Oakhelm

Once upon (twice actually) a time I lived in the Bay Area. A veritable mecca of punk, metal, music, activism, queer culture, and spiritual growth.

I hated it.  I couldn't get it together.  I couldn't find a job, make friends, find anywhere that felt like home.  On many days, I could barely muster the energy to leave the house.  Something about the sprawling, grey, crowded East Bay was so alienating and soul destroying for me.  I still think back on it occasionally as one of the most painful periods of my entire life. 

 I guess with every dark night comes a dawn, and with the dim light of hindsight I can kind of see what it was all for now.  Sometimes you have to walk through miles and miles of poisoned landscape, frozen water, and desolation to find out what nourishes the light of your soul. 

Somewhere in those years spent in ruins, I discovered the music of Oakhelm.  Some members' former projects Fall Of The Bastards, and Assuck had been old favorites of mine, so it seemed a logical step to see what they were up to now.

Goddamn, was I in for a treat.  The opening track begins with ghostly howling, and then goes straight into the song proper.  The music that unfolded in my ears was unrelenting, epic, masterful, inspiring.  It is broken up by two, quieter interludes.  I don't really know how to describe the music here.  Epic blackened death metal?  Sure.  It's not all that dissimilar from Fall Of The Bastards, just some more melody, and a little less misanthropy, and more spirituality.  The lyrics are heavily influenced by the Celtic Book Of The Dead, and speak on journeys of the soul to cleanse inner turmoil, which is just I needed at the time.  This record helped me view the place in my life as part of a journey, and not the end, not somewhere I had to be stuck forever, and for that I will always be grateful. 

2011 brought the release of Oakhelm's second full length:  Echtra.  I'm only on my second listen of this record, so I can't speak super clearly about it,   I will say this:  Even on the first track of this record, it's power is undeniable.  There are a whole slew of guest vocalists, and guest musicians who lend even more epic depths to this record.  Again, the title and lyrical content invoke the imagery of epic spiritual journeys through the otherworld.  I haven't gotten the chance to pore over them yet, but I have a feeling this record will be on heavy rotation come winter, and will further aid me in the life long process of healing. 

Thanks y'all. 

Both of these records are available on vinyl.  Go buy the shit out of them. 

Here and Here.

Isis - Panopticon

I read a blog recently describing this band's latter material as girlfriend metal.  Let's go ahead and just disregard that entirely shall we?  I'd rather not spend time giving the neanderthal douchebags of the world voice.  They speak too loudly as it is.

This is the record that turned me on to Isis.  I heard a copy of The Red Sea when I was 18, and didn't enjoy it much.  Five years later, I heard Panopticon, and was blown away. While band members insisted in interviews this not a political record, the liner notes and lyrics bring up some political themes, that astute listeners would not miss.

Central to the theme of the record, is Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon. 

The atmosphere of dread and paranoia, of a technological culture gone awry run thickly throughout this record.  You can feel it in resonate through your bones in the slow build up of track 3, In Fiction, it's as if the band captured the feeling of walking down a dark city street, seemingly alone, yet knowing somewhere a surveillance camera may or may not be zooming in on you perfectly.  Power is thus maintained by being everywhere, and nowhere at the same time. 

A dead 18th century British Philosopher's idea, for constructing prisons, in an effort to maintain the illusion of constant surveillance, and thus fear, and order, has disseminated through the rest of our culture, ensuring a certain amount of social control.  Let's think about that for a second:  we allowed our culture to be shaped to resemble someone's bad idea for prison construction.  Surveillance, and control may not be total, but we are led to believe they are. 

"Hence the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power. So to arrange things that the surveillance is permanent in its effects, even if it is discontinuous in its action; that the perfection of power should tend to render its actual exercise unnecessary; that this architectural apparatus should be a machine for creating and sustaining a power relation independent of the person who exercises it; in short, that the inmates should be caught up in a power situation of which they are themselves the bearers. To achieve this, it is at once too much and too little that the prisoner should be constantly observed by an inspector: too little, for what matters is that he knows himself to be observed; too much, because he has no need in fact of being so. In view of this, Bentham laid down the principle that power should be visible and unverifiable. Visible: the inmate will constantly have before his eyes the tall outline of the central tower from which he is spied upon. Unverifiable: the inmate must never know whether he is being looked at at any one moment; but he must be sure that he may always be so. In order to make the presence or absence of the inspector unverifiable, so that the prisoners, in their cells, cannot even see a shadow, Bentham envisaged not only venetian blinds on the windows of the central observation hall, but, on the inside, partitions that intersected the hall at right angles and, in order to pass from one quarter to the other, not doors but zig-zag openings; for the slightest noise, a gleam of light, a brightness in a half-opened door would betray the presence of the guardian. The Panopticon is a machine for dissociating the see/being seen dyad: in the peripheric ring, one is totally seen, without ever seeing; in the central tower, one sees everything without ever being seen."
- Michel Foucault quoted in the the liner notes


