Sunday, August 22, 2010

every time i say the word visceral you have to drink a shot

About three weeks ago Mike Simpson from The Womb came over to interview me for his radio show Superheavy Sounds on CIUT.

We sat in my back garden for and talked for a few hours whilst the dog tried to dig a hole to China.

I'm usually extremely reticent to do in-person interviews; on the whole i have terrible self editing skills when talking and have a tendency to respond as if i'm at a job interview

The results can be found
here.

Although it's edited down to 25 minutes there's still a vast amount of contradictory rambling and bullshit to force yourself through.

Lost in the edits are a long discussion about violent films (i made Mike go watch William Luistig's Maniac after the interview), and probably a whole bunch of other bullshit. I think there was something about WWII and measuring human history in increments far larger than the lifespan of a human.

I also completely neglected to answer Mike's question on magick properly (he asked specifically about Thelema) and went off on a largely unrelated tangent. I may or may not rectify that with a blog post in the near future, i'm still undecided as to whether or not i can be bothered typing it out and if it's anything other than utter self-indulgence to post here. Does anyone really care how i use the hermetic Qabalah in my daily life? (That's a hypothetical question by the way)

I was also asked to contribute a playlist and if you're interested this is what i requested they play:

Bastard - Shikabane
No Security - Rattvisans Hand
Repulsion - Festering Boils
Haymaker - In Home Surveillance
Korpse - To Be Continued...?
Godflesh - Life is Easy
Neanderthal - Fluids
Crossed Out - Neglect
Despise You - It's All in God's Hands Now
Man Is The Bastard - Idget Child
Infest - Sick Machine
Heresy - Ghettoised
Cro Mags - Hard Times
Bad Brains - Attitude
Autopsy - Ridden With Disease
Necrophagia - Cannibal Holocaust

also, this:

Final Blockade from Bennett on Vimeo.



suprisingly only one person tried to fight Matthew

7 comments:

am said...

I would very much like it if you were to elaborate on your veiws on Thelema. Especially in relation to hardcore and youth culture. I named my dog Aleis.

Ryan Page said...

My favorite part about the song Cannibal Holocaust, is how there singer always looks like he's about to fall asleep in the video... that an phil anselmo's introduction...

Will listen to the interview.

Ryan Page said...

Interesting interview. I've considered a few of the topics addressed before, and I generally agree. Although there is a bit of contradiction, but not hypocrisy. For example, it's sort of hard to deny that you are applying an intelligent approach to aspects to your music, but it's also fair to call bullshit on superficial intellectualism in extreme music. That's a pretty extreme oversimplification of what you were saying, but in essence I suppose....

Comments on lyrics were nice to hear. I often think about the potency of lyrics as stemming from a process similar to computer compression. it's a hack metaphor, but if you follow, those with the capable mental tools can extract the meaning of those references in the lyrics, allowing for more to be expressed in less words... This is a very under-developed thought.

One final thing; I completely agree with what you said about elitism. I have voiced similar concerns in my own scene. The results were not particularly good. It's funny how quickly punk kids will call you a nazi when you tell them they have some responsibility to their art. Sometimes it really feels like most people got into punk so they could make songs about their dick.

Vegas said...

It's a shame Blockade is on indefinite hiatus, I would have liked to see y'all again with the noise. It sounds like it was sick/working better than it did at the KVRX show.

Survivalist said...

Ryan, i said somewhere recently (Crustcake i think) that the satisfaction of the intellect should not be the first priority death metal (and i'd extend that to hardcore and grindcore). Which in a sense i guess i was repeating in this interview.

And you nailed it in your use of the word superficial.

I think my example of Metallica and Carcass songs not being improved upon on any level by being played by classical musicians holds water.

And i must respectfully disagree with you on Necrophagia; the best thing about that song is the main riff that makes me want to mosh through the walls of a police station.

Ryan Page said...

Yeah, it's on of those situations where I've probably only been joking about that song for forever because it's completely awesome. Very few songs have riffs that come to mind so easily, you mentioning it has caused it to start playing in my head and I can't turn it off.

I think it's fair to say that it's probably a matter of integration when it comes to applying "intelligent" (whatever people choose that to mean) concepts, or anything really, to music. What you were getting at seems to be that some people are just masturbating their ego by adding classical instruments, or operatic vocals, or anything else they choose to hide behind. Which is what calling someone pretentious should mean.

I'm not going to pretend I'm old enough to know what things were like in the beginning, but it would seem from what I've seen that you're right. This type of music (whatever it is) was not started to show off how smart the members were. It's a music of outsiders inherently. I think it takes a certain type of person to accept that the music you've chosen to play is inherently limited in scope and audience. I've certainly found that to be true, and have caught myself many times wishing that more people were interested in what I was doing, before I was reminded how it's important that this kind of music repels most people.

I'm going to cut myself off now because I'm posting too much for a blog comment. Would you mind if I sent you an email at some point?

Survivalist said...

e mail address is in my profile

i think i'm being horribly unclear; my issue is when people are afraid to enjoy things for what they are and have to dress it up in more fanciful terms.

A piano cover of Carcass magically gives respectability to something that doesn't need a stamp of approval (Carcass were largely excellent without other peoples gimmicks).

Saying your grindcore band was really inspired by Lubos Fisher, Sartre and Bernard Herrman when you really just play in a genre band.

It's like when you watch the DVD extras to a horror film and all the name actors fall over themselves to say that they loved the script and it isn't *really* a horror film, it's more of a psychological thriller.

It's the fear of being seen as stupid because you like death metal/ hardcore/ gore films/ whatever and dressing it up as something else, often whilst belittling the genre itself.

Or the fear of contamination, which is something else entirely and too much for the scope of a blog comment.