survivalist

a timely warning

2012-01-24T15:42:00.001-05:00

this is going to be "ancient" news in about 38 minutes i guess, but here goes anyway:

It's unfortunate that Brooklyn Vegan chose to add nothing to the potential debate around the Bastard Noise/ MitB vs Akron Family's merch machine debate. Instead their piece looks vaguely like some kind of TMZ meets EXTREME MUSIC (bro') pop news item.

The Skull is famously not drawn by Eric Wood's own hand; he took it from a book in the library twenty years ago. And Akron Family aren't the first to use The Skull on a shirt, Capitalist Casualties did it, Robocop did it; i'm sure a shit ton more have used the image.

Really what this about is context and re-appropriation.

I consider Wood a good friend and i can imagine that if whichever dude in Akron Family it is that used to drink 40s in the parking lot of crust shows as a teenager in the 1990s had e mailed him and said "i love your work, i play in this band, i think it would be funny if we used The Skull on one of our shirts as a weird homage/ clandestine propaganda" Wood would have been completely stoked.

Instead he sees some band with absolutely no clear link to any of his values, principles or aesthetics using The Skull with no explanation and he's mad as hell and goes into his patented Eric Wood Meltdown Mode (no one is safe...).

Akron Family have not obviously paid their dues and it just looks like another depressingly typical context-less re-appropriation of a symbol that represents considerably more than Akron Family understand (see my awesome Akron Family tattoo below).

It would be like seeing Kit Kat do a commercial where their delicious product forms Black Flag bars and some central casting punk kids eat them. What's the connection (Besides Dez Cadena potentially really liking Kit Kats)?

This will all blow over. Akron Family's manager will figure out his charges aren't going to get sued, they'll eventually issue a public statement (or Israel Lawrence will just keep posting private communication from the band) about how they meant it all in the greatest respect.

And because seemingly no one can ever remember history, it'll happen again in a few years (remember the utter PR disaster of Nike's Major Threat tour a few years go?)

What's the lesson here? That if you don't have an obvious claim to a symbol, you need to put it the fuck down and find something else.

Hardcore punk (and metal and noise and every other contemporary youth culture for that matter) is infamous for its picking and choosing of external sources and symbols. Sometimes people pick up symbols they have absolutely no claim to. I remember about ten years ago a friends grindcore band, Tangaroa, got into a whole heap of internet bullshit with some people who were understandably miffed that they were using the name of a Maori god for their band name. As if the Maori's hadn't been almost colonised out of existence enough without some English kids rendering something of great importance meaningless.

There's several moments in my own body of work, including recently, where in hindsight i've felt i should have actually left someone else's imagery alone.

No one looks good here, Wood and his friends and supporters (like me) look petty ("it's just an image man, other people have done it before and he just took it out of a book anyway"), and Akron Family look like cynical plagiarists at worst and naive dilettantes at best.

OK, i'm off to reblog 8,000 pictures of alchemy on tumblr

Column of Heaven shows

2012-01-20T22:27:00.000-05:00

Montreal, Fri Feb 24, @ Death House

Vile Intent
Hoax
Column of Heaven
Sqrm
Flatgrey

Toronto, Sat Feb 25, @ Siesta Nouveaux

Vile Intent
Column of Heaven
Gas Chamber
Farang - the other ex-Blockade band

Ottawa, Sun Feb 26, @ The Legion

Vile Intent
Column of Heaven
The Donner Party
Spilt Guts
Roughhouse

Still very much in the figuring things out stage but at the end of June/ beginning of July we're hoping to be in British Columbia. Squamish, Kelowna, Vancouver and possibly Victoria. The usual Mudlark/ Haggatha/ Osk related bands will no doubt be playing the shows and supplying 50% of the band with drugs

In September we're planning on making the foolhardy trip over the border for two weeks of shows, hitting the usual east coast and mid-west spots you can get to in 16 days when you're starting in Toronto.

Mission from God tape on Survivalist should be (might be...) ready for the three shows in feb, the 12" version on SPHC will be out a month or two after that (is my guess). Thirteen songs, absolutely no surprises for anyone with even a passing familiarity with things i've placed on/ written in the last five-ten years.

the void

2012-01-20T13:18:00.000-05:00

man, i remember when i used to post here...

the current void that has infected Survivalist is temporary, but is going to be in place until august this year. After that it looks like i might have five minutes free to actually put some records out and post some stuff

some minor bits of news coming in the next short while

Pay What You Want

2011-11-19T18:27:00.000-05:00

Pig Heart Transplant / The Endless Blockade - Split 7" by SuperFi Records

aka just download it for free

repress of 300 coming sometime

Black Paintings// Death Agonies

2011-11-06T23:21:00.002-05:00

Eric finally released the Black Paintings tape he's been talking about for around three years now:

black paintings - demo mmxi cs

black paintings is about recognizing that nothing good ever happens, but a) why should it? and b) it doesn’t matter. it navigates the works of goya circa 1820 and reinhardt circa 1960.

primitive.tools@gmail.com if you want one

Death Agonies live a few months back:

Death Agonies is currently recording 15 songs for what will probably end up being a 7" and a split 7". If you've ever longed for d beats and contact mic'd metal carnage then these might just be the recordings you didn't know that you were searching for

Inaudible garbage

2011-10-26T21:40:00.004-04:00

Shows won't be a regular thing for this band, will happen at least twice a year

and as i said in reply to a comment on this blog elsewhere (regarding the Blockade tape) "there are copies of the tape left, not many, but enough for anyone with a keen eye to grab one. Probably won't be able to get to the post office until next week though."

Twitch of the Death Nerve

2011-10-22T17:21:00.002-04:00

Last ever release for The Endless Blockade, an 11 minute cassette of the only recording of the final line up of Bloomer, Carroll, Edgar, King and Nolan. Recorded in our practice space the week before we dissolved the band this cassette represents the set list we played at pretty much every show in 2010; though it lacks the extended noise and closing song of either Do Not Resuscitate or Qabalistic Zero.

Bloomer was a long time friend of the band and joined us as an extra blast of noise for our final year. His solo works since around 2007 or so have mostly explored noise as a unified field of integrated textures rather than explorations of volume as a tool or juxtaposing clashing dynamics; his approach is pretty much HNW without really being HNW.

His presence on this recording is understated; emphasising the distortion overload and mirroring the intent of the music rather than putting new sounds into old places, which is frequently the approach i take when adding noise to music.

This is available at Column of Heaven's debut performance in Toronto tonight, any left over copies will go to 20 Buck Spin and Absurd Exposition. I'll be going back into my academic swamp after tonight - only coming up for air in December to attend Rites of Darkness - so please contact those guys for mail order.

This exists in the form of 100 cassettes because this isn't some precious work of art that needs to be left as a monument to a seven year period of our lives. This exists in the form of 100 cassettes because an outdated, fragile, hated, disposable, easily dismissed and largely dead format is the most fitting carrier of the last recording we ever did.

Consider it fertiliser for everything the five of us intend to do next.

Pisshorn, RIP

Bloomer finishes one of the dumbest nights Blockade was at the centre of

this weekend

2011-10-19T17:13:00.000-04:00

just a reminder:

Column of Heaven will be playing on saturday, sometime around 8 i think, thrill to our new line up of King, Kristiansen, Nolan and Simpson AKA now more ex-Slaughter Strike than ex-Endless Blockade. Owl Eyes are before us, their demo is great, they have a new 7" for this weekend, you should buy one or at least google search the interweb for a download of their demo.

The final Blockade release in the form of the piss raw tape i've been talking about for ever will be available at the show, 100 copies, with leftovers going to Absurd Expostion and 20 Buck Spin for mail order.

There'll also be Column of Heaven shirts with art by the lovely Sin-Eater, you can either buy one at the show or wait until we play your small Romanian fishing village on whatever ill-advised tour i talk myself into doing next year. As ever i must remind you, if you paypal me money for a shirt i'll just go and spend it on Mexican food and you'll never get your shirt, so let's just save all of us a headache.

I will gladly take your money off you if you're attending the thursday night show at Poor Alex Theatre as i will be doing the door and having a rubbish old man mosh later on to Double Negative.

Anytime a band plays a Siege cover this weekend i will be drinking a shot, feel free to join me.

Blockade/ Pig Heart Transplant

2011-10-05T14:55:00.000-04:00

Blockade/ PHT split 7" out now on SuperFi records. SuperFi released our first piece of vinyl and it's only fitting that he's releasing our last.

I'm told that these are the places you can get it from in North America:

Warm Bath
Rescued From Life
Iron Lung
Malokul
Give Praise
16OH
Feeble Minds
Vinyl Rites
Feral Ward
To Live A Lie
Katorga Works
Anthems Of The Undesirable

google that shit.

Locals can find this at Hits and Misses in about an hour and potentially at Not Dead Yet fest, though they may not last that long.

500 pressed and they look fantastic, Feeding did the artwork and someone i don't know - i'm sure they're lovely and kind to animals - in the UK screened them. Six panels of meat baby action.

These represent the final two Blockade tracks ever written and other than alternate versions of previously recorded material that's coming out on cassette later this month this is the official last rites of that part of my life.

Both songs deal with loss, one being a desire for escape from the cultural noise of the world; an embracement of a deliberate loss of social connection. The other is a scream into the void over the death of my seventeen year old cousin Alasdair. RIP wee man.

Joshua Norton Cabal/ Disgust

2011-09-27T19:44:00.000-04:00

After around 18 months of delays the Norton/ Disgust split is out on Small Doses.

Disgust's tracks are predictably great and there's an unexpected xbrainiax cover. I did three tracks (in one), recorded around the same time as Between Two Fires.

You can listen to samples and buy it here

In the layout it looks like i'm crediting myself with the quote that comes from The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell. My fault entirely.

Reading:

The Dominion of the Dead - Robert Pogue Harrison
Chips and Beer - issue 1
Culture and Materialism - Raymond Williams
History of Sexuality vol 1 - Michel Foucault
The Immortalization Commision: Science and the Strange Quest to Cheat Death - John Gray

Listening:

Wasteoids - demo
Owl Eyes - demo
Morbosidad/ Pseudogod 12"
Sutekh Hexen - Luciform 12"

Some Random Thoughts of Relatively Little Consequence

2011-09-06T08:55:00.004-04:00

Being the old guy at the show sometimes gets a little irritating, mostly it just adds to the distance i already perceive between myself and a lot of the human race.

My tour journals are frequently filled with references to the Peter Pan like nature of some local scenes; in parts of the US you are perpetually playing to a different group of under 20 year olds, no matter how often you go back over a period of years.

The biggest drawback of this level of transience is that discussions are sometimes perpetually stuck at entry level, see for example any internet discussion of power violence, something that everyone over the age of 30 was bored of ten years ago. It's hard to build on ideas and concepts if everything has to cycle back to the beginning.

Sometimes on tour i feel like i'm the man that time forgot, every year i get older than my audience. There's definitely something that reminds you of your own mortality to be found in touring in an underground band when you get over 30.

I've Been Looking at Everything Backwards Until Recently

The success of the international underground is one of a strange consistency and permenance despite the almost ever changing audience.

The audiences change, but the form of DIY shows stays the same; cram as many of your friends as you can into a small room with no adult supervision and go fucking nuts to a band. There's an undeniable beauty to that kind of simplicity.

The core values and approaches remain consistent despite the transient nature of the audience. It's almost like some kind of tenuous proof that the path many of us in the life have followed and are still following is a vital aspect of existence that's embedded into a wider consciousness. It's music and specifically the culture of music as an atavistic urge. I loosely verbalised an aspect of this eternal nature of ideas in the Blockade song Irrationalism Uber Alles.

Fellow old guy in a band, Sean from Suffering Luna, sees shows in terms of Victor Turner's concept of Liminality. I'm just going to be lazy and pull a quote from Wikipedia here: Liminality refers "to in-between situations and conditions that are characterized by the dislocation of established structures, the reversal of hierarchies, and uncertainty regarding the continuity of tradition and future outcomes".

There isn't much of a conclusion to be had here other than to say that the comfort i find in underground culture is not to be found in the consistency of the audience (because it isn't consistent), but in the consistency of ideas and approaches.

Shank, 2003, a show that happened a life time ago by hardcore standards

a small follow up

2011-09-04T23:00:00.000-04:00

Buy tickets for Not Dead Yet here

the shows will sell out

for out of towners who don't know, Poor Alex Theatre and Hard Luck Bar are practically next door to each other, so if you're feeling flush you can catch bands at shows on at both venues, it looks like the line ups are set up so people can go between shows, but you should check first.

this place is cheap if you need somewhere to stay

Chaos in Ontario?

2011-09-03T11:08:00.003-04:00

I've finally agreed to Column of Heaven's inaugural Live Ritual Desekration Ov Filth and Impurity, which is Finnish for "we're playing a gig"

This is the night we're playing:

Saturday October 22
Poor Alex Theatre
772 Dundas St. W.
7pm - all ages - $18

DROPDEAD
SCAPEGOAT
VEINS
PICK YOUR SIDE (ex-Haymaker)
HOAX
COLUMN OF HEAVEN
OWL EYES

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that the entry price gets you into the after show, the Direct Control show that's happening practically next door and the show at the Silver Dollar, but i could be wrong.

(It's true, i'm frequently wrong about stuff)

Column of Heaven line up: ~~Bloomer~~, King, Nolan, Simpson.

There will be a Blockade tape available at this show that we recorded in our space a few weeks before our final show, left over copies will go to 20 Buck Spin and Absurd Exposition. It's basically our live set of the time and the only recording that had Bloomer involved.

Listening:

Bastard Noise/ Actuary split LP
Furze - Reaper Subconscious Guide LP
Unholy Majesty - demo

Reading:

Salvation on Sand Mountain: Snake Handling and Salvation in Southern Appalachia - Dennis Covington
Northlanders - Brian Wood

Locals Only

2011-08-12T11:38:00.001-04:00

Sete Star Sept, - Tokyo, ex Blockade
Cages - Buffalo, ex Running for Cover
Death Agonies AKA EBHN - Bloomer/ Carroll/ King/ Kiyasu/ Nolan
Disleksick - runt of the litter noisecore

Parts and Labour, 1566 Queen Street West, Toronto, doors at 8pm, show over before midnight

Listening:

Aeon Byte Gnostic Radio podcast
Hunting Lodge - Nomad Souls LP
Gas Chamber - Corpse With Levity 7"
Lydia Lunch - In Limbo 12"
Ride for Revenge/ Undor LP
Current 93 - Of Ruine or Some Blazing Starre LP
Kerasphorus - Necronaut 12"

Reading:

Golly: Catching Hell - Phil Hester
Handling the Undead - Jon Ajvide Lindqvist
Esoterra - Chad Hensley
Mystics and Messiahs: Cults and New Religions in American History - Philip Jenkins
Lonliness and Revelation - Brendan Myers

Transcendental Power Violence

2011-07-19T15:10:00.001-04:00

Column of Heaven, Altars (Music, 2011) from Justin Oakey on Vimeo.

Haven't had time for posting for a while and that isn't likely to change anytime soon

Things currently being worked on:

Blockade/ PHT split 7" (super fi), records pressed, awaiting the artwork being finished off

Column of Heaven - Mission From God 7" (SPHC), written and ready to be recorded, just figuring out the exact line up beyond me and Eric for this release. Two splits need to have the details finalised then i'll start writing them.

Nameless Dread - Coronation of the Beast CD (Crucial Blast) about to be mastered.

a band with 3/5's of the line up of Slaughter Strike is in extremely embryonic stages; if it continues expect a Survivalist release before the end of the year.

Ears:

Druid Lord - Hymns for the Wicked LP
Nefandus - Death Holy Death LP
Paul Chain - Detaching From Satan 12"
Sick Seed - Great Corrupter LP
Opiate - First Document tape
Youth Korps - 1982 demo
Damnation AD - Kingdom of Lost Souls LP
Inside Out - No Spiritual Surrender 7"
Converge - Jane Doe LP

Eyes:

The Gnostic #4
Metalion: the Slayer Mag Diaries - Jon Kristiansen
GB84 - David Peace
The World of Perception - Merleau-Ponty

Ecstatically Embracing yadda yadda yadda

2011-06-06T16:30:00.001-04:00

my last post ever about this tape

download it here for free (like anyone would pay...)

200 copies were made, almost OOP now, Vile Intent will be making another batch to sell on their upcoming tour.

Lissuning:

IRM - Oedipus Dethroned/ An Act of Self Mutilation is an Act of Freedom
Anenzephalia - Ephemeral Dawn
Genocide Organ - Leichenline
Integrity - Detonate VVorld's Plague
Nader Sadek - In the Flesh
Left for Dead - everything

more salesmanship bullshit

2011-05-25T22:38:00.000-04:00

if you're buying the Column of Heaven tape from 20 Buck Spin (now in stock) and still want Primitive on vinyl it's about to go to the big fat OOP in the sky.

Canadians can also purchase it now

reading:

Dylan Dog Case Files (fuck yeah)
Ernest Gellner - Nations and Nationalism
Mattias Gardell - Gods of the Blood

Listening:

Excruciating Terror - Divided we Fall
Chronic Sick - Cutest Band in Hardcore
Bizarre Uproar/ Gelsomina - Assisted Self Sterilization

The Future of War

2011-05-17T21:53:00.000-04:00

I finally got around to the seemingly Herculean task of getting my arse down to Kinko's to make the covers for the first Column of Heaven release, Ecstatically Embracing all that we Habitually Suppress.

These are the places you can get this release:

wait a few weeks for a shitty rip from the Bridge Nine board (i'll upload it sometime before the end of the summer anyway)

Canadians go here

Americans go here

Europeans go here

Torontonians go to Hits and Misses

Rest of the Worlds go to whichever one of the above you want to send your money to.

I'll be hitting up the post office in a few days to mail all these fuckers out, so don't worry about it too much for another 7-14 days (other than local people who can go to Hits and Misses, a local shop for local people)

After Slaughter Strike predictably broke up, both Eric and myself wanted to return to something a little more primitive (no pun intended) and get something out quickly.

This is the result of that goal, three practices, six songs and absolutely zero suprises guaranteed.

When we were talking about starting this band the original idea was a loose "Like Blockade but with more noise and less hardcore; more weird shit." This release definitely isn't "less hardcore; more weird shit", at least not to my ears. The future may be different, but we'll see what that looks like when we get there i guess.

The noise to music ratio is about the same as on the Blockade/ Unearthly Trance split LP.

I'm often asked in interviews what keeps me motivated in keeping my involvement going "after-all-these-years", lyrically this release vaguely takes a stab at answering that: That i'm following a tradition (Altars); that bad feelings don't ever go away (Binge/ Purge); that culture is power (the cunningly titled Knowledge. Culture. Power.); that sometimes i can hear every sound in the universe all at once (A Sea of Blood in a Universe of Infinite Flaming Darkness); that it's a way of keeping track of themes in my life (Scarred); that it's something positive in my life (The Future of War).

There is a very small tongue in cheek part in Shawn Wilson's excellent book Research is Ceremony where he quips that he thinks graduate students should be ritually scarred upon completion of their thesis. A lot of the lyrical inspiration on the tape comes from this idea.

We're recording again in a few weeks for a split 7" with Holy Terror pin up boys Rot in Hell.

Reading; see above photo

Listening; Macabre Eternal on repeat non-stop for two days in a row now. Oh, and that Whitehorse/ The Body split 7"

The Body in Toronto

2011-05-15T03:52:00.000-04:00

for the locals

The Body are playing tonight (sunday may 15th) at Parts and Labour with some other bands of little interest to me and probably most readers of this blog

go see them, not sure how well promoted the show is; their LP All the Waters of the Earth Turn to Blood was one of my favourites of last year

Meanwhile in Land Belonging to No One...

2011-05-09T08:54:00.000-04:00

One last death rattle available in an edition of fifty copies for anyone still requiring a physical copy of Winter's Agony.

Here

You can still download it here

Australian playlist:

Arms Reach - Death to Shallow Hardcore
Deadstare - discography
Nekrasov - Into the No-Mans Sphere of the Ancient Days
Suffer - Lone (i'll keep plugging this LP)
Abraxis - Abraxis
Sadistik Exekution - K.A.O.S.
dISEMBOWELMENT - Transcendence into the Peripheral
Mournful Congregation - The Monad of Creation
Death Sentence - Ryan, Thanks for the Support
Mass Appeal - Nobody Likes a Thinker
AVO - Fuck Positive Hardcore

and two (not Australian) documentaries:

The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye
Who Took The Bomp? Le Tigre on Tour (if you're not a fan it's worth it for the stuff about Le Tigre and Hatebreed hanging out)

Just to Get Away

2011-05-04T12:38:00.001-04:00

I semi-recently made a micro-run of a short (24 page) zine on touring called Just to Get Away.

I'll probably make more copies in the future, but you can download the electronic version here.

I put it together in part because it's something i'd been considering for a while and wanted to get my thoughts down on the topic, but mostly it's a test run for the Survivalist series of zines i'm in the process of putting together (more later).

Just to Get Away follows a relatively simple popular education how-to formula; i position myself in relation to the text, i list what i don't cover, i set out some "how-to" excercises (in popular education these wouldn't typically be "how to sell shirts" or "how to cross a border with a band", but i don't think that makes my case that this is a popular education text any less valid ) and at the end i return to positioning myself in the text.

The return to positioning myself within the text is the important part and in my opinion the rest of the zine really just props up that section. This is because i believe that the choices we make in this life are inherently political and i'm really just using the zine to underscore this.

No one else has to care about that aspect from Just to Get Away though, i'm just showing the mechanics at work.

The zine was originally given away at a popular education conference in Toronto and it shared physical space with zines on Hip Hop and collective education, physical activity and academic performance and using tea parties as a political/ educative process (tea party meaning where people get together and drink tea and talk, not where people shout dumb shit about how awsum 'Merica is and how those damn Muslims terrists are in league with the homosexes).