"Magistrates dream of plague
Tongues loll in anticipation
You are awake in their darker visions
Drool slips from grinning mouths

The plague is forced on us all
Is it there? Are they there?
Shouts of fact abound
But whispers of truth burn through

Is it there? Are they there" 
Track 7 - Grinning Mouths

  

Cameras as common as streetlights

Asunder - A Clarion Call

Take one part Thergothon, one part awe at the enormity and immensity of the cosmos, and you have this little gem here.  The music is unrelentingly crushing, while being etheric enough to conjure the visions of soaring through darkness of the cosmos, cold, beautiful, and undying; stars burning on, out, and pulsating in the darkness.   In some ways, this band never really go their due, so lest we forget them. 

Here

Old Journal Entry

One time in 2007, two friends died in one month, and I wrote this for them.  Cheesey?  Yes.  Embarrassing?  A little.  Sincere?  Yes. 







"I miss you"
spraypainted across trains stopped in the night
and the other night you stopped forever
And if I had the belief, or the strength I'd say a prayer that this train rolls past someone
who loved you on a night like this one.
cold and just a little bit emptier because you left us
I'm not mad at you
I never got to tell you how many nights I've stood at the edge of that abyss
with the blackness pulling at me, and daring me to fall
I could never explain what's given me the strength to carry on
but I wish more than anything I could have lent you some of it.
Just enough to get you through the night.
Maybe you would have felt better in the morning.
Or just felt it less.
Maybe the sunrise would have given you strength
Or it could have just been another day.
where the morning rays of the sun feel like a whip
and each breath draws like black eyes and slit wrists
with the weight of this culture bearing down like a fist
But maybe, just maybe you would have found strength to go on.
"I miss you"
Written across the train, as it rolls into the night
may you ride forever.
and death bring you the peace you could never find in life.
I'll never not miss you
If I could just write it bright and beautiful enough
beautiful enough that the words would reach you in
your place beyond the sun
I miss you.
I'll never not miss you.

Sombres Forêts - Royaume De Glace

There's lots of badness and woe happening in the world lately, it seems.  I'm pretty susceptible to media induced sadness. I can't look at images of bloody, terrified protestors, without feeling a bit of that terror myself.  It's an interesting time to be alive, and a frightening one as well. 

What better way to escape the horror, and banality of the modern world, by letting Sombres Forêts take you on a journey through a mystical, frozen, northern forest.  Sombres Forêts is a one person black metal project fronted by Annatar.  True to Uber Kvlt form, the band only has one website, Here; that has not been updated in some time. 

On to the album, It's great.  Excellent, cold production.  Similar to Gris, (the bands are apparently friends, and have collaborated on a project) the production brings me back to classic first wave Norwegian Black Metal, without anything being too tinny, raw, or you know....  Awful.  There are also quiet, acoustic interludes, and good work with keyboards to fill out the overall mournful, almost frightened atmosphere of the record.  I imagine the composer of this record as a sort of woodland sprite, desperate to be heard, and valued, while wanting at the same time to be left alone by humanity's hatefulness, and destructive nature. 

This is good music for nights when you feel like a hunted, miserable, misunderstood creature, which is why I'm going to give it a spin tonight.

Stay safe, friends. 

Here.

Do you need a change?

Once upon a time I had some friends that make some of my favorite music in the world, and here's why:  being a person on this planet is complicated, and at times incredibly difficult.  RVIVR voice that anguish, and frustration beautifully.  For as difficult as it can be to be a person on this planet, being a queer person is harder.  Even being a queer punk is difficult.  Our subculture is supposed to be so wild, free, and accepting, yet often has the same rigid rules and norms as anywhere else in the world.  How often do we talk about how our little subculture was created by weird misfits who were born into ill fitting skin, and in turn had few places in the world where they felt at home, or safe in their bodies?  Read any book on the beginnings of the punk subculture, it started as a weird, misfit, scene, that a lot of queers were involved in, and in this writer's opinion, hardcore came along and changed all that.

Of course the advent of hardcore was long before I was involved in punk so this is all speculation,on my part but I know what I feel.  I've been involved in Punk for well over half of my life at this point.  That's seventeen years at last count.  A long enough time.  I've been to countless shows where punk was seemingly defined as those who were the biggest and baddest, and danced the hardest.  Remember all those nights when it seemed like four huge dudes were ruining the show?  Or all the times you were smaller, and shoved to the back of the room, so a mass of sweaty, violent men could take up space at the show, with the same entitled impunity that they take up space in the rest of the world. 

