Top 5 Songs of the Month ~ May 2023 ~ Slow Danse with the Dead, The Blood Pact, Haunt Me

Another busy month, this blog is a bit later than it ought to have been. Should I just start doing these in the middle of the Gregorian calendar month? Maybe. I dunno. These are as of May 8th, the day this blog should have come out, so any song that came out after then has a chance to be on next month’s list. Also, I once again went down memory lane and provided my top 3 songs of May from 20, 15, 10 and 5 years ago. This will take you through many different eras of my life, as I went from metal to dark electro/EBM to post-punk and deathrock.

Anyway, here’s what Ive been listening to.

Slow Danse with the Dead ~ If One Coffin Lid Shuts Another Shall Open

Slow Danse with the Dead is back, now as a three-piece band rather than a solo project. And if the new album Dark Ritual is indicative of their new direction, I am very excited. The first half of the album is rerecorded tracks such as this one, from the earliest days of the band. I chose this song because I’ve always liked the message. The body may die but the soul is eternal. There is no end. But I could just as easily have picked any track off the album as a fave. 

https://slowdansewiththedead.bandcamp.com/album/dark-ritual

The Blood Pact ~ Secrets

I couldn’t find the song on its own, so here’s the full album. It’s the second song after the spooky intro.

The Blood Pact is an 80s style deathrock band out of the US state of Virginia. This whole album is great from start to finish, and is another of those rare concept albums in the age of streaming. The album Death of the Vampire is packed with enough spooky tracks to satisfy any vampiric goth. I actually first came across this album on the video above, and after a few listens I decided to get it on Bandcamp. It’s not The Blood Pact’s first album either, they’ve had a handful of releases since debuting last year.

https://thebloodpact1.bandcamp.com/album/death-of-the-vampire

Type O Negative ~ Black Sabbath

Hot damn, how did I miss this song for so long? I never heard this because it was originally only released on the European single for “My Girlfriend’s Girlfriend”. It’s a cover of a song by of course Black Sabbath, but rewritten in order to give equal focus to Satan, apparently. It’s so badass though. I love it when I uncover some rare track from a band I thought I heard everything from. If you haven’t heard it, you should. It’s delightfully sinister sounding.

Haunt Me ~ All Things Turn Grey

Haunt Me is a band out of Austin, Texas that I’ve been following and enjoying for a while now. This is another one of those “We’re all going to die” songs I keep ending up liking. Other such songs include Type O Negative’s “Everything Dies”, Mortiis’ “Everyone Leaves”, Tears of Ozymandias’ “683280 Hours”, and Devoted Sinners “Everything I’ve Ever Loved is Dead”. Maybe one day I can make a very happy little mixtape of just death songs. Anyway, this one has a nice beat to it at least. I actually feel like it’s reassuring somehow. Yeah my back is ruined for life and my hair’s starting to get just a little thinner, but it happens to everyone. At age 37 I think I’ve still fared better than a lot of people. I still look like I could be in my 20s, despite my internal physical issues. Some people have lost all their hair and teeth by that age. Anyway, memento mori. 

You can find the song here:

https://hauntmeofficial.bandcamp.com/track/all-things-turn-grey

Rubbertankboy ~ Pure as Water

Okay, it’s time to give my thoughts on AI in music. Now the lyrics in this song were generated by AI using Nirvana’s songs, and the song’s music cobbled together by the artist, who did their best to sound like Kurt Cobain. I don’t actually think it does sound like Nirvana, maybe more like another 90s Nirvana-esque band like Local H, but I ended up just liking it as a song. It got stuck in my head. The lyrics “You’re as pure as water and I’m rotting away, I got my reasons. She’s the perfect daughter and I’m a mistake, I got my reasons” resonated with me somehow. 

As for AI music itself, I think it’s okay if you’re just messing around with it for fun, particularly if it’s a deceased singer and the band is never getting back together again anyway. I can see it becoming a problem when you start using it with still-active bands. And it threatens to make pop music even more soulless than it already was if they make completely artificial music with it. I think if you’re going to use it at all this is the ideal way to do it, using a real human to sing it at least, and not for a profit. It comes off more like a tribute than a ripoff this way. I don’t think AI has reached the point where generating a voice makes it sound truly good, yet. At worst you get something like this.

I have different feelings about AI art though. That’s being used by capitalists to force the very few artists who can do it for a living back into wage slavery. If it gets even better this might happen with music too, sadly. 

TOP SONGS OF May THROUGH THE YEARS

20 Years Ago ~ May 2003

My metal phase was ongoing, and The Kovenant mania had still not run its course for me at this time. Their album SETI came out in April 2003, and ended up being the final album from The Kovenant, despite teases from the band that there was another one in the works, or perhaps even finished but never released, titled Aria Galactica. I’m still waiting after all these years! I was also enjoying Cradle of Filth’s Midian album, which I still think is one of their best. Also, I learned through a mix CD a friend had made me of rare Rammstein songs that Rammstein had covered a Kraftwerk song, to my amazement at the time. Too bad it was “Das Modell” though. I think “Sex Object” would have been more up their alley. I wonder if I still have that CD buried somewhere in one of my huge CD binders I have stashed away.

1. The Kovenant ~ Cybertrash

2. Cradle of Filth ~ Tortured Soul Asylum 

3. Rammstein ~ Das Modell

15 Years Ago ~ May 2008

Oh woe was me. I talk about this way more often than I should on this blog, I’ve been over it now for years I swear. It’s not something that keeps me up at night. But this was what was happening with my failed first relationship. On my 22nd birthday, April 21, I learned through a friend that my then-girlfriend was planning on breaking up with me. It shattered me. E Nomine carried me through my sorrows at the time. They were kind of a passing phase I went though, not helped by the revelation that they’re a Christian band. I can’t deny they have a few good songs though. I also gravitated toward “Stitches” by Orgy, and the song served as the title track for a mixtape full of breakup songs I put together as a coping mechanism. 

