ThatMakesItNotInsane will be on a brief hiatus, if you can even call it that, until the 12th of February. For the next eighteen days I plan to embark on an exploration into the arctic and unexplored chasms of my mind in order to produce one short story a day for a collection I'm going to call Out of Order. The collection, short stories of over or under the 1000 word mark, will range from brain dead Horror, Sci-fi and Dark Humour. It will basically be as much an exercise in creativity as any kind of collection to show off to friends.
The idea is to take every bad, rotten idea I've ever had for a short story and just run with it. Rummage through the bins and make idols of empty tuna cans. I've heard some people refer to this as "Bizarro" fiction, a reinvigorated Absurdist movement kicked off by Carlton Mellick III, and if that's what it is; then fuck it, throw me the jersey and send me on the field. I don't mind what it's called, just as long as I finish it and have something to put out by the 12th of February.
In the meantime, there are still interviews to be posted, the ever popular agony aunt Ask Nora, and maybe some music recommendations from the encyclopedic Hugh Deasy (I haven't asked him yet, but I will try and make it so).
Turn off the lights and await further instructions.
The stench of sweat and whisky hung warm and the tip glass was empty, as usual. That’s the problem with small towns, everyone knows each other and everyone has each other on a tab that never gets returned. Abigail would’ve kicked up a stink about the filth of the bar and the fact that she’d be the one to sweep up the glass shards, but it was “faggot bashing” night and the three beards howling with laughter in the corner of the bar were clearly still in a fighting mood. She kept herself behind the tap, took the orders and just hoped more of them didn’t show up, falling through the doors of their pick-ups and kicking open the bar’s door. Tuesday is faggot bashing night for the boys and it’s nights like this that blood accompanies the ochre blotches on their vests.
It’s the same old rodeo every week. They pour themselves full of booze and roll their beat up cars slowly through the streets, throwing empties at passers-by and yelling at anyone they suspect to be a homosexual or anyone they simply don’t recognize. Mostly they just hurt people, regardless of their sexuality. There was only one gay couple in the town and they left three months ago. The boys ran them out after a year’s worth of broken windows, black eyes and death threats. Still, every Tuesday night, they go faggot bashing, “Just in case”.
Ethan, the ringleader of the trio, swallows back his whisky with haste, just so he can return to the bar and try his hand at Abigail. She knows this, so when he saunters over with the tip of his cap, she’s already pouring him one before he can attempt his usually slurred, porno mag flirting.
“Whassa matter darlin’? Boys too loud for yer likin’?”
“It’s just Tuesday is all” she drones, slipping him his glass and a dirty glare.
“Tuesday’s Tuesday alright, damn right it is” he smiles crookedly, knocking back the glass like a shot of cough syrup. He slides the glass back over to her with a wink. She pours him another.
“Y’know sugar, I always did wonder something about you.”
“And what was that?” she asks only because she has to. He leans in over the counter and tips his hat back even further, Abigail’s eyes are elsewhere but she's getting the full waft of his sickly, biting breath.
“I always did wonder what you look like without them panties” he sneered, and as soon as the words oozed from his mouth, the gang behind him erupted into barked laughter and banged their hairy fists on the table like tribal drums.
It was at that moment that the bar door creaked drowsily, and the gang fell silent with eyes narrowed and with slight lingering grins.
The man was tall and slender, shoulders to ankles in dark denim, a long cigarette hanging from his moustachioed lip. A plume of smoke escaped his nostrils and his eyes traced left to right as he walked towards the bar. Abigail had never seen him before and judging by the sudden silence of the faggot bashers, either had they. Ethan crooked himself to face the stranger with a furrowed brow.
“Well, you ain’t a usual sight.” he spoke with a monotonous venom as the stranger silently pulled a seat at the bar. The stranger didn’t return words. Abigail knew what was coming and quickly asked what the stranger wanted to drink. He eyed up the bar’s shelf without a word.
“Y’know, the lady askin’ you a question, stranger,” Ethan burped, looking him up and down. That’s when he noticed the handkerchief. It hung from his backside pocket, crimson red. Ethan turned to grin at the boys, then faced the stranger once again.
“Say, nice little hankey you got there” he slurred, slamming a .357 magnum on the bar table, “where’d you get it?”
Abigail was about to pipe up to try and dismantle the situation, but the stranger had already turned a pair of sunken eyes on Ethan. His voice was cavernous and he spoke with careless lethargy.
“Why you asking?”
The two slobbering henchmen immediately kicked back their chairs and marched towards the bar to stand side by side with Ethan, who was now spinning the pistol on the bar table and stabbing the stranger with a glare. Abigail was slowly reaching under the bar for her shotgun when one of the brutes pulled a pistol on her and shook his head. There then followed a moment of silence, a weighing of options, thumping of hearts and thoughts of lead and flesh.
“So, what kind of faggot does that red little hankey make you?” Ethan drank deeply in his own words, his words were his greatest weapon. Fear is the first stage of death.
The stranger flicked his cigarette to the ground and slipped the handkerchief from his back pocket. He pursed his lips and stared at it for a moment before dangling it in front of Ethan’s face, who remained deadpan and fixed.
“This here hankeychief?” the stranger smiled for the first time, he licked his lips and whirled the handkerchief around his finger, “Well, I’m not sure what red is supposed to indicate in my little circle...”
It all happened so quickly that Abigail’s body hardly had time to jolt to the lightning pops of gunfire that bounced off the walls and painted them with gore. She shattered bottles as she fell back against the bar shelf, her jaw locked wide and her eyes set firmly on the grisly sight before her.
All three faggot bashers twitched madly in rivers of their own DNA. One of the lackeys was gasping for breath and reaching for his pistol before one final crack sent his eyes rolling to the back of his head like a slot machine. Abigail’s entire body trembled and words tripped over themselves to escape her mouth.
