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The Best Underground Metal Of 2018
by Brett Stevens on December 31, 2018
The task before a reviewer varies widely. If you want to be a big shot, you need to write about what the labels want, since they are the only source of top-down money coming into the genre. They will then reward your publication with advertising, it will then reward you with a promotion, and eighteen months later, you can ditch it and move up to the big leagues.
Tags: 2018, Angantyr, archgoat, best of, black funeral, Black Metal, condemner, death metal, deceased, Drawn and Quartered, Grindcore, Heavy Metal, internal bleeding, iskandr, judas priest, kever, master, monstrosity, nachtlieder, phosphore blanc, progressive metal, retortion terror, Satan, slam metal, sludge, Speed Metal, Summoning, Therion, trenchant, underground metal
/smr/ Sadistic Metal Reviews: Post Black Eulogy (Part 1)
by Brock Dorsey on April 12, 2018
[Join DMU editor Brock Dorsey on the first of a two part massacre of the soy metal sub genre that has bastaradized black metal beyond the belief! Also, this image is an actual cover from an actual post black metal album- you can't make this stuff up!]
Post black metal was an embarrassing sub genre of soy metal. Built upon a foundation of either screamo, pop punk, metalcore, math rock, shoegaze, or avant-garde and fused with the most minimal touches of black metal, post black metal was a flavor of the week(/weak) trend that lasted from around 2009 to 2014. The genre name is misleading, however, as most bands only claimed to be metal and incorporated only slight touches of metal characteristics before abandoning them completely in future releases. As indicated by its core standard bearers being dropped by labels, performing terribly in sales and Facebook likes, and being forgotten by fans, post black metal has finally passed away. As we lay it to rest with one final cremation in the SMR fashion, let us learn from its failings as the future looks to more traditional forms of heavy metal to restore a once proud genre.
First, we must understand metal history to understand how such an abomination could happen, as Post-black metal followed a number of flavor of the week black metal trends and bands. The first of these, symphonic black metal, sent many fans of the original (true) black metal genre into a frenzy with their incorporation of gothic influences. What was to come would be much worse, however, as the soy metal bands marketed as black metal would prove to be far more embarrassing than the Victorian campiness of Cradle of Filth or the industrial meddling of …And Oceans. The next flavor of the week black metal trend was cleverly concealed in a cloak of static, but the hipsterisms of "depressive black metal" would soon be known to the world. Time was not kind to the legacy of Xasthur and Leviathan, both of whom are now widely panned against the metal community, as where the thousands of "bedroom black metal" clones who polluted Myspace. With many short lived flavor of the week trends (such as "Norsecore" and "Cascadian black metal") and bands (Kult ov Azazel, Inquisition) in between, the soy metal- black metal hybird that was post black metal was the next successful marketing scheme to deceive young and retarded metal fans alike.
Performed mostly by wealthy but useless trust fund kinds from liberal cities, post black metal was to metal as emo was to rock music: feminine, tame, and a complete and utter bastardazation. Thus, post metal was eventually abandoned by its former fans, spat on by the metal community, dropped by metal/rock record labels, and remembered poorly by music lovers. Much like how the rent some of its musicians was eventually cut off from their parent's bank roll, post metal was eventually told to stop leaching off the metal community so that the genre may maintain a shred of dignity.
Brace yourselves for an infernal evisceration unlike aynthing you've ever seen before, because in this edition of SMR, we won't just be sadistically reviewing albums…
…we'll be sadistically reviewing careers.
Tags: altar of plagues, archgoat, art rock, Black Metal, burzum, cradle of filth, drone, drugs, dsbm, ghost bath, hipsters, Hunter Hunt Hendrix, Leviathan, liturgy, magazine, metal, metal-archives, nuclear blast, post-black metal, post-rock, sadistic metal reviews, screamo, smr, soy metal, trust fund kids, vice, wolves in the throne room, xasthur
The Devil's Cradle Out September 15th
by Daniel Maarat on June 25, 2017
The English translation of Tero Ikäheimonen's comprehensive Finnish black metal book, Pirunkehto – Suomalaisen black metallin tarina, is coming out September 15th on Svart Records with the English title The Devil's Cradle. The book features interviews and career retrospectives of Beherit, Impaled Nazarene, and a bunch of other bands who do not count and have no reason to be in the same book as they suck and play crossover thrash with high-gain guitar pedals and RAC/oi themed pop-punk . These modern black 'n' roll bands aren't even from the same era; they are just poseurs.
Tags: archgoat, beer metal, beherit, black 'n roll, Black Metal, book, cosmic church, Finland, Finnish Black Metal, goatmoon, Grindcore, horna, impaled nazarene, metal books, pop punk, poser metal, posers, poseurs, RAC, rac/oi, ride for revenge, satanic warmaster, svart, svart records, tero ikäheimonen, upcoming release
Sadistic Metal Reviews 02-02-15
We all seek a claim that our lives are worth living. For some, this comes from money; for others, being right or at least being cool. In order to achieve either or both, one must emit product, and far too often this product tries to flatter and pander to its audience rather than grow some balls and make a point. You could write an album about cooking an omelette with more passion than most bands approach topics like war, death, genocide, evil and emptiness. When the surface takes over from the core, the cart has come before the horse and all is lost, which is why we savor the sobbing tears of poseurs, tryhards and scenesters with Sadistic Metal Reviews…
Like a Storm – Awaken the Fire
In a flashback to the bad parts of the 90s, this album opens with a digeridoo before breaking into predictable hard rock riffs with heavier production and more basic rhythms. Then some guy starts singing in his best lounge lizard voice, building up to a pop chorus that could be straight off an Eagles album if they sped it up and did not worry about how truly incongruous the whole package would be. If you like speed metal trudge riffs paired with AOR favorite techniques and Coldplay-style vocals, this album might be for you. But the question remains: why even bother to release this as a metal album? Clearly it would be happier as country, pop, rock or even blues if they truncated the scenery-chewing vocals. It seems the music industry has found an update for nu-metal which is to channel it into this rock/metal hybrid which takes the angry parts of Pantera and pairs them with the smarmiest parts of overproduced, excessively pandering fraternity rock. These guys have a Titty Bingo sticker on their van. The scary thing is that the "inspirational" rock stylings here are a kissing cousin to much of what has infested power metal. But this takes it a step further to the point where what comes out of the speakers resembles the worst of corporate rock from the 90s and 00s to the point that heavier guitars cannot disguise the essential frat party rock tendency of this flaming turd. This goes well with a pukka shell necklace and lots of hair gel, with a NO FEAR sticker on the overly polished 'stang next to the keg of Natty Light.
Abominator – Evil Proclaimed
Angelcorpse invoked a revelation in death metal, but not entirely a good one. The basic idea was to accelerate the rhythmic fill to the level of riff, such that the composer could use one or two chords in a charging rhythm much like war metal or hardcore punk, but then work in elaborate brachiated chord phrases to avoid the riff concluding in the stunningly obvious chord progression that otherwise must result. Add a bunch of these together in constant rhythm and the essence of that style shines forth. Abominator attempts to break up the constant charging and give songs more shape, as well as use actual fills which complement the riffs, but despite this effort and some inventive songwriting, the blockhead forward charging — like Cannibal Corpse working on the longer Bathory riff outtake that opened the first Angelcorpse album — continues and ruins any atmosphere except a constant tension that starts to resemble an eyestrain headache after a few songs. Speaking of songs, these are nearly indistinguishable, written at similar tempos with similar riff forms and while not random pairing of riffs, reliance on phrasal similarity to the point that songs sound like one giant charging riff with some textural flickering within. To Abominator's credit, Evil Proclaims is a lot better than the other Angelcorpse tributes out there. Unfortunately, that's about all that this album remains as and a few moments of power notwithstanding, remains mired in a sea of formless raging metal which never reaches a point.
Venom – "Long Haired Punks" (from From the Very Depths)
Venom are NWOBHM, not black metal; this fact flies in the face of what you will be told in 99% of the metal propaganda out there. The band themselves have never denied it. On this track however, Venom throws us a twist by sounding exactly like Motorhead except with more sudden stops at the end of each phrase where Motorhead would have kept a methamphetamine groove going. "Long Haired Punks" features punkish riffing combined with Venom's archetypal primitive, broad leaps of tone and nearly chromatic fills. A bluesy solo that seems designed to be slightly abusive to key and chaotic accompanies this as do the purely Lemmy-styled vocals in what is essentially a verse-chorus two riff song with a bridge. The sudden pauses grow tedious within the passage of the song to newer listeners but then again, those grew up after metal assimilated Discharge, Amebix and The Exploited. For someone from 1979, this would seem like a slicker version of Venom with more emphasis on carefully picked chords and less onrushing punk energy, which makes the title ironic. It is well-composed within the limited style that Venom has preferred all these years, but attempts to update the NWOBHM stylings plus Motorhead of Venom have failed and should either be rolled back or the original style entirely discarded. This band is halfway between trying to be what it was, but in a post-1983 sound, and what it could be, which probably would resemble nothing like the original except for the raw "gut instinct" energy which unfortunately, attempts to modernize have limited. While I am not the world's biggest Venom fan, it is hard to deny (1) their catchy punk/Motorhead/NWOBHM pop power and (2) their aesthetic influence on much but not all of underground metal, and it would be great to see this band develop into all it can be. From "Long Haired Punks," it seems in doubt that From the Very Depths will be that evolution.
Unrest – Grindcore
The title proclaims this release as grindcore but a better description might be later punk styled as grindcore with a nod toward pop punk. These songs fit together nicely, but rely on two unfortunate things that doom them: repetition of classic punk and grindcore tropes as if they established something in themselves, and use of very much pop rhythmic hooks and song transitions. The vocals are great, the instrumentation fantastic for this genre, the melodies adequate and the rhythms good, but the meaning is not there. The recent Nausea album achieved a great deal more with less by focusing on having each song present an idea and then developing a basic, albeit circular looping context. Grindcore attempts instead the infamous "outward-in" composition of tribute bands everywhere where the need to include the tropes on the surface pushes out the need for internal structure based around a coherent thought, so songs end up being technique only, which is somewhat ironic in such a theoretically anti-technique genre. Most of these result in that "feel" of classic punk and hardcore but add to it the heavy technique of grindcore, which only serves to reveal how disorganized these tracks are. By the time they fall into imitating classic punk open chord picking and stop/start conventions halfway through the album, it has already been long clear that this is a highly competent tribute band but nothing more. To the credit of the label, production is flawless and clear without sounding too slick and the vocals are perfectly mixed. That cannot save Grindcore, nor can its periodically great guitar work, from being reliant on the crutch of imitating the past in lieu of writing songs. Maybe all the great hardcore and grindcore that could be written was long ago.
Archgoat – The Apocalyptic Triumphator
Much like the late days of hardcore, underground metal is standardizing into a war metal/death metal hybrid that emphasizes fast slamming rhythm without the obvious rock, jazz and blues breakdowns that make it clear that music belongs to the peace, love and happiness side of metal. Archgoat, by applying the structure of Scandinavian metal to the raw onslaught of Blasphemy/Sarcofago styled proto-black metal, stands as an innovator to this sub-genre which tends to combine Onward to Golgotha, Fallen Angel of Doom and Tol Cormpt Norz Norz Norz into a single style that like the bands which combined The Exploited, Black Flag and the Cro-Mags into a single voice, standardizes itself and becomes just about interchangeable. The sad fact of The Apocalyptic Triumphator is that a lot of good songwriting went into this album and some quality riff-writing, but this band remains literally imprisoned by the style in which they choose to create. About half of this album, preying on all of us who wish there were somewhere undiscovered in a vault another four hours of Drawing Down the Moon, borrows rhythms and arrangement patterns from that highly-esteemed work, as well as developing known riff types from the above influences. None of this is bad; however, it does not add up to enough to be compelling, like previous Archgoat works. This album represents the most professional work from this band so far and clearly exceeds any previous efforts, but the genericism of its riffs make songs indistinguishable both from one another and in terms of structure, creating the musical equivalent of listening to a flood sewer. For every good riff, four "standard" ones borrowed from the war metal/Blasphemy-tribute/Incantoclone group crowd them out. Periodic moments of greatness are balanced by a double frequency of moments of staggering obviousness which make it hard to get behind hearing this one on a regular basis. What I want to know is: what do these musicians actually idealize in music, outside of this style? Their work in such an artistically liberated medium might unleash the creativity that this narrow style suppresses.
Heaving Earth – Denouncing the Holy Throne
Disruption metal. In business, the idea of disruption is that some new entrant into the market disturbs it to the point of throwing everything else out. This should simply be thrown out. Trudging riffs, squeals, chortled vocals, mind-numbing rhythms and melodic fills that sound more like video game noises than metal. An album of this would be excruciating, doubly so if you listened to it.
Ancient Wind – The Chosen Slain
Style over substance defines this release: built on a base of melodeath, Ancient Wind regurgitates several different influences but predominantly Sodom and Wintersun. The result is a sampler plate of styles that never comes together but, because it has no topic other than the need to record something for a half hour or so, the lack of style damages nothing nor salvages anything. You are left with the typical experience of hearing something disorganized, then seeing a fat woman eat ice cream, and suddenly being unable to recall if the music had been on earlier. In one ear and out the other, if you're lucky.
Sacrilegium – Wicher
1996, out of Poland. Like Graveland? A more conventional version of Graveland: less scary, more uptempo, more musically predictable. Sounds a lot like there was a Dimmu Borgir influence. While it's tempting to like the style, the lack of substance suggests this album should have stayed in 1996 with the other proto-tryhards.
Battle Beast – Unholy Savior
An album's worth of that one song your junkie ex-girlfriend is really into. For Lady Gaga listeners who like the sound of electric guitars. Halestorm meets fantasy. Daddy-issues metal. I'm out of jokes, just don't listen to this.
Tags: abominator, archgoat, Black Metal, death metal, like a storm, sadistic metal reviews, unrest, venom
Fan kills black metal singer for not being Satanic enough
by Cory Van der Pol on January 12, 2014
I'm going to hell for this, but it's an observation, not a recommendation: black metal was a lot better when it was the Wild West, with bodies cropping up everywhere, churches aflame, and musicians stockpiling paramilitary gear.
Then it got all civilized — about the same time it became sociable and profitable — and immediately descended to the same repetitive and soulless level as all other music that has been socially accepted.
For this reason, while I'm not going to cheer the acts involved (and no one accountable can, because we are civilized), I have to admit a brief flicker of something — nostalgia? hope? — crossed my nerve net as I read in this morning's virtual paper about the self-proclaimed Satanist who killed the singer of a Thai metal band, Surrender of Divinity.
Surrender of Divinity have released a number of underground efforts to some acclaim, culminating in a split with Finnish war/noise metal cult Archgoat. Prices on Surrender of Divinity merch on eBay have already spiked in response, for you cynics.
The alleged killer, Prakarn Harnphanbusakorn, was apparently a fan of Surrender of Divinity when he reportedly met with the band's vocalist, Samong Traisattha, for some beers at the latter's home. When Mr. Samong's wife returned to check on the two several hours after the gathering began, she found her husband dead from multiple deep knife trauma wounds.
Posting on Facebook as Maleficient Meditation, Mr. Prakarn posted pictures of the gory scene of the killing and made a series of references to the sacral nature of his act:
"I have intended to end my life since I was 25. Because I'll die eventually, I want to drag down those who tarnish Satanism with me. But I refrained from killing women and children," he wrote.
"In my view, I have more respect for devoted Buddhists, Christians and Muslims than those who call themselves Satanists without knowing anything about it," he wrote. "If I did not kill him, I'm sure he would be murdered by someone else later."
"Maleficent Meditation" concluded that people who do not have faith in Satan should not call themselves Satanists. He also said he hoped he would be with Satan after he died.
He had previously mostly posted black metal news, snippets of Satanist information, and kitty pictures.
Tags: archgoat, Black Metal, Satanism, surrender of divinity
Various Artists – Servants of Chaos (Debemur Morti Productions)
by Brett Stevens on January 6, 2014
Interesting compilation from Debemur Morti productions that you can listen to online:
1. Behexen – "We Burn With Serpent Fire": the generic black metal that's always playing in the background of record stores. This is it.
2. Porta Nigra – "Megalomaniac": there's clean singing and rockin-in-a-boat rhythms. Get it away.
3. Setherial – "The Neural Cage of Self Infliction": cool song title. Cool first couple riffs. Then campfire melodic heavy metal.
4. Nunfuckritual – "Parthenogen": slightly boring track produces mildly melodic drone with compelling rhythm. But would you want to hear it more than twice?
5. Manetheren – "II": strobing melodic drone of some type of metal/emo crossover, but is the best so far from this genre that I've heard.
6. Sidhr – "Hex": spanky hardcore/black metal crossover that doesn't really go anywhere, substitutes frenetic energy for songwriting.
7. October Falls – "Bloodlines": more emo, very typical, flee while you can.
8. Archgoat – "Penetrator Of The Second Temple": churning tumescent sonic violence, raginginly primitive with riff-based song structure.
9. Blut Aus Nord – "Epitome II": this band was always primitive and not quite put together black metal, but now they're linear droning emo. It kind of churns on an on in a single mood. For wallpaper lovers.
10. Rex Muendi – "The Flesh Begat": a boring and predictable version of early Bathory set to disco beats.
11. Wallachia – "Dual Nothingness": bog-standard melodic black metal that melds into a 80s heavy metal/Goth mix. Screechy.
12. Infestus – "Down Spiral Depersonification": an attempt to fuse post-metal with the harder edge of black metal, this is both a welcome addition of musicality and screamingly obvious, which makes it useless for repeated listening.
13. Monolithe – "Monolithe III (excerpt)": When black metal went from "pick the best" to "approve of anyone in case they're in your social group," music like this got encouraged. It's musically literate in about five styles and works through them, from a basis of rather poppy, melodramatic doom metal with basic and obvious chord progressions.
Tags: archgoat, behexen, blut aus nord, debemur morti productions, infestus, manetheren, monolithe, nunfuckritual, october falls, porta nigra, rex muendi, setherial, slidhr, wallachia
Sadistic Metal Reviews 1-31-10
by Brett Stevens on January 31, 2010
So much of what we do in life is politics. Telling people things they want to hear and making warring parties proffer the olive branch. But metal should not be about politics. Metal should be about pure spirit, both inside of us and in the world at large, meaning that we know ourselves and we know reality. With that kind of background, we don't need politics. We don't need drama. We don't need to be flattered. We want adventure — musical adventure, preferably with tragedy and triumph, violence and vengeance, sodomy and satisfaction! Meet this week's Sadistic Metal Reviews, where sacred cows get sodomized and we find satisfaction in the diamonds among the cluttering turds.
Fenriz' Red Planet/Nattefrost – Engangsgrill
We're going to talk about the first band here, Fenriz' Red Planet, because Nattefrost is forgettable 1970s punk rock dressed up as early 1980s black metal. This band is a hybrid between doom metal, 1970s heavy guitar jam, and what they call stoner doom now but was recognizable in St. Vitus, Pentagram and Sleep for many years. The production approach and song style is closest to 1970s heavy guitar rock, like Cream or even Led Zeppelin, in that songs are verse/chorus works with a big fat diversion stuck in the middle that may run through a couple of riffs but comes back into key and rhythm so the cycle can spin again. But over half of the riffs are straight out of old school 1980s doom metal, and that would be St. Vitus and Pentagram but also late-blooming NWOBHM with a doom edge like Witchfinder General and Budgie. It's not exciting; if anything, it sounds like a demo where the band hasn't yet finalized direction and aesthetic. However, it is good; these songs have character and a spirit to them which you cannot get anywhere else. You can hear a few lifts from Fenriz' folk/metal project Storm and one or two similar themes to Darkthrone, but this CD doesn't need to namedrop to stand on its own. They named it "Engangsgrill," which apparently is a type of disposable barbecue, which fits exactly the kind of sloppy rock/metal hybrid you have here: pickup trucks headed to the country with a keg, a bong and some friends, followed by a weekend of the best neighborhood bands jamming, society gets forgotten until on Monday morning you drive back with a mouth full of ash and the kind of diluted hangover that comes from cheap beer in constant consumption.
