Altered Zones

"A lot of people don’t take metal seriously as art, and a lot of people don’t take art seriously as ethics. That’s fine, I guess — but as for myself, I do both. These days, when people detect ambition in someone they leap on that person like hyenas. The label 'pretentious' is unquestioned as categorically damning. But I think musical culture could use a whole lot more pretension, if anything. It suffers from false, dishonest humility, and from a lack of ambition to be more than either entertainment or a badge of identification with a group."

-- Liturgy’s Hunter Hunt-Hendrix via Stereogum, in a response to an open letter from Woe's Chris Grigg for Metal Review, which is itself a response to Hunt-Hendrix's recent "Transcendental Black Metal" essay. Grigg accuses the frontman-philosopher of taking himself-- and his sense of his music's importance in the evolution of American black metal--a little too seriously. Hunt-Hendrix owns it.

Grab Liturgy's Aesthethica LP from Thrill Jockey