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Nonsensical color denotions; rational color wheel will be added later -



March 30 2026;Pearl Jam - Jeremy (1991) ; Randomly started yarling the words and took it upon myself to sit down and listen to it while I worked. Brought back some memories, inspired some introspection as well as critical ideas about society now relating to compassion for males of any age. With your Chappell Roans and Sabrina Carpenters, it can be inferred that the Jeremy's of today, having repeated the action which inspired the song, would go unmentioned, or mocked in the characteristic feminist hubris I've come to expect fully from those bitches.
March 24 2026;Kittie - What I Always Wanted (2001) ; I am no Kittie fan, but this song is good. I find their other songs like Brackish very grating and annoying. But this tune carries, and the melody, alternation between melodious clean singing and screamed parts so musical. Also, a thought came about during my listen that her vocals are a blueprint for what you would go on to hear Randy Blythe do.
March 22 2026;Culture Club - Karma Chameleon (1982) ;
March 21 2026;Bad Brains - Free (1993)  ;
March 21 2026;Bad Religion - 21st Century Digital Boy (1994)  ;
March 20 2026;Godflesh - Control Freak (1999)  ;
March 20 2026;The Prodigy - Poison (1994)  ;
March 20 2026;Godflesh - Endgames (1999)  ; I sent a DM to Draven, who I know to be as much of a fan of The Prodigy and electronic music more broadly as I am, telling him to close his eyes and imagine this song as a Prodigy tune. The electronic skeleton and tempo is very Liam Howlett-esque.
March 20 2026;KMFDM - Virus (1989)  ; Having bought this CD at Doc's Records in 2018, I was initially completely unaware of the score I'd made; in fact, I was doubting that I had made a legitimate addition to my collection as it didn't seem to be one of KMFDM's prominent releases. I've since grown a brain (hopefully) and at least cringe at the days where I couldn't seem to use Google and music database resources to affirm the legitimacy of releases (Skrew-Angel Seed, Front 242-Tyranny For You, etc.). But I did instantly have an affinity for what I was hearing from my Bose CD player; the clearly sampled guitars on the opening track's nuances were lost upon 15 year old me, who interpreted it as a disciplined performance. Perhaps I did have a clue that it was partially synthetic, but I had a resolve to emulate that clinical approach - where the riffs are quite start-stop (gated), employ religious adherence to number of strings sounding (essentially, ensuring that only two strings are being sounded so to not add too much textural variance which would defeat the industrious, flat tonality that throwing in another harmonic here and there would chaffe against).
March 18 2026;Muslimgauze - Wasz Whirling (2001)  ; One of the more mexican food truck-like tunes of Bryn Jones. Brilliant.
March 17 2026;Everclear - I Will Buy You A New Life (1997)  ; Had a dream about my ex-girlfriend and played this song after I woke up. It was a song that I had on some playlist, either personal or for her, that had became somewhat associable to our relationship.
March 17 2026;Muslimgauze - Resume And Shaduf Fatah Guerrilla (1997)  ;
March 16 2026;Prong - Beg To Differ (1990)  ; "Good Thrash"
March 16 2026;Pablo's Eye - AMB 8 (1995)  ;
March 15 2026;Meshuggah - Stengah (2002)  ; For some reason the bite I sustained in 2018 from Drewsif Stalin has manifested symptoms yet again in 2026; in my investigation of particular articles of guitar equipment utilized by Meshuggah and other bands (some very dissimilar but of the same timeframe), I turned a magnifying glass to an article I possess in the Line 6 POD Pro, and 'Nothing', an album released in 2002, features a frontal perspective of the POD Pro's one-size-fits- all saturated excellency in this application.
March 14 2026;Meshuggah - Sickening (1994)  ;
March 12 2026;The Prodigy - Their Law (1994)  ; This song has absolutely dominated my rotation this center and latter portion of March 2026. I am compelled to get a Roland W30 in order to channel some currently appreciated Liam Howlett effects.
March 11 2026;Prey - Confess Your Love (2026)  ;
March 10 2026;Hank Williams Jr. - Your Cheatin' Heart (1980) ;
March 9 2026;Merle Haggard - I Think I'll Just Stay Here And Drink (1980) ;
March 8 2026;Meshuggah - Beneath (1995)  ;
March 5 2026;Bolt Thrower - Graven Image (1994)  ; Such a mean riff.
March 5 2026;Obituary - The End Complete (1992)  ; The more staccato riffing style combined with the fuzzy tone employed by the string section of Obituary, the former of these points in this song especially, is quite a compelling thing. It inspires a misanthropic feeling, whenever the repeating and modulating riff near the end enters its recursive playout. I have remarked about sections, normally breakdowns, of songs that sound to me like an aural personification of conflict; this song's example of such sounds to me like doing something sadistic, like transporting a hogtied woman into a damp hole in the ground in an inconspicuous locale in the woods, your satisfaction with this irrelevant; the task of carrying this out being a clinical labor with dynamics of abruptness, inspiring all the more hopelessness in the mind of the bitch who has befallen this circumstance, ha.
March 5 2026;Godflesh - Baby Blue Eyes (1992)  ; I had neglected to induct this one into this list these past few weeks (interesting how the materials this webpage serves to index are mysteriously overlooked by its curator), and it had been a placeholder song to put on while driving, lacking anything else holding more short term currency (as you'll find the majority of inductions to this log are; fleeting tunes which have a pull on me for only a short time, but this is not something I wish to let slip into amnesia). It ticks a few crucial boxes for me, with its driving artificial percussion and sampled 'boop', overtop a depressive or rather dissociative melody is assigned that sticks in my mind.
March 3 2026;David Allan Coe - The Ride (1983) ;
March 2 2026;Alice In Chains - Am I Inside (1992) ;
March 1 2026;Cathedral - Reaching Happiness Touching Pain (1991)  ; For my friend's birthday celebration, we were gathered at "the house"; we passed the phone around and played music while we played GTA IV. I initially put on Muslimgauze, but it wasn't received well, so I switched up to Cathedral, and while it wasn't met with warm reception, it got the heat off my back. I played Crowbar afterwards.
March 1 2026;Legend B - Lost In Love (1994) ;
February 27 2026;Erika - I Don't Know (2003)  ; I Don't Know.
February 22 2026;Scorn - Falling (1994)  ; An initial pull into the world of Scorn; I had probably heard this song first, perhaps after tracks from 'Vae Solis', but probably before anything from 'Colossus' - this was in 2023.
February 22 2026;Muslimgauze - Thimble Cups Of Urdu (1995)  ; The low end is driving, and the liberal (Chomskian) use of delay makes for a Spongebobianly disoriented condition. It sounds like the onset of violence, or anger.
February 22 2026;Muslimgauze - Submit To Sharia (1993)  ;
February 22 2026;Muslimgauze - Khan Younis (1993)  ;
February 22 2026;Muslimgauze - Home Demo A2 (1992/2023)  ; A more intimate perspective into the spontaneity of Bryn Jones' musicianship. This is a raw demo of ideas which would appear on 1993's "Hamas Arc" as "Khan Younis", which develops some of the sounds heard here with gobs of reverbs and panning effects (informed speculation).
February 22 2026;Mortician - Inquisition (1996)  ; An ironclad argument against any claim that Mortician isn't "slam".
February 22 2026;Godflesh - Locust Furnace (1989)  ; A song I remember walking after dark listening to in my earbuds, en route to my then-girlfriend's house or home from. In hindsight, the dystopian sounds and textures, austerism was a foreshadowing of so much; the ruinous collapse of the relationship, the global pandemic, my rejection of societal templates and standards in the coming years, it all is as if I should have been able to see these things coming through this song.
February 22 2026;Ministry - We Believe (1986)  ;
February 22 2026;Bourbonese Qualk - Murmur (1989) ; Potent jam.
February 22 2026;Napalm Death - State Of Mind (1994) ;
February 22 2026;Napalm Death - Corrosive Elements (1996) ;
Febraury 20 2026;Kate Bush - Wuthering Heights (1978) ; Got this song stuck in my head after I watched a youtube short of Kate performing this song on television; her animated facial expressions are iconic, but what I hadn't known was that she was nineteen years old when she penned the song, conceived of the melodies, and all within an evening. Kate is a rare, rare specimen.
February 19 2026;Thomas Dolby - She Blinded Me With Science (1982) ;
February 19 2026;Dead Or Alive - You Spin Me Round (Like A Record) (Rip It Up Mix) (1987) ;
February 15 2026;Chuck Person - A3 (2010) ; While I'd acquired in my memory some acknowledgement of the particular album this is from being noteworthy, with relation to Chopped and Screwed music re-entering prominance - I'd forgotten the handle of 'Eccojams'. Also, I only learned today in looking into the bodies' origin that the creator is Oneotrix Point Never.
February 14 2026;Lead Into Gold - Snake Oil (1990) ;
February 13 2026;Suns Of Arqa - The Truth Lies Therein (1987) ;
February 13 2026;Suns Of Arqa - He Did Not Die (1987) ;
February 13 2026;Suns Of Arqa - Om Kaaraaya (2006) ;
February 13 2026;Muslimgauze - Please Leave Calcutta As You Found It (1997) ;
February 12 2026;KMFDM - Liebelised (1990) ;
February 7 2026;The Rootsman - Tremors (2001) ;
February 6 2026;The Rootsman - Intifada (1995) ; The oud sample is the most prominent loop, and is addictive, but what also caught my ear is the tambourine loop - this is the same loop which can be heard on Scorn's tune "Exodus" from their 1994 album "Evanescence".
February 5 2026;Pitchshifter - Product Placement (1996) ; Was inspired to listen to this song randomly; glad that I did. I feel the message of the song are quite relevant to the current state of things, what with the aerosolizing Epstein and Jewish mass control debacles.
February 3 2026;The Rootsman - Pass The Chalice (1996) ;
January 31 2026;
January 30 2026;Rob Zombie - The Great American Nightmare (1997) ; A high-octane industrial rock/metal tune which helped distinguish Rob Zombie as a solo force apart from his soon to quietly disintegrate collective White Zombie.
January 28 2026;Autechre - Puch (1997) ;
January 28 2026;Autechre - Clipper (1995) ;
January 28 2026;Autechre - Cichli (1997) ;
January 27 2026;Fatboy Slim - Won't Talk About It (1989) ; Mentioned by Norman Cook in an interview as an initial experience using the Atari ST as a sequencer.
