Book review: Doomed to Fail

Doomed to Fail by J.J. Anselmi.
My rating: 3 of 5 stars.

Doom? Doom. DOOOOOOOOOOOOM. It’s a good word. One of those multiple-vowel words that have a plasticity turned to enjoyable goop by repetition. It’s also a type of metal music, though it furcates into numerous equally heavy (though to outsiders, often similar-sounding) strands.

Doom music is an unmitigated bummer, a reminder that Life Is Hard So Why Bother sung from basements at brain-rattling volume through equipment that smells like spilled bong water and hot dust. It’s a release in only the way realising you’ve reached the bottom of the barrel can be. It’s about [dis]comfort with horror, and in its original form emerged as a reaction against post-war austerity, industrial isolation and the general Shittiness of Living. It’s something you’d expect to be extremely un-fun, which it is, but luxuriating in that precise bummedness is, well, if not fun, enjoyable.

Continue reading “Book review: Doomed to Fail”

Book review: Louder Than Hell

Louder Than Hell: The Definitive Oral History of Metal by Jon Wiederhorn.
My rating: 5 of 5 stars.

METAL.

It’s a genre that’s only bound together by a spirited fuck you. Its denizens run the gamut, from church-burning nihilists to hairspray-supported hedonists; from kvlt blackness to tits-out stupidity. From funereal dirges to brain-freezing speed runs. The sublime to the ridiculous. Speed to heroin. True to poser.

It’s got it all. It just adds studs and unreadable logos.

Continue reading “Book review: Louder Than Hell”

Service resumes with CONAN

I’ve been off blogging for a couple of reasons – birthday, weight loss, weird viral headaches – but am getting back into the writing in general now, so hopefully a little more will happen around here soon. Until then, enjoy this album which has – quite rightly – ripped nuts off 2014 already.

With Swans’ new release around the corner I assume it’s gonna be a good year.