Latest news with #Draugveil
The Sun
02-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Sun
Draugveil's album faces AI allegations
ART exists to invoke a response, elicit a reaction and move the observer. The spectrum on where these land on does not matter, whether it provokes anger, thought, laughter or discussion. Ultimately anything is better than bland art, which is akin to a glass of milk at room temperature. In black metal, due to its anti-establishment and misanthropic nature, art in this circle only has room to incite the most extreme reaction. That said, the metal and black metal community were simply not ready for how they themselves would respond when Draugveil's Cruel World of Dreams and Fears arrived last month. Released by the prominent underground music promoter Black Metal Promotion on YouTube in its entirety, the album blew up instantly not due to the music, the artiste behind it or their politics, or even the subgenre. It was the album's cover art that shot it to infamy. Hollow imitation Cruel World of Dreams and Fears itself is a relatively bog standard album within the subgenre, liberally taking from different generations of black metal, without actually etching an identity of its own through the music. The 10-track album bears gratuitous similarities to other projects such as the older Satanic Warmaster and newer ones such as Kristailer, Kekht Arakh, Lamp of Murmuur and even Gudsforladt. Though it is inevitable for chords, arrangements and such to be 'lifted' from other projects' albums, which Draugveil does for his debut, there is nothing in Cruel World that stands out. To make matters worse with the music lacking an identity, the lyricism goes to the other extreme end of black metal in a failed effort to replicate Kekht Arakh's 'romantic black metal'. 'Forgive me Lord for all my sins / Forgive me Father, cause I'm weak / I had no time to figure out / That all I need is love' – Draugveil sings in one of the weirdest recurring passages in the album's opener Knight Without a Name. Musically, the songs were not terrible by any means. It is uniformly good but only worth a single spin through the entire album as it is neither groundbreaking nor is it able to summon longevity from the artiste's name alone unlike what many of the subgenre's established acts are able to do. Shroedinger's black metal The cover for the album is a thing of beauty and the stuff of nightmares. It just depends on the lens it is seen through. On one hand, it is brave for going against the subgenre's norm for cover art. On the other, it can be interpreted as being too comical that Draugveil has pushed himself into the cringe corner of black metal. After the cover art summoned the hate-filled eyes of black metal fans, their ears soon followed the galloping riffs of the album. With the weight of armoured hell beasts, fans of the subgenre poured heavy scrutiny on the Czech Republic artiste's album. What followed were the allegations that the album cover was generated by artificial intelligence (AI) and then, that the music itself was possibly also AI-generated, as the album is Draugveil's debut, with no previous singles, EPs or demos. Artistes and albums falling out of the sky without prior history or background are usually tell-tale signs of AI. The lyrics for the songs on the album also share similar genetics to the slop AI is known to vomit out, particularly the grammar and how often the em dash symbol is used. Though AI-generated slop has not flooded the metal scene, it is prevalent in more niche subgenres such as dungeon synth, which was born from black metal. It is hard to say whether the cover or music for Draugveil's debut is AI, but it does not change the fact that the album is, in modern slang, very 'mid'.
The Sun
02-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Sun
Draugveil's debut sparks AI allegations in black metal scene
ART exists to invoke a response, elicit a reaction and move the observer. The spectrum on where these land on does not matter, whether it provokes anger, thought, laughter or discussion. Ultimately anything is better than bland art, which is akin to a glass of milk at room temperature. In black metal, due to its anti-establishment and misanthropic nature, art in this circle only has room to incite the most extreme reaction. That said, the metal and black metal community were simply not ready for how they themselves would respond when Draugveil's Cruel World of Dreams and Fears arrived last month. Released by the prominent underground music promoter Black Metal Promotion on YouTube in its entirety, the album blew up instantly not due to the music, the artiste behind it or their politics, or even the subgenre. It was the album's cover art that shot it to infamy. Hollow imitation Cruel World of Dreams and Fears itself is a relatively bog standard album within the subgenre, liberally taking from different generations of black metal, without actually etching an identity of its own through the music. The 10-track album bears gratuitous similarities to other projects such as the older Satanic Warmaster and newer ones such as Kristailer, Kekht Arakh, Lamp of Murmuur and even Gudsforladt. Though it is inevitable for chords, arrangements and such to be 'lifted' from other projects' albums, which Draugveil does for his debut, there is nothing in Cruel World that stands out. To make matters worse with the music lacking an identity, the lyricism goes to the other extreme end of black metal in a failed effort to replicate Kekht Arakh's 'romantic black metal'. 'Forgive me Lord for all my sins / Forgive me Father, cause I'm weak / I had no time to figure out / That all I need is love' – Draugveil sings in one of the weirdest recurring passages in the album's opener Knight Without a Name. Musically, the songs were not terrible by any means. It is uniformly good but only worth a single spin through the entire album as it is neither groundbreaking nor is it able to summon longevity from the artiste's name alone unlike what many of the subgenre's established acts are able to do. Shroedinger's black metal The cover for the album is a thing of beauty and the stuff of nightmares. It just depends on the lens it is seen through. On one hand, it is brave for going against the subgenre's norm for cover art. On the other, it can be interpreted as being too comical that Draugveil has pushed himself into the cringe corner of black metal. After the cover art summoned the hate-filled eyes of black metal fans, their ears soon followed the galloping riffs of the album. With the weight of armoured hell beasts, fans of the subgenre poured heavy scrutiny on the Czech Republic artiste's album. What followed were the allegations that the album cover was generated by artificial intelligence (AI) and then, that the music itself was possibly also AI-generated, as the album is Draugveil's debut, with no previous singles, EPs or demos. Artistes and albums falling out of the sky without prior history or background are usually tell-tale signs of AI. The lyrics for the songs on the album also share similar genetics to the slop AI is known to vomit out, particularly the grammar and how often the em dash symbol is used. Though AI-generated slop has not flooded the metal scene, it is prevalent in more niche subgenres such as dungeon synth, which was born from black metal. It is hard to say whether the cover or music for Draugveil's debut is AI, but it does not change the fact that the album is, in modern slang, very 'mid'.
