Monday G'nite: Tuesday G'Morning

As I understand the current very fucked up DST, y'all on the East Coast are now looking at a sleepless night if you see this: It's about 1:30 a.m. on Tuesday. here on the Islands it's a peaceful 7:30. And, for my many peeps on the West coast, it's almost bedtime...a healthy 10:30.

Been gone for three weeks for a great many reasons, and, because I'm a fucker, I'll actually share them with y'all later. But, let's get your Monday night off in a peaceful way, and start your Tuesday with a depressive number:

Lake of Tear's "To Blossom Blue".

Norway's finest sad-ass band. Miss these guys...

-d.s.

READ MORE » Monday G'nite: Tuesday G'Morning

Monday, Monday.

Not a particularly great one: Through some extreme schmoozing was able to pick up an awesome client over the weekend, thus keeping alive the dream of paying off my student loans, in one lump sum cash payment...

But probably not anytime soon.

On the downside; one of my friend's firms went under on Thursday, on Friday several of my friends were disappointed as a $25bn dollar Boeing plant, and the associated $100 bn boost to the local economy, was submitted to Saint Louis rather than Mobile; on Saturday, found out a homie has MS, and another friend's sig o lost her job.

Add to that the fact that I'm in self-imposed detox (can't chew down Dilaudid 24/7 ya' know).

So, let's just permit Monday's grumpiness to rain down on us like Heaven's fury. In fact, there may even be a song about that...lemme' double check. Yep. There is.

Deicide's Angel of Agony.

Obnoxious. Loud.

Just the way Satan Rock is meant to be.

-d.s.

READ MORE » Monday, Monday.

Friday: Sanity renewed

The Shadow had a sucky week, even for a very sucky February. Been dealing with tons of real world issues, fighting a terrible sinus infection, and a busy week at the office.

But, sanity has been restored: Just in time for the weekend and an opportunity to detail my car, and go on a Dragon Age: Origins/Awakening marathon. In other words; relaxation :)


Got some hopefully interesting stuff on the horizon for you today, in the meanwhile, sit back, and enjoy the dulcet tones of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

Mercy Seat.

Classic.

-d.s.

READ MORE » Friday: Sanity renewed

Monday's got a Malthusian Nightmare....

Techincally off today, but with depos tomorrow and Wednesday, I thought I'd give a series of stories with grim interconnectedness today: The death of our biosphere, resource wars, overpopulation and general fucked-upness within the next four decades.

Sigh.

In the meanwhile, please enjoy Nuclear Assault's seminal  Critical Mass. You could call these guys prototypical New York speed metal/thrash. But, like Slayer and all Devastation and Anthrax and all of the "speed bands" contemporaries, these guys are one short step removed from punk. Even closer, I'd say, since they are overtly political. And damned sure lefty.

Critical Mass addresses all of the things more and more relevant with each passing day, features a dead-sexy Jessica Haun lounging by a refinery, and, because they were pretty serious about lyrics, even has a yellow-bouncy ball for the lyrics.

Good shit. Enjoy.

-d.s.

READ MORE » Monday's got a Malthusian Nightmare....

Thursday took a sanity day...

Personal day today. Been overwhelmed since about December. Going to clear real world things off my plate today, but I'll touch base in a bit with the most ironic thing I've seen in a damned, long time.

For some reason (completely unknown to me), I'm really digging on the Five Finger Death Punch these days. Perhaps because it's what you rarely see anymore: earnest, semi-tolerable, rock and roll.

Doesn't exist much anymore, so when we find it, we should be thankful. The alternative is a world of Gaga and Bieber.

-d.s.

READ MORE » Thursday took a sanity day...

Tuesday's reminescing...

about club drugs, button-popping sex with my friends, suede, leather, vinyl, the smell of red wine, candles casting flares on dilated pupils, speakers fuzzing and humming and thrumming, bumping into a crowded scene, knowing everyone and liking most of them.

Sigh.  Homesick.

I haven't been home, home in a very long time. Went in 2009 for a short visit and in 2008 for a week. But, all things considered, I'm missing people and things and places and familiarity of it all.

Enough of me and my concerns. Hope you all enjoyed your V-Day with your special and/or loved one(s).

Today's ditty is for the long-suffering Fetching Frau Schatten, with whom I shared a pleasant, if low-key evening last night.

Echo and The Bunnymen, "Nothing lasts forever", ladies and gents.

Seriously, they just do not make bands like this anymore.

In fact, I'll be a bit more militant, if you don't like Echo & the Bunnymen, you can go suck a fuck.

-d.s.

READ MORE » Tuesday's reminescing...

Happy Valentine's Day, my lovelies...

Love is like a red, red rose...and, if you ask Killing Joke, it's also sanguine (and a reminder of our mortality).

Classic band, classic song. If you fools don't have Killing Joke in your auditory arsenal, it's like having to explain who Bauhaus was. And, confession, in the whole classic 80's/90's goth/synthpop genre, these guys always got my vote over The Smiths.