“…because this here hankey used to be white” he drawled, wiping specks of blood from his face with the thin cloth. He slid back onto the bar stool and fired up another cigarette.
“I’ll have a Malibu and pineapple, if you got it”.
Hatred and war are perhaps the most common tropes in heavy metal. They're as deep-rooted in metal as the drum set is and have, admittedly, always been easy themes to fall back on when imagination fails to do its job. I'd be of the few who believe that Canada's Blasphemy were as instrumental in the formation of extreme metal as the likes of Bulldozer and Hellhammer, and the hellish canucks' influence on the following groups is immeasurable. While it may have taken them almost a decade to release any recorded audio, there's no doubt that these bands that refer to themselves as "war metal" (I hate the term), learned everything they know from Blasphemy. Not to mention a certain horde of Brazilian savages whose numbers were many and whose hatred was seething.
So if you ever find yourself riding through city streets on horseback and swinging an indiscriminate bastard sword, you might consider these musicians to accompany your gore-soaked campaign.
Proclamation - Crucifixion Vomit
Perhaps my favourite of the lot, probably because they were my first "war metal" band, Proclamation are the sound of primitive war drums bouncing and ringing on a rain-drenched battlefield. Theirs is the music of ripping flesh, chiming iron and post-war ritualistic cannibalism. There's nothing nice about them. They're not very nice. Spain is warm, its nice, its death metal is fucking disgusting.
Tetianblood- Whore Mass
Again, proof that the Spanish are among the generals leading the global death metal scene, Teitanblood are the perfect mixture of the old school and (what I personally like to call;) the new wave of extremity. Inhuman growls echo over the explosive crack where violent waves meet jagged cliffs.
Morbosidad - Conjuro Infernal
Morbosidad's history is as chaotic as their music. With two drummers dying violently, one in a rehearsal room explosion and the other falling to his doom from a three-story building, Morbosidad have overcome many obstacles in their career and have been hammering out sonic barbarism since 1993.
Nyogthaeblisz- The Abysmal Wargoat
You don't get much more raw and hateful than Nyogthaeblisz. They are perhaps one of the few black metal (?) bands in this day and age that truly promote hatred. Operating out of Texas and with connections to a seemingly legitimate Neo-Nazi record label, Nyogthaeblisz's history is as confusing as the pronunciation of their name. I wrote an article recently regarding Neo-Nazi bands and how awful they are, but if Nyogthaeblisz are of the idiotic, race-obsessed persuasion, then they are probably the only Nazi band I enjoy listening to.
Weregoat - Antichrist Kommand
There is absolutely no foreplay with Weregoat. They simply penetrate immediately and leave before you've even had a chance to clean up. I could use all of the same adjectives to describe them as I have many of the bands above, but these yankey-doodle brutes don't fuck around with atmosphere or setting. They come at you suddenly and their deed is done before you've noticed limbs missing.
The 17th and 18th centuries saw the rise of an artistic and philosophical movement known as libertinism. The libertine, as described by Gickapedia, is one who is devoid of moral constraints. While that makes up a large part of what a libertine actually is, it's not the entire meat and veg. It was a movement that walked hand in hand with individualism and romanticism, so therefore the real libertine is one who seeks to achieve maximum happiness, whatever it is that makes them happy. While that sounds all well and good, the movement (a relatively small one) highlighted some very uncomfortable truths about human nature and psyche; we like to fuck things we shouldn't, and we like to enact this in some of the most heinous, red-handed manners possible.
When I first read Marquis de Sade's 120 Days of Sodom, I didn't know whether it was pure genius or hastily scribbled wank material for the deeply disturbed. Taking influence from the early eroticism of Samuel Richardson, de Sade took the erotic to unthinkable levels and blurred the line between pleasure and torture. The term "sadism" comes from his name, that tells you how very sick this man's literature is. While I'd only recommend 120 Days of Sodom to those with morbid fascination and a tolerance for young men being sodomized in barrels full of liquid feces, it is definitely valuable as an insight into the dark and sexual, as well as the abuse and perversions of the aristocratic class.
So, besides literature, what exactly constituted as porn for the 18th century lady and gentlemen? What were their particulars? I believe part of the answer can be found in the illustrations of Marquis de Sade's literature. Welcome to the world of Enlightenment era porno.
Easy now!
Never leave a woman hanging
ALL the pierres are lucky here. Teamwork.
Writhing around in the middle of the ground when simple penetration fails.
Miami Connection is the result of several different movie plots thrown into a blender with about 200 mg of Tramadol. You only vaguely understand what's happening at any one moment, your mind can only concentrate on one detail at a time and you'll find yourself giggling madly when you probably shouldn't. There are two kinds of b-movie; those that keep you attentive and on your toes, and those that take you by the hand meaning to lead you somewhere, but they forget where're exactly it is they're going. Miami Connection is most definitely the latter. That doesn't make it a woeful film though, this is a great piece of b-movie action and like I've said a million times and to a million people; if you want Scorsese, go watch Scorsese. Don't buy a burrito and get disappointed when it doesn't taste like oyster.
To go into the entire plot of this film would be to read a child's essay about what they did on their Summer holidays, so it's best to keep to the general outline. A popular pop rock band called Dragon Sound are making waves on the Miami club scene with their catchy tunes and on-stage Tae Kwon Do, but not everyone is so eager to join the party. A rival band want Dragon Sound gone so that they can reclaim their place as the house band for a popular Miami night club and they employ the services of gangsters and a Miami ninja motorcycle gang to ensure that Dragon Sound never play in the town again. Unfortunately for the rival band, as one of them mentions about Dragon Sound; "They're all black belts in Tae Kwon Do and they're pretty BAD".