Re: Survivalist in print. Yes, i've probably been talking about this forever, but if i have an idea, mentally massage it to death and actually stick to the same idea over the period of about a year then i usually do something about attempting to manifest it in physical form.

Each issue will be on a single theme and won't be objective, it will be about my specific experiences and thoughts on the subject. Yes, they're going to be essentially ego-driven.

The first two are slowly being worked on concurrently, expect one of them before the end of the year, depending on other commitments. The third and fourth issues have their themes decided upon as well, but will take a bit more time to put together.

There's no great plan to how many issues i'll make, but i've committed to the first two, anything after that and we'll see how inspired i am.

This morning's listening:

Threshold Houseboys Choir - Form Grows Rampant
Antediluvian - Revelations in Excrement
Excruciating Terror - Expression of Pain

and Benedict Anderson's book on nationalism, Imagined Communities, is still blowing my mind for the third week running, well worth reading and then re-reading.

Clean House

2011-05-01T17:11:00.000-04:00

My favourite new (ie they've existed less than two years and i've heard of them) local band made a video.

Bandcamp here for free downloads and all that malarky.

This song was recorded when Godstopper was still a one man operation, now they're a full band and playing live.

Some posts about new releases, both musical and written in nature coming later this week.

Probably a post about this photo in a month or two:

Reading:

Neil Strauss - Everyone Loves you when you're Dead
Joe R Lansdale - Complete Drive-in
Benedict Anderson - Imagined Communities
(the unfortunately named) Michael Jackson - At Home in the World
Dodgem Logic #7
Dead World Omnibus
Valdimir Nabakov - Invitation to a Beheading

Watching:

Venture Brothers Seaon 4
Sons of Anrchy Season 1
I Saw the Devil
Heartless
My Soul to Take (was expecting to hate this and it reeks of studio inteference, but there's suprisingly something very watchable about it)

Listening:

Whitehouse - Bird Seed
IRM - Four Studies for a Crucifixion
Hexvessel - Dawnbearer (probably contender for my favourite record of the year already)
Despise You/ ANb
Rot in Hell - As Pearls Before Swine
Socially Retarded/ Daisycutter
Vegas - Never to Wake
Moutheater - Colonial
Blut Aus Nord - 777
Ke/Hil - Hellstation
Suffer - Lone
Drainland - unreleased splits w/ Cellgraft and Trenches
Head Hits Concrete - unreleased split w/ Mudlark
Fudgetunnel - Sweet Sounds of Excess
Nekrasov - demos for next LP

Yes, i've had a week of ignoring all commitments other than feeding myself and the animals to indulge in all of the above.

Chromium Dioxide

2011-04-26T16:24:00.003-04:00

New issue of Chromium Dioxide, Toronto's genetic experiment attempting to cross breed Cracked Magazine (when it was still seen as Mad's crappy little brother), Cinema Sewer, Bugs and Drugs and SOD Magazine (SIX HUNDRED AND SIXTY SIX FUCKING SKULLS!!!!!). The loose connection to this blog is that one of the creators was in Slaughter Strike.

I haven't seen the current issue yet, but one feature is a round table "what went wrong?" discussion on Celtic Frost with Dave Adelson (20 Buck Spin), Dave Slimer (Slaughter Strike/ Chromium), Athenar (Midnight) and yours truly.

Buy it here.

Poly Styrene

2011-04-26T11:18:00.005-04:00

I'm conscious of not posting everytime someone famous dies. Phil Vane, (friend and grindcore trooper) and Sleazy (one of music's most important creators and commentators) were two i couldn't let go with out saying something and Poly Styrene of X Ray Spex is someone else i would be remiss if i didn't say a few words about her.

I'll keep it short and break it down into two things, her importance to culture and her importance to me

Her importance to culture is pretty easy to define; she stood as a light in the darkness and paved the way for other incredibly important acts for years to come. Let us not forget she got her artistic start in an era even more hostile to to the idea of strong female artists than the one we're in now.

As an aside i'm mildly irritated when i see references to female performers in grindcore/ hardcore/ death metal etc reduced to things like "greatest female vocals on a hardcore record ever", as if "female vocals" is somehow a genre in and of itself outside of weird decaying second hand record shops where you'll still find Bolt Thrower in the Rock and Pop section. Or when gender is commented on when it isn't even necessary for a description.

Because to me Poly Styrene was one of the greatest vocalists full stop, not greatest female vocalists or greatest punk vocalists (or "greatest female punk vocalists from kent with Somlian heritage that only released one LP in their original incarnation in the late 1970s").

If i had a daughter i would be far more comfortable with her listening to Oh Bondage Up Yours than Beyonce's anthem to female un-emancipation, Single Ladies.

On a personal level (aside from just being really into X Ray Spex in a huge way), in a time past, when the contents of my mind were not always as well ordered as i'd have liked them to be, the song Plastic Bag meant a lot to me.

"My mind is like a switchboard
With crossed and tangled lines
Contented with confusion
That is plugged into my head
I don't know what's going on
It's the operator's job, not mine
I said"

Poly Styrene was diagnosed with a bi-polar disorder at age 34 after living with a wrong diagnosis of schizophrenia for several years.

Poly Styrene died yesterday from breast cancer.

Obituary here.

Never Forget

2011-04-19T09:25:00.002-04:00

Death Agonies live

2011-03-21T10:10:00.004-04:00

From the show we played in Toronto a month or so back with Vile Intent, Purity Control and Direct Action.

Death Agonies (Music, 2011) from Justin Oakey on Vimeo.

Two things i learned whilst playing:

1. Emperor bass cabs hate me.

2. Hitting a contact mic with a hammer at the start of the set is a terrible idea if you have a minimal amount of equipment with you.

And for something completely different:

Name four samples (track and artist) and win a prize of some sort.

Survivalist tapes

2011-03-19T16:15:00.002-04:00

Because i get occasional questions asking me exactly what is or isn't a Survivalist release here's the list of everything i can currently remember.

Not everything has Survivalist written on the packaging.

Not in chronological order, most of them are C20s

death agonies/ winters in osaka - 80 copies
death agonies - the path to heaven leads through hell - 60 copies
flatline construct - queen west withdrawl - 60 copies
death agonies/ piss horn - 80 copies
death agonies/ pig heart transplant - tunnel - 80 copies
slaughter strike - a litany of vileness - 300? 400? 500? I lost count. Pressing of 172 by Nurse Ettiquette with alternate artwork
slaughter strike - winter's agony - 100 copies
joshua norton cabal/ nekrasov - primordial transmissions - 75 copies
the rita - womanhood - 80 copies
windscale - servitude - 50 copies and 30 on CDR released by Fellacoustic
humiliation - christian charity - 200 copies

everything long sold out

lovers of fuzzily recorded hardcore/ grind and power electronics will (possibly) be thrilled by the column of heaven - ecstatically embracing all that we habitually suppress tape that will be ready in a few weeks and will (for the first time ever) actually be available relatively easily through mail order

a playlist:

slogun - we human animal
submerged - violence as first nature
potawatomi - noisy le grand
vile intent- shadow of the skull

reading:

whitefella jump up - germaine greer
liber null/ psychonaut - peter carroll (re-reading again, probably one of a handful of books on magick i would wholeheartedly recommend)
slayer xx

אמת

2011-03-15T11:07:00.002-04:00

More coming later. Recorded in as no-fi a way as you could possibly imagine.

King. Nolan. Ward.

Short Fast and Loud 10th anniversary issue

2011-02-23T15:49:00.005-05:00

as mentioned a while ago after, i wrote a column on Scion and hardcore for the 10th anniversary issue of SFL. Get it here.

E mail me if you want an electronic copy of the column, but seriously, don't be a dick and buy it anyway if you give a shit about hardcore being more than just something you like on facebook.

Slaughter Strike - Winter's Agony

and if anyone wants the Slaughter Strike final demo it's still available to download here:

winter's agony mediafire free music omg piss in your own mouth with sheer unadulterated joy death metal oop lol old school old school old school ;)

all physical copies are now gone, if you see any on e bay for more than $5 then feel free to flood the market with your own bootlegs (og art file included with download)

Listening:

ENT - Peel Sessions and split w/ Slang
Bizarre Uproar/ Will Over Matter split
Killa Instinct - The Bambi Murders
Low Threat Profile - Product #2
Pig Heart Transplant side of the split w/ Endless Blockade

Reading:

King Kong Theory - Virginie Despentes
lots of shrill hysteria about fascism in music - various know nothing idiots with loud voices

Phil Vane

2011-02-23T08:46:00.003-05:00

Friend and legend, RIP

First punk band i ever saw live, 1990, Duchess of York in Leeds.

The man that introduced me to GISM (and thus is partly responsible for naming The Endless Blockade)

more Kiyasu versus the world

2011-02-18T23:36:00.005-05:00

Ryosuke Kiyasu, Keiji Haino and Chiyo Kamekawa

Space jam freak outs. Get into it.

And this classic from my youth that i reworked:

(Column of Heaven recording soon)

Kiyasu vs Endo

2011-02-13T17:40:00.002-05:00

Original Blockade drummer in a live improv battle with living legend (and amazing karaokae king) Kazumoto Endo

aka two of the best dudes in Japan to get drunk with making a racket

Death Agonies live

2011-02-13T15:06:00.001-05:00

rare live performance, i think this will be our third?

Bloomer, Carroll, King, Nolan is the line up at this show

Buy the new Vile Intent record

John Lennon is dead. . . I still think - I still think about Jodie all the time. That's all I think about really.

2011-02-09T21:18:00.014-05:00

I guess it's time to do that final post on 2010. Doing four seemed like a good idea when i had the time back in late december...

The death of black metal, pictured yesterday.

Often when black metal is discussed the talk turns to the satanic aspect of culture; whether or not Satanism represents the defining aspect of what makes something black metal or not. “Black metal is Satan’s music, if there is no Satanism inherent then it isn’t black metal.” You’ve heard all of these points a thousand times before and by now you’re probably largely immune to the emotional triggers that black metal’s visual language is supposed to awaken in you.

Similar to power violence, which I discussed last time, no one is clear about black metal and what does or does not constitute its essence. If its essence is the Satanic, then Satanism needs to be better defined. Modern Satanism can take the form of anything from a literal theistic worship of Satan as a divine entity to a metaphorical Satanism; Satan as the symbol for ultimate rebel/ artist/ libertine/ what have you and all points between the two polar beliefs.

So where does the heathenism of someone like Burzum fit in with the gnosis of a band like Ofermod or the brutal Dennis Wheatley style Satanism of Morbosidad?

And where does the eco message of the “are they or aren’t they black metal?” of Wolves in the Throne Room fit?

If you pull back a bit and look at what black metal is reacting against then it is clear that at its most simple level a rejection of Christianity is at the heart, regardless of the approach. You can see this in areas as diverse as Chris Moyen’s comic book satanic super hero adversary of Christ to the reclaiming of pre-Christian ways of interacting with world of the heathens. I would even argue, though this thought is far beyond the scope of a blog post, that the eco-philosophies of some black metal bands come from a place that rejects the separation of man from nature that Christianity has come to embody in many minds.

However, written into this rejection I also see something else, I see a strong rejection of Modernity in black metal. The misanthropic Anti-Life black metal crowd wants to push everything to breaking point and the inevitable societal collapse that will follow (“if it doesn’t work, fuck it up even more”). One of NSBM’s main thrusts is the rejection of diversity and multi-culturalism, both of which are distinctly modern ideas. The symbolic Satanists reject post-Enlightenment moral codes and the heathens have a desire to return to a romanticized past. I see all of this as being a rejection of the modern world and it generally focuses on Christianity in particular, arguably the major defining force on the entire world over the last thousand years.

I love black metal, I listen to it a lot, but it’s not strictly my culture. I acknowledge I contain an element that will probably always mark me as a tourist when navigating this terrain. Thus, what does or does not constitute black metal is not strictly my fight.

As an aside, the wide scale derision that the Hideous Gnosis symposiums have faced strike me as a reaction to what I think many people perceive as outsiders trying to write their meaning on black metal. Once that meaning has been written, it can be colonized and owned anew. Again, this isn’t particularly my fight; I can enjoy some of the undoubtedly ridiculous intellectualizing of black metal (I love theory, particularly the ludicrous stuff) and I can also appreciate and support the refusal to legitimize the proceedings.

At the end of the day if, as I suspect, elements of black metal contain an untamable barbaric warrior spirit then no shit, these symposiums are seen as alien and are hated in some quarters.

Blood Revolt – Indoctrine (Profound Lore)

So, if you’ve seen more than a few posts on this blog it’s probably clear that I’m a person that tends to think a lot (perhaps over think sometimes) about what gives something its form and what it is that I really like about music beyond the sound.

I’m rarely interested in saying much about the musical side of things; I either like it or I don’t and there are different gradations within those two sets. As the post on power violence said, I could easily pull some “this CD resurrects Christ with its occult power then publically executes him and spends an eternity defiling his corpse. It’s fucking brutal dude.” So the lengthy intro above is a just way of framing certain qualities in this release that I admire. The structuring of the power violence article was exactly the same.

But musically, yeah, let’s do this first. This shit is awesome and I had no expectations to the contrary. I followed Axis of Advance’s output avidly and I get the impression that this disc is essentially where the fourth AoA LP would have ended up musically.

J Read’s drumming, like Mick Harris’ of some twenty plus years ago, is instantly recognisable and adds the chaos and war to even relatively polite and melodic sections. Meaning that even in relatively restrained sections there is an uneasy undercurrent to the whole thing.

A. A. Nemtheanga’s vocals are suitably in character; typically veering between an introspective yet impassioned self-questioning and something akin to an insane, histrionic preacher.

Not everyone is a fan of the vocals, I understand that but two things strike me. One, I love black metal pterodactyl vokillz as much as the next nekro guy on the block but the content, which makes the record so vital to me, would be utterly lost with that vocal style. Two, kids would bitch about vocalists like HR and Jello Biafra these days; as time goes by the acceptable means of expressions within genres diminish noticeably.

"Aw, teach me how to pray, good Christian.
If it works you'll all be dead.
We'll see the secret to salvation,
For me it's when you're dead, you're dead, you're DEAD"
- Crucifucks, Hinkley Had a Vision

So where does this fit in in the terms outlined above in the preamble? Lyrically it makes me think of what Sirhan Sirhan’s private diary entries might look like, though the first thing I thought of was the letters Reagan’s would be assassin, John Hinckley sent Jodie Foster before he did the deed to prove his love for her. Searching online doesn’t pick up any of the really crazy ones asking Jodie to hang on to his dreams and fly away to netherworld of happiness with him or crying into the shaving mirror every morning. But trust me; they’re worth a read if you find them in a book, for the life of me I can’t remember where I first saw them, (edit, they’re in Apocalypse Culture 2).

The intro to God’s Executioner, Praise Be brings to mind Emperor Constantine’s (you know, the guy more responsible for Christianity than Jesus) vision before the battle of Maxentius in which he had a premonition of victory if he replaced the images of imperial eagles with crosses on the soldiers standards.

Blood Revolt’s central concept is one of religious fundamentalism married to the most mentally decayed aspects of modern life. That most ironic of all distinctly modern phenomena, violent religious fundamentalism at war with the modernism that gave rise to its existence.

Blood Revolt does not condemn the martyr, but they don’t need to. Either way Modernity is called on its shit, both in its creation of deeply disturbed people that attach their psychoses onto a spiritual impulse and for being such a sickened environment in the first place.

If black metal is a culture of obsession (which I think it is, but I haven’t touched that) and also anti-modernist and with a religious aspect (whether in theistic Satanism or in its anti-religious discourses) then to me Blood Revolt hit all three of those concepts squarely. Not only that, but the ideological content is something both entirely new yet still remains consistent with black metal’s framework.

The whole CD is the deranged religious visions of death that black metal has always promised to deliver made incarnate.

Probably the release I listened to the most in 2010 without a doubt.

Dust in the Lungs of God

2011-01-30T21:59:00.006-05:00

Out now on Cathartic Process, Death Agonies, Dust in the Lungs of God C20.

This is the fifth Death Agonies release and the first not released on Survivalist.

Line up for this was Carroll. Edgar. King. Nolan.

Dust in the Lungs of God was born out of the middle period of an extended personal meditation on the shortness and shortcomings of human life and the idea that we aren't nearly as important as we'd like to think we are in the grand old scheme of things.

Musically it represents another attempt of mine to erase the importance of individual thought and action in art.

The sounds were recorded in mid-2009 over four sessions, mostly at the end of Blockade rehearsals using our regular backline and drum kit on a variety of hand held recording devices. A vague nod is made to power violence in that part of the goal i set myself was to structure essentially formless and very loud recordings of harsh noise in a way that reflected the structuring of Endless Blockade material. I like the end result and the fact that i can't tell what material came from which session and who's responsible for its creation.

I haven't heard any of the other releases in the current Cathartic Process batch but the previous release by The Teratologist on CP was excellent and i hope for more of the same on the new one. If you don't already have them i'd also strongly recommend Bastard Noise OEB IV, Clew of Thesus - Meridian, Bizarre Uproar - Triumph and Vice Wears Black Hose - Part 1 releases.

Reading:

Wild Garden - dian marino
Wasase - Taiaiake Alfred

Listening:

Godstopper - demo
Morbosidad/ Perversor
Macronympha - Amplified Humans
Control - Seven Deadly Sins
Urban Blight - Total War
Winters in Osaka - Mutual Collapse
Nekrasov - whatever it is that's coming out on Void Seance sometime this year. Great release, perfect meditation music

Winter's Agony

2011-01-30T21:40:00.009-05:00

Download Winter's Agony here. If you want a physical copy either check 20 Buck Spin or Profound Lore, the last 15 copies are on their way to those dudes. If you want to bootleg it don't forget to print on to Glacial Mist recycled card for the covers and dub it onto one side of a C20 for accuracy.

Cyclopean has made shirts with the cover image.

You can find the third and final interview with Slaughter Strike here, Dave answered most of the questions, i answered a handful.

Slaughter Strike is no more, Dave is in Abyss and publishes Chromium Dioxide magazine, Eric is in Urine Cop and Column of Heaven, Joel is in a Mentors cover band and plays live with Midnight from Cleveland, Cindy is probably shredding along with Dream Theatre records and my main priorities are Column of Heaven, Joshua Norton Cabal and Nameless Dread with some other occasional noise activities. I don't really have the time for a "real" band right now, ie booking tours and trying to get several people with competing schedules to get together at the same time. Maybe a year from now.

Column of Heaven will be primarily myself and Eric working on material that picks up slightly further down the path The Endless Blockade was on (this isn't "new" news).

2010 Part 3: The Problem with Power Violence (and two records from last year that i liked)

2011-01-11T11:54:00.018-05:00

First world problems man...

OK, last one was noise, this one is power violence (and one grindcore record because it fits), next one is black metal.

There is no working definition of what power violence does or does not entail. Part of the problem is that many people believe that power violence is a definitive essence that can be easily found lurking within whatever audio murk is being examined. This means that whatever band/ record we're talking about is magickally moved from the set marked "bands that are not definitively power violence" to the set marked "bands that are definitively power violence".

A few years ago in interviews i started trying to side step the whole "what is power violence anyway?" questions (cuz, you know Eric Wood publicly proclaimed Endless Blockade were power violence and no one else was, thus making me an expert on the topic). I suggested that if we changed the language and asked who was influenced by power violence, rather than who was or was not definitively power violence then we wouldn't need to see the same endlessly boring e-fights about whether or not HSMP should be considered a sacred text in the Power Violence Canon or not.

I think power violence is something that can be defined, i just usually can't be bothered with the discussion that inevitably comes with it.

So who is having this conversation about what is or isn't power violence?

Well, mostly it seems to be people that are either pretty young or people who are excessively flippant (and who wouldn't be excessively flippant at this point?)

This is fine, but when people under 20/ newcomers are the only voices represented then shit gets skewed pretty quickly.

DIY culture is a living tradition, thus in the same way that i absolutely resist the notion that boring old gits like Stephen Blush (or me) get to define the debate on hardcore i also resist the notion that only the very young get to discuss something that's been around for a while now.

So what the hell is power violence anyway? Well, just because it usually can't be specifically named doesn't mean it isn't something tangible. Pick five people who are into black metal and ask them to define it and i'm sure most of them couldn't give you a clear answer. And what are similarities between Psuedogod, Burzum and Hate Forest? And by the same measure what are the differences? Because all three are black metal bands and all three sound utterly different.

Being able to pinpoint exactly what power violence sounds like is not really the issue because i would argue that it isn't a sound. I would argue that power violence is not a genre in and of itself but an offshoot of hardcore (and most certainly not grindcore). If anything it's a set of tools to compose music still very much within the framework of hardcore punk, but one that produces some different outcomes.

To my mind power violence parodies hardcore. When i say parody i don't mean the word pastiche, which a lot of people confuse for parody. I use the word in the same spirit as Bakhtin when he examined the notion of the carnival and the grotesque in his book Rabelais and his World. It is a purposeful distortion of another form to make a new point in the terms already laid out by the thing being parodied.

It's hardcore squared, hardcore on steroids etc etc. When hardcore uses a breakdown in power violence we exaggerate that point dramatically. The breakdowns are slower and it's a more jarring contrast. When hardcore uses short and fast song structures that don't follow traditional musical patterns in power violence we exaggerate those. Our songs are faster and shorter, our transitions are less predictable, our focal points are radically different, we use false build ups, we introduce riffs and discard them instantly without returning to them.

We fuck with the program but we're still definitely very much part of the program; if it moves too far away from hardcore then it stops being power violence (though it can still be influenced by power violence) and becomes something else entirely.

Take Mind Eraser, though they've mutated considerably over the years they write to the basic structure of hardcore but with the content replaced, making it something else, though still undoubtedly hardcore. Hatred Surge do a similar thing.