1. E Nomine ~ Mitternacht

2. Orgy ~ Stitches

3. E Nomine ~ Das Böse

10 Years Ago ~ May 2013

Light Asylum’s IPC topped the charts for the second month in a row, because I could just not get this song out of my head. My then-girlfriend now-wife introduced me to the song “Runnin’ Up That Hill” by Kate Bush, giving me hipster cred over people who didn’t hear it until it was used in Stranger Things. I liked the Placebo cover because it was a bit gothier, but I think the original is overall the best. Ayria’s new album Plastic Makes Perfect was coming out soon too, and it’s still one of my favorites.

1. Light Asylum ~ IPC

2. Placebo ~ Runnin’ Up That Hill

3. Ayria ~ Plastic Makes Perfect

5 Years Ago ~ May 2018

For some reason it took me until 2018 to give The Cure’s early albums a listen. “Cold” is still my favorite song by The Cure. At this time I was starting my grueling call center job with Macy’s, and “Cold” really encapsulated how I felt at the time. Like my heart had to be frozen as ice to be able to handle being yelled at all day. I discovered “See You” by Depeche Mode at this time too. An underrated track from early in the band’s career, from 1982. I wasn’t quite done with my synthwave phase either, hence Gunship. I mostly got tired of the genre by 2019 (because 95% of the songs sound the same or are just instrumentals, and it ceased to be dark and dreary enough for me as my tastes turned toward post-punk and goth rock), although I might still come across a song I like every now and then.

1. The Cure ~ Cold

2. Depeche Mode ~ See You

3. Gunship ~ The Hegemon

Travelogue ~ Disneyworld, and A Brief History of my trips to Disney parks

I’m quite over Disney. Their best movies are usually  the ones that bombed at the box office. Probably the last one I liked at all was Lilo and Stitch, from over 20 years ago. But their movies for the last 10+ years are just regurgitations of older, better movies. So why would I go to Disneyworld? Well, my in-laws went on a vacation to England in April, and came back with my wife’s cousin Thomas who really wanted to see Disneyworld because it’s his first time in America. My mother-in-law also wanted my four year old son Jareth to go, and I needed to be there to help supervise him, as caring for him is a two person job (he’s autistic and has ADHD, and is nonverbal, also prone to running off suddenly). Tickets have ballooned to astronomical prices (for all four of us it cost $500, yikes), I would otherwise be way too poor to afford it, but my mother-in-law paid for us, so I don’t want to seem ungrateful, of course. But I plan on being honest about my thoughts during the trip. If nothing else at least it gave me something to write about, for which I’m grateful. 

A Brief History of my trips to Disney parks

1991

This was to Disneyland, in Anaheim, California. I was five years old so I barely remember anything. But this was the only time I ever went during my childhood, which I somewhat resented later. But now I don’t care. All I remember is that a big part of the park was closed because they were building Toontown, and the castle being way smaller than I expected it to be. Even back then my brain focused on the negatives! Of note though is that we stayed with my paternal grandparents during this trip, and this is the only memory I have of meeting my grandfather Suren. Specifically I remember my grandmother Olga telling me to play chess with my grandfather, but I didn’t know how to play. He was a tall, mountain of a man in my eyes, a bit intimidating. A lot of people thought so too, so I’ve heard. Anyway, these memories are a lot more valuable to me than Disneyland. 

2007

I remember this trip a lot better. It was Disneyland again, and I went in December so everything was Christmas themed. I was 21, and went with my then-girlfriend and some other friends. I paid my way with some money I won at a casino, actually. Another trip I had gone on with my parents months prior. Overall I enjoyed myself, at least at the time. The memory is tainted by how badly that relationship with said girlfriend ended, however. Pirates of the Caribbean, Indiana Jones and Haunted Mansion were my favorite rides. 

2015

I had just moved to Florida, and it was a couple months before my big trip to Armenia. I went to Disneyworld with my future wife. Annnd it wasn’t that great (don’t tell my mother-in-law). Half the time was spent waiting in lines. We waited almost an hour to get on this one roller coaster, and when we got to the end of the line, the ride was shut down. I was so pissed. We went to the Magic Kingdom area, which I didn’t realize was very kid-oriented. I didn’t have a kid yet. So a lot of the rides were not that fun for adults. Rides that had equivalents in Disneyland such as Pirates of the Caribbean and the Haunted Mansion seemed shorter and less fun than their original counterparts. I guess I had high expectations for Disneyworld, having sat through enough ads for it in my lifetime. I felt lied to. Another adulthood disillusionment.

The 2023 Trip

So, with the 2015 trip still fresh in my mind, we left for Orlando. The trip would be different this time now that we had a kid. Another difference is that since 2015 I’ve developed chronic back and tailbone pain, and walking or standing for too long is excruciating. I was also worried about getting hurt on a ride. This along with my anti-capitalist ideology, distaste for modern Disney, and poor experience in 2015 were why I didn’t really want to go, but alas, I had to be a responsible parent. A few days prior we got disability passes so that our spot in line would be saved and I could go sit down somewhere. It works essentially like a “Lightning Pass” that you usually pay extra for, except you do have to abide by the wait time. So if the wait time is 45 minutes, you can walk around or sit and rest elsewhere until the time comes. We needed it even more for my son’s sake, as he gets very impatient while waiting and likely would not tolerate standing in line for more than 15 minutes. The rules were only one person in a group could get the disability pass, which I guess makes sense, we weren’t planning on splitting up. But it did get us into trouble at Haunted Mansion, as I’ll explain. 

I took a bunch of painkillers in preparation for the trip, and we left. We got stuck in traffic on the way there, which is common on any given day on Highway 4, the most dangerous highway in the US. There was more than one crash on the side of the road. I got to expose our guest from England to Slow Danse with the Dead, which I’m not sure he was into, before putting on the more crowd-pleasing Alice in Chains Unplugged album. So few people share my unique musical tastes, alas. 