The truth is, as I get older, I grow more and more tired of this nonsense.  It's exhausting having to constantly, aggressively defend my personal space at shows, from drunk dudes who are there to "have a good time", and to have to claw out queer space in the subculture I became a part of to get away from the straight white male dominated world. 

Which brings me to how much I appreciate the music RVIVR makes, how much I appreciate that I feel like it's made for everyone, and not just the boys.  I appreciate that they are just so punk, but spend so much time talking about growing and changing, while staying punk, and not doing the same ritualized shit, over and over.  How they do their best to carve out space for the queers, for the ladies, for the nerdy short people, for the people who don't fit conveniently into any definition or box. I appreciate the effort they put into making every one of their shows a safe space.  How they make it easier to be a queer punk, if even only for a night sometimes.  Thanks friends, for real.   

Here.

Vengeance

Last night Warcry played in my town.  For those of you who aren't familiar, Warcry is members of Tragedy, Hellshock, and probably some other really good bands playing raging, total Discharge worship, straight forward D-Beat punk.  I picked up a copy of their first LP Maniacs On Pedestals back in 2004.  It's decent.  Nothing original.  I've listened to it a few times over the years.    I also grabbed a copy of 2006' Deprogram, which I listened to maybe twice.

Live, Warcry are a non-stop, blistering, steamroller of D-beat punk, from start to finish.  I'm not sure if they even really stopped to Take a breath.  Singer Todd Burdette's theatrics border on almost ridiculous.  I found myself in the corner of the room giggling at the overwrought male posturing of it all.

But then on my bike ride home, it occurred to me that I don't know what this person has been through, really anyone in the band.  Am I mocking their art?  Maybe the looming nuclear apocalypse that seemed ever present during the Cold War haunts them still.  When the singer angrily points the sky, while screaming indecipherably, maybe he's actually seeing ICBMs falling from the sky to bring oblivion to us all.  Maybe he rages at the ghosts of maniacal leaders, and wars past, wars yet to come, and those ghosts just come of the surface more when they play.  Or, you know, Ronald Reagan himself could be haunting the back of this bar. 

I'm getting off topic though.  I was moved to revisit Tragedy's Vengeance LP upon getting home from the show.  In my opinion, this is one of the best Hardcore Punk of our era, if not ever.  Seriously.  From start to finish, the power of this record is completely undeniable.

I first got a copy of this gem on vinyl when Tragedy came through Denver in 2002.  I still listen to it fairly regularly.  

This record was the soundtrack to some of the most difficult, bitter, moments of my young life.  In 2003, after attending the Anti-FTAA protests in Miami, Florida and witnessing the ensuing police beat down, this record was there for me, hidden away on a cassette tape on a bus full of other activists speeding North out of Miami.

"Every last ounce of sympathy, every last bit of emotion
Saturated with this bitterness and situations, stacked end on end end on end"

I sat in the uncomfortable seats, holding hands with one of my life long best friends, and could find no words of my own, but those lines repeated over and over in my head, with new, vicious, meaning.  

Those were the words that sustained me, gave me voice, when the horrors I had witnessed were too much to bear, and I felt like my own voice had been stolen.  I want to make it clear, that I am only speaking from my privileged experience.  Police violence is systemic to people of color, and poor people in the United States, and white activists like to make a big deal when we get a taste of someone else's daily existence.  Even then, the repression we face usually pales in comparison to what movements in other countries face. 

Later that winter, upon hearing of a friend's sexual assault, this record again, was what kept me company through a long and terrible night, crying, and smashing bottles in the darkness of the alley behind our ramshackle house. When I felt almost calm enough to sleep, I stomped up the stairs to my freezing room, and put this tape in the stereo, hit play, and the world looked almost right, at least enough to sleep, and face another day. 


"Will we recognize our self abuse, as a product of the abusive hands that molded our lives?"

This record gave me words, when I felt too terrorized, too traumatized to find words of my own.  When uncoupling abuse, violence, and domination culture from a life worth living piled up into weeks, months, years, and felt like there would never be any dawn in sight.   This record leant voice to my anger, to my despair, to my defiance,  for that, am endlessly grateful.  

"No words, no words can explain the anger from years and years of being beaten down
No words,no words can relay.. no words,no words can erase
Brainwashed, domesticated, bound in chains
No words, no words can relay

As the giant steamroller called progress mows down the last fragments of what once was

No words can explain the rage as another factory replaces another field
No words, no words can relay

No words can begin to say what would be said if the dead could replay, if the napalmed children, the tortured dissidents, the publicly executed, the burned villages, the silent masses could cry, could scream, could speak..

