Abyssum – Thy Call (1998) en Español




La proporción de completa bazofia a lo que consideraríamos música auténtica es, en mi experiencia, realmente alarmante. Tratar de encontrar algo que no sólo sea auténtico sino que también tenga un nivel de calidad sobresaliente es una labor todavía más extenuante, bordeando en lo imposible. Dadas estas estadísticas desesperanzadoras, no es de sorprenderse que se pueda contar con los dedos de la mano el número de álbumes duraderos provenientes de Centroamérica. Curiosamente, la cuenta exacta de bandas que merezcan algo de atención, cuando organizadas por país, no parece variar con respecto al total. Esto parecería ir en contra del sentido común ya que cualquiera podría esperar que si la probabilidad de que un proyecto prometedor aparezca esté dentro de cierto rango fijo, una cantidad mayor de bandas en total debería asimismo indicar un incremento en la cantidad de música de calidad. Sin embargo, las cifras de Guatemala, Honduras y El Salvador, no parecen ser muy distintas. Aun la escena colosal con recursos muchas veces superiores de Costa Rica parece no poder producir una mayor cantidad de proyectos musicales en el metal, o en la música underground en general. Hasta donde conoce el autor, las únicas dos bandas centroamericanas que merecen ser mencionadas para la posteridad, y no solamente por nostalgia, son los death metaleros Horgkomostropus, de Honduras, y el proyecto black metal Abyssum, de Guatemala.

Constituido entonces por Diatharma Thoron en la percusión y Rex Ebvleb, al mando de las guitarras, voces, sintetizadores y demás, Abyssum publicó dos demos entre 1995 y 1996 que llevaron finalmente a un álbum completo en 1998 bajo el nombre de Thy Call. Aquí, la banda se muestra una fiel seguidora del black metal maduro, que tiene una inclinación fuerte hacia lo que se denomina como ambient, mas no deja atrás sus raíces del metal negro. No se percibe ni un trazo de rock’n roll. De hecho, una vibra oscura muy familiar, característica del ambient tipo “dungeon” o “medieval”, emana de su instrumentación y coloración. En esto constituye la música purificada cuando es llevada a los límites del black metal, pero Abyssum se detiene antes de llegar al punto de dejar el metal, y voluntariamente permanece dentro del círculo de invocación para poder continuar el ritual eterno.

Como si entrásemos en los dominios del bosque de un antiguo dios de la montaña, el comienzo del álbum nos sitúa entre dos voces de teclados y un par de notas en el piano que llaman nuestra atención a la vibrante simbiosis de vidas entrelazadas, cada una de ellas insignificantes pero, en conjunto, tan majestuosas e infundidas de significado. Luego una simple guitarra acústica nos trae al oído acordes punteados, arpegios que reflejan las armonías de los sintetizadores y melodías en ciclos seguidas de episodios nacidos a través de ellas. Algunos de estos pasajes sirven como puntos de partida para caminos que atraviesan este yermo. No son completos por propia cuenta pero sin ellos la magia de los distintos momentos que les siguen carecería de significación ya que harían falta toda clase de puntos de referencia.

El perfecto balance de mundos paralelos, uno físico, el otro energético y espiritual, se encuentra retratado en Thy Call. La música es llevada al extremo de lo que un metal respetable permitiría en cuanto a repetición, mientras el contenido se mantiene relevante no sólo con respecto al contexto de cada momento y la obra en su totalidad, pero también por medio de una armonía activa, aunque minimalista, que siempre está presente y es guiada por la melodía principal. Ésta es la vida misma manifiesta en la MUSICA indivisible. Su naturaleza no es rítmica, tampoco se basa en el sostener de una sola armonía, y definitivamente no es equivalente a la indulgencia del pop sobre una línea melódica que no tiene más mérito. No es ninguna de estas cosas, mas es todas. La negación de una de ellas implicaría la destrucción inminente del todo. Este es el balance perfecto, el balance de los tres dentro en una sagrada, indivisible, aunque discernible, trinidad de elementos que no podrían ser uno sin los demás.