Love Like Blood

 So damned good, you deserve the lyrics

We must play our lives like soldiers in the field
But life is short i'm running faster all the time
Strength and beauty destined to decay
So cut the rose in full bloom

'til the fearless come and the act is done
A love like blood, a love like blood

Everyday through all frustration and despair
Love and hate fight with burning hearts
'til legends live and man is god again
(and self-preservation rules the day no more)

We must dream of promised lands and fields
That never fade in season
As we move towards no end we learn to die
Red tears are shed on grey  

-d.s.

READ MORE » Happy Valentine's Day, my lovelies...

Mysterious Friday

Let's hear it for "Orphaned Land", an atmospheric powerdoom band hailing from Israel that uses, no shit, Arabic influences/language/musicians in an attempt to reconcile the internecine conflict in that god-forsaken, wind-blown, war-torn hell hole.

Such is the power of music.

I chose Orphaned Land for an entirely different, non-prescient reason, however. I have a story coming up in a bit about a very mysterious object, and it's now-discovered age. Hold tight.

Until then, enjoy Mercy won't you. Not the best sound quality, but the distorted sitar is tits-out awesome.

I really can't think of any music, other than of Persian extraction, which is so mysteriously evocative.

-d.s.

READ MORE » Mysterious Friday

Thorsday.

Really, really looking forward to the Thor movie. But, you're gonna' need some background.

I was an odd kid growing up: I was a voracious reader, a comic nerd, a gamer (AD&D holler), in the choir and jazz band, a pretty successful athlete, a hoodlum who spent a record 54 days of suspension in the 11th grade, an honors student, an amateur designer, and -most oddly- a neophyte proselytizer.

See, I wanted to bring back the gods. The very very old gods from Upsala and Thuringia and the Jutland. Of course, not really. What I wanted to see was a world where people worshipped their own gods, ancestral or geographical (fortunately, Neil Gaiman would write a book about this very concept. And, if I need to tell you the name, then...well, nevermind, I'll let you find it on your own).

So, yeah, renaissance kid borne solely from restlessness and heavy drug use.  But, the last one has really perservered. I am an atheist personally, but I really do still want to see our friends in France and the UK try to restore some of Angelesly's lost druidical lore. I'd have no problems with our Tuetonic neighbors rearing kids on tales of Asgard and the horrors of Niefelheim. And, specifically, I think it'd be a better world without the covetous, pissy hermit god of the desert holding sway in modern Christianity and Judiasm.

So, yea, really pumped for Thor. Let's have some Viking and Pagan Folk Metal, shall we?

Enslaved, Heidevolk, Korpiklaani, Finntroll, c'mon...what else do you need?

-d.s.

READ MORE » Thorsday.

Wednesday's got a confession....

...not big into Hellecktro. Or Cybergoth. Or Aggrotech. Always been more of a fan of the subdued stuff. Blacks (sans neon), grays, lace, extravagance in layering. Classic, Victorian gothic...or, as I like to call them, pretty things.

The CG thing always struck me as an aesthetically unpleasant chic, and no where is it more unpleasant to me than in the musical scene it begat. I'm not bagging on it...just not my thing, and there are a couple of bands I do dig.

But, my confession is this: Suicide Commando does the shit well. Very Well.  And I groove on him.

This track, "See you in Hell", is the stuff of nightmares. Do not watch this while alone or on drugs.

Suicide Commando's "See You in Hell"

Soundtrack for the post-Apocalypse gloom-merchants.

h/t DJ Darkest Peru for turning me on to this so many years ago.

-d.s.

READ MORE » Wednesday's got a confession....

Tuesday: Blasted by nostalgia.

Yesterday's 1984 redux from Motorola got my fragile psyche prepared for sandblasting by nostalgia. And, for some reason, this morning the only thing I could really think about was Coke's epic (and epically creepy) Max Headroom.


Such a hit was Max, the disembodied, assholish, talking head, that he got his own talk show (and featured prominently on others).

So, chilluns' of the 80s, enjoy some Max Headroom, on "How to be Macho", with --holy shit!-- Pat Benatar's Love is a Battlefield. It does not get more throw-back than that, short of the Smurfs wrestling Voltron for the rights to choose which Styx song to play on the Walkman. 

There is a reason all of we Gen Xers are completely fucked in the head...

-d.s.

READ MORE » Tuesday: Blasted by nostalgia.

Monday, same as a Sunday...

Shadow didn't get a whole lot of quality hang-out time this weekend. Saturday was spent preparing for/dealing with people coming to view his condo. While Sunday....

Sheesh. Sunday.

Sunday began pretty nasty with a true night terror: Waking paralysis, horrendous visual content bleeding into reality, etc. I have them about 3-4 times a year...on top of my weekly nightmares and sleepwalking. This one, comparatively speaking, I'll give an 8.3 to - Not enough to truly derail me for days, but enough to ruin Sunday.

And, even after I recovered yesterday, I nevertheless spent a full work day getting caught up at the office. So, yea, Monday has gotta' be a lil' better.


Which brings me to today: German Goth-Industrial DeathStars, with "Razor End". This is absolutely 100% free of anything resembling commercial influence. Purity? Yea, you could say this. For a nice change of pace --from anything really-- check these guys out...