Telling tales of tragedies for which we find no words
For which there are no words" 

 I think this record is still available on vinyl.  Get it.  You owe it to yourself.  Tragedy are pretty staunchly DIY, and put out all their own stuff.  This is probably available from any number of distros.

Here.

Gris - Il Était une Forêt...

Good, raw depressive black metal from Canada here.  This is their second full length, and the one I've listened to more.  The production and instrumentation are good enough that it's not so fuzzy that my ears ring after ten seconds of listening.  The music is actually really engrossing, and captivating.  It reminds me of what I think people see in bands like Burzum, that mixture of sadness and anger, and mourning - except this is great, because it's (as far as I know) not written by an obnoxious, racist, sexist, homophobic troll.

The vocals are really what does it for me on this release though.  The singer sounds genuinely anguished, it's like this record is the soundtrack to someone's utter despair at trying to find beauty in a culture that does it's best to grind all things beautiful and natural down, to make them marketable commodities.  I know some Black Metal bands do their noble best to copy some privileged, Norwegian teenager from 20 years ago's posturing, and leave it at that, adding little originality, or genuineness to the mix. What this band does is convincing.  Seriously.  I think that's what I appreciate, there is the darkness, and sadness, and hatred, but the attempts to find beauty in the world too.  It comes off as incredibly real.  During track 4 "Veux-tu Danser" The singer sounds like they are actually weeping, and it doesn't come off as the least bit pretentious, or forced.  Okay, maybe a little pretentious, but what form of art isn't just a little pretentious?

The lyrics are all in french.  I did a quick Google translate, (which is unreliable at best) and as far as I can tell they are all sadness/forest/natural world themed.  Metal Archives lists their lyrical themes as "Balance between Depression and Joy, Spirituality" which I can get down with.  Go buy this record.  If you know where to get a copy of it on vinyl, let me know. 

Here.

Wolves In The throne Room - Celestial Lineage

Wolves In The Throne Room:  Celestial Lineage

First off, let me reiterate.  I have little technical knowledge of music, songwriting, song structure, or any of that.  I hope to still write a review that does this record justice. 

I'm not going to lie.  I'm incredibly biased.  I love this band. They are probably my favorite band playing music right now.  I've loved every single one of their records.  I won't front, and claim to have been following their recording career from the beginning.  I began listening to them with 2007's Two Hunters.  I've had a long and complicated relationship with metal.  It was the first music that really appealed to me as a kid growing up in the 80's.  In the 90's, when I got into punk it was the burnt out metal heads that were beating me up for being punk and queer.  In punk, it was suddenly very uncool to like metal.  I imagine a lot of folks older than me have similar experiences. But I digress, Wolves In the throne Room.  Their music brings a sense of Eco-spirituality to black metal.  I'm sure they aren't the first band to do this.  Romania's Negura Bunget come immediately to mind, as does Portland, Oregon's Agalloch  Even bands from the original wave of Norwegian Black Metal held nature in a certain amount of awe.  There are countless promo photos of Immortal thrashing away at their instruments in the snowy forests of Norway.  One could write an entire other blog on the goofiness of Immortal alone, but we'll save that for another time. 

Another simple fact of the matter is, I don't often see myself reflected in the music I listen to.  I'm a pagan anarchist homo.  I don't want to listen to Burzum or Emperor.  There is no place for people like me in the world that those folks inhabit.  Quite literally, in fact with some of the members of Emperor.  Again, I could go on and on about the shady right wing/racist/homophobic tendencies in black metal.  I don't want to talk about that here.  I want to talk about what I like, which is this band, and this record.

The first track, Thuja Magus Imperium,  starts off with previous collaborator Jessika Kinney's clean vocals, and lyrical contributions, ambient keyboards, and sparse notes plucked on guitar, evoking a clean, grey, Northwestern dawn.  The calm before the storm, if you will.  


"Redness in the east beyond the mountain
The Wheel begins to turn anew
Turning ever towards the Sun
Garlands adorn a chariot, aflame
Blood runs from the flank of a wounded stag
Turning inwards, all beings bow low
Unconcealed she flies
Then hidden by snow
Eyes pale voice of night"

Around the two minute mark the song thunders into full gear, the opening riff perhaps setting the tone for the rest of the record.  The song is pupunctuated by moody riffing, and Nathan Weaver's desperate, rage filled, sorrowful vocals.  Around the midpoint the song slows to an ambient break, with more keys, clean vocals, and chimes.  It then kicks back in, but keeps the tempo slower for the remainder of the song.

