Lunch – Perpetuum Mobile (We Bite Records, 1987)

3. Rachel Mason – Das Ram (Cleopatra Records/Practical Records, 2016)

4. Naia Izumi – Natural Disaster EP (self-release, 2016)

5. Hobbs’ Angel of Death – Heaven Bled (Hell’s Headbangers/High Roller Records, 2016)

6. Suzanne Vega – Lover, Beloved; Songs from an Evening with Carson McCullers (Amenuensis Productions, 2016)

7. Bessie Smith – The Complete Recordings, Vol 1 (Columbia/Legacy)

8. Ghosts of Sailors At Sea – Red Sky Morning (Faded Maps, 2016

9. Dorje – Centred & One EP (Invisible Hands Music, 2016)

10.Drudkh/Grift – Betrayed By The Sun (Nordvis/Season of Mist, 2016)

11.The Mothers of Invention – Burnt Weenie Sandwich (Reprise Records, 1971)

12. Gentlemans Pistols – Hustler’s Row (Nuclear Blast, 2015)

13. Kaada/Patton – Bacteria Cult (Ipecac, 2016)

14. Maki Asakawa – Masi Asakawa (Honest Jon’s, 2016)

15. Nightsatan – Nightsatan and the Loops of Doom (Svart records, 2014)

16. Pilot – From the Album of the Same Name (EMI, 1974)

17. Haar/Ur Draugr – split (ATMF, 2016)

18. Wardruna – Runaljod – Ragnarok (By Norse Music, 2016)

19. Scott Walker – Scott 3 (Phillips, 1969)

20. The Stupid Daikini – Everything is Fine (self-release, 2015)

Symphonies of Sadness, Dirges of Disgust, Noxious Noise: Musical Masochism

Any kind of masochism is (to non-masochists/collaborators) peculiar and difficult to understand; no less so when it is related to music; but I’m going to try to understand it anyway.

I have isolated three main areas which can be loosely classified under the ‘masochistic’ heading, but there may well be more:

1. Self-consciously unpleasant music which is “enjoyed” (or just enjoyed; a subtle but perhaps important difference) for its intentionally unpleasant/disturbing/unsettling or harsh sound

2. Music which is humorously/ironically enjoyed for its perceived awfulness*

3. Non-unpleasant music which is listened to specifically for its upsetting/depressing or negative emotional effect

Uniting all of these is the fact that they are not everyday listening (for me anyway), but in are special music which retains its potency by being indulged in only occasionally and when prepared for the physical (tinnitus) or mental (lachrymose) consequences.

*aka ‘guilty pleasures’ of course; but that is a whole other discussion; if guilt is an appropriate emotion for listening to music it would have to be something a bit less innocuous than I have in mind. ‘Embarrassing pleasures’ would be a more accurate and even more dodgy-sounding description

1. UNPLEASANT NOISES
The first category is very distinct from the other two; not only is the unpleasantness aural (and intentionally unpleasant), it is precisely the nastiness that appeals to the listener. Why that should be is mysterious; I have used the word ‘masochism’ in the title here, but only because everyone knows what it means and because I can’t think of a better term; but neither ‘sexual masochism disorder’, BDSM or so-called non-sexual masochism (“self-defeating personality disorder”) really functions in the same way as listening to, say The Rita (noise artist Sam McKinlay) or Gnaw Their Tongues.

Noise as (anti)music goes back at least as far as the Dada and Futurist movements of the early 20th century (on the left is Luigi Russolo with one of his Futurist instruments), but on the whole (I think) it’s true that the noise that was created, though fascinating to hear, was more about the process of composing and rule-breaking than listening for pleasure. The same may be true of a lot of experimental noise since then, with classic albums such as Yoko Ono’s Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band and Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music probably being far more frequently owned than enjoyed. Various musique concréte and other avant garde pieces have the same kind of status, being performed perhaps more for historical/academic (albeit interesting) reasons rather than for the purpose of actual entertainment (which is not of course to say that people aren’t entertained by it).

Noise: So what of semi-musical or non-musical noise like Merzbow or just plain ugly music? It’s hard to say where the appeal lies, but with pure noise it seems to be at least partly visceral. It has an immediate, emotional impact; it has nothing to do with traditional musical qualities such as melody, catchiness or even memorable-ness, since it’s possible to listen to the abstract noise of (for example) Thousands of Dead Gods (2006) by The Rita many times without ever getting used to it. This makes the noise endlessly surprising, alienating or boring, depending on one’s mood. The sense of noise as abstract is reinforced by its context-lessness; typically the artwork for a Merzbow album is as enigmatic and unrevealing as the album within, and occasionally every bit as flatly un-evocative (not a criticism!) as the Merzbow sound itself. Cultural identifiers in pure noise are also minimalist in the extreme; the race, nationality or gender of noise artists tends to be known only insofar as the artist wishes it to be so.

At the same time, a quality that pure noise shares with more traditional music is that it can noticeably affect the mood of the listener, especially when played at a loud volume. Listening to pure noise can be much like watching ‘white noise’ on a TV screen; the endless movement may be random, but the mind will look for patterns and if it doesn’t find them, create them itself; pure noise often feels detailed in a way that very little actual music does. And it is enjoyable (the word covers a wide range of responses here) or unenjoyable (simpler) for as long as it engages the listener.

Ugly Music: What I shall call ugly music is sometimes easier to pin down; it is music, which means it follows certain structural rules which noise ignores, and the listener enjoys it for its ugliness or not at all. It is notable too that artists who aim for ugliness usually attempt the Wagnerian ideal of the gesamtkunstwerk or ‘total work of art’ where everything from the sound to the lyrics to the artwork contributes to the overall effect.