JIIIIIIIIIIMMMM!!!!
As far as stand out performances go; Y.K Kim (Mark) is the perfect lead man. He has little to no acting ability, is mostly stone-faced for the entire film and performs some of the best martial arts magic I've seen in a while. All of those qualities make him the perfect b-movie hero.
This film is essentially an emotionally charged Sega Megadrive's Streets of Rage and even though the plot seems to stumble, fall and vomit all over itself, the action is the perfect chaser. The original soundtrack is completed by fantastic, cheesy nu-wave songs about martial arts, friendship and tough guys, all performed by Angelo Janotti, Kathy Collier and the Lloyd-Richards Band. I'd highly recommend this film to any action fan or anyone who has a six pack of Tuborg and nothing to do for 83 minutes.
Big Man Japan (2007)
Japanese movies, no matter what genre they adhere to, can always be quite hard to follow. There's a style of story telling there that confuses, bewilders and infatuates the Western audience. What's beautiful about the Japanese film is that there's very little, if any, Westernization in their stories and production. They celebrate and parody their own culture and though that approach can't possibly lead to a generalizable product, do they really need to try and sell themselves to the rest of us? Nope. The Japanese are not known for dispensing many fucks, never have been. That's why we love them.
Big Man Japan, even by Japanese standards, is bizarre beyond words. The story follows a middle-aged man known as "The King of Pain", as he defends Tokyo on live television against Dali-esc mutants by transforming himself into a 30-foot giant. A lot of the film details the man's downtime, his relationship with his daughter, his hobbies and the squalor in which he lives. We find out that, besides having the ability to completely obliterate everything in his path, The King is actually a very mild-mannered, shy and socially awkward man who still doesn't feel as though he has found his purpose in life.
It is essentially a deadpan comedy, half mockumentary, half CGI madness. Like a lot of Japanese comedy, there are moments where you can't resist laughing at how formal the dialogue is and how meek the characters are, even if they're supercharged mutants stomping their way through Tokyo. As funny as the movie can be, there are also a lot of very surreal scenes that create an inexplicable discomfort. It's hard to tell whether or not the film wants to be a stone-faced comedy or an art house exploration of Japanese nationalism and commodification. As the Takashi Miike worshiping dungeon prick that I am, I wanted to try and understand this film, but I simply couldn't. All in all, I'd recommend this film to anyone patient with a high-tolerance for silliness.
The sedan rolled slow and cautiously along a strip of
glowing neon lights and pallid brick, and his eyes sought movement in every
corner of darkness. When a vehicle moves in such a way and in a place such as
this, it is an unspoken dialogue to those who lean against street lights. There
is a clear intention, though it is a subtle kind of communication. A gentle
whisper for attention from streets whose eyes never shut.
Howard hadn’t made love to Pauline in six months. At first
he thought the wedge in their sex life was attributed to the birth of their
little girl, but it wasn’t long before he fully digested the reality of their
situation. Earlier in the year, he’d successfully pitched a marketing plan for
a nuclear energy company operating out of capital city, one that had been
planning to mine uranium near a town called Campton, about eighteen miles north
of the city. The townsfolk didn’t take kindly to the idea of having large camps
and even larger drilling apparatus interrupting their day to day lives, and the
company needed a way to sell them the idea that their mining would be
profitable for both company and locals alike. Howard suggested, in order to
sway the dim-witted hicks, that the company hand out free bottles of Oxycontin
to the townsfolk, including the children. Howard’s plan had worked. Drilling and excavation began
immediately while the mullets and pregnant bellies of Campton lay on their
couches and collected saliva on their chests.
While driving through the town, he saw a three-year-old nodding off on its trike. Industry prevails once again.
While this brought him wealth, esteem and endless invites to
wealthy college fraternity parties, he could see that his work had fallen ill
on his liberal wife. Her disdain for him was apparent in her narrowed eyes, and
her disappointment apparent in the glass of pinot grigio she poured herself
at the breakfast table.
“You’re a fucking pig” she’d utter.
“Are those new shoes?” he’d ask, flipping the page of
yesterday’s paper.
He’d been trying to appeal to her in the bedroom, but to
little affect. A hand would spider gently up her thigh, a lick of the lips, but
she’d remain motionless and seemingly engrossed with her iPad. She didn’t even
know how to use one. It was obvious that her interest in his body had
disintegrated along with her respect for him. He tried to offer her some Oxy,
just to further illustrate the “good” he was doing for the people of Campton.
She took up the bottle and tried to knock all of its contents back with a
bottle of red she’d been saving for a rainy day. They both spent that night in
the hospital and that was the last time the two of them would share a room with
a bed for months.
Clarke from work had told him about the Kønnite prostitutes
that linger the sidewalks of Little Køn town, a street once known as Parker’s
Avenue. “Best sex in the world” he’d laugh, cheeks
flushed and arms stretched out, “they’d fuck the lord’s name out of you a
thousand times a minute!”. Though he looked like your typical business fat cat
with a receding hairline, Clarke was one of the more progressive types these
days. He was willing to accept and even avail of the alien practices and
traditions that were slowly spreading from city to city, those that began in
warehouse slums and bloated out to apartment complexes.
When they arrived, we really didn’t know what to do with
them. The UN were frightened out of their comfy chairs, the media were raking
in the Benjamins and cryptozoologists and UFO fanatics were frenzied in their
told-you-so’s. Their intelligence was evident in how easily some of them could
communicate with and socialize with us, but they were ultimately a submissive
race who did as they were told. When they were told to jump, they were
concerned with how high. At the beginning, it was largely believed that their
meekness was a ploy to earn our trust or bypass our typically human paranoia,
but that wasn’t the case at all. We had definitely been studied from afar, but
obviously were deemed harmless.