So we get there, and the entrance is like going through an airport. And don’t think going on a weekday will make things not crowded. There were thousands of people. I still had that old “what if we get Covid” fear left over from 2020. I suppose it wasn’t impossible. But what could I do? I saw maybe one person with a mask. The security guards frisked us and put us through a metal detector, and then we were sardined into a line for the ferry boat to get there. We just missed the ferry boat and had to wait in the hot, punishing sun for the next one. Maybe we should have taken the monorail. But we only had to wait like 15 minutes, making me feel like a whiner even though I didn’t vocally express my discomfort. Easy now, we only just got here, plenty of time for crotchety old complaining later. 

After we got off the ferry, there was a stupid sky-writing plane spelling out “Jesus loves you” in the sky, lowering my respect for Disney even further. They must have at least given permission for this. By the time they reached the end of the phrase the first part was illegible. Hey, if your deity is real, why did that happen? Reminds me of a quote which I will paraphrase; “If you leave the bible outside, it will be destroyed by the wind and the rain. My religion is the wind and the rain.” Anyway, it was kind of a nightmare getting in. We waited through three lines, the ferry line, the line to get into the park (Thomas wasn’t a member of our “group” apparently and that had to be rectified), and the line for the disability pass. So Disney thinks I’m disabled, maybe I’m not faking my pain and depression after all, you think? If only the government were as easy to convince.

So the day went as follows:

Entrance and Castle

We got my disability pass at the “City Hall”, in the main entrance area made up to look like a town from the 1890s. It meant I had to be on every ride for us all to get to benefit from it. We didn’t spend a lot of time in this area, which was mostly stores. But this was where I decided I couldn’t stand hearing Disney music all day and turned on my MP3 player.

The castle is like the Mecca of the Cult of Disney. It’s also classist symbolism. The worship of power, hierarchy and wealth. I will say it’s taller than the one at Disneyland, which I think even when I was 5 years old I was underwhelmed with.

Haunted Mansion

We brought my son Jareth on this ride. Poor kid was traumatized. I felt a bit guilty. I enjoyed it myself but he screamed the whole time. Thing is if we didn’t bring him then Deborah would have to not go on the ride, and not benefit from my disability pass, having to wait in line an hour or something. And we weren’t going to make Thomas watch Jareth and miss out on the ride. I mean I never found the ride scary myself, but then again I never went on it until I was 21 years old. And I kinda forgot about how scary it actually would be to a kid.

I also kept thinking about how there’s apparently a big problem with people bringing their loved ones ashes and spilling them on the ride somewhere. Anyway, I didn’t really get to enjoy it as much as I could have.

Merry Go Round

We went here basically as an apology to Jareth. He finally started to enjoy himself on this. I had to sit in such a way that I was putting my weight on my thigh and not my tailbone. It wasn’t comfortable. Those horses are rock hard.

PhilharMagic

This is more of a show that you watch in a theater with 3D glasses than a ride, full of computerized versions of famous Disney Acid Sequences. You could feel air jets blow at you and pick up smells that went with whatever scene was on. I wished I were high for this. Would have been quite amazing. Anyway, it was a bit cringey honestly, but I liked that I could sit down and it was air conditioned. I didn’t really like air being sprayed in my face though, reminded me of that machine you put your face against at the eye doctors that shoots air into your open eye.

Lunch

Seating areas are hard to come by. But we found a slightly shady spot along the path and sat on the curb to eat the sandwiches we bought at Publix that morning. I’m not spending $50 to buy a meal at Disneyworld. 

Tea Cups

It’s not truly a day at Disneyworld until the ride you’re standing in line for breaks down. Fortunately it wasn’t for long. But waiting in line for it twice did suck a bit.

Winnie The Pooh

I don’t care at all for Winnie the Pooh, other than Eyeore being relatable. But it was for Jareth. And at least I got to sit down and the air was cool. It’s almost like the Haunted Mansion for toddlers, that’s how I would describe the ride. 

Tea Cups

They were operational again after we got off the Winnie the Pooh ride. I got very dizzy. Jareth was happy though. 

Walking around in the Severe Heat While Waiting For Our Turn on The Mine Cart Ride

At least we weren’t standing in line, that would have been much worse. We used my pass to book the ride ahead of time, but it was a pretty long wait time. This was when my back pain really started to catch up with me. And it was very, very hot. By this time Jareth had fallen asleep, which was just as well because now we could go on the more adult rides. As adult as Magic Kingdom gets anyway. We probably should have waited until this point to do the Haunted Mansion, but it’s not like we knew he was going to fall asleep.  We took a walk through Tomorrowland (to be more accurate it should have either been underwater or a smoldering radioactive crater, rather than the empty promises capitalism made about the future in the 1950s), back around and through the castle, and eventually back to the ride itself. This killed enough time. But yeah, I was hurting.

The Snow White Mine Cart Ride

My favorite part of this was the part of the line that went into a mine tunnel, because it was dark and the air was cool. The ride itself was fine. Short, not anything spectacular, but the only proper roller coaster I would be on during this trip. This was the ride that I had waited in line for an hour only to have it break down during my 2015 trip, as I recall. At least I got on it this time. I was kind of afraid I would hurt my back on the ride, but luckily I didn’t. 

Walking Around Waiting for Pirates of the Caribbean 

I was still hurting, but we did find a table to sit at eventually. It was starting to get later and we were thinking of leaving soon. But it would have been a pity to leave without going on Pirates of the Caribbean. So we booked it ahead of time. The wait was 45 minutes or so. We traveled through Frontier Land. I got to see the former Splash Mountain being remodeled. The tears of racist conservatives were delicious when it was announced they were getting rid of the Song of the South references on the ride.

Pirates of the Caribbean 

The only Disney ride that ever had a decent spinoff movie. I won’t say that about the sequels, but I liked the first film. As I said before, it’s shorter than the Disneyland version, with only one dropping point. But it’s still fun. My MP3 player started playing some Cradle of Filth, and it paired with the ride quite nicely. And of course, it had cool air and somewhere to sit. The minimum requirement for a ride to be enjoyable to me. 

