About a month ago, the debut album from Czech black metal artist Draugveil – called Cruel World of Dreams and Fears – appeared online. The album immediately went viral for its highly-romantic album art, which we’ve seen before from bands like Sacred Son and Këkht Aräkh. Though there was a bigger problem and it wasn’t the sort of doofy artwork.
There were accusations that the album cover was AI and that the music was also AI, even though original YouTuber uploaders of the album Black Metal Promotion said Draugveil sent them screenshots of the original tracks in a DAW. It’s still not clear if the art or the music is AI, but this all presents a much bigger problem – AI is going to get really fucking good at fooling all of us.
Is Cruel World of Dreams and Fears totally AI generated? Is this all an elaborate hoax by Draugveil? Or is this a legit album and Draugveil just hit at both the right and wrong place at the right and wrong time? I have no idea. But I think the metal community needs to brace itself for an onslaught of this exact same conversation where we’re not sure if music is AI-generated or not.
Frankly, that sucks. It steals the spotlight from actual musicians making actual music. It drowns out real conversations about creative work in favor of debating whether something even counts as human-made.
And that’s one of the core reasons to push back on AI music: it kills the conversation before it even starts. You can’t interview an algorithm about its influences. There’s no intention to unpack, no years of struggle behind the songs, no late-night writing sessions, no serendipitous moments of inspiration. There’s no story. Without that, music becomes nothing more than sonic wallpaper – content, not art.
The other issue – and one that I mentioned before – is that AI is going to get really fucking good at making music. And it’s going to create bangers, and it’ll ultimately go viral, and you’re going to want to listen and share it all. Please don’t. I know it’s going to be tempting as hell (“but the song is so good! Why can’t I just enjoy it?”), but don’t. Encouraging the watering down (and flat-out plagiarism) of an artform in favor of what is at its core a purely capitalist venture that doesn’t give two shits about the art itself should not be happening at any level.
We’ve already seen the early outlines of this with Spotify’s Perfect Fit Content program, as exposed by Liz Pelly. Spotify employees commissioned “fake artists” to create background-friendly tracks, slotting them into curated playlists and dodging full royalty payouts. It was a quiet way to replace genuine music with cheap filler.
Now imagine that, but fully AI. No need to pay session musicians. No need to split royalties. No need for humans at all. Just endless algorithmic sludge, dressed up to blend seamlessly into your Discover Weekly. And given Spotify CEO Daniel Ek‘s track record, why wouldn’t they? This is why I respect bands like King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard for pulling their catalog from Spotify – even if their reasons were different.
Which brings us back to Draugveil. Is it AI? I think so. Look at the below picture and then some of the things I highlighted – namely the fact that the ring on the armor in the neck goes over the hair for some inexplicable reason (mostly because it’s AI, which is also why I suspect there’s a filter on it). Still, we’ve already crossed the threshold where the lines between art and automation are blurred beyond recognition.
And society has shown, time and again, that it doesn’t care about wealth consolidating into the hands of a few. So why would it care if those same hands gutted the arts, hollowed out its corpse, and puppeteer it back to life without asking any of us? The answer is bleak: nothing’s stopping them.
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