V&A Scraps Napalm Death Gig For Fear Decibel Levels Will Damage Sculptures 79
An anonymous reader writes "The Victoria and Albert Museum has cancelled an 'experimental' concert by a death metal rock band amid fears that the high decibel levels could destroy some of its most treasured artefacts, including Ming vases and priceless sculptures. The British band planned to play inside a specially-constructed ceramic sculpture with the idea that the piece would explode under the force of hits such as Order of the Leech and Fear, Emptiness, Despair"
I believe this "death metal rock" is known as "grindcore." Maybe they should book Manowar next.
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Smash the art smash the art!!!
They did, by cancelling the gig in which they smash the art. By doing so they can deconstruct the event of smashing the purpose-built sculpture.
It's pretty clever stuff.
Maybe the band should have been... (Score:4, Funny)
Disaster Area - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disaster_Area_%28fictional_band%29#Hotblack_Desiato
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Chapter Twenty-one
Down on the dry, red world of Kakrafoon, in the middle of the vast Rudlit Desert, the stage technicians were testing the sound system.
That is to say, the sound system was in the desert, not the stage technicians. They had retreated to the safety of Disaster Area's giant control ship which hung in orbit some four hundred miles above the surface of the planet, and they were testing the sound system from there. Anyone within five miles of the speaker silos wouldn't have survived the tuning up
What was the name of that band again? (Score:3)
The Who? Pink Floyd? Disaster Area????
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Diasater Area would have been preferential. Fortunately out city put in an ordinance not based on the sound level, which the bar was always under, but on how the sound effected objects in nearby areas. If vibration can be felt at another property, violations can be issued.
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Let me guess: The bar war there before you moved in?
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Pfft that's nothing. Here in Vancouver BC, people complain about noise from people partying at the beach across from their apartments. Damn city, how dare they put a natural beach across from a residential building!
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Loud cunts aren't really a part of the "natural beach."
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Actually they are.
Normal people make noise when they are having fun on the beach.
Assholes move into someplace and immediately demand it be changed to suit them. They also often think they own a beach just because they own the land above the high tide line.
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When you say 'vibration can be felt' do you mean 'detected by human senses' or 'detectable'? A busybody with a good optical interferometer could have a field day with the latter interpretation...
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I remember seeing "The Zombies" perform a reunion show in an old arts theater surrounded by an audience that looked for all getout like a milquetoast PTA meeting.
They decided to perform a few Argent numbers. Until the plaster started falling on them.
With today's sound systems you don't need to be Deathklok to damage some of these old buildings.
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In the late 60s, my parents saw some of the first performances of 'Hair' in the West End, at blistering volume. This eventually caused the theatre to collapse, around 1973 according to Wikipedia, and it's citation is here: http://www.thisistheatre.com/londontheatre/shaftesburytheatre.html [thisistheatre.com]
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I remember seeing a brass band play in the local church, in about 2000. Flakes of plaster fell from the roof. The church is between 200-1000 years old (Wikipedia is very unclear on this point), so I'm not surprised the V&A is concerned. I wonder why they booked the band in the first place.
I saw Laibach [youtube.com] play in the Turbine Hall in the Tate Modern last year. That was a fantastic gig, in what felt like a very appropriate location. The volume didn't matter, I'm sure the building (ex-power station) coul
You Suffer (Score:2)
Maybe they should just play You Suffer (the shortest song ever recorded at 1.316 seconds long) to see if the structure will hold.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Suffer [wikipedia.org]
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That's very fascinating! I wonder if you could use "You Suffer" (which is sufficiently short it can almost be considered an "impulse") to determine the impulse response of the sculpture, and somehow using the outcome of that to determine which other Napalm Death song is most likely to cause the structure to fail.
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Best sound balance (Score:5, Funny)
Regular concert goers judge that the best sound balance is usually to be heard from within large concrete bunkers some thirty-seven miles away from the stage, whilst the musicians themselves play their instruments by remote control from within a heavily insulated spaceship which stays in orbit around the planet - or more frequently around a completely different planet.
Great User Interface, though! (Score:4, Funny)
Every time you try to operate one of these weird black controls, which are labeled in black on a black background, a small black light lights up black to let you know you've done it.
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You know - I'd always assumed that the unwritten reasoning there was that the color spectrum was just outside the range of human perception. Not that it was just so silly that everything about the band was black.
