Frostbite Orckings
The Orcish Eclipse
Metalverse
AI. Artificial intelligence, heavy metal, electronica…
This was bound to happen, and don’t think you were not warned. I have in my hot little digital hands what is claimed to be the “World’s First Artificial Intelligence-Generated Heavy Metal Album.” It’s a digital release and plays just fine on Winamp. This record (such a quaint anachronism today!) offers a full ten tracks of CPU-damaging wall of noise. “So, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the concert?” I thought it was interesting but still had a few flaws. I’m not sure how we will enjoy digital head banging over old-school analog head banging.
I’ll jump straight into track two, “Orcs Don’t Cry.” In the back, we hear a well-modulated drum barrage. It’s got enough slight changes in tone and spacing to keep the track exciting. The vocals offer an unusual register and an odd modulation. Behind that we hear a sort of angelic choir, making this a nicely complex composition.
“Hammers High” opens with a fast acoustic guitar riff. I can’t quite follow the lyrics, but with a few additional spins they would clarify. The lead vocal might be a slight problem: tone and rhythm are very consistent, consistent to the point of repetition. That doesn’t mean it’s bad metal, but it lacks any sense of surprise.
I’ll wrap up with “Endless Love,” with its intriguing melody track. Is love of anything besides destruction and darkness even appropriate for a metal album? That’s not my decision, but by this track a few loose edges are raveling the tone of the project. I find the instrumental music quite nice and arresting, but this metal machine composition suffers from that flaw in all music that attempts to be tougher than the last record: you can only be so loud, and so angry, and then you are stuck in an acoustic corner, head banging to no good end.
Is there a deeper meaning here? AI is clearly the “Next Big Thing,” and a game changer for many creative fields such as advertising, songwriting, and even poetry. This tech might not erase the way we do things in general, but it will be harder to make a living without a computer sidekick.
Perhaps the answer lies in an anecdote from the famous 20th century cartoonist Will Eisner. I remember quite distinctly, in March of 2000, in a sort of stripped-out house on Rollins College campus with maybe 10 or 15 attendees, Eisner gave a rather long talk on his career and the place of cartooning in the new digital age as part of Rollins’ Distinguished Visiting Scholars series. In the Q&A, Eisner was asked if cartooning would die out in the digital world. To the best of my recollection, he replied that no form of communication ever completely disappears, but it does become more rarified. He went on to give an example of Japanese “Noh” dances, based on a style invented in China centuries ago. Today the Chinese barely know what this is, yet in Japan it’s become a national passion.
Following Eisner’s logic, metal and metal bands will carry on, but the sound will shift and improve. This project may be that harbinger. The collection is not great, but it’s slightly different.
Welcome to the future, again.