Penetrando este mundo de ensueño al que se llega atravesando un portal erigido por ésta entidad musical, descubrimos escenas repletas de exuberante vegetación entre pigmentos otoñales que desbordan con melancolía. Aquí y allá vemos animales correr en una dirección u otra – una guitarra eléctrica acompañada de percusión irrumpe la calma, declamando en alaridos que resquebrajan el correr del viento silbante. Adentrándonos en el recorrido, finalmente nos encontramos de frente con el señor reinante: una criatura antigua y poderosa, coronada con hoja, musgo y flor. Gritos punzantes sobrevuelan entre pasajes de presurosas melodías que se complementan con arreglos de percusión inspirados en el estilo magistral de Emperor.

Esta atmósfera envuelve a quien se descubre frente a su presencia, estremeciéndolo bajo su mirar. Después de un instante cuando la muerte parece inevitable y vistas del infinito innombrable se develan, la calma vuelve, dejando pasar toda noción de peligro fuera del recuerdo. Asimismo se retira el anfitrión, penetrando la densa flora circundante. De guitarras eléctricas a guitarras acústicas, de patrones espesos de percusión a silencio, de armonías plenas al silbido del viento, todos llegan a restaurar la paz en singular impermanencia, creando una existencia ininterrumpida mientras mueren y reencarnan.

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71 thoughts on “Abyssum – Thy Call (1998) en Español”

  1. Vigilance says:

    The Two Meter NorseMensch readership will be alienated by this.

    1. David Rosales says:

      If only they knew how vastly superior to English the romance languages are for poetic expression…
      If only they knew how many of the greatest thinkers and authors wrote in the romance languages and not in AMERICAN English…

      1. Vigilance says:

        Being on the losing end of the first and last global empire sucks doesn’t it?

        1. John D. says:

          I know David Rosales is speaking of language preference itself, but the following came to my mind after reading his remark.

          From a letter by poet Hart Crane:

          November 26, 1921 – “I can see myself from now rapidly joining Josephson in a kind of Elizabethan fanaticism. You have doubtless known my long-standing friendship with Donne, Webster, and Marlowe. Now I have another Mermaid “conjugal” to strengthen the tie. The fact is, I can find nothing in modern work to come up to the verbal richness, irony and emotion of these folks, and I would like to let them influence me as much as they can in the interpretation of modern moods,—somewhat as Eliot has beautifully done. There are parts of his “Gerontion” that you can find almost bodily in Webster and Jonson…. I don’t want to imitate Eliot, of course,—but I have come to the stage now where I want to carefully choose my most congenial influences and, in a way, “cultivate” their influence. I can say with J[osephson] that the problem of form becomes harder and harder for me every day. I am not at all satisfied with anything I have thus far done, mere winnowings, and too slight to satisfy me. I have never, so far, been able to present a vital, living and tangible,—a positive emotion to my satisfaction. For as soon as I attempt such an act I either grow obvious or ordinary, and abandon the thing at the second line. Oh! it is hard! One must be drenched in words, literally soaked with them to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment.”

          1. David Rosales says:

            I’m also talking about objective flexibility of the language. English has more words,and an incredible amount of borrowings. Romance languages have more ways of saying the same thing with smaller different emphases.

            This is not something I say because I am a native speaker of Spanish. Given their properties, different languages have different strengths. The advantage of the English language is its succinctness, its brevity. It’s easier to get to the point in English without sounding absurdly crass than it is in Spanish or French.

            Notice how it takes Joseph Conrad, a polish guy who started to learn English when he was 20, to come and make the use of English a smooth and densely charged, allusive and supercharged medium for human emotion. This was different from the funny cleverness of Shakespeare or the typically dry Rudyard Kipling (translations of his ideas sound better than the original).

            1. John D. says:

              Good point, David. I also think of philosopher and essayist Emil Cioran who was native Romanian and wrote for a period in French. I gotta run so I can’t reply more at length. I’m in good faith and only trying to stimulate discussion…

        2. David Rosales says:

          I have no idea what you’re talking about as it sounds irrelevant to the topic of language as a medium for expressing human emotion.

          1. John D. says:

            To not see the forest for the trees? This has everything to do with language as a medium for expressing human emotion. Anyway, contentious argument is not my intention. I sincerely appreciate your artistry with words.

            1. David Rosales says:

              This was a reply to the other guy’s tangential comment on their decadent empire’s supremacy or something.

