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THE NAME OF THE BAND Initially,
the name SwineRoar was chosen for the band, but that was too much of
punk flavor...
Newertheless, this word is historical: "Do stop this swine
roar!" - barked my father when occasionally heard Black Sabbath IV
on my tape recorder.
On the other hand, think of the sounds coming from the Herd of Pigs
Possessed by Legion. (Matthew told us something about that... and from
the New Testament we learn that some ancient jews (shepherds) was
actually the first who heard kinda proto-death-black performance, and
they did not like it from the very beginning, at least because THAT herd
of pigs was lost forever.) Similar option was the name IronPig, but it
also did not rule.
What concerns DeathFrost, you can relate this name to: a message from
The Frostheart of The Deathland, or a tribute to Celtic Frost and Death
and similar bands, or simply to some items in modern computer games...
where one can meet again some bloody battles at mountains covered by
snow and ice.
Last, but not least: this word has almost as much hardly articulated
sounds in its middle part as "DarkThrone" or "BoltThrower"
do. THE BAND
IS.... VIRTUAL ONE Most
important, DeathFrost is a one-man band/label/distro entity. Here I am,
Cynoptik Of Deathfrost, and I am running it, from time to time, in one
way or another... This seriously impairs the ability to play live... but
I do not feel such need... and it also saves lives of potential band
members/managers/producers.
Therefore, the band history is simply a certain aspect of my bio. For
non-musical and/or unhuman aspects see page "Real Horror
Behind".
What was the reason to start DeathFrost?
Not to get/lose money,
not to get/lose fame,
not to get/lose influence,
not to get/lose personal contacts... etc.
But rather to find a more complete mental self-consistency, for which I
must formulate and express explicitly some (normally) neglected and
suppressed memories/nightmares/fears/images... (which otherwise DESTROY
ME). The above list simply gives items in the price list to pay for it. THE
ORIGINS OF THE SOUNDS
As a musixx, it was
started at least near 1980... That time I managed to bought a Lead Star
guitar ($200). (Earlier I used an acoustic $10 guitar with some awful
pickup attached). Played some solo guitar (my younger brother conferred
me a title of "Shitty Hendrix"). But also learned the standard
music notation (now I forgot it and use tabs). Even then there was some
trend to find my own riffs and to go over diatonics, pentatonics, and
even bluesy tunes. I tried to implement atonal approach, but there was
no much success. (Nevertheless, the second theme in "Conjuring
Beelzebub" goes up to a riff found 20 years ago...)
By The Year 2K, the principles of The Evil Satanic Harmony (or maybe The
Pure Arian Harmony?) become to be a bit clearer. Definitely, there
exists some rather dissonant but very coherent harmony which cannot be
reduced to any diatonics, and is deliberately Anti-Bluesy.
Listen to all
Darkthrone
(Especially "PanzerFaust")...
Listen to all
Burzum
(Especially "Filosofem")...
Listen to all
Bathory
(Especially
"Octagon", 6-th track)...
Listen to all
BoltThrower
(I got
"Mercenary" and could not stop bying their CD's until I had
all their earlier ones)...
Listen to
Celtic Frost
(The early one; but
Vanity/Nemesis sometimes also rules)...
Listen to most
Black Sabbath
(When I was a little boy,
I heard their "Sweat Leaf" and that was the last drop... I
have made myself some ugly one-string device to see immediately how
their monstrous riffs are constructed. I could not wait until my parents
will buy me the promised acoustic guitar)...
Listen to some
Led Zeppelin
tracks (e.g.
"Friends" and "Out on the Tiles" from LZ III, and a
lot of intriguing sound stuff on Physical Graffiti, incl. "In my
time of dying", where, at first feeling, one hears
"Jesus" as every second word, but actually Robert Plant tells
us about uncertain chances of L.Z. crue to be taken in Paradise after
Death. Well, well, well, there are a lot of rumors that Jimmy Page was
Satanist, and anyway he is a big fan of Alister Crowley)...
Listen to
Blue Cheer
tracks "Just a Little
Bit" and "Gypsy Ball". (unbelievable, but these two were
released as early as in 1968 - !!! on their OutsideInside LP... one
feels a strongest mid-tempo death/black flavor; these three evil guys
made a great input into my audio-seduction. Eternal thanxxx, L.Stephens,
D.Peterson, and P.Whaley.)
Etc.
Currently, I got enough (low-budget) equipment to produce demo tapes and
to copy them in limited (some tens) quantities. To my fortune, I have a
friend who is professional musician, well understands any kind of (extremal)
metal, and consults me on some technical problems.