Baroness – The Blue Record
Oh neat, an emo/stoner metal hybrid with lots of indie and punk rock touches. If you can imagine Neurosis and Jawbreaker making sweet love with newer Sleep, and throwing in tons of stuff from the heavy metal and indie rock canons, you'll have a good image of what this cheeseball release has to offer. From the way the labels and the big industry reviewers — who have about five minutes to hear each CD, and put them on in the background while socializing for two weeks, then forget about them — went on about this CD, you'd think it was the second coming of innovation itself. Instead, it's stale and completely loses what's good about metal and punk, converging on a mean that's closer to your run-of-the-mill hipster band. This is awful.
Despised Icon – The Ills of Modern Man
Metalcore is rock songwriting with technical death metal technique, and a desire like punk music to string together radically "different" riffs as if it can surprise us, and since it's random in structure, built around what's left: vocal phrases that end on the expectation of the offbeat like a sales pitch. Despised Icon is as a result about 80% the fratboy-pleasing, gurgling, blasting, very simple riffs played in difficult time of technical death metal, like Immolation, and the rest is bouncy moronic rock music that I got into metal to escape. Consequently, it has no attention span and cycles like carnival music between different styles and tempos, then crams it all into a barely-disguised verse/chorus structure. What is the point of typing this all out? To point out how to fail at metal. This is the abyss of music and is every bit as stupid as your parents claim your music is. If you want to fail at life, try listening to this random accumulation of parts — each part is in itself OK, not great, but together they add up to a conversation made by borrowing a phrase from 30 works of literature — and as a result project a scatterbrained, neurotic, pointless and non-constructive view of the world. No wonder people hate metalcore; it's the nadir of underground music.
Cryptopsy – The Unspoken King
This is what's left of the band that made None So Vile? The neatly structured, compact death metal has been replaced with blasting metalcore. Metalcore, as you may know, is kind of a garbage plate for underground metal and punk. Based around the interpretation of technical metal into punk structures that Human Remains showed us, metalcore loves randomness in circular song structures, so you get ten minimally-related riffs linked by a breakdown and a few slow chants, and then the whole thing repeats, and then the song ends. It's music for a fragmented mind and as a result, has the IQ of a headless chicken watching daytime TV. Cryptopsy utterly fails to make coherent music out of this style as their countrymen Neuraxis eventually did, and instead defecate this collection of random riffs based around an egodramatic vocal track. It's total garbage for morons.
These Are They – "Who Linger"
Imagine Iron Maiden doing a simplified version of 1990s Demigod or Amorphis. This CD is unique in that it successfully applies both (a) the old school death metal style and (b) a heavy metal, harmonized-guitar, bouncy riff style — and does it by coming up with a melodic phrase and answer, and using these to make layers of verse and chorus. Play riff; play notes of riff in variation of rhythm; harmonize guitars and repeat, then cycle. The choruses do the same. Nothing sounds out of place, and the deep guttural voice guides it along, but it seems entirely out of place when the heavy metal riffs and trills come into play. In addition, the riff salad of death metal isn't here; like rock or indie, this rides one pattern for verse and one for chorus, and much variation is not to be found, which probably places this out of the range of old school death metal fans. Still, these are quality riffs and excellent use of basic harmony, which makes this easy listening and because it is not random, a great improvement on the metalcore-heavy stuff we hear daily. For albums like later Bolt Thrower, which tried to make a heavy metal/death metal hybrid, this is probably the best so far.
Vreid – Milorg
Black metal was about writing unique melodies and building song structures to fit them. Vreid is about mimicking the past with more intensity in each riff, but relying on predictable melodic strips and linear song structures in circular repetition, resulting in songs that are binary like nu-metal: a softer part, then a harder part, then a response to that which softens the hardness, then a restatement at full blast, fade out and win. Most of these riffs come from the 1970s and 1980s generations of metal and get a "black metal" treatment, so end up sounding like rock music in its Sunday black metal evil clothes. The music is driving by a chanting vocal which rides the beat like the shouts of the drummer commanding the slaves to row. Every now and then they launch into an extended melody like a pentatonic version of early ancient, and they have the raw rhythmic power of an early Marduk or Zyklon, but it doesn't add up to more than most rock music, and considerably less than the formative works of Nordic black metal.
Black Funeral – Az-i-Dahak
Throbbing notes rhythm a rhythm that then reverses, examines a portion of itself in detail, and then picks up in a new direction which dovetails with the old; the throb remains, like symbols etched in the air with a torch caught on the slower memory of film. In this way, Black Funeral achieves an odd ambience similar to that of Impetigo, where a higher note is strummed repetitively at an offset rhythm where most bands would hammer a lower note on the beat, but by the nature of the larger melodic structure of the riff, this throb does not bounce jauntily like a rock rhythm; it hangs, like a reminder of mortality. Vocals are chant-ish black metal rasps and the mechanistic pedaling of the drum machine fits this sound like a glove, getting further inhuman as it distances us from musical expectation and clean aesthetics. Like the humming beeps of an alien machine exploring the night, this album rediscovers humanity by removing it from the picture and showing us the empty space in which we must construct as inevitable death closes in. While most experts agree "Vampyr" is the height of this band — and who am I to disagree? — this perhaps less proficient album is more haunting and bizarre, yet fits it into a pattern similar to our reminiscences of isolated nights when the future angled away from us like the shadow of an unknown doorway.
Decrepit Birth – Diminishing Between Worlds
If the recombinant album name and band name didn't clue you in, here's the skinny: this band is totally postmodern, meaning that they fit together all sorts of random influences and then link them together with the basics of rhythm and harmony. As a result, it's like a fast ride at Disneyland: constant changing stimulus of radical difference so much that after a while you lose any idea of where you are, and end up thinking you've come very far, when at the very end as the buggy slows you realize you've been circling around the same relatively small space. Unlike most bands of this type, which I'm going to call crypto-metalcore because it's (a) without death metal's style of organization, preferring instead the hardcore method of having riffs have as little in common as possible and no narrative (b) of mixed riff styles and (c) depends on rhythmic buildup/breakdown for tension because you're not going to get it in contrast between riffs, Decrepit Birth is good — it's like an Iron Maiden album hidden in Deeds of Flesh with Blotted Science and Negativa offering critique. However, I can't listen to this carnival music; it breaks down concentration and replaces it with elaborate versions of territory trod long ago.
Funebrarum – The Sleep of Morbid Dreams
What happened here? Eight years ago — before old-school "revival" was even a blip on the radar — this band had the apparent potential to give proper life to archaic death metal form. Their first album/demo was a brooding, infectious and grimly cohesive piece of work, enough so to make this sound almost brazenly cheap by comparison. Toss in every imaginable death metal riff style coined between 1989 and 1993, lay them out on a rhythmic smorgasbord and put them through enough mood changes to make a pregnant teenager blush and you've come damn close to this; add enough embarassing Bloodbath-sounding material (listen to the opener) to something otherwise "authentic" and you'll never want to hear "old school" again. – kontinual
Star Fucking Hipsters – Never Rest in Peace
There are some of us who believe that rock and roll music, instead of being a thing deliberately created, is an aggregate of what was left over when we tested everything else against a captive audience. Star Fucking Hipsters prove this by carefully absorbing everything they can into the great sponge of melancholy indie pop. These songs usually start off with fast punk or speed metal (Slayer) riffs, and then pass through a few exciting transitions borrowed from anything industrial, black and reggage or between, but then we get to the core: darkish, self-pitying, somewhat helpless indie pop. True, it's in pop punk format like The Descendents meets Blink 182 with Jane's Addiction advising on behalf of the emo CIA, but basically, it's pop. And when we get to that point we see this album is like a confused and lonely person in the city, covering themselves with newspapers or whatever fashions they can yank out of the wind, hoping no one will ever get a glimpse inside. If that's its goal, this is supreme art, but more likely it is the emoting of such people hoping we'll justify their existence for them. As pop, it's not bad, a little toward the "poignant" side of minor key melodies sliding into major key to give you a sense of hope. But it's really the same old thing, or the latest incarnation of it in whatever styles have stuck over the past twelve years, and so I can't imagine why you'd listen to this instead of any of the 100,000 other albums this "good" in the rock style.
Ahab – The Divinity of Oceans
Funeral doom of a style similar to Skepticism if merged with Esoteric, with a tiny bit of Paradise Lost or Sleep in the wings, Ahab is a studied take on the slow and depressive atmospheric music that many people seem to enjoy. Stylistically, it is probably the most advanced of its kind; musically, it is perfectly competent; artistically, it is not particularly compelling. Its melodies have less of a sense of mixed emotions than do those of Skepticism, and its songs develop in predictable cycles within cycles, leaving us with atmosphere by default once all else has been blocked out. Like American rock bands, Ahab also has to throw in that sense of "contrast" where any dominant idea gets a contrarian voice thrown up against it, where bands like Skepticism bear down with enhancement and variation inside their major ideas. Few want to be the voice to stand up and say this, but most doom metal is boring, and not just because it's slow. Ahab, while better than most, falls under this umbrella.
Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine – The Audacity of Hype
Purists will kill me for this, but this is Biafra's best work — it's musical. Where the Dead Kennedys sounded disorganized and messy without really building on that as an aesthetic, he's slowed down to a pop-punk combo that uses hardcore riffs (Discharge, Exploited) to balance its melodic lead picking (Circle Jerks, The Plugz). That, plus Southern Fried guitar solos and lead guitar noise, forms the underpinning for a more interesting Biafra performance than has ever been heard before. On this CD, Biafra develops his vocal lines both melodically and in timbre, giving the performance of his life with verve and energy. You've heard these riff types before, and many of the note progressions are "pop culture" stalwarts that show up in movie soundtracks and commercials, but here Biafra and his band develop each into a song that's half-rock and half-hardcore, creating a foundation that will introduce a new generation to the sounds of hardcore punk.
Akitsa – La Grande Infamie
Most of us love the idea of black metal: a few totally socially alienated people, armed only with the truth, pick up guitars one weekend and make a simple mind-virus that helps slay all of the vastly powerful illusions that make our modern world miserable. The problem is that this is far from the truth: most of the people who have made great simple black metal were expert players or at least savants who self-schooled themselves in a unique and powerful style, and their work is very deliberate and designed to make us enjoy life as much as convey some idea. But as in all things, each generation picks up where the previous generation appeared to leave off, so the source of the idea is always lost. Akitsa sounds like a cross between The Exploited and early Dark Funeral, with simple melodic riffs offset against sawing basic power chording; the melodic riffs are too candy-sweet and the power chord riffs are too much of a style we can get anywhere. "Silence" appears to be heavily influenced by "Thy Winter Kingdom" from the first Behemoth CD. The rest of the CD is alternating Burzum influences with later model droning melody. It is both not bad and not really compelling enough to want to hear again.
Orthrelm – OV
I wish this album were a joke, but like most modern and postmodern art, it's an attempt to "demonstrate" an "idea," and that idea has no correlation to the reality of an artist both entertaining and informing his listeners. Instead, you get a lot of fast chromatic playing over serial drumming with occasional breaks into jazz-style breakdowns that are either sloppy or misinformed about music theory. The result is a dissonant atmosphere after the band lulls you into contentment with repetition. Over time, the basic pattern increases in a period-doubling format, creating a linear expansion on a basic idea that resembles holy books that write about the universe expanding from a breath, except here the expansion leads to nothing but a reflection of itself. When Burzum did this with Det Som Engang Var, it built a mood that gained resurgent power of time; here it is purely deconstructive and fragments the listener's attention span by forcing it through a narrow slit of musical awareness. People will like this because it's unique, and talk about how genius it is because no one else "dared to be different" to such a degree, but as a work of meaningful art and a listening experience, it is worthless.
Blood Mortized – Blood Mortized
This band claims "active" status in the early nineties, with zero material to show for it. It may very well be true; current personnel have some of the more run-of-the-mill Stockholm bands to brag about in their ancestry. Excited yet? This falls somewhere between Amon Amarth and Dismember's Massive Killing Capacity, smothered in the "soft" mimicry of the Sunlight sound that seems so common for these fence-sitting bands. The plod is painful and simple and the song development as bluntly screwball as the song titles, lending an air of crafted irony to the whole presentation lest somebody seriously stack it up against any of its predecessors. One wonders whence this stuff keeps coming — I'm wont to call this the "Swedish mid-life crisis" and leave it at that. – kontinual
Junius – The Martyrdom of a Catastrophist
What is post-rock? For most, it's slow atmospheric rock beats with emo, punk, indie and noise riffs slowed down to provide texture. On this CD, Junius blend in a modern taste of the ancient with a Dead Can Dance influence. The result is like a river, winding around obstacles to rejoin itself, but only suggesting a topography. This music is comforting and melancholic, but not really exciting. It is pretty, but will find it hard to escape a lukewarm rock underpinning that reigns in its tendencies to escape for the outer limits. A reasonable comparison might be if Danzig decided to do a space rock album: you can appreciate it aesthetically, but sense how the voice isn't really there, and how as much as these guys want to be ancient, they're stuck in a modern paradigm.
Virus – The Black Flux
For the last time: if I wanted indie rock, I would have gone to a different part of the record store. Take your Sisters of Mercy gothic vocals, your bad indie rock open chord guitar riffs, and your basic song structures interrupted by dramatic outbursts, and put them there. I don't want to fall into the old trap of saying "this isn't metal," because what I really want to say is that this is indie rock and should be integrated into that genre for the modicum of black metal stylings and ideas it still possesses. Sure, they're going to call it a "post-rock" influence, but other than a little flexibility of rhythm, what's going on here is the same stuff emo, indie and shoegaze bands were pumping out in the early 1990s.
Mefisto – The Truth
This CD resembles death metal in no way other than the vocals, which are the kind of reverbed whisper shout that made the first Sepultura EP so memorable. But the music… well, it's stranded in the 1980s. Throw a lot of Metallica, Kreator, Slayer and Destruction in a blender — like every other band from that era — and you'll get this mismash of riffs very similar to both the aforementioned bands and a huge heritage of heavy metal. To their credit, this band string them together well rhythmically but otherwise seem entirely random. Before someone convinces you this is a forgotten classic, ask them if classic means "good" or just that it was around in the early 1990s.
Sarke – Vorunah
We all want to love anything with the enigmatic Nocturno Culto on it. In fact, many of us were hoping he would pull off a Nemesis Divina where his skills converted an unexceptional band into a relative masterpiece. Not so on Sarke — his performance is phoned in, mainly because these songs are sparse, undeveloped, and entirely derivative of their influences in a 1989 way. In fact, the whole CD has the vibe of a collection of songs that have been kicked around since they got written in the 1980s, finally put onto vinyl years after the genre has passed them by. You're familiar with these chord progressions and general rhythms, since many of them come out of punk rock and hard rock, and you're probably not unacquainted — unless you've been under a rock labeled BLACK METAL GO HOME for the last two decades — with Culto's interpretation of them. It's all quite vanilla; nothing to really be appalled at here except how little you care about this flat regurgitation of the past.
Drautran – Throne of the Depths
We live in a time of fools. Given no real truths to chew on, they raise themselves on lies, and make competing lies so they can be heard. Then they tell us what metal bands to listen to, and they cannot tell the difference between good music and derivative shit. They will, for example, convince themselves that Drautran is folk metal, when really it's indie rock songs dressed up in black metal chord forms with a little extra violence. Unlike metal songs, where riffs fit together and make sense, these are rock songs with some metal riffs dropped in between the sing-song verse chorus. They take their riffing inspiration from Enslaved's Frost but none of the compositional coherence is here. Listen to this if you want to distract yourself, fragment your concentration and dull your possibilities of ever understanding the difference between good music and crap.
Moëvöt – Abgzvoryathre
Every now and then, people who lack direction in life and so pay attention to surface features more than anything else, hoping to use these to justify their emptiness, will try to tell you how good a band is because it's unique and nuanced. Usually this includes some kind of infantilism, like extreme minimalism or incoherence. This tedious little recording fits the bill. People like it because it's obscure, kvlt, whatever… the truth is that it's melodically simplistic, goes nowhere in song development, and showcases no really unique ability except to waste your time. They try to eat up as much tape as possible with intros, chants, and very basic keyboard melodies, but basically there's nothing here. Maybe that's the artistic point — emptiness — but then again a blank tape would have been more effective, and pleasant.
Black Vomit – The Faithful Servant
Interesting approach by this Mexican band: take a more technical version of the full speed burst style semi-melodic black metal that Sarcofago made, and intersperse it with flowing keyboard-enhanced choruses in the style of countrymen Xibalba and Avzhia. The result suffers from the radical shift between two very identifiable poles, but the music although very basic develops gently through this style, and as a result is more credible than most of what we get sent here at the Dark Legions Archive Metal Reviews and CD Recycling Center. This is a band worth keeping an eye on.
Archgoat – The Light-Devouring Darkness
I'm convinced that a lot of contemporary death and black metal is music designed for children, because not only is it painfully simple and repetitive, but it also uses gentle rhythms of chord change — while playing at top speed. It's like listening to a fan slowly playing an early Mozart piece. This album is similar. Sounds a lot like Blasphemy meets Impaled Nazarene, with the lower register production and slamming tempo changes of Belial. So as a retrospective of Finnish metal technique it's great, but for anything else, it's kind of a droning lullaby. What excuses it is that this CD shows purpose in its songwriting, and captures a mood, but for many of us the droning outweighs its significance.
Cruciamentum – Convocation of Crawling Chaos
During the past two years, underground black metal shifted from emulating the early 1990s — fast melody — to emulating the late 1990s, specifically Demoncy's "Joined in Darkness." The Convocation EP does its best to revive that sound, with an injection of Finnish death metal and possibly American doom/death like Incantation, Winter and Infester. Although it keeps its goals limited, which is appropriate for a demo, this release shows promise in songwriting in that (a) every piece works together (b) together they create a vision of some idea, experience or emotion we can recognize from life itself and (c) while a good deal of it covers known death metal archetypes, it does so without borrowing straight from one source and so gives us a sense of exploring these ideas from a new angle. Low rasp voices, downtuned rigid guitars, and drumming that sounds like it's straight out of drone/hardcore punk fusion gives this CD a sense of growing out of the past toward something even more ancient.
Tags: ahab, akitsa, archgoat, Baroness, black funeral, black vomit, blood mortized, Cruciamentum, cryptopsy, decrepit birth, despised icon, drautran, jello biafra and the guantanamo school of medicine, junius, mefisto, moevot, orthrelm, sadistic metal reviews, sarke, star fucking hipsters, these are they, virus, vreid


