Kyle's Review of BLACK SABBATH FAQ BY MARTIN POPOFF

Review of BLACK SABBATH FAQ BY MARTIN POPOFF

by Kyle Nonneman

[Note: this was composed in prison where proof-reading facilities are notoriously bad. Please don't hold that against the author. You can contact Kyle through the address listed at the end of this entry.]

Book review of

BLACK SABBATH FAQ BY MARTIN POPOFF

(Www.MartinPopoff.com)

Martin  Popoff is in many ways to metal journalism what S.T. Joshi is to the horror field. Joshi is a scholar and brilliant analyst of traditional, classical and quiet horror and a vehement detractor of modern hardcore horror.

With Popoff, later Sabbath is ignored and criminally underrated like post Human Death. Most coverage of Sabbath from Hal Leonard tab books , tribute albums and greatest hits packages usually don't cover anything past the Ozzy era and even then emphasis is given to the first four or five records .

This excellent book on the other hand is a completist study and analysis of all aspects of Sabbath's  legacy. Popoff, for example, shines a light on how the mastering job on Born Again influenced extreme metal. Popoff doesn't mention Cannibal Corpse covering Zero The Hero on the Hammer Smashed Face single.

And Cannibal Corpse don't mention this Sabbath album in their official biography, Bible Of Butchery.

But Popoff answers the question as to why this was likely chosen as a cover.

Being an obscure deep cut. One of the more interesting extreme metal takes on Sabbath.

Not as interesting or hilarious as what Blowfly did  to Sabbath and Ac/DC on Black In The Sack, Better then Xasthur doing National Acrobat or Brutal Truth's Lord Of This World, Avulsed doing Neon Knights or Belphegor's take on Sabbath Bloody Sabbath.

My favorite Sabbath cover is Flower Travelin Band doing Black Sabbath on their Anywhere Lp from 1970. All the post drone metal shoegaze sludge dripping from the neck beards of hipster noise rock bands that's  become trendy lately was invented and pioneered decades earlier by Flower Travelin Band's Anywhere Lp.

Popoff incorrectly says no obvious Sabbath worship existed In the 1970s and erroneously states that Sucks cover of War Pigs from 1971 was the first recorded  Sabbath cover. That honor goes to Flower Travelin Band not Suck.

Another minor error is Popoff gives Vol 4 a rating of 8. Despite previously giving Vol 4 a rating of 10 in Riff Kills Man. The only review from Riff Kills Man that needed revision was In Uetro.

(The 20th Anniversary reissue has the original Albini mixes.The original Albini  mastering was neutered in post by a major label hack in the version reviewed by Popoff)

Popoff also declines to comment on the urban legend that the Live At Asbury Park New Jersey Ozzy era show was a board mix pressed and distributed by the New Jersey mob.

Popoff also claims there's a trace of Sabbath tribute to be found in Judas Priest's name. Kk Downing says on Page 42 of Heavy Duty Priest is named after a Bob Dylan song.

Also in Popoff's chapter on bands named after Sabbath no mention is made of Electric Wizard. The band that redefined heaviness! Their very band name is an amalgamation of two Sabbath tracks. They also used the same font Sabbath did on there S/T debut.

Earlier in Popoff's chapter on the doom genre, Sleep Vol  1 is cited but not Dopesmoker.

NOTE: [I lost the rest of this review. When I find it, I'll add it here. Stay tuned! MB]

You can (and should) write to Kyle

Kyle Nonneman
#16534211
Snake River Correctional Institution
777 Stanton Blvd
Ontario OR 97914-8335

My (Mykel's) Blog is at https://mykelsblog.blogspot.com

Apopthelema Entry 6 Part 3 -just found- by Kyle Nonneman

Saturday, June 14, 2018

Apopthelema Entry 6 Part 3 -just found- by Kyle Nonneman

Apopthelema Entry 6 Part 2 by Kyle Nonneman
(Note: I just found some missing parts to early entries. I'll be posting them before I continue with the newest stuff. Here's the missing PART 2 from Entry 6)

by Kyle Nonneman

[Note: this was composed in prison where proof-reading facilities are notoriously bad. Please don't hold that against the author. You can contact Kyle through the address listed at the end of this entry.] 

Lovecraft distilled the gothic elements from gothic romance and discarded the rest of it. Just like he took all the bleakest and most horrifying elements of supernatural literature and isolated those core images and filtered it through his misanthropic anti natalist nihilism known as cosmicism.