Iron Lung are all about the focus on repetition in terms of short, concise songs, and a massive expansion on the idea of punctuation and the pause in music. The repetition is very much there, but so fleeting and so shortened it flies past at break neck speed without becoming about lengthening the song. It's the idea of early Swans being attached to the speed of DRI and Koro. Songs are defined not in terms of melody and structure but where the pauses are, where the drums temporarily shift tempo before kicking back in.

Blockade towards the end was about taking the implied noise and dissonance of hardcore punk and really pushing it to breaking points at key moments. I was also starting to get really into the practice of shifting time signatures within sections of songs so a simple six bar pattern became something different. The denial of expectations that a lot of power violence represents has become predictable and codified (variations on the formula of two bar blast as punctuation, four bar break down, two bar blast, two bar breakdown, four bar blast to finish), so i was trying to keep to that spirit. Column of Heaven is largely founded on this song writing practice so far.

What does any of this have to do with 2010?

Well, rather than say "this record peels paint from doors and makes you feel like your face just got raped by a gang of PCP addled Vikings that just arrived through a rift in the space time continuum that this record fucking caused dude!" I figured i would define what power violence is to me, and a lot of people will undoubtedly call bullshit on my ideas, and from there talk about two bands that in 2010 encapsulated these ideas.

SFN - Itching 7"

I love this band. When i say "these kids fucking get it" what i'm really trying to say is that i perceive in their sound the formula i talk about above. They validate my own experiences and opinions, which is probably how most of us respond to art on a certain level.

I think i first met them in Wisconsin in 2006 when Blockade and Iron Lung were touring together. There's definitely a "mid-west, mid-week power violence curse" when you're on tour and i figured this might well be another one of those occasions where some whacky bullshitters with some half baked sub-Spazz riffs would be on the show. But no these four (as they were at the time) kids (Graeme must have been all of 16) were completely amazing and totally destroyed my negative mindset as soon as they started. Four years later and they finally released their first record! The demo 7" doesn't count. In a time where massive productivity is the key to getting your name out SFN spent years recording demos (i think i have them all) and refining the same set of songs endlessly. And fuck it's paid off for them. Ideally they've got over that stage of ultra slow writing and they'll give the world a full length sometime within the next 18 months.

I love power violence, but most power violence records i hear do absolutely nothing for me. This 7" reminded me of why i continue to mine this aesthetic.

Defeatist - Sixth Extinction CD

Not a power violence band by any stretch of the imagination, but i feel they apply the ideas of parodying structure and content to the grindcore genre in the same way that the good power violence bands do.

Defeatist are great in a subtle way. Initially they were one of those bands i would've said "fucking crush you with a clown car filled with mutant Orcs screaming about the end of the human race!" You know, that whole this-record-is-brutal thing without saying much else.

But listening to this CD and the Sharp Blade Sinks Deep Into Dull Minds discography CD (which i think i prefer slightly) fairly intently one day (which is something i don't do enough of these days) i picked up on a lot more things than i had first heard.

There's an interesting use of time signature going on and there's some cool shifting accents, that like Iron Lung define the form of the song rather than melody. But it's subtle, almost like how you notice how loud your refrigerator is when it stops making a sound. Yeah, apparently i've just decided that comparing music to consumer goods is a good thing.

Like Klaus Dinger of Neu's Motorik beat, to fully understand the section you're listening to you have to put it in the context of the part that immediately proceeded it and the part that follows it.

But it's also scream-like-a-banshee-guitars-that-sound-like-atlantis-sinking-drums-that-sound-like-a-boeing-taking-off brutal as well.

New age grindcore; tough as nails with a sensitive underbelly. Not really, i'm becoming self-conscious of how fucking ridiculous it is to talk too much about music.

Anyway, there's another two that would be in my definitive 2010 best of list.

2010 part 2: As Loud As Possible

2011-01-04T07:31:00.010-05:00

For some the importance i feel that the publication of As Loud As Possible magazine represents may not be as clear as i'd like until the next post when i bring things closer to home and talk about power violence using some of the framing i'm intending to bring up here.

Going by blog comments, conversations at shows and personal e mails it's clear that The Endless Blockade managed to straddle the worlds of noise and hardcore with some degree of success. Some noise people that liked us saw an approach in us that, despite very different end results, either mirrored their own or at least came from a similar place. We also appeared to be something of a small gateway for people discovering the world of noise in its many forms.

For the people that are still navigating their way through the entirely intimidating noise as a genre via Bastard Noise, The Endless Blockade, Breathing Problem related things and a cursory knowledge of Dominick Fernow and possibly Mikko Aspa, ALAP is an essential purchase.

The importance of Throbbing Gristle is well documented. Like so many other intitially repugnant strains of art TG gained respectability through the passing of time and exposure to the fallout of their ideas. See also punk, black metal, techno, graffiti, yoga and veganism.

Bizarrely Whitehouse appear to have benefitted by being around forever as well; generally respectable music publications will actually acknowledge them now and write off the transgressive aspects of their aesthetic with a cursory mention of "Sadean wit" to get themselves over the initial hump of guilt over enjoying something that is essentially utterly hostile and downright unpleasant.

Even Genocide Organ have managed to find someone that will write that hoary old pile of dog shit pondering if they're merely "a mirror being held up to society" in the liner notes of the reissue of Remember. People need to remember that Mayakovski quote about art and mirrors better...

And let us not forget the exotic sounds of Harsh Japanese Noise like Merzbow and Melt Banana (sic). Like i said in a recent comment on another post on this blog, people who will reference Lords of Chaos in a conversation about black metal can usually be written off immediately as being unknowledgable. The same holds true for people that will bring up the Merzbow/ BMW story when talking about noise. (Read the actual story here and then move on with your life)

Sometimes it feels like noise has become an exotic oddity from the mysterious orient (that no one really likes), with magazine articles reduced to a few paragraphs shoved in between either Philipino and Mexican black metal bands (themselves more exotic oddities to be wondered at) or Hassidic drum and bass DJs and has been modern composers.

It's treated as either a gimmick or a curiousity.

And then there's the highbrow approach, the same one that some heavy metal fans will use to intellectually validate their tastes; some Russian woman can play Carcass songs on a piano, some Finnish dudes can play Metallica songs on cellos, so and so from some boring band is actually more like a classical jazz guitarist than some generic shredder. These things apparently give the veneer of respectability to something that in reality doesn't actually need that repectability bestowing on it.

The noise version of this is to reference people like Russolo, Cage and Xenakis; all of whom are interesting and there is an undeniable importance to their artistic and philosphical contributions, not just to noise but to music as a whole.

But none of this adequately explains the importance of The Rita, Sigillum S, Intrinsic Action, Government Alpha, Richard Ramirez ad infinitum in particulary easy terms.

As Loud As Possible is certainly not the first voice noise has had; there have been several zines, a few books (of varying quality) and some talking heads (also of varying quality). What ALAP does is examine the past and the present of noise using the terms of noise itself without relying on the hackneyed approaches of either exoticism or intellectualism.

Some have questioned the validity of the reviews section; in the micro-releasing world of noise most of these are long sold out by publication time and the reader has little chance to hear the product. This isn't actually important and the reviews function less as a buyers guide and more as a guide to the evolution of both individual artists and the broader scene.

Noise artists frequently release a lot in a short time frame and in limited numbers. ALAP takes snapshots and traces development, documents phases and the entry and exit points of movements and currents. HNW didn't appear over night, it existed before it was given a three letter acronym. Sam McKinlay of The Rita can quite eloquently explain (so feel free to make contact with him to discuss it further) that he sees the birth of HNW as being rooted in an approach that appeared in the mid 90s where a group of quite different artists deliberately moved away from the frenzied and hyper kinetic cut up clean sounds that the Japanese scene at the time epitomised (itself a steroidal push of the ideas Merzbow presented in Noisembryo). McKinlay (in personal conversations) makes no bones about comparing HNW to an art movement and that it needs to be seen in terms of a lengthy process of artists discovering their formula and the constant mutual re-informing and re-envisioning that these movements entail.

Using this lense, noise (and most forms of art and the culture attached to art) is defined equally by what it rejects and what it includes. ALAP acknowledges this and gives voice to the disparate tendencies that make up what is reffered to as noise.

ALAP looks at the past and how it informs and relates to the present; see the articles on Broken Flag, RJF, Interchange and others. And rather than just focusing on the past, which whilst interesting is too easy and ultimately too worthless to look at with no further explanation, it also looks at the present and again uses past reference points to explain how we got here (see Climax Denial, No Fun, Sewer Election and IDES amongst others).

This is the approach we (meaning noise consumers and creators) have rarely had. This is the voice that in a sense validates what we do without being held to account for the same boring questions we get from outsiders over and over again. Why someone would want to attach a contact microphone to a block of glass or why someone would want to release a tape wrapped in electrical tape and thumb tacks that is both difficult to open and difficult to find. These questions are dispensed with because they're unimportant and the answers can be found in other places anyway.

We can see where we've come from; whether it's a reaction to punks lack of real noise, a continuation of transgressive performance art or just teenagers hearing Whitehouse for the first time in the early 1980s who thought "i could have some of that" and starting their own power electronics projects and labels. We can see where we're at now and we can take a good guess at where we might be going.

Punk (and thus hardcore) is generally great at seeing its past but terrible at being able to get to grips with its current forms and by the same token too many noise people think they're reinventing the wheel and have no idea who their musical forefathers actually were.

ALAP is not an apology and it is not entry level. It presupposes a certain amount of knowledge to find meaning within its pages. Which is how is how it should be.

That noise is still viewed like it's the dark continent of music or that it's apologised for in terms of intellectualism is a source of occasional personal irritation. ALAP raises the bar and renders those approaches largely null.

2010

2010-12-30T10:35:00.009-05:00

Hey, it's that time of year again where i don't provide a list of ten hardly essential things that you all downloaded long before i did anyway.

Sometime between now and mid-january, time permitting, i intend to do three seperate posts on some stand out artefacts of the last year. If the posts never happen and this paragraph is rapidly edited out then i've descended into another fit of self-consciousness and decided agianst it.

There's a reason why most metal blogs catering to a non-niche market all have Agalloch, Electric Wizard, Deathspell Omega and Ludicra in their lists and it's because people moderate their behaviour and opinions in accordance to what other people around them are doing. Or it could be that these were just totally fucking amazing releases, but i kind of doubt it.

Regarding Deathspell Omega i listened to Paracletusa lot (probably more than most other releases this year), still waiting on an easy to purchase vinyl edition before i hail or curse it. Initial listens were utterly frustrating and i'd decided that this was basically the LP where i would stop following them. And repeated listens did not bring anything out that i could say i liked. Yes, i can definitely hear all those parts that have been written off as sounding like Botch and likewise, i'm not all that enamoured with them.

Sometime about two weeks ago whilst walking through a snow storm at 6am it clicked with me a lot more and listening to it in terms of the two major DSO records that came before it (Fas and Si Monumentum) i'm starting to appreciate it more. In this era of instant downloads and instant ill thought opinions via blog, message board and status update alike it's a brave band that will release something that neccesitates repeated listens. (And i offer the same praise to The Body for their All The Waters of the Earth Turn to Blood release.)

Which is why a top ten list of things from 2010 is about as useful as the playlist on the bottom of any of my blog posts; it just captures my thoughts from the previous two days. I'm still figuring out the importance of Deathspell Omega's newest work, it'll either be something that doesn't captivate me at all or it will become an important release to me (and it'll be one extreme or the other).

Drainland's And so our Troubles Began is one of my favourites from 2010 without a doubt. Download it here, get the demo here. Where it would sit in a top ten list i couldn't say.

Shit that was important this year:

A new Burzum LP

This is something that is worthy of a far more in depth analysis than i could attempt. This is something that needs to be discussed in terms beyond "OMG he a natsi that killed a mayhem", "this record is garbage, lol nintendo metal" or "HOLY SHIT BEST GUY EVER RETURNS TO SHOW YOU HOW IT'S DONE AND REDEFINES BLACK METAL"

Maybe in five years it can be discussed.

Scion.

First, fuck the language of advertising encroaching onto grindcore records and fuck everyone who let it happen (the "who" that entails is a more complex answer than "Magrudergrind gone done fucked up"). Second, fuck almost everyone on both sides of the debate except Ryan McKenney of Trap Them who wrote the only genuinely compelling piece about Scion that i read this year.

My opinion on the subject is considerably more nuanced than the simple "fuck Scion" this reads like (but still, fuck Scion)and will appear in the tenth anniversary issue of Short, Fast and Loud magazine early next year. I was considering posting it here as well, but at 4,000 words it's far too long for a blog post even by my wordy standards. E mail me if you want to read it and buy the magazine anyway when it comes out.

The death of Peter Christopherson.

Most of my heros are dead. See earlier lengthy post about it.

Myspace being irredeemably awful

I wrote all this stuff about complexity theory and eco-cycle lenses in terms of Myspace and their failure to move effectively with the people using their services. Then i figured why even bother and just deleted it. Myspace is a largely dead concern.

The Endless Blockade and Joshua Norton Cabal Myspace pages can stay where they are for now; they're unused anyway. Slaughter Strike's page will be deleted as soon as Google redirects people to Bandcamp more often than it does to our Myspace. I'm trying out a Soundcloud page for Nameless Dread. Here's something:

Crowned and conquering child by nameless dread

I'm still figuring out if i like Soundcloud or not.

My 2010

Well, shit, it feels like i had something released every three weeks this year and 2010 has undoubtedly been my most productive year in terms of physical releases.

The Endless Blockade finally died a death in 2010, i guess it's time to stop pretending we're on hiatus. The Bastard Noise split finally came out and i was pretty pleased with both that and the Unearthly Trance split as being our final major statements.

The BN split was based on taking the formula of Primitive and applying it to a section of chapters to make a linear, yet hopefully cohesive whole. The UT split was a recycling process; taking the weirder elements that the BN split threw up and putting them back into the template i set up for the writing of Primitive.

And i realise that this is very much seen as the blog of That-Guy-From-The-Endless-Blockade so i should probably announce now that after taking a year off writing power violence i recently started working on new material with Eric King that largely picks up the pace where Blockade stopped.

It's early days yet, there's probably less than ten minutes of material so far (based on new writing and finding an unused Blockade rehearsal tape with just the two of us). Anyway, the upshot of this is that there will be something in 2011 by Column of Heaven, possibly nothing more than a demo tape but there will be something.

My time is pretty constrained with full time school, two part time jobs and Slaughter Strike and when Eric says "yeah, i totally want to rehearse this week" there's only a 30% chance that he actually does want to rehearse.

Slaughter Strike continued on at a glacial pace, which i'm definitely ok with. After spending the last seven years as sole decision maker for most things i'm happy taking a collaborative approach to running a band again. In 2011 expect our full length (currently half written) and some dates in the eastern and mid-west US in august. Possibly the west coast of Canada around april/ may, but that's highly debatable at this point.

And in my post-Blockade world i tried my hand at some different stuff. Here's a download for you.

Two of the tracks are by Nameless Dread, one is for the full length coming out on Crucial Blaze the other is a remix of a Cutty Ranks song, probably never to be released and more a learning excercise than anything else. The problem with electronic music is the ability to edit things forever and never stop. After about twenty different versions of Limb By Limb i can already hear things that need to be changed with the mix. The other two tracks are just things i was pissing around with and are unlike anything else i'm known for (Nameless Dread still has a relatively industrial edge to it)

Emanations

2010-12-16T15:32:00.005-05:00

Ten years ago there was a Norton/ Cornucopia split CDR on Audio Intruder Pain. AIP ended up being the straw that broke the camels back; after something like five labels in a row screwed me on copies of my releases i gave up on releasing noise for over five years.

Alonso, if you're reading this feel free to send me copies of Sounds for Heads and the second press of the Cornucopia split... Anytime you're ready...

Anyway, Jorge from Cornucopia asked me to do a second split/ collaboration with him when he heard i was releasing noise again and this is the result.

It took forever to come out, entirely due to my initial reticence to release my track for a year or so. I had some hare brained ideas about where i wanted to go with Norton for a short while; the problem with being a one person act is that there's no one to say "don't do that" except yourself. Anyway, this is an anomaly in my back catalogue, it doesn't really sit easily with any of my stuff. Had i released a few different things in various permuations of this style it would be different.

It's basically a thirteen minute track made up almost entirely of other peoples music (not noise) with the occasional field recording mixed in and endlessly reworked and regurgitated into a new composition (not music). Consequently it never really gets all that harsh or bass heavy. At times i guess it's slightly like some sections on Shattered Hand (last track on Inner Light).

But yeah, for about a year i was being a giant baby and decided i didn't want to hear it ever again (it's playing in the background as i type this and i can't really figure out what the hell i thought was wrong with it to be honest).

Actually, the tape's called Emanations and i was in some weird Qabala head space at the time so there's probably some mystic shit that i've forgotten about as to why it flows the way it does.

I also submitted a much shorter track of reworked Cornucopia materials.

Collaborations are always a tricky beast for me; if the source material is excellent i ask myself "what can i do with this? It doesn't need any work" and if they're too unfinished i say "what can i do with this? It needs too much work."

Which is why i rarely get involved in collaborations. This one turned out pretty good though and is quite listenable. Cornucopia did a great job reworking the harsh noise material i sent them. There's a Norton/ Frailty of Angels collaboration that i'm quite happy with that should be out early next year too.

You should buy this direct from Cornucopia/ Sonora as they're offering it to you for the princely sum of $6 PPD anywhere in the world. Given that it costs me almost $7 to mail a single cassette to the US (apparently we have the third most expensive postal system in the world or something) and the US $ has been at parity with the Canadian $ for over a year now, meaning there's really no point in anyone ordering it from me.

You can hear samples of the two collaboration tracks on the order page.

Listening:

The Body - All The Waters of the Earth Turn to Blood
Noose - 2009 demo
Lycanthropic Warhead - Infinite Castigation
Hooded Menace - Never Cross the Dead
Death in June - Peaceful Snow
Cutty Ranks - Six Million Ways to Die
Rot - Diabolus (the Unholy Rot)

Reading:

As Loud As Possible
Journey to the end of the Night - Celine
Kosmology - Jeremy Christner

Small Doses

2010-12-16T15:15:00.003-05:00

No, not the label of the same name (though i did just approve artwork for a release on that label), but the 100 band compilation CD that Mortville just released.

Anyway, there's a 30 second Joshua Norton Cabal track on there. I tried to apply power violence dynamics to a noise track, came out OK i guess.

Here's what some guy on the internet said about my contribution:

The disturbing image in the booklet warned me, but the music frightened me without premonition. I think this is a duo, but I may be wrong, and they deliver a very disturbing mix of concrete music, harsh noise, ambient and industrial, everything topped with super pissed off screaming. Pretty interesting stuff!

Great comp, had a listen to it this morning. Put it on in the background, ignored the tracklist and treated it as if it was a 70 minute single piece of music, utterly enjoyable. There's something for everyone; noisecore, grindcore, noise, grindnoise, noisegrind. Every single genre of music in the world worth listening to is on here.

The CD booklet also has some writings by Andy from Mortville, Wadge, some other guy and someone that was in The Scroungers. Three of the four pieces are excellent and worth a read.

You should buy one from the label. (Plus Andy was in Captain Three Leg)

Death, dying, art, culture and "famous" people - one explanation as to why we're bummed out when celebrities die

2010-11-26T14:28:00.022-05:00

Person on the internet #1,876,345 writing about the death of Peter Christopherson...

For those of you unaware you can read a decent eulogy in The Guardian here and from former bandmate Chris Carter here.

To my mind a major function of art and in particular music, is to carry difficult emotions of the consumer so they are better equipped to deal with them.

Unconsciously or concsiously, it doesn't really matter and people tend to do both, we seek out music that captures a certain moment of our lives and encode that moment into the sound. To this day i still can't hear Wonderwall by Oasis, a song which i don't even like, without getting slightly misty eyed as it reminds me intensely of an important period of my life where that song always seemed to be in the background.

People often listen to angry music when they've had a bad day for a reason. Frequently it's because they can project their feelings on to the music and then get on with their day. Similarly some people would rather listen to something that functions as soothing because of the mental and emotional association they've trained themselves to attach to whatever the piece in question is.

I believe that a small but significant part of the music industry's dying gasp is happening because in the 1980s there was a concerted effort to tie more and more music with more and more useless consumer products that ultimately only held a fleeting meaning; it's hard to get stoked on a night on the town when your anthem now makes you think of sanitary towels or low fat yoghurt.

When celebrities or artists die i believe a lot of the reason many feel a sense of loss towards people they never even met and probably had little in common with is not some misplaced sense of worship but the sudden loss of a deeply personal sense of sharing.

Whether you care or not Nirvana wrote songs that millions of people felt encapsualted some of their sense of alientation and loneliness in the world. When the creator of those songs took his own life i have no doubt that the effect on many was a feeling that the songs that in some way helped them had either been pulled away from them, or that now there was a new layer of grief encoded into their meaning for the listener.

This is in a sense how i feel about the passing of Peter Christopherson. After a sudden death very close to me i listened to a lot of music (it's what i do...) and found that certain pieces by Coil, amongst others, helped me substantially to deal with the drowning sensation that i find true grief to be.

The real help they gave me is hard to adequately explain, but as i talk about above it was really just a conscioius transferring of emotion of my behalf so i could try and turn off the sensation of loss.

On a certain level, hearing that Christopherson died in his sleep this week brings back some of those emotions to me again. Coil's music helped me get through a difficult patch of my life; i can listen to Wraiths and Strays now and i appreciate it as both a fine piece of music and a bittersweet mnemonic device that helps me remember both the good times i had with my friend and the hole in the world that i will always feel in his absence. And it's a sensation of loss i neither want to have clouding my thoughts constantly nor is it something i want to forget; it's just too fucking important to me.

So Christopherson's death brings some of that back to me. I'm sad for the death of someone important in my life who i never met and i'm reminded again of the very tangible loss in my own world.

