between now and 2013

These are the only musical things i am doing between now and next year:

Shows:

Column of Heaven, Purity Control, Farang, Spearhead, September 7th at 460 Spadina, Toronto

Column of Heaven, Magrudergrind, Iron Lung and others, Saturday, November 10th at Hard Luck, Toronto

Pick Your Side European tour October 12th-21st

If The Process manage to make it to this part of the world in late October Column of Heaven will be playing with them in Toronto and Montreal

Releases on Survivalist:

The Rita - new C20
Column of Heaven - Demonology CS

There might be a Colonizer tape as well, but that might not happen until next year.

Some books i've enjoyed lately:

Zack Furness (ed) - Punkademics: the basement show in the ivory tower

Stephen Duncombe and Maxwell Tremblay (eds) -White Riot: Punk Rock and the Politics of Race

Clifford A. Pickover - Sex, Drugs, Einstein, & Elves: Sushi, Psychedelics, Parallel Universes, and the Quest for Transcendence

Jack London - Iron Heel

a word on downloads

I can't stop them, i'm not really going to try, but here's my request as an artist: If it's on the bandcamp page, please don't upload it to your blog; people can get it for free from there.

If the free downloads run out then people are just going to have to wait the 1-30 days until the free credits come back. Waiting a few days for a free digital version of a grindcore record won't kill anyone or ruin anyone's day.

If it means less people are exposed to my music i'm ok with that.

If you're going to ignore me completely, then there's not really a whole lot i can do about it; issuing cyber death threats has never really been my thing.

But, if you really are going to upload it anyway, say something about it, put it into some kind of context, good or bad i don't really care.

More than just a picture of a wolf in a heptagram with "ex-The Endless Blockade" and a download link please.

That's it.

(This doesn't apply to anything before Mission from God went up, Slaughter Strike and Ecstatically Embracing... are fair game)

Soldiers' Field

Soldiers' Field now online as well

Mission from God LP out now

Order it here

I've seen some internet talk about how this is our death metal record and honestly, if you read that and expect anything beyond one or two harmonised riffs you're going to be spectacularly disappointed.

And if you're a fan of the New Wave of Circus Grind you're definitely going to hate it.

It's now on bandcamp for pay what you want download, though bandcamp has a cap on that stuff, so when the free monthly downloads run out go seek a shit rip from the Bridge Nine board or something.



This record was never supposed to be an LP but it just sort of grew after the Rot in Hell split 7" we were going to do fell apart when they had a line up shuffle.

I wanted to write a record that explored some of the reasons why i'm an unrelenting misanthrope and Mission from God was the result.

In a nutshell i grew up whilst serial killer Peter Sutcliffe was killing women in the part of England i'm originally from; far from being some distant and incomprehensible tabloid tale this was something that seriously affected the social landscape of where i was living that's hard to adequately convey to others.

As a teen a lot of my friends were into dumb shit like reading the book of Revelations and scratching pentagrams in their arms in the late 1980s. Hey, it's what kids did back then, just like how now they post pictures of witches on Tumblr. As a wannabe seventeen year old magician i took a hit of acid and went to Soldiers' Field, where Irene Richardson was killed in 1977, and tried to contact her spirit. It didn't work, at least not in the way i was hoping it would.

We sold an alternate version over the weekend in BC that came with a different cover, a short zine, and a tape called Soldiers' Field which is not a separate release, more of an addendum, mostly, but not entirely, pure noise. I'll put the whole thing up on bandcamp in the next week or two.

Rather than rewrite some stuff i've already gone over here are the two statements that are included in that version of the record, the first by Dave, the second by me:

From 1969 until his arrest in 1981, Peter William Sutcliffe, also known as “The Yorkshire Ripper” attacked and murdered women in Yorkshire, England. The overwhelming majority of his victims were caught in the suffocating poverty that defined much of Yorkshire at the time. Many were involved in the sex trade. All were eventually united by Sutcliffe’s clear and extreme hatred of women which erupted as he bludgeoned, stabbed and beat his victims.