January 27 2026;Caustic Window - Flutey (1994) ; As my thirst for information about a figure I've mentioned plently of times already and will not expressly say their name as its become a bit of an externalized obsession, and their process for creating the musics they did continues, doesn't really get sated except through perhaps the most earnest channel which is assembling an individual interpretation through sporadic experimentations and conception from repeated listenings, I do figure upon hearing electronic music of a relative style, quality that I ought to become an expert in emulating the familiar one so to approach the obscure one as closely as possible. And while I may peer at articles about Richard D James' setup or the like, I won't find the same raw interest like I would if a picture or reliable account on the subject of the unnamed creator's workflow / setup met my eyes. Somewhere somebody mentioned the [rolandsbx80]and that seems like a plausible component, considering the presences of groovebox basses and their seamless parity with the percussion at all times.
January 26 2026;The Rootsman - Wadada (Sema Mix) (1995) ; Didn't expect there to be a bridge between The Rootsman and the Son Of Arqa. But, after such a revelation, it makes complete sense considering the stylistic parallels and shared reverences. Also, an aside; The Rootsman is nowhere near as popular or prolific as I had previously assumed. No insult to the man, but I have been somewhat surprised to see that this mysterious confidant of Muslimgauze is in this way. 'Al Aqsa Intifada' or the remixed tune bearing his name on Sandtrafikar would lead you to believe the guy was as feverishly prolific as Bryn.
January 26 2026;Muslimgauze - Untitled 2 (2000) ; A very relaxing but melancholy tune. Sounds to have been composed nearly six years before Bryn's death, and this is reinforced by the back of the CD case's information.
January 26 2026;Obituary - Killing Time (1992) ; Perhaps the best argument for hardcore's relevance to death metal and the furtherance of the genre. I always turn my nose up at the mention of hardcore influence anymore, because like with most movements, it has gone too far. I dislike bands like Volcano, and generally tune out of advertisedly hardcore music recordings or performances, because it generally comes at the expense of traditions or considerations that I prefer to hear in music of that valence. But, like I said, this song makes a good case for its necessity early on (1992); and philosophically, I am very much supportive of the effect hardcore had on the compositions and productions of death metal particularly in the nineties - taking a genre that was essentially the heir of thrash metal and converting it into something with groove; Demolition Hammer nor Ripping Corpse were going to steer the genre where it would need to go in order to yeild truly idealic groove-laden tracks that you hear here, and would continue to hear throughout the decade.
January 26 2026;Fear Factory - Archetype (2004) ; I randomly remembered this song while sitting on the couch in the living room, in the middle or at the close of a conversation. I went into my room and played it because it had been some time since I'd listened to Dino-less Fear Factory.
January 26 2026;Gorguts - Waste Of Mortality (1991) ; I've always defaulted to playing the palm muted descending riff which is the primary motif in the song, whenever constraining myself to, say, the 'A' or 'D' string on a very downtuned guitar or a guitar closer to the D / C# Standard domain. I have an affinity for the Floridian death metal production and, by extension, the compositional tropes found within everything from Napalm Death's Harmony Corruption to Cynic's Focus.
January 25 2026;The Rootsman - Only Jah (1997) ; Resurrecting some appreciation for Crooklyn Dub, but also a more simple and forced acquaintance with the people who collaborated with Bryn Jones in life.
January 24 2026;Vidna Obmana - Echoing Delight (1993) ;
January 21 2026;Godflesh - Post Self (2017) ; One of the riffs that I resort to playing by default whenever at a loss for what else to play, on account of my introduction to it being relatively early on in my guitar playing (three or so years in). Exhibits a signature industrious cadenced rhythm (the song itself as well as the partly matching guitar part), as well as a tritone, when the open- call it E -changes to a first fret tritone on the A; this is a staple of Godflesh guitar riffing and this proclivity toward the injection of this particular note relationship has crept into my own riffs, in the brutal death metal genre to sludge metal, industrial-capitalizing slamming brutal death metal and more straightforward industrial metal that I've caught myself attempting to make. But those genres, being the extent of my guitar-involved movements, reveal my innate habits on guitar, and this song informed it alongside maybe ten other Godflesh songs and a trail mix vat including White Zombie, Prong, Pantera, Mortician, Napalm Death, Devourment, Last Days Of Humanity, Malignancy - everything I've ever heard I've held onto in some respect. In a way, this webpage and its affiliated musical logbooks serve to aid in facilitating the furthened development/shaping and contouring of my guitar playing among other things, like acquired production formulas, rhythmic vocabulary, valent tinging (scenes and bands influencing bands and scenes, with a paper trail to observe the modifications), etc.
January 20 2026;Dangerous Toys - Scared (1989) ; Dangerous Toys occupy the same space of conversation as Skid Row does, but with acknowledgeability toward Pantera considering there are geographic and comeupical kindrances. While their sound is rich in the whimsy which would and did disqualify them from full adoption by metal fundamentalists, the chorus, while slightly cornish, is memorable - as is the hook and bridge. A memorable song indeed.
January 18 2026;Second-Hand Satellites - Orbit 1.4 (2000) ; The vocal sample (non lyrical) and bassline are incredible. Reminds me much of Muslimgauze and Bryn Jones.
January 17 2026;Muslimgauze - The Public Flogger Of Lahore (1995) ; An infectious and heavy beat to be found on the Izlamaphobia record. It conjures an image of a wrinkled forehead leaning over a mixer board. Bryn Jones was reported to have been in a discontent, frustrated frame of mind during the recording of this album in particular.
January 14 2026;Pantera - Suicide Note Pt. 2 (1996) ; As a fan of Pantera since around 2015, I've had a concept of each of the eras of Pantera from religious live footage viewing during the early years of enjoying them and learning guitar alongside those videos. Despite it being the only album of theirs' I've owned a physical copy of, The Great Southern Trendkill is the album I have until today been least intimately familiar with; I didn't identify with this album during my initial run of being a living, breathing Pantera fan. However, since being radicalized by death metal production and compositional tropes, I can really appreciate, say, the ending breakdown on 'Suicide Note Pt. 2' - I wouldn't have disliked this part in the before era, but I absolutely am a fan of it now, as well as Phillip's shrieks (something I used to have a distaste for).
January 13 2026;Muslimgauze - Nabius (1993) ; Taking David home the other day (January 11th) had this track appear in the recommended songs. It provided a nice atmosphere as I deposited him at his aparment block.
January 11 2026;Alice In Chains - Heaven Beside You (1995) ; It randomly popped into my head when evaluating some issues of perspective on tribulations of individuals "so there's problems in your life.. that's fucked up". This isn't that I have a dismissive view of people plagued by whatever agents of inhibition they are; in fact, I'm someone who tries to export a flat admission that the conditions of our society are becoming unnacceptable. So I complain, but I entertain the ideas of Jesse Lee Petersen that dissuade me from doing so, and instead point to maintaining a stoic facia for every predicament and hardship. I don't hinge my content with myself on proximity or adherence to another person's model, but I'd say that I'm not too far in the red - what I lack in my life, I don't resort to excuses to detract from individual responsibility. I'm retentive enough to know what has contributed to the state, but I make sure to balance whatever external citation with an inward one. Ultimately, righteous or not, the advices of each mind will go untended and degeneracy will take over always.
January 10 2026;Godflesh - 40 Versions (1996) ; I've been listening to this song on repeat, the delivery of the vocal is very hummable and singable. Having been acquainted with Wire through this cover, I appreciate about this version (haha) the vocals mainly but also the atmosphere of the effected guitars; the synth blorps at the end are very unusual for Godflesh but suit the song and architecture of sounds well. The use of drum machines will always be a positive in my book, and in a track with such depressive energy as this, the empowerer of the individual musician in the utilities' use is emboldened. A great detail - a man uses a gun to kill himself or other people; a man uses a drum machine to write songs (to comment on himself or other people).
January 9 2026;Morbid Angel - Invocation Of The Continual One (1998) ; The intro riff is addictive to listen to; the chord progression sounds imperial, dark and whimsical. The greater song while technical is also masterful, a labor undertaken by Trey Azagthoth alone, save for the vocals and their words, which are Steve Tucker.
January 2 2026;Aphex Twin - Acrid Avid Jam Shred (1995) ;
January 1 2026;Muslimgauze - Dust (1993) ; There's a conjoinment of four distinct Muslimgauze songs on YouTube; 'Shamal Aquabah', 'P.L.O. Flag', 'Veiled Sisters' and 'Dust' - the four make sense grouped for one uninterrupted listen, as it is a journey - however, upon the listening of the third tune in this sequence isolated, its ending made me instantly recognize the absence of the tune which is to follow, and this spurred me to investigate what song that was (what the title of it was). 'Dust' is an ethereal, neon track, what with its looped four-dimensional bit of on-brand ambiguous sampling or synthesis being something of a hypnotic agent.
December 26 2025;Libido Airbag - Legalize Necrophilia On Psylocybin (2000) ;
December 28 2025;Mick Harris - Cure Period (2005) ;
December 21 2025;Malevolent Creation - Multiple Stab Wounds (1991) ; I've long considered Malevolent Creation to be one of my favorite metal bands, let alone in the death metal bracket. Brett Hoffman's vocals are so franchising into the violent ethos of death metal, and this particular tune features a great chorus.
December 19 2025;Depeche Mode - Enjoy The Silence (1988) ;
December 18 2025;Muslimgauze - Ultra Orthodox, And No Cheating (1997) ; Listening to this with headphones is quite a revelation into the panning mastery of Bryn Jones. Its as if there were no mistakes present in anything he produced - each silence deliberate, each dropout purposeful.
December 17 2025;Caustic Window - The Garden Of Linmiri (1992) ;
December 13 2025;Curve - Die Like A Dog (1991) ; I often don't know what to say about these Curve titles which rightfully have a place on this list; what I do have presence of mind to mention is that I feel the lyrical matter is next to nonsensical. I'm biased against the tribulations of womankind, sure, but Toni Halliday doesn't penetrate my soul with her words - they're optional - it's her angelic voice which captivates me. Peering at the lyrics of a Curve song is a completely unnecessary action - you feel everything you need to feel already, with the phrasings and repetitions conducting your emotions. The precise mantras and sentences are underwhelming and subtract from the music if you are so rigid as to emphasize them.
December 12 2025;Fear Factory - Resurrection (1998) ;
December 9 2025;Muslimgauze - Bandit Queen (LXSD Mix) (1996) ; A truly quintessential song encompassed in Bryn's catalog. A sampled element (which upon more scrutinous listening is reminiscent of what you'll hear across the previous year's 'Silknoose', a record I'm overdue to revisit) sounds similar to the 'tadaa' sound effect on Windows 3.1, and this of course has me swearing to follow this cryptic ritual of sampling the 3.5mm out of an IBM PS/2 of the era with a Peavey SP/SX. Because my life is unfulfilling in most ways.
