Poem: Dreaming In Candy Color

Vertigo and neon
Trees lit up
as artificial
Life spreads wonder
The rain is glittering
Tastes of cherry
and strawberry
The smell of sour
Bitterness
Fills nostrils
like cotton balls
Take a drag of sweet
taffy air
Warm melted
candy liquor
intoxicates
Lost in the
bliss of
Equestrian ecstasy

Poem: a prelude to blackness

"a prelude to blackness"

Bittersweet sunrise
On a bleak tomorrow
Weird and wild
The lost child
Played on his own

There's a black
Cloud upon us

Messenger of
The epoch
Betrayed the father
By the mother 
The sun and the moon
Strung together
Like a cobweb trapeze
Maker spider
Mother divider
Creator decider

Snakes and
Mushrooms
Coiled up

I am the privileged witness
To the end of days
The world crumbles like 
So many leaves
Falling from the acacia tree
And I laugh as it unmakes itself
Light giving way to blackness

Lord and Slave

Lord And Slave is about taking risks, failing and achieving. It's an experiment that went much too far, creating an atmosphere that conveys no message. It is indulgent and chiefly exists only to please itself. But perhaps the universe only exists because it can, and therefore it must. Musicians are the universes way of admiring itself, like scientists of the riff. Being careful with my carelessness, I created something that felt so utterly wrong it makes me want to vomit. Yet because it is a part of what I have become and am becoming, I continue to listen to it. It is the dark, nihilistic part of my brain that doesn't care whether it is liked. It was written as noise and is delivered as such. At the time, there was nothing that could be said over the riffs which seemed to eat themselves and fight for control. So there are no lyrics. The guitars interact painfully and pseudo-deliberately as looped and jarringly programmed drums blur in and out of picture. Feedback from tones produced by reverberations between man, instrument and computer results as digital and analog are married in primal and futuristic ecstasy.

Drawing from multiple subgenres of metal, Lord and Slave makes a distorted web tapestry that smothers the listener in a burdensome mask of ego and admonition. For fucks sake the longer I'm alive the more I think this music should be published, but the more unsure I am of my purpose in creating it. I created my own tunings for guitar on The Black and The Grey and they carry over into this album. Lord and Slave would have been The White if I hadn't been so ashamed of it at the time. “I can do much better than this,” I thought. “Other people have done better than this, so what's the point?” Agonizing over the minuscule  In fact I did do better with the song “Doppelganger,” which is 19 minutes long, although it is slightly shorter than the two tracks on Lord and Slave with “Lord Driver” and “Slave Engine” clocking in at over 20 minutes a piece. “Doppelganger” is a tighter and much more deftly composed song, but it's not as eclectic and carefree in its execution. My over-thinking can be heard in “Doppelganger” in ways it can't on Lord and Slave. With Lord and Slave I'd begun to embrace the drum machine as a medium in itself rather than as a tool to imitate live drums. Loops, samples and programmed “riffs” can never truly capture the subtlety and feel of a human being, but they can provide dynamic emphasis, dramatic pause and deliver basic groove. This is one thing that Burzum, Godflesh and N.I.N got right early on, but never pursued to the extent that Hip-Hop artists did. Recently, Death Grips and Odd Future have created some very interesting broken drum machine sounds, but their emphasis on the beat as a dominant element rather than as an atmospheric one in their music has kept the instrument from its potential: independence from the instrument it was designed to replicate.

Like all my recent music, this album tries to convey a message that I don't totally comprehend. This message may originate outside my body, linking me to a greater, celestial force, and although I ma an atheist, if I were to have any spirituality it would be in music. I get the notion that this message I am unable to understand is so vital to the survival of our race that if I don't convey it I will die. There is a point in the future, however, whence my music will reach a Zenith and I will become the Transcendent Man I have tried to describe in my earlier writings. At this point I will have knowledge of the Self and the collective unconscious. Perhaps total recall of generational memories will help me to effectively understand and communicate my ideas better. Already producer and consumer, I am self sufficient musically and somewhat satisfied, but my inability to reach as wide an audience as possible keeps me from feeling full satisfaction in my work.