Ugly music probably began in the 60s with some of The Mothers of Invention’s more indigestible experiments (like Absolutely Free, which is perhaps more difficult than truly ugly), Captain Beefheart or the 17 minute churn of the Velvet Underground’s ‘Sister Ray’, but it came into its own in the artistically serious 1970s (see below) and, in a more populist and relatively lighthearted way with the advent of death metal in the 80s, specifically with albums like Reek of Putrefaction (1988) by Carcass. This classic album is ugly not only in the details of the music and presentation, but in the murky muddiness of its sound; a chance element caused by the cheapness of the recording, which makes some of the album sound like two or three different bands immersed in a swamp, simultaneously playing three different songs, When allied with the rasped vocals of Jeff Walker and the ridiculously deep ones of Bill Steer, this churning noise makes for a disorientating but strangely addictive listening experience, which has something to do with the humour of its extremity (lyrical and musical) as well as the pure heaviness.

Back in the 80s, this kind of music had an outsider/snob appeal even within the metal genre. 80s metal (on the whole) strove for clarity and precision; Carcass (emerging from an anarcho-crust/punk background) pushed the boundaries of musical extremity and taste (using the notorious collages of medical photos for their artwork, rather than relatively cuddly horror mascots like Iron Maiden’s Eddie) beyond what the standard fan of Iron Maiden, W.A.S.P., Metallica or even Slayer might find acceptable. To say that death metal is relatively lighthearted is slightly misleading – Carcass’ early music was informed by a radical vegetarian disgust with all things meat-based in quite a serious way – but as a subgenre of a popular youth-focussed music it lacks the gravitas of the kind of music which made the late 70s a darker place to have ears.

By contrast with death metal, the sheer ugliness of early industrial music exemplified by the work of Throbbing Gristle, seems designed not so much to shock or alienate with its extremity, so much as to shock and alienate with its familiarity, kind of a negative mirror image of the almost subliminal ambient music being pioneered around the same time in Eno’s Music For Airports.

By reflecting the greyness of the decaying industrial (edging into post-industrial) landscape and society that produced it, the corporate packaging and document-like title made TG’s debut album The Second Annual Report (1977) a masterpiece of grinding mundane-ness. In its way their music is every bit as evocative of the 1970s as glam or disco, but the way it embodies its era, its brutalist architecture and grey/brown/beige ambience, combats any possible sense of nostalgia. Although it’s easy to say why it’s interesting, liking Throbbing Gristle (as many have done and continue to do) is much harder to explain. The appeal of TG; in effect the appeal of being made to feel uneasy or disgusted, is an odd way to be entertained. On the surface you could say the same about the horror genre in cinema and literature, but Throbbing Gristle’s effect is utterly different from straightforward horror-as-entertainment, feeling (to me anyway) more analogous to the JG Ballard of The Atrocity Exhibition or Crash than to Stephen King, perhaps because like Ballard, TG’s work had more to do with documenting than it did with entertaining. Although there was undoubtedly an element of confrontation in TGs music (especially in a live setting), as with pure noise, confrontation isn’t the focal point that it becomes in the power electronics of groups like Whitehouse and Sutcliffe Jügend who (to some extent) followed on from the early British industrial scene. There is also a more straightforwardly ‘horror noise’ sub-subgenre including bands like Abruptum and the aforementioned Gnaw Their Tongues, whose aim seems to be to engender (with, it must be said, varying degrees of success) extreme anxiety in the listener; significantly different from the almost abstract quality of pure (if harsh) noise artists like Merzbow, easier to understand, but also easier to dismiss as sensationalism.

One of the cumulative effects of abrasive-sounding music has always been to spawn more accessible versions of abrasive-sounding music, in short, to make tunes out of it: noise rock, hardcore punk, death metal, grindcore, grunge, black metal, industrial pop music, techno, trance, drone, shoegaze; all bring a taste of ugliness to the masses in their own way and all are enjoyed, just like traditional pop/rock/soul/country/reggae etc etc etc, by people who like the tunes and like the songs. So they have little part to play in this particular discussion.

2. SO BAD IT’S POSSIBLE TO PRETEND IT’S GOOD

Across all of the arts there are ‘so bad it’s good’ works that appeal on the ironic level of kitsch. These are completely subjective and therefore a bit of a minefield; at what point does listening to something that you personally think is so awful that it’s funny become just listening to it; and is there any difference anyway? Did my teenage self and friends have a different experience listening to an old Shakin’ Stevens tape ‘for a laugh’ than “Shaky”’s actual fans did or do? Well, yes, presumably; they probably don’t laugh as much. Still; it’s all ‘listening with pleasure’ and not only is it subjective, but it’s all about timing. The awfulness of music is as much about the zeitgeist as the popularity of music is; hard to imagine now, but there was a time in the late 80s when listening to Abba (or The Carpenters for that matter) could be enjoyed as revelling in tacky 70s awfulness; but since the early 90s they have been revered by the once-embarrassed media as a great band after all.

Since the 90s in fact, revelling in irony has become so commonplace and mainstream as not to be ironic anymore; at one time including an artist like Tom Jones in the lineup of a major indie rock festival was kind of a hipster joke that the audience was expected to be in on. Since then the line between alternative and mainstream has become blurred, not because mainstream music has become more adventurous, but because ‘alternative’ music became popular and thus blander and more geared towards commercial success and because the mainstream media discovered people they had actually heard of at these oft-derided hippy festivals. The amusingly mainstream guest act at (for example) Glastonbury or T in the Park has almost imperceptibly become the headlining act; no accident, since these artists are usually household names which therefore guarantee ticket sales in a way that even a medium-big indie rock band isn’t.