"This bright thread so pure
Drawn through everything that is
Enslaved by ancient bonds
Beyond the mists and golden light
Beyond the darkness transcending time" 

The second track Permanent Changes In Consciousness is to me, one of the stand out tracks of the record.  It's not metal in a traditional way at all.  It starts out with melodic chanting (by Aaron Turner of Isis fame.), faint drumming, and sparse keys, and some other sound I can't quite make out.  It sounds sort of like a primitive axe gently grinding.  The song fades out with a field recording of waves crashing, and seagulls calling, and blends seamlessly into the next track, Subterranean Initiation.  This song is all killer, no filler.  Fans of raw black metal, will not be disappointed, unless of course you are the type to prefer your records sound like they were recorded in a frozen Norwegian garbage can.  If that's the case, maybe this blog isn't for you.  This song simply soars to celestial heights (or dives to subterranean depths, if you will) the keyboards and guitar work blend seamlessly together setting an atmosphere of urgent dread, of trying desperately to reclaim spiritual light, in a culture that does it's best to ceaselessly grind that spark out of you.

"A temple of wet earth
And rough stones erected in haste
Don this garment of wolf skin
Drink deep from the sacred mead
Bathe in this fire kindled with living wood
Torn from sacred trees" 


The next track, Rainbow Illness, blends so seamlessly between the songs it is in between, and has such a strange name, I often forget about it.  It's short, and ambient, and has some of the reverb effect that is often present between songs at Wolves In The Throne Room's live shows. 

Next is Woodland Cathedral with more vocals and lyrics from Jessika Kinney.  This song evokes wooded spiritual reclamation in all it's glory, an earth based spirituality based procession, with sparse, droning guitars, chanting vocals, and chimes, all with the backdrop of majestic keyboards.  This song was showcased on NPR a few weeks before the album was released and Drummer Aaron Weaver had this to say:

"It totally is a pagan hymn, in our eyes. We had the vision of a mass or a ceremony, but one that reflects our own personal experiences and dreams rather than something handed down from antiquity. And, of course, it is filtered through a black-metal sensibility. We always try to have a certain element of decay and melancholy, even in a song like this. But I think that ecstatic darkness is a part of a lot of ancient music — it's not unique to metal."

Next is Astral Blood, in my opinion one of the crowning moments of this record.  All the moody riffing, desperation, and atmosphere come to a head right here.  It's as if this song is a massive prayer, an offering to the themes of destruction and creation that are so present in their music.  This song evokes the utter destruction of the established order of things, and a rebirth of a more just, and primitive cosmos.  Seriously, you owe it to yourself to listen to this song.

Closing the record is Prayer Of Transformation, the record's dénouement. It begins with ambient noise, and droning guitar work, sparse drumming, and builds up to a crescendo of crashing riffs, seamless drum work, and keys.  The last three minutes of the song are mostly ambient noise, fading guitar chords, and the last few lines of the lyrics. Aaron Weaver's strained vocals sound even more haunting and desperate amongst this backdrop.  This song, too is perfect, although not traditionally structured at all for a black metal song. It works though, it is a perfect closer to a wonderful record.

"Lay your corpse upon a nest of oak leaves
Wrapped in a star shroud repent your flesh
A shadow child dissolves

Meditate in a den of skins and straight poles
A sacred fire of madrone burns eternally
In a circle of turquoise and serpentine
Whisper the prayer of transformation

Engulfed by clouds of thujone
Emerge purified clad in a golden fleece
A vessel awaits built from owl feathers and moss"

Goth Subculture Piece

This was written for my friends over at Graceless.  I'm not sure if they've decided to include it in issue #2 yet.  I'm excited about putting it out into the universe, so I'm publishing it here too. 


          “Wipe that shit off your face, you look like a faggot.”

            It’s 1994, rural, rust-belt Pennsylvania, I just came home from middle school wearing make up and this is my mother’s response.  The Cure and Nine Inch Nails are my favorite bands.  They are both led by enigmatic, tender men who are not afraid to be angry, but also not afraid to cry.  They wear make up and play with gender presentation.  I sneak into my mother’s room on the rare occasions she isn’t home and steal her make up, to go out at night, always hurriedly, and maybe a little shamefully trying to wipe it off before I get home.  I sneak out into the woods by myself and play in borrowed dresses and tights.  Small town Pennsylvania, and the alpha male attitude reigns supreme.  I’m bad at sports, I don’t want to play them, and I would rather read or write.  I cry easily.  My mood swings become more severe as adolescence drags on.  I hear my friends’ parents whisper about therapy and medication when they think I can’t hear.  My mother will have none of it.  I just need to toughen up. 