Lovecraft's work had almost no characterization. Let alone anything remotely human for readers to relate to. It transgressed all that and spitefully refused to pander to simple minded readers who needed a linear narrative and character development to sugarcoat the horror of his work. In his refusal to pander to accepted standards of what proper writing is supposed 
to be his work was all the more powerful and disturbing as a result.

Lovecraft's imagery was also at times vague and subjective. Prompting the readers to fill in the blanks with images from their own psyche. As a result, Lovecraft was able to coerce readers through understated details to imagine personalized visions of hellish nightmares from their own minds and this as a result made Lovecraft's work more powerful then overly descriptive formulaic writers who gave readers clean precise descriptions. 

Like Lovecraft removed the romance from Gothic Romance, a lot of extreme metal took all the pop and rock elements out of thrash and heavy metal and even stripped out most of the blues influences. Leaving by a cold monstrous sound of pure evil. This was taken to an even further extreme by power electronics and noise artists carrying on what true industrial stood for before it became associated with raver trash dance music and false mall metal with keyboards. In what is in effect the auditory equivalent of Lovecraft's prose.

As a result weak minded sheeple can't handle it. They try to disarm their revulsion and claim to appreciate some metal, but they cant handle true metal, metal refined and distilled down to its brutal core of pure evil. Remorselessly and unrelentingly dissociated from anything remotely relatable to the common mass of mankind. Something the common cattle can't even decipher.

They will claim that its too loud, too distorted, the lyrics are just screaming, or cry about the unintelligible lyrics that they simply can't understand.

Its interesting cattle accustomed to pop music will typically say similar things about jazz. You play jazz for a lot of sheep they will complain about the lack of vocals and the timings they cant follow. But these aren't valid criticisms .
Its like an illiterate crackhead giving a book a bad review because the words were too advanced for his reading level.
Or a child criticizing a gourmet dinner because there's no sugar in it and he just wants to eat candy... Or a toothless senile old man complaining about food being too hard to chew.

Their suggestions to make the music they disapprove of more acceptable to their palette are all centered around debasing down to the level they can understand. Making things safe for everyone. Weakening it and sugarcoating it for civilians. This is the tyranny of the masses in action and the type of forced equality that destroys individualism like what Vonnegut was satirizing in Welcome To The Monkeyhouse.

They'rer also completely blind and ignorant of the passion and the energy behind the music. John Shirley wrote a great description of live Punk Rock in his cult cyberpunk science fiction classic 'City Come-A-walking'. He said the fact that the lyrics were indecipherable and unintelligible didn't matter because the sheer passion and energy behind the performance overcompensated for all of that.

But they don't get that. They're actually,  in a lot of cases, frightened of music with actual emotion and feeling behind it. Buying releases from shock acts whose extreme lyrics are actually just a misunderstood metaphor for something acceptable and politically correct. Prefering dead clean sterile remastered studio versions of radio hits over live bootleg deep cuts where the band is actually taking their mask off. 

You listen to the live Joy Division material, is raw,violent, and distorted. Ian Curtis' voice cracks and becomes frantic. The fluctuations in volume heighten the delivery. It's the sound of Curtis bearing his soul to the crowd and letting his emotions bleed through the microphone. In the last years of his life before he committed suicide. The Martin Hannet production material is cold and definitive but it also tones down and censors a lot of what Curtis was trying to convey.

On albums Black Sabbath's heaviness dosn't reach the level of modern acts like Electric Wizard. Sabbath's Live at Asbury Park New Jersey bootleg from the seventies is as essential as Paranoid. It's Sabbath live in the flesh with all the proto metal doom conveyed in a more heavy context due to the mafia produced board mix that isn't cleaned up and post processed by major label hired gun studio exec engineers for proper radio airplay.

--end of part 3--

You can contact Kyle at:

 Kyle Nonneman

 #16534211

Osci

3405 Deerpark Dr SE

Salem OR 97310

And here's some more art from Kyle:

You can also see a profile and have e-contact at:

http://www.writeaprisoner.com/Template.aspx?i=z-16534211

And a new contact: https://prisoninmates.com/profile/KyleNonneman16534211

I'm Mykel Board, and I post for Kyle because no one else will. If you're interested in my own ideas, you can read me at: mykelsblog.blogspot.com

--end

Apopthelema Entry 6 Part 3 by Kyle Nonneman

Apopthelema Entry 6 Part 3 by Kyle Nonneman

[Note: this was composed in prison where proof-reading facilities are notoriously bad. Please don't hold that against the author. You can contact Kyle through the link listed at the end of this entry.]



