You are entering... The Scary Door

Want to know something that gets on my nerves? People who are of the opinion that, because I or somebody else takes an interest in something morbid or "taboo", we are psycho/sociopaths who must be avoided or looked down upon. Not even talking about wearing goth-attire or constantly musing about death and murder and suicide and stuff like that, but just... the people who act shitty to you just because you're interested in the way psychopaths' minds work, or you listen to unconvential music, or you like horror.

This also segues nicely into another thing that annoys me: people who think that, because you acknowledge, or expend thought on something, you are condoning it. Therefore, if you like dark music, you want to kill yourself; if you like horror films, you want to kill other people; if you examine demonic themes (even within a work that at its core takes a positive view on Christianity), you want to kill God... I've seen so many people condemn art that agrees with their fucking point of view as being "of the enemy" because it simply acknowledges whatever they disagree with in a more realistic way... or sometimes even for a more arbitrary reason. An example of this kind of thing would be how, after Ozzy Osbourne (a Christian who had religious themes in quite a bit of stuff he sang, contrary to popular belief) sang "Miracle Man", a very pointed song specifically condemning the hypocrisy of one Jimmy Swaggart (a televangelist who once condemned Osbourne and was later caught soliciting a prostitute), some figures in religious media made extremely defensive complaints about Ozzy mocking the noble practice of televangelism... after which, they condemned the hypocrisy of Jimmy Swaggart. I could go on, but you get the idea.

Album Review: Ministry - "The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste" (1989)

Ministry

The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste

1989

Let me get a few things out of the way here. First, Ministry is one of my favorite bands. Second, I am a huge fan of industrial music. That said... This, which is often considered to be Ministry's, or even industrial music's (or at least industrial rock/metal's) finest hour, doesn't take me to such heights of elation for some reason, even though I do like it. I feel that its reputation precedes it. Why is that? Well, I like the songs. I quite dislike "Test" but other than that I enjoy everything on here. However, this album's gestation and recording/production period was a chaotic mess and it shows here, to the point where, though the quality is fairly consistent, the album seems to fail as a cohesive work. It's certainly not a bad thing that there is a lot of experimentation with different styles, but it just doesn't work as well as it could. Feels like it could have been stitched together better.

This was the first album with the main team being the trio of Al Jourgensen, Paul Barker and Bill Rieflin (though poor Rieflin, as always with these guys, is not credited as an actual member of the band.) Also on board in various roles are Nivek Ogre, Chris Connelly, and several lesser-known people that Al and/or Paul decided to collaborate with. This creates the album's problem with feeling disjointed; different tracks had material written by different people, some parts were written or recorded for other, non-Ministry projects, and it has been said that during this time, Al became obsessed with the idea of being a 'puppet master' conducting a crowd of guest collaborators, rather than just putting his all into it and getting assistance where it was warranted.

Again, most of the songs themselves are good; "Thieves", "Burning Inside" and "Breathe" are excellent, fierce, militaristic industrial metal tracks. "Cannibal Song", "Faith Collapsing" and "Dream Song" are great examples of Ministry doing awesome atmospheric non-metal industrial stuff. "So What" is one of Ministry's crowning moments of awesome, so of course Al would try to credit himself with doing Connelly's excellent vocals on the song. The only one on here that I don't like to some extent is "Test". Fucking shitty rap-metal song with pitifully predictable lyrics. Fred Durst probably found a divine light of inspiration within the song, which provides me with another reason to want to knee Jourgensen in the groin.

The album provides probably the most abrupt shift in Ministry's style; all their albums prior to this had some kind of progression in sound, but this one is probably the biggest jump. While With Sympathy was poppy new wave, Twitch was new wavey electro-industrial, and the Land of Rape and Honey was electro-industrial with elements of metal here and there, this one is almost entirely metal, with a few post-punk and industrial (not electro-industrial) touches here and there. The synths are hugely downplayed, live drums feature on every track, the vocal style has entirely shifted to metal screams (except for "Cannibal Song" and "Test", of course.) This one sets the stage for the style Ministry would carry for the rest of its career, more or less. Not nearly as strong as its two predecessors and not quite as good as its follow-up, but still a good album... Just not the masterpiece it is made out to be.