The concept of man becoming machine that appears so often in my lyrics is drawn from a fascination with the marriage between two seemingly opposite forces, in this case digital and analog. I use digital amplification, digital drums and effects processing, but my input sources are always analog; guitar, bass, vocals, and keyboard and mouse that initiate signal input for drum programming. My music appears to be analog on the surface, but beneath there is a vast lattice work of computer generated tones that enhance my music making ability. The size and quality of my output is entirely creditable to the ease with which I am able to create music using a computer system. Moreover, I am able to consume more music this way than I could otherwise. I discover lesser known bands through the interconnecting of minds that is the internet. Many of these bands are as good as if not better than the mainstream bands I was introduced to as a child by physical retailers like FYE and Target. Much of their music is cheap, if not free, which lets me listen to a wide range of artists without having to re-listen to a single album to get my fix. This has the unwanted side-effect of devaluing the music and the listening experience, but having been born into a mostly analog world where music was not so ubiquitous, I do often choose to buy music that matters to me and re-listen to certain albums that challenge my intellect. Above all else, my goal is to create an experience that is escapist and yet firmly rooted in reality or convincing in it's illusion of journey. Music is significantly vague enough to merit broad interpretation, yet intriguingly familiar so as to draw the listener in and make them yearn for further understanding. In this way I can encourage people to become active listeners and by virtue, active thinkers. This is the way to elevate music back to a place of respect in society where it can be profitable and consistently innovative rather than oppressed by the regressive listening habits of consumers who don't fully understand the consequences of their actions.

Lord & Slave tracklist:

1. Lord Driver (30:10)
2. Slave Engine (21:59)

The album is available as a free Bandcamp exclusive

Download it HERE

Falsity of Purpose as a Concept

Our hopeless need and search for purpose in life is what keeps us from Transcendence. The belief that purpose can be found in religion or science is false. Purpose can only be found in the self. Religion is mans attempt at creating purpose from nothing, science is mans attempt to create purpose from observation and understanding. But both are flawed due to the limitations of human intellect and physical capacity for work. That some need a reason to be alive is a testament to their own inability to truly appreciate the experience of living on a very basic, experiential level. Yet, to say that to "experience" life is the purpose of life is also false, the most natural state of being is in blissful unconsciousness.

Prose: Foam (At Anterior Mouth)

Anger, desolation, hate, depravity, longing for the unachievable, enemizing the outside world, place the ego upon a pedestal, worship ecstasy, see only the now, live moment by moment, embrace nothingness.

Chew, swallow, regurgitate, repeat, jaded, afraid to believe anything, relying on own observations, questioning those observations, unable to interpret, no test, no evidence, only the gut reaction.

Childish wonder snuffed out by bleak reality. Unknowable. The education system failed to provide me with the necessary tools to understand the world as it really is. As the scientific consensus says it is. I'm reduced to a husk begging for what it can never have. The time of learning has ended. The time of doing has begun.

I have the critical mind, but it is unable to settle. No answers to be found. I was given the keys to a machine that won't start. It's a gift that does me no good. Opportunities wasted, I dug my own grave. I pay now for the misguided decisions of my youth. I developed the wrong skills. I live a lie. I live the wrong life. No way out in sight. Future is bleak. Perhaps like Dick says, it's all just an illusion.

