The Red List

OK, it finally came out and unbelievably (to me) The Endless Blockade are still a band.

I think every member of the band privately decided to quit playing music altogether at least twice in the duration it took to finish this.

Originally we had planned to do a one song 7" for Fatalist and doing something terribly clever (sarcasm) like include a bonus CD with the full 60 minute version of the song. We were basically intending on writing a ten minute mid-section with a lot of burly noise on either side and the 7" would contain the musical aspect and the CD the full unedited glory.

Anyway, this hideously self-indulgent streak probably lasted about a week, then we organised a show for Bastard Noise and talked about doing a full collaboration together, so we scrapped the original idea and our discography is better off for it.

At the time we were writing Primitive and anything that we felt didn't fit was shelved and put towards the Bastard Noise collaboration.

Eventually we'd written a lot of different material for the collaboration and i'd planned out how we'd switch between the two artists; some sections with just Blockade, some with just Bastard Noise, some together and a bunch of transition points. What Bastard Noise would do in their solo sections would be up to them, but i wanted it to be a cohesive whole, not just some oscillations over the top of our slow parts which would be the easy approach.

Enter Bastard Noise dusting off the four shaking cables and acquiring a drummer and the idea of the release as a collaboration was no longer viable so we started again.

Lyrically i totally failed with my first plan; a completely ridiculous idea about a man having a panic attack on a plane and reaching a new state of mental evolution at the end. The lyrics would move through the different aspects involved in the Descent of Power and anyone with any familiarity with this way of thinking will instantly know i bit off more than i could chew. If i was a smarter man and prone to writing a 3 hour prog rock opera i'd try again.



Instead i settled on a very brief look at the relationships between eschatology, time, monotheism, politics and violence; starting with the confusion of tongues and ending with 9/11



Anyway, it's out now, thank fuck and you should be more stoked than Max Ward getting a huge envelope of shitty South American grindcore tapes in the mail over the return of the four shaking cables.


Reading:


Turning Back the Clock - Umberto Eco
Flowers of Evil - Charles Baudelaire
Maldoror - Comte de Lautremont


Listening:


BT. HN. - Retrospective (buy it here)
Disorder - Complete Disorder
Severed Tongue - demo (download it here)