Lyrical Analysis: Nocturnal by The Black Dahlia Murder

I pay less notice to the lyrics of songs then I used to. Now, when I buy new cd's, I have a quick look through the booklet for the artwork, usually while I'm ripping them for my mp3 player. But for a lot of releases that is the only time the written lyrics pass by me. 

Once in a while however, a hear a song that does make me want to now what exactly is being sung. One of those is "Nocturnal" by The Black Dahlia Murder. There are some hooks in that song that made it interesting, certain parts that could be clearly heard that draw you in. I had a closer look at the lyrics and found more than I expected.

Let's do some analysis:

1. A minimalist booklet design: Apart from the front page, the booklet does not contain any artwork or pictures. Each song has its lyrics printed on a separate page in a light font on a dark background. With the lyrics before you and nothing to distract you, your own imagination will draw up visions of what is being sung about. This is a trick that horror writers sometimes use as well. Instead of meticulously describing every physical aspect of a monster, they stay silent on specifics. This way, the reader will imagine the monster as something which is particularly frightening to him personally.
2. Free flowing text: The lyrics of a single song are printed as a continuous sentence. There is no punctuation to break up the text. No indentation indicating the start of a chorus. It puts your brain into a higher gear because it is harder to follow the lines. But it also has the side effect of keeping you better focused on what is going. Your mind is less likely to drift away.
3. A dark ritual: I read from the lyrics the description of a dark ritual going on: a sacrifice, a forbidden book, the calling upon an unholy master, blotting out the sun, ... Good stuff!!
4. Figures of speech: The choice of words used to compose these lyrics was not done haphazardly. Serious effort went into provoking a sense of dread through vocabulary and style. 

Perfect for a closer look (lyrics are in italic):

between the lines of dead language tongues 

before the dawn our hearts they shall hunt 

the smell of blood excites the nostrils

at first cut the sanguinary worship of 

"sanguinary", not "bloody", but "sanguinary", excellent word.

red spraying punctures a sight so divine

clutching her carcass face frozen in time 

Here we have the first of a set of alliterations (clutching-carcass, face-frozen), more will follow

a distorted dialect for the draining of veins 

Like before, more repeats (distorted-dialect-the-draining)

to the flooding of bedsheets with sick crimson rain 

They could've gone with "reddish" maybe, but "crimson" has a more evocative feel.

a warped diction of scriptures befouled 

traditions steeped within disgraces reviled

father, unholy one, to your nightrealm we bow 

nocturnal majesty, sworn to black we'll always be 

damnation's diction, a deadly disclosure our poisons in their goblets drip 

More repeats (damnation's-diction-deadly-disclosure)

How perfectly hideous, so eloquently scribed each scripture so skillfully sick 

And more (scribed-scripture-skillfully-sick)

parchment scabbed over with plasmatic prose, prophesize permanent night 

And even more (parchment-scabbed-plasmatic-proces-prophesize-permanent), be assured, this is no coincidence. Writing lines like these takes time, effort and talent.

the words of sheer blackness paint ebony my soul and bestow me with infernal might

"ebony", another choice for a more evocative color than simply brown. And not to forget, a bit of rhyme (night-might). 

A warped diction of scriptures befouled 

traditions steeped within disgraces reviled 

Father, unholy one, to your nightrealm we bow 

nocturnal majesty, sworn to black we'll always be 

A call and an oath upon the dark one. It would indeed be unlikely for a cabal of cultists to request something from their master without them having to pledge themselves to him for eternity. I suppose, who knows what it's like to be a cultist these days...

hatred and persistance 

destined to see 

a complete eclipse 

of that hated sphere the sun

Blotting out the sun, a lofty goal... not so easy to reach...

by the light unspoken 

this language of brutality

enraptured I have become 

unholy night's arms welcome me

nocturnal majesty, sworn to black we'll always be 

hatred and persistance 

destined to see 

a complete eclipse 

of that hated sphere the sun

VirtualPresence: Hashing up some more Twitter

Last week's post on Twitter was on basic Twitter usage. Today, we'll see another aspect of Twitter that you are bound to run into when you start using the service.

As it happens, people on Twitter often post messages on the same topic. They might, for instance, reveal their thoughts on an upcoming event (like elections, etc.). These messages only go as far as the circle of people they are followed by. In order to find these kinds of messages, the #-character was introduced as a convention. For example, if you are going to put a message up on the upcoming American presidential elections, the you can include the word "#election" in your message. And this makes it easy to find those kinds of message. Just head over to the Twitter search page, enter "#election" as a search term, and voila, all recent messages about the elections show up (well, at least the ones that also had "#election" inside the message).