December 6 2025;Godflesh - Merciless (1994) ; It has been over a year since I listened to the collection of superb tracks on Godflesh's 'Merciless' EP from 1994, a sister release to 'Selfless'. The album sounds like a unseasonably depressive Broadrick taking a sampler to the instrumental conventions of Godflesh's sonic and piecing an image of them at the most clinical, cynical and massive. Its perhaps the most 'industrial' the band had ever sounded, in my view, owing to the downwardly artifacting guitar and bass samples which are masterfully synced and sequenced to the signaturely icy SR16 drum machine. During my last marathon of listenership of this release, I was motivated to do what I've described, which is sampling hits/"stabs"/one bar rhythms on guitar and bass into an E-MU ESI32, the products of the experiment being notably compelling.
November 29 2025;Black Sabbath - Zero The Hero (1983) ; It only took me this long to give 'Born Again' by Black Sabbath a chance. The progression from consuming a piece of unrelated content passively to arriving to something which defines your investment over the course of days or weeks is certainly a marvel - what started me along the path to discovery of Ian Gillan's mastery was a YouTube short of an excerp of Jon Lord playing the keyboard solo to Deep Purple's 'Highway Star', which I looked up after twiddling my thumbs and nearly forgetting about the impulse to look into the piece of music which did pique some interest. And, not really being all too familiar with Deep Purple aside from their (in)famous hit song, I was taken for a ride with 'Highway Star'; the vocals at first seemed a bit campy, until their fit was driven in through repetition. The song lingered about my mind for the day or so after I walked that path of search history. But, courtesy of algorhythms which make recommendations based on the recent content consumption habits, the acidlike- covered Black Sabbath album stream for 'Born Again' found itself playing as I'd not been active; in a capacity of awareness to click "stop" on the autoplayer. I decided to sit and listen to the piece, and after one or two songs, I had already become a scholar of Deep Purple and Black Sabbath's momentary affiliation with Gillan. Then 'Zero The Hero' started playing; this song rocked me. Having been familiar with Cannibal Corpse's cover, to not have heard the original before gave me the impression that it would've been an Ozzy era song. This of course is not the case - it is Ian Gillan who contributed to such a monolithic song. Great verses and chorus.
November 28 2025;Scorn - Ultranova (1991) ; This random early Scorn tune popped into my head today as I contemplated what songs to add to the limited capacity audio repository for songs I wanted to be cycled through for navigating the site pages.
November 20 2025;Rapoon & Promute - A Breath Of Glass (2014) ; It was a pleasurable experience to sit at the propped-open backdoor of the business I work at while it stormed and the people traffic slowed to journal. This spacey and mystical, merridean response-esque music is truly great for the passtime of shaking the peachtrees of consciousness.
November 16 2025;Amon Tobin - Mighty Micro People (2002) ; Amon's music reminds me of the atmosphere on display in Eraldo Bernocchi's music.
November 11 2025;Kid Loco - Relaxin' With Cherry (1997) ; The triphop tune by the artist Kid Loco has seen repeated listens by me this week in November, as its a melancholy dance track whose sparse lyrical content makes it ideal for background music while journaling/writing. It also was the basis of a conversation with a colleague about music technology peaking over two decades ago, this being my position, and theirs' being incongruous. He has also dubbed this particular tune an example of 'elevator music', a handle he's given a number of songs that appear in this manifest of songs that have for a time or enduringly captured my interest.
November 4 2025;The Future Sound Of London - Speed Ball (2007) ;
November 3 2025;Suns Of Arqa - Ananta Snake Dance (1982) ; The atmosphere present in this early Arqa tune is distinctly twentieth century, and appeals in a similar way to Muslimgauze pieces (the more 1930s film-esque examples like Sandtrafikar, which itself is kin to the gateway Scarab's 'Secrets Of The Past And Future'). The tune feels like being in a mediterranean pub or tavern, being unassuming to the bustling and rowdy local patronage.
November 2 2025;Suns Of Arqa - Sadrayama (2015) ;
November 1 2025;Suns Of Arqa - Hey Jagunath (1990) ; 'Hey Jagunath' has been a once per three day listen since my initial smittenness with the product of Bryn Jones' manipulations, which singles out a brief eight second passage and loops it for close to five minutes. The source material of the sample, the tune of the same name from a 1990 7-inch release is a nearly industrious tune which excites more than Suns Of Arqa is known to, their brand being more introspective and spiritual and not azz bouncing. Apparently they flirted with this more energetic flavor from around 1989 until 1993 when Snelson's Last Stand transpired and they leaned into a more reggae aesthetic, on display in the BBC compilation that also contains cuts from 1992 that foreshadow the slowdown.
October 25 2025;Muslimgauze - Route Amin Fraction (1996) ; Where Muslimgauze meets breakbeat. I consider this particular track off of the limited release DAT 'Uzbekistani Bizarre And Souk' to be one of my favorites. The frenzied vocal sample over an easternized glitchtronic beat weaves a demeanor of disharmony that I wish to hone at some point myself. The Uzbekistani and Satyajit Eye DAT releases, on account of the released format, provoke a craving more than any other of using DAT as a recording medium; though for the time, I am pretty unwavering in my reluctance to take that plunge, as the media is quite expensive and I already have a more convenient and familial system in PCM tapes. Oh who am I kidding, its probably far more exciting to handle little DATs. I'll get more miles out of the PCM workflow before that time if it is to come.
October 24 2025;Godflesh - Witchhunt (1999) ;
October 23 2025;Front 242 - Religion (1993) ;
October 21 2025;Scorn - Almost Human (1999) ; While it isn't my favorite version of even this song, this particular edition of it (the Anamnesis studio version) features these cold inanimate whines which, for me at least, stuck around in my musical memory. Reminds me of some industrious production effects in Gut's 'Can't Wait For Tonight'.
October 18 2025;Fear Factory - Manipulation (1992) ; There's someone in the comments' section which insinuates the song is some exempliary show of unsatisfactory musicality - I happen to disagree. I think this is a brutal and disjointed by design bruiser of an industrial death track.
October 14 2025;Pablo's Eye - La Pedrera (2018) ;
September 28/October 3 2025;Pablo's Eye - The Switchback (1997) ; Having experienced the revelation of Extreme Records' existence beyond just Muslimgauze in Skuli Sverrisson, I began perusing the Discogs page for the label. A name which I'd seen early on into my outsider music familiarization phase was 'Pablo's Eye', although admittedly I didn't recognize the music as great at that time.
September 27 2025;Muslimgauze - Fiefdom (2005) ; Having taken a liking to this tune months ago, it comes to mind now to include it in this register of impactful or mentionable songs. Its one of the more poignant works of Bryn Jones, what with the explosion-esque beat juxtaposed against the gentle, innocent songed wail atop harps and glimmers - a statement in/of itself about the middle eastern situation that has only festered in the years following his hospital bed death.
September 20 2025;Meathook Seed - A Furred Grave (1993) ; The industrial craze of the 1990s within metal music was a pervasive phenomenon, evidently impacting even grindcore pioneers Napalm Death. Its no secret among my musical friend bubbles that I am a proponent of industrial elements in music production, metal music largely but not limited to that - the reciprocal atmosphere of graphics of a time which utilize textures kin to those you hear in music dated to the period command my affinity in things as detached as programming guides (see: picture I can't find at the moment). Meathook Seed is an example of an album artwork and sonic aesthetic meeting to synthesize a feeling - 'Embedded', released in 1993, is rife with chunky but slightly groggy riffs (think incandescent hospital lights and sleep deprivation, where Napalm Death / Obituary convey more disarrayed town center images) overlaid atop organic and artificial drum performances and individual sounds, upon which exceptionally value-summing vocal deliveries (occasionally the lyrics come up short (My Infinity)) bale everything together before the enveloping pre-post production shrinkwrapping is vacuum sealed. Not to be eager with lazy comparisons, Meathook Seed is similar enough to Nailbomb to assert that the laud the Newport-Cavalera venture garners owes some percentage to the Brummie-Floridian cell.
September 15 2025;Suns Of Arqa - Anthem (2011) ; For some odd reason, I think of Chumbawamba when this gem of a tune plays; it is distinctly English. The female singer sounds to my ears quite similar to Billie Myers, not an artist I have much affinity for, but the foundationally different musical ideas and hierarchy make for a setting in which her sound isn't exaspirating.
September 14 2025;Find The Missing Chord I Play (Muslimgauze cover of Suns Of Arqa, 1998) ; The texture of Bryn Jones' production overlaid upon the sonic breadth of Suns Of Arqa is truly addictive - there are samples found in Bryn's music which find their way to Suns' pieces as well - they were from the same hometown and had like interests, so there's some inevitability for this. But seeing as I've been and still am a huge Muslimgauze and Bryn Jones proponent, Suns Of Arqa by merit of the kinship and photographed meeting of Bryn and Michael (Wadada/Ward) is on my radar, and I'm frequently impressed and subject to their earworms. Bryn's finalizing notarial stamp on a piece is inimitably good, with the atmospheric properties of so much as the phrases he chose to repeat through some medium, either a sampler or tape loop, being profound. I don't feel as if I'm overextending laud either - having subscribed to industrial music for some time, I've identified specific attributes and capacities of music that (Bryn) Jones taps into and interacts with where his contemporaries fully overlook. Aesthetic ugliness in some cases (to bring up an erratically unrelated project; Repudilation's demo makes some people - my ex-girlfriend included - winge with its flagrances) can be tasteful. Sacrificing convention or tetheredness to balanced and pleasing mixtures can lend the effect of magnifying the pleasing qualities of surrounding parts - surrounding releases even, if you approach it from a cumulative, long-term angle.
September 1 2025;Pablo's Eye - All She Wants Grows Blue (1998) ; (260118);This track dominated my rotations around this time (September 1 2025) and though in the months leading up to this writing, I haven't listened to this track much if at all, when mulling over the impactful tunes of last year and not seeing this one, I knew I had to wedge it in. The months after moving into the "new" apartment, having a room full of a new cars' value in music equipment but without the energy or confidence to reconnect everything, I may have been feeling down. Coupled with the persisting blueness on account of being apart from someone meaningful to me, this song resonated with me with its sonic movement, its cliche but apt sampled(?) narration, and the simplicity of it all was motivating to rekindle creativity. Effects processor, microphone, hand drum, volume pedal, two samplers - that's all it would take to recreate the tune.
