power violence versus Bermuda

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

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

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

"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?"

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

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

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