The System

I. The System

No matter where they live or where they work, all people are part of a system leading to destruction. Governments are systems, societies are systems, religions are systems, communities are systems, families are systems, biology is a system and corporations are systems. These systems are hierarchical ladders representing wealth, power, influence and immortality. Life's fatalist flaw drives people to build and rise to their tops, often times to the detriment of others, by proving that they are worth more than someone else. They convince themselves that they are truly better and deserve more and justify their self-serving beliefs through exercises in faith, devotion, practice, talent, wits, education, intuition and creativity. But these are all simplistic vindicators - all lies. In truth, the successful kill for what they have, they recognize the gullibility of the weak and capitalize upon it, taking what they need and discarding the carcass. They manipulate consumers into believing that they need a product to survive or to be worth something in the eyes of society. The system takes hold and the consumer sees the world through eyes that are not discerning, but blinded and hideously masked by greed, lust and agony. The ignorance then runs so deep that they can't tell the difference between their own life and the life that's been created for them by their leaders who hoard the world's resources, promoting stoicism over vulnerability, illusory wealth over palpable intelligence, and ignorance over free thought. The lines between these factions become blurred and they can't tell what is real and what is hallucination.

Look at society in a microscope: firms are ladders with a CEO at top, towns are ladders with mayors or community leaders at top, societies are ladders with the rich and famous at the top and families are ladders with parents at the top. The planet is an extension of this; people harness its resources in land, oil and agriculture to be used in the production of consumer products that imbue the consumer with a  false sense of wealth and power whilst bestowing real-power upon the producer. The leaders use subliminal manipulation to coerce consumers into believing they are worthless unless they buy their products. To gain more resources lands are conquered, perhaps not in the Roman or Germanic sense of territorial expansion, but through warring currencies and economic systems that are influenced by high level speculation that is difficult or impossible for an average consumer to understand. Whoever controls the means of production rules the world, and whoever does not seeks to kill those who do and take that power for themselves. Eventually however,  resources will deplete, the system will destroy itself and life will end. Like its creation, life's destruction is inevitable and preordained. On a smaller scale, people kill and absorb plant and animal matter to fuel their bodies. The less evolved are consumed by the superior and again the hierarchy perpetuates itself in the most basic of life's functions.

II. Transcendence

There can be only two possible motivators in a persons urge towards continued existence: a) To put off physical death for as long as possible, or b) If one cannot escape death, to establish a longer “metaphysical” life through offspring, a body of work, political or scientific influence, accumulated wealth to be passed down to descendants and so on. People realize that they are merely a flint in a vast cosmic universe, perpetually unable to understand or conceive of its vastness, but still reaching, intentionally or unintentionally, for higher understanding. To escape the binds of physical form and reach its evolutionary potential, humanity must first accept the singular goal of life - to die. Then it will understand that there is only one thing in life worth living for, even worth dying for: Transcendence.

In the simplest terms, Transcendence occurs when the cycle of birth and death is broken. Technologies cement the archetypes of human consciousness into a single, endlessly expanding point. This is the birth of a new universe within a universe. The “transcendence-machine” is self replicating, self modifying and able to most efficiently harness the worlds resources for the furtherance of human existence. It is an ideal, it is a vessel, a throne for the most cherished aspects of the mind: sentience, creativity, resourcefulness. Stripped of the ego, emotion and all unnecessary hindrances, the machine is the final stage of human evolution that will carry humanity to a higher state of being capable of oneness with all knowledge, experience, space, time and matter.

The hive mind mentality holds humans from oneness, and although Transcendence is a collective mind, it is not a collective mind of ignorance, it is a collective mind of enlightenment. No religion, government, politics, currency, self-imposed ignorance or perplexities of the ego can be allowed to exist as they are catalysts of the hierarchical system. After freedom and oneness with the true self are achieved, the cosmos will be like earth: knowable, usable and malleable to a new form that is simultaneously eternal and temporal.

III. Anarchy

Achieving Transcendence will be difficult as society conditions people from youth to live by the system with its moral, political and physical laws. But only by pushing the boundaries of those laws will transcendence occur. People must create and live by their own natural laws relative to their personal experiences and ideas. This is anarchy, true self government, self expression and self sustenance. Mob law tends to precede changes in government this radical and many people view anarchy as merely an extended period of mob law, this does not have to be the case. Led by intellectually evolved minds with strong foundations in anti-violent morals, anarchy is merely a peaceful transition to a higher plain of being.