Leaving

Jareth woke up while I was on the ride; Deborah had stayed with him outside. We decided it had been a full day and we had been on pretty much the best rides. It was about 6pm at this point. We weren’t bothered about staying until the park closed and seeing the fireworks and electric parade really, I’ve been there done that. 

I may have been in pain, but I felt accomplished for having made it through the day. At least I got to see my son happy. I wonder how much he will remember about it, if anything. Anyway, I think I enjoyed myself a bit more than I did in 2015, maybe because my expectations were lower and more realistic, maybe because I didn’t have to stand in line for an hour each time (and have the ride break down), and maybe because I had Jareth with me. 

A Facebook Copypasta about High School

Yep, another of these dumb things. I like to get very long-winded, so I might as well do it in my blog.

Your SENIOR year of high school! The longer ago it was, the more fun the answers will be: 

(sure, okay; is half a lifetime ago long enough?)

1. The year: 

2003-2004

2. What kind of car did you drive?

I uh, still don’t drive anything. When I get behind the wheel of a car my anxiety goes through the roof and I just freeze up, forget left from right, even forget which pedal is the brake and which is the gas. I think it has to do with my autism, and inability to multitask, especially if mine and somebody else’s life is at stake. I can’t watch the road in front of me and watch the rear view mirrors at the same time, and there are so many little buttons and levers to keep track of. My brain can’t do it. I am actually mentally disabled. Most people can’t tell when they meet me (and I didn’t even realize it myself until somewhat recently), it doesn’t mean I’m not intelligent. But there are things I can’t do, driving is one of them. Working the only gods-awful jobs I can qualify for is another. And this is one of the many reasons I don’t live up to society’s standards for masculinity, or adulthood in general. Gods, I hate US society.

3. It's a Friday night football game where were you? 

At home, sitting in my darkened bedroom, rocking back and forth while listening to my mixtapes or metal albums.

4. What job did you have?

None, and I think forcing minors to work is wrong. As if school didn’t rob me of enough of my youth.

5 Did you party?

No

6. Did you play sports? 

Not at all, except when forced to in P.E.

7. Were you in the band?

“The band”? You mean like the school band class, or a cool garage band? Well, I was in band class during Freshman year. I played clarinet, but was never any good at it. My teacher was a lot nicer than the evil tyrant I had in Middle School. And during that year we went on a cruise to Ensenada, Mexico, where I bought my infamous leather hat. The next year my Freshman English teacher was starting a Creative Writing class, so I took that instead of band.

8. Were you a nerd?

Yes, but probably not the typical nerd. I didn’t play Magic The Gathering, when it came to anime I had only seen what was shown on Toonami on Cartoon Network. Those were the two main things nerds at my school were into. I didn’t even really fit in with the nerds in High School, not that I didn’t have friends.

9. Did you get suspended?

Not senior year. I got suspended Sophomore year when my math teacher wouldn’t let me use the bathroom and my rage built up to such a point that I drew him being cut in half with a chainsaw and fed into a wood chipper. The teacher saw it, and not only got me suspended but called the cops on me. They luckily thought the whole thing was stupid.

10. Were you sociable?

Not especially.

11. What was your school mascot? 

A stupid falcon, that was ripped off from some NFL football team. I’m not bothered to look up which team. The school should have been sued.

12. If you could go back and do it again? 

Okay, I really hated High School. But, I don’t think I could turn down a legitimate offer to travel back in time. I would take a lot less crap from people the second time around. Actually what I should have done is drop out and get my GED instead. That’s what I would do, maybe after I meet my current friends. I could also avoid some of the mistakes I made after High School, like going out with that girl who dumped me after four months (probably thanks to my undiagnosed autism), and getting that damned Creative Writing Masters degree that kinda ruined my chances at any kind of career outside of retail and call centers, and put me in tons of debt I’ll never pay off. You get punished for pursuing your passions in this country. And I could become a goth early, since I didn’t get into goth until my 20s. I could also try to meet my wife early, but then again with our four year age difference things might get risky once I turn 18. I only want to go back once though, no need to get stuck in a four year Groundhog’s Day time loop.

13. Are you still in contact with people from high school?

Yes, a few friends, particularly my friend Kris.

14. Do you know where your high school sweetheart is?

Didn’t have one. I was too afraid to talk to girls in school, especially after things really didn’t go well in Middle School; a certain bullying incident with a girl left me with severe trust issues. I don’t remember having a crush on anyone in particular during Senior year either. I just wanted to do my time and get the hell out of that prison. After I got out I started to wish I had a girlfriend, and that got me into more bad situations when I jumped at whoever showed the slightest interest in me and it always ended badly until I met my future wife.

15. What was your favorite class?

Creative Writing. Followed by German.

16. Do you still have your high school class ring?

What a waste of money! Luckily I knew that back then too. School “spirit” is just another way to instill obedience. Just like nationalism.

17. Do you still have your yearbook?

I threw them away. But now that I’m drawing a webcomic about High School I wish I had kept them. I do still have a yearbook from Middle School that somehow survived the purge.

Copy and paste...let's hear your story

Top 7 Songs of the Month ~ April 2023 ~ Death by Nature, Vestron Vulture, French Police

I was struck with inspiration for this month’s blog. I’ve been keeping records of my top songs of the month for a long, long time, going back to 2000 (and yet I was only diagnosed with autism last year, what a shock). I originally started it as an answer to the deeply flawed Top 20 lists I would hear on the local rock radio station I listened to. Before 2019 it was relegated to notebooks. I thought it would be interesting, after looking at this month’s list, to look at what I was listening to 20, 15, 10 and 5 years ago. Don’t expect a little essay on each song, but I might provide a bit of context, like where I was in life at that time. 