Even though the Kønnite are far more advanced than we are,
their level of expertise have no place in our global society. They are capable
of things, illusions and magic, abilities that are of no practical use to men
in high rise buildings. So it was that the male of their species were allocated
jobs in manual labour, heavy lifting, digging, drilling and sometimes they
stood at doors as bouncers. No teenager without an ID is going to spit gruff at
a seven foot tall humanoid jellyfish with arms as wide as tree trunks.
Unfortunately, the females, whose bodies were much smaller
and less imposing, were left in a state of occupational purgatory. They can
create and repair unfathomably complicated technology, but earth has no such
technology. They can communicate telepathically with almost any living thing
bar humans. Their scientific knowledge is legendary, but earth has not the
resources to accommodate their research.
So, it’s a street like this, Little Køn town, where you find
the females.
***
He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel and tried to
avert his gaze from the shapely figure approaching him from the sidewalk. You
could almost confuse her for a human woman, were it not for her large,
mushroom-shaped head. She strutted towards him, her almost translucent flesh
glowing angel white under the street lamp, and she tapped on his window. He made
a point of waiting a few seconds to register her. They both knew that a
transaction was about to be made, but he didn’t want to appear too
enthusiastic. “Play it cool” he breathed to himself, turning the car radio off
and rolling down the window.
“Liking is?” She asked with a high-pitched purr.
He cleared his throat and raised an eyebrow.
“Yes. Yes I most certainly am liking is.” He grinned
nervously, examining her perfectly manicured tentacle limb. He wondered what
exactly she can do with such an oddly formed appendage. Then he swallowed hard,
realizing that he’d soon find out.
“For make kissing?” her English is terrible, but it’s
obvious by her mismatched and colour-conflicting attire that this lady Kønnite hasn’t
seen much farther than Little Køn. She’s probably not used to seeing human
females around these parts, so her reference levels are zero.
“Eh, yes. I’d like very much to kissing” he tries to keep
his words simple, though he’s not sure if it constitutes as “talking down” to
her or not. The last thing he wants to do is offend a hooker whose pimp could
open him up like a can of tuna. “How is much?” he adds.
The Kønnite took a moment to measure his words. She spoke to
herself in her own tongue, a dialect, that to Howard, had the pithiness of
Japanese. She eventually held up seven of the nubs which
constituted as her fingers and nodded her head. That gesture did little to
inform Howard, but he nodded his head in return nonetheless. He’d brought six
hundred papers with him, just to be sure.
When she slithered into the sedan, Howard’s muscles relaxed
considerably. In his mind, the hardest part was over. Now all that was left to
do was drive this mutant sex machine to a secluded area and find out exactly
what you’re supposed to do with them. He had to halt himself mid-breath when he
was about to try and make small talk with the female. What exactly would they
even talk about, even if she could understand him? So, what’s it like
on Køn? Did you catch the show about the monkey in the wheelchair last night?
What’s your sign? Howard realizes that he’s about to get extremely
weird with a telepathic alien scientist in the backseat of his company car.
Howard realizes that normative conversation has no place in this vehicle.
He’s about to make a left turn towards the coastline before
he feels a warm, jelly nub rub against his hand.
“Not is direction. Is…” her thought process seems to have a
lot of hang-time, Howard wonders if she’s brain damaged. “…is beach car.”
She wants to go to the car park by the beach. Howard doesn’t
complain, that stretch of empty tarmac is as good as any a place to do the
deed. The only people who wander the beach at night are the winos, the type to
take a quick gander through your window, slug from their brown bag and shuffle
off into the darkness. No problem.
On the way, Howard thinks about everything Clarke told him
and a strange excitement starts to graduate in him. He remembers those lewd schoolboy
recitals by the coffee table, Clarke detailing every depraved and sinister act
he’s ever committed with women of both human and alien origin. The warm slime that excretes from every orifice, and they have many. Their insatiable thirst for
human flesh and fluids, their love-making as a pantomime for extreme violence. Howard
thinks that he might ask this Kønnite to strangle him for a little while. An act
that Pauline would never indulge him, even when he indulged her idiosyncrasies.
The sedan comes to a slow halt before an inky ocean torn by white moonlight.
Europe’s The Final Countdown is slipped into the car’s
player. As soon as that booming synth filled his ears, Howard was filled with a new confidence. It's a victory song, a montage of success, the sound of breaking the ribbon in first place. That’s his tune, that’s the song he wants to dance to tonight. "Nah nah naah nah" he hums, awkwardly slipping an arm through his suede jacket.
“Money, is your having?” she smiles, if that’s what their
smile is supposed to look like. Howard fishes out every last paper from his pocket
and holds it in front of her like a winning hand. This is about to happen.
“I’ve got everything you need” he grins, shaking frantically
and unzipping himself, “do you have what I need?” he bites his lip, sharing eyes with the hooker for the first time since she hopped in the car.
"Yeah, I’ve got exactly what you need you motherfucker” she
spits in disgust, holding a gold star badge in front of him like a winning
hand. Suddenly the darkness of the car park is cut by a flush of reds and
blues.
***
Howard leaned his head against the wall and let his eyes blur the ceiling. He sat between two other men. To his left was a sparse young man whose afro sat atop his head like a cloud. And sitting to his right was Clarke from work, stone-faced and silent as though Howard was a stranger. All three of them wore handcuffs.
The station shuddered with activity. Men in tight Zegna suits roared in protest as they were led forcefully to holding cells, and a group of Kønnite women, standing on high heels and waving around cigarettes, laughed among themselves. Howard thought he heard one of them hum something through chirped laughter. Nah nah naah nah.
The infernal legion of Stormgoat has submitted a form to the bastards Knockanstockan. Our baneful strand of raw black metal will fill ensnare their very beings.