            My room becomes a refuge.  The homophobic jocks at school and indifferent teachers can never reach me here.  Music by bands like Skinny Puppy, Front Line Assembly, and The Sisters of Mercy inspires me.  That harsh duality I so crave is ever present in the music.  There is sadness, yes, but also that undercurrent of revolt against a world which we have no control over.  I see it in punk, and I’ll see it again in a few years when I escape Pennsylvania and immerse myself in the Anti-Globalization/Anti-Capitalist movement of the late 90’s/early 2000’s. 

            Sites of desolation and almost unbearable loneliness start to feel like home.  The world feels quieter, safer, I feel more at ease.  I wish I could go out only at night.  The cemetery, abandoned houses, the woods, abandoned buildings, the remnants of weird, rural, rust belt machinery from an era past.  I haunt it all as a teenager. In my head, I like to imagine myself as similar to a small town British Punk Rocker in the 80’s, living in both a world of “No Future” and one of endless possibilities at the same time.    

            In the music, I find that tenderness I can find almost nowhere else, it’s okay to be sad, to cry.  The state of the world is enough to make anyone despair.  Its okay, the music holds me though long Pennsylvania winter nights.  I can’t sleep, and there is nowhere to go, and nothing but snow and scary rednecks for miles.  My adolescent brain finds it analogous to living behind enemy lines.  I have the music, I put on my make up at night, get my tights and dresses out of their hiding places.  In this space, I feel safe.  I don’t have to be such an angry boy all the time; I don’t have to be a boy at all. 

            Punk is changing my life forever too, but the type of punk I’m finding seems to offer me more cynicism and anger than anything else.  It’s a survival tool.  My friends think anything beyond the scope of emotions offered in Black Flag songs is stupid and weak.  I want to listen to The Cure or the Sisters of Mercy at night after the show, or the party, much to the derision of my friends.  I wear make up to see the Oi! bands that were so popular in the American north east in the mid to late nineties, again much to my friends’ derision. 

            “Why do you have to look so Goth, to go to a PUNK show?”

            I’m wildly in love with punk too, but I feel limited.  I want to feel.  I am unashamed.  I want it all, tenderness and pretty boys singing softly in make up too.  I feel grounded in my sense of justice that something is wrong with our culture, and all the ways people find to express that sense of injustice, of anger, of sadness, seems valid to me. 

It’s like I can see beauty for the first time ever, not some preconceived, prescribed notion of it that exists only on television.  I see the world as a beautiful, wondrous, place that I live in, instead of survive in.  I see it in my friends, in everything, like being awaken from a long sleep.  Most all, I see it in my skinny, awkward, body that everyone has been telling me is inadequate, and shameful for as long as I can remember.  I can see myself through smeared eyeliner, and ripped dresses.  Though I doubt it, and struggle with self loathing still, it’s like my body can feel my genderqueer future ahead of me, and is begging me to hold on, to stay safe, to stay alive inside. 

            I’m glad I did. 

            Now it is 17 years later, and I’m near 31 years old.  The Pennsylvania rust belt and my mother’s hateful words are behind me forever.  The cold, dark, void of dogmatic Christian spiritual desolation is banished forever.  None of them can ever touch me again, never reach that all holy, vulnerable core of my being.  I am free; I am born again every night, in eyeliner, in ripped tights, in black lace, in glitter.  I see the androgynous divine peering back at me in the mirror.  On some nights I can still see that wounded kid who made it through.  Mostly, I see our wild, unfettered genderqueer future, and it looks amazing. 

            In a sense, I owe so much of it Goth movement.  It provided a safe space for me to explore, to play with gender, to subvert that fucker.  Goth helped me learn how to feel, how to not stifle any emotions that do not make you immediately tough, like so many of us who are socialized as male are taught to.  It was a much needed refuge growing up, in what felt like a teenage warzone.  It provided a space to explore the feminine aspects of myself in the midst of homophobic death culture.  The seed of revolt against the gender binary, that was planted when I wore smeared black eyeliner for the first time as a teenager, has taken root and become the well rounded, fierce, genderqueer adult that I am today.   The desire to subvert masculinity in what initially seemed superficial ways grew into an open sense of revolt against patriarchal death culture.  Even through moments of doubt, I’ve never looked back, and never felt so blessed that I had finally come home. 