Lately I’ve been really into Spanish-language post-punk, from Central and South America, and California (that counts, right?). It just has this particular gloomy feel to it that I love, distinctive from varieties of post-punk from the US, Western Europe and Russia. Vestron Vulture was my introduction to this style, but I also really love Guerra Fría of Guatemala, and Death by Nature from Los Angeles. I don’t speak Spanish (other than the little bit of linguistic osmosis I picked up from living in California most of my life), but not understanding the lyrics has never stopped me from enjoying music before. But as usual I have a few songs from other parts of the world as well. 

Death By Nature ~ I’m Not Real

This is a band from Los Angeles, California is one I just found out about a week ago, and so far I love every single song. This song accurately describes what it’s like to have a bout of Depersonalization/Derealization, and there’s not enough music out there directly about that. 

There is another band out there with the same name, so beware. Look for the one spelled in all-caps. I don’t exactly see this song on Bandcamp, but here is their Bandcamp page.

https://deathnature.bandcamp.com/

Vestron Vulture ~ American Nightmare 

This song seemed like it got a quiet release, I only accidentally stumbled upon it when looking the band up on YouTube. It’s a single released on March 17. It is a melancholy song, not particularly political as the title might suggest. But perhaps it is just about how living and trying to survive in America has become a nightmare. 

https://vestronvulture.bandcamp.com/track/american-nightmare

Poison Dreams ~ Faustian Glow

This song came out in May 2021, and I think I did hear it when it came out, but this is one of those songs that laid dormant for a while and then clawed its way back onto my charts when I listened to it again when going through my YouTube likes and ended up enjoying it greatly. It has a Christian Death sound to it, and is in the deathrock genre. I like deathrock a lot more these days than I did in 2021

Poison Dreams is a band out of Albuquerque, New Mexico, and this song is off their EP Faustian Glow. 

https://poisondreams.bandcamp.com/album/faustian-glow-ep

French Police ~ Hildago

I hope ACAB doesn’t apply to the French Police because I really like this band. I’ve been hearing more from them in recent months and have gone on a binge of their earlier music. They are not from France, as I initially thought, but Chicago, Illinois. I thought they were following the grand tradition of French coldwave that dates back to the 80s with bands like Little Nemo. If you listen to this song you can see why I was fooled, it has that 80s coldwave sound to it. Very catchy, a little melancholy.

This is from their 2019 album Pedaleo Nocturno.

https://frenchpolice.bandcamp.com/album/pedaleo-nocturno

Memory Drops ~ No Queda Mas

Memory Drops is another Guatemalan band, like Guerra Fría, the other band from there I’ve been listening to. I found this to be a very beautiful song. It came out in January of this year, and translates to “All that Remains”. From what I can gather its kind of a tragic, dreary breakup song, but the tune just really stuck with me. 

https://memorydrops.bandcamp.com/track/no-queda-mas

Node ~  Cold Dream

Out of the goth/goth adjacent bands I know of that are from Armenia, Node seems to be the one with the most reliable output. Aside from the voice sample at the beginning this song is largely instrumental, with a laid back, dark trance vibe to it. I wonder if Node will be in attendance when Lebanon Hanover plays in Yerevan next month? That would be such an awesome concert to go to. Maybe that will inspire other bands too, help invigorate Armenia’s goth scene. 

This doesn’t seem to have an official release yet, but you can find their other music on Bandcamp.

https://nodeofficial.bandcamp.com/

  

Another Abyss ~ Liminal Space

This song caught my attention because I was just learning about what a liminal space is when I discovered it. Basically it’s a location that looks uncanny or makes you feel uneasy, characterized by mixed feelings of familiarity and unfamiliarity. Like a playground at night, a house with nothing in it, hallways that seem endless, things like that. It’s kind of popular with the young ones, so I’ve heard. Probably a reaction to the Covid lockdowns. That’s what the song is about too, mentioning a “transitional space” which is another way to define it. 

The song came out in December 2022, so it’s still new. I should like to hear more from Another Abyss.

https://anotherabyss.bandcamp.com/track/liminal-space

Top Songs of April Through the Years

20 Years Ago ~ April 2003

Oops, all Covenant/The Kovenant! It was my High School metal period and I was really into their Nexus Polaris and In Times Before the Light (the 2002 remake) albums.

1. The Kovenant ~ From the Storm of Shadows

2. Covenant ~ Planetarium 

3. The Kovenant ~ Towards the Crown of Nights

15 Years Ago ~ April 2008

2008 was a weird time for me musically. I was getting out of metal, hadn’t fully embraced goth yet, and I went into a 1930s jazz  period. It was my early 20s, a time of soul searching. I also really liked the Gangs of New York soundtrack that month. 

1. Cab Calloway ~ St. James Infirmary 

2. Big Bad Voodoo Daddy ~ Who’s That Creeping?

3. Finbar Furey ~ New York Girls

10 Years Ago ~ April 2013

And One had been a mainstay for me for years at this point. The song “Und Wieder” is beautifully hypnotic, really give it a listen if the only song you know from them is “Military Fashion Show”. And for most of the year I was really into Light Asylum and Zombie Girl. “IPC” is still awesome. Really doesn’t feel a decade old.

1. Light Asylum ~ IPC

2. And One ~ Und Wieder

3. Zombie Girl ~ Creature of the Night

5 Years Ago ~ April 2018

Now we’re really in “that doesn’t feel like that long ago” territory. My musical tastes were almost what they are today. In the intervening years though, I have only come to understand the song “Medication” even better, with its “I am sad, even though I am on all the meds” chorus.

1. William Control ~ Cemetery (acoustic)

2. Hante ~ Empty Space

3. We Are Temporary ~ Medication

A Night of Nirvana with Nirvanna, the Nirvana Tribute Band

 

Sometimes I miss living in the Tampa Bay Area, because I got to go to so many concerts of my favorite goth bands. I would go to like three or four concerts a year. Tampa has a thriving goth scene and I took full advantage of that. But then in 2019 we moved to Rockledge on the eastern Florida coast. Nothing but boring suburban people driving either golf carts or twenty foot tall pickup trucks around. Nowheresville. It reminds me of the town from Edward Scissorhands (which incidentally was filmed in Florida). Not even the obscure underground bands I love would play anywhere near Brevard County. Nothing interesting ever happens here. They do have pro wrestling shows sometimes, and actually a cool local theater that puts on plays and occasionally shows silent films, but that’s about it. Orlando isn’t that far, and a lot of bands play there, but it’s far enough to where we would need a babysitter for our kid and have to spend more money on gas on top of the concert itself; it’s a 45 minute to one hour drive depending on traffic. That’s the other reason why my days of going to concerts all the time came to an end by the way, parenthood. 

