Top 11 Songs of the Month- June 2021/ Մարգաց 4513 ~ Lilith My Mother, No Man Cry, Death Loves Veronica

I have been inundated with new music this past month so it’s been hard to narrow my favorites down to just 5. But you know, why limit myself? I’ll just talk about all my favorite new songs this month. Just one per band though, or else I would be writing forever. So this time, let’s call it a Top 11 list. You can think of it as a Top 10 plus an honorable mention, but I would say after the third song these are in no particular order and I like them all equally. I won’t say I will have this many songs every month, I might go back to just 5 next month, but we’ll see. There’s no limit, no maximum. 

I’ve been listening mainly to music that came out either this year or last year. I’ve made some exciting discoveries this month, from bands around the world. A lot of US bands this time around, a lot of California bands in fact, but, I finally found an Armenian goth band! More on that later. 

Lilith my Mother - There’s No Poetry in Light

Lilith My Mother is the solo project of Oleg Degtiarev out of Czechia, and their new album Now released just last month. Included on the album is the original title track along with no less than 13 remixes of the song from artists such as Project Ich, Luin and Batavia. It’s very interesting listening to each artist’s different take on the track, I don’t think I have ever heard so many remixes of one song. It really becomes an entirely different song sometimes. So don’t think the album is going to be redundant with so many remixes of the same song on it, it really is quite varied. No two are the same. In fact Oleg was kind enough to send me the album to listen to and review, and I decided to include it in my monthly Top Songs blog. My favorite track off the album is one of two songs that aren’t “Now”, and that’s “There’s No Poetry in Light”. A terrific song for lovers of the night and lovers of poetry, of which I am both. The lyrics themselves would make a good poem. I definitely recommend checking this album out.

You can find the album here:

https://lilithmymother.bandcamp.com/album/now

No Man Cry - Undead

I finally did it! I finally found an Armenian goth band! They do exist! After finding so many Greek, Russian and Turkish goth bands it feels great to finally hear goth from my homeland. I know The Deenjes, an Armenian band which has made my lists before, can be goth-passing or goth-adjectant on certain tracks, but No Man Cry is fully goth. No Man Cry is the solo project of Tigran Davtyan out of Yerevan, Armenia, founded just last year. He now has three albums out. As soon as I found this band I bought their whole discography. So far my favorite song on the three albums is the above track, “Undead”. The song is off their debut album Kukuruznik, released almost exactly one year ago, which you see on the video above. The usage of an old Soviet skyscraper on the album cover (Kukuruznik, Russian for “corn”, is the name of the building, in fact, a legacy of Soviet modernism in Yerevan) reminds one of Molchat Doma, and given Armenia’s cultural closeness with Russia I wouldn’t be surprised if No Man Cry wasn’t influenced by the bustling Russian post-punk scene that has exploded in recent years. But No Man Cry has a charm all its own. They mainly sing in English, although they do have an occasional song in Armenian. The English in the lyrics isn’t always the best, reminding me of the Greek band Tango Mangalore; for instance one verse in this song is “Body that twitchy, eyes that are twitch, a blood on my hands I am dragging that witch.” It adds to the charm. As does the accent. I love how “Undead” opens with the sound of ravens and a church bell chiming, very classical gothic. The song goes on to have shades of Bauhaus’ “Bela Lugosi’s Dead”, with its “undead” chant, and a gloomy post-punk atmosphere. The drum beat at the beginning even reminds me of that song. In all, I think it’s a good introduction to this band if you want to check them out. 

Check the album out here:

https://nomancry.bandcamp.com/album/kukuruznik

Death Loves Veronica - LIES

“You can’t break the system, it’s always been this way.”

This is another one of those songs, like the thematically similar songs “Deep Down in a Box” by Paradox Obscur and “Off the Grid” by Rein, that correlates with my worldview. It expresses a desire to escape the inescapable dystopian system upon which our society operates. The system is something you can’t escape, it’s always been this way and always will. Or at least that’s what the authorities would have you believe; the Sun has to expand into a red supergiant and swallow the Earth someday, after all, it won’t always be this way. Another good lyric is “Don’t go outside, just play the game.” Stay asleep and obedient, work to make the rich richer, pay your bills, never question anything, and then die. Stay locked up in the cave and stare at the shadows on the wall your whole life. Basically the stuff I write about in my Doom Scroll blogs all the time. The system is a game I never asked to play. 

Death Loves Veronica is the solo project of Veronica Campbell of San Antonio, Texas. She’s been releasing albums for a few years now but I only just discovered her, and I like what I’ve heard. I have a lot of great music to get through. This track is off the album Chemical, which released late last month and can be found here:

https://deathlovesveronica.bandcamp.com/album/chemical

Slow Danse With the Dead- Red Wine and Sad Songs

The ever-prolific Slow Danse With the Dead released a new album mere days ago, called Into the Dark, not to be confused with a two-song EP by the same name released in late May (which I accidentally bought while trying to buy this album on Bandcamp, but it’s okay! One of the songs on that wasn’t on this album at least.) Each SDWTD album is a little different. This album is a bit more up-tempo and synth-heavy than their self-titled album last year, if only by comparison. It also doesn’t sound quite as ironically miserable as the first albums I heard from the band (compare the title track “Into the Dark” to “So Obnoxious” and “Monday Mourning”, you’ll see how the music has evolved), but it’s still satisfyingly dark. My favorite track was the final one, “Red Wine and Sad Songs”, with “Church Be Gone” as a close second. Who doesn’t like sipping red wine while listening to sad songs? Well okay, let me rephrase that, what goth doesn’t like sipping red wine while listening to sad songs? Anyway, Slow Danse With the Dead remains one of my favorite bands right now. 