These #-tags are not imposed by a certain company or institution. Anyone can start using a new one. The hard part is getting others to use it as well...

What about my band?

So what do you need to do with #-tags for your band? I wouldn't bother with them too much. Keep an eye out for those that are actively used and that you can use. Maybe a festival that you will be playing at has its own #-tag... If you find any of these, don't hesitate to try them out, but otherwise, there's going to be more useful things to do instead of doing this kind of semantic tagging.

Do you have a question about using webapps for your band? Drop me an email, and I might answer it on the blog.

VirtualPresence: Twitter

First of all, I changed the name of this series from "Social Sites for Bands" to "VirtualPresence", while the former was kind of a bland description, the latter has a better ring to it and is shorter to write.

So, today I'm gonna talk about Twitter and there's lots of stuff to say about it (probably enough for multiple posts) so let's start with the basics. Twitter is a small webapp where you can make an account for yourself and post messages. The trick, however, is that your messages (often called tweets or notices) can only be 140 characters long, similar to a text message (SMS) on a cell phone. For this reason, Twitter is often referred to as a microblogging site. Twitter also lets you follow other Twitter users. If you're logged in and you look at the profile of someone else (like mine), you'll see a button under their picture that reads "follow", press it and you are linked to them. The result is that when you log on to Twitter, you will see their messages as well in a single timeline.

Sometimes, when you see a message form someone else, you might want to reply to this. The @-character can be used for this, as follows:

• A_Band: Touring Germany for the time next month, anyone know about a good tourbus company?
• Dafmetal: @A_Band You should have a look at Bunny&Devil-buses.

Now my reply will show up in A_Band's feed. This works even when you aren't following each other!

What about my band?

This should give you a basic overview on how Twitter works. Now, the question remains, what's the best way to use Twitter for my band?

Keep the messages band related. For your band account, your best bet is to keep it band-related. Keep the "My cat is going to the vet."-posts for your personal account. Some good topics?

• Gigs you're going to do or just played.
• Recordings you're doing.
• New merchandise that you're bringing out.
• Post about the equipment you use.
• ...

Decide what your following strategy will be. A Twitter account for a band will mostly be about getting info to some of your most loyal fans. Once you start being followed, there is the temptation to follow those who are following you. But when you follow someone, they'll partly expect you to be interested in what they post, and you might not be able to keep up. If this means that you no longer add people to your follow list, you are essentially breaking up your follower base into two camps. With one side feeling let down and possibly giving you a bad rep. My advice is to decide up front what your following strategy will be and choose: 

• Follow no one.
• Follow everyone that follows you.

Remember, this doesn't mean that you shouldn't @reply to people if they post something good. Twitter is really meant to connect with people indirectly.

The best way to get a feel for this stuff is to try it out, so head on over to Twitter and make an account. And don't forget to let your fans know about it through your website, blog or newsletter. And make a comment on this blog so we can find you.

Do you have a question about using webapps for your band? Drop me an email, and I might answer it on the blog.

Social Sites for Bands: Intro

As a software engineer, I spend a lot of time behind a pc and online. There has been a big shift in the last years towards social websites and webapps and more seem to crop each month. It's easy to find your friends on these sites, but when I started looking for bands (or band members) on these sites, I almost couldn't find any at all. Now, I'm not talking about MySpace where everybody and his dog has a page (and which I do NOT like at all, spam anyone?). But rather sites like Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed and more...

Of course, so many pop up that it is almost impossible to register at all of them, let alone have an active presence, yet this can't be the only reason. When I talk with other people, a lot of them don't really know what they are about and how to best use them. So, this might be the case for music bands as well. Therefor, I'll be running a series on my blog on those social sites and webapps and on how they can be put to good use.

Some ground rules:

• I'm mostly gonna look at this from the point of music bands. There will be useful info for personal use as well, but the target is bands.
• And when I say bands, I think metal bands. This is still supposed to be a metal blog. Now, most metal bands have a pretty positive DIY attitude which is excellent for this. If you're not in a metal band most of this will probably still apply. I just won't be thinking of you  ;-)
• Lastly, and most important, I recommend using different accounts for your band and for band members. I'm a firm believer in providing focus to your online presence, and having different accounts is a first step in that direction. More on this in future posts.

I'm also open to suggestions. So if you have any questions on this subject, drop me a mail and I'll look for an answer in a future blog post.

I use such sites as well of course, best place to find me is FriendFeed.

Alright, stay tuned for the first real installment in the next blog on Twitter...

lolmetal IV: archeology is a hobby

I found some more lolmetal pictures that I made a while ago.