Why write an album about a serial killer? To view this album through such a narrow prism is to miss the point utterly. The absolute last thing we wanted to do with this record was to trot out asinine subgenre clichés; truly, does the world need another grind/noise release that vapidly glorifies sexualized violence? Fuck no. So, then. Why? The answer is primarily catharsis. There are member(s) of this band that experienced life in the time and place of Sutcliffe’s activity. This work is intended to help purge oneself of the poison and unease that comes from growing up in Sutcliffe’s shadow, and to remind oneself of how that environment is inexorably part of our being.

The simpler impetus behind this album is that Sutcliffe’s murders are part of a larger, horrifying landscape… a bleak, ruined vista of grinding poverty, institutionalized racism and sexism, police brutality, pollution and inescapable decay. Quite simply, the Yorkshire of Sutcliffe’s day is probably unimaginable to those who weren’t there. It was a time and place that warrants examination and exploration. The environment of Yorkshire at the time and Sutcliffe’s crimes are deeply interrelated, perhaps even symbiotic. Some of this album is deeply personal, much is intentionally enigmatic and some is completely straight ahead. Our desire is not to decode or spell this album out, but to encourage one to consume it on a level that is deeper than a “fuckin’ grind/noise album about a serial killer, man!”.

In a society that is absolutely saturated in violence, much of it directed towards women by men, it is easy to be unaffected by the truly horrific nature of Sutcliffe’s crimes. Years have passed since then, but the reality is that women violently lost their lives. Some survived attacks by Sutcliffe only to pass their remaining years tormented by trauma, fear and depression. Family members of victims took their own lives. The bureaucratic and police reaction was a disgusting farce: Sutcliffe was interviewed by police nine times and was ultimately caught only by complete accident. The police and powers that be simply didn’t care that someone was murdering poor women. It’s a reprehensible reality that sadly continues today all over the world. It’s a cold, terrible place and will likely always be so.

Kristiansen, Summer 2012

I was born in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England in 1973. Seven years before my birth Ian Brady and Myra Hyndley were convicted of killing children in Greater Manchester, just across the Pennines from West Yorkshire. The bodies were buried on Saddleworth Moor; Keith Bennet, missing since 1964, has never been found.

In 1977 Irene Richardson was beaten to death with a hammer and her corpse mutilated with a knife. The murder took place at Soldiers’ Field, less than a mile from where I lived, and was committed by Peter Sutcliffe, the man this record is superficially about. Between 1975 and 1980 Sutcliffe would kill at least 13 other women, including Jayne MacDonald (1977) and Jacqueline Hill (1980), in areas that would grow to have great significance in my life.

It’s hard to really convey what this record is about succinctly, but for me it’s about how the physical and social landscape shapes us.

My childhood physical landscape prominently featured buried children and murdered women. My childhood social landscape had an inept and brutally racist police force that was both unable and unwilling to protect the women of northern England.

In a way this record is my own exploration of the Greek concept of Pharmakós, the ritual scapegoating of people for sacrifice in times of crisis and upheaval.

The 1970s were a shit time to live in northern England and the first half of the 1980s weren’t that much better. I grew up with garbage strikes, an energy crisis that caused shortages of electricity, economic recession that created a three day working week, mass unemployment, and the gradual nationawide realisation that the days of England’s former colonial glories (add your own sarcastic intonation for the word glories) had finally ebbed away into nothing.

Sutcliffe’s misogynistic rampage across northern England gave us a diversion from all the other shit. It wasn’t until Sutcliffe started making ‘mistakes’ and killing women that weren’t sex workers – and thus disposable – that incompetent police officials like George Oldfield became accountable.

Nolan, June 2012

Further reading:

Derf Backderf – My Friend Dahmer
Michael Bilton – Wicked Beyond Belief: the Hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper
Ian Brady – The Gates of Janus: Serial Killing and its Analysis
David Peace – Red Riding Quartet

Next release is a split 7" with Radioactive Vomit from Vancouver on Feast of Tentacles

Give Up shirt

available here sold out

Column of Heaven BC shows

We're playing three shows in BC next week. For a while i wasn't convinced it was going to happen, but flights have been paid for, work has been cancelled, dogs have sitters and attitudes are now firmly 'Can-Do'.


Friday July 6th The Astoria
w/ Rotting Hills, Haggatha, Violent Gorge, and Archagathus.

