Some Songs Blaring While Certain People Don't Know How to Survive Aug 17-22

There were several distinct parts to my own personal experience for the last almost two years. The first part was marked by absolute terror. Actually, that's not true. On the morning of October 7 we got up, much like basically everyone, because of the sirens. And when the news started showing white pick-up trucks with guns just randomly driving through towns it was almost comical. I can't really recall why, but I remember being amused way before being horrified. I think I might of not computed that it was real, and that what I thought would be the eventual result – the attack being quickly stopped – turned into a protracted nightmare. Then came hushed stories, rumors, and the steady and unavoidable arrival of existential dread. Every sound outside was someone with a gun. Imagining stuffing my kids in the cupboard, deciding which one was the best cupboard, figuring out whether my then one-and-a-half-year-old would stay quiet. And while that stage was happening, I already knew whatever came next would be a nightmare. That was the beginning of that stage, which ended a few months ago, I think. It's title might be "this is a mistake, you can't achieve what you think you're saying you want to achieve like this, it never works." The "it" means "war."

The current stage, the one I and many suspected was coming, is being fully aware that my government isn't intent on achieving anything but killing and conquest. Had people known that that was where this was going, though some suspected, I think, most would have resisted. I think most people honestly thought they could just rescue the hostages and go home. But the way the war went on, the endless stages, the added wars on top of the war, the sense of maybe this is going to end and the many times we realized it isn't primed human minds to accept the current horror of starvation and a complete disregard for human life as just life being life. I've lived through war all my life and I've studied war for the last 15 years. Once people don't care, they just don't care. It's not even an active choice, nor is it, I think a moral failure, it's a fact of mechanics. That's where we are right now. I think it counts as being back to the existential dread part, only not from the point of view of the potential victim but to that of moral shame. The terror of realizing fully that psychopaths are deciding my fate and the fate of millions of people around me.

This week's post includes a band that I contacted to say how cool I thought their music was. I do that. I do that a lot. I think one of the deficiencies of a creative life is how rare it is to have honest, good listeners and people who respond openly to what you do. I wrote about this a while ago. Responses aren't plentiful, but that's OK. I do it to do it, I know how it is to hear anyone say anything about something you've done. This time they responded, and the first thing they responded with was to ask what my position was regarding the Gaza genocide, just so, I guess, they feel comfortable being carried or named by an Israeli blog. It caught me off guard, both because, well, that never happened to me (I mean, it probably happened many times, just in the form of not replying) but also because I thought for whatever reason that my position – whatever that means; is horror, fatigue, and incessantly being worried about whether or not living here is right for my children's soul a "position"? – was quite clear. But why would it be? I mean, it probably is if you're reading every week, through the minute outbursts of my own frustration, but not everyone reads like that. So, while a bit shocked, I thought some response would be appropriate. Not because I felt like I owed it to this or that band – in fact, I kind of felt immaturely like I owed it less to that band for directly addressing the issue in my first correspondence with them – but because it got me thinking. Thinking about the merits of directly addressing things, making it easier for people, and about my usual strategy – some might call it "personality" – of not giving up on the painful intricacies in which things, to me, actually appear in life. This is not me saying "it's complicated." It's me saying that it did made me think whether there's value in saying – "this is wrong, I am against it."

This is wrong, I am against it.

And yet there's that part of me too, might not be a part I'm always public about or even proud of, that remembers the horror I felt for those first few months and how little that mattered. To anyone. That my seven-year-old, who, if you've ever met one, too is engrossed in his own quest for omnipotence and strength (he routinely tells me how much stronger than me he is) is afraid, all the time. Afraid enough to cry, apropos of nothing, about dying. About being a kid like other kids and being taken from his home, and by the fact that he knows parents can't protect him – like so many parents in Gaza and Israel who have not been able to protect their kids. There's a horrible poem and beautiful too I read about a Gazan mother keeping her displaced person tent open even in winter so her dead child can find his way home. War isn't just the death it's the collapse of meaning. What is the world where parents see their children die, where little girls find themselves in stretchers and ask if she's about to be buried, where children say to each other casually "dad is really dead, not pretend dead." My son knows I'm alive, and he knows he's alive, but he also knows that that doesn't matter. And he's 100 percent right. He knows nothing will make him feel safe again (short of leaving the country, a daily argument in my life, and yet to those of you who have emigrated in their lives, you know safety isn't guaranteed there either). That my three-year-old, the most beautiful boy in history, looks at stars and asks if they're missiles. 

So, yes – the war has to end, and it is run by corrupt psychopaths and it is priming minds for death, for a carelessness about death. There are people here who have voiced their protest, who have protested their protest, who have been going to protests and doing what they can amid also a horrible war, who promise nightly to their kids that everything is going to be OK while plotting escape (my daughter, who is almost eleven, was asked along with the rest of her class at the beginning of the war to make a sign, the kind of sign they would want to display. I think the point was to draw signs of public encouragement or support for the families of those kidnapped. She instead made a sign for her. It still hangs on the inside of our apartment's door, facing the apartment. It reads: "We're safe") while also being very afraid and I think that in itself is a statement too. Not everything is words and saying the right thing. There are ways of speaking. And the feeling that no one seems to care either about that statement and about our own fear for our own lives makes the need to make statements feel stale. Yes, I am horrified by atrocities and death. But my life is worth something too. My kids deserve to live too. And I just don't think the people making demands for statements seem to see that. 

Is this a statement? Probably not.

Keep safe.