Did you know that more wounded military personnel today are being saved on the battlefield, than any other time in our history, thanks to the care medics perform as well as more effective body armor? But those who are saved may suffer limb amputation, multiple limb amputation, serious head injuries, vision and hearing loss, traumatic brain injuries, post traumatic stress, and more.
The wounds they suffer will require life-long care. And once these men and women go from active duty to veteran status, their care will come from the Veterans Administration.
Perhaps many of us think that once a soldier is wounded, he or she will be forever taken care of. Sadly, tragically, that isn't the case in The United States.
Dr. Glasser sees these wounds first hand. He is both active as a doctor as well as an author attempting to spread the word to all of us, that these men and women suffer tremendous burdens when they return, and they need, they deserve tremendous support.
We can easily argue over the fact that they do or do not receive adequate care from the VA; we can argue over which political party will help them enough. I like a good argument, but in this case, arguing accomplishes nothing. No wounded veteran wins through our arguing.
Perhaps instead, like Dr. Glasser, we can get involved in helping them ourselves. There are many organizations, aside from the VA, that assist veterans daily. Some of them take donations, others need volunteers. I just want to tell you about one.
I first learned about Homes Four Our Troops (HFOT) a few years ago from a friend, whose father also happens to be a Vietnam veteran. I do not take credit for the information here about HFOT, I only want to spread the word about an amazing organization helping our veterans.
Their mission is simple, "To build mortgage-free, specially adapted homes nationwide for severely injured Veterans post-9/11, to enable them to rebuild their lives." The homes are built where the veteran chooses to live, with their specific injuries in mind. HFOT wants to help the veteran and the veteran's family focus on recovery and living meaningful lives.
"Since 2004, HFOT has built 225 specially adapted homes nationwide." Their goal is to build a home for every Veteran who qualifies for one of their homes.
Their mission may be simple, but to accomplish it, as a non-profit organization, HFOT needs help in the form of donations, fundraisers, and volunteers. You can visit their Ways to Support Our Mission section to see how you can offer support. If you like to run, you can join a Run for HFOT. You can even simply purchase items from their online store.
I urge you to visit their website and read the Stories that Inspire. And I challenge you, dare we become a nation that shares the weight of their burdens as our own, or will we remain one that allows the veterans' burdens to be carried only by the military, even as we reap the protections our military provides?
How Will My Biracial Child Be Accepted In The Future?