You can find the album here:

https://slowdansewiththedead.bandcamp.com/album/into-the-dark-2

Mystic Priestess - No Tomorrow, Only Today

Mystic Priestess is a deathrock band out of Oakland, California, same county I grew up in. I wonder where all the goths were when I lived in the eastern San Francisco Bay Area, I always felt like the only one on the planet when I lived there. Anyway, I discovered this band last year when they appeared on a radio show I occasionally listen to either on their website or through Radio Garden, The Hanging Garden on BFF. FM out of San Francisco. I heard the track “Toxic Masculinity” and enjoyed it, but I hadn’t gotten around to listening to to their other music until recently. Their music is often very angry and politically charged, as is the case with the above track “No Tomorrow, Only Today”, a song about how the United States is headed for nuclear doom. But what really grabbed me about this track was the rare and illusive goth sax. Yes, the gothic saxophone appears again. I’m going to make a goth sax mixtape once I find enough songs with it. 

This track is off their self-titled album, which was released last December. Highly recommended listening. You can buy the digital album, but the CD is only two dollars more and you also get their previous EPs as well as the MP3s, so that’s probably the best way to go.

https://mysticpriestess.bandcamp.com/

Glaare - Buyer’s Remorse

Glaare’s 2017 debut album To Death and a Day is still a favorite of mine, I even got it on cassette. The song “My Love Grows in Darkness”, first song on the album, is one of the most beautiful songs I have ever heard, and I don’t say that lightly, considering my MP3 player is now past 2,200 songs. So I was thrilled when I learned that Glaare was going to have a new album out this year. The new album, Your Hellbound Heart, takes their sound in a bit of a new direction, with synthwave tones thrown into their usual shoegaze/post-punk. The theme of the album is sci-fi action movies of the 1980s, such as Hellraiser and They Live. One of the songs is even called “Terminator 2” and is told from the perspective of Sarah Connor, a character in the film. It’s very much a concept album, which are getting rare these days. Like their previous album, listening to it from beginning to end is like listening to one single work rather than a collection of unrelated songs, and that’s the mark of a good mix. There’s a lost science to placing songs on an album (or mixtape) in a way that they flow into each other and you kind of forget that you’re listening to more than one song at times. Glaare is good at this.

 My favorite off the album is “Buyer’s Remorse”, with the title track “Your Hellbound Heart” a close second. Those two songs are a bit slower and sound closer to Glaare’s initial sound, although I do like all the songs. Admittedly nothing is quite like “My Love Grows in Darkness”, but perhaps that song is like lightning in a bottle. I do wonder if this album signals a permanent change of musical direction for the band, or if the next one will be different still.

Listen to it here:

https://glaare.bandcamp.com/album/your-hellbound-heart

Pitch After Dark - Torn

I discussed this band last month when I was hooked on their song “Trapped Inside”. I bought both of their albums then, and I love every song on both. This song eventually surpassed “Trapped Inside”. It’s more subdued and mellow than that song, but with that same great post-punk sound. I just love the vocals of singer Pari Dark, and while the guitar solos that appear in their songs almost feel a bit outside the genre, that punctuate the songs well. Anyway, this song is a good one to listen to during my walks outside. Dark yet relaxing.

This track appears on their self-titled debut album, released last year.

 https://pitchafterdark.bandcamp.com/album/pitch-after-dark

New Cross - Fist of the Hanged Man

New Cross is a band out of London, England, which emerged last year. I recently became hooked on this song after it was shared on the Guitars and Sound YouTube page. I went on a quest to find out more about this band for the blog but information seems pretty scant. They do have quite a lot of music out despite only debuting last year though, so it looks like I have some more new music to get to! This song can be found on the Fist of the Hanged Man EP, which also includes an instrumental version of the track. 

https://newcrosss.bandcamp.com/album/fist-of-the-hanged-man

Qyburn - Rain on a Grave

This song has two versions, a slow version and a speeded up version. I find that I prefer the speeded up version, but maybe it depends on one’s mood. This song is atmospheric and dreary. It just puts the image  in your mind of a foggy graveyard, raindrops falling upon a tombstone. I imagine if it were played live a fog machine with blue and purple lights would be a must. Maybe it’s because of the image on the above video but I feel like the hooded druid is perfect too, like the Ghost of Christmas Future presiding over the grave of Ebenezer Scrooge. I guess this song just takes my imagination places. Which judging by Qyburn’s Bandcamp page was the intent. The music is supposed to evoke a setting. They’ve succeeded.

Qyburn is based out of Los Angeles, California. This track is off their new album Wax Mask.

https://qyburn.bandcamp.com/album/wax-mask

Serj Tankian - Your Mom

Alright, time for some rock music. Serjik appears on my non-music related blogs quite frequently due to how our viewpoints usually align, but I hadn’t actually listened to his music in a long time until this song came out and got stuck in my head for days. Then I had to go marathon his discography again. This ties in with a nu-metal kick I’ve been on lately, which I will talk about next. Anyway, this song is a scathing attack on Islamic extremism, but I think it could also apply to anyone whose extreme dogmatic philosophy leads them to kill, like Armenia’s wonderful neighbors to the east for instance. I almost wonder if that is indirectly what he’s singing about, given present circumstances. I mean I guess ISIS and Al Qaeda still exist but they haven’t been in the news much for several years (that’s American news for you though, they exist but they aren’t a useful boogeyman at the moment so they’re not talked about). Some might take issue with the abelist language in it, (the word “retarded”, specifically), just to forewarn. I think he could have used a better word there. I mean when I was in high school just 20-ish years ago everyone was calling each other that, but it’s hurtful to people with mental disabilities so I don’t say it anymore. I’ve been trying to understand the connection with “your mom”. I think he’s asking if their mother would approve of their bloodthirsty behavior. I’m not exactly sure. Serj ending the song with “nah, bruh” was a stroke of genius though. Can we make this man Prime Minister of Armenia, please? 