              1. Rainer Weikusat says:

                Mr Vigilance seems to have a certain passion for wording things provocatively. That’s more entertaining for an observer than for someone on the receiving end. I think he has a point, though (NB: This is my interpretation, not something I claim the original author ‘really’ wrote): It’s often easier to use one’s native language because of greater familiarity and it also ‘feels righter’ because of sentimental attachment. There are even things which genuinely don’t
                translate, an example I quickly found would be

                Versteht man den Hamlet? Nicht der Zweifel, die Gewissheit ist das, was wahnsinning macht … Aber dazu muss man tief, Abgrund, Philosoph sein, um so zu fuehlen … Wir fuerchten uns alle vor der Wahrheit … Und, dass ich es bekenne: ich bin dessen instinktiv sicher und gewiss, dass Lord Bacon der Urheber, der Selbsttierquaeler dieser unheimlichsten Art Literatur ist: was geht mich das erbarmungswuerdige Geschwaetz amerikanischer Wirr- und Flachkoepfe an?

                [Nietzsche, Ecce Home, “Warum ich so klug bin”, section 4]

                There’s no way to render all the word and sound plays in English and a publically available translation of that I found is consequently a pitiful failure. But a perfect expression of something nobody understands is perfectly useless and the idea that everybody on this planet needs to learn a few thousand languages to be able to talk to most other people he could conceivably encounter doesn’t fly: Ordinary people struggle with two languages already and this would also take too much time to leave any for communication.

                I can read your essays in English, usually do so and consider them well worth of the time. In Spanish, they just express »people like you must not enter here« to me. Metal bands usually don’t do that because they address international audience, be it for lowly, commercial motives only, as someone could suggest, and this is rather an asset than a loss: It means I’m also invited to listen to Wormed (Spanish technical death metal band I like very much) instead of just being tourist who stares at the natives with dumb curiosity because they’re different, secretly considers them inferior because they are and who is – in turn – generally regarded as a pest with more money than brains by them.

                1. David Rosales says:

                  You are right about native tongues.
                  However, my point still stands.

        3. pelayo says:

          First truly global empire: Great Britain

          The USA were never a global empire,not during their years of independence, between getting rid of the British and succumbing to Jewish control.

          So, Last global empire that we know of: Zion ( Israel is just the capital, USA the ignorant golem, the European Union their defeated former greatest enemies now turned self-hating mental slaves)

          I think those on the “losing side” were humans as a whole. Kali Yuga, baby.

          1. Internatio reloaded says:

            Except that the US does what they want : Israel leaders are mad at the talks with Iran, but they are powerless to stop them. Israel’s domination of the US is a myth, Israel has always been the pawn.

            1. pelayo says:

              Israel doesn’t, correct. Zionists do.
              You should be able to tell the difference.
              The fact that they have to struggle to get what they want doesn’t mean they do not have the most Significant influence.

              Think again about the USA is today. It is not a group of people, it’s a conglomerate of different people fighting for control. The group with the most influence being Jews. Don’t tell me there is an equal partition, nor is there anything close to a balance of power among the different groups. The so called minorities, excluding Jews, who are a real minority, when put together have a minimal influence over affairs. And “whites” aren’t anything close to a legitimate group, so it is ridiculous to consider “them” as being in control. Do people mean the Irish? Germanic descendants? Surely not Slavs, they’ve formed lowly mafias to stick together… they’re not at the top.

              Unified purpose, traditional racial elitism, and an aptitude for excellence achieves true, widespread and lasting power. Numbers are an illusion, especially when poorly organised or lacking a deeper unifying factor. Jews have all three. All those other groups, for the most part, lack at least one of them. “Whites” (whoever the fuck that actually is) being in power today is the true myth. Europeans are a mess, not to mention Latinamericans, Arabs are greedy materialists but lack the xenophobic and hermetic aggression, resilience and patience of the chosen people. Who else is there? Yes, there is a struggle of different groups, but that doesn’t mean someone specific doesn’t tend to have the upper hand.

