Friday, July 23, 2010

Nightspirit spake me TINNITUS


I listened to Emperor's Anthems To Welkin At Dusk in Febuary and it was the first time I've loved a metal album as much as one of my favorite dreampop albums( I only own less than 30 metal albums so far, I'm still a beginner really). I had already been blown away by In The Nightside Eclipse a year before but this really moved me incredibly, I have never heard a group of people this unbelievably ALIVE before.

But I ended up turning it up louder and louder on my headphones, so it was the loudest I'd ever heard anything till the drumming really beat the shit out of my ears, but I was enjoying way to much to turn it down, enjoying it so much I'd even call it a highlight in lifetime this far. Inspired me incredibly, made dreams come true of images I have always longed for. And on that pulverising volume I listened to it twice in a row and I got Tinnitus from it.

I have a relatively light case of Tinnitus, but it was difficult to accept for the first few months, but I can ignore it fairly well now. But I'm just warning you that it can happen easier than you think, I mostly listen to soft music, only 10% of my listening is extreme music and I never thought this could happen to me.

But still...HAIL EMPEROR!!! I've only got one more album and some EPs to listen to and then off to solo stuff and offshoot bands.

11 comments:

Craig Collins said...

Hey - an excellent choice! It's arguably the best black metal of all time, a personal favourite.

If you're looking to explore the genre a bit more, you can't go wrong with Immortal's 'Sons of Northern Darkness' - not much of the symphonic element but it's a pretty much perfectly crafted cold black metal album.

Just been looking at your blog - amazing stuff!

SEAN said...

Awesome. These records were VERY exciting when they came out, i listened to them over & over again. This was still pre-total internet saturation so there was some degree of mystique to the BLACK METAL then too.

Uland said...

Yes! I think Emperor were one of the most conceptually sound black metal bands; there was a fullness to the experience; the name of the band resonates perfectly with what you're hearing.If you boil it down to a character, It sounds like a kind of high-priest of an ancient fascist Imperium going through Faustian trials in a high Romantic mode.

Robert Adam Gilmour said...

Thanks Craig!

Have any of you got hearing issues?


""O'Nightspirit! I am at one with thee. I am the eternal power. I AM THE EMPEROR!!!
Winds and storms, embrace us now. Lay waste the light of day. Open gates to darker lands. We spread our wings and fly away--AAAAAAAIIIIRRRRRRRRRRGGGHHHHHH!!!""

That part is one of the most thrilling moments in music I've ever heard.

When I first went out of my way to get metal music I wanted extreme epics and Mastodons "Blood Mountain" had just came out and people were describing it as very epic, some were even saying it was the best metal album of the decade, it was good, but nowhere near as massive as I expeced. I was dissapointed to find the last very long track was mostly filled with silent space rather than being a 20minute prog epic. I got worried that was as epic as it got in metal, but I have found stuff that fits the bill.

Unknown said...

BLACK METAL \"/

Anonymous said...

That's bad luck your ears are mashed Robert, is it a sort of high pitched hissing?
That's what I have, but very mild compared to the abuse I've put my ears through (including 3 operations to fix ruptured eardrums), so I'm very, very lucky really.
The worst damage was done by very pure oscillator tones (from electronic test equipment, not musical instruments)that I listened to in my early twenties, even at low volumes they shredded my ears.
Black Metal wise, my faves so far are Darkthrone, particularly 'Transylvanian Hunger' and 'The Cult of Goliath'. Think it's the scratchy, high-end production and their obnoxious humour that does it for me.
-Zeke.

Aeron said...

I've been to a lot of really loud shows but I think I've lucked out and don't have any serious damage.

However I was at an Einsturzende Neubaten show about ten years ago that I was sure was going to destroy my ears for the rest of my life!

Anonymous said...

Would've loved to have seen Neubauten. I saw Faust in 2007, they were pretty loud but I think the loudest band I saw was My Bloody Valentine in the late '80's, they were vicious!
-Zeke

Aeron said...

My Bloody Valentine in the 80's must have been a lot of fun. The Einsturzende show is one of the few that I've been to where they literally sent the crowd into a sort of literal audio trance. They had these insane high frequency signals going off that would build up in pitch over 5 or 10 minutes, halfway through that you really started feeling like you were tripping on something, pretty crazy.

They had a metal slide on stage that they poured sand down with microphones tweaking the recording in weird ways, chainsaws and drills, crazy fucking show.

Robert Adam Gilmour said...

It is a lot like the fuzzy sound of a tv when on a channel with no signal, it is not that loud.
I'm going to see Swans and I'm expecting they wont be as loud as they used to be. I bought ear plugs.

Marcel Ruijters said...

This is one of the very few metal records that I have, it's very good.
The loudest gig I have ever been to was probably Test Dept., or maybe Merzbow. Yowtch.