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Repeated patterns overlaid in a metacontext work upon the most developed part of human sentience, our capacity for inference, and build a context for our extrapolation which communicates through related but different patterns an understanding of the structures we manipulate in life, as shared across many instances and types of information. Where conventional methods of communicating anchor their meaning in teleology, or the study of end results, art eschews such vector basics in favor of experiential studies which illustrate the evolution of patterns and the emergence of truth from a paradoxical complexity (a simple example of which is that each person born is born to a death - and thus murdered by the fact of their creation).
 Like emotion, art is a kind of cryptopgraphic checksum for understanding of human situations and events. It is based upon layers of inference and understanding which depend upon the individual for their interpretation, forcing more than a juxtaposition of patterns a simultaneous parsing of their significance in relation to each other, a state of consciousness which approaches the chaotic yet seemingly intentional state of nature. In this art has a value beyond the everyday "teleological" tangible-value-based return in which all things serve a function (such as entertainment or any of the other conveniences of bourgeious living), and the overall function is survival without necessarily having an appreciation for the question of what purpose exists to continue living. As with religion and philosophy, the abstract approaches a spiritual level where it is studied, understood, and then assimilated to a degree of subconscious knowing unreplicatable in the conscious mind.
In these reviews, the point of view is taken that all art contains a potentially relevant communication, and that all means of information transferral convey only their contents and not the context of their creation (a common misconception is that artists represent a political viewpoint corresponding to their social origins and are incapable of expressing nothing but an affirmation of that value system; as seen by artists, nothing could be further from the truth - art is transcendence of all origins to pure intelligence). We are not afraid of "bad" art - if the aesthetic, packaging, or compositional is interpreted as negative in a conventional context, our duty as reviewers is to look further and find what it is, fundamentally, the art wishes to express and to assess it on that basis. Art which is wholly commercial, e.g. essentially similar to all else excepting aesthetic, is based upon the political principles of marketing and not the experiential principles of art, and is therefore irrelevant to our quest at the Dark Legions Archive.
 Consequently the writing here emphasize production as an aspect of the music independent of its composition, and stress the abstract rather than more tangible physical factors. We acknowledge that for 90% of the aspiring fanbase this is contraintuitive, but simultaneously we smile with the knowledge that they will not find better descriptions elsewhere, and that 10% might appreciate the ideas here as lucid but transcendent in their address of the issues hidden behind the social screen. It is intened like all other aspects of the work to disrupt illusion and communicate valuable information on the genre that will alow it to be its own predator, forcing evolution by ignoring the weaker and exhalting the stronger.
Although one of the most frequent criticisms of the writing style herein employed is that its language is overly technical for the fans, that criticism is fundamentally incoherent in that the language here in all of its latinate technicality (and, not to brag, but this is not intended to be technical - it gets more extreme in other forms) its derived from the lyrical tradition of metal as begun in Black Sabbath and found evident in other bands such as Slayer, Morbid Angel, and Burzum. For those who work within the Hessian community, this is our way of building culture where germs of ideas have been nurtured in lifestyle, technique and ideals for three generations.
That any growth might occur in the genre depends on writers, thinkers and musicians to do their best to tell the truth; herein is our testimony.
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Commercialism in Metal
The community from which this music is produced must awaken and address the issues of composition and lyricism from an artistic and not political or commercial level. Looking to history, once a movement called hardcore punk music freed all music to be nothing but rhythm, or nothing but noise, if it so wished; however, that empowered easy forgery using novelty to replace content. In life one can always play a role, but few appreciate where they are and perceive what they love; these are the artists.
Our current civilization, as a foster home for the Judeo-Christian enshrinement of avoidance as "moral good," manifests world materialist neoliberal culture as its foundational values as thus does not surprisingly create a horror of social distrust and hypocrisy. In a modern democratic capitalist state, social values emphasize not offending neighbors who could become customers and working hard for what one desires monetarily, so it is unsurprising that production and musical cleanness are the main factors valued by a working bourgeois audience.
When a community becomes undercut by the ease of imitation of aesthetic, as once happened to hardcore punk, the type of people who need something easy to do, in order to be part of a movement, show up. Novelty (the preference of slightly unique recombinant aesthetic over content) prevails and mediocrity soon ensues. When scenes grow rapidly, as the metal scene did from 1988-1998, they often become bloated with people who are fundamentally useless and thus dragged down as more work and friction burdens the thoughtful. It is the triumph of slave morality: the weaker force others to work around them and to manage them, as the slaves are unwilling to assume the burden of existential decision.
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