There are lots of "if it wasn't for abc then def wouldn't exist" in the world and honestly, were it not for industrial culture and in particular Throbbing Gristle and Coil, then The Endless Blockade and any related output and this blog would have turned out quite differently.

Even more than Throbbing Gristle, Coil have long encapsulated almost everything i've looked for in music and culture for my entire adult life now. My early experiences generally revolved around being stoned out my gourd listening to Transparent, in particular Sicktone where everyone would basically try really hard to make themselves feel nauseated by listening to it as loud as possible. As my drug use progressed it became dropping purple oms and listening to Love's Secret Domain and Stolen and Contaminated Songs on repeat for eight hours straight. And i got pretty bored of drugs by about 1994 but have maintained my obsession with Coil since.

Ah, what else can i say? The man was a genius (as was partner Jhonn Balance); i don't think he's ever been on a record i didn't like. I'm not really one for nostaliga most of the time but i decided to travel to Chicago to see Throbbing Gristle last year, the main reason being less about TG and more so i could witness Peter Christopherson and Chris Carter perform.

I guess given the tone of this piece i should use this opportunity to state publically that i want Fire of the Mind played at my funeral. Someone point my family in the direction of this blog when the time comes.

In the last two months i've found myself listening to a lot of Coil again. I put up the Nameless Dread link last week (and thank you for the kind comments) which a number of people refered to as breakcore or similar. The truth is that most of it is influenced by Coil filtered through my love of power electronics and grindcore. And if you listen to the opening of Some Names Must Always Remain Unspoken you'll notice the track is built around the main refrain from What a Day by Throbbing Gristle (whether that was Carter or Christopherson's idea i have no idea...).

This week i was also in the infant stages of figuring out a Nameless Dread take on the Coil song Triple Sun and have also been reading Mick Fish' book on Cabaret Voltaire (the band), Industrial Evolution, which makes several references to Throbbing Gristle.

And if you've managed to get this far and your interest in music doesn't go that far beyond hardcore and metal then this interview is a great introduction to some of the thoughts of the man. It's worth watching the entire thing whenever you have a spare fifteen minutes.

"We are all only temporary curators of our present bodies, which will all decay, sooner or later. In a hundred years or so all the humans currently alive will have died. I take great comfort in knowing, with certainty, that thing that makes us special, able to enrich our own lives and those of others, will not cease when our bodies do but will be just starting a new (and hopefully even better) adventure ... "

More Urine Cop

2010-11-19T13:47:00.003-05:00

Info:

URINE COP IS ADAM JENNINGS (WINTERS IN OSAKA) AND ERIC KING (THE ENDLESS BLOCKADE, SLAUGHTER STRIKE)

LIMITED TO 35.

EVEN MORE FILTH, FEEDBACK, PITCHSHIFTED VOCALS, AND BLASTBEATS THAN THE FIRST DEMO.
THIS IS HARSH NOISE LO FI BLACK WAR METAL GRINDNOISECORE SHIT.

EMAIL ME AT: MEATALULCER@AOL.COM FOR MORE INFO

More drums forcing a structure on the new one (which is about three weeks newer than the first one...). Vocals are kinda like Revenge.

Still lo-fi noisecore blast

a playlist just because:

Death SS - Horned God of the Witches
Kathaaria - The Complex Void of Negativity
Integrity - Systems Overload

and new experiments are inconclusive but this is a partial early result

another one from ancient history

2010-11-11T17:50:00.002-05:00

Fuck, i haven't heard this in forever.

I wrote about Ebola last year and posted the 7" we recorded here.

The internet is failing me today and i'm unable to find a picture of me when twenty two and much skinnier/ less crushed by life as i was in this band. Actually, i was probably more crushed by life than i am these days but what ever.

During the recording of this LP i had pnuemonia and could barely breathe. I'd also worked night shift for the entire week before (and the entire week after). Daylight hours were about 9:30am until 3pm at that time of year in Newcastle (if it got light at all). Consequently as my weekend off was spent in a windowless studio i didn't see any natural light for two weeks and basically felt like killing myself. All great stuff to pile on top of my clincally depressed younger self; i think my grandfather would've called it character building.

Anyway, the only Ebola full length, recorded back in 1995. Probably the most 'tuneful' thing i've ever been a part of.

And this is exactly what download blogs should be for, not "for review purposes only" new releases

Blockade/ Wadge split 7"

2010-11-04T15:31:00.019-04:00

Before our posthumous collaboration with Tupac Shakur drops let this beast whet your appetite.

Recorded in early 2007 and largely forgotten about the material on this split was written and recorded in the transition period we had between Turn Illness Into a Weapon and Primitive. Along with the Hatred Surge split these songs bridge the aesthetic gap between the two full lengths.

Earlier versions of some of these songs were on the Trapped in a Scene comp on 625. Most of these songs were originally ear-marked for the session that eventually became the Hatred Surge split. Not sure why all the changes occured; i'm sure there was a good reason at the time.

And much like the Hatred Surge split these songs were also recorded in our practice space.

Note to all budding home recording enthusiasts; if you tune to B and play at loud volumes you need to sit your computer on a large piece of foam so you don't keep getting disk errors due to massive amounts of vibration. Or try and move it out of the same room as the 8x10. Whichever's easier.

The lyrics to IPCR are printed incorrectly. They should read "Children call me Hungry Knife and creep silent with love for Earth" which is a line from one of many letters penned by Lynette Fromme and Sandra Goode in the wake of the Manson Family's demise. Quite which eco-unfriendly CEO or politician they were threatening to murder in that particular communique escapes me just now.

And speaking of eco-unfriendly, the first song, Pest Control, is the closest i'll ever get to writing something on a vaguely ecological matter.

For a long time i've personally felt one of the failures of the green movement to engage the general populace is its refusal to reframe the subject matter in more honest terms.

The bottom line is we aren't killing the Earth and we're actually unlikely to destroy it. The Earth however will destroy us at the rate we're going.

When we talk in terms of how we're killing the planet we're still engaging in this idea that human race is the be all and end all and that the universe revolves around our every act.

In a broad sense i believe you can tie this into the cult of individualism and some of the longer lasting destructive shifts that occured under Reagan and Thatcher's legacy in the 1980s. And in the same way that WWII is far more historically nuanced than "some bad man invaded Poland" i recognise that the "me" generation is not simply a result of the shift towards Third Way politics.

Enough. We'll see if that opens up a can of worms i'm utterly unprepared for on the comments page or not. It could go either way.

The idiotically named Regurgitated Semen Records from Germany released this one. They can call themselves RSR all they like but everyone knows they're really called Regurgitated Semen Records. I guess there's some kind of a lesson to be learned about not naming your label after a Meat Shits demo when you're a teenager in there somewhere.

On the A side of the record (we're definitely playing second fiddle here) is the incredible Wadge; Ontarios greatest video store owning Tiki grindcore one man band. Number one in a field of one.

Some people may take me to task here and say "i thought you didn't like humour in music?" Well, Wadge is deadly serious. That's all there is to it. Wadge rules; nothing more to be said.

Reading:

Tsawalk - Richard Atleo
Saints, Scholars and Schizophrenics: Mental Illness in Rural Ireland - Nancy Scheper-Hughes
Rabelais and his World - Mikhail Bakhtin
Violence in War and Peace
Only Death is Real - Tom G fucking Warrior

Listening:

Cloaks - Desolate Turves
Diocletian - War of All Against Y'all
Ride for Revenge - In the Spirit of Ultimate Sacrifice
Rudimentary Peni - Farce

Urine Cop tape/ Disgust live

2010-10-27T19:12:00.004-04:00

Eric from Blockade/ Slaughter Strike and Adam from Winters in Osaka collaborated recently to release a 15 minute tape on Coffin Crawl.

Expect blown out noise and blast beats, like an ultra lo-fi version of One Handed Christ Destroyer from the Blockade Unearthly Trance split but with more variation in the drumming. Influenced by World and the like and the last song, which is by far my favourite is apparently an Ildjarn cover.

If you want to relive (or pretend you were there) the days of receiving obscure noisecore tapes from far away lands (hey, Ohio was pretty far away when i lived in Newcastle) then this is probably the nostalgia trip for you.

Nostalgia or not i enjoyed this release a lot.

Urine Cop also played their first and last ever show recently which was a great night out; Cannibal Ferox 35mm print on the big screen followed by a power electronics show just up the street.

Eric did vocals at the end of the set, i wish he`d do more. Every single time i`ve seen Eric do some vocals he`s totally into it, then just loses his place, laughs to himself off microphone and gives up. You can usually anticipate him wrenching all power supplies to his noise gear out of the wall within about 30 seconds of this occuring.

True Music for True Music fans.

Also playing that night were Disgust. There's been a Norton/ Disgust split tape lost in the works for a while now though i understand it's actually coming out shortly.

It was cool to hang out with Mackenzie from Disgust, he's someone who clearly understands the ritual function of art in working through different aspects of personality. I'm not refering to either of the common cliches of catharsis or the interminably crappy "if i didn't play in this band i'd go out and kill people" schtick.

Our understanding of violence in the world match up at the edges and it was interesting to hear his views on the nature of God; i hadn't considered his perspective before (we're from vastly different cultural backgrounds though which has a lot to do with it)

So far this year i think by far my favourite live experiences have been Swans (Toronto; New York wasn't nearly as good) and Autopsy; as i'm getting older i'm suprised to find myself wanting a little more spectacle at shows. Disgust is actually the third most enjoyable live experience i've had this year.

Four guys huddled tightly around a table with a handful of noise equipment; unnassuming, focused, hostile, unconcerned with anything in the room except the table and each other. I feel they would have given it as much had they been playing to no one. There was something intangibly honest about the whole thing that sat well with me.

Power violence dynamics applied to noise and it was everything that a power violence performance should be (and is sadly lacking in most).

Disgust understand the core is the intent; not the useless trimmings holding it together, they come secondary. Genre as a vehicle for greater expression.

Also highly recommended is the Constrictions tape; more power violence approaches to power electronics

Download their demo here and the Zero Discrimination tape here

Inner Light/ a small statement of sorts

2010-10-12T10:30:00.012-04:00

New Joshua Norton Cabal release, Inner Light is out now on CD. In Europe get it from Chimera from anywhere else send me an e mail (it's in my profile).

About 80% of this one was made with reamplified metal and one and a half Trogtronic boxes (the half was a decidely busted 665). I used the Blockade backline at Audiolab studio for an afternoon and made Chris Hegge laugh like a drain as i demanded more and more ridiculous configurations of amps and devices at ludicrous volume.

The last track uses a lot of field recordings i've collected over the years and is the tale of the evolution of my occasionally disconnected mind reduced to a fifteen minute piece.

Originally i had a few vocal tracks recorded as well but for some reason (perhaps a sudden bust of self awareness leading to a lack of confidence) i cut them all and left it entirely vocal free.

Art and layout was done by Joce again (he also did the Blockade/ Unearthly Trance split)

The basic theme of Inner Light is a celebration of the irrational internal flame and how it informs other aspects of my life and thinking.

As someone with close to twenty years of involvement in DIY culture i'm often asked what keeps me motivated to stay involved? Why do i still bother? Sometimes it seems like these questions are daring me to speak to all of the ultimately petty ills we could all share about the more frustrating side of hardcore/ noise/ metal/ avant garde/ youth based cutures. Generally i don't need to do that in public too much; if you want to hear other people piss and moan i feel you can look to any cock on a message board and get your fill there.

Of the many answers i can give the easiest one is a very simple "it's pretty much all i know". It's the same with my choosing to not eat meat. Sure, i had a solid ideological reason a long time ago and for a while there i was definitely every cliche of the vegan police you could think of, but after more than two decades it just becomes normal. If pressed i could undoubtedly give you a long list of reasons why it's important to me, but it would be delivered with all the passion of why breathing air or learning to read is important.

Anyone who's familiar with anything i've written over the last five years or so will be aware i tend to fall down the rabbit-hole when it comes to discussing the symbolism and semiotics of whatever culture it is i belong to (these days i feel i'm unable to say what it is i'm attached with any degree of precision by merely saying "hardcore").

One of the questions i've mulled over a lot recently is "if we base much of our public front on rejectionism (and *we* really do, just look at your record collection) what are the values and acts that we find beauty in? What are our standards beyond refusing certain models of interaction with the world?" What is said by its exclusion in dialogue?

With that in mind an aspect of Inner Light is my ongoing quest to determine what it is i personally find beauty and value in.

One of the things i've been very aware of for a long time is the current that runs through my life that informs all other aspects of my self identity. It informs my creative urge, it informs my way of thinking, it informs my career path and pretty much every other aspect of my life i can think of. Taking every individual aspect and putting them together does nothing to really illuminate what this current is though.

Unfortunately anytime anyone ever attempts to speak to a sense of calling the connotations are often too closely linked to a religious impulse. Or worse we invoke the modern soft-agnosticism of refering to things as being "spiritual" which has become a term even less meaningful or agreed on than Anarchism in this day and age.

In this blog i've often reduced it to a necessarily simplistic reference to The Occult, which as any boring pedant can tell you merely means "hidden".

I see a lot of other pop references to The Occult in culture and in particular modern music. From some quarters there is the knowing nodding head of assent, from others the open frustration that nothing is ever really specified and from the rest either outright rejection and calls of "bullshit" or an utter disinterest.

My own feelings on the matter (like it's a single "thing"...) are that if any ideology you subscribe to in this life is not a living, evolving system/ praxis that enables you to negotiate meaning in the world then you should give it up. I don't think it matters that much how you negotiate meaning, as long as you do it.

And finally, though i reject (for many many reasons) the god awful cliche (as it's become) of the personal is political, particularly when applied en masse to the drabber ends of the hardcore spectrum in the 1990s; i think there is a huge validity in the also cliched notion of becoming the change that you want to see in the world.

Lest you think i'm some kind of yoga mat carrying hippy let me qualify that by saying that this is not an inherently fuzzy and nice concept. The change you might want in the world could be utterly hostile to the change i want and vice versa.

More people need to practice or at least understand the principles of agonism and pluralism.

Listening:

Pimp Action Slutgun - Body Scrap LP
SFN - Itching 7"
Autopsy - The Tomb Within 12"
Gunter Saxenhammer - Interstellar Overkill CDR
Universal Order of Armageddon - discography CD

Reading:

well, entering a masters program is kicking the shit out of my ability to read for fun (and also my opportunity to write music) but here's two books i've enjoyed recently

Wendy Doniger - The Implied Spider
Roland Barthes - Mytholgies

Quitting my job was the second best move i ever made in my life (the first was immigrating to Canada). School is particularly novel to me as i don't actually have much in the way of a formal education.

small victories

2010-10-05T21:07:00.004-04:00

Last week the laws around prostitution in Ontario were changed (perhaps only temporarily). You can read the full details about it here.

Several years ago Sex Professionals of Canada launched a constitutional challenge on laws that made it illegal to "communicate for the purposes of prostitution". The argument being that if sex workers were robbed, assaulted or raped on the job then reporting these crimes was self incriminating.

The courts agreed and felt that the laws were both unconstitutional and added more potential violence and danger into sex worker's lives.

About seven years ago i wrote a song called Pimp Killer for The Endless Blockade; it's the first song on the Come Friendly Bombs ep. As ever at it's heart was a sense of frustration and inability to change things i personally felt were wrong with the world.

I recognise that language is in an almost permanent state of flux and one of the reasons that English is such a strong language is its ability to constantly adapt (obviously discussions on colonialism and language can be skipped here).

I guess my issues with the word pimp came at a time when quite by chance i was involved in several different projects that involved sex workers. I'd delivered several housing workshops to different groups of sex workers and one of the community development projects i was leading involved taking a popular education (Paulo Freire and all that jazz) approach to empowering groups to form their own coalitions and advocacy groups that included several sex workers in their numbers.

And if you can mediate a group of active drug users into politicised roles you can pretty much do any group facilitation...

Anyway, someone around this time referred to my handsome pitbull (who was at the time wearing a slightly altered child's fleece with a Man is the Bastard patch sewn on the back; it was winter time) as "totally pimpin'!" Quite what that actually meant i have no idea but at the time there was clearly a move in our society to change the word pimp (Pimp My Ride for one other example).

Having moderated several groups in Toronto involving sex workers and the amount of crisis intervention work i did in Glasgow with sex workers who'd had the shit kicked out of them buy their johns, pimps and lawyers (an ugly story indeed) i wasn't impressed by this move and wrote a completely emasculated song from this perspective.

And slightly related the song Black Economy on our first LP was inspired in part by Alan Young's book Defiling Justice (he was the lawyer for SPOC)

A music related post coming later this week, i promise.

interviews

2010-09-12T11:32:00.003-04:00

I've always believed that you should learn theories, then absorb them so much that they become second nature so that you don't really have to think about them and you can wilfully forget them.

With that in mind i think it was Carl Rogers, chief theorist behind Person-Centred Counselling, who felt that the act of openly verbalising responses to questions was a way to get people to understand what their actual feelings were about the given topic. But like i said, i deliberately forget a lot of the specifics of most theory after a few years of using it solidly.

And this is pretty much how i've always viewed interviews; as a quasi self-indulgent way for me to work through some of my opinions on the world and how it works, though usually only in the relatively narrow (but by no means unimportant) terms of the culture of music.

In a sense this blog is really a record for me of things i've said so i can keep some kind of track of it. Almost like a diary in a way, though the Tumblr page i have is much more of a (largely symbolic) record of current personal activities and obsessions. Similar to tattoos or the more less defined in intent sigil stuff i've done, though far less serious than either of those.

Last night during a drastic lull at work i found the following two interviews from three years ago.

In the longer one some of my predictions about the state of the scene seemed to come true. All hail my mighty divination powers i guess...

In the shorter one i didn't really feel much empathy to the article or publication and the content of my responses shows this.

Listening:

Haggatha - 2nd LP
Drainland/ Grinding Halt 10"
Mauthausen Orchestra - Vernichtung Lebenunwerten Leben 2xLP
Witchrist - Ancient Tombs demo
The Damned - s/t LP

Reading:

Kevin Coogan - Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker Yockey and the Postwar Fascist International
John Gray - False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism
Destroying Angles #10
Robert Anton Wilson - Sex, Drugs and Magick
Hans Heinz Ewers - Nachtmair

Watching:

Dog Tooth
Black Death
Valhalla Rising

interview from 2007, quite possibly unpublished

2010-09-12T11:14:00.005-04:00

Name and role in the Endless Blockade?

Nolan – Minister of Propaganda and Information

How do you feel about ther term powerviolence?Would you consider powerviolence to be a good classification of your band? Do you agree or disagree that it is sort of a trendy subgenre of hardcore right now?

I have no problem with admitting we're a power violence influenced band. As for it being a trendy sub-genre, it really depends on how you define trendy; a tiny sub-section of a small scene (hardcore in 2007) isn't really trendy in my opinion.

Or maybe it means people playing a style of music without either the necessary skill or the proper understanding of the genre to accomplish their desired results. In which case it could conceivably be called trendy, but I don't know that the existence of obviously lousy bands is the only criteria we should use.

What is the song Haymaker Vs. Manowar about?

I have a Manowar DVD (sampled on our second demo) where Joey Dimao is talking about encouraging their fans to destroy a club during a video shoot.

Haymaker, for those who don't know, basically can't play live anymore (or rarely can) because in Ontario the audience just fucking smashes any venue they play to pieces.

So it's basically drawing a minor parallel between Manowar and Haymaker. Of course my money is on Haymaker winning every single time and I suspect Manowar fans did little in the way of any real destruction.

footage from the infamous Haymaker show at The Corktown

How long was Ryo in the band? How long has this current lineup been in existence?

Ryo was in Canada for approximately a year, we managed to record the first demo and have an abortive attempt at recording the LP with him on drums (which was salvaged as the second demo and Come Friendly Bombs 7"). Ryo also contributes a vocal freakout at the start of Island on the Warzone Womyn LP.

He can now be found mainly in Sete Star Sept back in Tokyo and probably in about eight million jazz/ noise projects. And sometimes he jams with the legendary Keiji Heino. [and sete star sept]

The current and final line up of The Endless Blockade has been together since late 2004

I didnt get to witness this myself, but i heard that T.E.B served as the backing band for Hatred Surge. How did that come about? Did you serve as the backing band for the Euro tour?How was it ?

For those who don't know, Hatred Surge is one guy playing every instrument on his recordings, so he has to get hired guns to play live with him.

The Endless Blockade is basically the Canadian franchise of Hatred Surge. We've done one show as Hatred Surge and have a few more in august 2007 on the cards. [ultimately we played a total two shows as Hatred Surge and obviously Hatred Surge is an actual full band now]

The European tour line up for Hatred Surge was Jon and Jensen from Iron Lung and Ben from The Endless Blockade with Alex and it was by far the best I've seen Hatred Surge and I think I've seen all the incarnations bar the Alex plus iPod early days.

Speaking of the European tour, how was that?

Good, if a little sedate at times, possibly due to D Beat's vice like grip around the neck of many scenes currently. D Beat in 2007 is as expected and as bland and formulaic as Youth Crew was in the late eighties and will be the death knell of hardcore over the next few years.

Playing shows is the least important part of touring for me and I consider Jon and Jensen from Iron Lung, Alex from Hatred Surge, the rest of Blockade and the others that came on tour with us as very close friends so it was a great time for me.

What was the best show on the European tour?

Mannheim was cool, as were Leipzig, Gent, Strasbourg and Groningen.

Is the name The Endless Blockade taken from the GISM song, or is there a deeper meaning?

I comes from GISM, there was a deeper meaning and like the best magick it only works when you forget the original intention and I pretty much have at this point…

Do the band members hold down regular jobs while not touring?

I manage to pay my habitual record buying debts with ease and aplomb, yes

On the split with Warzone Womyn, your side consists of an amazing, crushing near 20 minute sludge song. What was the idea for this?

