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“Mortals,” a black metal band from Brooklyn.

Last week was a good week. I met a lot of dear friends and heard a lot of good talks. But I’ll also remember last week for its heavy metal content. One orghead volunteered to go out with me to the Empty Bottle, for a metal meetup. So here we go.

First up was “97-shiki,” a local Chicago band that plays what I’d call punk with a twinge of industrial and Ornette on trumpet. They weren’t metal, but I’m glad I saw them. The hip thing is to sell cassettes (!), but with a code so you can download the music. Second up was “Mortals,” a traditional metal group from Brooklyn situated squarely in the cookie monster/black metal genre. A bit noisier than 97-shiki, and often battling feedback on the monitor. Got the CD, Savanger. My two year old daughter loves “Wolf metal.” She also loves the fact that girls can play metal really, really loud. Two thumbs up from clan Rojas. The last band was Wizardry, another black metal band from Brooklyn. Interestingly, the most danceable of the evening, as noted in various blogs.

Finally, our good friend asked about “The Ontology of Noise,” a recent ambient music release from Nana April Jun, who is Christofer Lämgren, the Swedish sound and installation artist. Connection to metal?

The Ontology of Noise researches the dark associations of post-black metal. No traditional instruments are used on the album and all techniques are digital in their application. There are almost no arrangements or layers, but the pieces consist of single streams which change intuitively. This makes The Ontology of Noise a concrete journey through an abstract language evolving around light and darkness, nature and artificiality, and sometimes even takes the form of a sound very similar to an electric guitar…

The Ontology of Noise explores the filmic qualities of noise – the image-creating mechanisms that arise almost hallucinogenically from subtle variations of frequences. By using a special set of digital mastering and filtering techniques, the recordings often sound very much like the sounds of nature; wind in trees and water. The Ontology of Noise opens up an audial perception for these sounds of nature and ask questions about their ontology..

The older I get, the more I love metal.