THERE ARE NONE MORE BLACK. THERE ARE NONE MORE TRUE. THERE ARE NONE MORE GRIM.
We were smoking cigarettes outside a derelict building that was supposed to be a shelter for battered housewives when I first heard Maggot Twat. My friend held an earphone in front of me with a huge, crooked smile on his face and he said; "You're going to fucking love this". I slipped it into my ear and was greeted by the sound of 8-bit porno music accompanied by orgasmic wailing, "Doggy style", intense screaming. What's this? The wailing becomes louder and louder, the Sega Megadrive bukkake party intensifies. What followed this brief intro would stick with me for the rest of my life. That was seven years ago and I can still remember the moment like my last bathroom visit.
Maggot Twat don't fuck around. Okay, they do fuck around, a lot, but no one does it better than they do. The music has all the breakneck intensity of a derailing train and all the hilarity of a greased-up midget death match. They bend metal music over a table, pull down its trousers and feed a gerbil into its anus with a tube.
I got to speak with Spam, bassist and masochistic nincompoop of the duo (trio, if you count Mr. Dick Pancakes, their puppet percussionist). The man's mind is a crypt of ancient, forbidden knowledge. To even attempt to perceive the inner workings of Spam Manwhat is to accept insanity. You may try to get inside his head, though you may never return.
How is life treating you these days?
--Pretty good I would say. I get my pecker waxed pretty consistantly. Plenty of degenerates hangin around to get drunk and high with. Not too many worries.
Maggot Twat has a rich history of producing stellar fuck songs. Are there any sex positions or filthy rituals in particular that should accompany the music?
-- One of my favorites is where you make the girl, or whatever youre fucking, lay on its back with its legs stretched up to the shoulders. Ya know, so the hole is up in the air. Then you mount it backwards so your ass and balls are facing its face. Then it gets to see your ass pounding away. And you can blow a fart or whatever you wanna do.
On a scale of 1-10, how much damage has been done to your brain after all these years of self-harm during the live shows?
-- 3.14159265359 Thats the circumference ratio of my balls to my banus... Or something
If you had to the describe The Imp of the Perverse to an impressionable school boy, how would you describe it?
-- I would just slap him in the face and tell him I didnt mean it. And then slap him again and call him a faggot.
How long did it take to record the new album?
--- 4 long dumbass years. By the time it was done I had forgotten how to play half the songs cuz it took so long. We took our sweet ass time. And it wasent worth it. The album sux... haha.
How does The Imp of the Perverse differ to 8-Bit Apocalypse and Stuffed Animal Orgy?
--- The Imp has I think two serious songs on it. As opposed to the other albums that have zero seriousness. I was diagnosed with Tourettes in 2008 and had to write about it. So wait... maybe there arent any serious songs because tourettes can be fuckin hilarious.
What's the best way to fuck your fucking underwear?
--- The best way is to get caught by your mom while you're grinding the couch pillows in E.T. underwear. It will definitley make dinner conversation uncomfortable.
What's in the future for Maggot Twat?
--- Probably grey pubic hair and more venues and promoters hating us.
Is there anything you'd like to say to the fans, old and new?
Human beings have always carried with them a library of reasons to hate and exclude each other. It all began with "otherness", when kingdoms began to trade with others and the introduction of philosophies and traditions began to cause conflict with natives and immigrants. Realistically, it probably began with facial features, skin colour, clothing and language. Soon enough that collective discomfort would mutate into hatred. Boats set sail to discover and conquer new, alien lands that's where globalization started. The world started to become smaller and for many it became claustrophobic. Identities were being lost, created, repressed and coalesced, seemingly all at once. Hatred was no longer an intimate reaction, it became generalizable. The rise of the aristocratic class only furthered stratification and hatred became homogenous, hating based on race and religion wasn't enough anymore, people began to hate those with more wealth, land and fancier clothes or those with a lack thereof.
What have we learned from this? Hatred is constructed, and it also advances and encompasses. So what next? How many more reasons can be come up with to hate or dislike each other? Why do we even need to hate and dislike each other for impersonal reasons? The answers to those questions are bloated with philosophy, but there is certainly a sociological answer to them as well. At least on a smaller scale. I think the answer to why we stratify and exclude each other can be found in the youth of today and the music they listen to. Yes, it's 2014, and there are people out there who fucking hate each other based on which Springsteen album is their favourite. We're living, and have been living for a while, in the "poser" generation. Are you wearing a band's t-shirt right now? There's someone out there who thinks less of you for wearing that shirt. That's the most specific and snobbish strain of hatred. Your tastes are different to mine. Go fuck yourself.
The concept of adolescence, that period of life where one is no longer a child but isn't quite an adult, is actually a rather new one. The rise of "youth culture" seemed to rise up as WWII ended. We were introduced to the nuclear family. The father as the breadwinner, the mother as the carer and caterer, the children as the future. But what of the adolescent? A period of life where innocence, immaturity, deviance and developing opinions begin to take hold. Not quite a child, not quite an adult. So who and what are they? What's their role in the nuclear family? With a flourishing economy, expansive job opportunities, the rise of "pop culture" and uncontrollable hormones, what was in store for this generation that we were starting to call "teenagers".
Rock n' roll, the opiate for a bored and restless generation.
Roll Over Beethoven and tell Tschaikowsky the news.
Like it always was before, music was the symposium for social integration. Except, probably for the first time in history, no adults allowed. I believe that the rock n' roll dance was the sperm for modern youth culture. A space where developing youths could congregate, explore themselves and each other. Of course, teens had been "exploring" each other long before there was a Chuck Berry or Bill Haley, but for the first time they could do so in a setting among other teens on a larger scale. Connections were made in these dance halls, ideas exchanged, dramas unfolded, sex was rampant, friendships formed and ended, and all without a single adult present. This is where youth culture began and this is also where it began to divide.