Nowadays, to have the same kind of kitsch shock value as including Tom Jones in an indie festival once had, you would have to put someone like Gary Glitter or Rolf Harris (an original ironic festival guest, strange to remember) on the stage, doubling the irony and making the whole experience extremely uncomfortable for all concerned. Despite the weird Ballardian/Coum Transmissions echo this experience this might present, it’s probably best not to.

3. NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL MISERABLE MUSIC
This category takes it for granted that unhappiness is a form of unpleasantness that is most often avoided; which may not be strictly true – or obviously isn’t, given the endless popularity of tragedies, murder mysteries etc. Still, it’s a basic human truth (I hope) that most people would rather be happy than sad. Most of the time that is; historically, music was most often written for occasions; sad music was required for a funeral, just as weddings demanded happy music. Tudor and baroque music often had mythological, narrative or literary inspiration which dictated the mood of the works. For a court composer to make a cheerful-sounding funeral dirge or a comic opera from a tragic mythological story would be perverse at best and bad workmanship at worst.

In modern popular music there are many kinds of sad songs, but from a personal point of view (narrowing it down to music I actually like) there are two;
songs which express the unhappiness of the performer
songs (which may or may not be sad in themselves) which make the listener (me) feel unhappy.

Both of these kinds of songs may actually be very pleasant in an aural sense, so only the latter are strictly relevant here. But – outside of the funereal situation mentioned above – why would someone intentionally listen to music that makes them sad?

There are probably as many reasons as there are people, but two big ones: to make you feel better or to make you feel worse.

A lot of interesting research has been carried out on the restorative power of sad music, so I wont say too much about that. The blues (and early country music too) is a classic example – intended not just as an outlet for the woes of the artist her or himself, but as a sharing of universal wretchedness that brings the relief of empathy/recognition – and it does seem to have a regenerative quality (a kind of earthly parallel to the redemptive power of gospel music) that makes it essentially uplifting in all but the most desolate examples.

Music to make you feel worse is more problematic, but wanting to hear sad music that deepens your depression is a fairly common phenomenon, especially among adolescents. The logic of the blues is that something that reflects your mood or encapsulates your own troubles is a kind of comfort, but it’s also true that brooding on one’s unhappiness can deepen that mood; that one can indulge in misery. Why? Because people are strange and self-pity answers some deep-seated psychological need? Perhaps it is a real kind of masochism after all…

A short, personal masochistic playlist

UNPLEASANT (these examples are all undeniably ‘not nice’, but are oddly exhilarating too)
1. Throbbing Gristle – D.o.A.

2. Painkiller – Guts of a Virgin

3. Merzbow – Pulse Demon

4. Mastery – Valis

5. Hijōkaidan – Duo

MUSIC IT HURTS ME (TO VARYING DEGREES) TO LIKE
1. Celine Dion – My Heart Will Go On

2. Samantha Fox – Touch Me

3. Yngwie J Malmsteen’s Rising Force – Now Is The Time

4. Focus – Hocus Pocus

5. Sigue Sigue Sputnik – Dress for Excess

MISERABLE MUSIC FOR WALLOWING IN
1. The Smiths – I Know It’s Over

2. Cranes – Tomorrow’s Tears

3. Daniel Johnston – I Remember Painfully (plus most of Yip/Jump Music)

4. Adam Cohen – Beautiful

5. Red House Painters – Katy Song

Draining; that’s probably enough misery for now…

All the stuff and more; why bands should split up and never, ever reform

Firstly, let’s acknowledge that there are a few reasons that bands who have long since split up should reform, but they are mostly reasons relevant to the band itself and not their fans;

unfinished business (various kinds)
reaping the rewards (personal, financial) that they didn’t get the first time around
because they (think they) are better songwriters/musicians than they were before – that kind of thing.
It’s fun being a band again

BUT – much as I loved Lush, Ride, Slowdive, The Stone Roses, Pixies and definitely wish them all well, do I want new albums by them? Even if (as seems unlikely – and in the case of The Pixies definitely wasn’t the case) the new albums are “better” (whatever that means) than their old ones, part of the appeal of those bands (leaving aside nostalgia and the age I was when I first liked them) is the completeness of their discographies; a whole story, from start to finish.

As with most pop/rock music,The Beatles are archetypical. If their discography had stretched from 1962 to 1970, but with one strange album from 1979 where they sounded a bit like The Beatles, only in 1979, with maybe ‘Just Like Starting Over’, ‘Getting Closer‘, ‘Blow Away‘ and ‘Wrack My Brain‘ on it, would Beatles fans be any better off? If nothing else, it would spoil the strangely mythical story arc as recorded in the Anthology documentaries etc, not to mention their embodiment of the cultural phenomenon that is remembered as ‘the sixties’.

Obviously there are many bands with long, good careers, bands who manage to produce something surprisingly great, even in their ‘twilight years’, but nevertheless the classic band (or just human?) trajectory is:

early promise (or astounding precociousness)
maturity (‘best’ period)
post-maturity (weird/interesting period)
end (can be many kinds of end)

There are many permutations on this formula, but a relatively short, intense career (5-10 years?) can be the most satisfying one to look back on, especially from the point of view of the record collector who wants to own everything, in every format and version. Ideally (again, from the collecting point of view) a career should make a nice box set (or two; albums/singles, although it’s inevitable that if a band is commercially successful, record labels will make much more than one or two nice box sets out of their work; “reissue, repackage, repackage” etc).

This article was prompted by the seemingly untimely demise of the brilliant avant-grind/death metal/peculiar UK underground band Oblivionized, followed by the realisation that a couple of demos, an EP, and a few split releases, culminating in a pretty much perfect album is in fact a model career. Their work began in a certain style, they perfected that, moved on, experimented, made something new, perfected that and then quit while they were ahead. And it’s all out there, relatively easy to get hold of and there you have it; the complete Oblivionized collection. Might be a bit of a wait for the box set though.