August 2025;Living Colour - Sunshine Of Your Love (True Lies soundtrack, 1994) ; This cover blew me away. As I was only familiar with their hit song 'Cult Of Personality' (where I'm sure most peoples' knowledge of their work ends too) from 1988, discovering that their career continued into the 90s was surprising. It was a guitar magazine feature cover of their guitarist and founder Vernon Reid's elaborate rig (as he was infamous for then and may continue to be) that queued me in to their post-stardom era, as the issue is from 1994; well into the subsequent decade. Looking up 'Living Colour 1994' yeilded their video-supported tune 'Leave It Alone' which is a good song in its own right (you can hear the AKAI S1100 that sticks out amongst everything else in that rig photo, though that's probably not a good thing considering its being used a bit roughly (looping Glover's lyric "peace" not quite on-time with the remainder of the music) but the other recommended thumbnails possessed that '90s near-lost media sheen that commanded my attention thereafter. The old-YouTube meets exclusive Hollywood early/mid 90s big production pop culture pinnacle-of-humanity is a vibration you can measure from a lot of music acts' video materials (MTV during that period was ubiquitous, explaining why even obscure by today's standards stuff found its way onto the juggernaut video sharing site eighteen to twenty years ago) from that day and Living Colour's 'True Lies'-promoting video for the massive Cream tune carries it in homer buckets. The members of Living Colour look edgier than their Glamour Boys-look and sound serrated, and the videography/post production injects an additional wealth of swagger (if you watch the higher picture quality, copyright vetted and True Lies-excised videos for the cover hosted on Living Colour's official YouTube channel (the video I'm championing is characteristically on some rando's channel who thought this was just as cool as I do but had the advantage of being present and equipped to document and disseminate this art), you'll see that the movie scenes went over what are just junk and unimpactful angles and contents/subjects, like Glover playing a little keyboard looking like a Ghetto Stevie Wonder when no synth or keys are heard in the tune, thus elevating the quality of the media-supportive example and making the 'official' and orphaned remnant feel lame by comparison.
August 2025;Curve - Missing Link (1993) ; Curve is a band that has only recently entered my scope of awareness, but has already seen dominance and recession and re-dominance in my rotations. Initially, Horror Head, Already Yours and Think And Act were the big, ever-repeated tracks as I drove to/from work, to/from the airport, or was in a particular mood in my office/bedroom space. After the appeal finally began softening, I would on occassion put on a track followed by another from the 'Doppelganger' album inbetween other artists - that is until I decided to give 'Cuckoo' a try. I believe it was Curve's live footage from 1993 that bequeathed a Cuckoo track to me, and my enjoyment of what I heard had me search up the studio version and notify YouTube's algorithm that I was indeed ready for the recommendations. 'Unreadable Communication' is a sibling to 'Missing Link' in that I really enjoy both, though they're so distinct from one another. As we're discussing Missing Link, I'll mention that the instrumental reminds me of a tracker software-created demo which leveraged sampled thrash guitars (Amiga 500 Pro Tracker in favscenes). This of course is no criticism - you've probably come to know my appreciation for attributes of music which anchor it to its time.
August 2025;Deftones - Beware (2006) ; Deftones listenership is a cycle. You begin the sequence by discovering them, you generate momentum by familiarizing yourself with the discography and identifying which eras are the best in your view, and then you slowly fall out of love with the project as everyone else hops on the bandwagon and you can't escape the alignment of this sound with the perpetrators of sexual extremism. You'll get to the point where the sound of Chino Moreno's voice angers you, because he exudes this obnoxious cholo gangster feces (at least I'm referring to their earlier more rap-infused work) and the only acceptable iteration becomes Fat Chino (2001-present). I didn't realize that my disgust was circumventable until recently, when I heard/reflected on a Deftones song that my mind didn't interpret as nails on a chalkboard (to clarify, I used to enjoy the earlier Deftones material, but now I really have trouble suffering it). Well, it's the homestretch of the circular orbit that is being someone who is familiar with them, as I've begun rekindling my affinity for their brand of alternative metal. Beware is a particularly potent piece from them, as its empassioned chorus is fettered by the subdued but energetically rising verses.
August 2025;Gut - Can't Wait For Tonight (2007) ; Gut is a band that I have fond memories of becoming acquainted with in my freshman year of high school. At the time, the latter of the back-to-back El Paso and Dayton shootings had been drawing massive attention to the strain of underground music purveyed by its purpetrator, Connor Betts. His affiliated pornogrind act Menstrual Munchies appeared in news headlines and articles, and fascinated surely more than just myself who understood that the extracirriculars of this individual had no bearing on the actions he would commit to. The YouTube channels 'Anal Flamethrower', 'xTheTreasureHunterx' and 'Grindwar Channel' became institutions for me, a faltering high school student too far gone performatively to restore any morale of improvement; by some smiling of the gods of unexceptionality, I was waved through the exits and I was appreciative enough to not attend college after. This is relevant to Gut because it was them who I was studying, becoming acquainted with in the months leading up to the world shutdown, which delivered me to a linear trend downwards into dissappearing happiness. I was an emphatic grind kid with partiality to the left wing as 2019 yeilded to 2020, walking unprovisioned to Arby's during lunch break to return ten minutes late due to the massive distance for a teenager or anyone really to walk voluntarily in such an amount of time. I wore provocative shirts like Anal Cunt's "Everyone Should Be Killed", I hassled a girl my age on a whim and photographed her amused expression - I was showing signs of success amid other unraveling failures, and the pandemics' shutdowns swished these around to become a less joyful, less confident and healthy teen who would very soon walk into the fatal exceptions that would extricate his friends and girlfriend just after one another.
August 2025;Vatican Shadow - Nothing Lived There (2021) ; Expanding upon the atmospheres blueprinted by the likes of Bryn Jones with Muslimgauze, JG Thirlwell and a rich charcuterie board of other industrialist musical presences, Dominick Fernow's output with Vatican Shadow is a spacey, occassionally epic interpretation of solemn electronic body music. I find the combinations of rugged, rotary kiln-like rhythms with tapestrial though modern (almost too much so but not) synthesizer layers really inspiring - they play like the collective environmental soundtrack to scandals which involve the Clintons, though I'm too young to have have any substantive perception of them when they were current.
August 2025;KRS One - The Sound Of The Police (1993) ; Having heard the most brief sample of the vocal in the new Naked-Gun-starring-Liam-Neeson adverts, I immediately recalled the song and the artist. While I do find the messaging and artistic merits of the music occasionally highly scrutizable, the boom bap and hip hop exponents of the era (late 80s and early 90s) were a mixed bag. I would consider KRS One in the upper hemisphere of respectable rap 'artists' of the day - Eric B and Rakim too, Cypress Hill in a different way but alas, and of course Chuck D and Public Enemy. The draw of KRS One personally is the wittyness of the deliveries - he proves himself not impenetrable but nonetheless a well equipped wordsmith with steadily compelling instrumental accompaniments. KRS One's beats were pretty good in the day (even though I preferred 'The Bridge' to 'The Bridge Is Over') and inspired many, beyond just the scope of hip-hop.
August 2025;Prurient - You Show Great Spirit (2013) ; While the underground entrenched persons like StuntRockConfusion and surely others write Dominick Fernow off as a profiteer of the genius of Bryn Jones and his non decouplable musical/advocative effort Muslimgauze, I don't necessarily observe such a soulless imitation. There are, after all, projects which sound much closer sonically to Muslimgauze, some even cohabitating the labels the music was released through - and while Dominick is a clear disciple of that sonic institution, I feel his ear for synthesizer pads, gregorian chants and however modern dance beats renders him eligible for laud. When I find myself craving the sounds of synthesis in my own music, which happens frequently as I appear to have skimped over provisioning the studio I operate with synthesizers, I think to Fernow's work as it plays an ample role.
July 2025;Godflesh - Nihil (Total Belief Mix) (1991) ; Godflesh are a persisting current in my musical vernacular. Having been introduced to them through the Wikipedia page for Ministry and a happenchance purchase of their 1996 album 'Songs Of Love And Hate' (a release fans wouldn't cite as their finest moment), retroactively exploring their catalog online after becoming fond of the proto-nu and drum machine-relegatory 1996 offering made Godflesh's navigation, at the least, bisected. Over time there were additional pockets of prior negligence exposed, some of those acting like natural gas reserves for inspiration (Slavestate re-envigorated my industrialist proclivities near 2023's closing) - while I can say certainly that I've now entertained each of the iterations and tasted each of their flavors (save maybe for A World Lit Only By Fire - I can only really recall Shut Me Down at the moment), I'll admit that the Cold World-resident remix of Nihil (the 'Total Belief Mix') made me pitch a tent when I heard it for the first time last week. When the momentous driving bass bites (sampled portions of the bass which are being sequenced) appeared over the rarely-upped bleakness of these SR-16 drum patterns (so to say that this remixed track's drums are similar to the trademark cold mechanical effect, only that they're somewhat even bleaker than the normal), I was hooked - this was like a needle being inserted in my arm and the plunger pushed. I will always be a fan of this re/de/alternate mixing-precipitated feeling of a piece of music being manipulated and paired synergetically with the present technologies - an effect, a maximization so hard to come by anymore with the collective move away from ingenuity-spurring limitations in the tech (now we have non-inspiring limitations that nobody seems to talk about despite numbered upticks in DAWless/ computerless music interest). Within the industrial genre particularly, remixes of tracks often housed grooves and interpretations of concepts superior to those found in the original versions (Fear Factory had some devious alternate versions of Soul Of A New Machine (1992) on their Fear Is The Mindkiller remix album in 1993) - Revolting Cocks springs to mind too, Front 242 following, and the list lengthens from there, but among these austere compadres, Godflesh stands out personally to me as a band whose sound and intuitive configuration (man plus man plus machine) lends itself best to adulterations in post. I remember attempting to justify my glazing over of Slavestate back when on the basis of the tracklist's sparseness (the title track has three remix versions out of an 8 or 9 song lineup); it looks like laziness or grounds to undersell it, especially when you take note of another track being a rerecording of a track from a previous album. But over time, for reasons breaking down to artistic comparativism and individual experience, I came to recognize Slavestate as a great execution. On one hand it was hearing the remixes of that song, and visualizing the mixing desk with Broadrick and perhaps a sampler/sequencer cutting these songs up Burroughs-like and yeilding guerillized, club-friendly slabs of second-pass music; the other hand on my forehead whenever I'm composing tracks for a personal project and wishing to (possess the skill to) pull what Justin did. Three alternate versions of a banging track should more often occupy an album's tracklist, having potential to benefit the rev 0 in the supplimental auxilliary contexts.