As time went on, teenagers weren't just teenagers anymore. The kinship of the dance halls had worn off and with new musics, new stars, new fashions and new attitudes, there were new teenagers. Rock n' roll influenced lifestyles and now lifestyles were evolving, separating and conjoining, and all of them had names. This was the birth of teen subculture. There were greasers (or "hoods"), rockers and heads, and they all carried themselves with gang mentalities. "Otherness" had found its way to the adolescent and this otherness would, again, mutate into irrational loathing.
Opiates, the opiate for a bored and stoned generation.
By the 1960s, the music was changing and the drugs were stronger and in higher demand. The division of labour brought about new forms of occupation, education, ideas and art and each of them carried their own importance to this new, radical generation seeking identity. The adolescent began to separate itself from its biological family in favour of a new family of friends with common interests, ideas and hobbies. The dance halls of old were now clubs and bars that catered for specific strains of rock n' roll and they were occupied by specific strains of teenager. Here we see the division of youth culture into sub groups and with division comes isolation, and as a group isolates itself, so too does it strengthen its internal bond. Greasers beat up hippies, hippies criticized the rich kids ("squares") and the rich kids looked down on them all. Class division had evolved into division of affiliation.
Social constructionism is the theory that humans endow meaning to something in order to better understand and contextualize the world around them. A statuette of a young man, half-naked and nailed to a cross, is an example of social construction. It's just a statuette, but to the human it is precious and sacred. The same can be said for much of what was happening in the 60s. Music and fashion were no longer exterior and materialistic, they became instrumental in the adolescent's identity formation. Music and fashion were then married with philosophies and lifestyles. Subcultures had matured and grew more important in the lives of teenagers at this time. If you weren't a part of a scene, where was your identity?
Anger, the opiate for a bored and poor generation.
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To complicate things even further, not only were teenagers at each other's throats, but parents, teachers and government officials all began taking swipes at and scapegoating them, their music and their lifestyles for everything ranging from crime to out-and-out terrorism. The late 70s and early 80s webbed the fabric of youth culture even more so. Governmental candidates and the media all sought to exploit the fears of the older generation by highlighting the "dangers" of these punks, mods, rockers and general outcasts. Popular music became public enemy number one and so did those who listened to it. Greater distinctions could be made between these teens, whether they were skins or punks or metal heads, they were all easily identifiable and easy to scapegoat.
If you throw in civil and political unrest, boredom and the change of pop music from "I wanna hold your hand" to "I wanna fuck myself", the stereotype of the angry teenager was very much established. It was also heavily embrace by the teens themselves. By this point, the teen was estranged from the adult, the society and even their own faction. There was no longer a struggle to establish identity, rather there was a struggle for authenticity in a world full of organized identities. Who is that? Are they the real deal? Is he MORE punk than me, or is he a poser?
The word "poser" would eventually become a staple part of any young person's vocabulary, even to this day.
Hatred, the opiate for a bored and elitist generation.
Émile Durkheim, one of the forebears of sociology, offered a theory called "anomie" in his book Suicide (1897). He highlighted certain social disorders, rapid changes in society, that negatively affect the self. Though the term itself is quite flexible and still has yet to be fully understood, it can be said to describe a state of "purposelessness" in someone who has experienced a sudden change in societal integration. For Durkheim, functionalism is the dependence a society has on each member of the society, every man and woman has a purpose (occupation) in such a society and they also rely on other members of that society in order to fulfill their purpose. This reliance is essentially integration, the sociable aspects of every day life, from working with clients to taking part in sports events, anything that brings people together.
Though it's been widely argued that Durkheim did not say that anomie explicitly meant a state of "social detachment" in itself, anomie is in fact a large part of how someone becomes detached from society. Unemployment, social alienation, any kind of lack of purpose in life is what leads to this kind of detachment because one experiences a decrease in social interaction. This lack of interaction essentially leaves the self to its own devices and this is where constructionism begins to take place. Suddenly, the slightest of hobbies or interests become of heightened importance. Without practical work and without offering anything to society, one creates their own importance as they are left in a state of egoism.
In 2014, anomie has led to a heightened importance on the hobby, the subculture. This heightened importance doesn't just come in the form of constant engagement in said hobby, it also creates a frame of mind where this hobby IS the identity, rather than the hobby merely being part of the individual's identity. Thus, the individual must validate their "identity", which is the only thing they believe to possess, by criticizing others who claim a similar identity. Because the hobby is now the identity, and hobbies are shared by many, the individual must prove that he/she is unique to the others. They want to be a part of the elite, those who are "more unique than others".
In teen subcultures, the word "poser" is used to describe an individual who is either A) trying too hard to find an identity in a subculture, or B) someone who doesn't live up to the standards set by the "elite". Because consumption (music, video games, fashion, technology) is arguably the biggest hobby of the modern teenager, this kind of elitism is rampant and far and wide. Status is no longer based on ability or exertion, it is based on consumption.
Who are your favourite band? Crystal Castles? Oh, that's cute.
You mean you don't have the new expansion pack? You fucking faggot newb.
You've never read Charles Eliot Norton? HAH!
You know absolutely nothing about metal. Log off this forum and never come back.
So does the word "poser" really hold any weight? If it does, then why do people care so much about such trivial matters like musical taste or subculture lifestyle? Is this irrational hatred (perhaps too strong a word) of others based on perceived inferiority a socially constructed phenomenon or is it attributed to the primal instinct of "the other"? John Lennon wrote a song a long time ago about tearing down the walls with which we have created to segregate and stratify each other. He suggested that a world without radical belief, elitism and irrationality would lead to world peace. A world where we concentrate on ourselves rather than excluding and chastising others.
