the Triumph of Doom

Last night I went to a reconverted church to see a coronation. Japan's crushingly heavy Boris was playing with the earthshaking SunnO))) at the Avalon in Manhattan, along with avant-guitarist Oren Ambarchi. I was surprised to see the size and the fervour of the crowd. I knew Boris had become a very popular underground draw but was unprepared for the amount of goodwill they engendered in their audience. Although the club Avalon is merely another incarnation of the zipperhead standby dance club the Limelight, the room was a good place to see a show. The high ceilings of the room muddied up the sound of Boris, but SunnO))) sounded amazing. The crowd was pretty diverse for an indie rock show, with everyone from t-shirted hipsters from Williamsburg to dressed-down thrash metallers from Queens, and what was most surprising to me was the patience of the crowd as the drones unfolded from the stage.

Oren Ambarchi started things off with an understated half-hour long piece utilizing minimalist melodic snippets run through a variety of effects. Elongated and processed sustains collided with deep rumbling bass tones, and the elegiac feel of the piece was shattered nicely by an explosion of noise at around the 20-minute mark. I figured for sure that the crowd would despise Ambarchi's gentle pulsings and surges, but they loved it. He would return to play with SunnO))) during their set.

Boris was everything I hoped they would be. Powerful, charismatic, tight, and ecstatic, the trio ripped through a set that drew mostly from their last two full-length releases, Pink and Akuma No Uta. They were received joyously by the crowd. Their professionalism was underscored by their showmanship, led by manic white-gloved drummer Atsuo, who served as set boss and chief ringleader for the band. Whether saluting the crowd with his gong-stick, screaming into his headset microphone, or simply pounding the shit out of his drums, Atsuo got the crowd fired up with his energy and sense of fun. Their set concentrated more on shorter songs, but one or two crawling tempos snuck out from underneath. They closed with a tremendous take on Pink's amazing shoegazer/stoner rock opener after punishing the crowd with a nifty hour-plus set. All in all, they proved themselves to be one of the most creatively asskicking bands on the planet.

I had seen SunnO))) three times prior to last night, with diminishing levels of enjoyment each time. I love their records and think that they are one of the most unique bands currently active, combining tectonic sludge and awesome guitar and bass tones with noise and creepy guest-vocal weirdness. The last time I'd seen them was last year at Northsix, and I found their set that night to be forgettable. After an amazing smoke-machine/blood red spotlight intro, they devolved into boring drone that was not helped by the ridiculous and timid presence of Malefic (from Xasthur), who contributed black metal vokills to that night's efforts. Thankfully, last night's set left the corpsepaint on the sidelines--the duo of Greg Anderson and Stephen O'Malley were augmented by Rex Ritter on Moog, Oren Ambarchi on guitar and treatments, and the long-lost Mark Deutrom (ex-Melvins) on bass. The additional low end was great, and Atsuo from Boris contributed some gong hits and weird handheld percussion to the ritual. The first half hour of the set was excellent, with both the crowd and band totally into the performance. All six musicians were draped in black robes with cowls, and the extending of a hand or a fist from the robes was enough to solicit immediate crowd response in all the traditional forms of metallic hand signing--horns were as plentiful as fists. After the first half hour, they seemed to drift aimlessly for about ten minutes before I decided to bail. My neck was tightening up and I'd seen and heard enough for one evening. The crowd was still going strong when I took off, basking in the blackness of doom.

I grabbed a copy of the hard-to-find domestically Boris/Keiji Haino collaborative effort before I left, and it is really fucking cool. All the violence of the man from Fushitsusha's guitar work, backed up with the drones and weight of Boris' sound. Despite leaving a little early during SunnO))), this show was a blast all the way round. A great bill of music that featured several different interpretations of how to be heavy. If doom is now king, one of these bands must wear the black and filth-encrusted crown.

The Good Ol' Boys Good-Time Massacree and Prayer Service

Well, it was bound to happen. You send good-hearted, decent American men and women overseas with expensive weaponry and eventually there's going to be one of those types of situations where they just have to kill everyone they see. Especially when they've been programmed to forget all of their innate human qualities and demonize large groups of people as unholy others that must be killed at any cost. The US military has been caught perpetrating the first unadulterated massacre of Iraqi civilians since the war started, and it appears that we can thank the modern communications industry for providing the evidence via a participating Marine's camera on his cellphone. The sharp minds of the military haven't just bought the rope to hang themselves, but they have constructed the slipknot as well. All of those nifty pics from Abu Ghraib must have really taught the military a lesson.