The Herald Scotland
19-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
This extreme metal album blew up one weekend – now it's accused of AI
These examples are out in the open, attached with a clear mission statement, framed by their practitioners as the next step in the future of art creation. But what about when the algorithmic infection begins to worm its way out of the mainstream and into the underground, where screams of authenticity are paramount? It all began last Friday when an album by Czech black metal artist Draugveil was uploaded to YouTube. Its striking cover art of a young, long-haired knight draped in corpse paint laid upon a bed of roses caught the eyes of many, and its popularity snowballed instantly. Read more: The cruel AI joke played on Studio Ghibli and its well-loved style But something else caught the eyes of some, that the roses seemed a little off. The rose stems protrude from the ground in an unrealistic fashion. So, in line with the times, accusations of AI trickery arrived swiftly and spread fast. Soon, the music itself was accused of being AI, or outlines of songs fully formed once put through the generative music program SUNO. There's no indication that this is the case, and the music is in line with what one would expect from a one-man black metal project in the vein of Judas Iscariot and Burzum, but then if AI was asked to create music in a black metal style, that is probably what it would decide to generically produce and spit out. A Reddit thread titled 'Had to leave band because singer was too obsessed with AI art' was also linked to the project, but nothing indicates a connection beyond mere conjecture of how certain details might match up. Alas, it was just another factor for many that deception was afoot in the underground metal community. The germ of the strange roses became the igniting catalyst for the torrent of accusations, but that itself does not indicate the use of AI. Album covers hardly need to exist in the realm of the real, and it's not out of the ordinary to find details within album art that do not line up with their real-world counterparts. For all we know, the artist was a few roses short of a bed, and the suspicious plants were digitally placed there in image editing software, which is totally standard practice. On the part of the YouTube channel that gave the album a platform, Black Metal Promotion, they say Draugveil sent them screenshots of the songs in a digital audio workstation. That does not mean there was no AI in play, but then it likely means there was a creator's hand guiding the work at the very least. But the intensity of the speculation, and the sheer speed of the AI narrative setting in, shows how quick we are to jump the gun in our suspicions of AI as a looming threat waiting around every corner. That's not surprising considering the use of AI in art is bound to get even more complicated, deceptive, and normalised – but it does not help if suddenly every artistic eccentricity is now in the firing line for inauthenticity through an assumption of AI use. Read more: This film veteran was stunned when he asked AI to give him ideas For many in the discussion, Draugveil's album being a result of AI is an indisputable fact, repeated until it becomes truth. Many say Draugveil needs to clarify with a statement, but that would be the biggest mistake to make. The hype generated by the intense back-and-forth discussions, the mystery of what the reality is, is a more powerful promotion than whatever the truth might come to be. It is reminiscent of the hijinks of 2000s black metal project Velvet Cacoon, which became infamous for mixing in fake albums that never existed and stealing songs from local bands and passing them off as their own, all because the ensuing confusion and outraged bluster would be entertaining for them. Before, accusations of inauthenticity lay in intentions, but now it is the process that is being questioned. If the threshold for suspicion is this low, we're heading toward a future where artists will have to prove their humanity just to be taken seriously. Whether Draugveil is a project borne from AI may always be a mystery unless the artist speaks and makes their case, but the prevailing sense is that people want it to be true, for the thrill of catching a fraud in the act and to satisfy any lingering purist paranoia. But if every strange flourish in an album cover or every odd-sounding riff becomes grounds for an AI witch hunt, where does that leave human creativity in the end?