Goddamn, I love The Cure Pt. 2

1987 - Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me:  First off, I have to say.  Just Like Heaven  is one of my all time favorite songs.  Ever.  This record  marks a further departure from The Cure's moody, gothic rock beginnings.  The record is light, even fun at times.  Their are acoustic guitars, string arrangements, and pleasant singing.  I bought this record in eighth grade.  I listened to it endlessly that summer, it's songs of longing, and lost love, a perfect soundtrack to late night skateboarding and long talks.
Far and above, my fondest memory of this record is listening to it the winter I shared a room with someone I love dearly, in a busted, cold, fucked up punk house.  We moved the bed into the closet to have more creative space in the room, though it ended up being so cold that we didn't spend much time in there anyway.  There was a cheap boombox in the corner of the room, this CD was often put in at night, when it was time to go to sleep.  We would start at If Only Tonight We Could Sleep, joking about how cold it was, and curl up under at least three blankets for warmth, and fall asleep, often as the sun was coming up.  It wasn't always an easy time, or pretty, but it was definitely full of inspiration, and something I look back so warmly on now. 

1989 - Disintegration:  This record marks a return to the darker, less poppy Cure sound.  Some of the guitar melodies are moody enough, that they are reminiscent of 1982's Pornography and at the same time a hint of what would come with 1992's Wish.  This record is great.  It's dark and moody, but in a more grown up way.  It's like looking back at your life as a complete picture, some regrets, some amazing bits, some funny, awkward parts, and a realization that you can never go home again.  Sometimes maybe, but definitely not this time.  It's a soundtrack for lost youth, which was bizarre to hear and identify with at fourteen.  It makes much more sense at 30. Get this record, and listen to how heavy track 11 Homesick is without using any sort of distortion, or traditional heaviness.  It's all in the atmosphere.  You can literally hear the regret in Robert Smith's voice "My eyes are bursting hearts, in a bloodstained sky." 

1992 - Wish:  I will almost guarantee you that nearly any angst ridden teenager from the year this record was released to at least 1996 or 1997 owned this record.  Whatever year Nu-Metal reared it's abominable, neanderthal-esque, head as the standard for angsty kids, is probably when they stopped buying this record and crying in their bedrooms in the dark to it en masse.  Not to sound crotchety, but they have no idea what they are missing.  Holy shit...  This record, this record.  When I was fourteen I couldn't listen to track 3 Apart without bursting into tears.  I just could not do it.  If I was listening to the album the whole way through, and this song came on, I would literally jump up to skip the song.  Robert Smith's moody, soaring guitar riffs are perfected in this record.  Listen to track 9 A Letter To Elise for proof.  Like Pornography before it, there is hardly a song out of place on it.  I would only argue that track 5 Wendy Time is a little off, but someone with a better ear for album completeness might disagree.  You owe it to yourself to listen to this record.  Seriously.  If for nothing else, than the humor value of yours truly, listening to it and trying to write bad poetry that mimicked Robert Smith's lyrical styling, or me and my best friend at the time lying in bed together, confiding in each other about girls, but trying to work up the nerve to give each other handjobs.  I don't mean that to sound as depressing as it does, but being a queer in a small town sucked.  I recently heard that another childhood friend, that I've long lost touch with; named his newborn daughter Elise, after the aforementioned song Letter To Elise.

Alright, that's it.  Thank you for following me down this self indulgent trip down memory lane.  You may notice I didn't include The Cure's later albums.  I omitted them simply because I'm not as familiar with them.  I barely know 1996's Wild Mood Swings, and listened to 2000's Bloodflowers enough to think that it was pretty okay, all Cure records since then are virtually unknown to me.  I covered these records, because they helped define who I am, kept me company through some of the bleakest nights, and I just think they are wonderful records.

Goddamn, I love The Cure Part 1

I will say it with no shame.  Even having spent over half my life being involved in something that can be as cloying and judgmental as punk, The Cure are one of my all time favorite bands.  I started listening to them seventeen years ago, when I was in seventh grade. I have never stopped.  I guess I haven't kept up with their newer records, but their classic ones are still on relatively heavy rotation in my life. 

Robert Smith is a genius songwriter, and was an early genderqueer icon in my life.  Sad songs written by an androgynous tender dude were probably exactly what I needed at fourteen, when I was kind of learning how to be a person who feels in a crazy world. 

Let's go through their (in my opinion) essential albums:

1979 - Three Imaginary Boys:  This was repackaged with a different title, different cover artwork, and slightly altered tracklisting as Boys Don't Cry in the US.  This is the version I primarily grew up with.  I bought this record when I was fourteen, after hearing my best friend at the time listened to the record's final song "Three Imaginary Boys" over and over.  The music is relatively light and poppy, with some darker lyrical themes thrown in.  In my opinion, the last half of the record was always a hint at greater things to come.  I don't love this as much as I love some of their other records, but this one is still essential.  I fell asleep to it often, the year I was in eighth grade, only to be awoken in a start by the bloodcurdling scream at the end of Subway Song.  