But you know what, one day something DID finally happen here. I usually hate seeing ads when I scroll through Facebook, and I do my best to ignore them, but one happened to catch my eye. Nirvanna was playing in Cocoa, the next town over. I did a double take. Then I noticed the extra “n”. Ohhhh. Clever. (The band later explained that it’s pronounced “Nirv-annah”, like the announcer says at the beginning of their music video for “In Bloom”). So it’s a tribute band. The tickets were affordable enough, $15. So I decided, eh, why not? You win this time, capitalism. You got me to CONSUME. Ever since then I’ve gotten ads for other tribute bands playing all over the country too. I’m not flying to the other side of the country to see a Pearl Jam tribute band, Facebook. 

First, I suppose I’ll give some background about what led me to the point where I would go to a concert of a Nirvana tribute band. It was a long series of events. Firstly, Nirvana has always been there in the background of my life. Nevermind came out when I was five years old, and “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was playing all the time on MTV. I grew up listening to rock radio stations which of course played their music. My first ever mixtape had “Lithium” on it, and they were regulars on a lot of my old mixtapes. But I still never really dug deep into their discography until the last couple of years. Followers of my blog may know that I’ve been on something of a grunge/90s alternative rock binge the past almost two years, returning to the music of my childhood after years of being into metal and then goth (which is still my number one genre). Alice in Chains was the band that lured me in after I heard “Get Born Again” for the first time in 20+ years. After listening to all the Alice in Chains I could find, I moved onto Nirvana. I had really only heard what was played on the radio up to that point, but for such a relatively short-lived band there are tons of demos, bootlegs, live shows and even good fan-made music, and after listening to Nirvana for over a year now I’m still finding new stuff. Songs like “Heart-Shaped Box”, “Sappy”, “Dumb”, “Something in the Way”, “You Know You’re Right”, they all really speak to me. I like music that’s dark, thought-provoking and emotionally powerful, mostly regardless of genre. I’ve gotten to know about Kurt Cobain too, his life, his art and his philosophies, and I find him really relatable. I feel like we have a lot in common. A fellow tortured artist. But I know there are millions of people who feel the same way. 

Anyway, the night of April 7th. I had been suffering from gout all week, but I was still determined to go to this concert even though I needed a cane to walk. The venue, The Attic, was a place I had probably walked past many times but never noticed, hidden up a narrow staircase above a bar, in a nondescript corner of Cocoa Village, the touristy area of Cocoa. Due to my gout and back pain I needed to secure a spot, but because I didn’t arrive early enough, a barstool was the best I could get. The crowd was small, maybe 25 people or so at most. A lot of Gen X people in the audience, older than me, and a few younger people. The general vibe of the show was kind of like a pre-fame Nirvana concert. Like seeing them in 1989, except for some of the song choices of course. Like if you watch this old concert, it was a lot like that. The lead singer was a young man who pulled off a good Kurt Cobain cosplay, wearing the big sunglasses and snow hat, a green sweater and ripped jeans. He did a good job sounding like Kurt Cobain too. Not 100 percent, but he clearly has studied how Kurt Cobain sings, down to the slight “yodel” vocal pitch shifts that was his style.

The band was open to requests many times throughout the show. I was too shy to request anything myself. I thought about requesting “Moist Vagina” just to see peoples’ reaction but ultimately chickened out. They weren’t able to play everything requested though. Someone kept requesting one of their more obscure songs, “Mr. Mustache”. The band knows 52 Nirvana songs, but they haven’t learned them all yet. I think they were later unable to play “Sappy” either, another one which never made it onto an official album, which was a bit of a shame. The three of them did well with what they did play too. I had to remind myself how Nirvana sounded live versus how polished they sounded on the albums when making comparisons. They sounded closer to the live performances obviously. I really liked how they nailed that scream after the bridge in “Drain You”, that was definitely a highlight of the performance. There was a nice mixture of high energy moshing songs and the slower, drearier songs such as “Something in the Way” and “You Know You’re Right” that are my favorite. The much-overlooked debut album Bleach was well-represented, along with songs they were obligated to play like “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and “Lithium”. 

A lot of the banter between the bandmates were direct quotes from some of the more famous Nirvana concerts. There were a lot of little easter eggs for those of us who have binged through old Nirvana concerts on YouTube that most people probably wouldn’t catch. The singer began “About a Girl” by saying “This is off our first record, most people don’t own it.” just as Kurt Cobain said at the MTV Unplugged concert. When they reluctantly played “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, they instead started playing “More Than a Feeling” by The Pixies, just like Nirvana did at the 1992 concert in Reading. They also talked smack about Axl Rose, which is very in-character, and talked about the rivalry they had backstage with Guns n Roses at the 1992 MTV Music Awards. We also got the inspirational quote from the booklet of the Incesticide album, wherein Kurt Cobain explicitly tells racists, sexists and homophobes not to buy their albums or show up at their concerts. Being in the unfortunate part of Florida that I’m in, I was wondering if that quote would anger anyone in the audience, but it was met with cheers, and anyone who didn’t like it kept their mouths shut. Toward the end of the concert they wanted everyone to come up to the stage, and I felt a bit guilty for staying in my seat but with all my aches and pains it just wasn’t happening. Leave the mosh pits to the young whipper-snappers I guess. 

In the end I got to hear most of my favorite Nirvana songs, the only way you could ever hear the songs played live these days, by impersonators. But you know, there’s nothing wrong with impersonators, particularly of bands that aren’t active anymore and never will be. It was a lot of fun and I’m glad I went. I will be paying attention to any concerts that might come through this small town from now on thanks to this. I wouldn’t mind seeing Nirvanna again one of these days.  