~~DeathStars~~ ~~Razor End~~ Vidéo My-Goth sélectionnée dans Musique

Yep, pretty much the soundtrack to my nightmares...

-d.s.

READ MORE » Monday, same as a Sunday...

Fridays On Fire....

Not as much as this OUTSTANDING 15 year old. Haunting voice, incredibly gifted already, and --to top it all off-- covering the incomparable Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire".

H/T Leanne Rose.

-d.s.

READ MORE » Fridays On Fire....

Thursday apologizes

Apparently, the posts I pre-drafted never came up yesterday. Including, sadly, the Imbolc greetings to one and all.

Imbolc, or St. Brigit's Day, marks the traditional waxing into spring for neo-druids/neo-pagans, and the like. Halfway between Solstice and the Equinox,  it's a pretty important day, even here in the States.

Huh? Silly superstition, stupid pagan nonsense some would say. True that may be, but why do we still recognize the importance of its arrival in the Western, non-Imbolc sphere?

 Ever heard of Groundhog Day?

Anyway, for my witchy kin and kith, happy Nos Gwyl Fair Imbolc

READ MORE » Thursday apologizes

Wednesday got back on track...

...thank god. Tons of fights with "real world" entities; wrote two briefs in a day-and-a-half, and have been trying to run 5 mediations/arbitrations while preparing for a March Wedding and two May trials.

Der Schatten is overworked, undersexed, and grossly underpaid.

Still, I'll take that over the alternative: Underworked, unpaid and non-sexed.

Not that it's relevant to you and I, but last evening we watch the follow up to PBS's 1991 "Dancing Outlaw" (Jesco White), a fascinating, and frankly touching documentary about the rest of the Mountain folk and the White family specifically. Got me in the mood for some dark, dark bluegrass.

If this doesn't bring the fear of god into ya', nothing will...

Dr. Ralph Stanley's evocative "O' Death".

My great granny used to sing this us when I was a wee kid in North Carolina.

American Gothic, yo.

READ MORE » Wednesday got back on track...

Tuesday's gotta' do better.

Yesterday may have been one of the least explicable days in my life. 'Real life intrudes' does not do it justice, as Monday turned from merely bad into potentially one of the most stressful days of my adult life.

As usual, Pete & the Bums from Staten Island nail it...

Type O Negative's "I don't wanna' be me (anymore)"

For what it's worth, I still can't believe Peter Steele is dead. His absence has left a void in the music world. Certainly not a hero or a role model (hell, probably not even a decent guy), but he brought something to the table sadly missing --originality and earnestness.
October Rust remains one of my five favorite albums, without a doubt.

-d.s.

READ MORE » Tuesday's gotta' do better.

How did Monday let this happen?

Somehow, between working all day Saturday, and dicking off on Sunday, I walked into the office with full-blown panic....way too much to do today for comfort.


Regrets? Yea, a few. Speaking of which, please enjoy the classic Peaceville band, Anathema. Along with their label-mates, My Dying Bride, they set the standard by which all 90s British despondent music is judged by.They began as typical doom, but moved to Rock'n'Sad/Prog stuff (a la Canaan).

This one is one of their more subdued offerings, but still wonderful.

Anathema, "Regret"

"As I drift away... far away from you,
I feel all alone in a crowded room,
Thinking to myself
"There's no escape from this
fear
regret
loneliness...""

-d.s.

READ MORE » How did Monday let this happen?

Friday gives you true gothic metal...

An oft-tossed out phrase, for a genre that is already ill-defined, but --much like Potter Stewart's pronouncements on pornography-- you know it when you see it...

And, boils and ghouls, Tristania frankly fits that bill. This little ditty is off of the latter "Ashes". However, their better albums, to these ears at least, have to be the earlier, "Widows Weeds", "World of Glass", and especially, "Beyond the Veil".

See you peeps soon, until then, enjoy. Won't you?

-d.s.

READ MORE » Friday gives you true gothic metal...

Thursday may have had Captain Trips

Got sick as a fucking dog yesterday, but as soon as it hit me, it was over.

Then, Kleph, tweeted about an industrial accident at, and subsequent lockdown of, a biological/chemical weapons base in Utah. 

I therefore believe on the basis of no evidence whatsoever that it was Captain Trips. 

Anyway, got something different on tap for you today, and over the next couple of weeks. Hope you enjoy it.

-d.s.

READ MORE » Thursday may have had Captain Trips

Wednesday is for Whimsy...

Had a dream last night about that horrific, fascist trope "Enders Game". I don't care whether it's clever Hitler Apologia or whether it's means justifying the ends, non-Rawlsian utility arguments, it remains one of the most overrated, frankly frightful, books of the past quarter century.

Rather than dwell on the horrors of tortured kids engaging in morally "acceptable", first-strike, galactic genocide, let's have some whimsy, eh.

I can't think of anyone more whimsical than Germany's Knorkator.

Ok, this isn't terribly whimsical; still, don't underestimate the power of top-shelf Euro-trash industrial to start your day with a stiffy.

Bonus: Headbanging, mitten-wearing, Tuetonic Pianist!

-d.s.

READ MORE » Wednesday is for Whimsy...