Lovecraft distilled the gothic elements from gothic romance and discarded the rest of it. Just like he took all the bleakest and most horrifying elements of supernatural literature and isolated those core images and filtered it through his misanthropic anti natalist nihilism known as cosmicism. Lovecraft's work had almost no characterization. Let alone anything remotely human for readers to relate to. It transgressed all that and spitefully refused to pander to simple minded readers who needed a linear narrative and character development to sugarcoat the horror of his work. In his refusal to pander to accepted standards of what proper writing is supposed to be his work was all the more powerful and disturbing as a result.

Lovecraft's imagery was also at times vague and subjective. Prompting the readers to fill in the blanks with images from their own psyche. As a result Lovecraft was able to coerce readers through understated details to imagine personalized visions of hellish nightmares from their own minds and this as a result made Lovecraft's work more powerful then overly descriptive formulaic writers who gave readers clean precise descriptions. Like Lovecraft removed the romance from Gothic Romance, alot of extreme metal took all the pop and rock elements out of thrash and heavy metal and even stripped out most of the blues influences. Leaving by a cold monstrous sound of pure evil. This was taken to an even further extreme by power electronics and noise artists carrying on what true industrial stood for before it became associated with raver trash dance music and false mall metal with keyboards.

In what is in effect the auditory equivalent of Lovecraft's prose.

As a result weak minded sheeple can't handle it. They try to disarm their revulsion and claim to appreciate some metal , but they can't handle true metal, metal refined and distilled down to its brutal core of pure evil. Remorselessly and unrelentingly dissociated from anything remotely relatable to the common mass of mankind.

Something the common cattle can't even decipher. They will claim that its too loud,too distorted, the lyrics are just screaming, or cry about the unintelligible lyrics that they simply can't understand.
It;s interesting cattle accustomed to pop music will typically say similar things about jazz. You play jazz for a lot of sheep they will complain about the lack of vocals and the timings they can't follow.

But these aren't valid criticisms .It's like an illiterate crackhead giving a book a bad review because the words were too advanced for his reading level. Or a child criticizing a gourmet dinner because theirs no sugar in it and he just wants to eat candy... Or a toothless senile old man complaining about food being too hard to chew. Their suggestions to make the music they disapprove of more acceptable to their palettes are all centered around debasing down to the level they can understand. Making things safe for everyone. Weakening it and sugarcoating it for civilians.

This is the tyranny of the masses in action and the type of forced equality that destroys individualism like what Vonnegut was satirizing in Welcome To The Monkeyhouse. They're also completely blind and ignorant to the passion and the energy behind the music.

John Shirley wrote a great description of live Punk Rock in his cult cyberpunk science fiction classic 'City Come-A-walking'. He said the fact that the lyrics were indecipherable and unintelligible didn't matter because the sheer passion and energy behind the performance overcompensated for all of that.

But they dont get that. They're actually, in a lot of cases, frightened of music with actual emotion and feeling behind it. Buying instead releases from shock acts whose extreme lyrics are actually just a misunderstood metaphor for something acceptable and politically correct. Preferring dead clean sterile remastered studio versions of radio hits over live bootleg deep cuts where the band is actually taking their mask off.

You listen to the live Joy Division material, is raw,violent, and distorted. Ian Curtis' voice cracks and becomes frantic . The fluctuations in volume heighten the delivery. It's the sound of Curtis bearing his soul to the crowd and letting his emotions bleed through the microphone. In the last years of his life before he committed suicide The Martin Hannet production material is cold and definitive but it also tones down and censors a lot of what Curtis was trying to convey.

On album Black Sabbath's heaviness doesn't reach the level of modern acts like Electric Wizard.
Sabbath's Live at Asbury Park New Jersey bootleg from the seventies is as essential as Paranoid. Its Sabbath live in the flesh with all the proto-metal doom conveyed in a more heavy context due to the mafia produced boardmix that isn't cleaned up and post processed by major label hired gun studio exec engineers for proper radio airplay.

(contact Kyle at: http://www.writeaprisoner.com/template.aspx?i=z-16534211 )