              1. Internatio reloaded says:

                Zionists have been among the top lobbies in the US since the peace between Egypt and Israel, but calling Israel the “capital” implied a total control that’s far from the truth. The real top layer you can’t see was called by Eisenhower “the military-industrial complex”, and they will toss aside any toy that doesn’t give then what they want without hesitation, including the Zionists.

                This layer itself might be full of internal struggles in which some jews enjoy great power sometime, I just don’t care because what makes them a threat, jews or not, is their exceptional level of power/contro and the total cynicism that such wealth and power gives them, not their family/university buddies/ethnic/religious/lifestyle affinities – and so, what needs to be addressed is their power, above anything else.

          2. Vigilance says:

            I was almost going to give you a serious response based on the first sentence alone then I read the rest.

  2. John D. says:

    This is a good standard for others to aspire to in the writing of their critical reviews. Not overlong but just the right length, expository but also imaginative. It keeps heated preference out of it, personal taste restrained; it’s not violent in its emotion but in command of it. With all the subjective murkiness cleared, one sees into the distance, what’s possible in the future, and into depths, connecting with the past and with origin. It complements the music but also encourages one in one’s own thinking and even in a healthy way inspires one to emulation. One is given over to the pleasure of contemplation.

    1. David Rosales says:

      Thank you for the support on this initiative and that marvelously insightful observation!

  3. Johan P says:

    Good intiative. Sometimes I feel like writing some passages in Swedish instead to cover a wider spectra of nuances or to find the proper word.

    1. John D. says:

      Hey Johan P.

      I echo the sentiment of Ludvig B.B (vOddy), that it’s good to have you around here. I wonder how your investigation and exploration of metal in relation to folk is going. There are some interesting overlaps and considerations here, considering language.

      I think of native language as heart’s language. Probably one would be best served writing in one’s native language first, writing from the heart freely and naturally, unburdened by additional problems of word choice, and then translating later if that’s what one wants to do. A clinical and even surgical aspect in treatment enters writing in another language, a detachment and higher scrutiny in the use of words foreign to one’s native language or heart’s language. That in itself can be a benefit, actually, if one is doing something more analytic, academic or scholarly. Mr. Rosales has a good dry detachment in his english written reviews. It strongly appeals to the intellect. But for poetry and more imaginative expression, the heart needs to be involved.

      1. Johan P says:

        I feel somewhat ambivalent towards the pro/cons of writing in English. On the one hand I feel a greater responsibility of correct and vivid writing in my native toungue, on the other I am somewhat plauged by feelings of inferiority and frustration when pressed to translate what I can perfectly well express “naturally”. Did that sound alright in English? I don’t think so! Haha.

        The folk thing is progressing, although somewhat slowly “thanks” to obligations and incidents happening in real life…I will have to divide it into even more parts than I first thought.

        Thanks for the encouraging words!

    2. Rainer Weikusat says:

      I have Swedish, American, French, English, Brazilian, Polish, German, Australian and Spanish bands around here all trying to speak in a common language because they’re addressing the same kind of people. Why’s that wrong?

      1. El Duende says:

        Nobody said it was wrong. Stop chasing ghosts in your out of hand efforts to sponsor multiculturalism. We all like , enjoy and write English.

        What’s wrong with also cultivating other languages and cultures as SEPARATE entities, celebrating TRUE HUMAN DIVERSITY in communion, rather than the disgusting hodgepodge you find in certain areas of the U.S., where “Latinos” (don’t call the rest of us that) cannot speak proper English or Spanish (it’s painful to hear them try), where they serve as the perfect slaves to a utilitarian and materialistic system that encourages selfishness and hedonistic caprice.

        1. John D. says:

          Rainer is a peculiar fellow. He does write some interesting observations, but at other times it’s as if some trickster mixed up all the pieces of different puzzles, and Rainer sits down and tries to force pieces together which don’t fit, and regardless he insists that they do fit. Sometimes he’s quite convincing, and someone gullible might be lured in to agree, which at times to a wiser and more self-aware onlooker can be amusing, but at other times it’s maddening, because it’s as if a fine tool or instrument is being misused and ruined. Someone should take Rainer’s microscope away and give him a telescope to use for a while. I’m not sure he consciously has a multicultural agenda, but how he expressed himself here certainly indicates he’s unaware that pushing every language and cultural heritage into a blender and grinding it all down could only come out, not common (common is not a bad thing) but a distasteful hodgepodge, or a repugnant ooze, a chunky hybrid, or something like that. The result is the hideously uncommon, the trying-too-hard-to-be-different. Along with other types of music in the integrity of their kind, this is actually one way that metal has been corrupted and hijacked.