It's just a natural part of our sound; we're not all fast fast fast thirty second songs. We just wanted to draw out some of slower influences a bit. There'll be some more releases in a related vein in the future. [i shit canned all of these except the Bastard Noise split]

As someone who has been involved with hardcore and diy for a while, where do you see these things headed?What bands/people do you feel are doing the genre justice and keeping this subculture breathing?

Hard to tell really. I guess the thing that keeps me going this long is by really narrowing my parameters of what I'm into; consequently I don't get burned out on punk because I don't buy every flash in the pan hyped record and go see every show that comes within fifty mile radius anymore.

Trendwise I see the D Beat thing going on longer and in certain parts of the world crushing what's considered acceptable in hardcore.

I see more and more useless D Beat bands who are merely emo bands with gruff singers and punk drummers.

I think at some point in the future discerning metal heads will start producing convincingly good black metal bands with large crust influences. I don't really see a future in punk bands trying their hands at black metal though, all the examples I've seen over the years have been pretty bad to be honest.

I think in the US audiences will get younger and in Europe they'll get older. All of which will mean is that in Europe shows will be very mellow yet financially viable and in the US the reverse; shows will be exciting, yet less easy to break even on.

Related to this I think hardcore will get safer and safer and then someone somewhere will say enough and bring back some kind of edge and sense of danger, elitism (punk really is not for everyone and we need to bring that back) and radicalism (however you choose to define that). [this might be one of the first times where i unashamedly used the word elitism.]

And people will continue to make limited tour only merch as a way of forcing people to buy the records direct from the band on tour.

I think we'll see some of the bigger distros and labels collapse for trying to please everyone all of the time instead of focusing on specific genres and ideas.

As for who's keeping the subculture breathing I'm just going to give a very very small list of punk bands I currently enjoy that others might not have heard of:

SFN from Wisconsin, Judas from LA, Suburban Disease from the UK, Grinding Halt from The Netherlands, Brain Handle from Pittsburgh, Dirty BS from Toronto, The Process from the UK, Staat Haat from The Netherlands, Black Shape of Nexus from Germany and Living in Darkness from Toronto

What can we be on the lookout for from The Endless Blockade?

In 2007 we're recording the following:

A split 7" with Wadge, a collaboration LP with Bastard Noise and Primitive, our second LP proper, to be released on 20 Buck Spin. [and apparently the Wadge split is out]

No more tours this year and we'll see what 2008 brings.

SEMEN IN THE CAPS LOCK OF ERIC WOODS KEYBOARD*

2010-09-12T00:07:00.002-04:00

Remember 2007? That was the year Eric Wood publically proclaimed something along the lines of how the only two real power violence bands of modern times were The Endless Blockade and Apt 213.

Well holy shit did that ever

a) ruffle a lot of feathers
b) form the focus for 90% of conversations at the merch table for two years
c) give 99% of interviewers a new question i didn't want to have to answer
d) make already shit "recommend me some power violence like Tragedy and MK Ultra" message board posts even more shit for about a year or so.

After Wood's glowing recomendation Anthony Bartkewicz, who wrote the article for Decibel magazine about power violence where we received said musical reach around, also asked me for a few soundbites. These are the unedited questions and answers that they ultimately trimmed down.

1. A few years removed and on an opposite coast from the original PV bands, what is it that makes you feel aligned with PV instead of just grind or hardcore?

it's the music that really drew me in during that early - mid 90s blackspot of diy hardcore, when faux humanism, tolerance for morons, celebrations of inadequacies and screen printed manila envelopes were de riguer. It cut through the bullshit and laid waste to everything in its path; it synthesized Heresy, Neos, Ripcord, Larm, Impact Unit and many other greats perfectly, updating them for a new era and always keeping an eye on the roots that grew before.

As for being aligned with PV, i'd say we're a power violence influenced band, or a neo-power violence band.

We still feel aligned with hardcore (primarily), grindcore (secondarily) and noise/ power electronics (thirdly), we just know what makes our sound and how to filter our influences cohesively. We know that if we're going to lift an Autopsy riff then there are certain changes we have to make in order for it to fit our parameters. Look at Darkthrone: they're heavily influenced by punk and crust but their records are definitely black metal records, not mere World Burns to Death or No Security clones.

2. What (if anything) do you think separated/separates PV bands from grind or hardcore?

at the time nothing really seperated them from hardcore. In retrospect it was a very short lived moment that can barely even be called a movement (that came after the originators largely burned themselves out) that was running on total nihilistic anger, the kind of which hardcore just wasn't producing anymore.

[at the time] Hardcore consisted of too many tales of betrayed friendships and the horrors of Reagan's legacy; all delivered with the passion of a shopping list

i don't consider PV to have much in common with grindcore

3. Which of the original west coast PV bands were the most influential/inspriational to you?

My favourite record of the era is definitely the No Comment - Downsided 7", you can't fake that despondent rage. As far as inspiration goes the oppression of Crossed Out and Neanderthal appeal to us most. We aren't interested in the joke bullshit that came in the wake of Spazz (second wave power violence) or Charles Bronson (not power violence)

*cheers Dave Adelson

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

2010-08-22T18:16:00.003-04:00

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

Between Two Fires

2010-08-16T15:18:00.005-04:00

New Joshua Norton Cabal C20, Between Two Fires, available from Swim Harder. You can hear some of the second track on the tape at the myspace page and you can find their webstore somewhere there too.

This release represents the second chapter (the first being the unreleased split with the very excellent Disgust that Small Doses is putting out) in Norton's slightly new direction of having vocals and ocassional more musical flourishes.

Thematically it's about martyrdom; killing for a cause on one track and being killed for a cause on the other. Of course ultimately it's all just one guy yelling over a bunch of noise...

And seeing as i just quit my job to start a two year Masters program i need some money to keep myself in weird Nunslaughter records, thus i'm actually going to start selling some of the many releases that keep turning up in the mail that i play on. Currently i have no Blockade or Slaughter Strike releases though.

Here's the list at present:

Joshua Norton Cabal - Between Two Fires C20 $5
Joshua Norton Cabal/ Juhyo split CD $8
The Rita - Womanhood C20 $5 (i found a small amount of copies over the weekend hidden under a pile of dog toys)
Humiliation/ Nekrasov split CD $5

also currently waiting on receiving copies of the Joshua Norton Cabal - Inner Light CD that are somewhere in the mail system. I'll post about that when it's in my hands.

Contact via the e mail address in my blogger profile for paypal and all that jazz

Recent noise playlist:

Gerritt - Space Level Blaze CD
Martin Bladh - Umbilical Cords CD
Control - The Cleansing CD
Craniopagus/ Sharpwaist 7"
Custodian - Toil and Waste CD
Bizarre Uproar - Purification CD

Reading:

Neil Strauss - Emergency
Evan Wright - Hella Nation

"i'm old, my liver hurts..."

2010-08-08T12:29:00.003-04:00

for everyone who keeps asking who it is that's yelling about fighting and bleeding at the end of the Unearthly Trance split

and whilst i'm on the topic of sound bites at the end of our records, this is the end of the Hatred Surge split (approximately 2:50 onwards). Jonathan would have been 36 in six days time. RIP brother, i still miss you.

shirts

2010-07-12T21:56:00.002-04:00

kids love to buy shit, i hate to sell shit

here's the compromise

PS harsh noise fans should listen to Custodian here and here

A Time We'll Remember

2010-07-07T19:37:00.002-04:00

Shank meets our generations Elvis some time in 2002

Blockade/ Unearthly Trance split LP

2010-07-05T11:01:00.007-04:00

It feels like this has been on our plate forever (and the delays were all on our end); anyway, it's finally available.

Unearthly Trance offer up one side long track about submission to animistic guidance when under extreme duress and we have nine tracks that (as ever) mainly use a backdrop of esoteric thought to explore misanthropy and a willful seperation from the rotten modern era.

Most of the music for this one was written via automatic writing techniques; I basically wrote music in the same way i've been 'writing' noise for the last fifteen years.

And speaking of noise, the first track is a vague nod from us to some of the noisecore greats we grew up listening to and the track "I Just Kill" was written by Slogun which was something we had planned to do for a long time. Originally we were going to do it quite differently and write it in a more musical fashion but it didn't really work and time was not on our side so we took the Death Agonies approach to it. Part of me feels that the casual listener will be easier going with a track on one of our records that sounds like that if it's under the guise of being a 'cover' as opposed to a Blockade track.

Our material on this record gets pretty harsh in places and i'm expecting our overall world ranking on "recommend me some power violence" on tedious message boards from here to rural Honshu to drop dramtically. "In before Ceremony and Trash Talk LOL". More on that later this month.

Our friend Joce did the artwork and layout; you've no doubt seen his work on various Portal releases recently. A dead guy with his pineal gland/ Ajna chakra/ Chokmah/ third eye opening fits both the lyrics of the Unearthly Trance side and the composition of our side perfectly.

Next releases are:

Blockade/ Pig Heart Transplant 7" (Super Fi)
Blockade/ Wadge 7" (Regurgitated Semen Records) - this should have been out before Primitive...
Blockade/ Death Agonies 12" (SNSE)

see how much of a liar i was when i said no more splits?

for anyone traveling this saturday

2010-07-01T10:38:00.001-04:00

venue change

all ages, no BYOB (bar at the show), order on the flier does not reflect the playing order

home is where the heart is

2010-06-27T12:43:00.000-04:00

The Rita - Womankind

2010-06-24T12:01:00.004-04:00

New release on Survivalist in celebration of Blockade bringing The Rita back to Toronto (and Montreal for the first time.)

Low end crunch and decay with ghostly formants fighting for recognition. The sound of a dying species yelling into the roar of the universe.

Due to the wonderful G20 i'm unable to get to my tape duplication place until after the world conference of worthless parasites leaves my city.

(I'm also assuming that some misguided soul isn't going to burn down random businesses on the southern part of Bathurst during the inevitable rioting that will occur.)

Thus this tape will be first available at the two Bastard Noise/ Blockade/ The Rita shows on july 2nd and 3rd. E mail (it's in my profile) after then for availability. Tapes are $5 plus postage (which is hideously expensive in Canada)

One from the vaults

2010-06-19T11:36:00.002-04:00

Bastardizer was a short lived band i played in from (i think) 2003-2004. We probably only played six or seven shows before dissolving into nothing.

We managed to cough out a five song tape. The keen eyed among you will note that i clearly redrew the art for the film Le Notti Del Terrore for the cover.

I've uploaded all eight songs we managed to finish. I can't remember why the tape had three less than we actually recorded and i have absolutely zero recollection of what any of these songs are even called.

The Repulsion cover is obviously Slaughter of the Innocents (shame we never recorded our Autopsy or Celtic Frost covers) and the song that has a part lifted dirtectly from Motley Crue's Live Wire was called Thown to the Wolves. Other than that feel free to make them up.

We broke up because the band was pretty much evenly split between a faction that wanted to fit in with Tragedy and From Ashes Rise scene that was about to become huge and the other half (that i was firmly in) that wanted to sound like Dismember meets Discharge.

We had several posthumous offers to release this material on an LP. Some of the others seemed keen but i steadfastly refused to have any of this material be released in any form other than the original demo tape. I didn't feel the material was particularly essential; i wasn't all that enthused about the band in general to be honest and once i'd moved on i felt everyone should move on.

I can listen to this material now and i'm ok with it but for years i hated this stuff. Too frustrated that it didn't go more in the direction i was interested in following i guess.

After we broke up Dave concentrated on Rammer and now sings in Slaughter Strike. Ben and myself carried on with The Endless Blockade full time (both bands existed concurrently) and we both ended up in Slaughter Strike (though Ben has since left). Josh formed Dirty Black Summer and they put out at least two 7"s on Slasher Records. Prior to Bastardizer Keith played drums in Ire and The Black Hand. I don't believe he's played drums sinced we broke up, but he frequently tours as the pyrotechnician for underground old school thrash revivalists Metallica and some guy called Paul McCartney.

Anyway, download it here and if you don't like it i pretty much agree with you

wrong time to be going on extended hiatus i guess

2010-06-18T12:41:00.004-04:00

I'm torn between being extremely flattered and a semi-parental desire to asking leading questions in a vaguely disapproving tone.

Apparently there's someone out there with the Fenrir design tattooed on their skin as well.

the relevance of analogue media in the digital age

2010-06-11T14:26:00.007-04:00

I was recently involved in a huge (as in more than two hours huge) discussion on the relevance of analogue media in the digital age for Crustcake. You can hear the edited version here, before the important part is some news and general bullshit about Isis, Nachtmystium, MDF and other stuff.

It's hard for me to say anything else about the subject after that much discussion, but essentially i don't actually feel that analogue media is all that important. I think what's important is what analogue media represents, which as i've talked about before in this blog is the cultural aspect. And when making money is not the central point of your artistic output, then it's usually born out of some kind of (intentionally not defined here) cultural aspiration.

In essence we use analogue media to connect to greater cultural influences; fanzines and vinyl as atavism if you will.

When people talk about a fetish for vinyl they often unconsciously mean "an object regarded with awe as being the embodiment or habitation of a potent spirit or as having magical potency" instead of "any object or nongenital part of the body that causes a habitual erotic response or fixation."

I think it was Douglas Rushkoff that said he was less enamoured with mp3 downloading not because the music industry lost money but because he fondly remembers that listening to a new LP was a communal experience where you invited your friends over to listen with you. I'm not really interested in the olde tyme nostalgic aspect of that point (and my own childhood listening experiences are the same), but the idea of coming together to experience music as a group is definitely something that seem's largely to have been lost. Outside of getting drunk (or not getting drunk) at concerts of course.

Anyway, if you have a two hour attention span for four people bullshitting it's there for you.

Reading:

The Butt - Will Self
The Art of the Nasty - Nigel Wingrove and Marc Morris
How the World was Made; the story of creation according to sacred geometry - John Michell and Allen Brown

Watching:

[rec 2]
A Bookshelf on top of the Sky: 12 stories about John Zorn

Listening:

The Vomit Arsonist - Wretch
Rammer - one sided 12"
Complications - s/t

I'm going to listen to Grief for about seven hours

2010-06-10T17:29:00.003-04:00

last time i checked the internet was calling us experimental power violence

and not really related to anything but Devo's new CD is streaming here

File under "different metal"

2010-06-10T17:24:00.004-04:00

I'd forgotten i'd done this one. Some slightly flippant answers, but that's what happens you answer interviews at work i guess.

Original can be found here

Hi guys, how is The Endless Blockade / Bastard Noise doing these days?

The Endless Blockade: We live.

Bastard Noise: Bastard Noise (now The Bastard Noise) is doing very well thank you but of course we always see room for improvement - we have Connell (man is the bastard) back in the drum throne and he has never sounded more progressive/heavy so things are great! We are getting ready to do a full US tour this summer and our brand new full length 12" LP/CD (with bass a.k.a. "four steel girders", drums, electronics and vocals) will be released before we leave in June. It is titled ‘A Culture Of Monsters’. The 12" LP version will be released by Deep Six Records here in California (www.deepsixrecords.com) and the compact disc version will be a "joint" release between the two Minneapolis, Minnesota-based labels Housepig Records (www.housepigrecords.com) and Hear More! (www.hearmorerecords.com) It came out totally sick and heavy!

This interview is going to be part of a Bastard Noise/The Endless Blockade split-interview: do you have anything to say to those guys?

The Endless Blockade: See you in July?

Bastard Noise: The Endless Blockade simply fucking rule both as people and as a band - they are progressive thinkers with a different angle every time they document their sound.

Can you tell me when you first heard Bastard Noise / The Endless Blockade and what your thoughts were?

The Endless Blockade: I first heard Bastard Noise as Man is the Bastard began to change into a different beast. Bastard Noise has several different periods that represent a continuous evolution, perhaps mirroring a desire for the human race to evolve along similar lines (as above so below). They’ve changed from their initial sound of primal yelling over primitive oscillations to incredibly complex and uniquely composed sound work that are always unmistakably their own. With the current and latest change they’ve left life in the ocean long behind, ascended Jacobs Ladder fully and challenged Metatron himself. Bastard Noise to me represents the struggle of the human spirit to overcome its surroundings; Bastard Noise is a survival of the fittest mentality applied to pure sound.

Bastard Noise: Quite a few years back now. I thought: "I need to hear much more!" I started writing Nolan (bass/support vocals) a while back as well and very quickly into that early relationship I he "got it". Carroll is one of my favourite vocalists and truly Ben and Eric fucking slay on guitar and drums!

The split turned out to be something completely different than we are used to from you guys, was this planned just for 'The Red List'?

The Endless Blockade: We write for each record specifically and the parameters shift consistently as we restrict certain ideas at the expense of others. Our primary musical goal of the last few years have been to condense our sound to its most basic building blocks; be as minimal as possible and just utilise as much as we can from the ideas we allow ourselves to use. I’m also keen on performing music that negates the role of the individual in its performance and can only largely be viewed as a whole, less a sum of its components. For example I have absolutely no interest in ever being considered a “good” or “interesting” bass player. If that happens in this band (unlikely) then I’ve failed. Our half of ‘The Red List’ is just the latest stop on this path.

Bastard Noise: No this was a "long term" plan to bring back the "four steel girders" and drums to the forefront of the skulls' expression. This was a permanent decision! We have a lot of music to get out! It has worked out great first with Danny Walker (Phobia / Intronaut / Murder Construct) for ‘The Red List’ sessions and now with Connell (M.I.T.B.) back in the line-up (Walker is extremely busy at this point in his life and need a more "grounded" member for BN which is where Connell came in) things are a real joy to say the least.

Did Bastard Noise / The Endless Blockade influence you in anyway for these recordings?

The Endless Blockade: Any band that claims power violence as one of its primary influences is by necessity influenced by at least one period of Eric Wood’s musical history. Eric Wood’s musical legacy is always intrinsically linked to Eric Wood as a human being (no disrespect to Walker or Nelson) and I see Bastard Noise as another emanation from him. He is a person truly linked to his creations.

Bastard Noise: By simply existing they influenced our writing. I knew these guys would "deliver the goods" big time and back in 2007 when Nolan and I first discussed the possibility of this happening we were fixed on the concept of a full length collaboration. It didn't work out that as we needed our own material to play "live" - one of the reasons it became a split full length instead. We hope to work with them again. T.E.B. are people we want to associate with for the long term.

Did you guys discuss the lyrical concept of the record as well? Do you guys have similar ideas about writing lyrics would you think?

The Endless Blockade: I think we both draw on similar primordial sources of inspiration; Bastard Noise seems simultaneously more misanthropic and more hopeful about the fate of our species. Perhaps we’re just more resigned?

Bastard Noise: I am not sure now if "lightly" discussed the lyrical issues when it was first going to a full length collaboration but by the time we decided (collectively) to have each band have a side( or half a compact disc), we essentially went our "own directions". It doesn't matter though as these guys know what is happening around them. I think this is their best effort to date both in sound and in compositional feel.

What do you think of the Bastard Noise / The Endless Blockade side of the album?

The Endless Blockade: It’s everything I hoped it and knew it would be.

Bastard Noise: It is a beautiful "journey" in sound and lyrical expression. Very powerful without losing sight of their trademark sound yet reaching farther (at least to me) than they ever have in the past.

Will there perhaps be another cooperation in the future?

The Endless Blockade: It’s not impossible to conceive of on going collaborative work in some shape or form between the members of Blockade and the members of Bastard Noise; we’ll see. There’s enough of a mutual respect and understanding between both units to make it a distinct possibility but time is everyone’s master.

Bastard Noise: We would be honoured to do so. Together as separate bands/entities, we have not discussed this yet however.

What are your immediate future plans?

The Endless Blockade: Our immediate plans are to finish mixing our split LP with Unearthly Trance and sneak over the border to do a week of shows with Hatred Surge. I’m starting to put ideas together for our next two records, Antinomian and Salvation. One of which will hopefully come out this year, the other sometime before 2012.

Bastard Noise: Immediate plans include preparing for the release of ‘A Culture Of Monsters’ and rehearsing our asses off for our US summer tour then upon return, negotiating flight costs to get to the UK and Europe with one years time. Also we are developing even newer material for next sound document yet untitled.

When will we be seeing you guys live in The Netherlands?

The Endless Blockade: No plans at present. If someone wants to pay for our airfares upfront we’ll be there much sooner though.

Bastard Noise: Hopefully with any luck by the end of 2010 or the middle 201! "The Skull" is coming!

Human Cargo

2010-06-07T15:11:00.006-04:00

New noise release, five tracks from Minneapolis duo Juhyo and four from yours truly, out now on Housepig and Hear More.

Blockade and Juhyo have played together a few times now (twice i think) and each time we've been blown away by their meticulous attention to detail; this is not two dudes randomly turning on and off DOD death metal pedals and skronking the controls on their Behringer mixers as fast as they can.

Juhyo's sound on this release at times sounds like being slowly marched out of your house and into custody. Haunting stuff.

The theme for the release was loosely human trafficking. Juhyo probably get this across better than i managed. Though i did stand outside my local cash-for-handjobs-from-Eastern-Europeans-parlour and recorded the sounds of the night whilst out walking the dog for one track.

My material on the split presents the penultimate release in this style before i had a minor shift. The Inner Light CD that i'm going to go on good faith and hope is either currently at the plant or about to be sent to the plant will be the final release of mine in this style. The soon to be released split tape with Disgust on Small Doses and Between Two Fires C20 on Swim Harder are the first of the new approach (hint, it has vocals and bass on as well as the usual harsh noise and reappropriated enviromental recordings, pretty ground breaking stuff huh?).

Some of my side has me hitting the harsh noise like i'm 21 again and some is an altogether slower listen. I did a lot of field recordings and stealing of other peoples material for this one. Thrill to the sound of Nekrasov's first born, the soundtracks of Friday the 13th and Blade Runner, endless recordings of my dog, the above mentioned "massage" parlour, going to Blockade practice, being at Blockade practice, coming home from Blockade practice etc et fucking cetera.