There's a t-shirt hanging up in my wardrobe right now, one that I haven't worn in a very long time. Two of my friends put their money together to buy it for me for my sixteenth birthday and though it hasn't left its hanger for years, I can't bring myself to give it away or tuck it away somewhere in a box. It's stretched, faded, and the face of Brandon Lee is dotted with cigarette burns.
I've never been a comic book aficionado, I've always liked comic books, but I've never collected them. I wouldn't call myself a "comic book geek" in any way, anything I know about them comes from a close friend who has more comics and relics than I have hairs on my head. Anything I know about the world of the graphic novel, I learned from him. Though I never delved too deeply into that world and probably couldn't tell you Doctor Strange from Doctor Light, I've always had a connection with The Crow.
When I first picked up James O' Barr's The Crow, I was 13 years old and had only been exposed to the Spidermans and Batmans of the comic book world. Valiant heroes with rules and thick moral fiber, the kind of dudes that went out, did their job, went back home and awaited their next call. As much as I still love to hear their stories, I think they're mechanical in a way. They know right from wrong, they beat down the villains and protect the weak, they're the archetypal heroes that we've all come to know and love. When I finished reading The Crow, I realized that Eric Draven wasn't one of those heroes, he wasn't even a hero at all. Eric Draven was just angry, that's why I've always liked that story. The character is raw, human even in inhumanity, and the story is as personal for the writer as it is for the characters he created. Eric Draven isn't a hero, he's the righteous bad guy. Eye for an eye.
Just as I haven't worn my t-shirt in a long time, either have I read the book or any of its subsequent offshoots. The character was always very sexualized, but that didn't occur to me until years after I'd read it. That sexualization turned me off the character for the longest time. What I believed to be the personification of vengeance was actually just some sexy Goth bad boy. A Halloween costume and a fashion statement. Everyone, including myself, had forgotten that there was anything behind the make-up. I haven't been enthusiastic about The Crow in years, but then I read Skinning the Wolves. Now it all makes sense again.
Skinning the Wolves takes place in a Nazi concentration camp administrated by a cruel and sadistic commandant with a penchant for classical music and chess. In order to keep himself amused in the camp, he invites captives, fellow soldiers and "intellectuals" into his quarters to play a game of chess with a twist. If his opponent loses the game, that opponent's brains become a part of the interior. His twisted game has claimed many lives during the campaign and he soaks up the fear of both the camp's captives as well as his own soldiers. His own fear, however, becomes very evident when one of his former playmates returns from the incinerator for a rematch.
This book is almost a complete departure from O' Barr's classic tale and it's easy to tell why that is. The first book was written by James O' Barr and for James O' Barr. It's no secret that the first Crow was written as therapy for O' Barr's own personal tragedies, and this endowed the book with intense emotional energy that vibrated with every page. With Skinning the Wolves, we have a far more stripped down and raw character, almost devoid of human attachment. The character remains nameless throughout the comic, that's because the character isn't James, the character is the entire Jewish population. Even deeper so, he's the victim of suppression and violence.
This book is definitely risky in that it deals with a part of history that many would deem too sensitive to be brushed with fiction, but O' Barr seems to have stepped around certain aspects that may be perceived as overly taboo and instead focuses on the real story; a man's vengeance from beyond the grave.
Though written by O' Barr, this book also belongs largely to artist Jim Terry and were I more familiar with his work, I'd have mentioned him much earlier on in the article. My vocabulary for art is very, very limited, so maybe that's why I've tip-toed around him. What I can say is this; though the differences between O' Barr's art and Terry's are immense, Terry produces a visually stupendous rendering of a character that we all thought we already knew. "This is what The Crow looks like", nope, The Crow has a new face now.
Not only a new face, but a new person. The sexy rock star Crow that has been both celebrated and parodied has been reborn and stripped down to the soul. This avenging ghoul doesn't recite poetry, doesn't weep in solitude and you won't find him in every corner of Vampirefreaks.com. This character is what The Crow really is, before the terrible movie sequels, action figures and wall poster fandom. He's very, very angry and he's very, very dead.
Australia is a very scary place. Perhaps not for those whom have spent most of their lives there and have adapted to survive in or become a part of the many dangers that the country has to offer, but for a brittle-boned Irish part-time alcoholic with tender flesh and a thin emotional membrane like myself, moving there could only mean certain doom. The threat of stone melting heatwaves, bloated alcohol prices and with just about every living animal containing some variant of deadly poison...my death notice would be written on a one-way Aer Lingus ticket and funeral arrangements would be tended to upon my arrival. It's basically Mordor with koala babies.
Luckily (unluckily?) I'm one of the true Irish patriots that decided to go down with the ship and though I may have little to no prospects regarding employment for the foreseeable future, at least I'm not being chewed on by a T-bone steak sized tarantula in chainmail. That's always a good thing.
Though violent crime rates are relatively low in Oz, the elements themselves are hazardous enough to make up for the lack of stabby-stabby, rapey-rapey. However, that's not enough to calm my turbulent nerves, for there is a greater insidious evil that creeps, lurks and stalks in the land down under. That evil is the Australian metal scene. A circle of robed, spiked and hooded death metal ghouls that makes the Norwegian black circle look like a Mormon childcare center.
It seems as though some of these Australian warmongers and sorcerers decided long ago to scrape off any kind of groove, beat, rhythm or any of those terms usually associated with music and replace them with 100%, undiluted evil. These bands are not Metallica. They are not Slayer. They aren't Cannibal Corpse, Napalm Death, Mayhem or Emperor. They have managed to tear the flesh from heavy metal, all the way down to the bone. There is no warmth in this music, no headbanging, no beer-swilling. The late and great Euronymous of Mayhem once referred to Swedish experimental loonatics Abruptum as "the audial essence of pure black evil". Had Euronymous not been left in a heap with more holes than a saltshaker, it would be interesting to hear what he'd have to say about these Aussie hellions.