          It’s not a stretch to say that the same grinding down and blending is what has given rise to the stupid and demeaning stereotypes in popular circulation which are rightly taken by any more intelligent and self-aware human being as an affront or an offense.

          To be fair to Rainer, I think what he actually had in mind is not multiculturalism but that metalheads are all over the world, in almost every country. I’ve gotten to know him enough that I give him the benefit of the doubt. He just expressed himself poorly.

          I myself am modest for good reason. I’m a dummy in so many ways. Johan P. or David Rosales and I include Rainer too – each no doubt knows many things I don’t know, each reaching back into his own roots and heritage, and particular upbringing and experience. Every individual comes from some particular place. I don’t speak Swedish at all or write fluent Spanish, but, just to take two examples, I find Strindberg fascinating, the fearlessness and fire in his own iconoclastic genius, and I love Borges. What an incredible labyrinthine mind Borges had. I’ve only been able to enter into those worlds however through available translations.

          Language itself, being subject to conditions, contains so many difficulties. One solution is to abstract into generalities, losing oneself in the clouds, or blowing up into Platonic Forms. But shrunken back down and kicked around in the field of everyday reality, it’s an unglamorous living thing, changing and modifying itself to suit time and place.

          Isn’t music in its purest essence the only truly universal language?

          1. fenrir says:

            Music is SORCERY

            1. John D. says:

              Music is sorcery. All music? A short statement like that is provocative. I’m curious to know what you mean.

              1. fenrir says:

                All of it.
                Intended or otherwise.
                I do not mean it allegorically, but esoterically.
                Which is why which music you allow yourself to bask in through time radically affects your psyche.

                1. Ludvig B.B (vOddy) says:

                  Well said

                2. John D. says:

                  I could accept that, fenrir. Interesting way of looking at it. Sorcery I’ve always taken to mean as the practice of spells and curses, or what one who practices black magic does. I can’t claim to know much about these things, but I have my intuition and actively engaged imagination, and I’m not a skeptical reductionist (but I am to a good degree a skeptic). The esoteric I don’t discount. It’s interesting to think how one’s entire life history of musical choices, what one intensively exposes oneself to, or what one allows oneself to bask in through time, as you wrote, somehow figures into a spell of sorcery one is under. It’s perhaps another way of saying that life is but a dream, or a nightmare? One could safely say that much music is indeed used to escape or to cope, and in that sense there’s a spell cast. One willingly allows a spell to be cast because life sucks.

                  The thought makes me think further about how much, possibly, we human beings are just extraordinarily complex machines. If that’s the case, there’s the question of programming, and if there’s that, who and where is the master programmer? So, to run parallel with this thought, if there’s sorcery being practiced, or we music lovers are really only under an esoteric spell, deepening as the years go by, who and where is the Sorcerer?

                  This opens up many questions to me. I think music can also be used for awakening, for helping one to open up and see reality and can be an aid to seeking the truth. There is music for rituals, music for prayer and contemplation, music to push the mind way beyond itself and what may be considered normal, intended really to challenge, and in that discomfiture one feels there may be a realization, a puncturing through all the bad habits and dubious notions with which one has sealed oneself in, and a coming out with a discovery relevant to oneself, though it may not be relevant to anyone else, and a spiritual rebirth. Like literature or any art, the experience of music can enrich one in the best way, putting one more in touch with the ground of one’s being, making one less afraid of all the eruptions from the subconscious self.

                  A lot of the crazy stuff I’ve exposed myself to has personally helped me. To truly know the norm or what are the time’s conventions, one must go to the extreme. It’s helped balance and settle me as a person, and it has also made me less inclined to sit in judgment or to have knee-jerk reactions. In the world of sound there are many sphinxes who put forth riddles which don’t necessarily have an answer. The answer is that there is no answer. In other words, to begin with we are free, and what is revealed in trying so hard to come up with a “correct” answer, is that we create our own traps and obstacles.