What makes me laugh in the wake of this story is the idea that this behavior is the first of its kind by US troops in Iraq. Incidents like the shooting of Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena or the shelling of a hotel containing numerous members of the international media in Baghdad during the early days of the war were initial indicators of the way in which the US wished to conduct itself in this conflict. At this stage, the war has become a stalemate where US soldiers are targets rather than active participants in their own fate. Psychologically this must be a terrible burden, especially when combined with the propaganda our fighting men and women were fed in the runup to war. When words like liberty and freedom are thrown around by douchebag politicans, it is often a signal that a sizable bloodletting is on the way. The ideals of young soldiers must die as hard as their comrades on the battlefield as they see Iraqis rejecting the cheap knockoff of Western democracy being proffered by the cynics of the Bush gang. No roses strewn in their path, merely improvised explosive devices--which I like to call bombs, by the way--and no end in sight to a war that was illegal from its first days of planning. Ignorant and uneducated people under stress are liable to make very bad decisions, and these bad decisions are compounded when high-powered rifles, xenophobia, heatstroke, dehydration, and racism are factored into the equation.

So-called embedded journalists have provided many stories about the thuggish behavior of US troops in the Iraq conflict. The massacre of Haditha is an outgrowth of the same impulse that led US soldiers to torture prisoners; but it is also an outgrowth of the stunted morality practiced by the Bush gang. Their false piety is supposed to excuse the horrific and violent crimes committed against defenseless human beings on a daily basis in Iraq. In the Haditha incident it appears that numerous crimes were committed--murder and a coverup being the most prominent among them. But these soldiers, if guilty, indict the Bush administration by their actions in much the same way that the privately contracted torturers of Abu Ghraib did. Ultimately the moral responsibility for these deaths rests on the empty head of a panicked, privileged, and overwhelmed asshole who calls himself the President of the United States.

One of the photographs taken from the soldier's cellphone in Haditha shows a mother and child bent over in prayer, stilled forever in death. Shooting unarmed human beings in the head while they are crazed with fear, begging for help from their distant and uninvolved deity--is this an example of the heroism of American soldiers? Perhaps it is the level of transgression that a soldier may attain that impresses the impressionable. After all, killing in war is morally excusable, according to all of the Big Three religious traditions; to wallow in the blood of innocent people must be the ultimate transgressive buzz. And as a soldier, after you've killed them, there are a number of even more transgressive acts that can be indulged. Just let your imagination go as wild as your soul. You are an army of one. When you've finished, don't forget to take a knee for Jesus. Your god is bigger and better than their god.

How To Be A Fucking Fascist Disgrace, by Alberto Gonzales

The Bush gang has hit a new low recently. As amazing as this tidbit may seem upon first consideration, it is true. Speaking on former Clinton chief of staff George Stephanopolous' weekly political handjob/television show, the Attorney General announced that the administration is reserving the right to prosecute journalists for violations of national security. According to the nation's chief lawyer, the Constitutional protections of freedom that were once guaranteed for the press are now subservient to the demands of "national security"--all this despite the fact that the words national security are nowhere to be found in the Bill of Rights, but the words freedom of the press are.

To ignore the Constitution while you are a working public official in any part of American government is illegal. For the Attorney General to say that "it can't be the case that that right [the right to a free press] trumps over the right that Americans would like to see, the ability of the federal government to go after criminal activity" is utterly mindblowing. Gonzales is an appointed official of a Presidential administration, yet he is claiming the right for the administration to re-interpret and completely distort the Bill of Rights. With this statement, Bush and his gang have declared publicly that they intend to ignore and possibly supersede the Supreme Court when it comes to interpreting the Constitution. Additionally, Gonzales claims that the administration's actions are derived from the will of the people, despite approval poll ratings that have been mired at roughly 33% since last July. If these underhanded misrepresentations of the Constitution were not so serious and threatening to our liberties as citizens of the US, they would be hilarious. The Bush gang is attempting to impose radical legislation from above, enshrouded in the most opaque secrecy, without the consent of the American public, and all despite the fact that they are the most unpopular administration in the last century of American history.