This track is off his new album Elasticity. You can find the album here:

https://serj.themerchcollective.com/

Tetrarch - I’m Not Right

You know what, I like nu-metal and I’m tired of pretending that I don’t! So along with my typical musical tastes of post-punk, darkwave, and all the other spooky wave genres, thanks to my old CD collection now being on my MP3 player I’ve been going back and listening to the nu-metal of my early teens for the first time in many years (Korn, Disturbed, System of a Down, Adema, even Linkin Park). My trip down memory lane transferred over to Youtube where I was searching for other music I remembered from back then, and I eventually landed upon this band. People say Tetrarch is like a cross between Korn, Slipknot and Linkin Park (minus the rap, which yeah, was never my favorite part of a Linkin Park song). The singer sounds like Chester Bennington, the guitar work brings to mind Korn and on the heavier tracks Slipknot. There was another band that sounded just like that in the early 2000s known as Adema, a band I have also been listening to for the first time in forever. So really this band is carrying the torch of all these bands. This just goes to show what I’ve said on this blog before. Crusty old fogeys who complain that today’s music sucks just aren’t digging deep enough, and if you look hard enough you will find some band, somewhere in the world, making music in a genre most people think is dead. Case in point, I thought nu-metal was long dead, having been killed off by emo in the mid-2000s. I mean the only other genre I can think of that was “killed” by a sudden backlash like that is disco. I don’t know why everyone turned on nu-metal. And yet here I find a new band that makes me feel like a moody 14 year old again. It looks like nu-metal is making a recovery!

This track is off their new album Unstable, and can he found here:

https://tetrarch.bandcamp.com/album/unstable

Emotions versus Logic in the Face of Defeat

Two modes of thinking since the announcement that Artsakh is going to be divided up, much of it given to Azerbaijan including Shushi, the smoldering ruins of whatever is left placed under the watch of Russian peacekeepers. 

First, the emotional, initial gut feeling. I am going to get this off my chest. For this, as is typical of me, I have a song that this reminds me of. A song I had not heard for years before it entered my brain when this news dropped.

“No one saved us. No one’s gonna save us now. Not even God.” “Where do you expect us to go when the bombs fall?“ Very relevant lyrics, all things considered.

This week, we have learned that ethnic cleansing, genocide, torturing to death prisoners of war, bombing cities with carpet bombs that are supposedly “illegal”, burning down forests with phosphorus bombs that are supposedly “illegal”, paying terrorist mercenaries $100 for every severed head they can produce, is rewarded in this world. It will get you what you want. If you have enough money, the word “illegal” becomes meaningless. The rest of the world will look the other way. The UN is powerless and meaningless. You can make a weapon illegal, but who’s going to enforce it? Laws only apply to the poor, not the rich. There is no such thing as justice. Justice does not fucking exist. Karma? Ha! Turkey and Azerbaijan are above karma. Hundreds of years have gone by, and they’ve never once been punished. Might as well wait for the United States to be punished for their treatment of Native Americans. It’s never going to happen. There is no such thing as karma. How many times do you need to be let down? How many times do your prayers need to fall on deaf ears? No one is listening. No one cares.  What a shitty world. I hate it here. I hate this place. 

Do I blame Nikol Pashinyan for signing away Armenia’s land and what little independence it still had? When I first learned of the news, my initial reaction was to blame him. But, now that I have had time to process everything, I see that perhaps it was the only thing he could do in those dire circumstances. But I would have appreciated it if he’d been more honest. This was all done behind everyone’s back. We were fed bullshit by the media that we were winning. Certainly keeping morale up is important, as is not giving information to the enemy. But really, my confidence in Armenian news media is shaken, perhaps forever now. I feel like I let myself fall victim to the echo chamber. I should have paid attention to neutral sources. Now, we are at Russia’s mercy. As soon as they stop giving a shit, and they pull out their peacekeepers, that will be it for Armenia. Turkey will take the rest. Maybe it will happen in fifty years. Maybe it will happen next year. No one will remember Armenia when it is gone. Its history will be erased, as it has been in every other part that the Turks have taken. But, perhaps there is some small comfort in knowing that this is the eventual fate of every country on Earth. The human race can’t have too much longer before they drive themselves to extinction, after all. Nothing is forever. Not even this planet and the star it orbits.

The second response: logic. Here’s a good interview that presents the more logical take.

Pashinyan acted before the situation could get even worse. Artsakh is not completely gone, yet. The rest of Armenia is intact, for now. And for the first time, the remaining people of Artsakh do have some kind of legal status and security guarantee. And most importantly, the war is finished, and the killing has stopped. After all, people’s lives mean a lot more than humanity’s abstract lines in the sand. Armenia lost around 1,300 people to this madness (that number will inflate once the bodies are counted, sigh). And for now, it is over. Or at least, on pause. And from the Azeri side, they still didn’t get all of Artsakh like they wanted, and now, they have  Russian soldiers on their soil. They are now a Russian colony just like Armenia is. The real winner of this war, despite Azerbaijan coming out on top, is Russia. Azerbaijan paid a heavy price for their gains. They think they’ve won, but let’s wait until it sinks in. It will be interesting to see what happens to them in the long run, when their oil reserves run out, and perhaps with it, their free pass to commit all the genocides they want.

Going forward, the only solution for Armenia is unity. Division does no one any favors. It doesn’t help. All the crying in the world isn’t going to change reality. This is the way things are now. We have to adapt. Things are grim right now. They’ve always been grim though. Perhaps grimmer. Maybe there is still a way for Armenia to survive. Doom and gloom doesn’t help anything. This may be every politician’s favorite excuse, but Pashinyan has inherited this mess from his corrupt predecessors. He should have acted before Shushi was lost I think, but, we don’t know the whole story, do we? I sure don’t. I’m not going to be an armchair general. Bottom line is I don’t think this is all his fault. I am not loyal to him, but I think Armenia is better off keeping him around instead of trading him for a Russian lackey, in my humble estimation, as much as my opinion from the diaspora counts, which is not for much.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I desperately need some kind of a distraction from the world. I have not slept well for the past two nights, I got maybe 4 hours of sleep last night over this stuff. I need to tune it out for my own well being. There’s just nothing at all that I can do about this. I won’t be sharing this blog entry around, this was just something I wrote to work through my feelings, but if you did manage to find it, well, I hope you learned something. 

