Draugveil: Mediocre or AI?
Turns out, both suck
I’ve lately tuned out the greater goings-on in metal to focus on my own work in music, coding, and writing, but there was no way the whole Draugveil controversy wasn’t going to find its way back to me. Of course, I don’t mean the important part of any musical piece — that being “is it any good?” — but the part that feeds into one of the most prominent discussions of our time:
“Is it AI art?”
Well… yes, probably. The album art definitely is. I don’t know about the music, but there hasn’t been much evidence that suggests it wasn’t AI generated…
Let’s back up a little bit. Truthfully, the only way to know whether the music was generated is to have had a hand in the albums creation. Most discussions I’ve seen around the matter do not seem to draw from first-degree sources, instead focusing on damning elements of the album art — and having finally spent time with the album, I can certainly attest that said damning elements are indeed there.
Bad Album Cover Is Bad
The first I heard of this album — “Cruel World of Dreams and Fears” — Torrentius, my guitarist, brought the album up in passing, asking if I’d given it a listen. Upon my response that I hadn’t heard of it, he flashed me a picture of the album cover from his phone, to which we both shared a chuckle. We enjoy a “good bad” black metal photo, and this certainly has the halmarks of some of the best — medieval adornments, cornball romanticism, and a tinge of self-awareness all give this cover the trappings of an instant classic.
Yesterday, while preparing for a performance at the Sentient Bean, a local cafe, the members of Mired — Nero, Torrentius, and I — sat down over some beers and gave the album a listen.
At this point, Nero got me up-to-speed on the controversy surrounding the album since its release, particularly on the claims that the whole album was created with AI. Having only seen the photo in passing on a phone screen, I did not immediately understand the criticism, but upon closer inspection, the issues with the cover image became glaring.
Firstly, let’s get the obvious problem out of the way: roses of all varieties grow on bushes.
Right off the bat, we’re going to need to offer an enormous benefit of the doubt to go any further, but we’ll do so anyways. We’re going to say that Draugveil meticulously clipped anywhere between 25 — 50 quality roses (an expensive flower, mind you), subsequently planting them in the ground (with little evidence of upset soil) to make the ideal bed of flowers for his album cover. Personally, I enjoy that degree of insanity in my black metal, so I’m happy to believe it for now.
On to the matter of the roses…
That’s not what rose stems look like. Top-center of the highlighed box, you can see a case where the general-purpose algorithm — having no clearly modeled concept of a leaf opposed to a stem — scribbled out similar blobs to suggest both. Those weird green smears certainly suggest rose stems, but they have none of the physical presence needed to support a flower as hefty as a rose.
Here’s an example of a photo containing a clear shot of a rose stem — the difference is noticable when focusing on how the stem angles itself to better hold the visually clear weight of the flower. Source
There’s more issues with the cover, but before we move on from the roses…
That’s not how perspective works. And maybe the most egregious artifact…
I know it’s contradictory to expect an AI-powered artist to not be lazy, but this stem-to-nowhere would have required thirty seconds at most with Photoshop’s blend tool to hide.
So what of the other problems with the album cover? Well, take your pick.
There’s the sword tapering in a way that suggests the point is planted only an inch-or-two into the ground, giving its extremely upright positioning an air of uncanniness.
There’s also the unnatural way the black corpse paint blends with Draugveil’s hair above his aged left eye.
Having worn corpse paint quite a bit myself, I’m sympathetic to how smears and smudges can appear on camera, but there’s something noticably off about how smooth the gradient is compared to the “film grain” of the rest of the “photo”.
These aren’t the only issues I’ve heard, but I don’t really feel a need to continue. I have no doubt in my mind that this not a photo — or even a doctored photo — but a generated image.
Maybe the cover is AI-generated… So what?
Say what you will of black metal — it’s a goofy genre wrought with mediocrity and shallow interpretations of the sound that grow more numerous every day. Nonetheless, that very same goofiness is what imbues the genre with a special sort of magic. Without a doubt, fantasy is integral to the genre, so when Draugveil says himself that “I just wanted the cover to feel like a dream you've seen before”,1 sure, AI can reasonably be a tool to achieve that. However, to actually use AI towards this end ignores another important (albeit, also silly) part of black metal: that you, as a musician, not only harbor fantasy, but that you live fantasy. The magic inspired by calling oneself a black wizard, donning robes and medieval weaponry, painting ones face, and taking flash-stained photographs amidst the cold stone of a historic crypt only works because you really did it. Sure, it’s silly and wholly detached from modern reality — but that someone did so anyways anchors all the fantasical elements of black metal into our very real world. Behind it all is photography, an artform GPTs have little trouble spoofing.
Photography’s Role in Black Metal
Photography is not the only artistic front GPTs are shouldering into, even within metal2, but for our purposes, I’ll keep my focus there. To understand what’s being lost at the hands of generative art, it’s important to establish why photography is important to black metal at all.
What has historically given all photography value to people is its ability to capture events that actually occurred, even within the abstract freedom of studio photography. A photographer finds the wiggle room to create in the physical limitations of cameras, forever unable to truly capture an event as it occurred in-person. Honing ones skill towards making the subjects of a photo transcend the in-person experience is what seperates the wheat from the chaff, and this space is likewise where a great deal of black metal’s magic occurs. A good photographer captures the black metal musician in a way to lend even the slightest shred of credence to the absolutely kooky notion that the subject is actually a wizard learned in black magic on a hellbent mission to subjugate all with their spells, tear the curtains from modern reality, and usher in an era where said musical wizard rules supremely as a tyrannical agent of the Goddess.