Ever since they allowed the events of 9-11 to occur, the Bush gang has taken a proprietary attitude (to say the least) towards national security. They are attempting to use the fear generated by that day to permanently attach war powers (or to use their trendy term, plenary powers) to the office of the Presidency. Going hand in hand with this repugnantly undemocratic conception of our highest elected office is the idea that the administration can ultimately determine exactly what constitutes a national security issue. In other words, the administration can immediately trump up charges against any citizen or journalist and accuse those individuals with violating national security statutes or directives. Since this administration believes that matters of national security should be forever hidden from any sort of oversight, even more people will soon be arrested in this country without being aware of what crimes they have committed or what crimes they are being charged with. This frightening idea is the germ of the New Christian Primitives' American police state.

These ideas are fundamentally antithetical to any concept of American government. They have their closest philosophical antecedents in such wonderfully anti-human stratagems as Stalin's Article 58 or Britain's anti-Irish Poor Laws of the 19th century. The FISA violations, the lies that built up the rush to Iraq, the Enron bankruptcy, the Katrina disaster, and the scandals surrounding the no-bid contracts given to Halliburton and Blackwater were all brought to the attention of the American public by courageous reporters who risked major retaliation against their reputations, their careers, and their families from a vindictive and vengeful administration. The sacrifices these journalists made to tell the truth will probably never be known. We cannot allow this criminal administration to withdraw protections that are nearly two hundred and thirty years old. The traditions of America are contained within the pages of the Constitution. When will we wake up to defend them?

Compacted Disks, Compact Discs, and a Few Books

Too much time has passed since I last updated...as always, there is an explanation. In the rational and pissed-off world of McBain, there are always explanations. They may not be free of spite, disdain, or rage--but they are at least an approximation of reality.

My latest round of major health woes began roughly twelve weeks ago, when I awoke from a fitful sleep to find my neck and shoulders completely locked in a hideous muscle spasm. The injury was so intense that I could not perform any of these following actions for six weeks without serious, knee-buckling, horrifying pain:

1. lie down
2. lift my head upwards
3. read books
4. play music
5. be on the computer for more than 30 minutes consecutively
6. have sex
7. bend over to pick stuff up off the floor
8. walk without pain
9. ride in a car or the subway without pain

Needless to say, my time spent sleeping (already slightly disrupted due my pregnant wife's increase in size and ability to pump out heat) declined. And this of course led to many nights of the worst kind of thinking--the type of fear-ridden, insecure, and self-hating thinking that only arrives when a person cannot sleep despite high levels of physical exhaustion. My doctors were unable to help me get rid of the spasm, preferring to medicate intensively rather than figure out exactly what was wrong with me, so I turned to shiatsu deep tissue massage as a potential fixer. After a few sessions of this I improved slightly but found the massages themselves to be horribly painful--during my second session in particular I was moaning like someone during interrogation in a secret American facility, with torrents of tears pouring from my eyes. The massage therapist was anti-medication, so I tried to tough it out without ibuprofen, Fentanyl, and Vicodin, while relying heavily on my normal marijuana intake. After an MRI I was diagnosed with two herniated disks in my neck, along with some other neck damage. It is unbelievable how much this shit hurts me when it acts up. The pain has put up a nearly permanent barrier between me and the rest of the world, which oddly enough does have some side benefits.

Fortunately, I regained the ability to read books about four weeks ago, and have been in a reading frenzy ever since, working my way through the metastasizing pile of books throughout my house. I had just started Karl Popper's mammoth Conjectures and Refutations (Routledge Classics) when my neck began sapping my will to live. Picking it up again as soon as I was physically able, I was extremely impressed with his critique of inductive reasoning and Bacon's scientific method. At times Popper can be difficult to get through, but for a philosopher he writes quite lucidly and is very readable. I found this book to be a challenge to all of my preconceived notions of epistemology (which is always a good thing). When reading most philosophy I need to have something a little easier to fall back on when my logic circuitry begins hurting, which can be dangerous sometimes if my interest surges in a new book....which is exactly what happened recently.

