Difficult Music

I've neglected this thing for far too long. There comes a point where the fat ass of guilt sits down so hard on me that I’ve no choice but to squeeze out a bunch of words. The writer as whoopee cushion, I suppose.

I’m terrible, because god, there’s no shortage of difficult music around to write about. Actually, I’ve reviewed a bunch of it for Unrestrained! magazine, writing between breaks in copyediting the thing. This is like the 12th issue I’ve done for them, and I’m always impressed by the way their writers can just crank it out…especially Bromley. On the other hand, there’s quite a price to be paid when you’re writing that much that quickly, but I don’t want to get into that here. Suffice it to say that we’d give most of these articles a really hard time in any of our workshops at Douglas.

So yeah, I’ve realized through this latest round of reviewing that the most difficult music of all is music that you didn’t really want in the first place. Though I did luck out with some of the stuff U! sent me (stuff I was actually curious about, like the stellar new Arcturus album and the “reunion” cash-grab by Swedish prog fossils Kaipa), the rest of it was nothing I’d invite into my house under any other circumstances. So writing about music I have no automatic love for is disconcerting, but I had fun with it. Fingers crossed that I don’t come across as an utter tosspot when (or if) my crap makes the hallowed pages of U!

I’m looking at a Purolator box full of promo CDs I’ve received over the last couple years as part-payment for my U! work. It’s piled high with grim, sixth-rate hobby bands that I have no interest in listening to…but I must. It’s the guilt again, its ample posterior packed into stretchy summer shorts, backing towards me, threatening to transform me into a crimson smudge on the office wall (or at least fart in my general direction) if I don’t give these vague semblances of near-art at least a perfunctory airing.

Second War In Heaven by Gonkulator (the band’s logo has pentagrams inside the “O”s) is by far the ugliest thing I’ve got in the pile. The comic art cover painting of an advancing satanic army is oddly sun faded (or perhaps it was rendered in pencil crayon), and the inner painting is equally as bad, featuring a bevy of impaled and bloodied female angels (naked of course) lying amidst the ruins of the gates of heaven. The belter says the band photo looks like it was taken with a pinhole camera…could be a pic from a TV screen too. Band member rundown:
1. Prat in corpse-paint and a Horgh-from-Immortal corset. A sword in each hand completes the ensemble.
2. Darkthrone/Satyricon guy with hair-obscured face wearing gloves that make his hands look skeletal. He brandishes a skull on the end of a stick. Alas! poor Yorick.
3. Female bass player…they’re not just an indie-rock mainstay. “Morbidia Kruel” is no Laura Ballance, however.
4. Short-haired guy with sunglasses and a Brujeria shirt (tucked in). Probably the only member of Gonkulator with a day job. Short-haired guys are a valuable component to any band, as Carcass and Enslaved have proven.

Now for a listen…intro with synthesizers, screams and infernal wheezing. Winds of hell are blowing. Somebody in the band owns a sequencer. Now it’s time to “Banish the Holy Trinity”! Or maybe not. Nice drumming—who taught you, Stephen Hawking? Nice whammy-bar dives, gaylord! Nice fadeouts on the songs. Couldn’t decide on endings during rehearsal? I guess they’ve had a “Volitile (sic) Response to Religious Brainwashing,” which has rendered them incapable of playing their instruments, writing songs and recording them the way God intended. That hasn’t stopped them from trying, though. I’m wondering if Gonkulator are satire-bent art fags (like Gwar), or if they’re a modern-day Shaggs, albeit more Venom-influenced. But I won’t ponder this eternal question for too long. My tea wants warming up.

Another winner from Fudgeworthy Records. Next!