SPS - I Needed A Surprise

I'll admit, I've been in something of a rut these last couple weeks; not keeping up with habits and practices that I've worked very hard to develop.  Writing consistently was one of those habits.  There's countless reasons WHY I was in that rut, but frankly that's not really what I talk about on this blog.  All that really matters is that I was thoroughly prepared to not write an SPS for this week.  And then this happened...

Echo Chambers

As a fair warning, this is probably the most old man-esque post I've penned thus far, and that might be saying something: I wrote about The Eagles of Death Metal.  And I'm not particularly a luddite.  In fact, I've got what comedian Eddie Izzard called 'techno-joy'.  I love gadgets, and I absolutely love tinkering with them and figuring out cool new tricks.  But new ideas have a tendency to create new problems, or at least awaken old ones, and the Internet is no exception.

50 years ago, if you had a minority opinion, that was simply it - you were the minority. You had to be persuasive, and sway people to your side, or you had to temper yourself, and frame your beliefs in a more palatable way. Now, there are some obvious downsides to this, and there's some upsides to 'truth' without compromise. But in this new technical age, it seems as though there's no reason to ever change your beliefs. Even the most minority opinion can find its fellows thanks to the world-linking power of the Web.

SPS - I Want To Dream

I'm well aware that my song choice this week is not going to garner a lot of new fans.  Black Metal is, at its absolute best, a divisive genre, and even beyond the massive barrier for entry, we're opening ourselves to the frightening world of subgenre nomenclature in heavy metal.  "Is Deafheaven truly Black Metal," you say?  "Maybe they're post-metal?"  "What does that even mean?"  "No, they're not Metal at all, they're just an indie band pretending to be metal," chimes in the purist.  "Have you actually heard them?  It's metal!"

The point of all this is that there's a good chance you won't make it through the nine-minute runtime of "Dream House," and if you do there's an even greater chance you won't make it through the full album's winding hour.  And while that's fine - it's not for everyone - it's also a shame.  Because Sunbather is a masterpiece, and beneath its craggy and off-putting exterior there lurks something poetic and even, dare I say, beautiful.