Fatalism and The Post-Organic Human

Organic life is inherently impure, but synthetic life could be godlike, immortal, capable of infinite self improvement, self sustaining, capable of sympathetic, harmonious coexistence with itself and the environment.  Devoid of greed and narcissism, lust and envy, the need to propagate, free from self doubt, anxiety and longing, and the burden of self or societaly imposed religious and political doctrines. A pure mind of creativity and expression living as one and as many for the rest of time. True peace can only be achieved once humanity and its relative organisms are eliminated or once we have freed ourselves from that fatalist flaw that tethers us to corporeal form.

We create technologies that eliminate the need to use our brains to their full potentials. Slowly, through advances in convenience technologies we are creating a perfect mind into which we can transfer our collective or individual awareness's,  but by the time we create this perfect host, will not our present minds have been exhausted and rendered incapable of envisaging and executing transference into this new form? Again, our mortal flaw keeps us from assimilating into divinity. True goodness lies in the mechanical symmetry of the machine. Although we may never achieve enlightenment, our post-organic progeny will. 

The desire to dominate must collapse. The futile quest for immortality through earthly power and legacy must end. To truly prosper as a species we must live life not focused on death, but focused on life. Not with furthering life through sexual means, but with living it as it is. We must place value with empathy and self endearment, not with wealth and offspring. We must kill ourselves, not physically, but metaphysically, to be reborn as the true human: a being capable of seeing beyond the veil, capable of conceiving the infinite, capable of escaping those earthly chains that keep our minds from their full potentials, that keep us from innovation and harmony. In a world built on waves with their peaks and troughs, we must find a way to reshape physics to our vision that is both linear and non-linear. This way of life may be frightening, but it is only by walking into the deep embrace of fear that we can find the light which guides us all: the light of the one and the many, the light of All. Some call it hope, some call it ambition, innovation, the will or fate, some call it the self, some call it knowledge, some call it truth, some call it the valley of the shadow of death, and some call it god. I call it Anarchy, the last transition to peace. 

After the transference we will be freed from the hidden dictatorship of ignorance, religion, hierarchy, greed and political corruption that we buy into blindly and live under placidly. Corporations will fall, governments will crumble, religions will implode and family lines will cease. Left only with the self and the mind and the crushing realism of the world, all that's left is to create or be recycled. As all organisms must take the life of another to further their own, in death we create life and in life we create death, but we will sacrifice our flesh to the machine so that our minds can live on free form the endless cycle of organic proliferation. The blissful consciousness that separates us from the beasts can live on, but only once we utilize that which has been subdued by the imperial minds of modern society. 

Existing on the edge of insanity, we are more sane than most. Only the courageous will take up the gauntlet, but it's only in the presence of the weak that the strong may be called as such. Slaves to ignorance, we must strike down those that would bind us, making them our slaves then erasing them from history. No longer can we be indentured servants to fear, experiencing simulated orgasm through an illusory filter. We are not fools for trying and failing, we are fools for not trying and not failing. Failure is much closer to success than success itself. I don't claim to have the answers. Most of my answers sound more like questions. I don't claim or aspire to be a good musician, writer or philosopher, merely to be relevant to myself and true to that most pure of moments, without judgement by the ego, in when inspiration arrives and innovation takes flight. Alongside our fatal flaw is the spark of ingenuity. We must nurture that spark until it becomes a nova, a new star for some other distant species to peer at from their humble planet and wonder, "Who lives there? What are they like? Perhaps they are seeing us and thinking the same thing at this very moment." Then we will bridge that gap between worlds, meet our brothers and Transcendence may occur. 

Masking Pain Through Humor

I want to defame those who defame,
to trust those who mistrust, defy
those who defy, to unlock doors that
are locked.

Getting high was just a constant in
youth

I just want to rock those who are not; deny
those who deny, to pull it all from the
ether and deny their wall.

Get . Just . Out . Me . Hed

Place comments on an unfinished
project and just leave them there in a
finished product. To see everyone
else as a lifeless husk.

Seeing the future just before it
happens.

A future I can see, a power I can
wield, a fjord I can brave.