The Smiths are another favourite band with a model career; and at this point it seems like Morrissey has made it pretty certain that a reunion can never happen. Even though I would no doubt want to see them live if they did reform, I’m glad it seems unlikely. As it stands, The Smiths’ career has that Beatles-y sense of symmetry; The Smiths, where they set out their style in its roughest form (actually my favourite album though); Meat Is Murder and The Queen Is Dead refining it and perfecting it; a sense of strain and everything going a bit odd with Strangeways, Here We Come (my second favourite). Plus a fantastic run of singles, some demos and Peel Sessions and a live album; and then end it before it gets to the first not-good album; perfect. For the individual Smiths, as for The Beatles, their post-band careers would be far more erratic, but successful enough (in Morrissey’s case more than successful enough) that they have no pressing reasons to relive their youth as grown-ups, with all of the high-school-reunion awkwardness one assumes comes from that situation.

It’s nice that The Smiths are, thus far, holding firm; one imagines that the financial rewards would be almost irresistable; and normally I think it’s fair to say that financial factors play a part in the majority of reunions of ‘heritage’ bands (classic cases; The Sex Pistols, Velvet Underground). Normally it is circumstance rather than integrity that prevents bands from working together again; too much water under the bridge in the case of Abba, or more tragically The Doors, Joy Division, Nirvana among many others; these bands have untarnishable careers for the saddest of reasons.

It’s entirely reasonable and understandable that artists want to relive their glory years; but they are called glory years for a reason – they can’t come again. Most bands with any kind of longevity are built around the vision of one or two members anyway (except The Ramones I guess) and how many bands that are any good have had more than a decade of productivity without any lineup changes or inferior albums? And how many reunions have resulted in the best album of a band’s career?

Best not to do it people, once the thrill of seeing you in concert has passed you will have taken the shine off your greatest musical achievements; and no-one except your bank manager will thank you for it.

An Illuminated Eccentric; the art of Christophe Szpajdel

What do black/death metal band Book of Belial and Kim Kardashian have in common? Aside from a desire to spread evil and darkness, the answer is that both have had their names immortalised by the iconic logo designer Christophe Szpajdel. Although inextricably linked to the extreme metal underground by his classic works for a vast array of bands, Szpajdel is first and foremost a great artist and designer and his work now has an audience far beyond the metal subculture to which he still undeniably belongs.

Szpajdel has been drawing bespoke logos since 1987, his big break coming in the early 90s with the classic and hugely influential logo for Norwegian black metal legends Emperor. Since then his work has helped to define the aesthetic style of underground metal, but also become well-known in its own right, being featured in exhibitions and books, including his own volume, Lord of the Logos.

It’s typical of the UK that, despite being based in Exeter (and having been a UK resident for the past fifteen years), Szpajdel’s work receives far greater acclaim and coverage elsewhere in the world; a real shame, and a situation which will hopefully be remedied as his reputation continues to expand both within and outside of the metal realm.

In conversation, Christophe is funny and informative and has a passion for drawing and, especially, logo design (his own and that of others) which shines through everything he says. It’s worth pointing out too, that in a time when useable graphics have arguably never been easier to come by, he remains committed to the art of imaginative, hand-drawn, pencil and ink images; unique works which have the feel that only comes from manual labour and contemplation.

Anyway, enough introduction; here’s the man himself – What are you looking forward to in 2016?

CS: This year I have lined up a few exhibitions, I have a possible show in Manchester for March-April at the Gallery Grim and another possibly in London. But I have had quite a long list of exhibitions in the past, so what is more exciting to look forward to is in June, when I have my first proper workshop, which is going to happen in Vancouver, Canada. That workshop is going to be together with [photographer] Peter Beste. This is something really to look forward to. I had a talk earlier today about an exhibition in Romania, in the Carpathian mountains. Last year I had a very successful last-minute impromptu exhibition in Japan. I’m actually looking forward to having a much bigger exhibition there, because that last exhibition became something of a timebomb. It filled the venue, they literally squeezed in, and I had three hours of non-stop autographs. All these Japanese people were taking selfies with me, which is something I have never seen like this before. In the UK, selfies are a big habit; in Japan, selfies are an absolute obsession. It’s the same with queuing. Here in the UK, everyone is used to queuing, the Japanese have turned queuing into an art form. So last year was a giant leap in my artistic career.”

As mentioned in my intro, Christophe’s name is known worldwide in metal circles, but although his love for and knowledge of metal music is obvious, his real passion is for designing logos, not simply recycling past glories.

CS: Yes, there is always metal, but this year I have made a new experience, I have done some pop culture logos. I drew for Calvin Harris and Bruno Mars, and Kim Kardashian, and Katie Price, Wayne Rooney (laughs). Also Maverick Sabre – you know; really popular artists, because I have the will to have my work exposed to a much bigger public. And at the moment I’ve been thinking about, just for fun, working on a Beyoncé logo, because she is so much talked about. So there’s this whole series of pop culture logos, I did EastEnders, Coronation Street, Emmerdale, Shortland Street. So I had some real fun exploring the mainstream. But the metal public is always the most receptive to my work. It’s my public, it’s the one who collects my work. A lot of people who see my work who haven’t been acquainted with the metal scene say that it’s not something they would be going for. Or that it’s nice but it’s grim.