                  1. Vigilance says:

                    To borrow from Dione Fortunate:

                    Sorcery(magic) is the art and science of affecting changes in consciousness in accordance with will. Symbolic acts like ritual are tools. Music, being an art of symbols, is also a device of magic per the definition. I assume this is what Fenrir means.

                    1. fenrir says:

                      That being but the rim of the rabbit hole though.
                      After that, you’re on your own.

          2. Rainer Weikusat says:

            I’m not alienated but an alient.

          3. Ludvig B.B (vOddy) says:

            Mathematics is a more universal language than music.

            1. David Rosales says:

              True, mathematics is more universal in that it applies to more things objectively.
              Music is more HUMAN, in that it encompasses everything human. Mathematics doesn’t.

              1. Ludvig B.B (vOddy) says:

                What are you sorry for?
                I agree with you.

            2. John D. says:

              Ludvig, this turns everything in an interesting philosophical direction. I hadn’t thought of that. Clearly my head has been more in words lately. Math as the most universal language, and music considered with that in mind, makes me think of Greek-French composer Iannis Xenakis. One might say he tried to make mathematics audible, not just sound patterns, but in such a way that the results are still music. He really pushed the envelope. I even think of Bach and that sublime purity he achieved, which has something purely mathematical about it, but it’s still deeply and richly human. A triumph of the human spirit over the machine is in that music. With Xenakis and that kind of questioning and experimentation, not in the Zen direction of Cage and that kind of openness but in a rigorously applied mathematical direction, one begins to feel some doubt that the human is not really just some machine. Machine not as mere metaphor, but in actuality. A miraculous machine perhaps?


            3. Vigilance says:

              Universal for humans perhaps. Creatures whose nervous systems aren’t attuned to the perception of distinct objects would find mathematics strange if not incomprehensible.

        2. Rainer Weikusat says:

          I don’t consider you authoritative wrt what I really ‘meant’ to say and that the chip on your shoulder badly makes you want to hit someone, be it as a placeholder only, is not my problem. If you’re so-called culture is so weak that it can only survive in walled communities, it deserves to die.

          I wrote half of a more intelligent reply but why bother trying to explain someone to something who only wants to shout, anyway?

          1. El Duende says:

            Who talked about gated communities?
            Cultures and languages naturally develop separately.
            The agenda of FORCING them to mix is what’s unnatural.

            1. Rainer Weikusat says:

              One could also call them reservations, outdoor enclosures or safe spaces, all terms denoting some kind of geographically bounded area where some protected species may safely dwell without risk of contaminations by outsiders. There should also be an Indian term for this to refer to some area where members of some tribe (or tribes) can continue to live in their accustomed, stone-age environment instead of being forced to adapt to one they don’t want to adapt to as this fatalistic mindset is apparently more common over there than in Europe or at least than it used to be in Europe.

              Your culture is also somewhat ill-defined: Every village really has its own culture, including objecting to outsiders, and people nominally speaking the same language but incapable of understanding each other because the dialects they’re accustomed differ too much is commonplace. Considering this, societies have really always been multi-cultural (aside: I actually consider different cities to represent different cultures). What’s the largest amount of differentness you still want to ignore and what’s the reason for this?

              Traditional myth which really also ought to be mentioned here:


              1. Rainer Weikusat says:

                And please, spare me with the “multicultural agenda” of your opponents. I don’t think they’re so much different from you and I wouldn’t chose either side if I had a choice. But I’m in favour of not fighting reality.

                1. John D. says:

                  Hard to argue with you, Rainer, now that you’ve filled out more where your thinking is. Your very first comment on this topic however could easily be taken the wrong way, and it was. I completely understand El Duende’s reaction, and he wasn’t wrong. Now that you’ve explained more where you’re coming from, I think some common ground has opened up. To keep on the attack at this point is only browbeating for ego gratification.

          2. Ludvig B.B (vOddy) says:


            When cultures mix, both of them change and a synthesis of them is born (Or, one destroys the other). This is always the case, it’s how things work.
            To say that a culture which can not survive this deserves to die is like saying that a person who can’t survive having his brain destroyed deserves to die. It’s asinine.