jSlack is a Java library to easily integrate your operations with Slack. Currently, this library supports the following APIs.Check the latest version on the Maven Central repository.
This is a Slack Real Time Messaging API client for Elixir. You'll need a Slack API token which can be retrieved from the Web API page or by creating a new bot integration. Add Slack to your mix.exs dependencies function.
A terminal interface for Slack. Create your Legacy Slack API token.
This library allows an application to connect to Slack to receive and send messages from any channel as if it were a slack client. The main purpose of this library is to build Slack bots able to react to channel events without having to configure any web hook.
A basic client for Slack.com, which can optionally connect to the Slack Real Time Messaging (RTM) API.Whether you're building a custom app for your team, or integrating a third party service into your Slack workflows, Slack Developer Kit for Python allows you to leverage the flexibility of Python to get your project up and running as quickly as possible.
A WeeChat native client for Slack.com. Provides supplemental features only available in the web/mobile clients such as: synchronizing read markers, typing notification, threads (and more)! Connects via the Slack API, and maintains a persistent websocket for notification of events. wee-slack doesn't use the Slack IRC gateway. If you currently connect via the gateway, you should probably remove the server definition.
GNU Emacs client for Slack. You can see some gifs on the wiki.
This is a copy of the files used to generate the Slack API documentation at https://api.slack.com/. It can be followed to see changes in our API documentation over time. We appreciate bug reports and proposals for changes to our API docs, but because this is a mirror of an internal slack repository we cannot directly merge pull requests.
This is Node.js library for easy operation with Slack API. It also exposes all opportunities of Slack's Real Time Messaging API.
Slack☆Stack is multi-column/multi-row slack client to overview many channels at a glance. Icons made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com is licensed by CC 3.0 BY.
Slacker is a simple weekend project CLI interface to Slack. This is not a library and is not yet intended to be developed on top of. It's not even very good. This is just a simple, silly command line Slack client. But if you live in tmux or the command line like me, you might just like it. Right now this is a goof project. But if the world loves it and wants to contribute to it, then I will maintain the app and make it a little more robust. Currently there's no testing, autoloading, no options, documentation, logging, or any niceties that a real app should enjoy. I will build those things if the project ends up warranting it, and that's all up to you.
Read the full documentation for all the lovely details.This module is a wrapper around the Slack RTM and Web APIs.
SlackKit makes it easy to build Slack apps in Swift. It's intended to expose all of the functionality of Slack's Real Time Messaging API as well as the web APIs that are accessible to bot users. SlackKit also supports Slack's OAuth 2.0 flow including the Add to Slack and Sign in with Slack buttons, incoming webhooks, slash commands, and message buttons.
A simple PHP package for sending messages to Slack with incoming webhooks, focussed on ease-of-use and elegant syntax. Note: this package is no longer being actively maintained. Then create an incoming webhook on your Slack account for the package to use. You'll need the webhook URL to instantiate the client (or for the configuration file if using Laravel).