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Unwritten?
===========
``Perhaps whoever designed it had eyes that responded to different wavelengths,'' offered Trillian.
``Or didn't have much imagination,'' muttered Arthur.
``Perhaps,'' said Marvin, ``he was feeling very depressed.''
In fact, though they weren't to know it, the decor had been chosen in honour of its owner's sad, lamented, and tax-deductible
condition.
===========
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Erm... wow. Some selective memory on my part!
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If you put your towel in your years, you'll be able to survive 0.45321 second longer than everyone around you.
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Very carefully as to not collapse the wave function that is the universe.
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Regular concert goers judge that the best sound balance is usually to be heard from within large concrete bunkers some thirty-seven miles away from the stage, whilst the musicians themselves play their instruments by remote control from within a heavily insulated spaceship which stays in orbit around the planet - or more frequently around a completely different planet.
As a regular concert goer of a couple of decades now, I feel I am qualified to throw in my two cents. I can say that music sounds best on a blistering hot summer day, in the middle of a field, in Tennessee, with a healthy helping of booze, a mean case of swampass, and about 80,000 close friends. Not what you were looking for, but that's what I like. Screw museums, anyway. They're for winter time, and nerds.
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Tennessee? I don't know. Sounds like an ominously high risk of the concert being for a country band.
Real reason for cancellation (Score:5, Funny)
The planned ceramic sculpture was was only built to 18cm scale instead of the agreed upon 18 meters.
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LOL..
it took a while for that one to sink in.
great work anonymous coward.
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modpoints!
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Proof, if I've ever seen it, that the metric system just doesn't work.
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I heard it was a puppet show scheduling conflict.
grindcore (Score:1)
GWAR... (Score:2)
Grindcore? (Score:1)
Grindcore: yes, it exists, and fits Napalm Death (Score:4, Informative)
Fellas,
Grindcore is a term for the hybrid between death metal and extreme punk hardcore. It grew out of the crust scene (Amebix, Discharge) and the thrash scene (Cryptic Slaughter, DRI, COC, MDC) of the early 1980s.
Coming just a few years later, it used punk style tunes with metal riffs and the "Motorhead-influenced" gravel voice noisy vocals.
All members of Napalm Death had previous experience in crust punk bands, and were tight with other crust punkers like Extreme Noise Terror, whose sound is very similar to Napalm Death's.
In their later years, 1991 and on, Napalm Death took on more influences from death metal bands. However, it is a mistake to consider them death metal, because in spirit and outlook, they're very much punk and choose to keep themselves separate from the metal community.
Read the motherfarkin' heavy metal FAQ:
http://www.deathmetal.org/faq [deathmetal.org]
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I always know when I'm listening to the wrong music, cause it has a "scene".....this works with music, cars, and just about anywhere else the word "scene" is used to indicate hip.
"Scene" essentially means "fans" or "hobbyists". You may as well apply the term to football, fishing, film or philately. Or anything else more than one person has an interest in.
(Can you give an example of music without a scene? One of my colleagues likes going to see operas, but he obviously has other friends who do the same, and they swap recommendations and go to concerts together. That's a 'scene'.)
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(Can you give an example of music without a scene? One of my colleagues likes going to see operas, but he obviously has other friends who do the same, and they swap recommendations and go to concerts together. That's a 'scene'.)
Hmm, maybe hobo music? I suppose there may still be a hobo scene, unless no one rides boxcars anymore due to the litigious nature of contemporary society. Any other type of music has its own scene, if said music currently exists.
Real country doesn't have much of a scene anymore. It has been supplanted by country-pop wannabe cowboys who seem to be contractually obligated to include one song about a tractor on every album, regardless of whether they have ever lived or worked on a farm.
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Even opera has a definite "scene," though I have never been exposed to it, which is okay.
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It grew out of the crust scene
I'm not sure if it's from a film, but round here whenever someone names a new music genre, we finish our drinks.
("Have you heard of Refrigerated Gore Goblin? They're a new transient math-art glitch dub-rap acidcore psy-d-m jazz group, they played in Dalston last weekend.")
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Fellas,
Grindcore is a term for the hybrid between death metal and extreme punk hardcore.