If you're new to this metal blog of bones you can also check out the various interview projects I have going on as well as the weekly recommendation posts. And if you'd like to keep abreast of the latest, most pressing developments follow us wherever I may roam (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Spotify, Bluesky, etc), and listen to my, I guess, active? (no) podcast (YouTube, Spotify, Apple), and to check out our amazing compilation albums. You could also possibly support my unholy work here (Patreon), if you feel like it. Early access to our bigger projects, weekly exclusive recommendations and playlists, and that wonderful feeling that you're encouraging a life-consuming habit. It's probably a bad idea, but to each their own. On to the list.

Pogarda – "Lament," from Czarne Obrazy (Avant-Garde Black Metal – Independent). In the packed field of weirdo black metal this year, this release stands out. Very Polish in the Odraza/Dola school of artistic, beautiful black metal that, honestly, isn't always that black metal but takes much of its inspiration from that wing of life. Grey Aura, another name that came up when I listened to them. A new band, I think, so a lot to look forward to.

Valdur – "Waves of Boiling Water / Molten Meteors pt. II," from Guilded Abyss (Death Metal – Bloodymountain Records). Bloodymountain is back at it, this time with a new release from the Valdur side of Matthew Schott's brain. A brain, one might suspect at this point, made wholly of about nine pounds of scary riffs and twenty pounds of reverb. If you're already acquainted with the masterful work of Bloodymountain (Sxuperion, Cabinet, etc), then this is another must-listen. If you are not familiar, and if you might be in the business of death metal that feels like it could spawn a black hole – step right in.

Evoken – "Matins," from Mendacium (Doom Metal – Profound Lore Records). I guess Evoken have this thing where they take just enough time between releases, and, of course, so much care into those releases, that they have time to breathe and live in the world until they are considered classics by the time the next one comes along. Hypnagogia was both so great and so long ago – we're talking two years before Covid!) that it might as well be a Black Sabbath album at this point. I can imagine many people had that thought "Hey, what about a new Evoken album?" but no one was rushing. It was coming, or it wasn't. Well, it is. And it's about a Benedictine monk losing his mind, because of course it is. And the first "track" sounds incredible and weird, because of course it does. Amazing. 

Porenut – "Chapter I," from Výstup k svätej Kunde (Avant-Garde Black Metal – Independent). More Eastern-European weirdness (Central European? I don't want to get in trouble here) from this Slovakian project that I guess I've been dancing around for a while but never actually doing anything with it. So here I am doing something. Slightly unhinged, beautifully chaotic, periodically proggy, black metal that sounds like a distant relative of early Oranssi Pazuzu an Malokarpatan with shades of mid 2010s Odraza. All very high praise, and very cool.

Drofnosura – "Kapala Kriya," from Ritual of Split Tongues (Everything Metal – Transcending Obscurity Records). Just one of many brilliant Transcending Obscurity that have come out/are due to come out this year. This one came straight out of left field for me. I didn't hear of these fine people and/or their band, but after hearing the album promo I can tell you I am very much going to do that. One of those rare "everything metal" bands that not only shift deftly between style and genre but also create a cohesive, fascinating atmosphere. Shades of Inter Arma in some of these tracks. Shooting up the year's list. Take notice. 

Fiery Serpent – "Canto III : Flammae quae Ligant," from Flammae quae Ligant (Disso Black/Death Metal – Independent). More weirdo metal, this time of the generally disso persuasion and not at all from Eastern Europe. This new Indonesian project released what might be its debut, and it shows – at least in terms of general recording quality and production. But under that (actually slight) layer of much there's an abundance of jewels and diamonds. Very promising stuff. 

Rhizaria – "Indulgences," from Indulgences (Black Metal – Fiadh Productions). I must admit, it took me a while to get into this debut full length from Americans Rhizaria. I think that hesitance hinged on the fact that the album presented more as a quite orthodox black metal release, at first, which is something I don't do as much. But as time went on, and as I got deeper and deeper into it, the album unfurled its charming weirdness, whether in its raw, choppy sound and wide emotional range of expression. Still, I think, quite firmly planted in raw/lo-fi black metal, but creative and, again, emotional enough to stick out in that field. Cool shit.

Hulder – "A Beacon From Darkened Skies," from A Beacon From Darkened Skies (Black Metal – Independent). I wasn't a Hulder fan until I was. And much like the shift in British poetry of the beginning and end of the First World War, I can pinpoint the exact moment that change took place. The Battle of the Somme, in this long useless metaphor, is The Eternal Fanfare EP. Maybe its the slight turn toward Emperor/Enslaved, maybe I'm dumb and they were always great, but every single track since then has been gold to me. And this new EP, which I hope is a harbinger of a longer release to come, is basically perfect.

Atavistic Decay – "Immakulate Invokations," from Immakulate Invokations (Death Metal – Independent). I have one other artsy/weird black metal album on deck (see INFO below), but I noticed a dearth in grossness and so I had to include this Atavistic Decay EP that packs within its putrid virtual walls a lot of what I love about death metal in once tight, bleeding space. Gargantuan sound, drilling riffs, drums that sound like they were recorded in a mossy cave. Just basically perfect. Check it out.

FIVE MORE THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW

ONE: New Afsky coming via Eisenwald. First single out next week.

TWO: That weirdo black metal album I promised above? Our Enemies from the Stars from Hungarian project Faith Malevolent.

THREE: Also stumbled into this cool melodic black metal album by ZØRZA. Came out last year.

FOUR: New Today is the Day.

FIVE: Cool Deafheaven set on KEXP.

ONE LAST THING, PROMISE: Pallbearer doing a "revisit" of what I feel is their best album, Foundations of Burden. Pre-sale up now over at Profound Lore.

ONE LAST THING, PROMISE PROMISE PROMISE: The next chapter of Milim Kashot is coming. All proceeds benefitting World Central Kitchen. More info soon.