Housepig just released the new Bastard Noise CD, so if you're going to buy that (and you probably should unless you're buying the LP version), pick this one up as well if it floats yer boat. Also much recommended from Housepig are the following:

Vennt - Vennt
Kelly Churko - The Confusion
Wilt - Scarecrow (in fact, if you're not familiar with Wilt, buy everything you can by them, some of the most interesting sounds of the last decade are coming from those two dudes)

and of the many Bastard Noise releases Bill's done my vote goes to the Brainstorming II collaboration with Christian Renou as being particularly worth investigating.

Hear More also released the excellent Pig Heart Transplant/ Juhyo split 7".

In other news this year i figured out how to go to MDF and not lose my mind. Autopsy and Portal were predictable highlights by a country mile and Watain, who i've always loved everything about except for their music were a revelation as well and the only band really put the Death into MDF.

Playlist:

Bizarre Uproar - Purity
Nominon - Monumentomb (unbelievably good, already my tip for best death metal album of the year)
Infinitum Obscure - Sub Atris Caelis
Mika Vainio - Black Telephone of Matter
Defeatist - Sixth Extinction

Inverted Forest

2010-05-08T17:36:00.002-04:00

another print zine with a Blockade interview. The interview covers anti-intellectualism, the occult, power violence as a genre descriptor and a lot of words on why i reject both atheism and religion

available from this guy: Richard inverted.forest.zine@gmail.com

Loser Life, 16oh and Suffer are also interviewed. I checked out Suffer's myspace page after reading the zine and liked what i heard.

I particularly liked the introduction page and hope Richard writes more personal stuff in future issues, i feel his perspective is well thought out and his interests in the cultural aspects of hardcore are for the 'right' reasons. I guess i just mean i agree with him and we probably have some similar life experiences.

Anyway, support printed zines, blah blah blah. In this day and age of internet and paypals there are few excuses for not buying half decent zines when they come in to being; having to piss about with pre paid envelopes are thankfully a thing of the past.

Other reading:

Terror #1
Special Interests #2
Romio Shrestha - Celestial Gallery
Ivan Brun - No Comment
John O'Kane - Celtic Soccer Crew
David Peace - Occupied City
Joseph Campbell - The Mythic Dimension

coming soon

2010-05-04T22:05:00.002-04:00

My first soundtrack. Only another 58 things i have to finish this year now.

Blood Boars (2010) from Justin Oakey on Vimeo.

Edit: now with trailer

power violence versus Bermuda

2010-04-26T09:27:00.002-04:00

I'm not saying anyone should book a flight or anything (we're hardly worth it), but our two shows with Bastard Noise and The Rita in july will be our last for the forseeable future while Ben goes and moves to the richest (and probably smallest) country in the world for an indeterminate period of time.

I can't guarantee Eric won't get swine flu again (like last time we tried to play Montreal) or i won't get stranded in England due to acts of God (as i narrowly missed by a mere luck of the booking draw last week), but if you're within driving distance and want to see us you should probably get out to either Toronto or Montreal.

Whilst we're on hold there are three Blockade recordings still to be unleashed upon the pestilent hordes (i'm trying to get in to the Slaughter Strike mentality here)

In the meantime these Blockade related bands are all active:

Sakhalin
Slaughter Strike
Brutal Knights
Column of Heaven

and this is the (main) noise shit:

Death Agonies
Gack
Black Paintings
Joshua Norton Cabal

Hopefully Ben will get bored and do some kind of one man computer grindcore band about riding scooters on a tropical island with Catherine Zeta Jones on guest vokillz

Playlist:

Strom ec - Divine Legions Beyond the Psyche (one of the most rewarding power electronics CDs of recent years, buy it here)
Bizarre Uproar - Unsafe and Insane LP
Dave Gildan - Texas Chainsaw Dopefiend CS
Mudlark/ Half Gorilla 7"
Vacant Coffin - Sewer Skullpture LP

Lee Altomare

2010-04-20T09:57:00.002-04:00

A man who was the spirit of a rough old school New Yorker in the body of a wirey grindcore fucker.

Good dude, died way too fucking soon for this to be anything other the universe displaying utter cruelty

Texas is the Reason

2010-03-24T16:59:00.005-04:00

Thanks as ever to Hatred Surge.

Sorry to San Antonio for cancelling the show, illness made it look like we were going to have to cancel all the rest of our shows for a while there.

Personal favourites were Mindless from Austin and Concrete Violin from Houston

Also great were Convert from Oklahoma City and some band whose name i will never be able to remember or pronounce but it started with Esc and might have been some dude from Mindless. Anyway, both bands are very new and already showing tons of promise.

Amazingly i didn't see any shitty bands at our shows, they may have played but i wasn't in the room at the time.

And no the GZA didn't end up playing (whatever, great show regardless) and yes SXSW was a fucking chore and i don't ever need to deal with that garbage ever again.

No merch left over from tour and the two Canadian shows with Bastard Noise are probably our last this year.

No plans to tour for the forseeable future.

zines

2010-03-09T10:39:00.004-05:00

"Society is over saturated with information and the seemingly meaningless exchange of that information. I think that telling people that everyone is a special individual and we should all be given equal attention is as damaging as constantly telling people that they’ll never amount to anything."

Ritual Assembly zine now available, it has interviews with Jon Chang and me and of far more importance on a larger scale there are articles on Hans Bellmer and Henry Darger.

"Punk rock is art first and foremost. The lyrical component should be to display both a personal side of the performers that the music is unable to convey and a hook to draw others in who feel similarly so they share a deeper connection with the artists in question. Anything else is pure fallacy. I think some people get confused and believe that the politics are the art themselves. Bullshit. This is usually the point where we get bogged down by passionless rhetoric and vibrant ideas and concepts are reduced to the functionality of a shopping list. At best it’s contrived and at worst it cheapens real concerns in the world outside of the confines of the punk scene."

Freak Power zine and comp 12" is also out now, a long interview with Blockade, Apartment 213 (Steve seriously needs his own stand up show) Sete Star Sept (featuring the legendary Kiyasu, formerly of Blockade).

The accompanying comp LP has a bunch of bands on, including Hatred Surge, Apt 213, Potop, Sete Star Sept and Brain Dead (hopefully the great and largely unknown UK Brain Dead)

As ever i sound 35% more irritated in both interviews than i actully am in real life.

Paper zines are for all intents and purpose dead from underground culture, no one needs me to point this out to them. Our scene is no longer about the objects and their implications; it's more about the explicit content. Online zines are accessible to anyone, mp3s are downloadable meaning you no longer have to hide cash in an envelope and mail it off to some label you found in a six month old issue of MRR in the vain hope of getting your record. Any moron can have a blog, this moron has one after all.

This is democracy in action, this is information available to anyone who wants it, this is focusing on the music and little else.

But we also lose the cultural importance, something being easy does not necessarily equate with being good.

I frequently talk about about elitism and exclusion in interviews, songs and this blog. Almost everytime i do there is the electronic crying of people who take issue with the fact that i would dare to publically state that i want to live in a better world, one where i don't have to interact with people i don't like.

I feel many things about modern living are too easily obtained and consequently too easily dismissed. There is nothing personal (or nothing that has the veneer of being personal i should say) about the ability for every single person, regardless of intent or capacity to understand to have access to the same information at the same level. The path to enlightenment isn't to demand a Sadhu explains everything to you in a nutshell. Likewise you can't learn to do long division then decide that Fourier Analysis is a bunch of stupid bullshit because you aren't able to instantly get to grips with it.

When i talk about elitism i'm talking about expecting people to invest more in their chosen culture. I'm asking that people have an understanding of why they do what they do and to what end.

A common defence is that with the ease of access there are more participants and it creates a stronger scene. People will accuse others of wilful obscurism (not necessarily untrue) and often state that without modern in-roads the scene would die. And i call total and utter bullshit on that.

My own access points to hardcore punk were similar to many people of my own age, listening to John Peel on Radio One, hearing Napalm Death and Heresy an going from there. Yes, John Peel was a a hugely popular DJ on a national radio station but this was not being spoonfed all the information i'll ever need in one afternoon. From there i bought records by Doom, Septic Death, Repulsion, Minor Threat an tons more on the basis of thanks lists, t shirts worn in photos, fanzine interviews and by virtue of being on record labels that had an associated image. I read Class War because i was angry, hated cops and wanted to know more about the philosphy of some of the bands.

It was a lot of work, but i loved it and perservered. I figured out what i liked and what i didn't like and in periods where i was less enamoured with what was going on (1997-2000 and 2008-present) i still maintained a degree of interest because i'd worked hard at getting here.

In short i feel invested in hardcore and i feel a degree of personal attachment that goes far beyond "Ceremony and Trash Talk ROFL"

Lately there has been a small resurgence in demo tapes and fanzines, particularly here in Toronto (where we're lucky to have a strong, active and fairly knowledgable scene). It could be mere fetishisation of a time passed, another cynical way for people to 'prove' that they're more down with the real roots of hardcore and punk. But i'd like to think on the whole it's a realisation that the current "you like this" and "recommend me power violence" is both unsustainable and largely meaningless.

And if you have a paper zine with a Blockade interview in it and you haven't sent it to us please do (i like to keep them)

"from where will a sun come into the smooth heaven when Fenrir has assailed this one?"

2010-02-24T15:15:00.005-05:00

New shirt available at any shows we're playing for the next six months, I probably won't do any mail order with these (which is number two on my list of 'Worst Shit About Being in a Band'; number one being 'mixing records' and number three being 'trying to find a van').

Tyr's hand and Fenrir doing the old Infest Break the Chains thing he's famous for (God bless Norse eschatology).

The story of Tyr losing his hand is pretty much the only sacrifice myth i'm aware of that i feel holds much value for my mindset. The story of Christ on the cross has become so meaningless and convoluted that no one really has much of a clue as to what it's supposed to represent. Something vague about dying for sins. Why he had to die for anyones sins i don't think most Christians really understand.

And it's not that i feel Christianity ever had much meaning in the first place; Emperor Julian (331CE - 363CE) is quoted as saying "no wild beasts are such enemies to mankind as are most of the Christians in their deadly hatred of each other" . He was refering to the then insane debates about Homoousios.

Honestly, if you weren't already convinced that Christianity is to divinity what McDonalds is to nutrition then look into some of the history of early Christianity. I can almost guarantee you'll give up very quickly (these people were complete fucking morons) and feel like punching the next hippy that tries to tell you that the original church had some great ideas that were turned on their heads by nasty white Europeans later on. Their ideas were (largely) always terrible, we just have the Romans to thank for exporting them to the rest of the world. Thanks Constantine (imagine a world if Diocletianus had been more sucessful than Constantine at leaving a legacy...)

Most "serious" (ie metal magazines) publications will ask me in interviews about why we book our own tours and put out so much vinyl. Most punk zines (since Primitive) will ask me about the occult and my views on religion. Those questions i don't mind, they're broad enough (and of enough interest to me) for me to want to answer.

There are no quick answers but i'm not that interested in punks' "No Gods No Masters" chant with no further thought attached.

For matters regarding the occult, well, at its most simple it represents a multitude of different ways of viewing, understanding and interacting with the world and isn't nearly as hollywood as most black metal hordes would have you believe.

At the end of the day people will always say things like "as above, so below", but there's "as above, so below" as words on paper (or a computer screen or in content of speech) and there's "as above, so below" as an understanding of something far greater than words can adequately convey.

Just like there's praying to God and the wee baby Jesus for forgiveness and there's having a genuine personal relationship with God, which is something that by its very nature can't be discussed, only experienced. (Did i just apologise for "good" Christians everywhere? I probably need to eat something)

And saying "religion is the opiate of the masses" is cute but i'd no more ask a Marxist's opinion on matters of the soul than i would a Thelemite's opinion on the nature of capitalism and the class system in the western world since the Industrial era.

And to end on an entirely crass note: 93 93/93

SXSW

2010-02-18T18:34:00.002-05:00

i have a feeling that our entire set will be about the length of one song by all the 'real' bands that are playing

if anyone feels like taking me to the airport afterwards and drinking a 40 with me get in touch

and whatever a Brooklyn Vegan is, i hope they give us good vegan food

Listening:

Pig Heart Transplant/ Juhyo 7"
V/A - Vancouver 2x7"
Seelenlicht - Gods and Devils CD
Grey Machine - Disconnected CD

Reading:

Peter Levenda - Stairway to Heaven: Chinese Alchemists, Jewish Kabbalists, and the Art of Spiritual Transformation

semi-related to Survivalist

2010-02-15T19:14:00.002-05:00

Humiliation/ Nekrasov CD is out on New Scream Industry

Nekrasov is on a split with Joshua Norton Cabal that i put out and Humiliation is the second best selling (200 copies) release on Survivalist after Slaughter Strike (probably around 300 copies at present, not including the 172 that Nurse Ettiquette made)

Nekrasov is a good friend and occasional collaborator on some of my noise stuff, his material is always great; weird rumbling transmissions from beyond the veil, ancient and futuristic sounding at the same time. He veers from blown out caustic screams and blasting machinery driven black metal to massively oppressive hum and click drone meditations.

Humiliation are Ontario's most negative band; embracing the self-collapse of modernism and finding the sacred in the profane. The sound of music falling apart from disease. No blasting and less of a black metal buried under 50 tonnes of poluted soil approach than the tape i did for them. Industrial without resorting cheap goth-rave black metal shit.

Reading:

Rape and Honey #2

Special Interests #1
Barb Wire #1

the voice of god

2010-02-11T19:33:00.001-05:00

right here

interviews

2010-02-03T16:40:00.004-05:00

New record on 20 Buck Spin, new interviews for 'real' music publications where they turn your words into witty anecdotes about the craziest thing that ever happened to you on tour, how stoked you are that Scott Hull agreed to take money in exchange for mixing your new record and what's up with all those split vinyl records anyway?

Here's one for AOL. Actually i'm being uncharitable, Geoff also writes for Crustake. which is one of the blogs (along with this one, this one and this one) that i read at work when i can't care about other peoples problems no matter how much i'm being paid.

And below is the unedited Q and A original for the interview i did with Zero Tolerance magazine (again, Alex Deller who conducterd the interview is also a knowledgable chap and i salute him accordingly)

Can you give us a quick potted history of the band, what you were initially setting out to do, whether you had any specific “gameplan” and, if so, whether you kept to it.

Formed 2003, line up since 2004: Carroll, Edgar, King, Nolan.

With each successive release you seem to be exploring further territory, be it musically, lyrically or thematically. What drives all this? Is it an organic progression, or are you striving / pushing towards something in particular or consciously stepping away from what others are doing?

There has been a deliberate move on my part in the last three years to be very careful about what direction the band will go in and i’ve intentionally restricted our sound to the point of collapse.

Thematically/ lyrically it’s different, really it just represents mine and Matthew’s interests. There’s certainly more allusion to myth as allegory and open embrace of symbolism and that language and culture are much more than words than on the first few records.

What can we expect from the Bastard Noise and Unearthly Trance splits? How did these come about and what (be it conceptually / physically) went into the music?

The Bastard Noise split was a lengthy and tortuous process that began long before it was even meant to be a release with Bastard Noise. Originally the material was culled from the writing sessions for Primitive; anything that we felt didn’t fit was put aside for another record.

Then it became a Bastard Noise collaboration and i wrote several set Blockade pieces, a few proposed collaborative sections and transition points where the artists would ‘switch’. It was to be a continuous 30-60 minute piece of music that would be both acts equally and not merely some whooping noises from Bastard Noise over our slow parts which would have been the easy option.

Anyway, Bastard Noise transformed again into a bass/ drums/ electronics unit and it was agreed that we should do a straight split. All of which meant i had to rewrite our material (for a third time) so it would make more sense.

Now it’s a fifteen minute single track called Deuteronomy expanding on some of the musical ideas of Primitive with some Neolithic noise sections. Lyrically it starts with the Confusion of Tongues and ends with 9/11. At its heart it’s intended to be a look at monotheism, politics, eschatology and the relationship of all three.

The CD version contains tracks by The Rita from Vancouver and New York composer Noah Creshevsky reworking material from Primitive.

The intent behind the Unearthly Trance split was to break some of the weirder musical ideas from the Bastard Noise split and force them into the structures set forth in Primitive. About 90% of the music came to me in visions and through meditation and is what i would call a deliberately mechanical style of song writing.

Part of my musical quest of the last three years has been to negate the individual in the performance of material so that no one is important in the end result. Hardcore punk and particularly the micro-genre of power violence influenced bands tend to lend themselves to this goal. I want to relegate my role to that of the unimportant carrier of a song received from elsewhere (hence automatic writing techniques employed).

Lyrically and artistically there’s a lot going on that’s shadowy, secretive and esoteric. Are these fields of interest shared as a band, and are their inclusion in the band’s output for self-gratification or to try and draw something out of your listeners? Is this some sort of response / reaction to the way people can get immediate access to and “into” music nowadays, to make the content itself as transgressive or difficult to navigate as the music itself once was?

Regarding self gratification, yes, it’s absolutely tied in to my own sense of satisfaction; I don’t waste my time on anything i’m not pleased with. I’m not really interested in the old tortured artist cliché of someone who just absolutely has to do things otherwise they’ll take a sniper rifle to the mall or whatever other laughable crap some people invent to justify what simply makes them happy.

Sometimes it’s difficult for me to know my true motivations regarding the wilful obscuring of content and the addition of deliberately esoteric ideas to the band.
Certainly i think life is too easy and sometimes i’m almost demanding more from people who are interested in our band. But at the end of the day we will always be “Eric Wood approved power violence” to most people out there, and that’s totally fine. I’m as happy to be the background music to someone punching a cop in the face (or more realistically: downloading internet porn) as i am to someone connecting some of the anti-modernist strains in the lyrics.

I don’t know if i would consider our content or sound especially transgressive as you suggest but i am definitely in favour of a return to weeding out the useless dickheads and making thing harder for them to fully participate. I like invite only basement shows, i like small pressings of records, i like fanzines, i like demo tapes, i like harsh fucking noise, i like an intelligent embrace and celebration of the violence of the human spirit (hell, i like a dumb embrace of it sometimes...). What i’m saying is that i feel that there should be more elitism and separation in place.

The single worst thing about 90s hardcore was the opening it up to all and sundry and we’re still feeling the fallout from it now. We need to exclude people, it’s perfectly acceptable to not want to be around stupid people. There are enough idiots in the world; let them have their own clubs, let them give a fuck about Tiger Woods or H1N1 and leave us to pursue things we find important without their cultural noise interfering. The Let’s All Hold Hands Brigade is almost 100% responsible for opening the doors to the Christians infiltration in our culture.

I’ve said it before but it’s worth repeating; i believe underground culture (which i’ll define as artistic culture not centered around money) should model itself more on esoteric orders in the Western Tradition. There is a difference between the Golden Dawn and the Scottish Rite in the same way that there’s a difference between grindcore and black metal.

Obligatory noise question. I know you’ve been doing Joshua Norton Cabal for ages and that it’s been filtered into the band’s sound from early on, but it seems to be creeping more and more to the fore. Again, is this a natural progression or just what the music has called for from release to release? Is it, to you, only natural that the lines should be blurred like this? How does this side of the band factor into your live show nowadays?

The noise elements have definitely come more to the fore in the last few years, part of that is an across the board genuine love for power electronics, harsh noise, true industrial and general unpleasant non-musical sounds (we’re not into hippy jam hacky sack didgeridoo noise).

Live we certainly use much more harsh noise than we used to. We’re at the point now where there are no gaps in the sound for any communication or even applause, it’s either us playing our songs or harsh sound while we tune up and get ready for the next block of songs.

A few years ago whilst playing i had the thought that live i really just wanted to play incredibly crudely. I felt i just wanted to hit all my strings with one hand and beat a random audience member unconscious with a mic stand with the other whilst yelling non-words. Anyway, that would be great once i’m sure but it’s not really practical. The noise approach we take live and to a lesser extent on recordings is definitely born out of this desire to play at a visceral level and not taint the intent with notes and structures.

To me, there’s a strange kind of “otherness” to the bands that do this type of music right. It’s something hard to pin down, but you automatically know it when you hear it. What would you say the defining factor in this is and why is it so hard to do right? Is it this purity (for want of a better word) that draws you to the types of music (Slaughter Strike included) you make?

There is always a tendency for people to pick out the most obvious and least important parts of a genre and focus on those. You only have to look at the glut of people wanting to be the fastest or slowest band in the world over the years; as if tempo means much to the end result. Or worse still the people that can only copy guitar tone and not substance (i’m looking at black metal and the odious intentionally retro death metal and 80s hardcore jokers here).

Whitehouse is more than piercing screeches and yelling abuse, Burzum is more than a shitty guitar sound and songs about forests, Crossed Out is more than fast parts with slow parts.

Many people seem to play music because they’re looking to fit in with something (usually anything) and lack the critical skills to evaluate either their own motivations or their own creations.

Personally speaking the art (defined in its loosest sense) that i’m interested in tends to be a genuine externalising of a person’s internal processes. I also favour art that embraces a cruel aesthetic but that’s perhaps beside the point.

Some people refer to this externalising as being true or real or kvlt or what have you, i think they’re all words for the same impossible to name phenomenon. It’s music as a numinous entity, it’s simple honesty. We tend to know it when we hear it and it is of course utterly subjective. Like someone with a far brighter mind than i could ever hope to have once said “the less said of it the less obscure is it.”

In an earlier email you mentioned that there’d likely be precious few gigs unless they’re with a select number of acts. Why are you winding things down and why is it these acts that will draw you out into the open? Are we talking friendship, calibre, the fact that they’re kindred spirits or something else?

We believe it’s important to support people you share a deeper common bond with (musical or not) in this life.

In another interview I think you mentioned a dwindling interest in playing shows and a lack of interest in whether people like or “get” it. If this is the case, why even bother playing to an audience in the first place?

It’s true, we don’t care if an audience “get’s it” or not and their enjoyment is generally not our first concern.