I could say much more about the technical details of running
DeathFrost... Just only one e-guitar freakness: quite recently, my
younger brother (a good Christian, and mainly blues player) took a more
precise look at my execution axe, and asked me: DO YOU ALWAYS USE THE
SAME (lower) POSITION of the 5-point switch? I said YES, BECAUSE THE
OTHER ONES SUCK (and are unstable when occasionally hitting this fucking
switch by the right hand). THIS MEANS, he answered, THAT ACTUALLY ONLY
THE HUMBACKER GIVES THE ELECTRIC SIGNAL OUTSIDE, WHILE THE TWO SINGLES
ARE DOING SOME PERVERTED EVIL JOB: THEY AFFECT THE STRINGS MECHANICALLY
VIA THEIR MAGNETS, JUST AS SMALL PIECES OF STICKY SHIT COULD DO. - But
that was COOL! That worked as a new weapon against fucking boring middle
trebles in the sound!!! Only after that I realized, what was the reason
for an incredibly dirty early DeathFrost sound when the singles were
screwed up as close to the strings as possible. So I decided to screw
them back, a bit apart from the strings... or may be only ONE of the
two:-)
There are many other specific Do It Yourself solutions, but I will
better stop here.
FUTURE PLANS
1. Writing lyrixx
is sometimes the most critical and annoying task. DEAR VISITORS! SEND IN
YOUR VERSES AS THE LYRIXX FOR MY TRAXX! (As soon as I obtain some better
lyrixx, that track will be re-recorded.) AS THE PAYMENT, A CASSETTE WITH
THE WINNER VERSION WILL BE SENT BACK! (If you will give an address to
send the package). Sometimes this scheme works, remember the great
"Total Death" CD of DarkThrone.
2. I have already installed heavy bottom D'Addario
"caterpillar treads" (.052-.042-.030-.017-.013-.010) on my
"Diesel Tank" Ibanes (S-S-H pickup scheme). The main intent is
to make future releases tuning it "two frets down" (from E to
D, as normal people would say).
3. I know, more efforts should be invested in the percussion/bass
section...
4. Somehow, verse-bridge-chorus paradigm must be further
transformed into some less trivial track structure...
FOUR FACES OF THE
SATANS MISSILE
Below I will dare to
expose some speculative observations concerning the phenomenon of music
(with some respect to extremal genres).
The main idea is very simple: we musicians will never understand what we
are doing - exactly as all other people will never understand the
purpose for what they are living for. And the answer is very simple:
life is not for purpose... life is a testing procedure (or a kind of
torture, if you feel so). Wait a little, and the testing will be
completed.
HARMONIC ANALYSIS: SOME HINTS, BUT NO
SOLUTION
There must be some consistency and coherency in any masterpiece, will it
be a painting, or a song... Can you imagine a picture of an angry awful
devil painted with bright yellow lines over white background? You will
not be able even to see anything! Likewise, a certain relation should
exist between the musical harmony (which deals with relations between
basic tunes of instruments) and musical instrumentation (deals with the
choice of different sound types; the latter are inherent to different
instruments in classical case, but obtained via different sound
processing boxes by e-guitar people).
In a few words, such notorious things as:
(a) the whole extremal voxx spectrum, from histerical blackmetal
screeches - to guttural deathmetal growlings;
(b) all kinds of fuzzboxes which has the evil option to suppress
or eliminate some middle range frequencies;
(c) somewhat elusive, but very definite and specialized harmonies
(extemal metal music is by no way atonal in its essence) used in
thrash/death/black etc.;
- all these three components are the three sides of the same tetrahedral
metal missile hitting your head! Some purely physical/mathematical
evidences can be presented for this... The fourth side of this
sharp-angled/rotated/flying pyramide (at 333 meters/sec) is its rhythm,
the most enigmatic thing, as is illustrated in the next section. At
least, I am unable to imagine any simple and natural system of laws
establishing consistency between FREQUENCY and TIME aspects of any kind
of music (be it light or heavy). But the most essential things are
hidden INSIDE this tetrahedral body... Because any book is not simply a
chain of symbols (be it latin letters, or greek letters, or even
runes)...
A METHAPHORIC COMPARISON WITH WRITTEN LANGUAGE & PAINTING ART
Obviously, notes and sounds themselves cannot be of any value when
disconnected from the underlying DIRECTED rhythmic structure which is
EVOLVING along the time line. Here lies the mystery of any kind of
music, be it bright and relaxing (he-he, not our case), or dark,
fearful, and aggressive.