Top 3 Songs of the Month - November 2020/Տրե 4513 - Selofan, Minuit Machine, System of a Down

The sun is waining, the outside temperatures in Florida are nearly comfortable, got a nice out of season tropical storm going on right now. The US presidential elections have been decided, and they elected the good cop instead of the bad cop. It’s probably going to be more of the same really, the same puppeteers still pull all the strings, but maybe I’m just pessimistic, not to mention way further left than either candidates. 

My focus has not been on that, but on the ongoing Artsakh war, doom-scrolling on Facebook and Reddit for news on the bombardment of Shushi, second largest city in the region. I find Reddit to be the more level-headed place to get one’s news. There’s quite a bit of inaccurate news passed around on Facebook. But you sure can’t rely on mainstream media for news on the conflict. Best you’ll get is some brief “neutral” coverage that blames both sides. Imagine a neutral report of Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939 presenting both sides as equal aggressors. That’s basically what it is. You have Azerbaijan, Turkey, and Syrian and Pakistani terrorists against a small country of 3 million people, fighting alone for more than a month. Who do you think is the aggressor? I don’t have much more to say about the war than I already have said in my blogs last month, but it has been the main source of my angst and depression since September 27th. Maybe I should be glad nothing in my personal life is giving me that much stress, so I have the luxury of stressing about wars in distant countries instead. But I will always feel a connection to Armenia. I did write and submit a poem about my feelings watching the war unfold from the Armenian diaspora to the website https://kooyrigs.org/, who are putting together a poetry compilation about the war. Hope I make it in. 

I’m still uploading my webcomic too. It is slowly getting more views. I was almost worried focusing on the comic would cause me to abandon this blog, but not yet. I suppose as long as I want to post ramblings that are too long for a Facebook post, I will keep this blog going. You’re probably not going to see any huge projects on this blog like the Years in Music series for a while though.

Anyway, the general mood of the past month has influenced the music I’ve been listening to. 

Selofan - Absolutely Absent

The Greek darkwave band Selofan released their new album Partners in Hell on October 20, and I have enjoyed what I’ve heard. This song in particular has been running through my head since I heard it. Being plagued by troubles on the other side of the planet as I have been, in a way, I feel absolutely absent myself. 

Find the album on Bandcamp here:

https://selofan.bandcamp.com/album/partners-in-hell

Minuit Machine - To Control

Minuit Machine’s new EP Don’t Run From the Fire released on October 16th. I suppose I’ve been very up to date on my musical tastes as of late. The title track was my top song last month, and this track here is a worthy follow up, with much the same energy as the other. The lyric “I want you to be scared” sounds really badass. The rest of the song has almost a horror sort of feel to it. Which also fits my mood these days. A good 2020 track, this is. 

The EP Don’t Run From the Fire can be purchased here:

https://minuitmachine.bandcamp.com/album/dont-run-from-the-fire

System of a Down - Protect the Land

Surprising everyone, except perhaps those who already knew about the second Artsakh War, was the return of System of a Down after a 15 year hiatus. This singularly brought more awareness about the war than anything else thus far. And it is good to hear this band again. I have listened to and enjoyed Serj Tankian’s solo music, as well as some of Scars on Broadway, which was started by the rest of the band. But I had forgotten what it was like to hear them all together in the studio again. The way they harmonize is so different from any of their solo stuff. I of course have a long history with this band. I first heard them in 1999, and liked them before I even knew they were Armenian. I was at their concert in Yerevan in 2015 for the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide. And while my musical tastes have moved on from rock and metal (hence why this isn’t higher up on my top 3), I have always had a special place in my heart for this band. 

The song is an ode to those in Artsakh who are fighting to protect their homes. 

Proceeds from this track as well as “Genocidal Humanoidz” go directly to ArmeniaFund, which right now is sending aid to the victims of Artsakh who have had to flee the invasion. It’s only two dollars for the songs. But you can always give more. 

Here is where you can buy the two songs:

https://systemofadown.bandcamp.com/

Honorary Mention: Orange Sector- Zerstorer

Orange Sector is a band I first heard a couple years ago, with cathartic songs such as “I Hate You” and “I Spit on You”. I’m sure everyone knows someone they would dedicate those songs to. This song, German for “Destroyer”, is a catchy and danceable Industrial/EBM track. It’s a type of music I was more into back in my 20s, reminding me of bands such as And One (who in fact did a song with the same name which I cannot help but be reminded of), but every once in a while it’s a good genre to return to. This track came out March of this year. And unusually for me, it was my wife Deborah who discovered it first and then turned me onto it. She’s usually more into pop music, but she liked the two songs I mentioned earlier. 

https://infactedrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/zerst-rer

Mixtape Reflections: Naqoyqatsi: Life As War

           

It was early April 2016, when Azeri forces instigated a blitzkrieg against the unsuspecting border villages in the Republic of Artsakh. I had just been in Artsakh less than a year earlier. I had met people who lost family in their war for independence in the early 1990’s; I had been to their war museums, I had even been taken up to the trenches at the ceasefire line. Even though I was in the US at the time, this brief four-day war shook me to the very core. I had to take time away from social media as it became bombarded with graphic images. The US media tends to censor gore out of their news coverage, but Armenia does no such thing. The image of an elderly couple, slaughtered in their homes in their sleep after Azeri soldiers snuck into their home in the middle of the night, is forever etched into my psyche. And I did what I often do when I need a coping mechanism. I made a mixtape, this time about the horrors of war. And now, with the United States invading Iran, I felt like returning to this tape. It’s not a mixtape I listen to often, but it is there when I need it. I am troubled by the prospect of war with Iran for many reasons. I bear no ill will to Iran or its people, and believe the United States is the definite aggressor, working at the behest of its allies. And I detest war. There’s never a good reason for it. Self-defense, maybe, but then there’s no good reason for the aggressor to be attacking.

