A FEW SONGS THAT MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE EXISTED THIS WEEK OCT 20 – 26
The point of having a set formula/structure to these posts is that I can just punch it in whenever, whatever mood I'm in, or regardless of what's going on in my life. My intention had been to maintain that order this time as well, despite the very sharp sense of panic and fear gripping (grip is a good word) my body. My own sense of myself is that the only parts of my body that are sentient at the moment are the palms of my hands clicking away at my MacBook. I didn't really needed to have a MacBook, I could have just bought a shitty laptop, but my old one died so severely I wanted to overcompensate, I guess. The first album I wanted to write about is the new release from Leila Abdul-Rauf, who to me seems like those rare minds that sprout into and thrive in a very cold, inhospitable world. I had begun writing about that album when I, mistakenly, just pasted the embed code which these days in WordPress erases everything you've done. So my attempt at order has been undone, and my poignant praise of Abdul-Rauf's work is gone. All that is left is the sound of the schoolyard nearby and my silent earphones because the track I was listening to is now over.
Here, I placed the picture where the picture needs to be. All I need to do now is to either embed the album/track or just link to it and yet find energy to do neither. Google Leila Abdul-Rauf and also buy her entire discography at a discounted price (on her Bandcamp page, not the label's – Cyclic Law).
What's next yo, what's next. Yo yo yo. Yo! MTV Raps. Next is (switching to my notes for a moment), oh yeah, next is a very happy coincidence in that a band I like is releasing through a label I have come to like. Sluagh do atmospheric-ish, dark black metal. I wrote about their first EP way back when (pretty sure it was before they had a label), and now they're finally releasing more music and it's really great. You can find it on the Blood Coloured Beast Bandcamp page (I really have no idea why I can type but don't feel like linking to the actual music, maybe this is not me having a mild breakdown, maybe this is just me hating WordPress, but probably both). My intention was to link to the track "XII" but the whole thing is great.
The feeling is both dread and being stuck. When you have the family history I have then you have the tendency to always think "When is the best time to get out?" or "What is the last moment before you can't anymore?" and I think for years I have judged people who didn't get out, out of any shitty situation, only to realize myself now that it really isn't that easy. That you have attachments, to friends, to family (my parents are getting older – who will take care of them. My grandmother, though not all there in mind, is still here in body – do I just leave her? Who will bury her?) and of course worrying about my kids being without a home for the rest of their lives. Yes, I've met comp-lit PhDs who know all the languages and are the smartest people in the room precisely because they never had a set home, I've envied them profoundly. And yet I don't want that for my kids. I guess I don't want it bad enough would be the more correct way of putting it.
But, the music, ah, the music (going to my notes again). I did something this week that I do from time to time which is to say to myself "Such and such are such a great label, how about I check out their stuff because I haven't in a very long time." If the label is always good then the results are always good. I did this thing I just described with Transylvanian Recordings formerly Transylvanian Tapes and the results are indeed good. The first album I loved there was by this ambient/black metal band Nythgraph that reminds me of Ûkcheânsâlâwit – really sweet-sounding, sombre, and quite magical black metal. Very sad, very beautiful, dream-like and heart breaking. No one wants their heart to break, but when it does this album will do very well.
Another album I really liked from Transylvanian Recordings was what looks like the debut from a band called Outer Graves. The cover might lead you to believe this is "cosmic" death metal, which is a fancy way of saying a Tomb Mold/Blood Incantation clone. And I was half expecting that myself, because I love those bands. But what I got was something much more unexpected and much better. I don't know if sludgy death metal is a thing, not sludgy as in RIFFS ARE LONG but sludgy as in that urgent, almost evil-hardcore energy great sludge (Grief) has, that makes you feel like someone is puking their soul on your jacket. So, that kind of energy only in very brief, very good death metal songs. I'm not sure I've heard that much before, but it's fucking great.
Thirdly and lastly from my little saunter over to Transylvanian was the new Abyssal album I thought I knew about but am not sure. Abyssal here means not the UK disso-black band (amazing band) but the incredible Mexican doom band. I've liked them, but this new one is a whole other level. One-track, 45 minutes of glorious funeral doom that is moving and silent at times and crushing at others, and never ever boring or overstaying one's welcome. Beautiful stuff, for real. Again, not going to link anything, sorry, just google it and spend all your money over at Transylvanian.