Imagine that you have reversed the letters (symbols) in a whole
sentence(phrase) - in 99.99...% cases you will obtain a complete
rubbish. Reverse even order of the words - in more than 50% cases the
sense of a sentence cannot be recovered after single reading of it. And
play in reverse some magically unforgettable musical phrase or a long
riff - in 99.99...% you will hear nearly the same sound, almost the same
harmonies, but nothing catchy. Hearing some new sensible music is a hard
work, but writing it seems to be a nearly impossible task... Most of us
can recognise musical letters/symbols, maybe somebody can identify some
musical "words", but the structure and sense of a whole
musical phrase (not mentioning a whole track) is always an elusive
matter of subconscious vision. It cannot adequately be expressed in
words or drawn as a picture.
If you are playing gammas or so, you are actually pronouncing letters of
some alphabet in a simple order. If you can play them fast - this is
only an exercise in improving articulation. Now you can imagine what
actually do some famous "hi-tech" solo guitarists when
improvising... That is the reason for which I am not deep into solo
guitar activity at present time.
The key to the above audiotrack reversion effect is the destroyment of
rhythmic matter caused by the time reversion. The musical rhythm as the
whole is similar to the black-white drawing component in painting art.
And the harmony is similar to the choice of colors. Time reversing
normally makes a "shuffled puzzle" from a musical
"picture" (if it was a sensible "picture" in its
original state).
MUSIC AS A SENSORIC GHOST
Everybody knows what is crossword. This funny thing was invented by a
prisoner (kinda 100 years ago... but sorry, I forgot his name) and is
based on formal VISUAL (through common letters) combination of (in
general) ABSOLUTELY RANDOM words, which should be placed in some
(normally, symmetric) geometrical pattern. Some vague hints are provided
in order to make the solution unique. As is seen, humans do have a
strong inclination to build quite artificial self-consistent objects.
Such objects are based on human knowledge but connected through
completely formal rules, with no relation to the meaning of the things
(words etc.) they are connecting. And sometimes unexpected side effects
arise...
For example, here is a very special one. The hint/answer list is
redundant here because the solution itself comprise a perfect
verbal/geometric object. This is the magic square from Mr. Vikernes:
V A R G
A M O R
R O M A
G R A V
Very simple, but hits as a laser-targeted missile, because the words are
not random in this case. I would like to refer such an effect as a
Sensoric Ghost one, which comes when an information object can be viewed
from absolutely different points, and their synthesis yields a
completely new vision, which cannot be expressed rationally. Here you
see all the things explicitly: letters, words, and geometry, but their
union invokes some invisible extra reality. (Do you hear some alien
sound images while watching this 4 by 4 square? If yes, this may be a
piece of music which Varg could not write because of his being in
prison.)
In the case when the soundwaves are coming into play, the situation
become even more mysterious.
To my deepest beleive, the sound data obtained by the human brain
through the two ears, and the images going to the same place through the
two eyes, are processed and analyzed by THE SAME nervous network device.
The latter is always huge, powerful and well trained, so the music, as
an ARTIFICIAL sound object, may occasionally require an additional
analysis by video-specialized brain structures... What are the resulting
impressions and impacts - only Satan knows. Do not forget that 90% of
human knowledge about the world comes through the eyes, AND YOUR BRAIN
STUFF IS 9/10 EXPRESSED IN TERMS OF VIDEO CODES. Then the music comes,
and your memory is started to be scanned in an unexpected way which you
cannot understand, cannot control; you can only feel something that you
CANNOT DECODE (i.e. express in words and/or images).
Also, much of your video knowledge is subconscious because it is
connected with high-frequency harmonic analysis. I hear you asking: WHY?
WHAT? - Think of the expression of eyes, the "eye's voice".
When looking at somebody's eyes, especially when you are staring at each
other, you can always determine, is he(she) tired, or angry, or drunk,
or being in prison for a long time, or simply mad etc. The explanation
is: the eye's muscles are ALWAYS vibrating at rather high frequency, and
the shape of this vibration is not simpler as compared to a complex
sound. Maybe, it is even more complicated, because the sound wave
presents a one-dimensional phenomenon, but the vibrating surface of an
eye generates a two-dimensional wave. And when the music comes, then it
is also processed by your nervous device intended for recognizing
somebody's gazes and glances... and sometimes (just when you listen to
you favorite band) you are feeling that Satan himself glares at you!
From every point outside! From inside! And if the evil melody is catchy,
He succeeds in watching you ALL THE TIME. Till you can hear the inner
call. Till the Death coming.
In The Middle Ages, ANY
music except of the canonical one used in Church, was concerned Satanic.
Therefore, somebody who played something wrong (especially a
non-authorized person) can be punished in a proper way. Very safe
approach. In our era, only high xpl0z!vs are treated with similar
precautions. |