July 2025;Curve - Already Yours (1992) ;
July 2025;Muslimgauze - Gulf Between Us (1997) ; Bryn Jones is an incredible influence upon me in 2025 - I feel a parasocial bond with him, having been a bit of an odd fellow and myself a differently manifesting one (certainly less successful in my expression). The era during which he churned out these sonic tapestries was not nearly as individual-friendly or democratized as it is today, for better or worse. Bryn was an example of a phenom - a force that comes about rarely, and accomplished in what really is a short time a lifetime's body of work. Mysterious but also universal, the englishman created powerful music that achieved its purpose in spades; I believe his work is more pertinent and consumed than at any prior point. It has succeeded in provoking critical thought in the minds of the insulated; I could and likely would have gone my whole life without concerning myself much with the struggles in Gaza - the media's narratives and their counters would've most likely rolled past my hole(s) and that would be a shame. The conflicts which motivated him to create such individually serene and ornate art in sonics are persisting and can and may inspire another ripe young mind. To comment on the song, the low end-rich tones that cascade in a descending constellatory shape repeatedly are quite therapeutic - they aren't reproduceable by phone speakers which makes this therapy untappable while I languish at work, but they do work their magic on my leisure-period that still reels from the assaults of months past, and anticipates only negatives in this bizarre world of idiots, ungratefulness and barbarism, which are 'values' (in the mathematical respect) within Muslimgauze's span. The absence of central vocals (check out their 1986 liveshow audio to hear an incarnation which did incorporate this) majorly widens the aspect ratio of the music's imagery; with a finite voice, one is boxed into the relatability and attributes of the vocalist; without such constraints, and the freedom to introduce and remove speech from any source, you are in possession of ample potential energy. The musician becomes a chameleon in front of a slideshow of troubling sights and situations.
June 2025;Bourbonese Qualk - No Easy Answer (1991) ; A neat little English avant garde project which existed in the same conversation as Muslimgauze in the early to mid 1980s, I quite appreciate about them their tasteful aesthetics, visual and auditory. The juxtaposition of light but sterile analog synthesis and screamed, effected vocals and loungy instrumentation is cultured, and something which hasn't been expanded upon. There are some molds of sound that get encased in amber and never revisited, due to the integrality of whatever aging or deprocated production processes or something similar. This song's recurring chord every 'one' beat is reminiscent (or vice versa rather) of Muslimgauze's 'Hebron Massacre', which too exhibits this pattern of unsettlingly recurrent chordal stabs.
Curve - Think And Act (1992) ;
Swans - A Long Slow Screw (1986) ; Swans is a band that is perhaps near the end of my own lineation of musical revelations to date; having acquainted myself with their music (importantly separate from familiarity with their name/influence) in late 2023, I'm less than two years ddown its pipe of ingrainment. A Long Slow Screw is them at their most menacing, right next to Real Love; no Jarboe in there to brighten anything, to add cherry flavoring - Gira's grunts and howls of discontent, the same discontent that sits in my heart and mind. His lyrics and deliveries sound like what you could imagine yourself to reproduce after an exhausting day of manual labor and spirit imbibement - and at 22, I'm experiencing a concentration of part-demoralizing, part-motivating forces. Gira's voice is the same as that of my slipping psyche.
June 2025;Muslimgauze - Mount Of Olives (2003/1995) ; Muslimgauze at its height of hypnotic potency; I don't condone listening while operating a motor vehicle.
Rammstein - Sonne (2001) ; Possessing a sentimental relationship with the music of Rammstein, the earworm that is 'Sonne' from their turn of the millennium album was a bright burner for the two or three days it took root in my head chamber. What is worth detailing about my feeling of kinship with Rammstein of all bands is their, or Till Lindeman's, explanation of industrial music and the early inclination to making sounds which would be categorizable within the discussed aesthetic. He referred to it as 'boring', and that is precisely what industrial-anything is in at least some capacity - to be repetitive, to be greyscale - these are classifiably boring styles, but are completely necessary; a shipping label doesn't need to be colorful in the same way that a drill doesn't need to be less repetitive. Ultimately, the subtractive approaches to art, ones which creatively utilize austerism and stillness, drollness in creating atmospheres are the most effective.
Skrew - Sea Man (1997)
Brutal Truth - Collapse (1994) ; Brutal Truth, a band I was once quite the proponent of, re-entered my musical dietary valence only just recently - though I can't remember what made me dust off the ol' YouTube search for Godplayer, I evidently did, and decided that I wanted to delve a little deeper into the album which created a little distance, or headroom, between the onslaughts of frenzied blastbeats. At one time, I would have copped a dismissive attitude opposite the position I assume today, which celebrates dynamics, aesthetics and groove, but it likely comes down to musical inexperience and palate neonatality I would've been experiencing at the time. Be it on maturity or simple and inexplicable diversion, I didn't listen to Brutal Truth for years and fell out of love largely with the punken fastcore ethos that much of grind founds itself upon, until I found myself thinking about Gurn and the explanation Kevin Sharp gave about his ousting from the collective (he hadn't practiced or played guitar since the band's initial dissolution and was no longer up to specification in their eyes) and I entertained the potentials for congruence with myself and not practicing guitar for long periods. And with nostalgia's revolutions striking more often now and for the period of time during which I listened to grindcore and memphis trap (triple six mafia underground 1), there are bound to be more revisitations of albums and discoveries of tunes I either didn't fully appreciate or missed entirely.
Curve - Horror Head (1992)
May 2025;Sepultura - Orgasmatron (Motorhead cover) (1991)
Front 242 - Soul Manager (1991) ; Having been a fan of industrious music, whether leaning into conventional rock/metal structures or totally German-style Tubeway Army-descendent electronics collectives since 2018, I really can't pass up anything that has loops, characteristically cold '80s sounding Analog/Digital conversion, or slash especially and steely synthetic percussive elements. Samplers as a tool have burrowed their way deep into my identity and sensabilities musically, for better or worse. Anyway, Front 242 is a band that took me a little more time than their labelmates to so much as take a seminal gander at, and a few more years to actually hearken back to a memory of the CD and alas fall in love with their sound. 'Tyranny For You' sounded nothing like I thought it would when I first bought the CD at Doc's Records in 2018; in fact, as a key reminder of my capacity for incompetence, I thought for a time that I had been bamboozled in some way as I suspected baselessly that the enclosed compact disk was a mismatch, as happens or is noticed at least on occasion at record stores or garage sales (certainly quite a common phenomenon for orphaned yard sale CD collections). On the disk is printed 'Tyranny >For You<' and perhaps an absent band name on the disk (not that it should be mandated that CDs have some representation of all the information sourceable from the jewel case inserts) is what informed my idiotic belief that maybe there had been some mistake, and the disk I had was for some begotten other band called Tyranny or something. Embarrassing confession now unretractable, I evidently came to my senses at some point (I think it took three more years; I distinctly remember resorting to inserting the still mysterious disk into my car's CD player in the dark in Justin, TX somewhere and enduring the first two songs Sacrifice and Rhythm Of Time while my buddy Trey finished up business inside whoever's house I was in the driveway of) and realized that I had the real thing, and that I didn't actually dislike what I was hearing. Winding the clock back to what motivated me to buy the CD to begin with, I recognized the band name from being associated with Ministry; I became a rivethead in 2018 after a conversation with my theater teacher about his experience at a Ministry concert, an anecdote that also acquainted me with Revolting Cocks "RevCo". I bought the CD as there was a real drought of exciting shit within those racks (I regret not buying Skrew's Angel Seed) after my high school friend Corbin and I had extracted from them anything and everything potent over the course of a summer. Around the same time, likely just prior to the bimonthly weekend music shopping expedition downtown, I was in the car with my then-girlfriend and her mom, who probably asked me what kind of music I dug. Responding with a short list including Ministry, we encircled them topically and I asked her if she knew about Revolting Cocks, which, to my surprise, she did and followed up with her own query about my familiarity with Front 242. Bluffing, I said I did know who they were and that I liked them - oh the dishonesty! So I bought the CD and played a minute of it and put it back in the jewel case for 3 years. What a crazy straw of a journey of acquaintance, acquisition and arrested re-exposure. Rekindling my industrial affinities gradually over time following the death metal/ grindcore ballooning and poppage, I got Rhythm Of Time stuck in my head from the memory of the Justin, TX vehicular wait session sometime in March this year. Pulling the album and song up, listening a number of times, and latching onto newfound favorites (Leitmotiv 136, Soul Manager) saw the album's tracks make entry into my recommended YouTube replays, and alas, Soul Manager's somewhat funky gait ends up here. It's lyrics are rehearsed semi-regularly in my mind and whistleblew skepticisms about an oft-journal mentioned figure's goodwill "I'm the trusting friend you need - You're the open book I read"; a learning experience in being gaurded about personal communications and displays of authenticity or compromised angles (my ass crack) to hunchback bald type 4 stomach cancer sufferers.
April 2025;Link Wray & The Wraymen - Rumble (1959) ;
April 2025;Muslimgauze - Untitled 4 (2000) ;
March 2025;Metallica - I Disappear (2000) ; Being one of the songs that got me into metal to begin with, Metallica's infamous Napster song has seen appearances on my playlist over the last year (writing in September 2025); a very early song to pique my interest in guitar driven music to begin with, 'I Disappear''s lyrical content resonates with me in a rare way.
Muslimgauze - Sari Of Acidic Colors (1996) ; The glitchy cinema of frequencies exhibited in this tune are legendary to me. It is what prompted me to share this particular track with my peers; its an active/urgent sounding tune with Bin Laden / Ted Kaczynski vibrations (the previous thing which was sent in a chat with a colleague prior to my linking this track was a picture of Ted at university, 1968 or thereabouts, so his image is now synonymous with this tune internally for me).
February 2025;Rob Zombie - What Lurks On Channel X? (1998) ;
February 2025;Muslimgauze - Missing Tibetans (1994) ; The departure between the Emak Bakia album and the rest of Bryn Jones' discography is so curious and its flame so quickly extinguished that it commands a bit of intrigue. 'Missing Tibetans' is the second song I heard from that mysterious and aesthetically delicious CD, and it inspired a bizarre call to arms that would leave the likes of Pete Cannon scratching their heads. The high pitched female vocal on the track amplified an (until then) ambient desire to explore the Amiga realm; trackers were among the first of the observed articles of hardware sustenance in DAWless jamming for me; the PolyEnd tracker was something that I gawked at during a time of PC workflow enslavement. The aforementioned vocal loop and perhaps its underlying track too hinted at the house music sonic template, and at this I said "fuck it" and bought an Amiga A500 without the slightest inkling that Bryn had actually used one (because who the fuck knows what he actually used, except for a Roland R8 and DAT recorder). I've thrown myself at collecting in the interest of maximizing potentials/attainable sounds, but another reason for the eager charging into the payment stages of online gear listings is to familiarize myself with what is offered now, what was offered and what has no guarantee of being offered in future. Conversations with Daelen about the launch of the iPhone eighteen years ago and the product's reciprocally felt ill effects on consumer tech afterwards and compounded today mull the grapes for this glass of wine, represented by coherent, consistent expression of ideas. It is easy to find yourself in a position of scrutiny without teeth or claws to secure your fading claim to uprightness, when you lost/forgot to resharpen them after the last fight. Dissecting the concessions we, the consumer, have made to corporations that anally precipitate brown pallaver into our outstretched palms zooms out the camera and makes it possible to draw marks of correlation from production workflows pre and post iPhone launch and greater culture before and after.