Interests: Theoretical computer science, computational biology, algorithms, history of computing, machine learning.
Interests: Computer vision, machine learning, scientific applications, multimedia data.
Interests: Programming languages, compilers, intellectual property protection of software, domain-specific search engines.
Interests: Compilers, program analysis and optimization, programming language implementation.
Interests: Software engineering, web development, program analysis, computer science education.
Interests: Geometric pattern machining, realistic input models, geographics information science and spatial databases, algorithms for mobile robots.
Interests: Operating systems, multiprocessor architecture and instruction-level parallelism, design of high-performance systems.
Interests: Scalable storage systems, network file systems, and distributed operating systems.
Interests: Information visualization, high performance computing.
Interests: Computational biology, algorithm design and implementation, combinatorial optimization.
Interests: Graph drawing and information visualization, algorithm design and data organization, geometric algorithms.
Interests: Visualization, geometric modeling, topological analysis, mesh generation, and computer graphics.
Interests: Operating systems, computer architecture. virtualization, and emulation.
Interests: Parallel and distributed computing, operating systems, and run-time systems.
Interests: Computer Science education, database management systems.
Interests: Computer science education, object-oriented programming and design, agile software development, patterns.
Interests: Programming language design and implementation, computer science education.
Interests: Computer science education and computer science outreach.
Interests: Programming language, compilers, cloud computing, information aggregation.
Interests: Data visualization, data analysis, computer graphics.
Interests: Software technologies, communications systems, compilers, programming languages, algorithms.
Interests: Science of computing, temporal databases, data semantics, query languages, database management systems.
Interests: High performance computing, compilers including use of the polyhedral model, parallel programming models, scientific computing, and software engineering.
Interests: Computer networks, Internet routing architecture and protocols, Internet topology, multicast.
Interests: Natural language processing, artificial intelligence.
Interests: 3D and stereoscopic displays, human computer interaction, virtual and augmented interactions.
Interests: Computer networking, protocol design for wireless systems, media streaming, sensor networks, performance evaluation.
Interests: Computer networking, network security, wireless security, privacy-enhancing technologies, cyber-physical system security.
Interests: Enterprise Data Management. Semantic Interoperability among Heterogeneous Data Sources. Biological Data Integration. Semantic Modeling Data Provenance and Quality.
Interests: Optical, wireless, and sensor networks.
Interests: Distributed systems, highly dependable computing.
Advises: Undergraduate students (prospective and current).
Advises: Graduate students (prospective and current).