At its most basic level music performs two functions for me, an internal one and an external one (or an intellectual and a physical one). I find i use my own music and noise as a way or working through my own ideas and thoughts and i’m becoming less and less interested in other (meaning non band member) people and their input. I find i get enough satisfaction on an internal level and don’t really need to stand on stage thumping out half baked power violence influenced hardcore currently. But the internal side can’t exist without the external.

Realistically playing music publically music probably keeps me firmly rooted in Malkuth and stops me from disappearing up my own arse. Ten years ago i was that guy that wouldn’t hit the “press when illuminated” button to get off the trains in Glasgow after all...

What have been the best, worst and flat-out weirdest things to happen to you as band?

Best? Ongoing friendships with people in bands like Iron Lung, Hatred Surge, Mudlark and some notable others.

Worst? Well on the scale of things nothing that’s worth commenting on really, probably barely anything that’s even small scale irritating to be honest.
As far as weirdest i don’t know, we don’t hang out and party much on tour so we skip a lot of that stuff, though we’ve certainly met our fair share of idiots.

Any word on what we can expect from the Endless Blockade once these two splits are out there? What does the future hold?

I’ve promised myself that i will start writing a third Blockade full length after summer 2010. After all the currently unreleased material is out we won’t be doing anymore split records, we feel like we’ve done enough, though at some point when we’re ready i want to start working on a collaboration (not a split) with Toronto industrial power electronics duo Piss Horn.

The four of us will undoubtedly continue to play music together in some form whilst we all live in Toronto, whether it’s Blockade or something else isn’t important, the process will be similar.

listening

Rudimentary Peni - Death Church
Abraxis - Abraxis
Otesanek - S/T
Threatener - discography

uuuh?

2010-01-27T18:58:00.002-05:00

apparently we're playing a radio show with hatred surge and GZA, march 18th, Austin

The Rita Vs The Endless Blockade

2010-01-24T21:00:00.003-05:00

The Second CD bonus track comes from Vancouvers The Rita (as seen in Rue Morgue magazine recently, the only regularly published magazine i read these days).

The Rita has been plugging away at his brand of obsessive, borderline motionless aesthetic for years now and over the last few years is finally starting to get some of the recognition he deserves.

Anyway, if Noah Creshevsky's track was a hyper kinetic reduction of Primitive then The Rita's track is the complete opposite.

The track Model Rebreather 49 is the sound of complete ego annihilation. There is almost NOTHING to grab onto here and most people aren't going to be interested in it at all. Use it as a meditation tool if nothing else i suppose.

God, i fucking love this track. A lot of harsh noise works best when you're close to the speakers so you can check the stereo seperation and lose yourself in the sound; i find this track works best if you play it super loud and go sit in another room.

Noah Creshevsky Vs The Endless Blockade

2010-01-24T20:42:00.006-05:00

First bonus track on the CD version of The Red List is a re-working of Primitive by composer Noah Creshevsky

Noah came to see us at ABC No Rio with Coffins, he spent a lot of time sleeping on a chair in the middle of the room whilst teenagers with ratty hair and patches wondered whose grandfather he was.

Trust a sixty five year old classical musician to have mosh pit ettiquette figured out instantly:

"this punk freak was doing beavis dueling hair duets with another guy, who was supposed to be the performer. at first i thought i was going to get hit and seriously mauled by the offstage freak, but then he ran into a girl first. that made it clear that i was sort of safe. i figured out how this act worked. when he bumped into me i would shove him into the middle. i guess that's how it goes. that was very good."

The old when going "crazy" push a girl over first, ignore anyone bigger or older than you thing. And as an aside none of us ever need to witness the "crazy" singer of some band or other pushing his friends about, if you're that disturbed just go and belt someone you've never seen before square in the jaw...

Anyway, i love Noah's track and i'm constantly hearing new aspects in it. Listening to it i can hear that he's written a piece of classical music and replaced the notes with tiny fragments of our songs.

Is this our answer to Metallica's daliances with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra?

Categorically, yes.

We're now taking applications for our in-band therapist.

The Red List

2010-01-24T19:44:00.008-05:00

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)

"it sounds like everything falling apart at the same time"

2010-01-19T22:44:00.003-05:00

Thanks to everyone that made BC a blast, especially to our close friends in Mudlark, The Rita and Haggatha.

Getting to see The Rita play on a large stage through a huge PA on friday was perfect.

Victoria managed to prove to me that time doesn't exist and everything is happening all the time. Last time we were there Ben's guitar broke and this time the crowd broke it for him mid-set. Both times we've been there we got no sleep due to dance parties at the place we stayed at and Ron from Griefer was wearing his Vomir shirt both times. Maybe he only has one shirt though?

Because we're gentlemen we did not fight the teenagers drinking cough syrup all night that were bitching about getting punched in the head when we played.

These are the next shows we're playing this year:

Feb 27th at Roboto in Pittsburgh, partying like it's 2005 with Warzone Womyn, xbrainax and Tumour Feast

The dates with Hatred Surge are:

Mar 12th Austin
Mar 13th The Valley
Mar 14th Houston
Mar 15th Dallas
Mar 16th Oklahoma City
Mar 17th San Antonio

Sometime after that (March 18th, 19th, 20th or 21st) we're playing a 20 Buck Spin/ Profound Lore label showcase as part of SXSW. I hear the other bands on the bill are Liturgy, White Mice, Coffin Worm, Salome and some band that has a member of Cobalt in and sounds like Tom Waits (this may be a lie but i'm buying it for now)

July 2nd and 3rd we're playing with Bastard Noise in Montreal and Toronto.

After that who knows?

Most shows will be with our new and unimproved five piece line up; 25% more anxiety disorders, 50% less clarity.

The Bastard Noise split is out and probably leaked all over the place by now. I expect some less than favourable opinions about our CD bonus tracks from some quarters.

I'll post the as-promised unecessary information about the release before the end of the week.

And in other news the Slaughter Strike 12", At Lifes End will be out in April

Play list:

Drainland - advance material for various releases
The Rita - The Voyage of the Decima Mas
Nekrasov - Cognition of Splendid Oblivion
Piss Horn - advance tracks for Pinnacle of Spirituality 7"

new survivalist shit

2010-01-08T13:50:00.005-05:00

tapes available next weekend when Blockade plays in BC and available to mailorder when we get back (e mail theendlessblockade@gmail.com)

Gack - Mask
Joshua Norton Cabal/ Nekrasov - Primordial Transmissions
Slaughter Strike - A Litany of Vileness (back in print again until april then i'm giving up on it)

hopefully before march:

Black Paintings
Masculinity - A Little Something for the Ladies
Pisshorn/ Windscale
The Endless Blockade vs Bloomer

Bastard Noise split out now

2010-01-07T07:35:00.002-05:00

CD is definitely here LP is apparently out, try here.

I'll post more about it later.

In the meantime there's always this if you have six minutes to kill

Listening:

HHH - Intellectual Punks
Daphne Oram - Oramics
Slugathor - Echoes From Beneath

Reading:

Thomas Bernhardt - Frost
Jorge Luis Borges - Seven Nights

2009

2009-12-22T15:30:00.006-05:00

Well, I guess my 2009 can really be distilled into one single moment. Text message sent to Dave from Slaughter Strike upon arriving at our hotel in Baltimore for MDF: "Dude, I just saw Proscriptor McGovern helping an old lady across the road."

The only other significant musical thing this year for me was after seeing Teenage Jesus and the Jerks and Bolt Thrower (alas not on the same bill) I finally got to settle the question my teenage mind of many a year ago could not firmly decide upon: Jo Bench or Lydia Lunch?

It's that time of year when every pratt with a blog (like this guy) wants to share with you their top ten of the year and lo and behold doesn't everyone just love the same Isis/ Torche/ Deathspell Omega/ Mastodon/ Liturgy records?

Personally I've always been more of the "I can see a Kakerlak tape underneath a dog chew toy, there's a Nuclear Hammer CD in the mail that I know I'll dig and I listened to Nazi Dust on my iPod this morning on the way to work" school of top tens.

Definitive top tens aren't worth the effort; the best record of 1996 is not the one I thought it was in 1997 after all (it's probably Duh, The Big City by Hammer Head, but I could change my mind at any second).

My top ten of this decade goes something like:

Infest - No Mans Slave
Iron Lung - Sexless/ No Sex
Grunt - Seer of Decay

And then I start looking at Werewolf Jerusalem CDRs and thinking "fuck it, this one was pretty good" and the list turns to shit.

I used to write reviews for Short Fast and Loud magazine then had to stop for a number of reasons.

One of my reasons was that when it comes to music and art borne from a specific culture (punk, black metal, whatever) I no longer believe you can review the object in and of itself. You have to look at the other aspects of the culture that produced it or its relationships with other objects produced by the culture.

A Mayhem record as an isolated artefact is not 'black metal', it's an object created by a larger current known as black metal that Mayhem happen to be a part of. Mayhem records do not contain the defining essence of black metal.

And if you want to look at neo-power violence you can't just take Eric Wood's word on the subject or look at your local sloppy blast beat and weak screaming about pizza and circle pits band. You have to look at Iron Lung, Hatred Surge and Mind Eraser, three very different bands with very different forces that created them that when looked at together give a clearer idea of the culture they belong to.

Over the last few years I've pretty much come to despise the cult of the individual. Every single person knows exactly what's wrong with the world and how to fix it. I know the world would be a better place if people could understand their utter insignificance in the scheme of things and could accept that measuring time in minutes and seconds is inherently flawed. And my grandfather knew that conscripting young men into the armed forces would solve the world's problems.

Everyone knows everything, so fucking what.

Anyway, all this nonsense just informs my attitude to music; I don't want quirky stand out gimmick bands thinking they've reinvented the wheel. I like and demand bands that have a good sense of tradition in their approach and a sense of internal consistencies. I like bands that strengthen their genre, not those that try and rise above it. Fuck off all post-hardcore or avant-garde shoegaze black metal.

With that in mind these are the two releases that I can honestly hand on heart say are the two full lengths of this year that I can fully stand behind:

Hatred Surge, Deconstruct. Can we stop with the Despise You 2.0 idiocy now? It makes almost as little sense as the haircut in Providence that told me Blockade sounded exactly like a cross between Cryptopsy and Isis. Hatred Surge: "it got girl vocals like Depsise U!"

Clearly there's no great surprise that a guy from The Endless Blockade would pick this as one of his best records of the year, but it's fucking bad ass. Hatred Surge is finally a full band and if anything it's focused the approach even more.

And I'm jealous Alex wrote Infinity before I did.

And the other utterly predictable entry is Slogun's Bloody Roots CD. I've already mentioned it briefly before. The whole disc is perfect and we managed to get John on the Unearthly Trance split doing some vocals.

I like his smart guy approach to death and violence; reading interviews on his site shows he's clearly not the dumb power electronics serial killer fan boy it would be lazy to peg him as.

Music to put on when you're in a foul mood and scream "FUCK LIFE" to the world.

Two other acts i have to mention are Bastard Noise and Magrudergrind.

Bastard Noise for challenging their audience in significant ways. In this micro information era of Tweeting and instant downloads who the fuck releases a five disc full length? Let alone mere months after the truly inspirational Rogue Astronaut CD. Well, Bastard Noise did it and it and Our Earth's Blood IV is an incredible piece of work, all five discs of it.

Bastard Noise released more exceptional music in 2009 than i've been able to manage in the last fifteen years of playing in active bands. Perhaps that's not saying much?

Anyway, two stunning albums, one of which is five CDs long. Fuck, that's committal to the cause.

Magrudergrind for proving me wrong. Hmm, how to start? Fuck it, bluntness: Magrudergrind to me were the benchmark for circle pits and pizza party. In a word they were as lowest common denominator as it can get; the Labbatts Blue of Grindcore. Anyway, this year I finally said yes to Avi's annual request to play shows with them. Their newest LP is very good indeed (I also love the totally incongruous cover art) and live they were a blast and great guys to tour with.

Anyone who knows me knows this is probably the highest praise I can give someone, to publically state that something i formerly thought was terrible is now actually really good. I still haven't heard the previous LP but i'm sticking to my opinion that their earlier recorded output just wasn't worth much.

Anyway, Magrudergrind 2009, no longer the embarrassing little kids you'd run across all over the continent.

I doubt many of these were published in 2009 but of everything I read this year these are the books I enjoyed the most:

Fiction

James Ellroy - Blood's a Rover
David Peace - 1974
Samuel Beckett - Stories and Texts for Nothing
GK Chesterton - The Man who was Thursday
Will Self - The Book of Dave

Non-Fiction

Howard Bloom - Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century
Nicholas Schreck - The Satanic Screen: An Illustrated Guide to the Devil in Cinema
Gary Lachman - Politics and the Occult: The left, the Right and the Radically Unseen
Dan Falk - In Search of Time: Journeys Along a Curious Dimension
Mark Sedgwick - Against the Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the 20th Century
Charles Freeman - AD 381: Heretics, Pagans and the Christian State
Joseph Campbell - The Power of Myth

oh Lord...

2009-12-14T22:01:00.002-05:00

i'm now a "composer"

i'm so over power violence and harsh noise, see you plebs on the other side

TOHN

2009-12-11T09:55:00.006-05:00

Locals only.

Black Paintings = Eric's first public noise performance outside of Death Agonies and Blockade

Black Paintings cassette should be finished sometime this month, but i've heard Eric say that before.

i guess this is my annual Ryan Bloomer related live outing for Joshua Norton Cabal.

Norton/ Nekrasov split cassette on Survivalist in january, Inner Light CD on Chimera/ Survivalist is currently being mastered.

Piss Horn LP on Survivalist sometime next year maybe. We'll see if late night drinking conversations can cross the threshold and materialise in the physical realm...

Remlap played with Blockade before and it was great

Burrow Owl just moved here from BC. Her parents were harsh noise loving peace punks that lived in a van.

some pics from the last Death Agonies show

Death Agonies - Dust in the Lungs of God C20 out on Cathartic Process shortly

Trapped in a Scene

2009-11-20T17:11:00.005-05:00

Like it says, UK Hardcore, 1985-1989 and personally speaking also the era immediately before i became involved in anything punk related.

Anyway, Ian Glasper's written a third book about the development of the UK underground punk scene.

I must confess to having not read the other two books in the series as i pretty much hate most peace punk and the mental stranglehold i feel it placed on European punk for twenty plus years. And the UK82 brigade were never a bunch i had much time for on any level whatsoever, i dunno, i'm just reminded of the Post Card Punks that could do little else but drink cider, fall over and bleed everywhere. I think that breed finally died out in the late 90s but they had a good run.

Anyway, Trapped in a Scene gets my thumbs up, it covers the essentials and a lot of stuff that was anything but essential (often in great detail).

Reading UK message boards i see a lot of bitching and complaining about the book, from the mundane ("nobody called it UKHC") to the missing the point ("the author didn't send any of the interviewees a copy"; seemingly some people thought it was a zine and not a 500+ page book). But fuck, the British are either mindlessly violent or mindlessly petty, frequently both and on the whole aren't worth listening to as a nation. So ignore their message boards.

Sure, it's not perfect, personally i feel a better approach would be to focus on a handful of the important bands (which is not necessarily the ones that released records, which the book definitely gets right) for each area and give a broad overview of the political situation and punk landscape rather than interview (almost) every band from the region. For example the Warzone Collective in Belfast, The Station in Gateshead and 1 in 12 Club in Bradford were/ are monumentally important aspects of the UK scene and the point isn't really made to people who wouldn't necessarily know. Plus any non-UK readers (or readers younger than a certain age) won't be clued in to certain political aspects like life under Thatcher or the Northern Ireland issues.

Other than that a small amount of editing wouldn't have gone amiss; way too many exclamation marks (an irrational personal ire of mine) and there's far too much text that reads something like:

"then Darren joined on bass, but switched to guitar when Becki left and then Trogg didn't show up to practice in 1987 so we had Adda from Apocalyptic Pig Torture fill in for six gigs in Dudley and then Jimmy returned when Spastic Thatcher broke up".

Lots of talk of John Peel and his role in popularising the scene as well which is great, a true legend whose importance can neither be downplayed nor really understood fully by outsiders.

I also have to give Glasper a backhanded compliment, i liked his book despite the voice and validity he gave to countless stupid London and Belgian bands in the pages of Terrorizer throughout the 1990s and lets face it, the inevitable two books on 90s UK hardcore should be interesting and potentially aggravating. Well, as long as my own personal favourites Downfall, Kito, Disaffect and Health Hazard/ Suffer make it in there somewhere i can skim through a few hundred pages of a bunch of southerners talking about how they reinvented the wheel (Knuckledust excluded, which is surely a sign i'm getting old if i'll finally recognise the effort they put in to getting their shit done).

What really struck me whilst reading the book is just how many of the major players from over twenty years ago are still very much active, still very DIY and are not mellowing with age, which is something i haven't found in North America on the whole. Bar Eric Wood (Peace Corpse - Bastard Noise) and John Brannon (Negative Approach - Easy Action) and a few others pretty much all the players dropped out or tried continuing to trade on decidedly past it legacies. Fuck, would you rather have Geriatric Unit or Dave Smalley playing the acoustic guitar opening up for Negative Approach? Hell, if anything one thing the UK is still good for (other than curry) is forty year old men playing really hard punk and grindcore.

Anyway, i totally commend all the old bastards from the 80s scene still going strong in Bait, Violent Arrest, After Birth, Meat Locker and a shit load more.

Some of my favourite recordings from the bands from era covered in the book:

Heresy - Whose Generation? 7"
Ripcord - Harvest Gardcore 7"
Napalm Death - Scum LP (duh)
Hellbastard - Ripper Crust demo
Doctor and the Crippens - Raphanadosis LP
Sedition - Dealing With Cliches 7"
Pink Turds in Space - Greatest Shits LP
Generic - For a Free and Liberated South Africa 7"
Stupids - Peruvian Vacation LP
Intense Degree - War in my Head LP
Deviated Instinct - Rock n Roll Conformity LP

Heresy:

Geriatric Unit (ex Heresy):

Jinn (ex Generic, who i couldn't find a video of):

Gruel (ex Generic):

Deviated Instinct:

Bait (ex Deviated Instinct):

Sedition:

Ripcord:

Stupids:

fuck off nowadays global pandemic

2009-10-30T09:30:00.009-04:00

Whilst the rest of Toronto is in a panic about a possible H1N1 epidemic and desperately trying to get barely plausible vaccines adminstered to them (in a rush that resembles an iphone marketing campaign in structure and effect) The Endless Blockade is sitting with middle fingers exposed to the world.

Eric is so fucking hardcore he went and LAUGHED in the face of H1N1, daring it to kill him.

Eric lives, Swine Flu was destroyed by his immune system and he was only hospitalised for a mere 24 hours. Take that disease culture! The Endless Blockade lives on with our no longer in hopital and 100% not dead from Swine Flu drummer!

Anyway, the upshot of this cage match is that we're no longer siq moshing with Cro Mags (jam) and Iron Lung in Montreal this weekend.

What this means to you is that i'm reluctantly forced to do mail order for two dfferent shirt designs. Vishnu/ Crowley and Serpent/ Messiah Rasputin are both available. $15 each post paid anywhere in the world. E mail theendlessblockade@gmail.com to enquire about sizes, availability and paypal details

(dog hair not included)

Currently being pressed

2009-10-26T20:54:00.004-04:00

I'll write more when it's actually available.

This has been a long stressful time in the making.

A Nation of Shop Keepers?

2009-10-23T08:58:00.014-04:00

The British Isles is a collection of small nations made up of former barbarians and conquerors lost in time and unable to understand how to work in the modern era. At least when there was an Empire we could still console ourselves that we were a force to be reckoned with.

You only have to observe almost any group of Brits Abroad as we drape our flag over ourselves and urinate on sleeping Spanish homeless dudes in some atavistic territorial marking to see that we're a lost bunch of savages with absolutely no idea how to behave. Anyone familiar with Amsterdam can attest that the British are the only thing that can actually lower the tone of the red light district anymore than it already is.

And far worse than Brits Abroad is actually being one stuck on the Islands with all the other displaced savages. It's modern times, go work in a shop and raise capital, go drive mass transit systems. Fuck, have you met Glasgow bus drivers? Whilst spending some time in Spain a few years ago i was amazed at how easy it was at the time to scam on to the subway system for free right in front of the workers eyes. If i tried that back home they'd have chased me out of the station and kicked the living shit out of me for daring to avoid paying.

Any excuse for a fight and i'd be lying if i said i didn't suddenly spark to life when near any form of conflict. The hardest thing about moving to Canada for me six years ago was changing the way i intereacted with people on the streets and in supermarkets. The casual offerings of violence that in general aren't going to actually transpire and usually merely demarcate personal space and community standing don't mean the same in sunny Toronto.

It took me a while to figure that one out and actively change the way i interact with strangers.

When people talk about looking for the meaning of life i think what is more accurately being done is looking for a way to experience a life most of us feel divorced from. I've always found that playing in the bands i stick out for the long haul fills a large part of that existential gap relatively well for my needs.

Shank started two years after i moved to Glasgow, Ebola overlapped the first eighteen months of Shank's five year existence and i think i'd parted ways with Sawn Off about a year prior.

I've written some stuff of this before.

I guess i was revisiting Shank recently to hear how i used to write songs; i'm in the midst of a lengthy personal experiment where i'm writing in an intentionally mechanical and highly restrictive way in Blockade. Not that it's entirely comparable as regarding direction Shank was mostly a duality and Blockade is generally a dictatorship.

Shank's formation was essentially the same as Ebola's; life is shit, let's do something better.

At the time i was working in a shit job at a community mental health residence. I intentionaly put myself on to permenant night shift and work would generally consist of making long distance calls from the office phone, write songs on the beaten up acoustic guitar rescued from Carstairs (god knows what former cannibal descendent of Sawney Bean that had belonged to..), smoke a bunch of hash whilst watching a horror film rented on the unit's microscopic entertainment budget then fall asleep listening to whatever harsh noise i'd traded for that week. Seven hours later i'd get up twenty minutes before the boss came in and just barely pretend to have been awake all night.