Naqoyqatsi is a Hopi word meaning “Life as War”; or in one interpretation, “civilized violence”. I guess one way you could interpret it is war or violence becoming routine. I don’t speak Hopi, so I can’t really say for sure. The name came to me after watching the Qatsi trilogy of films, which mainly consist of stock footage and images paired with orchestrations by Phillip Glass, focusing on some aspect of human society. Koyaanisqatsi, the first and most famous, is my favorite of them. Naqoyqatsi was the third and final film in the series, and you can read about it on Wikipedia if you like. The opening track to the mixtape is of course the theme song of that film. Listening to the orchestration gives you a mourning feeling, and a feeling of horror. The energy of war. 

Next, we have the two opening tracks from Hanzel und Gretyl’s 2003 album Uber Alles. I feel the need to stress this to those who give these tracks a listen: I don’t think the band Hanzel und Gretyl are neo-nazis; they’ve gone on the record stating that their music is a form of satire. But they’re still banned in Germany, perhaps because there are those might take their music non-ironically. I understand if someone has misgivings about their music. My own great-grandfather, a Jew living in Austria under Nazi rule, was shot and killed when he failed to pass their Aryan tests, and my grandfather Suren spent much of World War II as a prisoner of the Germans. These are blog posts for another time. These tracks to me symbolize the way governments beat the war drums and whip their citizens into a frenzy for war with propaganda. It’s the same in any country on Earth. Think about the techniques Germany used to prepare its citizens for World War II. How many of these techniques have you seen other countries use on their citizens? How many are being used right now?

From there we go to Voltaire’s song “Crusade”, in which a brave knight is radicalized into thinking dragons are evil, and he goes to slay one, only to find that the dragon was a mother protecting her young. Years later, his son is radicalized into believing that Muslims are evil and he wants to join the crusades; the father warns him to know his enemy. The song is about humanizing the so-called “enemy”, and its lesson is an important one. We’re all human beings. We are one. Why do we kill one another? Because we make the enemy into an “other”. We demonize and dehumanize them.

Rage Against the Machine’s “Darkness of Greed” speaks for itself mainly. Wars and genocides are committed by the rich to satisfy their greed. The poor are sent to their deaths so that the rich can fill their pockets. Genocide and war often go hand-in-hand. And they’re both caused by greed. As an Armenian, I know this only too well.  I’ve known this song for a long time, and I always felt a connection to it.

Next is System of a Down’s “Soldier Side”. They’re going to be on this tape a lot. A song from the soldier’s point of view, and that of their mothers watching them go off to war. Watching your friends die, the black hand of death always looming. “They were crying when their sons left, God is wearing black. He’s gone so far to find no hope, he’s never coming back.”

Voltaire returns to the tape with “Accordion Player”. It’s because lyrically I find it relates to both the previous and the next song. This song is actually a cover of a song by the somewhat lesser-known Julia Marcell. Both versions are good, but I chose this one for the bomb sound effects at the end of the song. It’s about an accordion player who didn’t want to be drafted into the war. He wanted to keep playing his songs. “Oh mother, I could die a hero, and bring glory to your home. But what would you do in a house full of glory if you had to live there alone?” What really gets me is when I was in Artsakh, I stayed in the home of a mother who lived alone in a house full of glory; her husband and son had fought against Azerbaijan in the early 1990’s. I’ll do an in-depth blog entry about my time in Artsakh at a later date. But this song really encapsulates my feelings on war.

The sounds of bombs and gunfire at the end of “Accordion Player” bleeds into Metallica’s “One”, a song which begins with sounds of war. Probably the most well-known song on the tape so far. This song was inspired by the book Johnny Got His Gun by Dolton Trumbo, a book about a soldier in World War One who had all of his limbs, his eyes, his lower jaw and his nose blown off by a bomb, leaving him blind and deaf, being kept alive in a hospital and wanting nothing more than to die. The insanity and horror of war. If everyone read this book there’s be a lot more anti-war sentiment in the world, let me tell you.

And One’s “Unter Meiner Uniform” (Under My Uniform) is in the same vein as the previous songs. The line that strikes me most translates to “Under my uniform, we can only die once.” I remember having this song in my head when I visited the Fallen Soldiers Museum in Stepanakert, Artsakh. The walls covered with portraits of fallen soldiers, old uniforms. A shrine to those who needlessly died; a war of self-defense on their part. The reasons behind any war, no matter which side is in the right or the wrong, who was the aggressor and who was the defender, do not change the costs much at all.

The faces of war.

Cradle of Filth’s “Sleepless”, a cover of a song by Anathema, captures the raw anger and despair behind those who suffer because of war in a way only black metal really can. “Surely without war, there would be no loss, hence no mourning, no grief, no pain, no misery. No sleepless nights missing the dead.”

Me at the monument to Sardarapat

Side B starts with the song “Sardarapat”, an Armenian anthem to the battle of Sardarapat in 1918. My own great uncle fought and died in this battle, in which the Turkish army attempted to invade Armenia and destroy the country once and for all. However, the Armenians were victorious, and declared their independence after pushing back the Turkish aggressors, ensuring that today there is still an Armenia on the map. Once again though, I put this song here not to glorify war. As glad as I am that the battle of Sardarapat turned out victorious for Armenia, it should never have happened in the first place. My great-uncle could have survived. Instead, my grandfather grew up an orphan. He was around 13 years old, with no living immediate family save for a sister; his father died sometime before of typhoid fever I believe, and the story is that his mother died of fright when she learned the Turks were invading the area they lived. War has cast a long, dark shadow on my family. Did you know psychological trauma can be inherited and passed down the generations? Explains a lot of these blog entries.