I jumped ship from Popper to try a few pages in Simon Whitechapel's Flesh Inferno: Atrocities of Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition (Creation Books, part of their Blood History series), and found myself compelled to finish the book. At a slim 154 pages in length, I thought this book might be a quick and dirty yet informative look at Torquemada. I was wrong; it was quick and dirty, but not very informative. I enjoyed Whitechapel's anti-Catholic outrage as he recounted the tales of several different autos de fe (the proper spelling of the term in Spanish; it appears the term that doubles as the title of this blog is from Portuguese), but found his prose so filled with venom that it quickly became tiresome and humorless. He makes some good points about the Inquisition being an early precursor of the modern police state, but overreaches in his attempts to link the Catholic Church to Hitler and Nazism. The book also prints all of its quotes from Spanish documents in both English and Spanish, as if they were concerned with the veracity of Whitechapel's translations. Overall the book was like a bad wreck on the road--you feel dirty for looking, but you can't look away.

I picked up a copy of Fred Coleman's Decline and Fall of the Soviet Empire (St. Martin's Press ) for six bucks at the Strand. Published in 1996, his latter-day conclusions for the direction of Russia's post-Soviet era are a little dated (not to mention incorrect), but the book covers the post-Stalinist era thoroughly and with no small amount of style. Coleman spent close to 30 years as a Moscow correspondent for the AP, Newsweek, US News and World Report, and though his perspective is thrown off kilter by his relentlessly jingoistic view of the US-USSR Cold War the book is really a solid piece of work. Particularly strong on the Khruschev and Brezhnev eras, I thought, and for once I can say I've read a history of the Khruschev era written by an American who did not spend his entire time dissecting the Cuban Missile Crisis. For that alone, this book is worth the time to read.

Following Coleman's book was Simon Sebag Montefiore's magnificent biography of Josef Stalin, entitled Stalin: the Court of the Red Tsar (Vintage). Montefiore limits his book's focus to Stalin's time as absolute leader of the Soviet Union, rather than delving too far into the nebulous available information about Stalin's early history as a possible double agent and bankrobber or the nasty rumors that surrounded his paternity as a child, and the book is all the stronger for it. Montefiore examines the impact of the deaths of Stalin's two wives upon the man much more intensively than any of the other bios I've seen about Stalin, and makes a good case for Stalin's loneliness and alienation from any other humans as being a major impetus in his purges of the 1930's. Even by the heartless standards of the early Bolsheviks, Stalin was a man whose capacity to inflict suffering was matched only by his competitiveness and his paranoia. Many portraits of Stalin (Solzhenitsyn's first among these, perhaps along with Trotsky's) have painted him as a "grey man", a bureaucratic mediocrity whose willingness to use the gun to solve problems was all too typical of the Bolshevik system. But in recent years writers like Edvard Radzinsky and Martin Amis have opened the door to a re-evaluation of Stalin's intellect and purposes. Montefiore considers Stalin to be a diabolical genius whose madness often got the better of his reason, which to me is a much more appropriate way to view a man who was such a master manipulator. The failures of the Soviet system are often attributed to Stalin, but few consider that Russia was an autocratic empire that had absolutely no tradition of nationhood, let alone democracy. At the time of Stalin's death in 1953, the average citizen of the Soviet empire was probably better educated and just as well fed as the average citizen of the Romanov empire. Though troubling to consider, Montefiore does not shy away from discussing the benefits Stalin brought to his people in the midst of so much blood and terror. Really an excellent book that rejects much of the conventional wisdom about the reign of the 20th century's greatest mass murderer.

After Big Joe, I figured I would give an American tyrant a look-see--so I read Robert Remini's solid history of Andrew Jackson and His Indian Wars (Penguin). Using language that eerily echoes our present day Choadmaster-in-Chief, Andrew Jackson stormed his way through the Southern states and became the most prolific killer of Native Americans in his day. As the corpses piled up, so did Jackson's governmental promotions and national honors--and although Jackson may have been less bloodthirsty towards Natives than popularly portrayed, he still comes off as a vicious alpha male who could barely control his own temper and had little sympathy for any views save his own. Remini claims that national security (in an era where European countries like Spain, Great Britain, and France loomed at every American border) was Jackson's primary concern in snatching millions of acres of land in Tennessee, Alabama, and Florida but also allows that Jackson's policy of removal of Native Americans was perhaps the single most monstrous act performed by any American President. Couched in racist pseudo-compassionate concerns, the removal policy was something that purported to be humane but turned out to be an exercise in eradication instead. The empirical "evidence" for the basis of the removal theory was pessimistic and grew out of a conviction that whites and Natives could never peacefully coexist. Remini lays the ultimate blame for the deaths of thousands of native peoples at Jackson's feet, but is oddly sympathetic to the idea that the two cultures would forever clash.