Anyway, Shank, four displaced angry bastards that used to drink in Halt Bar on Woodlands Road together and happened to all have the necessary skills to be in a barely functioning band together

Getting anything done was always a major problem; we owned no equipment, none of us could drive (and most of our friends lacked that skill as well), no one ever had any money and there was always the black hole pull of Glasgow's legendary entropy of the human spirit holding at least one of us back.

It's funny i look back on it all with fond memories (and typing this with the rain pelting against my window inspires even more nostalgia, all i need is a screaming smack head outside my apartment door and i'm set) but at the time it was a nightmare. Amazingly we never came to any physical blows amongst ourselves despite all butting heads constantly, though i do remember quite clearly one on-tour suicide threat that had the rest of us almost relieved that if carried through we wouldn't be compelled to do this shit anymore.

Looking back on the recording of our LP now seems almost farcical to me. We set up in our by-the-hour practice space with our friends new fangled hard disk eight track recorder (a big deal in Glasgow circa 2000) and blasted through twenty one songs live (like, actually live) in less than four hours. About three months later we recorded a second guitar and i did a small amount of additional vocals in a sketchy lock-up on some industrial estate in Edinburgh.

And this all took fucking months to plan. Hell, it took so long that Slap a Ham (the label it supposed to come out on) folded and 625 and Deep Six had to step in and release it.

And live? Equally ridiculous; Playing with an anarchist puppet show in Bradford (you have no idea...), being chased out of a squat in Poland by neo-nazis, three of us chasing some poor kid up the stairs and out on to the street (over God knows what) in Glasgow leaving Jason playing drums on his own to a perplexed audience.

Oh, and let's not forget the perfect end to that band; me having chronic pneumonia on tour in California and playing our last ever show almost unable to breath. Two nights earlier in San Diego i was hallucinating my arse off in the van immediately before we went on and i had to be propped up against a pillar just to make it through a vastly reduced five minute set.

Alas the proposed gig in Glasgow that would've been Shank, The Exploited and a bunch of Gabber DJs never happened. That night of old school crazy Exploited punks Vs young Mad Skwad Team Gabber Ned would've undoubtedly been punks answer to the Heysel Stadium Disaster of 1985. I guess i'll never be able share that tale of adventure with my grandchildren. Still, at least i'm not dead because of it...

Here are some download links:

Coded Messages LP and split split LP with Iron Lung
Curse of Shank pre LP discography

Shank was undoubtedly the most "real" band i've ever been and ever will be involved in. On a romantic level i miss that, but on a practical level i'm glad those days are long gone.

Listening:

Orcustus - s/t
Grey Wolves - Judgement
Spacement 3 - Playing With Fire

Reading:

The Power of Myth - Joseph Campbell

slaughter strike shirts

2009-10-14T09:46:00.002-04:00

New shirt by Chris Reifert, $15 plus postage, also have a few logo shirts, black on white or white on black for $10 plus postage

Paypal info here.

Also made another batch of demos, Nurse Ettiquette from Detroit will also be releasing a version in a few weeks to keep up with demand.

Listening:

Mammoth Grinder - Extinction of Humanity
Swans - Real Love
Prosanctus Inferni/ Witchtomb
Grunt - Terror and Degeneration

Reading:

The Good, The Bad, The Funny - Ramsey Dukes
LA Despair - John Gilmore

come friendly bombs pt 2

2009-10-10T11:44:00.004-04:00

Noise label Dada Drumming released Come Friendly Bombs as his first non-noise release after Greg Dada had been my online stalker for a few years. Greg managed to drag Joshua Norton Cabal out of wilfull inactivity not once but twice and is still one of a very small handful of people i will record noise on request for if the occasion requires it.

Anyway, Greg took a break from the world and resurfaced again recently.

Apparently Greg also found a box of the first press of Come Friendly Bombs on colour and some Blockade rat king shirts.

Feed his addiction to crystal meth and send him an e mail mail@dadadrumming.org to purchase

Some vague ramblings about the commodity of truth in art

2009-10-06T17:31:00.036-04:00

In my opinion the two most important aspects of musical development of the last fifty years were John Cage and Discharge. And certainly guitar and volume based bands that have no connection on at least some level to Discharge, Hell Hammer or Autopsy usually hold little to no interest for me. Bands influenced by Sabbath is a little less cut and dry for me...

Beyond these, on a cultural level the two musical currents of the last fifteen (ish) years that have resonated the most with me are Riot Grrl (the worst genre name since Power Violence) and Black Metal; both of which polarised (and still do) a lot of people.

In both genres intent became more important than proficiency, proficiency being often consigned to a lower rung on the ladder of importance.

Both genres were (past tense intended) about the acknowledgement of being a part of something larger. Of course Black Metal's aims were usually more obscure, but that was always an important facet of distinguishing outsiders and intellectual interlopers from the core who "got it". And some of the less political aspects of Riot Grrl were also arguably similar in intent.

Anyway, this lead in is just that; a lead in. I have no desire to attempt a comparitive study of two only superficially similar and largely impossible to correlate cultural strands. I'll leave that to some boring post-grad and i'm sure the book version of the thesis is just around the corner. I'll no doubt ultimately shelve it alongside some of the more recent stunningly bland books about noise that have been published.

This weekend i was in Montreal (yes, American readers, that's where some of them speak French), Teenage Jesus and the Jerks entertained me on friday night and Blasphemy formed the centre of my saturday night escapade down the path of drunken revelry.

Lydia Lunch falls into a group of people along with Boyd Rice, Throbbing Gristle, Robert Anton Wilson, Jello Biafra, Oliver Fox and Anton LaVey that quickly and dramatically reshaped my teenage interests and thought processes. Of course more than a few of the above now irritate me to varying degrees, but they were good access points to other perspectives.

Like anyone at the frontier of some cultural plague, from Ragnar Redbeard to Tim Yohannan to Dwid Hellion, Lunch's legacy has a lot to answer for. And that legacy can be summed up as 'endless boring pricks bending over, spreading their gaping anuses and commanding you to stare into their honesty'.

For every Emilio Cubeiro there's twenty Elizabeth Wirzel's and something like two hundred and fifty seven Netto's Henry Rollins.

Though in all honesty i don't know if i should be blaming Lunch or Annie Sprinkle for the Stare at my Ugly Truth untertainment cult.

So, after suffering through one and a half (i liked half of one set) rotten self professed weird and strange bands whose weirdness and strangeness was their major selling point (bar camel toe and shit haircuts). Teenage Jesus and the Jerks played and they were really good, hell, far far better than my relatively low expectations were (i felt time may have completely passed them by).

The mosh pit was inexplicable and the well placed boot to the face of one would be stage diver glorious.

For a woman who's made her name in spoken word there was a lack of on stage banter and the set was pretty short. THIS IS A GOOD THING. God damn i hate almost anyone that thinks i should listen to them for more than twenty minutes (generally it's ten) unless it's Godflesh before 1992 (in my all time top five shows ever), Hijokaidan (ditto), Bastard Noise or the upcoming Autopsy one off i promised myself i'd go to despite swearing off MDF after playing there earlier this year.

Oh yeah, and unlike Throbbing Gristle in Chicago back in May there was a welcome lack of middle aged bank managers desperate to prove to the world how much more of a transcendental experience than anyone else they were having. Fuck, i wish i'd secretly filmed some of those wankers, eyes glazed over in rapt nostalgia which is essentially the lowest form of emotional connection, as sarcasm is to wit and Christianity is to Divinity.

Basically it was still relevant (and didn't need a Burning Man overhaul a la TG), unpretenious and far heavier than any number of riffless amplifier bands the youth seem to dig these days. Just a great performance.

div>

Much is made of Black Metal's tendency towards the Kvlt and the True at the expense of the False (and occasionally the Posers).

As mentioned briefly above, initially this was a great way to ward off outsiders. The scene was small and insular enough to have its largely unwritten rules and a structure akin to a magical order intact (initiates, probationers, adepts, illuminates etc etc etc). But it got too big, its uncommerical edge became it's suprise selling point.

Point in case when i saw Mayhem recently i was amazed at how insanely awful they were, not just terrible sound and poor performance on such a huge stage to large audience, but also just how utterly unforgiving and listener unfriendly the music was. Clearly this is a band who have triumphed somehow in managing to sell what many would assume to be unsellable. And on a personal note i've enjoyed every Mayhem studio recording immensely (bar A Grand Declaration of War which is laughable) .

In 2009 a lot of the Scandinavian bands might as well be Led Zeppelin (fuck Led Zep) and a lot of the Americans are for all intents and purposes idea-free punk rockers trying to liberate themselves from punk but without any real idea of what to replace it with. As confused and as useless as what appears to be a current trend for people describing themselves as 'spiritual atheists', only with bad drumming and tinny guitars.

When the only real value a scene seems to (superficially) have amounts to being true to the unholy spirit of Black Metal a mass cop out occurs and we have an inversion of meaning on a level with Britney Spears singing about love and devotion.

In general it's the one's who don't get it that become obsessed with truth and falsehood, their own insecurities around both their personal motivations and their tenuous grip on what they hold in high regard are vomited forth endlessly. People just keep yelling "False!" like some Antichrist Tourettes War Command Fallen Angel of Truth because that way they'll never have to hear anyone elses criticism or be alone with their own terrifying thoughts for a minute.

Let's face it, almost every worthless False has a project that sounds "exactly like Ildjarn (dude)" these days. The commodity of being True is being sold back to us by the False en masse.

And to my mind the real problem with never getting past endless what's True and what's False is that they've become such arbitrary and comical terms. Which means that bands like Wolves in the Throne Room and the unimaginably rubbish Krallice get a free ride because barely anyone can muster up any criticism beyond a sheep like sour grapes bleat of "false black metal". Or worse, any one that can muster up a half decent critique is easily dismissed as yet another stupid Tr00 Kvlt Black Metal moron.

Which brings me to Blasphemy.

In the last four years the amount of redirection towards Blasphemy (and to a slightly lesser extent Von and Beherit) has grown massively. As people search for truer and truer alibis to their own sense of self worth they fall back on these guys.

And with good reason; Blasphemy pretty much broke the mold on every self-conscious nerdy metal jack off that made you laugh whenever they spoke of their 'warrior spirit'. No one else was really like Basphemy before and really, there won't ever be another band like them again.

Proclaiming themselves Satanic Black Metal Skinheads (a seriously bold move) twenty years ago they synthesised youth cultures in the most honest and quite frankly genuinely terrifying ways imaginable.

Satanic Skinheads? That was a weird fucking proposition, sometimes easy to forget how out there that was at the time.

And of course they're inadvertantly responsible for so much dreadful music masquerading as 'True Black Metal'. A simple scan of the sub-sub genre they're responsible for reveals that little is needed to fool a lot of people.

Chris Moyenesque cover, song titles more pathologically obsessed with Christ than most Christians and a whole bizarre mish mash of incongruous imagery liberally lifted from the western occult tradition. Throw some inverted crosses with some Enochian script and maybe a key of Solomon or two and Black Winds is your uncle. No need to add any actual substance to it.

It's more disingenuous than Cradle of Filth and it's being sold as 'real' and Kvlt. The reality is that it's frequently a passing lip service to theistic Satanism with occult clip art profusely splashed all over the cover. And don't forget your five bullet belts Young Warrior.

Which is not to say that it's all bad, Diocletian are doing something genuinely interesting with the style and i love the utterly neanderthal approach of Proclamation.

But really all underground cultures suffer this contraction of thought being sold back to people as either pushing the envelope or guarding the tradition. And like i said, most of it (in any underground culture) is largely dishonest and an inversion of the actual principles that they profess to embody.

In any case, the Blasphemy show. There were far less posers yelling about reality like some kind of Satanic Hip Hop all stars than i had anticipated. I think art witch Diamanda Galas performing the same night probably split that vote. Better being seen as cultured than intentionally cultureless if the occasion calls for an either/ or in some peoples mind i guess.

So Blasphemy, way too quiet to instantly endear me to them, but writing this on the train home two days later i'm struck with a lasting sense of how powerful a spectacle it was on a primal level.

Blasphemy were exactly what a gang (as in GANG) of 40 year old Christ hating coke dealers would look like; intimidating mother fuckers without even having to do anything 'intimidating'. In my line of work i meet a lot of people, a lot of them talk big, but in general the really mental ones don't need to do a damn thing; they just exude 'don't fuck with me' and are usually very friendly. But you know they could kill you in a heartbeat and wouldn't loose any sleep over it.

(this is a version of a larger piece that may one day eventually make it in to the print zine i've been threatening to do for a few months now)

listening:

The Rita - Skate/ Snorkel
Drowned - Aerth (these guys need to release more)
Black Sabbath - Peel Sessions
Cro Mags - Age of Quarrel
Kito - the Long Player

reading:

Psychogeography - Will Self
Cinema Purgatory 2 - Rick Tremble
Magic and the Qabalah - W E Butler

Slogun - Bloody Roots CD

2009-09-24T18:55:00.002-04:00

holy mother of fuck, this is probably the best straight up angry record since West Side Horizons

i rarely get very excited about much music anymore. Sure, i still like a lot of music, but i don't find much that i would call significant. Slogun however is a project i always have time for and follow what he's doing with great interest. As i've said before, Slogun and Crossed Out are almost exactly the same to me.

i still need to convince John to do a Slogun/ Blockade show in Toronto sometime

a Slogun cover will be on the Blockade/ Unearthly Trance split LP that we're currently in the end stages of writing

Theta Clear

2009-09-19T12:44:00.002-04:00

Matthew made a short zine of some his oddball collage work. At times it reminds me of a cut and paste punk version of Norihiro Sekitani.

Anyway, he seems to be experimenting with some kind of Neo-Luddism currently so if you want one send an e mail to theendlessblockade@gmail.com and i'll direct his attention to it.

listening:

Slogun - Bloody Roots
Kaos Ritual - Svøpt Morgenrød
Bastard Noise - OEB IV
Mare - Throne of the Thirteenth Witch
Haggatha

Reading:

The Trial of Gilles De Rais - Georges Bataille
Aghora, at the Left Hand of God - Robert E Svoboda

Into The Slaughter

2009-09-11T15:01:00.009-04:00

Well, finally Slaughter Strike has an 18 minute demo tape availble for public consumption.

$6 North America, $8 World, paypal dkristiansen80@yahoo.ca

If you want more than one demo or a shirt e mail first

Death Metal is a strange old beast, until 1993 i loved the stuff then it very famously became a steaming pile of shit and even the good LPs suffered from three good songs at the beginning and a whole bunch of crap afterwards. Too many songs that sounded like a bunch of transitions sequenced together with no real song underneath it all.

Then it went 'professional' and 'respectable' which lead to vomit inducing moments like in this documentary where some random dullard (maybe it was one of the Immolation guys, i forget) tries to convince us of death metal's merit because some of the guitarists are awesome and can play anything, even classical and jazz. LIKE THAT'S A FUCKING SELLING POINT YOU CLUELESS MORON!

And suddenly death metal was utter shit. Bad songs, boring riffs, laughable PR, horrible "professional" studio sound and worst of all no actual sense of horror or death. Cue several Norwegian's derisory and 100% spot on remarks about Life Metal. I blame Swedish teenagers and the entire state of Florida.

In the last few years the state of death metal has got considerably better once again, possibly thanks in part to underground black metal's continued longevity and people relearning some lessons from that crowd. Stand outs in recent years for me have been Drowned, Repugnant, Hooded Menace, Nominon, Necrovation and several others. And no one with any interest in this stuff can ignore Abscess or Nunslaughter's continued refusal to progress.

And it's funny, apparently now it's the return of Old School Death Metal. Within three days of our myspace page going up we'd had several offers of full lengths based on three roughly mixed songs (the final mixes aren't actually that different to be honest). Hell, more than one of these labels was a fairly big name which says one of two things to me. Either 1) Slaughter Strike is the best band in the whole universe and we've somehow managed to reinvent the wheel or 2) the music industry is fucked and will try and grab anything that might be half decent and might fit in to an emerging trend. Take your pick, or come up with your own.

And a lot of people congratulate us on such groundbreaking moves like our lack of triggered drums. Which really says something about the state of death metal.

So is this the return of Old School Death Metal? Personally i don't think so. Clearly journalists and some record labels need to pretend loose collections of shared values are a scene. It makes it easier to sell things.

We can learn something from hardcore here. In the 1990s hardcore was suddenly predominantly all that unlistenable fucking garbage like Coalesce, Dead Guy, Earth Crisis, Kiss it Goodbye, Snapcase, Starkweather, Refused, Cave In etc etc. At the end of the decade and at the start of this one bands like DS13, Career Suicide and more than i can be bothered mentioning were touted as retro hardcore or old school hardcore. Now that this trend has turned out to not be such a trend after all and is here to stay it's just hardcore. A different shade than the JNCO wearing lactose intolerant crowd, but still *just* hardcore. And if anything the bands that were called hardcore in the 1990s that bore little to no relation to hardcore before it are acknowledged as the abberation.

And anyone reading this that thinks hardcore is eye liner on dudes (Kevin Seconds and Jack Control excluded) and spin kicks at the local enormo-dome energy drink sponsored show needs to educate themselves.

And death metal is the same. Foregoing drum triggers and riffs that sound like a collection of eight million notes over gravity blasts, singing about a zombie apocalypse, getting away from photoshop album cover hell, releasing tapes and vinyl, having an underground DIY approach to booking shows and much much more is not old school death metal. It's just fucking death metal.

So yeah, we have a tape. We're recording a 7" and another tape before the end of the year and working on a full length next year.

Long Live Death.

New York's Alright...

2009-09-08T17:01:00.004-04:00

On a recent stay in New York a planned musical get together with Tim Wyskida and Jay Newman didn't manage to occur (maybe another time in the near future...)

I did however throw down a small amount of additional noise on fellow Manson/ Crowley/ Erikson enthusiasts Unearthly Trance's re-recording of their song VVVV

find it here for a free download

On a related note The Endless Blockade have almost finished writing the 11 songs that will make up our half of the Unearthly Trance/ Blockade split LP due out on Chrome Peeler/ Humanless sometime early next year.

And on another related note there's a Joshua Norton Cabal/ Abandoner collaboration in the works, Abandoner sent me some material and as soon as i get my amp fixed i'll start adding my take on the material.

Semen in the Eye Socket of Michael Bryant

2009-09-01T16:36:00.004-04:00

I promise not to do another post like this until Thatcher dies.

As much as i dislike modern society's seeming reliance on Schadenfreud as the only acceptable way to voice elation i can't help but smile for Michael Bryant's messy fall from grace that is doubtlessly only just beginning.

Michael Bryant, the most detestable politician since Margaret Thatcher (and it's not just the Bill 132 thing) .

Well, karma is a bitch Bryant, i hope your conscience eats you up for years.

The Mekon smirks at Michael Bryant's pain.

My condolencies to Darcy Sheppard

Ebola - Imprecation ep

2009-08-31T21:10:00.012-04:00

God bless the emotional time machine...

The real problem with immigration is not the fact that your qualifications are worth shit in your new country or that you can barely even open a bank account to deposit the wages from your demeaning new world job into.

No the real problem is that most of your record collection is stuck back in the mother land and everytime you think "fuck, i could really do with listening to Death Church/ A Light in the Darkness/ Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania" (it's a Macronympha record...) you realise they're 5,000 miles away.

Anyway, i found this yesterday and figured i'd share it. Kind of hard to believe i recorded this almost 13 years ago, i guess progression really is over rated.

I started Ebola with vocalist (first album only) Jonathan Shaw in the summer of 1995, we lived in Benwell, check this awesome photo of the street we lived on:

Need anything from the shop while i'm out?

Clearly we needed some escapism from our lives and Ebola was our ticket. I asked Micky and Karin from One By One to play guitar and second vocals (it was the 90s...) and Chris from my other band Sawn Off to play drums.

There's not much to be said really, the politics of Ebola were far more straight forward than anything i've been involved in in recent years and i was far less, uh, metaphysical in public then than i am now. Not that i'm one of those people that grows up and attempts to distance himself from his embarassing early forays into opinionated bullshit, i still stand by the necessity to say the things we said due to our time and space.

At the time there was a lot of backlash (and some of it with much merit if we're honest) against bands that were trying to say something about the state of the world. A common criticism i would hear was that punks would never change anything so what was the point. And it's true, on the whole punks will never change a fucking thing, hell, the only things they ever changed in Newcastle were my Crossed Out and Drop Dead records at parties when they wanted to listen to some useless awful dirgey bullshit like, hmm, how about Crass? But i digress.

Well, punk managed to change my life. As gay as that sounds it gave me the tools to travel regularly for free, open up my horizons significantly and ultimately led me to Canada, a move which after six years still isn't old for me.

Previous to this 7" we recorded an LP which i think has aged a little more poorly than Imprecation.

Nick Loaring replaced Jonathan Shaw on vocals between the first two records. After Imprecation came the horribly recorded split 7" with Servitude that took us far too long to write and marked the start of our inability to keep a drummer for very long. I left not long after the split 7" and the band managed another record before imploding under shakey line ups and too much physical distance to keep the impetus alive.

Micky and Karin recently moved to Belgium and have two children, Nick lives on a boat, Chris plays in the recently reformed Sawn Off and Jonathan tragically died of cancer three years ago. Jonathan was probably the most important person that's ever been in my life.

There was some kind of talk of a discography CD a number of years ago. Honestly, i can't say i was paying too much attention about it and i suspect none of us really feel that strongly about the need for an Ebola CD to exist. Having said that maybe five will turn up unannounced in my mailbox next week and i'll have to rapidly edit this blog entry...

RIP Lobster

A brick through a car dealership window as an act of love.