Despite my love of heavy metal and punk, I never really got down with hardcore, basically because I’m allergic to overt machismo. If all hardcore was made by 8 year-old girls, I might have a different opinion about the genre.

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If you crave a big dose of metal without the guttural growls, Akaname’s self-titled third album hits the spot. This instrumental opus is epic without being brutal, rhythmically dextrous without devolving into mathcore, and musically layered without succumbing to Scandinavian-style symphonic bombast. Enjoy this compelling, dark adventure at midnight. And play it loud.

How does a little Asian guy from suburban New York become as fascinated with hunting, heavy metal, skinheads, and New Jersey as I am? I don’t know, but Adam Krause seems to have the same interests. Maybe we should go on a friend date.

Varg Vikernes, aka Burzum, finally emerged from prison last year and immediately set to work recording a new album. Half the metal world has waited with bated breath to see whether post-prison Burzum would be a continuation of the strange, awkward, ‘ambient’ sound Vikernes developed while incarcerated, or would it be a return to the genre that he helped pioneer. Turns out, old Varg has picked up right where he left off seventeen years ago, screeching his bearded head off as if he were a church-burning teenager again. Good to see the old Count Grishnackh back! Seriously, though, this is a great album.

The Estonian heavy metal ensemble Winny Puhh was born in 2004 in the city of Polva. Their big hit was Noodles and the Victory of the Sour Milk, a hit from 2006. Now you can watch the video clip of their song Peegelporand, directed by Ove Musting [below].

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From the various responses I got from my previous post about hipster hate being misguided, most people defined a hipster as people who are very young (let’s say below 25), live off of their parents, and don’t contribute to the scene they glom onto. The problem I have with this is that in my personal experience, this is not how most people define hipsters.

Vice Magazine is usually derided as being a magazine made for and by obnoxious, overly irreverent hipsters, yet one cannot deny that they embody a certain scene altogether, and indeed contribute to the contemporary cultural landscape via their record label, their promotion of certain artists, and their video blogs covering everything from the Beijing rock scene and heavy metal in Iraq to sex tourism in Japan and the gigantic island of discarded plastic floating in the Pacific.

Indeed, Vice darlings Terry Richardson and the recently deceased Dash Snow are seen as the epitome of hipsterdom, yet Richardson is well into his 40s and both he and Snow are/were prolific photographers that most certainly were capable of paying their own rents in addition to supporting their massive drug habits. Many of the prolific artists in Baltimore, where I am, would be described as hipsters, regardless of how well they support themselves or the earnestness of their art, merely because they have mullets and child-molester glasses.

Still others who responded to my post suggested that irony was integral to the definition of a hipster, yet hip-hop kids today wear non-prescription nerd glasses, punks in the 70s wore torn school uniforms and swastikas, and peace-loving hippies before them wore army jackets, all as a sort of ironic inversion of what those cultural signifiers originally meant. When Kurt Cobain began the song Territorial Pissings with a line from The Youngbloods’ Get Together, he did it sarcastically.

A tattoo of Elmo may be retarded and intended as ironic, but had Sid Vicious grown up with Sesame Street, he too may well have gotten a similar image etched into his skin. That today’s 20- and 30-somethings have grown up more saturated with self-referential pop culture than any generation before is not their fault, and the sentiment behind a silly mustache may not be too far off from David Bowie wearing women’s boots, even if it is less classy.

Finally, I should qualify what I meant when I said that hatred towards hipsters was dangerously close to hatred towards immigrants – I didn’t mean to equate the two in terms of racial bigotry, but in both cases, people draw a line between who they consider insiders and who they consider outsiders. This line depends on a lot of stereotypes, generalizations, and assumptions that while not as virulent as ethnic hatred, are still on the same spectrum of reactionary prejudice.

For nearly two decades, Mark Riddick has done illustrations, album covers, and t-shirts for metal bands such as Devourment, Hirax, Deceased, Kataklysm, Nunslaughter, Slayer, and countless others. No one draws rotting corpses, severed goat heads, or piles of maggots quite like him.

The metal flow chart that made the rounds recently fell flat in my book. But these heavy metal laundry tips by WMUC metal DJ Scott Maxwell is pretty spot-on: ‘Allow your clothes to soak in waters as cold as the rivers of Blashyrkh itself, without agitation’. Comic gold.

Chances are, if you’re into metal at all, you’ve seen some of Christophe Szpajdel’s work. The Belgian forestry engineer has designed some of the genre’s most recognizable logos – Emperor, Borknagar, Old Man’s Child, and Enthroned among many others. A recent Vice Magazine spread elicited some pretty ignorant responses deriding his designs as unreadable. What the uninitiated fail to comprehend, however, is that heavy metal logos say everything one needs to know about a band (whether they’re thrash, death, black, or grindcore, and whether they’re Satanic, pagan, punk influenced, neo-Nazi, or humor-driven), and sometimes illegibility is the whole point.