System of a Down’s song “War?” is a song I’ve actually already talked about on this blog, and appears on the mixtape for obvious reasons. Marilyn Manson’s “Cruci-Fiction in Space”, I believe, illustrates what drives humanity to the practice of war. “This is evolution: the monkey, the man, and the gun.” Is the gun the end result of our evolution, when we inevitably cause our own extinction with it? Time will tell. The next song, “Jihad” by The Kovenant”, is on the mixtape to represent religious wars of all sorts. Merely another justification for war put forth by the rich who profit from it. Killing is easier when God says it’s alright.

Ayria’s ”Friends and Enemies” is another song I’ve spoken of on this blog before. It makes me think about human nature, of what drives humanity to create “enemies”, of pacifism versus violence. Are people your enemies, or is it the philosophy they follow that is the enemy? Is it ever okay to retaliate? System of a Down’s “B.Y.O.B.” (Bring your own Bomb) poses the question “Why don’t presidents fight the war? Why do we always send the poor?” The answer to that of course is obvious, but the question is something more people need to ask themselves. You’re not going to see Trump or any of his family at the frontlines in Iran, that’s for sure. No, it’s going to be the poor and the young, who joined the military because health insurance and college are kept expensive by the powers that be; done in lieu of the draft because that seems to make the masses too angry for some odd reason.

And One’s “Steine sind Steine” is about the endless colonialism engaged in by the higher powers. The same patterns followed throughout history. Translated lyrics include “first comes gold, then comes the world”, “first comes pride, then comes your land”. People are too historically illiterate to see the patterns. And they’re kept that way on purpose. If you’re over twenty years old you’ve already seen this play out in your lifetime with the farce that was the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, I don’t get why these idiotic armchair warriors who are actually for the invasion of Iran continue to be fooled.

Covenant’s “The Dark Conquest” is yet another song I’ve talked about on this blog before. A song about a dark lust for power, from the point of view of an overlord that has conquered an empire and left ruin in his wake. The album In Times Before the Light is mainly dark fantasy, but fantasy is always a reflection of reality. This song would be on the playlists of many tyrannical warlords throughout history, if they had playlists.

With the tape wrapping up, we return to Hanzel und Gretyl with the song “Auf Wiedersehen”. A song about ruin befalling a country on the losing side of a war, its pride in tatters, sounds of bombs falling in the background. Like Germany in 1945, and so many other countries throughout time. And the last song is by The Kovenant. ”Industrial Twilight”, is a song about nuclear apocalypse. Which of course, is the end game when it comes to war. It’s how this is all going to end up if we don’t put a stop to it. We’re only one world war away. “In nuclear war, all men will be cremated equal.”

At the end of the day, there’s nothing I can do about war beyond writing about it, and making mixtapes that only I am ever going to listen to. And, even though I hate that it’s happening, it really doesn’t affect my personal life beyond perhaps gas prices, at least until the nukes start flying. I think I’m too old to be drafted, should it ever come to that. I’d probably be a poor fit for the military anyway. Yet it depresses me anyway. I’m too empathetic for my own good. But I can only control what I can control. I can take care of my wife and kid (and hope there’s not a war going on when he’s 18), and I can work on my novels. Anything else is beyond my control.

There are more songs I could have put on the mix, but the tape was only 90 minutes. Fortunately and somewhat surprisingly, I was able to find all of these songs on Spotify (although “Unter Meiner Uniform”, even though I found it, wasn’t playing for some weird reason, so I‘ll link that to YouTube), so now all of you can listen to the mix too. Go ahead and give it a listen, if you feel in the mood for a playlist with anti-war sentiment.

Naqoyqatsi:Life As War – Spotify Playlist   

Side A

Phillip Glass – Naqoyqatsi

Hanzel und Gretyl – Overture

Hanzel und Gretyl – Third Reich from the Sun

Voltaire – Crusade

Rage Against the Machine – Darkness of Greed

System of a Down – Soldier Side

Voltaire – Accordion Player

Metallica – One

And One – Unter Meiner Uniform

Cradle of Filth – Sleepless

Side B

Sardarapat

System of a Down – War?

Marilyn Manson – Cruci – Fiction in Space

The Kovenant – Jihad

Ayria – Friends and Enemies

System of a Down – B.Y.O.B.

And One – Steine sind Steine

Covenant – The Dark Conquest

Hanzel und Gretyl – Auf Wiedersehen

The Kovenant – Industrial Twilight

And yes I've been doing a lot of mixtape reflections as of late. I want my next blog entry to be about something else, but I don't have a topic yet. But I love talking about music, and have over 200 mixtapes from nearly 21 years of making them, so that's always going to be a common topic on this blog. So yes. Stay tuned.

System of a Down - Day 9 of 10 Albums that Changed my Life

System of a Down

Genre: Metal

Year: 1998

Year I discovered it: 1999

Back in 1999, I started to hear this insane song on the radio called “Sugar” by System of a Down. I recorded it on a few mix tapes when I was lucky enough to catch it playing, and it became a favorite of mine. It wasn't until early 2001 at age 14 that I finally bought the album it came on, their self-titled debut album, and while reading the liner notes I came to the startling realization that the band members were Armenian. I would have liked them anyway, but that was certainly an added bonus. I’ve been accused of only liking this band because the members are Armenian before, but that’s not true. I bought their first album having no idea they were Armenian. The rest of the songs on the album were favorites of mine that year, until their next album Toxicity came out soon after. And my relationship with this band came in full circle when I was lucky enough to get to see them play live in Yerevan, Armenia in 2015. This was still the most amazing concert I have ever been to, and made me realize how far I had come from being a 13-year-old kid holed up in my room recording mix tapes off the radio to a 29-year-old teaching in Armenia.

