09/09/2026
In an interview, Genital Shame's Erin Dawson proposes that punk is a failed project. Its political aspirations have led nowhere, demonstrably failing to achieve revolution or a more equal society, and its artists have found their work easily appropriated and consumed by the media they ostensibly despised. This is not another lament for the way capital subsumes all, but rather to observe that Erin Dawson is the one woman brain behind an extreme metal band. Extreme metal, too, has been appropriated. But at its core extreme metal offers no project, which is to say, it is at its best when it "never neglect[s] to attack [its] trainers." William Gass argues in defense of a permanent avant-garde that "resists stereotypes, shake things, and keep things moving; offer fresh possibilities to a haded understanding; encourage a new consciousness; revitalize the creative spirit of the medium; and, above all, challenge the skills and ambitions of every practioner." This avant-garde must remain loyal to form ("loyal to the coil," as tattooers like to say), focusing so devotedly on the form of art that the art is its own end. Punk cannot achieve this because punk is only committed to negation, to nothing. Extreme metal is, in limited form, committed to the style it is made with, devoted to only form. Perhaps a short list of extreme metal that achieves this: Burzum, Akercocke, Antediluvian...who can know it.
08/30/2026
People listen to music for an experience. That experience might be a desire to be moved by lyrics or the sonic landscape or some combination of the two. Algorithms have truncated the experience, isolating it to individual moments. This is, unfortunately, incompatible with extreme metal. Extreme metal is a whole, not a part. The parts can be heared separately but not experienced.
08/27/2026
Extreme metal, whether black or death, functions as a continuation of of the avant-garde wing of classical music. Perhaps William Gass' essay on the avant-garde–what it might or might not be–would prove helpful here as a means of elaboration. If experimentation at the edge of the musical form is the aim, then what defines something as avant-garde metal? What is it, sonically, that marks it off as extreme as opposed to merely experimental? Those are some of the guiding questions that preoccupy me.