There was a time when the extreme metal underground was essentially a DIY business at all levels, but its growth, aided by that of the internet over the last two decades has taken your local extreme band from demos, fanzines and tape trading, to small indie labels, to world tours and ‘Norwegian Grammys’, with the concomitant rise of the oxymoron that is ‘big’ underground bands. No genre demonstrates this better than black metal; and it should be noted that the high profile black metal image that has evolved is in part due to the instantly recognisable work of Christophe Szpajdel himself. Classic 90s logos like his ones for Emperor and Moonspell set a style which is still widely imitated 30 years on.

As the world has changed, Szpajdel has changed with it, but although he puts in full-time hours designing logos, he still doesn’t rely on his art for his income, which means his work is, by the standard of graphic designers with his profile and pedigree, almost ludicrously inexpensive.

CS: “The cost varies, but really I am aiming for a fee of one hundred US dollars. Anybody who contacts me first must be prepared to pay my fee. This year I am also looking to introduce an hourly rate. I discussed this with some artists in Devon who saw my work, and they told me ‘you really need to concentrate on a contract. Send the client a contract that stipulates that there is $100 initial fee for the first draft; but the first draft includes a finalised logo. If they then want further drafts then you absolutely need to introduce an hourly rate.’ So I am working out those details soon.

Bands who contact me now for a logo for free, I say ‘if you want a logo then I want to see the 50% deposit. And when I see the deposit in my PayPal account I will then start working on the logos. If I don’t have the deposit then I’m not going to make a move.’

So is the logo done just for fun, or out of enthusiasm for the subject now a thing of the past?

CS: No, because times like now [January], when it’s been quite quiet over the festive period so, I sometimes just dish out a logo to someone, to people who support my work, just to experiment and to exercise my freedom. There’s a woman called Natalie Corless who has posted a lot on my Facebook wall that she likes my logos so I did her an impromptu logo and she loved it. And so she posted and promoted my album on her timeline and she got me some clients! And this was a person who randomly added me on Facebook. And at the end of the day, she liked my work and she got me five clients, who paid $100 each. So these kind of random people who add me on facebook, they’re not as random as you might think.

Do you forsee a time when you will live from just doing your artwork?

CS: Well, I would love to. But since I’ve started charging professionally, I have observed a steep drop of the amount of clients who commission a logo from me. There are lots of other artists, for example Chris Horst, or Gragoth from Luciferium War Graphics. They offer packages. Chris Horst for example specialises in logos, but for $50 he does logos that include drafts, revisions, work on the computer, digitised, vectorised, coloured, all that; for just $50. Gragoth from Luciferium War Graphics, he is offering for $300, a complete package. Like it has album covers, banners, ad banners, website, myspace layouts, reverb nation layouts, logo, all inclusive for $300. And he is having a lot of success.

But my work’s selling point is it is unique; it is absolutely handmade. I work in collaboration with some graphic designers to digitise my logos. Because now that I charge $100, my clients expect work exactly, precisely, rigorously, to their expectations. They expect the logo to be vectorised, digitised, they expect it in different formats; .PNG, .AI, Vector file, .RAR, .PDF, .GIF files, all the different formats.”

One would think that, as Christophe is now (and has been since the 90s) a well-known name, that bands would request a logo in his trademark style (or one of them), but surprisingly this isn’t always the case…

CS: When I used to do logos in my own style they all got rejected. Now I listen to what the clients want. When they pay the deposit I would like the band to discuss exactly what they are looking for. And actually I want them to send me examples by other artists and not mine, so I can avoid repeating myself. I’m also in very close contact and have been doing quite a lot of collaborative works with a guy called Raoul Mazzero from Italy. He is an absolute genius. He actually helped me how to create outstanding logos, and how to solve the symmetry problems. He’s been a huge help, and we’re looking at a possible Italian show too.”

Is symmetry something you aim for in general?

CS: I actually have an automatic impulse to create symmetrical logos, but I have also done quite a lot of asymmetrical logos. But symmetrical logos are just natural to me. I find a symmetrical logo to be more outstanding, and to be more balanced.

So what is a good logo to you?

CS: I think the readability of a logo is essential. A logo has to be readable, even in a small format. And I try to convince my clients and my customers that a logo needs to be readable. Not to be overly decorated, especially if it is going to be displayed very small on a poster or on the corner of a CD. On most of the logos I produce I am aiming for readability. And if the client wants a completely unreadable logo I am simply saying ‘why don’t we opt for several designs? Why don’t we think about doing a logo which is made of letters only, which is readable and then a more limited logo for t-shirts that can go more unreadable?'”

Do you have any interest in doing cover designs etc as well as the logos?

CS: No. I’ve tried to do it and it doesn’t really come well. I found out that doing album covers is not my speciality. However, I did work last year on a mural in Exeter. This is something I wanted to experience. I love working outside, especially in the summer months. In the winter, I essentially work in my studio. But in the summer I’m working a lot outside.

The mural is a rare Christophe Szpajdel work, not only because of the scale, but the use of colour.

CS: “In my logos I do everything in black and white. However, there are a few exceptions. For the 2014 Remembrance Day I did a logo with red poppies on it. [since this interview took place, Christophe also designed the beautiful memorial logo for David Bowie below also) Sometimes I like to share my thoughts through an artwork, like a logo. I find that logos come to me a lot better, it’s my vocation as an artist. I find that I prefer to put my hand into one pot, rather than to try to put my hand into a lot of pots.”

Although Christophe is known for his black and death metal logos, it would be a mistake to regard these as being in one single style; beginning in the 90s with the bold, spiky logos such as the classic designs for Emperor et al, but he also pioneered the naturalistic, organic, ‘spreading roots’ style logos now extremely widespread in the genre (I have chosen his logo for Grim as both a perfect example and a personal favourite) and latterly has turned to increasingly bold, primitive designs.

He has also experimented with various alphabets and styles, a favourite of mine being his masterful and atmospheric Art Nouveau and Art Deco inspired designs.