Suren’s Poetry Corner ~ A Gulag of my Own Making

 A blog exclusive that I’m not sharing on Facebook. Whoever sees this will just have to stumble upon it. 

I have been awake all night, with an enflamed toe joint that I’m pretty sure is gout. Like shit, I missed the part of yesterday where I kicked a brick wall barefoot. To get around, I’ve been using my grandfather Suren’s cane. The grandfather I am named after, who escaped from a Soviet gulag. In my slight delirium, it inspired this poem, and I jotted it down before I forgot it. Kind of free verse. With some tweaking I could make it into song lyrics. But I’m not sure if I’ll use it for anything.

In a gulag of my own making

But how do I escape?

Young and old at the same time.

A victim of my addiction

Suffocated by my ceaseless pain.

Can my suffering even compare to yours?

Two souls passing in the night.

Viewing each other through a barrier.

You left your book and some pictures

Looking dapper in black and white.

My inheritance was your name,

A legacy I could never live up to if I tried.

I would rather have a grandpa than a legend.

I’m left to imagine what you’re really like.

I’ll never know what you’d think of me now,

Maybe that’s for the best, 

Afraid I’m rather disappointing. 

I use your cane, you’re my strength

Even though I barely met you.

Left me behind for the afterworld

While I’m left on this rock to suffer.

You served your time in the gulag

Now I’m serving mine.

Mixtape Reflections ~ The Abyss

 

The time to do a mixtape reflection on the very theme of this blog has come. For this time, I will scream into the abyss about the abyss. “Tales from the Masked Bard” was the original name of the blog, named for a character in my unpublished fantasy book series, but that name harkens back to a time in my 20s, when I had such impossible dreams and aspirations. Before reality slapped me in the face. Now that I have realized that, even if I somehow did achieve fame (a zillion to one chance), the day will come that even the most famous person in history will be forgotten. The act of creating art is really screaming into an abyss. That’s all you can do with the abyss, either scream or gaze. You can’t fight it or escape it. One day the voice of everyone who has ever screamed into the abyss, from Shakespeare to Edgar Allen Poe, will be silenced forever.

First, a quote:

The true meaning of the first line of the quote is something along the lines of “beware that you don’t become the very thing you struggle against”. I suppose a famous example would be the Soviet Union; an attempt (at least, so they say) to create a communist utopia based on the ideals of Karl Marx, which instead became even more tyrannical than the Czars ever were under Stalin, and in fact was imperialistic even before that under Lenin, as Armenians well know, when their newly independent country was carved up between the Soviets, Azerbaijan (which didn’t exist before 1918) and Turkey. But it’s that second part of the quote that interests me. What is the abyss? 

My interpretation of the abyss, is that it is the darkness that encompasses the entire universe. It is that which will swallow us all, and make us forgotten. It is death, oblivion. One day trillions of years from now it will swallow the entire universe. I had a vision once; everyone alive is falling into an abyss, the abyss of death. Being alive is like falling into an abyss, we are all rushing towards its pitch blackness at terminal velocity but we look away from it and pretend it doesn’t exist, and we pretend we aren’t even falling. But as my body ages I know it to be true. I don’t know if I’m making much sense, it’s hard to put into words, you see. But I think I have gazed long into the abyss. 

I finally made a mixtape about it, because that is how I like to organize my thoughts and philosophies. And I used a lot of voice clips, and even a spoken word poem, along with music. I allowed songs about voids too, because a void is kind of the same thing as an abyss. Or perhaps the abyss is more of an idea, while a void exists physically. 

Follow along with my YouTube playlist if you wish. It has most of what’s on the tape, although you may have to skip through a couple of the voice samples. With the first one, I stopped the tape when the quote was finished.

First we have a clip from the anime Blue Exorcist, where Nietzsche’s quote is spoken. I have never watched this anime, but I liked the clip when I found it. We then go into songs I’ve known for a long time, since my teens; “The Abyss” by Stratovarius is one of the band’s darker songs, although it’s not entirely dark. I think it makes for a good beginning to the tape though. Then, there’s “The Chasm”, the 2002 remade version by The Kovenant. I could have gone with the original, but I think the remade version fit the vibe better. Pretty Addicted’s song “Blue Cage” is really about the cruelty of making whales perform in front of audiences, but I feel like it still fits the mood if you take the lyrics at face value. It’s a song about being ripped from everything you know and being placed in a cage and mistreated. It reminds me of what I went through in school, although to a far less severe degree. I was ripped from my innocence and plunged into a cruel dystopian world, hurdling toward oblivion. This is what eventually led me to gaze into the abyss. It mentions the abyss multiple times, that’s why the song is here. And it’s a good transitionary song between the metal intro to the tape going into the more goth songs.

We then come to our second voice clip, from the trailer for the English dub of the anime Made in Abyss. This is my favorite anime now. A very dark tale about a young girl and her half-robot boyfriend descending into a deep abyss to find her mother, encountering unspeakable horrors. I only included the beginning lines. For those of you following along on the playlist, skip after the opening line. “In the abyss, there is nothing as impartial as death. And soon we realize, in this cruel and indifferent world, it’s just the way we like it.” The abyss is likened to an inevitable death, and if the world is cruel and indifferent, it is how we designed it. We don’t have to build a society based on hierarchies, imaginary numbers deciding who lives and dies. We could collectively decide right now that money, nationalities, genders, countries, don’t exist. But enough people consent to it. So it goes on, crushing the unlucky underfoot. Did we create the Abyss ourselves?

The next couple of songs are a bit of a buffer, but they mention voids and the abyss. The next great song that captures the essence of the abyss is Tango Mangalore’s “Son of Adam”, which you may remember from my top songs of the month blog for March. “Let us stare in the abyss” is repeated throughout the song, and the mood it creates is exactly what I was going for with this mix. 