                                                    

1980 - Seventeen Seconds:  This record would be the start of the musical direction that The Cure is now known for.  The music is still somewhat poppy, but with darker, slower, melodies, synthesizers sparse, gloomy instrumental tracks and darker lyrical content.  One reviewer described the record as a "sad Cure, sitting in cold rooms, watching clocks"  Legends around the recording of the record say it was recorded in seven days, on a budget of three thousand pounds, and some of the instrumental tracks were meant to be longer, but they ran out of tape whilst recording, and couldn't afford to do them over.  I still think this record is great, and revisit it every so often.  It's lost none of it's power or atmosphere in thirty years.  It's a perfect soundtrack for grey, dreary days.   

1981 - Faith:  For me, this record is the essential soundtrack to long, cold, dark nights of introspection with nobody to keep you company but yourself.  It's an record that seeps with doubt, worry, and isolation, but tries to find hope at the bottom of it all.  I first heard it in 1995, and it ended up keeping me company through some of the worst parts about being a teenager.  Listening to it as a maladjusted adult, the record still makes sense, although I wouldn't want to listen to it every day.  I had a beat up cassette tape (remember those!) copy of this record that I made from a friend and listened to for years, before finally breaking down and buying a copy of the 2005 deluxe edition on compact disc.  The title track of this record is still like falling into an endless, cold existential void, and trying to find reason and meaning at the bottom of it all.  Seriously, I love this record.  Go get a copy of it, lay in your room in the dark, and start listening at all cats are grey, and think about your life, calculate your steps and mis-steps that have led you precisely to this point. 

1982 - Pornography:  What to say about this record?  It's nearly perfect.  It's my understanding that it was pretty universally panned by critics upon it's release.  Legends around the record's recording have the band consuming a pot of mushroom tea every night at the beginning of the recording sessions.  They must have had some serious demons to exercise, becaue the resulting record is bleak, scary, apocalyptic, and beautiful all in one.  The opening guitar riff on "One Hundred Years" is unforgettably chilling,  as are the opening lyrics "It doesn't matter if we all die"  This record is the soundtrack for angst and dread.  The tour for the record reportedly ended with Robert Smith, and Bassist Simon Gallup getting in a fist fight and the band breaking up, only reuniting at the urging of Robert Smith's Father, who reportedly told Smith that people had bought tickets to shows, and he owed it to them to finish the tour.  Seriously, I don't think there is one bad song on this record.  Maybe it's a testament to this record's power, that when I was fifteen I recorded this on tape (again, remember those) from a friend and listened to it until it broke.  I didn't want to borrow the CD from my friend again, so I painstakingly found where the tape had broken, heated up a pair of pliers with a cigarette lighter, and melted the tape just enough, so it held together long enough to record on another tape, which i listened to for years, until finally breaking down and getting a copy of the 2005 remastered edition on compact disc.  How's that for DIY?

1984 - The Top:  I never owned a copy of this record until I was in my mid twenties.  For some reason I remember it always being at least ten dollars more than every other Cure record, and I could never find a copy of it used.  It's a good record.  It marks a transition phase for The Cure.  The nightmarish atmosphere of pornography is completely gone.  Lineup troubles led to Robert Smith essentially writing and recording almost all of this by himself with a session drummer.  It's good, a shift from dark gothic rock themes to more of a light almost psychedelic pop sound. You can probably tell that I don't have many memories of listening to this record.  I did used to listen to a live version of the song "Dressing Up" when I would feebly attempt to tease my hair to go out. 

1985 - The Head On The Door:  Another shift in sound.  I would best describe this record as "dark pop" A good number of the songs are slower, and the lyrical content is still disturbing at some points.  I found a copy of this record on cassette for three dollars at a hole in the wall record shop in Minneapolis.  This record marks the rejoining of bassist Simon Gallup, and was the first record to feature second guitar player Porl Thompson as a regular member.  Some of this record's stand out tracks were compiled on Standing On A Beach, which I listened to regularly as a teenager.  I don't claim to be an expert lyrical analyst, but I prefer to think that Kyoto Song is about being fucked by a strap on.  One can hope. 


I've now been writing this for several hours, and need a break.  I will start fresh maybe later tonight with some notes on Kiss Me Kiss Me, Disintegration, and Wish.

Thanks for reading.

FIrst Post.

I intend to use this blog to practice my writing, and maybe write about music, film, and books.  We'll see how it goes.  I wanted to write up a favorite album to start, but right now the sun is creeping over the horizon, and letting me know it's time to fall back asleep.