text:
Q: Pushfoward of measures Lipschitz continuous in total variation Let $X,Y$ and $Z$ be metric spaces and $f:X\times Y\to Z$ be a measurable map. Suppose that we are given a probability measure $\mu$ on $Y$, and define a stochastic kernel
$$
  \kappa(x,C):=\mu(\{y:f(x,y)\in C\}) = \mu(f_x^{-1}(C))
$$
for each $x\in X$ and measurable $C\subseteq Z$. I wonder when $\kappa$ is Lipschitz continuous in the total variation metric, that is how to find good bounds on $\sup_{C}|\kappa(x,C) - \kappa(x',C)|$ if we know the distance between $x$ and $x'$,
here the supremum is taken over all measurable subsets of $Z$.
One idea that I have is to use the fact that
$$
  |\kappa(x,C) - \kappa(x',C)| = \left|\mu\left(f_x^{-1}(C)\right) -  \mu\left(f_{x'}^{-1}(C)\right)\right|\leq\mu\left(f_x^{-1}(C)\Delta f_{x'}^{-1}(C)\right)
$$
where $\Delta$ denote the symmetric difference of sets. However, I think we need to require that $f$ has nice inverses: e.g. when $f(x,y)$ does not depend on $y$, then $\kappa(x)$ are Dirac measures, so obviously no Lipschitz continuity unless $f$ is also independent of $x$.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
History for Young Learners (2)
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Historical Overview of World War II (17)
World War II Maps (3)
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World War II: Operation Barbarossa" (series) (2)
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The Battle of Russia Pt. 5 of 9
From YouTube, produced by War Classics Collection
The Battle of Russia from the War Classics Collection. "Here we discover Russia's valiant resistance to invasion throughout its history and how that strength of character was key to their determination to prevail against the seemingly unstoppable forces of Nazi Germany in the bloodiest battles of World War II. The film is a wonderful compilation of authentic newsreel footage from both the US Signal Corps and various Soviet resources."
Ages: 14 - 18 License: Proprietary Owner: War Classics Collection Found by Barb