I picked up a few discs lately too--the ones that don't herniate. I have been listening nonstop to the new Jesu EP Silver (HydraHead) since I got it. More poppy than last year's LP, this release somehow manages to combine some very diverse sounds to create the heaviest shoegazer-styled rock music ever. The textures are dense, the songs are great, and it all points to the next Jesu full-length as being a killer. Keith Fullerton Whitman's Lisbon (Kranky) is a sweet little forty-one minute masterpiece, recorded from a live performance in October 2005. Using his self-designed Playthroughs guitar treatments system along with a laptop and several other effects, Whitman has crafted a predominantly ambient work of great beauty and emotional weight. A great listen first thing in the morning. Lair of the Minotaur are from Chicago and they play badass metal with lyrics inspired by very specific references to various Greek myths. Though that might sound a little Dungeons-and-Dragons, the music is brutal, well-played, and totally ass-kicking. Their new release, The Ultimate Destroyer (Southern Lord), kills from start to finish. These boys don't waste time with guitar solos; in fact they don't play any useless notes at all. Highly recommended for anyone who needs a serious dose of power, or feels that the Greek myths would have even more impact if they had been played by a heavy metal band rather than written by mere poets and scribes. The new AFX/Analord/Aphex Twin disc is called Chosen Lords (Rephlex), and whatever Richard D. James wishes to call his music is OK with me. This disc is a distillation of the 10-record, 40-track Analord series that James ran out into the marketplace starting in 2004. Having not heard any of those 12" records, I found this compilation to have the smooth-running feel of a regular album. It's also quite good--despite a few bad reviews, this effort is a strong one, focussing on beats and melodies more than rapid-fire techno percussion. I still prefer his ambient works, but I am a big enough person to say I really like this release as well. My last new pickup is the choptastic collaboration between Zach Hill of Hella and Mick Barr of Orthrelm and the Flying Luttenbachers. It's called Shred Earthship (5RC) and if you are at all familiar with the dizzying technique of both musicians than you might know what to expect--a searingly well-played and totally freaked collection of jams that redefines the concept of playing fast. Hill and Barr are blurs on their respective instruments, and this relentless pace might put off more than a few listeners. The two connect with each other pretty seriously however--and I find this release to be more enjoyable than anything I've heard from Hella. My only complaint is with the massive running time and tracklist--19 songs, over 77 minutes long. With this type of assaultive style it would have been better to put out two discs.

Other than that, I've been obsessed with Sun Ra lately--wearing out my copies of Space is the Place, Other Planes of There, and My Brother the Wind. As a younger listener I couldn't hang with the Arkestra; but now I am finding that this cosmic gentleman was an interstellar voyager of the highest pedigree and quality. I've also picked up a couple of outstanding reissues lately, buying the remastered version of This Heat's self-titled first record (ReR). Light years ahead of its time upon its release in 1979, this band utilized a ferociously openminded attitude towards composition that blended improvisation, found sound, cut-up techniques, and great ability. Much of this record sounds as if it was recorded yesterday, and drummer Charles Heyward deserves extra praise for his experimental treatments of his own fantastic drum playing. Not too many rock bands or musicians outside of Eno or Neu! were building songs by manipulating sounds at this point in time. Another bunch of English lads who seemed to be working in the future were the Swell Maps, who were often mentioned more in conjunction with members Epic Soundtracks and Nikki Sudden and their respective solo pursuits. Their Jane from Occupied Europe (Secretly Canadian), released in 1980, puts together noise and song in a way that most bands shied away from at the time. Cool guitar sounds are put next to vacuum cleaners; drum sounds are deliberately distorted; and over the whole mess floats a relaxed and tuneful vibe that such later bands as Pavement mined successfully. Both of these discs are amazing, and the forward-looking nature of the music is really impressive.

So that's about it for me--my neck is fucking killing me, and there's a nice juicy pain at the bottom of my right shoulder blade right now that needs some special attention. Hopefully I can resume some sort of regularity in my postings, but we will see.