RATING: 3.5/5

Gira Be Not Proud

Continuing to be kind of frustrated with my musical endeavors... Having a hard as hell time finding people to collaborate with. No matter where I look, nobody seems the slightest bit interested in what I'm doing. Everyone within a statewide radius seems to either want to play classic rock, country, emo, or radio-friendly metal ("stuff like Slipknot"). The ones who seem a bit more open are looking for someone with more traditional experience than I have (which I can understand, much as I'd love being able to experiment and do nontraditional stuff). People I've tried to hire for session jobs have turned me down because they "don't think they can do intense industrial type stuff" or the like. Grr. Oh well, I guess I'll have to keep practicing and get more of my own instruments and see if I can do this stuff on my own.

Also, funny/fitting that a song by God came up on my playlist as I write this. Industrial jazz for the win!

In the meantime... So glad tomorrow is almost here! It's going to be a fun "late weekend".

Tonight shall be a night of much anticipation. And also playing Fallout: New Vegas and possibly watching The Human Centipede :3

And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future.

So, today was less boring than I expected. Good. It included going out for a birthday lunch/dinner for someone, then heading up to Greensboro to look at houses to possibly move into a few months from now. Cue the usual whining and racism/judgmental complaints from a certain someone in the car.

Most interesting thing to happen was seeing a woman stumbling down the street with blood on her face and dripping from her wrists. Despite the "certain someone" wanting us to keep driving and forget about it, to the point where she was yelling and crying when we stopped, we pulled around the corner and observed while dialing 911 and filling them in on the situation. At this point, the woman (who was obviously intoxicated) had sprawled across some stone steps at someone's yard, and another person (unknown if he was a bystander or what) walked up and started screaming at her to "Get the fuck out of those people's yard! Get out of here!" We were afraid to get too close but we stuck around until the police showed, then we got out of there.

Creepy, unnerving, and very strange. And, for me, noteworthy.

Very much looking forward to Monday. For obvious reasons. Nowadays, I'm actually finding reason to look forward to things. I used to spend way too much time dwelling on the past and lamenting where things went wrong. I feel lately like I've finally climbed over the fence I was pushed against and am running free, open to all kinds of possibilities. I actually feel kind of content, and like there's something to the philosophy of savoring life, rather than enduring it. It's mighty refreshing and comforting. I have one person to thank ;)

In other news, my mom scored tickets to a concert next weekend. Now, normally, our tastes in music sort of clash. Especially for bands either of us would care about enough to go see live. HOWEVER. It happens to be a show by this guy right here:

...the androgynous purple-clad fellow to hold a surprisingly large amount of credibility in my book for someone playing in his genre. I love me some muddafucking .

So... Yeah. Possible concert review forthcoming. Yay!

On Transgression

Hiya, kids! Today I'm going to talk at'cha about transgressive art.

Transgressive art can be a sticky subject because, well, subjectivity. What some find to be offensive and surreal could just be a Tuesday morning for someone else who leads a perfectly normal and productive life but just happens to have different values. That said, most people can probably agree on the definition at least: transgressive art is art in any medium that challenges social mores, whether to provoke thought, or simply provoke. "But Worlock," you say, "isn't that technically what 'art' as a general concept is supposed to mean?" Well, yes, but transgressive art takes that concept and runs like a goddamn maniac with it. It can be cruel, disturbing, disgusting, nightmarish, nihilistic, and utterly, hopelessly perverted. There can be deep meaning behind it, or none at all. It can be solemnly and pointedly making a statement (one example being Peter Sotos in his notorious sound-collage record, Buyer's Market, or maybe the lyrics of Swans and Angels of Light frontman Michael Gira) throwing standards and 'normality' out the window with manic glee (the films of John Waters, the lyrics of Frank Zappa, or Mike Diana's notoriously nefarious "Boiled Angel" comics) or, most effectively of all in my opinion, finding a middleground and swinging between the two extremes (such as the writings of Chuck Palahniuk or the lyrics of Marilyn Manson). The important thing is that it takes an outsider's point of view to some logical conclusion.

And that is where many people misunderstand (or especially pick up disdain for) transgressive art; in most cases, it doesn't think everyone is going to enjoy it. Best case scenario, it hopes that someone out there will understand where it is coming from. The idea, no matter what of those 'fighting styles' it adopts, is to present a viewpoint, belonging to its creator, of the outsider looking in (or in some cases, wandering around looking for something, no matter what it is.) Whether it's about the middle-of-the-bell-curve members of society, or about fellow fringe-minded folks, they are looking at them and reporting back with their own interpretation of it all - disgust, amusement, or even just morbid fascination.