Yes! But grindcore is easily differentiated from both death metal and hardcore punk in that to play grindcore you neither need to understand more than one tempo, nor know how to play your instruments nor give a fuck. True death metal practitioners practice incessantly to perfect their craft, odd as it may be, and hardcore musicisans, while generally not giving a fuck, do (somewhat ironically) conform to a particular sound and style. Grindcore is, well, more like noise created by non-musicians who think simp
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No one ever wins. No one finally loses, except the dead. Under the sun, they rot together with absolute biological equality. [youtube.com]
They could just play a cover song (Score:1)
Grindcore? (Score:2)
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So..., that's another word for "aimed at adolescent males", then?
I think they're into something else by now. Grindcore is perhaps a decade too old for that.
I don't know what that 'something else' is. Brostep? [youtube.com] (The video at least features a couple of 12 year olds, but I'm pleased the videos churned out in my adolescence didn't include violently holding up a man to get ice cream.)
Why Napalm Death? (Score:2)
Why Napalm Death? There are a lot better deathmetal bands out there. There are even a lot louder bands. I've been to thousands of concerts, and I can tell you that... BY FAR... the loudest live band on earth is MotorHead. I've seen them several times and still had ringing in my ears despite earplugs. Metallica would be a distant 2nd, but they suck total ass now so forget them. If I had to pick, I would have went with Vader. They're still touring, still very good... and aren't just some dudes that took over
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Yeah, Motörhead is the only band I had to put stuff in my ears for during a show. However, they already did the damaging a building thing in Cleveland back in 1984 [google.com] (the very tour where my ears needed the aforementioned protection).
Not all of us do. (Score:2)
Not all of us do, and in fact, I'm very glad to meet someone else who agrees with me that this is an important distinction.
Metal is its own genre, composed by its own standards. It emerged from rock (specifically, prog rock, soundtracks to horror films, loud hard rock and early punk combined) but it is not rock.
If you're up for some analytical historical data, would you read The Heavy Metal F.A.Q. [deathmetal.org]?
Er, what? (Score:2)
I hereby nominate this post for Slashdot's Most Obfuscated Post Title of the year.
Seriously, the title gives absolutely no clue what the article is about. Not everyone lives in your town, goes to your museum, or listens to your death metal.
Necron69
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I hereby nominate this post for Slashdot's Most Obfuscated Post Title of the year.
Seriously, the title gives absolutely no clue what the article is about. Not everyone lives in your town, goes to your museum, or listens to your death metal.
Agreed -- The linked article is also from a newspaper only published in London.
The "V&A" (Victoria and Albert Museum) is the least well-known of the three (excellent) free museums on Exhibition Road, South Kensington, London. Most tourists who visit London have probably walked past it on their way to see the dinosaurs (at the Natural History Museum) or see the steam engines / cars / computers (at the Science Museum), but only about half go inside the V&A. It has by far the least appeal for childre
Napalm Death! (Score:2)
I saw them in 91, it was my first death metal show. I think I wore that shirt for the whole first week of high school that year. Awesome....
andy
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Bolt Thrower maybe, but even when death metal was the only thing I listened to Cathedral were fucking ghey, I can't imagine how you'd consider them death metal.
Cathedral/Napalm Death history (Score:2)
Cathedral's founding vocalist, Lee Dorrian, was one of the original vocalists of Napalm Death and can be heard on Scum and From Enslavement to Obliteration.
Most people consider Cathedral to be doom metal [deathmetal.org].
Should also Invite.... (Score:2)
Anaal Nathrakh. Formally a two man band that now records and plays live with members of Napalm Death, both are from Birmingham. I am sure a few of their songs could easily destroy a sculpture, as well as anyone and anything in the vicinity.
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Anaal Nathrakh.
That ("More Fire Than Blood")... is actually quite good. Thank you!
(I don't like most death metal, but mostly because it has growly lyrics which are impossible to understand and is so loud (compressed) that the whole thing sounds like mush.)
I still prefer folk [youtube.com] metal [youtube.com]. Particularly if it's silly [youtube.com]. :)
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{To be read in the voice of pinhead from hellraiser}
The most sublime art is that of suffering. To fully appreciate the music your very soul must bleed the black blood of disappear. Then and only then will you become a god amongst the weak and wretched mortals. I have such sights ... and sounds to show you my friend...
Hey let's make a Disaster Area joke (Score:2)
because no-one's done that yet