Take Kommodus as an example.
You know the person in the photo isn’t really a black wizard, but you also know behind their spikey visage is an extremely large bonfire. Suddenly, the hilarity of the situation sets in, you laugh, squint a little, and try to reimagine the goofball before you as some evil musical magi, and “You know what?” you say, “I can kind of see it!” The bewilderment at how they ever staged such an ordeal is to many as exciting as it is inspiring, driving more to both participate and contribute to the mythological pantheon of black metal icons. We begin to see the black metal persona as distinct from the individual, something tangibly abstract, real as it is imaginary. It’s in this same space that mythology and religion thrive, giving black metal a unique place in the stories of humanity. All of this came to be because some nerds had the wherewithal to stage some goofy photographs and music videos in extreme or uncomfortable scenarios out of sheer dedication to the bit.
When Draugveil gets an AI to generate an image of himself wearing armor he neither bought nor made, lying in a bed of roses that couldn’t exist… there’s no magic in that, only fantasy. Without the authenticity of the “photo”, there’s little seperating Draugveil’s album cover from the army of teeny-bopper DSBM fans sporting corpse-paint in bathroom selfies. Arguably, Draugveil’s album art might be a step lower, because at least those kids bothered to put on the makeup.
The lack of authenticity inherent to AI art undercuts the work required to bring a black metal creation to life. All-in-all, Draugveil has all the creative liberty in the world to use AI towards the creation of music and its associated art, but by that same token, I’m allowed to perceive him a lesser artist than those who actually put in the work to do so through skillfully wielding an instrument, be it a camera, brush, or guitar.
To that last point — all this talk about visual art aside for a minute — what of the music itself?
The Music Is Boring
As we — Mired, that is — listened to Draugveil’s release, we all arrived at a similar consensus: there’s certainly elements here that we like to see in a track, but none of them are done in a way that stands out from the tens of thousands of black metal albums to come before.
Even if you can pass the litmus test for generic black metal, that’s not enough to deserve praise. I guess achieving mediocrity is better than nothing at all, but truthfully, without even considering that the album was made by AI, Draugveil’s Cruel World of Dreams and Fears is nothing to write home about.
So what of the AI allegations? Frankly, they’re a little harder to prove than the claims surrounding the cover, but at the end of the day, the mediocrity of the album makes the accusations matter little. A boring album is boring, no matter how you arrive there.
The Hype Is Not Boring
Unpacking the whole situation, Draugveil’s album is only impressive if it was made with AI, because even after five years in a post-GPT world, it is still shocking for many of us that something so “human” can be generated by a mathematical algorithm. Unfortunately for Draugveil, what's impressive in this case is not his musical prowess, but the beautifully mathematical order of music and language (something he can’t take any credit for.) That such an impressive method can only achieve mediocrity is a known limitation of GPTs, which can only generate an approximation of human creation, not the maximum — simply put, GPTs can create, and they can even help a human innovate, but they do not innovate on their own. Without a human in the loop, they will only create that which has been created prior.3
So what if Draugveil actually played the music on the album? Well, he’s chosen to play the mysterious angle, stating simply, “Let people decide. I have only made art and shown it to the world.” His decidedly vague response could read as an indictment if one wishes, but he very well could just be leveraging the controversy to drive more sales.
Taking it all in
We’re left with a few ways to look at this.
The album art is definitely AI generated, but whether you think that matters is up to your demands of artist. I find it inauthentic, lazy, and destructive to the magical ethos of black metal, but that’s only my opinion.
If the music was generated, any accomplishment here is that of the creators of GPTs, not their users. Claiming credit for a work created by a GPT is like taking credit for a book you edited with White-Out — sure, whatever, but both the author and the inventor of White-Out put in more work to create the final product than you did. If Galileo stood on the shoulders of giants, you rode their coattails.
If the music wasn’t generated, then Draugveil is at most a mediocre project that used an AI album cover, and thus belongs in the bottom of the bin with other similar projects. It would be extremely easy to prove that either the cover or music wasn’t generated. Music production is a messy process that creates many artifacts, such as bad takes, shitty masters, practice recordings, etc. Any photoshoot would have produced numerous duds that didn’t make it past the cutting room floor. To date, none of that has been produced, and as it stands, Draugveil is only benefitting from keeping such proof under wraps. It is on us, as both fans and artists, to demand demonstrable integrity from creators. Anyone failing to provide should be cast as one-step above plagiarists.
In Conclusion
If it wasn’t obvious, black metal is extremely taxing to create, play, and record. The allegations that any element of Draugveil’s music was made with AI doesn’t do him any favors in the eyes of musicians who actually shed literal blood, sweat, and tears to create their music. If you can create a rock-solid black metal album with AI, sure, consider yourself a creator of sorts, but don’t confuse yourself with someone who actually physically performs their music. As a drummer, I’m not going to be that impressed by programmed drums. That goes doubly so for generated drums. Anyone creating AI art should not be shocked when noone considers them a worthwhile member of the scene.
Check out Heavy Art Talk to hear some great takes about how AI is upsetting the world of illustrated albums and merch (as well as a lot of great interviews with extremely talented artists.)
I delight in imagining all the eye-twitches such a statement would invoke from Hacker News readers.