"But Worlock," you say again, an incredulous tone to your voice. "Couldn't it easily be said that a great number of these so-called 'artists' are only pseudo-intellectuals and/or are just trying to make a quick buck off the rebellious set?" Well, pay extra close attention, because this part will be on the test: even being part of that culture myself, there is not a doubt in my mind that pseudo-intellectualism and cheap, gratuitous thrills are probably a dime a dozen within this field. However. However. It does not change the outcome. If the creator's heart is not in the work, then its value may be suspect, as with most mediums. However, misanthropy is an acquired trait, and the people who have it and are able to take some personal significance away from the art still gain something. Value can be salvaged even from shit. And not just in the case of transgressive art, but in a very general sense.

Not sure what my ultimate point is, really; I just felt like expounding to the wall about something I enjoy and am frustrated at seeing frequently blasted by people who dismiss anything that isn't life-affirming. Probably will talk more on this later. As you were, citizen.

Album Review: Skullduggery - "You Are Here (Nowhere)" (2009)

Skullduggery

You Are Here (Nowhere)

2009

Industrial music. As a fan of old Wax Trax/Play It Again Sam shit, Industrial Records releases, and miscellaneous stuff that's mostly older, industrial music is a bit hard to find good new stuff for. The mightiest groups of old are fading away, if not gone completely. Godflesh is long dead. KMFDM is stuck in a rut which is full of stagnant ideas. Ministry is quite literally a ghost of its former self, recording boring covers and doing perfunctory remix albums years after the group's official disbandment (the albums immediately preceding not being up to snuff either.) NIN and Skinny Puppy are still good but who the hell knows when or if we're going to get anything else from them. Swans are still awesome but they've moved entirely outside the scope of industrial music in their new incarnation. And with the death of Sleazy, we probably won't be seeing any new Throbbing Gristle (which is a pity, because I actually think their 2007 comeback record was one of the best things they've ever done.)

Many of the newer bands are just imitations of any combination of the above bands, bringing little new to the table. It always seems to be either missing-the-point NIN-lite alt-rock-with-synths-and-samples, or Ministry wannabes thinking they can take that sound and make it radio-friendly, or bands doing the club-beats-and-horror-samples-and-laryngitis-vocals like :wumpscut: or old Skinny Puppy or about a million other projects from beforehand, just without any direction or anything to make them stand out, and IMO oftentimes with a hollow sound (again, big fan of the 80's sequencers.) It's a sad state of affairs. So of course I was cautious with my optimism for Skullduggery. I see now that this was unnecessary.

What we have here is a very evocative and fulfilling sound, grafted into a varied and well-made album. There are more sounds and influences than the average electro-industrial album at play here. Of course there's some of the requisite growling like Nivek Ogre and barking commandingly like Bill Leeb, but I don't mind it because Jayme Bass has a good voice for it (ironically, I like his version better than the real Bill Leeb's voice.) Bass has a surprisingly good vocal range, which is even better. There's some standard EBM type stuff here (though quite good) though most of those tracks go through diverse sounds and textures to make them stand apart from one another. Some tracks even delve into Warp Records IDM type stuff with an industrial tinge, not unlike, for example, Download. The album has a nice balance of destructive noise and purdy melody, which is not a bad thing, screw what tr00 rivetheads have to say. I think the important thing here is that you can hear a lot of probable influences here, but it takes those elements and then ventures outwards to build its own thing rather than lying under those influences, legs atrophied, and doing nothing but suckling at their teat, like a lot of bands (of any genre) tend to do. In that sense, Skullduggery is a success already, and this is only the first proper album.

The record is has a very rich and deep sound that conjures up imagery of dystopian cyberpunk hell in a way seemingly more natural and easy than most bands of this type. You can probably tell where I was going with this by now, but I legitimately like this more than a lot of stuff from 'famous' bands in the same style like Velvet Acid Christ, Front Line Assembly and Combichrist. It seems to have more effort and talent and soul in it than many of the more popular contemporaries within the genre. It's a real shame that Skullduggery is as little-known as it is while the alternative press and rivetheads around the world cream their deepest black little underwear every time another complacent piece of product falls out of Bill Leeb or Sascha Konietzko's butt. Bass has something special here. I can't wait to see what he does with it next... if there's any justice, then someday he will be held up as a motherfucking hero to spooky evil electro-industrial music for lifting a drowning genre out of the lake, pumping some air into its deflated lungs, and reapplying its eyeliner.

RATING: 4/5

This is the Song That Never Ends

Feels like time immemorial since I last posted here (and, depressingly enough, not one aspect of my life is at all different other than an ADHD diagnosis) but I figured, even though there's probably only going to be one person even looking at this blog, I'll keep playing for my pretend audience because it gives me something arguably constructive to do.

Expect more crap to be posted in the immediate future.