            1. Ludvig B.B (vOddy) says:

              I can’t speak for every one, but I am not against cultural exchanges. Different cultures have different virtues, and they can learn from each other and trade ideas, as well as co-operate.
              I am only against shit cultures, like the islamic ones. I don’t want any thing to do with them.

            2. Rainer Weikusat says:

              Equating “strange people living in the vicinity” with “having one’s brain destroyed” is aisine — the ‘strange people’ are living all around me. A lot of them are also muslims. That’s part of the reality I have to deal with and I don’t expect to be negatively affected by it. I’ve also spent some six months living in China in the past, 3 months in an industrial slum in the outskirts of Shenzhen and another 3 in a small, rented apartement in some skyscraper in Kowloon (part of Hong Kong), living almost exclusively among Chinese. I don’t think I destroyed much of their culture and they certainly didn’t destroy mine.

              I that’s something you neither have to do nor want to do, that’s fine. But this doesn’t apply to everyone.


              (the English translation is pretty atrocious)

              1. Ludvig B.B (vOddy) says:

                “Equating “strange people living in the vicinity” with “having one’s brain destroyed” is aisine”

                When a brain is destroyed, a person dies.
                When a culture is spread out like a drop in to a sea, it also dies.
                How can you not see this?

                1. Ludvig B.B (vOddy) says:

                  “I don’t think I destroyed much of their culture and they certainly didn’t destroy mine.”

                  If your children had grown up there and lived their entire lives there, then they wouldn’t have kept their ancestral culture.
                  The children of your children would have had even less of it.

                2. Rainer Weikusat says:

                  Because things aren’t that simple: 71 years after the 2nd world war ended and with no chance of returning anytime soon, the »Vertriebenenverbaende« (organizations of Germans forced to leave their ancestral homes east of the Oder-Neisse line as the Red Army advanced towards Berlin) are still a force to be reckoned with in German-Polish relations and still maintain their erstwhile cultural identity (to some degree) despite most nowadays members never came near the places their grand parents and great grand parents use to live in,


                  Surely, they should have been assimilated by now. Or maybe not. The Romans eliminated the Jewish state in 70/71AD and did their best to scatter its inhabitants all over their realm. Where are they now, almost 2000 years after the initial catastrophe? Cultures which are flexible enough that the members can change their way of life without losing their chosen identity can be pretty resilient.

                  The same doesn’t apply to places, though: The town I was born in was de-facto dissolved by two factions, people from the educated middle-middle class (“Bildungsbuergertum”) who wanted it to become much more quiet and ‘beautiful’ than I remember it. These replaced the road which had been running through the town-center with a pedestrian zone which changed the character of the place completely and basically caused the living town high-street to die and to be replaced by an assortment of shops selling ‘culture goods’ and no people, and large numbers of so-called Germans from Russia who were settled in this place because of a deal between the German and Russian governments which was part of the German unification proceedings (by the time I left, the number of these approached the size of the original population, about 7500 people). Likewise, I was born in the BRD (the western, German republic). This country was abolished, again by ‘patriotic Germans’, in favour of what became present-day unified Germany.

                  The conclusion from that is »Whatever material one’s heart is attached to above the level of personal property will be destroyed by people who don’t care for it in the cause of getting something they do care for and these will very likely be people who pro forma belong to the same culture« I get to keep what belongs to me and I’ll try to stick to that and the immaterial and nobody on this fucking planet is going to take that away if I can do anything to prevent it.

                  To end this on suitably grandstanding note:


                  (someone’s surely going to hate that)

                  1. Ludvig B.B (vOddy) says:

                    I never claimed that moving to a different area means that a culture dies, or even necessarily that it changes. I am aware that there have been nomadic cultures.

                    The Arabic culture is an other example of a culture that survives moving. It does not assimilate. It nests and makes itself a part of the cultural landscape of the land. This is bad, since it has little good and much bad to offer.

                    1. Rainer Weikusat says:

                      Like math, for instance.

                    2. Rainer Weikusat says:

                      To be fair: Arab high culture is a thing of the rather distant past and the present seems dominated by technically modernized tribal warfare and more or less openly murderous sects.

                    3. Ludvig B.B (vOddy) says:

                      To say that Arabic culture has math is like saying that Swedish culture glorifies violence, and raids other countries:
                      Outdated by 1000 years.