The album begins with the high energy track “Suite-Pee”. The song lets you know what you’re going to be in for listening to this album: insanity, but with hidden deep messages in the lyrics. There is method to their madness, if you penetrate deeply enough into the true meaning. In this case, it’s a song about religion.  Ah religion, everyone’s favorite topic to have rational, friendly discussions about. I already brought it up in the last blog, so why stop now I suppose. Jesus is referred to with female pronouns throughout the song, for whatever reason. “Try her philosophy, try her philosophy, try her philosophy, try. You die for her philosophy, die for her philosophy, die for her philosophy die.”  They could also be singing about the crusades and other holy wars, the Spanish Inquisition, the colonization of the Americas, anything on Christianity's long wrap sheet. This is hardly limited to Christianity, of course. It’s an Abrahamic thing. Don’t ask me what the lyric “I want to fuck my way to the garden” means. I’ve got nothing.

“Know” is even harder to interpret, I don’t have much of an idea what the lyrics mean. But the other songs all mean something (excepting one other song coming up that’s total nonsense). System of a Down is teasing me trying to get me to figure out what the song means. Maybe it means nothing. But maybe it means something. I don’t know. “Know”. Aha! Eureka! They “know” what it means, but I don’t. I need to get to a point where I do know. I understand these songs a lot better than I did back in 2001. It took many years for me to mature to the point where I could piece it together. Maybe I’m not quite there yet with this song. It sounds nice though. Almost has a particular Middle Eastern, dare I say Armenian, flavor to it. Like a lot of their music.

Then we have “Sugar”, the main single from this album that got played on the radio occasionally. In the late 90’s to early 2000’s, I would listen to the radio stations with a blank cassette loaded into the tape deck, and play a waiting game for music I liked to come on. I had an awful time trying to get this song sometimes, it was rare. But I managed. It appears on my 5^th mix tape, censored by the radio station of course. This was my favorite song when I was 13. The song mirrors a sugar rush, as the energy just builds and builds. “What do I do, what do I day? In the end it all goes away.” I’d never heard anything like it before when I first heard this song. Not since, either. The music video (which I never saw until YouTube was a thing) definitely had something deep to say, as stated by that newscaster in the beginning, about how the rich corporations basically rule the world and tell you what to think through the news outlets that they all own. “You’re mine. I tell you what they want you to know, and you consider it the truth!” This is the dystopia we live in. I get most of my news from outside the US on Armenian news sites or from RT (the Russian news channel), where even if it is still biased and trying to get you to think a certain way, they’re talking about things the US news never talks about. Stuff outside what Disney, Viacom and General Electric want you to know. I only rely on local news for the weather (and even that’s unreliable at times) and other petty news stories from around where I live. Either way, it’s all BS no matter where you get your news from, just different levels of it. Anyway, more people should watch this music video. There’s probably a good reason I never saw it on MTV back in the day. 

        

“Suggestions” is a song that always takes me back to this cruise to Mexico I took with my high school band class during Freshman year of high school, in April 2001, during the week of my 15^th birthday as it happened. We all got on a bus and it drove all night from Pleasant Hill to Los Angeles. I had a portable CD player, and I still remember the CD’s I brought with me. This one, Rob Zombie’s Hellbilly Deluxe, Rammstein’s Mutter, and Linkin Park’s Hybrid Theory (I was 14 and it was 2001, of course I listened to Linkin Park). I just listened to these CD’s on repeat for the whole trip. The lyrics “Watching, from a post up high, from where you see the ships afar. From a well-trained eye, the waves will keep on crashing by” reminds me of standing on the deck, looking out at the ocean and watching the waves. I haven’t ever been on a cruise since then. We were only in Ensenada, Mexico for a couple hours even though the cruise was for five days, but it was my first taste of being in another country, making it slightly less of a culture shock when I later went to Armenia.

               “Spiders” is finally a breather song, a little slower than the others, gives you time to rest. It’s the first song on the album where there’s a quotation in the liner notes giving us a clue as to what the song is about. This one says “Your thoughts and dreams are no longer sacred as they are exposed to a weapon known as remote viewing and monitoring.” Can you imagine getting a fortune cookie that has that message? This album was prophetic. Twenty years later, here we are with TV’s that watch us, and telephones that listen in on us, all so they can bombard us with tailor-made ads while selling our information to insurance companies so they know who’s not worth covering and do who knows what else with our information. System of a Down knew what was going on way back then, and they tried to warn us, but nobody listened.

          “DDevil” (not a typo) has the note “For those that control the central nervous system control society, and the world.” Deep stuff. Who controls the central nervous system? Have we lost control of that to the corporations too? If not yet, we probably will soon. They’ll start implanting the internet into our brains and every time we close our eyes we’ll see an advertisement. Just you wait. It sounds crazy now, but give it ten or twenty years. One line I’ve always been fascinated by in this song is “Stupid people do stupid things. Smart people outsmart each other, then themselves.” How do you outsmart yourself? Am I not smart enough to understand that line? Could be. I like to think of myself as smart, but so does everyone else. Nobody actually thinks they’re stupid. Maybe I’m actually stupid and don’t know it. How would you know if you were stupid? I think you’d have to be at least a little smart to know that you’re stupid in the first place.

Excuse me, I have a book to read now.