CS: “I like to do Art Nouveau logos, Art Nouveau logos give fantastic ways for using the space, using space between the letters, rather than pure black metal old school logos, which generally look crumpled. And I think that these usual kinds of logos actually reduce the chance for a band to become well known. Sometimes it’s an ultra-radical kind of orthodox black metal band who wants only to release ten copies of their demo or something, but unfortunately I prefer a logo to be standing out, to be readable. It has to be readable at first sight, but at the same time it has to be outstanding. it has to be kick-ass and memorable, not just a bunch of letters put together, but a logo.

Is creating a simple logo easier or more difficult than complicated one?

CS: “When it’s a complicated and sophisticated logo I mostly get it right the first time. If it’s a simple logo, that is where the client will challenge me. Because in a simple logo, that’s when any imperfection will be seen. And the client will be the first to see it. And this is what I really love; logos to be incredibly easy to recognise straight ahead. [note; the logos Christophe lists here are not his own designs] Think about Gojira; I love that logo. It’s simple, it’s clear, and even if you see it very small, you recognise straight away; that is Gojira and no other band. Think about a band like Tool. They have a perfect logo because it stands out, it’s unique, and it’s appropriate. Or logos like Anthrax; it’s modern, it’s thrash, it’s simple, it’s distinctive, it’s unique. Same, think about the logo of Helloween; or the logo of Malice. Think about Bathory!”

Or indeed Emperor…

CS: “You see, when I did Emperor, they had a sort of logo they used with upside down crosses, and it was too black metal, I thought they needed something simple, and imperious. And I got it right first time. You know, you throw your first dart and you get it right in the centre of the target. Bam! Like that. It’s a logo which is at the same time simple, distinctive, useable in any size, which works in any size and format.”

And of course you now have your own logo…

CS: “Yes, I have the Lord of the Logos, which is my trademark, which is my book.”

It’s a beautiful book, have you plans for more?

CS: “Well, Lord of the Logos, is still available, it’s still sellng. I’m looking to release a second volume, which has a working title of Ancient Modernism later this year. The title comes from a whole concept I’ve developed . The concept in the new logos is a real travel through time and dimension. So there is a timeline, beginning with really primitive logos I have created. A band called Gau, which means ‘night’ in Basque, this logo is very prehistoric, almost as if it was drawn by dinosaurs. With these very prehistoric plants around, no crows, no wolves. Very prehistoric, almost reptilian, taken from a time there was no mammals, no birds, there were just reptiles and primitive insects; trilobites, and ammonites. And in fact I live in Exeter, by the Jurassic coast, so you can send yourself spinning on a time travel of 200 millions years. So we go from these very simplistic logos, like Undo Creation from Georgia, up to the most sophisticated logos; art deco, or futuristic logos, like I did for Outsider Industries. Or Haunted, an Italian project.

It seems like, although drawing logos still isn’t your ‘day job’, it’s definitely your main focus…

C.S: “I’m trying to keep myself at the age of 45, forever doing logos. The main reason is being single; all the time being single, so I can concentrate 100% on my logos because this is what gives me happiness. I have never been married, never had children; my first child is that book, Lord of the Logos. And that child is growing all the time, it has been in many hands, and it’s being appreciated by people who have never been listening to metal. Lord of the Logos is really only focussing on what inspires me; it’s photographs and logos. And there are some medieval aspects, but mostly it’s nature. All the photos have been taken by myself, and the logos are all my own work and it reflects the places that have inspired me. It includes many parts of Devon, Dartmoor, Southampton, Oregon, California, south of France, Belgium. Quite a lot of places that I have visited. And last year there was also the release of the compendium, Logos from Hell by Mark Riddick, and I’ve got something like 200 of my works in there; no other artist had 200 logos collected in one compendium book. The book is very heavy.

Collecting works into books creates a great reference work for graphic artists, but does it inspire you to look back at your old stuff?

CS: “I have been at the moment making a complete retrospective and over the next while… I have been looking to post on Facebook for the first time logos that I did from 1992 to 1999. So a real retrospective that includes some logos like a band called Eternity of Darkness that I did in 1992, something like that; that was a UK band. And Stone Circle. We’re talking about very, very old stuff from the 90s…

What were the logos that first got your attention? In the 70s there were some classics like Kiss…

Yeah; the original [Paul Stanley designed] Kiss logo with the SS style lettering; it’s just exactly the kind of logo that got me as a kid. I started listening to Kiss in 1977. I also loved bands like The Cure. I remember going to see them when I was 12 and it was like going to enter a completely forbidden country. When I went in ’82 it was all the ‘post-punks’ but when I saw them again in ’87, that was the time of all the Goths. There were just loads of Goths; the people you just couldn’t see in the daytime. You just couldn’t see these people outside of some special place like Camden. In Camden you could see all these illuminated people with a vivid imagination; and I am one of them, I definitely consider myself as an illuminated eccentric with a vivid imagination.

At this point do you have any idea how many logos you’ve done?

It would be easily a good ten thousand. And there are quite a lot of logos that I unfortunately parted with the originals. Because in many cases I’d be drawing on the go and just hand the drawings over to the client. Like a band from Italy called Deathraid, who were a little bit in the vein of the oh-so-legendary Necrodeath…

…brief interlude as we discuss Necrodeath’s Into the Macabre and Christophe reveals that, however wide his tastes and artistic ambitions, his roots are most definitely in the underground metal scene of his youth:

CS: “Into the Macabre very memorable, it’s very simplistic, its raw. It’s got that vibe. The songs are just basically keeping you on your toes. It’s a great blend of thrash, speed metal with that slight black metal edge, but at the same time it’s very insane, it’s very haunting. It’s the kind of album if you hear it once you will remember it for the rest of your life.”