The next part that really gets to the point of the mix, is something I was unable to find on YouTube. To get it on the tape I had to play the Made in Abyss DVD on my laptop and hook it into my boombox with an aux cord. A technical marvel, I know. This speech comes from a scene where the two protagonists of the anime meet Ozen the Immovable, an elder woman who has lived in the abyss for decades. She first appears to be a villain, but when she fights the protagonists it is revealed that she did so to see if they were able to handle going further down into the abyss. She deems them worthy and ends up helping them.

The greatest nihilistic philosopher since Nietzsche.

You can view it in the manga online, although it isn’t the best translation. In the anime, she says: 

“Do you have any conception of God, boy? All of those who decide to stay down here, they don’t believe in any kind of almighty deity. Instead they have something else to believe in. The Truth. It’s stronger than God, because it is the Abyss itself. And since its end is unknown, that fear becomes their almighty.”

You see, I think she’s right. The Abyss is God. It is The Truth. As Carl Sagan once said, it made a lot of sense for humans to worship the Sun. The Sun gave us life. We are a part of the Sun. Our body and soul come from the Sun, and the other stars. The Sun, however, is a local God. And it is mortal. The Abyss is stronger than the Sun, and stronger than the galaxy it inhabits. One day, the Abyss will consume even that. The Abyss is indifferent. It us not good or evil. It is the Great Cosmic Indifference. I think out of everyone in the anime, I relate closest to Ozen, who inhabits not the deepest part of the abyss, but deep enough to see the truth about it. She is about where I am, philosophically, on the scales of jadedness and darkness.

If you were to have a humanoid personification of the Abyss, I think it would be something like Satan in Mark Twain’s The Mysterious Stranger, or how he appeared in the claymation adaptation from The Adventures of Mark Twain. Far from the biblical Satan, this entity inhabits an empty void, and creates and destroys civilizations on a whim, without a shred of sympathy. But, as far as this mixtape is concerned, I have already used plenty of voice clips from that film on multiple tapes, especially “Nothing exists but empty space, and you. And you, are but a thought.” Solipsism, now there is a scary thought. Am I the only conscious being that exists, floating in an endless abyss while hallucinating reality? Or is it you? We don’t know. We can’t know. Maybe everyone is trapped in their own separate universe.

We continue to Side B. A couple more songs about voids, and we get to the next voice clip. It’s from a game called Dragon Age, which I have never played. I only found this clip when searching for more abyss/void songs for the mix. It’s a hopeful quote from an old woman, who says that when the world plunges into the abyss, don’t be afraid to jump, for it is the only way to know if you can fly. I suppose my pessimistic and cynical retort is that nothing can fly forever, but I digress. It’s basically about not living with regret, which I can agree with, it just uses the Abyss as a metaphor. 

After this Tango Mangalore returns, with a song that is also about the Abyss. The dreary mood it creates brings you back down after that last voice clip, perhaps, but I find the transition relaxing and smooth. Now the Gothic Archies have two songs mentioning the Abyss, and I regret having to put them so close together but that’s just how it worked out. And after one of my favorite songs from Diary of Dreams (“see me drown in this abyss”) we have an actual spoken word poem that I found on YouTube, which I have to say is a first for my mixtapes since starting them in 1999. This poem likens the Abyss to depression. It’s about when you reach a level where you no longer struggle against the Abyss, but just let it consume you. You want to fall, you want to disappear into the Abyss. To lose your pain within the silence forevermore. I’ve been to dark places like this. I don’t know how I’ve ever managed to pull myself up again. But life just goes on, and so do I. I keep eating, trying to take care of my body, trying to tell my stories while I still have time to do so, playing this game called “life” that I never chose to play, even though it’s all absurd and meaningless. I’m going to get consumed by the Abyss one day regardless, why rush things? Might as well try to enjoy myself. 

Gothic Archie’s song “Dreary, Dreary” is the perfect song to come on after this poem. It manages to pull you up again somehow, while being a dreary song itself. It’s a song mostly about losing your close loved one, losing them to “a black and bleak abyss”. By that they are either referring to her death or just that she disappeared. The rest of the songs from here all relate again to the abyss/void in different ways. We return to Stratovarius with “Abyss of your Eyes”. Read the lyrics, it fits the theme well enough despite the genre shift. References to drowning, pain, losing your mind, these are all feelings associated with the Abyss. And appropriately enough the final song is “Final Abyss” by Your Funeral (great band name). The true final Abyss will be the Heat Death of the Universe, long after all of the stars burn out and die, black holes consume the universe until they too disperse, and soon not even atoms and particles remain. Maybe from here another Big Bang happens? But with something finally reduced to nothing I don’t see how that can happen. These are my thoughts by the end of the tape. What will be, at the end of everything? To think, not even the stars in the sky are safe from the Abyss. Nothing is forever, except for the Abyss. The Abyss is eternity. Infinite. The nature of the abyss is reflected in how unjust and indifferent this universe is. When you reflect on that, you gaze into the abyss. 

Side A 

Nietzsche Quote from Blue Exorcist 

Stratovarius - The Abyss

The Kovenant - The Chasm

Pretty Addicted - Blue Cage

Made in Abyss Trailer

Carnal Machinery - Void

Bedless Bones - Sad and Alone

Tango Mangalore - Son of Adam

Morosinthe - Abyss

Twin Tribes - Portal to the Void

Forever Grey - The Other Side

Ozen’s quote; The Abyss is God

Uncanny Chamber - Escaping the Void

Side B

Anesthetic - Void

SYZYGYX - Avoid the Void

Abyss of Change: Flemoth’s Words (Dragon Age)

Tango Mangalore - The Pit

Gothic Archies - This Abyss

Diary of Dreams - A Dark Embrace

Westly Nash - The Abyss (a poem)

Gothic Archies - Dreary, Dreary

Burial Ground - Abyss

RA - The Void

Give My Remains to Broadway - Comfort of the Void

Stratovarius - Abyss of Your Eyes

Your Funeral - Final Abyss