We'll be collaborating with The Rita at this show

Saturday July 7th Squamish, Fastcore Fest .
w/ 8,000,000 other bands: Osk, Soy, Rob Ford's Big Fat Psychedelic Adventure, Cooked and Eaten, Chopped and Screwed, Six Brew Bantha, Tauntaun Assault Squad, Giant Sandwich of Death (CA), Rape Revenge, Bastard Son of a Hundred Maniacs, Expression of Pain, Take it Real Easy, xMagnottax, Man Cave, Supergod, Cigarette Torture, Truth Serum, Real Magick (ON), Disgorge (France), New Jersey (MI), Apathetic Ronald McDonald playing a set of Blasphemy covers, and a Chow Down reunion.

Fastcore fest will be compered by the entire genre of Reggae, 1965-1998

Sunday July 8th house show at the Chateau Noir w/ Canada's greatest fuck: Radioactive Vomit, and Cooked and Eaten

If UPS doesn't do their usual trick of delivering records for tour three days after we've gone home, the show at the Astoria will have some magical version of Mission from God 12" with some e bay friendly trimmings. Buy them all from us, we don't care what you do with them as long as we have money for beer and falafel (my spell check keeps suggesting 'fellatio' here).

The record will be available for everyone else sometime in July.

My crazy adventure with academia is almost at an end, which means some of our records might come out quicker; the next two and a half are written.

It also means i might have some time to book some shows further afield at some point.

It's been a long time since i had a) the time and b) any news to update on this blog, so here's ye olde playlist of some things i've been enjoying a lot semi-recently:

Sound:

Skullshitter - tape
Snake Charmer - live
Horders - Fimbulvetr tape
Pick Your Side - Let Me Show You How Democracy Works LP
Lustmord - Zoetrope 2xLP
Ascension - With Burning Tongues 12"
Old Man Gloom - No 2xLP
The Cathode Terror Secretion - Spectre of Historys Design LP
Defeatist - Tyranny of Decay LP
Skullhog - Evil Dead CD
Isis - Oceanic 2xLP
Sea of Shit - side of forthcoming split 7" w/ Constrictions
Radioactive Vomit - Witchblood tape
Black Witchery - live
Purity Control - live
SHIT - tape
Violent Future - tape

Reading:

Chips and Beer magazine 2&3
Isten - Death Marches On double issue
Grant Morrison - Supergods: What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God From Smallville Can Teach Us About Being Human

some comic books and little else because i've been doing nothing except write my damn masters thesis for the post three months and my brain hurts at the end of every day.

Watching:

Delocated season 1&2
Mothers Day (2010) - i liked the unrelenting cruelty of it, but it was way too long for me to give a shit about the last 20-30 minutes and it reminded me of:
Kidnapped AKA Secuestrados - which was amazing from start to finish

A Modern Day Sodom

Column of Heaven - Mission from God tape out now on Survivalist, has slightly different artwork from the LP version that's due out on SPHC in July. SPHC will also be selling a shirt for mail order for everyone who isn't one of the 45 people that's had a chance to buy one from one of our highly sporadic live shows.

You can get one from one of these places in the next week or two:

Analogue Worship
Absurd Exposition
locals can go to Hits and Misses at the end of next week and get one and people in Winnipeg can buy one from Mike A at whatever show he's propping the bar up at

There aren't that many copies going to any of these people to be honest, most were sold at the Pick Your Side record release show in Hamilton last weekend. And mighty fine they were too (and the LP's great)

If you buy from Analogue Worship i'd highly recommend the Ill Omen and Luciation records he put out; two of my favourites of the recent times. Also get the Radioactive Vomit (Column of Heaven's favourite newish Canadian band) tape and the Stone Wings LP (if you like olde sounding doom death).

I'm not going to post about the release itself now, maybe when the vinyl comes out, but here's a brief word about tapes.

Here's why i make them: because it's incredibly fucking easy. That's it. No romantic notions about tape culture; i hold some cherished memories of tape culture, but that's personal, not something to base a release schedule on.

There's a tape duplicating place five minutes away from our band space and they have a 24 hour turnaround. If i had to send off files to Quebec to get them made i wouldn't bother releasing them. If the production time was more than a day i wouldn't bother releasing them.