What Speculative Metal is? 

In the text that summarizes much of the nomenclature related to Speculative Metal, the "Noctis Nebula Glossarium", a varied terminology is established:

"Speculative Metal is:

- textural,

- traumatic and unchained,

- metastructural,

- psychedelic,

- rhizomatic, transversal and heterogeneous,

- non-Euclidean and anti-canonical,

- hyperchaotic, desiring and schizophrenic..."

Let us develop the ideas presented by Relgneps Razalas in his work "Metallorum mutatio: Corpus theoreticum", chapter 3, "Time and fate; Space and causality":

"Speculative Metal (what-will-be) is a response to Spectral Metal (what-was). Speculative Metal appears to shake the established, to destroy homogeneity, to put an end to the copying of ideas, to the radical lack of originality of Spectral Metal. Spectral Metal repeats ideas (riffs, compositional patterns, production styles, concepts, aesthetics...) already established in the classic period of the genre."

Speculative Metal causes a trauma in the existence of Spectral Metal, a wound that does not heal, a crack that does not close. The trauma (wound) (≠suture) leaves the subject without resources, it disarms the tendency towards statism of the Spectral Metal.

Trauma (the wound) is the crack that arises in Spectral Metal when the primary elements that define it are subverted and secondary elements rise to the surface, now dominating the new structure and causing the emergence of Speculative Metal. Speculative Metal is traumatic for the listener since it involves a displacement of the axis of perspective, it is relegated (submerged) and what is hidden ascends (emerges)... it awakens the forces that remained dormant like the one who waits dreaming in R'lyeh:

R'lyeh

This process follows Salazar's Law (which we will talk about at another time) and which is key to this entire analysis since it influenced works such as Corpus Mutatio, Liber Semitarum and Metallicum Proverbia (as well as the aforementioned Metallorum mutatio: Corpus theoreticum), all of them texts handled by the members of the most important Speculative Metal bands of this century.

Extracted from chapter 7, "On the form of Cthulhu" of "Corpus mutatio" (the work of theory-fiction written by Drhuj that disappeared from the internet in 2006), we list below some of the challenges of Speculative Metal:

- Break the link with the previous thing to which it was linked.

- Destroy the manifest image → The SPECTRUM.

Zdzislaw Beksinski, "No title" (1986)

  

- Provide suitable speculative scaffolding for experimental exploration.

- Mapping chaos: geographic vs. archaeological (exploring the unknown instead of delving into the past and its relics); difference vs. repetition (constructing the Shape-of-Metal-To-Come (SMC), instead of simply reverence the Metal-That-Was) .

- Transform Metal back into what it was: a desiring-machine. Metal no longer desires; does not question the established order; desire is revolutionary; awaken a dormant style; perform it again on a new stage. Using desire and schizophrenia as a revolutionary force (delirium-madness).

Relgneps Razalas in the "Metallorum mutatio", chapter 5.2 ("The geographical horizon"), establishes that the Speculative Metal has the shape of a rhizome:

"The oldest parts die as the new ones are formed, acquiring the shape of a network. An album is united with other albums, with a series of visual and technical innovations. In the rhizome any point can join with another, hence its usefulness for Speculative Metal. Links do not lead to unification but to complexity."

Rhizoma enhances transversality: maximum communication between different levels and in different directions; transversal links: connection with the heterogeneous. All of this will contribute to the Shape-of-Metal-To-Come (SMC).

 

Rhizoma shape

 

"The spectrum contemplates you;

"it knows the power of memory."

Inat-se-Ragen (Metallicum Proverbia, verse 23)