Muslimgauze - Remix of Thugghee (actually Return Of Black September) (1996) ; This track is a masterfully dynamic showcase of field recordings-meeting-effected hand percussion and some sampled eastern stringed instrument which weaves a depressive, anxious atmosphere like nothing else. A nearly funerous feeling results in me from listening to it, which satisfies the aesthetic of my movements through the world of late - being anxious about my merits, employment and all other manner of things, driving around in a car I have to keep pouring money into on account of its tendency for problem to the soundtrack of a man mourning a hushed genocide.
Early 2025;Mortician - Defiler Of The Dead (1995) ; There's nothing heavier than when the guitars come in - its the sonic equivalent to the onset of a hurricane.
December 2024;Muslimgauze - Blood Of Salah Jadallah (1995) ; September 2025 marks my point of rediscovery of this brooding but somehow lighter Muslimgauze tune. The atmosphere is certainly airy, melancholy but not mournful - more reluctant. Bryn's produced songs of the era are so tacitly rich - truly a marvel of emotional transposition from the prompting news story or situation which he dwelled on the day of their recordings.
October 2024;Muslimgauze - Bilechik Mule (1999) ; I am still, in June 2025, under the spell of this song.
October 2024;Muslimgauze - Khan Younis (1993) ;
September 2024;Muslimgauze - Mullah Said (1998) ; What I enjoy particularly about this song is the atmosphere it weaves - the steely plucks of whatever instrument repeating and glaring like a reflective sabre inspires in me something resembling latent awakening to surroundings. Think Dido's 'Thank You'; the music video and delicious melancholic beat compliment eachother in that they paint a picture of expiration, of sighing with the turning of the proverbial page. Well Mullah Said is the opposite but with similar aesthetic - the repetitiveness and urgent kind of vibration is akin to being a windowseated passenger on the bus of life; desiring a change but not getting it. Like the 40 seconds after stopping when pulled over by a policeman, the soundless light bars splashing cascading red and blue on the waiting you and the sleeping inhabitant's house wall siding.
July 2024;Muslimgauze - Mint Tea With Gaddafi (1999) ; around the time my former boss Paul retired, I began getting into Muslimgauze, and a notable moment relating to this song was the drive home from the dinner Paul, Paul's brother, Paul's wife, Lyn, Lyn's wife, and myself enjoyed at Demassi's mediterranean buffet.
Pitchshifter - Floppy Disc (1997) ; Interesting, the direction Pitchshifter pursued as their contemporaries like Fear Factory and Godflesh went along their trajectories into theatrics and (whatever characterizes the grunge of Songs Of Love And Hate) respectively.
July 2024;Scarab - Scent Of Arura (1996) ; My introduction to ethnic electronica - this weird, minimal abstract project and enchanting song. Finding out about Scarab through Equations Of Eternity's captivating publishing mark (WordSound) is truly a testament to Napalm Death's paper fortune teller-esque lineup and alumni that fortunately hasn't experienced many deaths relative to their cohorts (obviously with the exception of Jesse Pintado, R.I.P.); they have everything to do with my discovery of the inspirational Scarab. To make a relatively labyrinthical story quite short, Mick Harris can be credited for delivering Napalm Death to the world through what appearences would indicate as very effective interpersonal networking and diplomatic dedication as far as work ethic and band politics are concerned. After his motivation exhausted sometime in 1991, he went on to do some truly groundbreaking things with early N.D. bandmate and personal friend Nicholas Bullen in Scorn
July 2024;Bolt Thrower - The IVth Crusade (1992) ; Around the time I was becoming a member of Tachycardia, I had been practicing drums semi-seriously for a month or two. 'The IVth Crusade' has a relatively simple drum line and was inspiring to hear Andy Whale doing what was to me some pretty impressive double bass and fills. The guitar riff is addictive, and the video component (despite the band having remarked in an interview their displeasedness with the result) revitalized passion about video mixing and music video exploration/craft honing.
June 2024;Pitch Shifter - Landfill (1991) ; When Jerel and I were onlookers to the cognitive dissonance of our bandleader sabotaging group labors spanning weeks during the last days of Withered Fabrication, I had been cemented into a major HR-16-deitifying Godflesh and Pitchshifter kick (period of repeat listening). One of the two of us proposed doing a project together, and having been making serious headway to getting the Atari 1040STF system working, I opted to utilize this method of sequence administration. The initial incarnation of 'Pitch Shifter', very faithful in their worship of Godflesh's template, was a chief influence upon my movements with Cremated (Jerel and I's tentative gestation) and even, somewhat regrettably, Resin Huffer ('Mines' prototypal demo).
May 2024;Torture - Blinding Ignorance (2023) ;
February 2024;Godflesh - Christbait Rising (1989) ; Christbait Rising is among my favorite Godflesh songs, and furthermore a definitive metal song in my view. Where 'Like Rats' gets the admiration and brownie points of many, and for equally good reason, I personally view Christbait.. as a more compelling track off of that pivotal album. The breakdown is infectious and sounds like a descent into violence - an effect I can't say I hear executed often - and it isn't even the only instance of such a truffle-in-the-verge caliber of musical transition heard on 'Streetcleaner' - 'Head Dirt' contains one too. What merits praise too regarding Christbait Rising's tune is the utilization of delay on the vocal. There has surfaced a late stage recording cycle demo that features a different snare drum and no delay on the vocal, and it is an alien image to that of the released iteration; the delay makes the part and the part is integral to the song. And for such a 'conventional' effect, its curious that you don't hear more examples of such tools being used - I suspect some malignant disuse of studio effects during the incumbent decade. All the more reason I'm a believer that experimentation and revisitation of antiquated systems and devices could very well lead to the discovery of unexplored sonic territories.
December 2023;Cable Regime - The Patti Hearst Show (1992) ; The repeated vocal sample of a female voice saying something I can't quite discern (this unintelligible female vocal sample thing has credence - staying power - to it; I'm compelled to part with $1000 for a Yamaha RS7000 over, guess what, an unintelligible female vocal sample) creates an atmosphere parallel to watching a nuclear reactor melt down, or a cargo airplane get pulled into the Earth tailfin-down due to a load shifting and fatally offsetting the plane's center of gravity. It sounds like a psychadelic trip to the intensive care unit.
Cable Regime - Novocaine Kul (1992) ; I routinely think back to Novocaine Kul, the first time I had heard it. It wasn't the album version; instead it was a live version included on a compilation album entitled "Spread The Virus" from 1992. Its a gritty sound, akin to grey cinderblock matrixes, and the percussive march doesn't evolve until the last forty five seconds or so, where the kick drums double or quadrouple up into a roll. It is a demonstration that simplicity is an asset - while this is quite estranged from the scene of music I am tethered to by way of my participations (so to say, nobody acknowledges Godflesh much less its sister project Cable Regime, save for that one RN in 2021 that drew the parallel, and I'd give much to recall his name), it is an ancestor in crucial respects to one man death metal. Cable Regime's tune 'Novocaine Kul' is structurally a skeleton for drum machine music.
November 2023;Godflesh - Slavestate (1991) ; Between the profoundly trippy visuals featured on the Howard Garfield-directed music video and the synthesizer excerpt-showcase loop that almost stains the track in something of a Temple OS-aesthetic, Slavestate's title track is a document of what industrial metal is. The visuals of the video compliment the song so well in my view, earning Howard Garfield a bit of a worshipped status as far as single-credit facelesses go for me. I see the chromatic cycling as just a ridiculously cool effect that I wish to get in on the action of.
October 2023;Depeche Mode - A Question Of Time (1986) ; It was an Instagram reel of the televised miming to this song Depeche Mode did for some French music program in '87 that was my introduction to Depeche Mode, funnily enough. I do remember being taken by the doubletime snares during Gatan's "It won't be long until you do exactly what they want you to" line. A band which I'd heard mentioned many many times, often with negative connotation (I had after all already been indoctrinated into the cult of KMFDM) turned out to possess a harder instrumental edge than I expected.
June 2023;Skrew - Godsdog (1994) ; Around the time I moved from one apartment complex in Fort Worth to another, I was getting into C tier industrial metal. This track along with 'Picasso Trigger' and 'Black Eye' were heavy in my rotation at the time.
Mid 2023;White Zombie - Electric Head Pt. 1 (The Agony) (1995) ;
February 2023;Windows96 - I think its over (2023) ; I return to this song once every nine months or so it feels. I do consider it one of my favorite songs from the album, which also is my favorite amid Windows96's discography.
Early 2023;Caustic Window - Cordialatron (1992) ; I listened to this song on repeat a few times in 2023. I was hooked on this at a particularly high point of my keyboard practice, having learned the melody around the same time as I did Depeche Mode's 'A Question Of Time'. Its one of the first nonlyrical songs I really embraced, and defined the first concepts of purely electronic music in my mind.
Early 2023;Lead Into Gold - Sweet Thirteen (1990) ; A big pressure to figure out how to use AKAI samplers was this song; while Lead Into Gold, and Ministry even, are not a band who documented their production processes the way Cevin kEy from Skinny Puppy did his band, it is evident that their studio actions leveraged samplers extensively and its plain to hear. Lead Into Gold is (practically) one half of Ministry's studio force left to his own devices compositionally and, while Al has made it known he was involved with production for it, the production choices can be attributable to Paul (Barker). This song is one of the harder tunes on the Age Of Reason album, and contains what I was hot and bothered for in 2022. Emerging from a fixation on digital instruments in use in a style of music where the producers were (often) legitimate criminals - I'm talking about Memphis rap and the crunk genre - I replaced the tendrils of the philosophical and aesthetic appreciations for antiquated studio tools I had let grow out by then into the incumbent auxilliary realm of affinity, which was industrial rock / metal / electronic body music. I'd been interested in the curational procedures for Revolting Cocks' 'Attack Ships On Fire' from their 1986 album 'Big Sexy Land', or 'Stainless Steel Providers' from 1990's 'Beers Steers & Queers' as early as 2018, but the requisite understandings were still far enough out of reach to where I could only remain curious for another succession of years, which ended in 2023. It was as simple as deciding to try - to abandon the effort to carry over a contemporary technique of longpan wavform sampling and preparing the samples with the precision and assumed conveniences of contemporary DAW software linear editing suites in securing a system allowing file transfer to a sampler unit from a computer, something the releasing of was informed by the early forming of my understanding of the personal computer's limitations pre-USB. While I'm not proud to admit that I was naive enough to believe earnestly that home computers were essential and to an unspoken degree (of course you need a personal computer to use the AKAI S900 - how else are you going to chop the wavforms up into the bite sized pieces that its onboard memory can stomach?) that no mention of this requirement was breathed in any manuals for hardware samplers, and that the AKAI CD3000 was some brilliant concept curiously abandoned in favor of the continuation to manufacture samplers with floppy disk media - especially as recently as my brain did contain those idiot thoughts, but hey.