One more note to mention; all three bands share some of the same fucking musicians. If ever there was a "black circle", this is where you'd find it.
Portal - Omnipotent Crawling Chaos
When referring to Australian death metal, even death metal in general if you are so inclined, you cannot start a sentence without first talking about Portal. This band and its members are perhaps the very heart and soul of this movement, which pushes the boundaries and blurs the lines of what metal is and isn't. There's jazz, there's unrelenting and crushing tone and most importantly there is unsettling atmosphere. Portal are one of those bands that come around every so often that manage to dig their fingernails right into your cerebral tissue and leave you either smitten or scarred for life. There is no warmth in this music whatsoever. Portal are the soundtrack to epistemology, madness and the unknown.
Initiation: Outre' (2007)
Impetuous Ritual - Inexorable Blasphemies
Only members of Portal could produce something even more terrifying than Portal. Impetuous Ritual are every bit as dark, brooding and celestial as their mother band, but there is a certain level of energy and aggression in the music that isn't present in Portal. There's something more here that cannot be easily explained. Whereas Portal weave desolate and alien landscapes with their music, Impetuous Ritual rely on a slightly more traditional framework of speed and assault. Though the similarities between both bands are obvious, considering they're essentially composed of the same musicians, there is an obnoxiousness and violence to Impetuous Ritual that gives them independence from their better-known counterpart.
Initiation:Relentless Execution of Ceremonial Excrescence (2009)
Grave Upheaval - 4
I could use a lot of the same adjectives to describe Grave Upheaval as I have Portal and Impetuous Ritual, but even those are just words and simply do not do justice to how horrifying this band sounds. In fact, that's the only adjective suitable for a band like Grave Upheaval. We could talk about musicianship, production value, themes and recent releases, but none of that even begins to describe the wicked drones that this band conjures. "Horror" is the only adjective needed. They are the sound of ageless tombs and pure cosmic horror.
Before we dig into the meat of this movie, I'd like to first unpack a term that I've literally, just this minute, come up with. It's called "Millennium Horror Syndrome". Millennium Horror Syndrome (or MHS) occurs mostly in American TV movies, but in many cases it managed to seep its way into and corrupt many of the mainstream films at the time. To elaborate, MHS can be described as the MTV-ization (There's another one for you) of horror films between 1997 and 2003. Hot off the heels of popular television shows like Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Charmed came a kind of disposable horror for a disposable audience. These films tried in vain to emulate all of the things that made these shows popular, but due to an obvious mutation in the test tube, they turned out like long episodes of Beverly Hills 90210 featuring extremely soft-core porn and the odd werewolf. That last sentence sound familiar?
Look at how sexy scary we are. Aren't you afroused?
The story, the scares and the visuals became an afterthought for some wealthy writer/directors who probably spent most of pre-production learning ebonics, listening to Nu-Metal, casting supermodels and generally trying to be "down" with the backyard wrestling generation. However, while some of these MHS movies were actually brilliant (see Ginger Snaps, Idle Hands), this one isn't.
Though Satan's School for Girls isn't terminally MHS, it is definitely riddled. It's not stupid enough to be entertaining and not serious enough to constitute drama. If the original film from 1973 is the crazy drunk college girl, then this remake is definitely her teetotaling Goth daughter. It sucks you into a kind of purgatory that doesn't let up until the credits. You wait for the money shot and it just doesn't happen.
I'm not even going to bother going into the story line because it's almost identical to the original, only this take is far more tame. I wouldn't say "avoid" as much as I would suggest you watch the original first. It's films like Satan's School for Girls and An American Werewolf in Paris that rip the heart out of 70s and 80s horror originals and poses seductively with them for the cover of some shitty alt-rock magazine with a free nail polish supplement.
Surf Nazis Must Die (1987)
The first time I saw this movie, I sat my ass down at my kitchen table, lit up a cigarette, sipped from a cool cup of tea and thought to myself; "That was Escape from New York written by a drunk baby". And that's exactly what it is, upon first viewing. But there's a lot more to SNMD than hyperactive idiocy, sex and action. The manner with which this film is presented is almost contrary to its ridiculous plot. It's like someone is telling the filthiest joke imaginable while remaining stone faced and sober. Moments of tension and conflict catch you off guard in what is mostly 85 minutes of depravity and silliness. That's what makes it special, that's what was missing from Satan's School for Girls. The film is admittedly silly and entertaining, but at the very heart of it; we have a classic 80s revenge flick.
We're dropped head first into a post-apocalyptic world where America's beaches have taken on a heightened importance and seem to serve as the main forum for societal integration. However, these beaches know no law and are ruled by surfer gangs of various ethnicity and subculture, the most ruthless of all being the Neo-Nazis. The Nazis, during their campaign to rule the entire beach, end up slaying the grandson of Mama, a hard-as-nails OAP with little tolerance for bullshit. Upon finding out who the culprits were in her grandson's murder, she embarks on a blood-soaked crusade to eliminate the Nazi scum. A gun in one hand, a grenade in the other.
Taste some of Mama's home cookin', Adolf!
With perhaps the perfect 80s action soundtrack, some of the best dialogue you could ask of a b-flick and astounding performances from Gail Neely (Mama) and Michael Sonye (Mengele), Surf Nazis Must Die is a must for any fan of the weird and obscure. Its poker-faced humor, cartoonish violence and unbelievable plot have cemented this as a trash classic and a viewing experience that no brain dead heathen should be without.
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