Well, it was recorded before all the genre boundaries were really established…

CS: “Yes, it was just straight from hell metal. And that was what I adored.”

Last year, Christophe’s iconic Emperor logo became, for the first time, a source of something other than pride, when it became the basis for some joke Christmas jumper designs posted online by the Foo Fighters; which still rankles, evidently…

CS: That drove me absolutely ballistic. And I could have sued them, but I had a much nicer idea. I came up with a Foo Fighters logo designed by myself, which has a black metal vibe, but with the FF of Foo Fighters and elements of the Foo Fighters logo but had a black metal, but still readable, Emperor-esque inspiration, without being a barbaric cut-paste like this pathetic Foo Fighters Emperor-esque logo which had been done on a computer.

A lot of people brought it to my attention and there was much going on on my Facebook wall that I finally said I’m gonna ram it down and post the logo. This is how the Foo Fighters logo should be! Woe to the guy who ripped off my Emperor logo and made a right pig’s ear out of it! Of course I had some people who told me I should be honoured. Well! Honoured of having my art being disfigured, desecrated, stolen and mistreated like that? Bollocks. If they really wanted to have an Emperor tribute logo they would have contacted me! They wouldn’t have contacted a lousy, so-called graphic designer, who made this terrible pig’s ear out of it, and on this awful, terrible, shameful Christmas jumper!

So what is the legal situation with the Emperor logo? Do you have any rights or does the band just own it?

I still have the right to exhibit. I had a massive exhibition; last year started great. I had the Marks of Metal exhibition in Odense in Denmark. There was an encounter between me, who did the Emperor logo and Kristian Wåhlin, Necrolord, who did the Emperor album cover. We actually brought the actual works, and we were there with the works together, making the same kind of statements. We both did these works when we were just Emperor fans, when we were young. I was exactly twenty when I did the Emperor logos, I was still doing my studies and I did it as kind of a hobby. When I did that logo in January 1991, during my first year winter exams, I would never imagine that Emperor would become so big. It wasn’t until 1994 and In the Nightside Eclipse that my name became big. That was when my name spread in the underground and became known among the metallers.

How do you feel about that logo now? Do you still like it?

Yes, I love it still. It’s become one of the timeless classics. Think about Motorhead, think about Iron Maiden, think about Abba! Tom Jones, he’s still going on. The Foundations; Build Me Up Buttercup. These are artists and songs I loved and still love. Think of Elvis Presley; these are timeless classics and the Emperor logo is one of those classics. And it’s one of the few logos that is still unaltered after 30 years. And when people meet me they say ‘you’re the Emperor logo guy!’ Of course there lots of other bands from the 90s whose logos I did; but Emperor is the one that stands out.

Do you feel your focus as an artist has changed much since 1991?

CS: “Well, in the 90s I wouldn’t say that I wanted only true black metal exclusively, but there was no way on earth that I would have been doing the logos for Kim Kardashian and people like that… I do wonder where those will take me…

Links:

Facebook

Devon Artists Network

Google Plus

Contact: christophe.szpajdel@gmail.com

(Don’t) Lower Your Expectations; the evolution of Oblivionized

We’re not quite at the ‘albums of the year’ stage yet, but when we are, Oblivionized’s Life is a Struggle, Give Up will be featured prominently. From their earliest demos onwards, the band has epitomised the vital UK underground extreme music scene, with a series of always high-quality releases varying from dirty, chaotic grindcore to extremely technical death metal and I have been lucky enough to be writing about the band since those early days, mostly for Zero Tolerance magazine. Back in April I caught up with one third of the band for Pun-Based Name Pending and below is (a slightly revised version of) what came of it:

It’s always* nice to watch a band grow and evolve and although Oblivionized have just released their first album Life is a Struggle, Give Up, it’s the culmination/distillation of five years or so of progress and transformation that has seen the band go from the powerful, technical death metal-infused grindcore of their earlier work to something looser, less metal, more intuitive and distinctive, far harder to define, but no less intense.

*disclaimer; if they are any good it’s nice. Otherwise it’s annoying.

The band’s history is short enough that it’s fairly easy to track down all of their work to date; it’s totally worth doing that. discography

The style the band has arrived at since shrinking to a trio in 2012 isn’t very much like any other band I can think of. Drums/guitar/vocals sounds like a pretty skeletal basis for an album, but the concentration on these components gives the music a sparse, elemental feel and an emotional impact that matches the harsh minimalism of the lyrics. On earlier releases the technical skill of Sammy Urwin (also of death metal band Regurgitated Life etc) was often used in a powerful but fairly conventional (riffs/solos) way and the songs seemed to be carefully composed for maximum dynamic impact – which was very effective. On Life Is A Struggle though, the technical aspect (though no less impressive) seems less to do with killer riffs and heaviness than with an almost jazz-like telepathic intensity, comparable in a way to Painkiller circa Guts of a Virgin, but with a more personal/introspective focus. The album perfectly captures the live sound the band showcased on last year’s This is S.O.A.N. split with Razoreater, losing none of the immediacy of the live tape, but giving everything more precision and a sharper impact.

Well, that’s what I think anyway; here are some thoughts from vocalist/lyricist Zac Broughton:

It’s been quite a long wait for a full-length Oblivionized album, but it definitely feels like now is the right time for it, do you feel like this is the Oblivionized lineup for the foreseeable future? Was this the first time you ever wanted to record an album?

