Is Black Metal The New Skateboarding?

To my shock, and much of the community's, Xasthur, a black ambient metal musician who hails from California, aka Malefic, was not only featured in a NEW YORK TIMES Arts & Entertainment section of this past Sunday's edition, but it was none other than Ryan Adams who wrote it. What? What in the hell. Has hell really frozen over?

People who listen to metal (and there are many sub-genres and classes and on and on), or care about it as an art form, and are musically inclined to experiment in the genre, such as Xasthur, Sunn, etc., will find it equally amusing, if not worthy of confusion and condemnation. This music is underground. Ryan has made a huge faux pas by stating it. Now he is damned.

In the shameful, or shameless October 24 article, entitled “A Dash of Mainstream and A Whole Lot of Metal,” Adams playlist lumps Xasthur among Mariah Carey, Metallica, and Jay Z.

See, Xasthur isn’t what you’d call chummy. ‘Cause chummy ain’t part of it.

The liner notes of the album Ryan gushes over, “Defective Epitaph” read:

“There is no one to thank, fuck you. No contact address. No interviews. The lyrics are unavailable upon request.”

Yes, there is a “Xasthur” myspace page. But it’s not created by Malefic. The “official” site states:

“Xasthur has never been affiliated with ‘My-space’ and there won’t be any official pages or profiles either. I have never chosen to promote this band and there isn’t any need to, especially in ways such as this. I am not your friend and truth is, I prefer not to interact with people, even if that’s so fucking hard to believe in this day and age...that is not my role, or purpose.... I’m sure..., as well as all of us, have better things to do with our time.”

Xasthur is not doing a reverse psych plea for attention. He, like others like him, though I hope not to incur the wrath of those who wish his name to not be spoken here, Leviathan, aka Wrest, work hard to be and remain underground. This goes deeper than six feet.

His ideal and concept is to never perform, Sunn will do so, though minimally, and to release very little in the way of recordings. There is a code to this genre and Ryan Adams isn’t part of it. Clearly by his “leaking” of it into the mainstream populace. This is not pop art. This is not indie. And it certainly isn’t meant to be exalted within the New York Times. There are places, and times for this music. There are those who speak of it and some who practice it. This is not Ryan Adams. If he truly appreciated it, he would have kept silent about it.

His exposure to the “light” won’t put Xasthur on a Monsters of Rock bill, it’s just in bad taste. Why does Adams feel the need to pose? Does he not know, we drink poser blood.

For one thing Mr. Adams, praises Metallica’s “return to form” effort, the miserable, and boring “Death Magnetic” an album deemed horrible, a horror, of sorts, by anyone who has any respect at all for Metallica albums I-IV. Metallica died after “Justice.” Why? Because Cliff Burton died. Since then they have not been the same. The end.

It makes sense for Jay Z and Metallica and the rest to be here and be spoken of by Ryan Adams. It just makes no sense for Xasthur. If Adams was a real fan, he wouldn’t have lumped Malefic in the same conversation, let alone on a Sunday, and in a Arts & Entertainment section of a mainstream publication.

I want to give him the benefit of the doubt, like it’s an editorial call, it’s close to Halloween, but Adams speaks for his own level of intelligence.