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text:
Products>Systematic Theology (3 vols.)
Systematic Theology (3 vols.)
by Wolfhart Pannenberg
Eerdmans
Digital list price: $136.99
Wolfhart Pannenberg is widely regarded as one of the foremost theologians in the world today. Respected by his peers and critics, Pannenberg's treatise on the dogmatics of Christianity is seen as one of greatest achievements in twentieth-century theology and a timeless work that will continue to challenge, teach, and ignite theological studies for decades to come.
Noted for his association with "high-church" intellectualism, the writings of Wolfhart Pannenberg offer a new perspective to your library of Christian theology and dogmatics. He is noted for his intellect and interdisciplinary approach in his studies and his expositions are cited amongst the most respected works in contemporary theology. Pannenberg's Systematic Theology will continue to benefit you and your studies for years to come as a part of your theology library. Specifically focused on the explanation of key Christian doctrines, this set is a very important addition to your Logos Bible Software library!
Please note: these three volumes will download as a single resource into your digital library.
"But in any case, whether inside the Christian church or outside it, and even in the so-called natural knowledge of God, no knowledge of God and no theology are conceivable that do not proceed from God and are not due to the working of his Spirit." (Volume 1, Page 3)
"The fact that God's care for his people can also be expressed in terms of a mother's love shows clearly enough how little there is any sense of sexual distinction in the understanding of God as Father." (Volume 1, Page 261)
"The theologian is the divinely inspired proclaimer of divine truth and theology is the proclamation. This idea lived on in later Christian usage." (Volume 1, Page 1)
"In my view the first task of a philosophical theology is to fix its intellectual point of departure in the historical revelation of God." (Volume 1, Page xii)
"Recognizing the finitude and inappropriateness of all human talk about God is an essential part of theological sobriety." (Volume 1, Page 55)
Through careful argument and often profound and detail analyses, Pannenberg shows how the Christian doctrine of God illumines our understanding of the world and humanity. His treatment of creation anthropology, and Christology continues the brilliance and erudition of the first volume.
—Francis Schussler Fiorenza, Harvard Divinity School
. . .dense, demanding, often provocative, rarely comfortable, and built upon a non-evangelical doctrine of revelation.
—Foundations 47 (Autumn 2001)
This three-volume work is the most important systematic theology to come from the Continent since Barth. It places Pannenberg in the forefront of living theologians, and will no doubt be discussed, debated, and criticized by many.
Volume 1: Translated by Geoffrey W. Bromiley
The Logos edition of Pannenberg's Systematic Theology equips you for better study with cutting-edge functionality and features. Logos Bible Software gives you the tools you need to use your digital library effectively and efficiently, searching for verses, finding Scripture references and citations instantly, and performing word studies. Additionally, important terms link to dictionaries, encyclopedias, commentaries, theology texts, and other resources in your library. Perform powerful searches to find exactly what you're looking for. Take the discussion with you using tablet and mobile apps. With Logos Bible Software, the most efficient and comprehensive research tools are in one place, so you get the most out of your study.
Translator: Geoffrey W. Bromiley
Publisher: Eerdmans
Sample Pages: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 7 | 10
Marked by a creative blend of philosophical, historical, anthropological, and exegetical analysis, Volume 1 focuses on the Christian doctrine of God, offering original material on the concept of truth, the nature of revelation, language about God, the nature of the Trinity, and the public aspect of theology.
Ranking alongside of Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics and Paul Tillich's Systematic Theology, Pannenberg's Systematic Theology is unsurpassed in its combination of historical, ecumenical sensitivity, and systematic rigor. It displays its creativity in its respect and retrieval of the Christian tradition. A monumental work of such profundity marks a milestone in systematic theology. Its publication in English places every American theologian in debt to Eerdmans Publishing Company.
Whoever said that the giants of theology are all gone is in for a surprise. Pannenberg's long-awaited magnum opus is a monumental achievement destined to provide a new touchstone of theological scholarship for decades to come. His Systematic Theology is meticulous in historical detail, rigorous in logical argumentation, and creative in relating the great tradition of Christian thought to modern experience without 'rash adjustment to the spirit of the age.' It is scientific theology at its best.
—Roger E. Olson, Bethel College, St. Paul, Minnesota
In a day in which theologians readily cater to current trends and whims, Wolfhart Pannenberg's attempt to advance the classical theological quest for the universal truth of God is refreshing. With his Systematic Theology he is at last moving beyond methodological questions to the development of his own theological system.… Volume One reveals Pannenberg at his best - conversant in exegetical studies, the history of doctrine, and modern thinking. It also raises to a new level the ongoing dialogue between Pannenberg and his critics. When completed, his Systematic Theology will no doubt prove to be a standard work in the task of reestablishing the voice of theology in the wider intellectual discussion.
—Stanley J. Grenz, Regent College
Pannenberg combines extraordinary erudition with fine analytical skills. In addition, he is an imaginative and original thinker of the first rank. A lifetime of creative work now comes to fruition in what is likely to prove the greatest systematic theology of his generation.
—John B. Cobb, Jr., School of Theology at Claremont
Volume 2 of Pannenberg's magnum opus moves beyond the highly touted discussion of systematic prolegomena and theology proper in Volume 1 to commanding, comprehensive statements concerning creation, the nature of man, Christology, and salvation. Throughout, Pannenberg brings to bear the vast command of historical and exegetical knowledge and philosophical argumentation for which he is well known.
Here is an opportunity to observe and interact with the greatest theological mind of our time at work doing genuine systematic theology. The many segments of Professor Pannenberg's thought that have been developed in separate treatises over the years are here brought together in a coherent whole. He does not hesitate to wrestle with the most difficult theological problems. The reader will not only learn theological methodology but also be exposed to the history of Christian thought on each of the major issues of theology. This is not easy reading, but clearly worth the effort expended.
—Millard Erickson, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary
Through careful argument and often profound and detailed analyses, Pannenberg shows how the Christian doctrine of God illumines our understanding of the world and humanity. His treatment of creation, anthropology, and Christology continues the brilliance and erudition of the first volume.
Theo-logy is about God, and to speak seriously about God is to consider everything. Few thinkers in Christian history have had the courage, learning, and devotion to undertake a comprehensive account of God, the world, and humanity as illuminated by revelation. Wolfhart Pannenberg is one of them. The second volume of the systematics helps us understand why, if our Lord's return is delayed, thinkers a hundred and more years from now will be taking account of Pannenberg.
—Richard John Neuhaus, President, Religion and Public Life
The second installment of Pannenberg's monumental Systematic Theology measures up in every way to the lofty standard set forth in volume one. His treatment of the creation of the world, the human situation, and God's provision of reconciliation in Christ leads the reader along an engaging path of theological inquiry. As always, Pannenberg brings together the best of biblical scholarship, the wealth of the Christian theological tradition, and the concerns fo the modern sciences. Theologians of a variety of persuasions will find his magnum opus engaging and challenging reading.
—Stanley J. Grenz, Carey/Regent College
In Volume 3 Pannenberg completes his theological project with the exposition of the Christian doctrines of the Holy Spirit, salvation, the church, and the eschatological hope. At the heart of this volume lies the theme of the church; it not only comprises the largest chapter but is intimately related to each of the other doctrines—to the Spirit as an eschatological gift and to individual salvation as a sign of its future consummation. Throughout this work Pannenberg brings to bear the vast historical and exegetical knowledge and keen philosophical argumentation for which he is well known.
With the appearance of this long-anticipated volume, Wolfhart Pannenberg's complete systematic presentation of Christian theology is finally available to an English-speaking audience. The third installment of his magnum opus unfolds the pneumatology pervading his entire theology, reveals his deeply felt concern for the ecumenical church, and sets forth his innovative and thought-provoking eschatology. The work of this premier theologian of the late twentieth century will be discussed for years to come.
A masterpiece of theological scholarship and Christian reflection. Pannenberg concludes his Systematic Theology with an exposition of salvation, the church, sacraments, ministry, election, and eschatology. He brings originality and creativity to the arrangement and exposition of the topics while at the same time retrieving the meaning and significance of traditional Christian beliefs and practices. In addition to his immense historical knowledge coupled with systematic rigor, Pannenberg brings a sensitivity to controversial ecumenical issues that makes this volume indispensable for Catholic as well as Protestant theologians. This three-volume Systematic Theology will become a theological classic for the twenty-first century.
This volume, dealing predominantly with the church and the sacraments, brilliantly rounds out Pannenberg's systematics. Particularly rewarding are his discussions of Lutheran-Catholic controversies of the sixteenth century and of the rapprochement resulting from the ecumenical dialogues of the twentieth century. This learned and lucid treatise will probably win a place alongside the classic dogmatic syntheses of Barth, Tillich, and several other writers of genius.
—Avery Dulles, S.J., Fordham University
This third volume of Pannenberg's Systematic Theology consummates the teaching career of the greatest living theologian in the world today .… With this work—encyclopedic in scope and profoundly grounded in Scripture and classical Christianity—Pannenberg has constructed a vision of the church capable of meeting the challenges of the next millennium.
—Carl E. Braaten, Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology
Title: Systematic Theology (3 vols.)
Author: Wolfhart Pannenberg
About Wolfhart Pannenberg
Wolfhart Pannenberg (1928–2014) was a German Christian theologian. Born in Stettin, Germany (which is now Szczecin Poland), Pannenberg was baptized at as an infant into the Lutheran Church. Despite his baptism, Pannenberg had virtually no contact with the church in his early years. Some time in his youth though, he had an intensely religious experience that he called his "light experience." Pannenberg wanted to understand this experience and began to search through the works of great philosophers and religious thinkers. While in High School he encountered a literature teacher who had been part of the Confessing Church during World War II. He encouraged Pannenberg to take a hard look at Christianity. At this time Pannenberg experienced an "intellectual conversion" and decided that Christianity was the best available religious option. This propelled him into his vocation as a theologian.
Quency Wallace
Pannenburg is not for the faint of heart in Theology. Widely read Scholars and Students can appreciate his intelligence and ability to translate God, The Son, Eschatology, and other Systematic subjects with a fresh perspective that does not seem to copy other 20th century evangelicals---He forges his own path anew while remaining true to subtantive nature of the Holy Writ. He writes like a forth century Scholastic and Early Church Father, But by the time you read his third volume, One is convinced his writing is born of the crucible of his prayer life and service to the Kingdom.
I finally got around to reading it in full, and I must say I found it rather disappointing. I would rate the volumes individually: vol. 1 = 2 stars, vol. 2 = 3 stars, vol. 3 = 4 stars. In the first volume in particular, Pannenberg relies entirely too much on philosophy and other disciplines. Little is done to explicate the doctrine of God in a way that is relatable and usable. To be frank, much of it comes off as a show of erudition, and unless one is very widely read, practically incomprehensible. Like many others, Pannenberg's writing and thought improves once he moves beyond the doctrine of God and enters other loci where natural theology is less helpful and one is forced to draw more heavily on the Bible and Christian tradition. I found the sections on ecclesiology and eschatology in the third volume to be the best, and in soteriology his discussion of the law and Gospel was excellent. Pannenberg's significance as a great 20th century theologian is undeniable, yet the audience for which it is suitable is rather small. Beginning students of theology should avoid it entirely less they get put off of the discipline of systematics entirely; it will not help them in grasping the basics of doctrine. Likewise, intermediate students are likely to find it of limited value. Advanced ones (read: higher than M.Div.) may find it helpful in researching specific topics in which Pannenberg does an admirable of getting to the heart of issues and provides excellent references, in both quantity and quality, to key primary sources.
Robert J Richardson
MIchael James
Ralph A. Abernethy III
John Lawless, Th.D.
Excellent scholarship. his writings are sometimes hard to follow; but, the ardent fan of Pannenberg will carry on. I especially enjoyed Volume 1 Chapter Six on Essence and unity of the Diety.
Caleb Koo
Excellent...A Systematic Theology that explains Christianity in 20th century.
Paul Coleman
Steven T. Lane
Fred Anderson