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There are two kinds of metalheads: those that are drawn by the hyper masculine, angry, aggressive aspect of metal, and those that are drawn by its Wagnerian drama, themes of pagan nature worship, and disdain towards modern civilization. The line between the latter and hippies is quite thin. I am one of these sorts of metal fans, which is why I also really love bands like The Lickets, an empyrean, luminously beautiful, experimental folk collective. They make music that makes you feel like a tiny speck floating in the vast oceans of existence, perfect for a night of star gazing, just like Burzum’s fourth album, Filosifem.

I almost forgot — metal is really about being drunk, pissed, offensive, and satanic. I have Bestial Mockery to thank for this. Their no-frills black thrash is barebones and snarling without being too dead-pan serious. These guys from Sweden are clearly having a blast worshiping the Dark One in the tradition of old-school bands like Venom, early Bathory, and Sodom. Nothing too original here, but it’s fun as hell.

Who said monks have no fun? This clip of an Italian heavy metal monk thrashing about with his motley gang of musical offsiders is about the strangest thing I’ve seen. Frock and roll? Ha! A brand new sub genre.

Metal icon Peter Tägtgren has produced the harshest and most underground music of the European metal scene — Immortal, Dimmu Borgir, Celtic Frost, among many others. His own band, Hypocrisy, is one of the most revered melodic death metal bands in the world. Lately, however, Tägtgren has been creeping into the mainstream with his solo project, Pain, a pop-rock, industrial metal outfit that specializes in radio-friendly, tongue-in-cheek anthems that still retain the dark edginess of the Nordic metal god’s earlier work.

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Why are people wasting breath and bandwidth arguing over the completely meaningless new Metallica album when there’s so much other fantastic new metal out there? Strapping Young Lad are a bit more polished than the bands I usually listen to, but frontman Devin Townsend is completely insane, and it comes through in his over-the-top singing and completely spastic song structures. This is really inspired music.

Pre-eminent Norwegian Viking metal band Enslaved has evolved over the years from a straight-forward black metal band into a moody, post-rock outfit without completely abandoning their roots. Their last few albums have seen a shift towards English lyrics, sweeping and majestic instrumentals, and diverse influences — everything from Pink Floyd and ’70s prog and psych rock to ’80s goth and shoegaze pop. Their most recent effort, Vertebrae, is their most contemplative and mellow to date, utilizing electronic elements, mid-tempo rhythms, enchanting harmonized vocals, and spaced out guitar parts than ever before. This is not to say that they have lost their edge — frontman Grutle Kjellson’s gravelly screech is as distinctive and harsh as ever, providing a textural contrast from the warm glow of the music. There are still some more orthodox metal moments on the record, such as on “New Age,” but they quickly veer back into the band’s newer sound.

Listen to the Enslaved song, The Dead Stare.

The Sound of Animals Fighting again unleash their experimental blend of progressive electronic hardcore rock. Known only by their animal names — Nightingale, Walrus, Lynx, and Skunk — and wearing masks for their rare live appearances, TSOAF have released two albums. Their latest, The Ocean and The Sun, offers an intense mix of genres, as delicate Brazilian-inflected melodies careen into shattering guitar workouts.

A couple weeks ago, some buddies of mine in the black metal band Krallice played a show organized by Matthew Barney (a notorious metalhead) at the Deitch space in Long Island City. Whole pigs were roasted, and the head of one became a stage prop for the Texas band Dagon. The highlight of the evening was the mighty Inquisition, a fantastic Seattle-based black metal duo from Colombia. I’ve never heard live black metal sound this good (who knew a huge art warehouse would be so perfect for blast beats and tremolo picking?), and the crowd — a strange mix of leather-clad biker-looking types, South American metal kids, and tote-bag-sporting hipsters — went nuts. Barney himself meandered through the crowd, looking like a dad that has allowed his kids to drink beer in the basement, and though Bjork was nowhere to be seen, my companion, who has more than a passing resemblance to the Icelandic pixie, received many a double take. Check out Jae Saam’s photostream for some more photos of the evening.

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Vikings terrorized and dominated Britain for the better part of three centuries, so its not surprising that there’s a dearth of viking metal bands in the UK. What the Brits did have, however, were pirates — Alestorm are a Scottish Finntroll-style metal band that sings about treasure, wenches, and battle on the open seas. Next time you have a pirates vs. ninjas party, put these guys on and watch as terrified ninjas cower like the landlubbers they are.