I was already pretty despondent about the whole life thing, the sense of the space around me imploding into savage racism and nationalism, the sense that our corrupt political class is perpetuating a horrible war (and fomenting more) just to stay afloat, an utter disbelief that men of power would so easily sacrifice the life of others for personal gain and then remembering that's how this shit always works. But then more people dying this morning, some of them my age, my background and the guilt of having not died and the burning desire to stay alive (yes, not a burning perhaps felt in this week's post, but writing these is like taking medicine sometimes), it's just too much. That on top of the already insufferable levels of strain and anxiety, of my kids' nightmares, of the alarms, of my two-year old crying if we don't explain every passing motorcycle to be a passing motorcycle and not an alarm, thinking about kids his age dead not that far from here. It's a lot. A new semester is soon about to begin, and I really can't think of a way I'm going to be useful in any way to my students other than to perform a very majestic act of breaking down in front of them.
The community of people who make and/or release and/or write about and/or enjoy metal online is hit and miss on a good day, and can drag me all the way down on bad days, which the last year has been filled with. It's a good reminder to keep only good people who care in your circle. Brucia Records have always been good people, and luckily for me also serial releasers of underrated, beautiful music. They have a record coming by a band called Possessive that is really sort of perfect. Sounds like peak-era (Under the Sign of the Black Mark) Bathory mixed with some pretty powerful powerviolence/grindcore. I love it, it's probably going to be one of my most listened-to albums of the rest of the year, and you should get it. This time I will expend the extra energy to link the music. I guess the writing is doing its magic again.
Speaking of underrated music – look at me, music-writing me is back – there's apparently a new Valac album. In the whole undercurrent also known as raw black metal my money is on Valac being both one of the absolute best and also one of if not the most underrated. Creative songwriting, beautiful ideas, all drowned in a very black static mud. Love it, and the new one's great as always.
This one I didn't really plan to writing about, but I had a link saved that led nowhere and I found this instead and I love the Bandcamp page background color so I said why the fuck not and was instantly rewarded by what appears to be a whole fucking magnus opous of Celeste-style pissed black metal backed by people who listen to Fugazi. I've never heard these dudes, and I'm really not in a post-metal or post-black mood, but I guess I am since this feels like the real thing. Real emotion from real people. I hope they're good people too. Fucking sick of bad people. Aren't you? They're name is Mother, by the way, and Consouling Sounds is releasing them, so that's nice.
I did want to get back to the messy puss-filled sore that is the source of all of this, for a moment. One other thing they don't tell you about when you're trapped in the quicksand of your life and without air that a contributing factor to this drowning is the people standing out side the rim of your drowning who have opinions of your drowning. My internet sphere is gratefully filled with caring people who care, and who have opinions about that caring. And yet reality isn't what you think it is. There are thousands if not millions of Israelis drowning in a reality they cannot fathom, even given the en-masse brainwashing this place has been undergoing for who knows how long. If you keep ignoring those people, much in the same way I would suspect good-meaning, angry Russians were ignored two years ago, then you are a contributing factor to them giving up or suffocating. Be angry, demand change, but also see to it that you recognize you wants that change too but is sinking. A band I like called Ka'tzon La'tevach, a wonderful hardcore band that is and has been railing against the atrocities committed in the name of decent people not just during the war but also before the war went on what I think is a very brave short tour of Europe. Maybe it was their way of showing what the complexity of our lives is like, I don't know what their intent was. But the result was their tour being cancelled because of protests that an Israeli band is playing in Spain or whatever. Again, probably well-meaning people, and who knows, maybe they're right. Maybe differences aren't made in wartime, maybe the bads are the bads and the goods are the goods. But I have a feeling that the sting Ka'tzon La'tevach feel isn't going to help the goods win, only to make good people drown. That's just an anecdote, a meaningless example. I feel this every day. Expend energy being a good person, but watch who you're stepping on.
Still listening to that Mother album. Very happy I included it.
My kids will be back from school soon. They probably need me more than this blog. Ending with a nother foray into a good label, Shove Records, and this album I checked out out of nowhere and that is good. The band is Coven, and this is post-hardcore/screamo/post-rock and very good. Take care and keep safe.
End text because I hate it when there aren't words. Oh, and there's a new Oranssi Pazuzu interview up.
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