I was going to give Dawn of Winter‘s The Peaceful Dead (Shadow Kingdom) the regular ol’ review treatment, but after checking out the lyrics for opener “The Music of Despair,” they’re worthy of an inspection all on their own. Here goes:

With lyrics by vocalist Gerrit Philipp Mutz and music by guitarist/vocalist J?rg Michael Knittel, “The Music of Despair” is a celebration of all things doom, shouting out artists like Penance, Mercyful Fate, Withcfinder General, Reverend Bizarre, Candlemass and others while proclaiming doom metal’s highest order. Like Saint Vitus‘ “Children of Doom” or even “Born too Late,” Sabbath‘s “Children of the Grave” or “Under the Sun/Everything Comes and Goes,” Dawn of Winter‘s track stumbles into the epic without realizing the solidness of its footing. At over seven minutes, it begins The Peaceful Dead — an otherwise solid but not necessarily landmark traditional doom record — on a note of aural celebration. Mutz is saying doom saved his life when he says in the chorus,

Doom is the soul of metal
Primordial and pure
Doom is the true essence of living
Immortal
My cure

It’s a story you hear time and again from doomers across the planet. No matter what country you’re from or culture you belong to, if you’re doom, that’s it. We’re friends. It’s an intercontinental band of social misfits and deviants — which can and has led to plenty of awkward conversations — but the community developed around the genre is like none other. Even hardcore, which has been treated to books and documentary films not yet afforded to the doom scene, sees rivalries between its various regional factions. If a Maryland doomer and a Chicago doomer were to get into a brawl (not saying it can’t happen), chances are it’s not because one disagrees with the way the other is “representin’.”

Even the biggest 1%er out there is still a social creature. We have families, towns, gangs, support groups, coworkers, etc., because people need the stability and peace that only others can bring. This extends to doom just as it does to everything else. Like a lot of people, Mutz‘s experience seems to be one — at least if we take the account in “The Music of Despair” at its word, which for the sake of argument I will — in which he had no place for himself and finally found personal satisfaction and fulfillment in doom. In the song’s third verse, he conveys the comfort he receives from the music with the lines,

When my heart is filled with sorrow
And I wonder who I am
I put on some ancient Trouble
Some old Vitus
Pentagram

Mutz is conveying the sense that doom is there for him. The song ends with the line, “And I know I’ve found salvation/In the music of despair.” When the mainstream world has failed, doom has succeeded. It has given Mutz, and many others, a feeling of inner peace. Think of the word “salvation” and how it’s used here. Leaving aside the religious connotations, he’s literally saying doom saved him. “The Music of Despair,” in a way, is a love letter and appreciation, but at the same time, it’s also a message to others out there who would seek the same comforts. It’s preaching. Missionary, almost, as if to say, “Come with me and learn what I’ve learned.”

The sense of enhanced inner knowledge is nothing new in either doom or metal at large. In the aforementioned “Born too Late,” there appears the line, “But they don’t know the things I know,” and that’s about as straightforward as it gets. In a larger spectrum that prides itself on its intelligence relative to what surrounds it (i.e., “metal” in its sundry forms), doom posits itself as the older, the wiser incarnation. Whether he means to or not, Mutz incorporates this into “The Music of Despair” with the line “And then I learn and understand,” which appears following a reference to the band Solace that encapsulates the emotional belonging he feels when playing or listening to doom. In that way, as well as sonically, the song acknowledges metal’s history and doom’s legacy while simultaneously personalizing it in the form of a narrative. This is Mutz‘s story. But it’s also the story of many others. It’s also my story. Maybe it’s yours too.

There is beauty in the mourning
So much truth and tenderness
Let me celebrate the sabbath so black
The rites of candlemass

The band allusions here should be obvious, but if you look at the first two lines of the verse, “beauty,” “truth” and “tenderness” are hardly words which an outsider would ascribe to anything based around huge distorted guitars, wailing vocals and thundering drums playing at a tectonic pace, but from within it, Mutz looks out and describes not necessarily the music itself, but how it makes him feel. “There is beauty in the mourning” — not in the funeral or death itself, but the act of being sad. And he’s right. To feel anything deeply, whether it’s joy, anger, sadness or whathaveyou is a beautiful thing. It’s an act of artistry. And the mention of ritual in the last two lines, “celebrate the sabbath” and “the rites” only validates and underscores the idea of doom as a social community with its own mores and values.

“The Music of Despair” is a song that says probably more than it initially intended, Mutz as a lyricist probably starting out by thinking it would be cool to write about his favorite bands or how he’s a fan of the music as well as an artist making it, but the comments it makes are no less poignant for that. If anything, they’re all the more so, because in writing them, Mutz is coming from an honest, humble place. He “celebrates the sabbath,” and earlier in the song is “soothed by the angel witch.” Dawn of Winter‘s The Peaceful Dead hardly hinges on this track for its successes, though it certainly counts it among them. Nonetheless, “The Music of Despair” taps into the classically metal anthemic and offers one of the most truthful accounts of coming to doom I’ve come across. Kudos to Mutz and the band as a whole.

Tags: Dawn of Winter, Germany, Shadow Kingdom

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 5th, 2009 at 4:25 pm and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.