text:
Q: Python parallel, semaphore leak warning and abort without traceback I am running a parallelized grid search in python using joblib.Parallel. My script is relatively straighforward:
# Imports for data and classes...

    Parallel(n_jobs=n_jobs)(
        delayed(biz_model)(
            ...
        )
        for ml_model_params in grid
        for past_horizon in past_horizons
    )

When I run it in my local machine, it seems to run fine though I can only test it on small datasets for memory reasons. Yet when I try to run it on a remote Oracle Linux server It begins some runs and after a while it outputs:
/u01/.../resources/python/lib/python3.6/multiprocessing/semaphore_tracker.py:143: UserWarning: semaphore_tracker: There appear to be 1 leaked semaphores to clean up at shutdown
  len(cache))

Aborted!

I tried to reproduce it locally, and with small experiments it does run. The unparallelized script also runs and the number of jobs (either low on high) doesn't prevent the bug from happening.
So my question is, given that there is no traceback, is there a way to make joblib or Parallel more verbose? I just cannot quite get an idea of where to look at possible fail reasons without a traceback. Obviously if some possible reason for the abort can be inferred from just this (and I fail to grasp it) I thank the notice very much.
Thanks in advance.

A: Using a logger, catching the exception, logging it, flushing the logs and raising it again, usually makes the trick
# Imports for data and classes...
# Creates logger

    Parallel(n_jobs=n_jobs)(
        try:
            delayed(biz_model)(
                ...
            )
            for ml_model_params in grid
            for past_horizon in past_horizons
        except BaseException as e:
            logger.exception(e)
            # you can use a for here if you had more than a handler
            logger.handlers[0].flush()
            raise e
    )


text:
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The Counseling Fund is designed to provide early access to mental health and addiction counseling for entertainment technology professionals by assisting with the associated financial burdens.
For individuals seeking to initiate or support ongoing counseling, the funds are issued as a subsidy on a per visit basis giving the grant recipient the flexibility to change providers if they find their initial choice isn't working well for them and, most importantly, encouraging a longer-term client/therapist relationship. Funds are also available to individuals entering an in-patient or intensive out-patient recovery program or those experiencing an emergency in-patient mental health event.
Behind the Scenes was approached by Karen Sherman with the idea of creating the fund, "I'm a choreographer whose day job is as a stage technician; I've worked both sides of the stage for over 20 years. Stage technicians tend to view themselves as invincible, working as they do in a physically demanding, dangerous industry that shuts them away in a darkened theater for days, nights and weekends, and through it all asks them to remain unseen and unheard. While depression, anxiety, and substance abuse occur across every profession, many aspects of the stage production industry reinforce these problems."
A few years ago, Karen began working on a piece called Soft Goods to highlight this issue. Structured as a live load-in, tech, and rehearsal for a show that never happens, she has developed it in collaboration with an ensemble of technicians and dancers, all of whom appear in the performance in their actual roles. Soft Goods has been co-commissioned by the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), P.S. 122 (NYC), and the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA (Los Angeles).
Karen commented, "Most people think of theaters as places that bring people together but often that's at the expense of its workers. I've lost many colleagues to suicide and alcoholism, including during the making of this very show. In an effort to add to the project a tangible, real-life resource addressing the issue, I approached Behind the Scenes about creating this dedicated fund. I recognize that for anyone who is struggling, the hardest part is admitting they need help and finding resources. But I didn't want money to be anyone's final excuse for not following through – especially for freelancers like me who toil in an already impoverished art economy, making financial stability unpredictable. There are many things we can do to improve our industry and make it more survivable. This is one."
Copyright 2019, Behind the Scenes Foundation. All Rights Reserved.


KPAC has been organizing theatre workshop and amateur drama competitions periodically. Many activities are conducted to promote the children's theatre. On april 14, 2007 the 'KPAC Children's Theatre' was formally inaugurated. In connection with its inauguration, a children's drama workshop was also conducted from 15-19 April. Prof. S Ramanujam was the Camp Director. Kavalam Narayana Panicker, Dr. AK Nambiar (Secretary, Kerala folk Lore Academy), CL Jose, Purushan Kadalundi (Kerala Sahithya Academy), M Mukundan (President, Kerala Sahithya Academy), Dr. Babu Paul IAS (former Chief secretary of kerala), Madhu (Cine Artist), Miss. Navya Nair (Cine Artist) and 6 Cabinet Ministers of kerala interacted with the 60 children in the camp during the 5 days.


Jet Kaiser is a cinematographer and editor who got his start in the video industry at a young age by producing wedding films.
While still producing wedding films all over the globe, he has since expanded into the commercial/corporate world of video, working on a range of projects. Jet lives in Greencastle, Indiana with his wife, Dani, who is also a videographer and editor.


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