Early 2023;Fear Factory - Digimortal (2001) ;
September 2022;DJ Screw - South Side Groovin' (2000) ; I remember driving to Cameron's old apartment off exit 12 with everybody in the "whip"; this was approaching the last days of Crocodylinae and my initial tenure as a part of the friend group with everyone. I was intent to incorporate "Screwed And Chopped" techniques into the sonic fold, and the absence of skills in that domain and a present refusal to enlist anyone else to assist, not that this would have likely worked anyway, is what resulted in the stagnation of enthusiasm on everyones' parts. You live and learn.
August 2022 ammend March 5 2026;BG - Get Your Shine On (Screwed & Chopped) (2002) ;
July 2022;DJ Spanish Fly - Uzi Tool (1994) ;
Early 2022;DJ Zirk - Shit Popz Off (1996) ; Aye, there was a time when I desired nothing more than to be a rap superstar, live large, have a big house, in its' driveway five cars, etcetera etcetera. But as is thematic in my life, my playout of this aspiration is a bit neurodivergent. I became smitten with Memphis trap music at the start of 2021 - I watched Cody Davidson of Sanguisugabogg's studio recording progress video that did a better job of exhibiting his presumed playlist heavyweights on account of their prominence in the video, these pieces being Project Pat's 'Out There' and Tommy Wright III's 'Meet Yo Maker'. At the time, my conception of rap music (discounting ICP) was Public Enemy vs. Anthrax and some distant memory of listening to N.W.A. on the schoolbus in sophomore year; I ended that day with a massive interest in the genre. From a random and to all else insignificant feed node. I developed a fanhood of Patrick Houston, taking up listening to his 1999 album 'Ghetty Green' concurrently to my girlfriend and I's shared Cocteau Twins' spell and surely my massive Napalm Death and budding pornogrind fascination. From Pat I singled out Triple Six Mafia tracks he was on, and thusly listened to a bit of the Underground Part 1 and 2 albums from 1999. Koopsta Knicca
October 2021;Ministry - Corrosion (1992) ; On one occasion, in the earlier Croc days when Trey was still holed up in Bedford in the apartment complex near a playground and with a patio to observe the sizable nearby water tower, there was a morning after which I had evidently spent the night and a high school friend of Trey's needed a ride back to his private domicile in Granbury. Consenting to the suggestion-command issued by Trey, the stranger friend and I made headway to my town and further, and for the journey I put on Ministry's 'Psalm 69' album. I had it on relatively low volume because I was unsure of the passenger's music tastes but as we approached the destination and the easygoing guy assured me I could turn it up, the album's backloaded track 'Corrosion' came on and for the first time I presume, I paid attention to the song. I was enamored with the simple mechanical brutality. It was great to find something I'd missed previously in my impromptu revisiting of the album I had really only consumed in fragments (Scarecrow, the title track Psalm 69, Jesus Built My Hotrod, Grace (I probably thought it was a '..Mind..' track before) and Just One Fix and N.W.O. of course) before then, not having appreciated the full presentation/tracklist. I'd identify this event as being a catalyst for the gradually steepening affinities for rustic, 'corrosive' sonic treatments in the contemporary Crocodylinae project - I'm recalling the distorted and sidechained kick drum track and the 'sputtering' engine-like effect I achieved probably due in no small part to this new age industrial enlightenment.
June 2021;Deftones - Sextape (2010) ; I remember crying in my car while hugging my then-just ex-girlfriend as she also cried, after we discussed how the relationship wasn't working out; I vaguely recall it stemming from me saying something frustratedly while I drove, and her dispondency over it is what led us to her residence where this teary-eyed scene unraveled. In hindsight, it was all overly-dramatic and unsubstantive crap, but hey, it cost me the relationship ultimately. We got back together in flashes during the remainder of the year, with the real, seismic and permanent separation happening at the year's close.
April 2021;Koopsta Knicca - Stash Spot (1994) ; A particularly unsavory memory affixed to a time and place in my life is the one of losing all my friends after a ruinous house party (at my house and not my idea), receiving news of my grandmother's death and encountering the first wave of real turbulences with my then-girlfriend, all coinciding. I was just beginning my musical relationship with Cameron, and had the first rack occupied with a 3U EQ, Digitech Vocal 300, Line 6 POD Pro, and freshly acquired (earnest thanks to Cameron) Behringer Eurorack 3U mixer. I'm running through the components as this creeper-sat hunk of a rack was situated under a folding table atop which was a Behringer Xenyx UB802 mixer, my HP laptop and Focusrite Scarlet 2i2 interface feeding the JBL studio monitors on the 1970s-fashioned TV platform stud corner. After my friends and their friends alike filed out in teams, I laid inebriated on the Goodwill-obtained reclining couch and listened to Koopsta Knicca's Da Devils Playground through the setup, majorly bummed out about the night's playout. And when it came time for my grandmother's funeral nearly a week later, I made handy a pair of earbuds and listened to Project Pat and Koopsta Knicca in my funeral attire on the car ride to the service.
April 2021;Lil Jon & The East Side Boyz - Get Low (2002) ; This song was one of the tunes that was played at the disaster house party described above.
July 2020;Viper - Fuck Tha Rules Im Driving On Rainbow Road In Reverse (2020)
; 260120; The piece of media which introduced me to Viper's genius. During the same time there was a TikTok (only a short time before Musical.ly) video circulating which adhered to a similar format to that of Musical.ly (I believe I had encountered it on Instagram) which featured two Russian or Ukranian teenagers (one male and another female) doing some dance on camera, outdoors in a suburban zone (an upper middle class front lawn with sidewalk and driveway in view) with a distinctly Russian or Ukranian pop song playing, with a male voice if I am remembering correctly.
May 2020;Last Days Of Humanity - Precisely Eviscerated And Conserved In A Formaldehyde-Methanol Solution (2006) ; I remember well being taken by the chaotic effects of the definitive goregrind band from the Netherlands, often abbreviated L.D.O.H., soon after discovering them for myself. Prior to hearing what the pinnacle of brutality indeed sounded like, I had already started down a path of grindcore and pornogrind acquaintance - I surely was already familiar with Gut and Rompeprop, potentially Cock And Ball Torture. (Note: even back then I had begun appraising things on the axises of x (brutality) and y (intensity), which I, at the time at least, rated LDOH particularly high in the 'y' attribute. Anymore, I understand that the 'x' is incredulously jacked as well, and what one hears on 'Putrefaction In Progress' is very nearly the pinnacle of sonic abraisiveness. I have always marveled at their ability to make conventional instruments (drum kit, bass guitar, guitar and the human voice) sound indistinguishable as such. The guitars, a primary fixation of mine early on in my affinity for them, rely on quite serrated textural applications to the distortion, achieved in leveraging the Line 6 POD Pro. Later on, the bass component commanded a wealth of my preoccupation (late 2020; I enjoyed the results I got with my Marshall G100RCD, Behringer EQ-7 and Boss FZ-5 on the Testicular Burst Laceration recordings) and of course the vocals are a simply fascinating element on their own.
Mid 2020;Cathedral - Soul Sacrifice (1992) ; For a good while at the start of the pandemic and through the harbinger year, I did hardly anything but practice guitar dilligently and experiment with recording in the laundry room, mic'd cabinet at the wall. This tune was a true wristbreaker, but quite satisfying to run through each time - the riffing oozes this imperialism, the same vibration encapsulated in the band's album cover selections that a brainrotted person such as me can only interpret as Shrek-like.
September 2020;Electric Wizard - Legalise Drugs And Murder (2012) ; David had turned me onto doom metal successfully in the midst of my grindcore/goregrind phase in 2020 - this particular track was a seminal introduction to the tonal aesthetics of the genre, and it inspired a demo I recorded and showed him to high approval. 'Bongheim' was the name of our project that might yet still become something.
Early 2020;Nasum - Resistance (2000) ; The fuzzed-out distortion and mean riff on this 'Human 2.0' track were very appealing to me around the time I moved from the house and into the Western Hills-adjacent apartment in 2019. Walking from locale to locale to play guitar in the laundry room, listening to Nasum and Rompeprop and Napalm Death's 'Mentally Murdered'... having a girlfriend... it was a good time period.
Late 2019;Meathook Seed - Famine Sector (1993) ; As deep a cut as Meathook Seed is, it entered my sphere of acquaintance early. Without earning me any bragging rights of course, as I had only heard one song and didn't bother to hear anything else from them, certainly because this tune was the only music video-accompanied track (how I would learn later to appreciate the void of such, and not correlate any merit on the basis of the presence of a label expenditure in that form). The music video for 'Famine Sector' by Meathook Seed appeared in my recommended videos pane in the days I was graduating essentially from Slipknot into Deicide, Napalm Death and the like.
October 2019;Gut - Women In Decay (1995/2000) ;
August 2019;Devourment - Self Disembowelment (1999) ; While its far from the most trve means of discovering a genre of music for yourself, I was partly initiated into the slam death realm of music listenership through disgraced YouTube content creator Finn McKenty. He was making the rounds in 2019 with his "What Killed Slam?" upload, and being a random but ripe music fan on the internet algorithmically selected to view this piece of content, I did. Thinking back to the time, 2019 was a nexus of occurences and the last "real" year we've experienced. Carrying on, I was already getting into the expansions upon death metal and grindcore; I may have already been acquainted with Gut (a quick Google search reminds me that the school year began in August 2019, when I remember these developments occuring - the Dayton Ohio and El Paso Texas shootings - and explains why I have such nostalgia for the time - I was having a lot of sexual intercourse with my girlfriend at this time..), and this all upon a basis of reverence for Napalm Death, Morbid Angel, Deicide, etc. I probably was into Nasum too already but I'm not completely sure of this; the reason I believe so is my purchase of a Nasum shirt at Doc's Records in what I remember to be November or December 2019 - there we go, that's a bit after. Also, how could I forget that October is when I moved from my childhood home into the apartment. That pins down when I got into Nasum, as I recall learning the songs on guitar in a sparsely decorated room. Matter of fact, I recall my mom complaining about the volume of the voice that was reverberating down the hallway in the direction of her room, and this voice was.. Finn McKenty's. So it would've been perhaps a month later that I got into Cerebral Incubation while eating Little Ceasar's and watching their [cerebralincubationlive2012]live footage from a show which didn't include a bass player (mind bending to observe at the time), and not too far away from the times of listening to 'Piles Of Little Arms', 'Confessional Rape', and 'Grotesque Impalement' in English and Chemistry and sketching out antimusic logos with Bic pens in the top square of college ruled (could've been wide ruled to my chagrin) paper.