  4. Interracial Porn and Arghoslent says:


    1. David Rosales says:

      Please build it and keep those lower-than rudra “latinos” inside with you. We don’t wann’em, we don’t need’em. We need to rebuild our ksatriya, decimated and dispersed,perverted and destroyed as they have been from the Cold War’s impositions.

      1. John D. says:

        I say build a wall to keep out idiots. It wouldn’t have to be that high. Actually no wall at all is needed. Just a long stick arching overhead with each idiot’s particular obsession dangling from the end of it. For instance, a magazine entitled Fags & Foreigners. Just tie that up at the end of the stick, the pages flapping in the breeze. The idiot would stand staring up at the pages, and occasionally break out into a guffaw while drooling from his bottom lip. Then jumping up and attempting to grab the bait of his own ensnaring, doing so more than once and falling short every time, he’d become enraged, swinging at the air, falling to his knees and pounding the dirt; but because his attention span is so narrow, soon he’d be right back where he started, catching sight of his own particular obsession dangling from the end of the stick, as if seeing it for the first time. Slowly he’d climb back to his feet while staring up, scratching his head, picking his nose, and start the whole futile process again, stuck in his mean little loop of hate and self-loathing.

  5. Huevos Puto says:

    chinga tu puta madre Rosales

  6. I blew my head off like Per Ohlin says:


  7. Johan P says:

    This album is superior to most black metal put out at the time of its release.

    1. David Rosales says:

      It definitely is. I we also wrong at first to believe there was a strong Emperor INFLUENCE, when in truth it was more of a genre parallel. I’ve heard a 1994 rehearsal tape of Abyssum with enough material for a full album, performed “live” exquisitely.

      1. Johan P says:

        Someone should start a label to release this stuff. Any chance that he/they will make those recordings public?

        1. David Rosales says:

          I’ve come to appreciate his privateness a lot in the last year.
          Look at how many people actually “get” Burzum.
          Or even Emperor for that matter: easier to listen so more profanes “like” it, but how many perceive what is under it? How many catch the whole of the music?

          Just like the more serious classical composers, this guy doesn’t want things he considers subpar to see the light of day.
          He will choose which ones he releases publicly very carefully.
          He does not work on a commercial time scale, and I also respect and appreciate this.

          PS. This guy actually makes a living out of being a self-produced musician, and he bows down to no one, depends on no one.

          1. Johan P says:

            Point taken.

  8. Belisario says:

    ¡Muy buen texto!

    And definitely a good idea to post a review in a different language, since this site has visitors from every corner of the world.

    1. David Rosales says:

      Gracias! Esparsa las buenas nuevas, si le viene en gana. jaja

    2. Belano says:

      De acuerdo con Belisario, David. Interesante leer en español la reseña. Algunas vez he pensado en que sería bueno tener algo deathmetal.org en español, pero luego repienso si habrá la cantidad de público necesario para que valga la pena el trabajo que eso implicaría.

      Belisario, leo tu página también. Me ha gustado que, si bien tienes a deathmetal.org de fondo, hay una voz personal que se anima también a recomendar cosas que no me imagino aceptadas por acá (como Pensées Nocturnes). Lástima que no haya espacio para comentarios.

      In any case, great job you two.

      1. Belisario says:

        Yo me planteé lo mismo al principio, pero me di cuenta de que haría falta todo un equipo para ello y descarté la idea.

        La página la llevo yo solo, principalmente porque apenas he dado con gente musicalmente afín que además escriba bien, así que si alguna vez tienes un texto interesante entre manos, sea original o traducido, será bienvenido.

        ¡Un saludo!

        1. David Rosales says:

          Aquí tenés un voluntario. El primero, al menos.

        2. Belano says:

          Gracias por la invitación, Belisario. Por temas de trabajo, sí manejo bien la escritura formal, pero nunca me he sentado a escribir sobre música. Pero sí me interesa el asunto. Trataré de escribir o traducir algo, y, si me sale algo que considere interesante, te escribo a tu correo.

    3. Johan P says:

      Belisario, your site seems interesting – it makes me want to pick up my Spanish language studies again!

      1. Belisario says:

        It’s never too late! :)

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