NINE SONGS THAT TRIGGER THE SLOW DEMISE OF THE NINE SONGS FORMAT THIS WEEK SEP 8 – SEP 14
If you follow my stuff on here you know that I've been struggling with keeping this format interesting now that it's celebrating its fifth anniversary. So, I finally made a move, not sure if it's the move, by borrowing a page from my year-end lists. We'll see how it goes. It'll probably change more until I'm happy. Or dead.
Keep safe.
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The Track Addressing the Blinding Rage I Feel at the Political and Moral Collapse of the Society in Which I Unsuccessfully Trying to Live:
Ka'tzon La'tevach – "Blood's Right over the Land" (Hardcore – Independent). One of the best hardcore bands out there, Israeli or not, sticks its messy finger, as per usual, right into the dirty pulse of the nasty thing that is reality. Raging against what can only be seen as the slow and total collapse of liberal values – or whatever it was that was left of them, good arguments could be made that they were never really there – of Israeli society. Also, that fucking image of a death-like being gorging on a chalice filled with blood is so good I want it as my wall paper.
The Track that Makes Me Feel Like I'm Scaling a Pagan Mountain Top in German While Ignoring the Fact that Germany Kind of Freaks Me Out No Offense Germany You Can Be Cool I Guess But It's Complicated:
Mýrdal – "Brand," from Helvíti (Black Metal – Vendetta Records). Haven't heard of these dudes and just happened to stumble on some promo stuff and said to myself "why not, I like bands named after words I can't understand" and am very happy I had that very idiotic intuition. On the one hand, very comforting, very formulaic atmospheric-esque black metal, but with some quirky moments that elevate it way higher than the usual "I'm hugging trees while riffing" affair. Very cool.
The Track that Engulfs Me with a Protective Layer of Absolute Nonsense So that the Insanity of Others Shields My Sanity from the Even Greater Insanity Beyond:
Aluk Todolo – ״●●•●●••••●●••," from Lux (Experimental Rock – The Ajna Offensive). The return of the profoundly dark circus that is Aluk Todolo, many a moon after their previous long-form release. It's repetitve, it doesn't make sense, and it sounds like a band starting to play a song and getting stuck, failing to proceed, allowing the cheap comforts of linearity to fall to the floor like the cheap ceramic plate it is. And no, being stuck is not a positive experience, but boy, Aluk Todolo, can I relate.
The Track That Made Me Believe in Something, Finally, Even if That Something is the Reality of Death, the Meaningless of Life, and the Soft Acceptance of Musical Violence as the only Effective Way to Forget How Really I Am Afraid and Lost and Sad:
Black Curse – "Trodden Flesh," from Burning in Celestial Poison (Black/Death Metal – Sepulchral Voice Records). Boy oh Boy was I waiting for this one. Endless Wound has, with time, grown to become one of my favorite metal albums of all time, and so I was anxiously waiting for more from these freaks of reverb and destruction. This track might be familiar to those of you who purchased the promo tape they released last year and sold at their shows. I, however, live in the dankest of global anuses and thus a) did not attend said shows and b) could not purchase them. So, being the mere mortal I am, I can now say that the new album is going to fucking rule, that they went ahead and said "fuck it, longer more violent songs" and that I could not be happier. Within, naturally, the already-established confines of me being actually very sad.
The Track That Made Me Think of All the Nice People Who Check Up on Me from Time to Time and How Much Really With Their Care Enable My Very Existence and That Also Reminds Me of People With Whom I Have Been in Pretty Close Contact in the Music World Who Never Had the Though "Oh Shit, It Looks Like the Middle East is Up in Flames I Wonder if Ron is OK" Which Makes Me Think Not Only Less of Them as People But in Fact Damages My Ability to Exist:
Rampant Beast – "Bestial Torment," from Into The Infernal Pyre (Speed Metal/Black Metal – Many Coloured Beast). Having wondered aimlessly to the label page that holds within its nefarious folds the wonderful 2023 albums from Odz Manouk I noticed that there was a new-ish album there that I never saw and of which I had never heard. I thought I'd check it out and my Negative Plane/Funereal Presence-loving mind was immediately rewarded for that decision. Very well-executed heavy metal worshipping black metal.