          "War?" has a poignant quote in the liner notes. "We first fought the heathens in the name of religion, then Communism, and now in the name of drugs and terrorism. Our excuses for global domination always change." Yes, the United States always has a boogeyman to justify their wars. It's amazing this was written before 9/11. But of course, phony excuses for war has been a signature American tactic since at least 1898, when the sinking of the USS Maine gave the US the excuse it was looking for to go to war with Spain. "The Splendid Little War" it was called. Splendid for bankers and corporations. Not so much for the people who died over something stupid. Now that terrorism is becoming old hat, I wonder what boogeyman they'll cook up for the 2020's. Just wait, it'll happen in the next couple of years. I'm just grateful I survived past the age where I could be drafted. I'd never want to fight a war where the entire point of it is to make oil companies richer. The only war I'd ever fight in would be if Armenia was being invaded, because unlike the United States, who tries to get you to lick the boots of the troops for "defending our freedom" that was never under any threat, Armenia has actual threats to their existence.

 The quote for “Mind” is “Mind control technology has been used by the CIA since the 1950’s as part of their non-lethal, covert weapons program.” I don’t really doubt this, but…citation needed, as they say on Wikipedia. The song has a strange intro where the singer Serj Tankian keeps saying “look at each other.” It’s an interesting song, the lyrics don’t make a whole lot of sense to me and I don’t have much else to say about their quote that goes along with the song, so, onto the next one. The song “Peephole” has a nice juicy quote for us to discuss. “The February 18 edition of Britain’s NEW SCIENTIST Magazine reports that the Geneva-based World Health Organization suppressed, under political pressure, a report which confirmed that marijuana is safer than either alcohol or tobacco.” So damn true. D.A.R.E. lied to us as kids. All of those anti-drug programs and TV specials lied to us. Cartoon Allstars to the Rescue lied to us. Marijuana was never made illegal because it was unsafe or unhealthy. If that were true, then alcohol and tobacco would be illegal too. But those both have corporations protecting them. It was made illegal because the pharmaceutical industry was unable to profit off it and used their money to influence politicians to ban it so as to protect their profits. Not to mention it proved a convenient way to criminalize African Americans and other minorities along with young political dissidents, and fill for-profit prisons with non-violent offenders. I really think making drugs illegal is pointless. It doesn’t stop anyone from doing them. But making it illegal is profitable for drug cartels and pharmaceutical corporations, who are equally morally reprehensible. Not that I would know anything about marijuana…I certainly would never smoke it before writing one of my blogs, especially one about Mortiis. Oh no, not me! Ahem. As for the song “Peephole” itself, it was one of my favorites when I first got the album.  

             “CUBErt” is the other song on this album that’s incomprehensible. Just a bunch of words slapped together. Then again if you look at the lyrics, a meaning emerges. For the first couple of verses they sing “popcorn everywhere, canned, cliché people organ rare.” I’ve never seen canned popcorn for sale anywhere. Later on the word “popcorn” is replaced with “humans”. Canned humans, organs rare. Is this song about the harvesting of human organs, to be sold on the black market? I’ve heard horrible stories of that happening in China. One of those things that makes you wonder if karma even exists. So I don’t know what the song’s really about, but who knows? Maybe I’m onto something.

            The question System of a Down poses in the liner notes above the lyrics to the next song, “Darts”, is as follows. “Why do old societies hold the pantheon of 12 gods to be true, while modern societies generally have one God?” Well, there are various historical reasons for that. You could blame the Roman and Arab empires. The song starts with Serj singing in a funny voice, saying “May I please?!” in a shrill way that makes me think of whenever someone on Monty Python cross-dresses and plays an old British woman.  The lyric “Arise as did the gods Ninti and Ishkur” dominates the song. These were Sumerian deities; Ninti was the Goddess of Life, and Ishkur was the God of Storms and Rain. I don’t know a whole lot about the Sumerian pantheon myself, but maybe I ought to educate myself on it sometime. I mainly stick to the Armenian, Urartian (early Armenian, basically) and Egyptian pantheons, though lately I’ve been reading up on the Greek pantheon as well.

Have a read about these two deities for yourself, it’s interesting:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninti

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Ishkur

           And finally, we have the song that made me realize System of a Down was Armenian upon reading the liner notes; “P.L.U.C.K.” (Politically Lying Unholy Cowardly Killers), a song dedicated to the 1915 Armenian genocide perpetrated by Ottoman Turkey. I wasn’t really raised as an Armenian; rather it is a path I chose to follow. At age 14 I didn’t know a whole lot about the genocide, just the basic fact that Turks had killed a lot of Armenians back then. I would later write several term papers and an entire novel about it in my 20’s, after choosing to go by my first name Suren rather than my middle name Michael, which until I was 18 was what I went by. I could probably write an entire term paper on that whole process, but for the sake of brevity I’ll leave it at that for now. “A full race genocide, taken away, all of our pride.” I can’t be sure exactly what the members of System of a Down wanted to convey when they wrote this song, but this is what I get from it. I feel like it’s not only about the Armenian genocide, but also about Armenia defending itself, both when Armenia established a brief independence after the genocide in 1918 when it repelled the invasion of the Ottoman Turks into Armenia’s modern boundaries, and when the Armenians of Artsakh, with help from Armenia itself, stood its ground and refused to be assimilated into Azerbaijan after the fall of the Soviet Union, fighting a war from 1988 to 1994 for their independence. This war would have been very fresh in the minds of Armenians in 1998. “Revolution, the only solution, the armed response of an entire nation, we’ve taken all your shit now it’s time for restitution.” And after attending their concert in Yerevan, on the eve of the 100^th anniversary of the genocide on April 23, 2015, I feel like I’m probably right.

         Yes, everything came in full circle when I was lucky enough to be in Armenia as a volunteer teaching English when this concert took place. Standing out there in Republic Square in Yerevan in the pouring rain, thunder roaring in the clouds, lightning streaking across the sky, listening to the music of my early teens, I felt complete. Alive. And that was our revenge for the genocide. Despite their best efforts, we were alive.

         And the last song they played was “Sugar”. The song that had started it all for me. And it was a million times better and rarer than catching it on the radio.