July 2019;Count Dankula theme song ; Not a musical artist or a song (aside from the banging intro to Absolute Mad Lads which ought to qualify this entry), but rather a marker of the point in time where I was discovering/watching a lot of Count Dankula's content, as the metal intro and not pathetic persona of Mark Meechan was enfranchising for me, where I was beginning to become disillusioned with the indiepop "Me And Michael" gay homestuck watching faggot friend group I was steeply trenched in. It was his video on GG Allin that served as my introduction. This also makes me remember months earlier, eating cookies in bed and becoming acquainted with Mr. Bungle via their video for 'Travolta' (Quote Unquote), also watching quite a bit of Whang! in the same bed/PC at the foot of the bed scheme, also watching the Netflix series Lucifer together with my girlfriend while on video call, playing a game of pause-for-five-seconds-and-see-if-we're-synced-up, additionally watching Cannibal Corpse's video for 'Devoured By Vermin' for the first time.
April 2019;Everclear - Santa Monica (1995) ;
March 2019;Cake - Going The Distance (1996) ;
February 2019;Garbage - Happy When It Rains (1995) ;
February 2019;Morbid Angel - Caesar's Palace (1995) ; Upon getting into death metal via a Mick Thomson (Slipknot) interview, whittling outlines for tastes out of what I heard and really liked (e.g. Malevolent Creation) and didn't much care for (e.g. Death / Possessed), I was able to formulate a quantification of what elements I enjoyed within extreme metal music. Morbid Angel was among the first bands that I gambled on outside the reservation of what was mentioned by Mick or had tempted me aesthetically (Napalm Death, even before I discovered for myself the Godflesh affiliation); Morbid Angel's logo is classically 'death metal' in its satanic overture with the red (the most common iteration is red) "horny" flanges - combined with the member's stylings, they never appealed to me prior to the death metal interest dam breaking and them regularly appearing in recommended videos amongst Cannibal Corpse or Gorguts. Even still, their imagery isn't inspiring (though I did for a time aspire to emulate David Vincent), and I don't like their earlier output e.g. 'Altars Of Madness', 'Blessed Are The Sick', even most of 'Covenant'. 'Domination' reversed this general dissatisfaction (certainly owing to the change in personnel) as they slowed down quite a bit, indulging less in high frequency/low impact thrash-esque sections and having more duty to explore grooves. Caesar's Palace features a really neat melodic guitar intro, with industrial-adjacent electronics supporting, but the real substance comes with the songwriting and deliveries on the instrumental AND vocal fronts. Yeah, all of them. Sure, the production isn't radical (never was with Morbid Angel in my view), but the vocal approach was distinctly powerful for the time I heard it first. I remember having a mental rendering of Morbid Angel's before I saw what they looked like with a Phil Anselmo/Randy Blythe-looking vocal silhouette, but as we know that voice is emanating from behind a Hamer Scarab bass, ECW tee shirt and then-fashionable goatee. To be explicitly detailed about my inaccurate preconceptions, Psycroptic were the only reference for Death Metal prior to the Slipknot alumni referendum (for me and only me), and I suppose the brief snippets of video I consumed of their technicality-tainted spazz storm burned in an Ed Norton silhouette for anything off the Nu Metal/Groove Metal reservation.
November 2018;Slipknot - Gematria (2008) ; There's a selfie I took of myself atop a shipping container sometime in 2018; this is before any chin hair came in, but I do have a thin mustache and a squinty Native American expression on my face. I was wearing a little mass-produced tribal necklace thing with an anchor signet and an oversized Harley Davidson t-shirt; I remember the typical day around the time of this was to play guitar for hours in the laundry room, retire to the living room/main partition of the house to eat puffcorn and dick around in my room, and repeat the process a time or two more before going to sleep for school the next day. Gematria by Slipknot is the song that I recall being enamored with compositionally at the time, on account of having seen the playthrough that has captivated many more guitarists than just myself, depicting Mick Thomson in studio recording for 2008's 'All Hope Is Gone'. The video is a motivator, as if you haven't seen a guitar being played articulately as well as aggressively, it rectifies that. The sounds of pick attack come through in the camcorder footage, conveying just how hard Mick is striking the strings, also unusually massive, with the pick. Those which investigate Mick Thomson further discover that he, at that time, was distinguished in his preferences of amplifiers, plectrums, strings, pickups, guitars and, well, just about everything else too. It seems that in 2025, he has deradicalized himself - he now plays ESP guitars that do not feature many of the mainstays of his former signature models through other companies; no specialized inlays, block side markers, or bridge system, and the strings don't seem to be as thick, nor does his physical technique seem as brutal. But the permanence of videography casts in stone the forces of nature like himself and countless other guitar titans, and his playthough of Gematriawill continue inspiring young guitar players who need to see that approach to guitar in order to take it upon themselves to advance.
October 2018;Cannibal Corpse - Hammer Smashed Face (1992) ; I remember helping David clean out what was essentially a storage extension of his house while we traded the aux, and he played this. He had been the more encyclopaedic of the two of us respecting metal (he liked Slipknot and would mention brutal death metal bands like Parasitic Ejaculation to be chuckled off by me and Nicholas Campbell who were less receptive to those extreme fringes, and it wasn't until around this timeframe, of David's ousting from the friend group we'd cointegrated together into, that my music tastes began pivoting from Nu metal to harder substance.
October 2018;KMFDM - Blood (Evil Mix) (1993) ; A formative interaction with industrial adulterations of guitar music, as the transition in the middle of the song and later, the near-closing of the tune becomes a studio equipment-manipulation of something (likely a guitar) into a transcendental "sound". Their incorporation of pneumatic drills atop this more structural, rhythmic material, being somewhat of a compositional mortar, was just a capitalization upon that boasting, that KMFDM were better because they had the wherewithal to perform such mutilations. And they were justified in feeling superior.
September 2018;KMFDM - Juke Joint Jezebel (1995) ;
August 2018 ammend March 5 2026;Meshuggah - Future Breed Machine (1995) ; Ah yes, the genesis of my affinity for increasingly detuned guitars, as well as my consideration for elements of band sound beyond the guitar role; sat up in the first incarnation of my studio, playing guitar in the start-stop staccato styling of djent, aping what I saw from Drewsif Stalin and heard from Marten Hagstromm and Frederik Thordendal, I recall the first divergence from the path of least resistance when my pursuits of technical proficiency in guitar playing began to display diminishing returns in the reactions of my peers. They acknowledged that it was 'good' but more guardedly, at least in the case of Olivia (one of my cousin's first girlfriends)'s sister, who assumed a reassuring tone of voice when she (con)fessed to overhearing whatever it was which was being played in that style, that "it was good" (/ inflection).
The tone of this album was not so much discussed in the initial note, and with the Marshall Valvestate 8100 being a major point of craving in me (and my colleague David Thornton, someone who found my scarce mention of him in this document disturbing - he is right, that is disturbing, and I am moving to include as many acknowledgements of his relevance to all this as can be - it is a ripe time to mention how apart from 'Destroy Erase Improve's compelling composition, its tone and production is nearly an equal part inspiring. They used the 8100 model Marshall Valvestate head, as can be noted in [this live video captured around 1995] to great effect, an effect as close to the application of the amp as David and myself would make (we wish to marry slamming brutal death metal compositions to the sharp, tight character of the 8100 Marshall's sound).
July 2018;Prong - Caprice (1996) ;
June 2018;Fear Factory - Self Bias Resistor (1995) ; A tune I have returned to many times over the course of my guitar playing in order to verify my chops against the precision of Dino's guitar work here.
June 2018;Prong - Controller (1996) ; I remember somewhat vividly, seated in the first iteration of the control room of my studio with a gray Ibanez GAX70 tuned to Drop C# learning this song. I was a big proponent of groove metal riffing at the time, Prong being a central influence at this time.
May 2018 / ammend March 4 2026;Prong - "Snap Your Fingers, Snap Your Neck" (1994) ; The guitar tone on "Cleansing" is one of the highlights of 1990s metal. In March 2026 I'm feeling a major itch to procure a Marshall Valvestate 8100, and Tommy Victor is a central motivator.
April 2018;Sepultura - Roots Bloody Roots (1996) ;
April 2018;Powerman 5000 - Neckbone (1997) ;
March 2018;Hed PE - Swan Dive (2000) ;
March 2018; Stephen Hawking dies;
January 4 2018;Audioslave - Show Me How To Live (2002) ; Located via Google Activity. I recall being interested in modest weight lifing at the time. I would lift 20 lb. weights that I got at Walmart and do jumping jacks on the regular.
October 9 2017;Bad Brains - Rise (1993) ;
October 2017;Static-X - I'm With Stupid (1999) ;
August 19 2017;Psychostick - Pluh (2003) ;
August 3 2017;Christian meeting w/ Bruce, Thomas, Teresa in Dallas.
June 7 2017; May 2017;White Zombie - Blood Milk And Sky (1995) ;
February 2017;Skid Row - Big Guns (1989) ;
January 2017;Faith No More - Epic (1989) ;
December 2016;White Zombie - Cosmic Monsters Inc. (1992) ;
December 2016;Obtained second guitar ever, Jackson Rhoads RR24 Satin White
March 2016;Pantera - Cemetery Gates (1990) ;
Moving out of addon part of house and into dining room.
January 2016;Stone Temple Pilots - Sin (1992) ; "Down you go! Suffer long!"; as of writing this, I haven't listened to this song in some time, but that chorus is etched into the annals of my consciousness tube. I have always regarded Stone Temple Pilots as perhaps the strongest band in the cohort of grunge, though that's explainable by them not actually being grunge.
November 2015;Korn - Got The Life (1998) ;
October 2015;Metallica - Sad But True (1991) ;
September 2015;Disturbed - Want (2000) ;
June 2014;Bee Gees - Nights On Broadway (1975) ;
June 2014; Grade 6 Summer School; Monnig Middle school locale; Radio
September 2013;REO Speedwagon - Time For Me To Fly (1978) ;
August 2013; Walgreens RedBox locale; 'Jobs' Movie

© 2022-2024, Jesse Strobel.