The Track that Made Me Realize Everything That was Missing for Me from the News Nails Everyone Seems to Love but is in Fact a Boring Piece of Same Old Same Old Nothing-Flavored Nothing:
Trauma Bond – "Good Grief" (Powerviolence – Independent). Trauma Bond are finally geared to release a new album, which is always a great thing. For the uninitiated, I've been screeching their name since day uno (interview here), and they serve as that rare occasion in which I was right, whether I survive this war and its subsequent political/social implosion or not. Also, they just released a sick longsleeve, but I can't afford it so for all you rich fuckers out there.
The Track that Reminds Me that All that Air-Punching and Rage is Really Directed at Me, at My Sense of Failing Myself, My Children, and My Family, of Being a Coward Who Won't Just Uproot Everything and Save Our Lives Because of the Complexities of Love and Attachment We Have, the Great Loves of Our Life that Also Bury Us in Our Own Love, That Prevent Us from Doing What Actually Should Be Done Because the Enemy is not the Enemy, We are the Enemy:
Toby Driver – "Raven, I Know That You Can Give Me Anything," from Raven, I Know That You Can Give Me Anything (Prog/Experimental – Independent). Toby Driver, Kali Malone, and Charlie Looker are artists that seems to always present the human spiral in all its delicateness and absolute horror. No easy solutions, not ways out, just a painful, beautiful homage to what feels to me at times is giving up on ever doing any better and instead elaborating on and expanding what we are. I know that a lot of my (fiction) writing really goes for those places, that kind of paralyzed and grateful feeling, and I know some of the best music makes me feel that too (Virus and Portal are two other examples). No one like him. I actually wish he never strays from this ballad-oriented path, culminating in a kind of piano-side lounge singer act (Nick Hudson on piano), after which everyone drinks their lovely cocktails and kills themselves.
The Track that Made Me Forget that Rage and Ugliness Isn't Actually a Solution and that Made Me Worship Satan in My Head Because I Won't Scare My Kids My T-Shirts Are Bad Enough:
Carrion Bloom – "Ruins Along the Beach," from Carrion Bloom x Piss Baptism (Black Metal – Transylvanian Recordings). A second-wave-heavy project from a bunch of very talented people who are/were also in other cools bands (Exulansis, Fell Voices, Akatharsia). The kind of solid, mid-tempo black metal that makes me happy as a person and also makes me want to write. Very cool.
The Track That Just Let Me Sit With the Brown Soup that Has Been My Emotional Existence the last year or so. I realize I'm not longer capitalizing this title, as I should. Though interestingly still maintaining the capitalization of personal names and the first letter of every sentence. Like: Mount Eerie, or Ron Ben-Tovim:
Mount Eerie – "I Walk," from Night Palace (Indie – P.W. Elverum & Sun, Ltd.). Say what you will about Phil Elverum, he feels things and he's very good – perhaps one of the best ever – at making you feel those things too. Is there a higher state or function for art than to make you feel something? I don't know, and I actually hate the question and deeply dislike myself for swerving into art theory when it's obvious that what I'm doing is escaping the pain. "Into a clearing, there's a pause between the breaths, and I look up."
SHORT FACTS ABOUT THINGS
Fact #1: Erik K Skodvin released a haunting, beautiful ambient/neo-classical album that sounds like a swamp at night.
Fact #2: Crippled Black Phoenix are releasing a new double album, here's the first single.
Fact #3: Khalil of Defacement (great musician) released a short ambient piece on his YouTube, and it's gorgeous.
Fact #4: Srefa, who released one of the best black metal albums of the year, played Brutal Assault and you can watch that here.