I’d say this is the third album me and Sammy have written for Oblivionized. Before Abhorrent Evolution (2011) Geoff (Bradley, guitarist), Sammy and myself over the course of nine months or so, demoed a twelve track album in my room. We turned the best from those demos into four songs when Jon and Phil joined and recorded them and released as Abhorrent Evolution. With that five piece line up we wrote nine, maybe ten songs for an album, we demoed two of them and released that as Nullify The Cycle… That album obviously never happened and I’m happy it didn’t. I realised recently that I haven’t been doing music just for fun, I enjoyed hanging out with my mates putting demos on myspace and going to gigs and that, but I’ve turned expressing myself through music it into my life. Being able to express myself honestly, not just screaming negative fantasies, or telling people how fucked the world is… which it is, lets be honest, we’ll likely all be dead in twenty years if that. But actually making something that I can be proud of and feel is an honest representation of what this is. So basically, if all the music we wrote, people’s lives we’d been part of, positive and negative experiences we have had as a band and individuals during our time together hadn’t happened, neither would Life Is A Struggle, Give Up… I don’t know what I’m trying to say anymore but I think I said it.

The title is great because it can be read as super-negative or actually positive, listening to the album it kind of feels like both; very bleak and angry but at the same time full of passion and energy, what would you say is the overall feel or theme?

I spent a lot of time trying to make sure I wasn’t telling anyone what to do or how to think, I’m not interested in that, so you can take them how you like. For me the album expresses exactly how I felt while writing it; simply put, life is really hard and I’ve wanted give up, just become what other people expect or want me to be. I chose not to and decided I’d live for myself, nothing matters anyway, so why give a fuck about other people and their opinions if the end result is your unhappiness.

One of the things that is really noticeable about the album is the way each element of the music has the same importance/focus, is that easier to do that as a three-piece band than it was in the past?

That is something Will bought to the band, in the past we’d had bass that was kind of an accompaniment, with guitars that played separate parts, make things more dissident but we’d made the drums all blasting and double kick. When Will joined and we became a three piece, Oblivionized became three different personalities working towards something.

You tour and play live a lot, was it important to produce an album that captures the sound you have live?

We don’t want to create much on record that we can’t recreate live as just a three piece. We recorded drums with just Sammy and Will playing together, no click track, no triggers or drum replacement, just take for take. Sammy then recorded his guitar parts and I did my vocals last, Tom (Corrupt Moral Altar, Vagrant Recordings) added some singing bells to I Pity You and Justine (Employed To Serve) did some extra vocals on Your Mouth Is A Wound, besides that it’s just us three in a playing music in a room.

Secret Law records seem to be doing a really good job of promoting the album, how did you come to sign to the label?

Will was just hanging out with his mate Tom and Tom was most likely saying “bro I might start a metal label” and Will probably said something like “yeah that’d be rad dude, my band has an album no other labels want to release!” and it just snowballed from there, Ed and Tom are fucking on it, they’ve picked up Desert Storm and they just picked up a new band called Funeral Pact who are rad.

Do you have as much control and involvement in all the aspects of making and promoting the album as you did when you were putting things out yourselves?

We still do all the same stuff, we just have some mates working with us now. It’s good to be part of something like Secret Law Records where we are working together to get something heard.

I’m sure the music is carefully worked out etc, but compared to your older work it has a kind of explosive, spontaneous quality, almost like free jazz, is there any element of improvisation in the way you write songs together?

Some songs were written with all three of us in a room bouncing ideas off each other, basically pushing a song in different directions until it met a conclusion, others were Sammy bringing ideas to me and Will, or Sammy and Will bringing ideas to me. After I’d improve vocals until I knew what the song was about. More simply put, It’s all just ideas and things that happened, musically and lyrically.

A related question; I’m not sure which are the newer and older songs on the album, but it seems like the band has gotten a bit looser and less rigid over the past couple of years, would you agree?

Before Geoff (Bradley, now of Atonement) left the band, he said something along the lines of “it’s time Oblivionized stopped writing shredding guitar exercises and started writing songs.” So that’s what we did, weird avant-garde jazz grind songs, or something.

One of the things I really like about the sound Oblivionized has now is that it’s impossible to label in a meaningful way; there’s something really special about the contrast of the technical guitar playing with the kind of intuitive, non-robotic drumming and super-emotive vocals but it isn’t typical ‘tech-grind’ or any of the usual labels you are given. How do you describe your music as it is on the album?

I honestly can’t, when we started out the idea of a genre was a huge joke to us. We started in 2008 it was weird man, you remember all the bands calling themselves “Ultra Guttural Brutality” and “Brutal Technical Slammin Death Metal” yeah? We all thought it was funny, some reviews called us Technical Death Metal, others said Deathgrind so we called ourselves “Misanthropic Technical Deathgrind” and it was hilarious. So we don’t really mind; Trve Kvlt Heavy Core.

the Life Is a Struggle artwork by Mark W. Richards (Heavy Hand Illustration)

You seem to push yourselves further with each release, is that something you do consciously? Do you have a ‘comfort zone’ as a band and if so is it something you avoid staying in?

I feel like we are aiming for something musically and we haven’t reached it yet, I love music and really enjoy being involved with underground bands and new bands. Lots of people come and go, make new bands and there are some brilliant bands out there if you want to find them. There are also a lot of bands that sound just like Converge, Napalm Death, or someone else and that’s rad, go for it, I enjoy seeing those bands play… but I’d like express myself, not someone else’s self.

Since the early days of the band it seems like the lyrics have become more and more focussed and specific and possibly more personal, is writing and performing an emotional or cathartic experience?

The lyrics are all developing an idea; it’s fully developed, yet I’ve been exploring the same idea for a long time. Making this music and performing is a very cathartic and important experience though, I feel sorry for any musician or listener that doesn’t have that connection to music.

LINKS:

Secret Law Records homepage

Heavy Hand Illustration