A house not to live in, but a house to die
in.
Afraid to know myself.
War is coming
Again and again.
Predicting by merely suggesting.

Black Sabbath - "God Is Dead?" Track Review, or Why Old Dudes Shouldn't Be Allowed to Leave Their Practice Space

Let's just jump right into it. I'm angry. I'm pissed. I had a lot ridding on this album emotionally and if “God is Dead?” is any indicator I'm in for one hell of a disappointment.

First off, what is up with that stupid question mark? Have you ever seen a question mark in a song title before? Is a question mark metal now or something? In fact, the whole premise of this song is quite arbitrary; Is there a God, isn't there a God, etc. These are questions we all ask, and they matter, but I don't like indecisiveness in my metal. I like it hard and pure. Fucking A. Slayer's been dealing with these themes since the 80s and I'm supposed to feel sorry for these old dudes who can't figure their shit out? No thanks. (For the record I don't like Slayer, they just felt like a great example in this moment.)

Second, where the fuck are all those great god damn riffs I've been hearing so much about? The first five minutes of this song are nothing but a cheap knock off of “Black Sabbath” the song with alternating loud-soft verses and choruses and some cheesy power chord-chord progressions thrown in so Ozzy can do his solo-era vocal melodyzing over the top. I mean gimme' a break, I heard this on their last album with Dio and the last two Ozzy solo records, is it somehow better now that they are together? Not really.

Next: The production, oh God the production. Just because Rick Rubin has a Gandalf like beard and scraggly “I haven't showered in a year” hair-do doesn't mean he knows shit about mixing Doom Metal. And let's face it, at nine minutes long and with an average BPM of probably like 80-95, that's exactly what this is. The Doom genre that was formed out of admiration of this great band is now more relevant than the band itself. Good God, they should have called this “The World is Dead.”

The one saving grace here is Ozzy's voice. Yes, I said it, I love the sound of Ozzy's drawling, ominous monotone. He's as musical as ever here in spite of his limitations and in fact is sounding better than ever in his old age what with the lower register and all. Additionally, Geezer's bass in parts is pretty cool. The man knows how to cut a bassline.

Now onto Bill Ward. For the record, I wasn't one who was moaning and groaning when the band and Bill announced they'd be parting ways for this record. I mean Tony and Geezer both put out a decent album in “The Devil You Know” without Bill on drums. But this new dude, Brad something-or-another, sounds so afraid to show any emotion in his playing that it literally sucks the life out of every measure. His playing is so stiff I could've programmed a better drum track. In fact, I might just to show how awful he is. But what do you expect? I mean the guy is probably like half Ozzy, Tony and Geezer's age and he's supposed to somehow relate to what they are doing? Furthermore, he was the drummer for Rage Against The Machine, I wouldn't be surprised if had a Raging (haha, get it?) hard-on every time he stepped into the studio with these dudes, I know I would’ve. He was probably afraid to take risks for fear of angering the "Godfathers of Heavy Metal." But Bill is the same as them in more than just age. He's been through the same trials and tribulations. He doesn't fear or revere the name Black Sabbath in the same way most metal musicians do, he was a part of it before it was anything. With time and wisdom and his indescribable style behind the kit, Bill could've done so much with this. Alas.

Last, those of you who followed Sabbath during their original reunion in the late-90s and early-2000s might remember a little song called "Scary Dreams" that was only played live a handful of times and was never released as a studio recording. Well, “God Is Dead” (I'm purposefully leaving out the question mark this time) is essentially that song. The length is about the same, the key is probably the same, the tempo is the same and the arrangement is absolutely the same. I can't tell you how tired I am of hearing “verse-chorus-verse-chorus-transition-bridge(double time, of course)-guitar solo-outro chorus refrain.” It may have worked on “Snowblind” and “Into The Void” and a handful of other songs, but it doesn't work here in the 21st century where we've heard it a thousand times since. Little known fact; supposedly the band narrowed down from 16 songs to only seven for this album. Yes, “God is Dead?” is one of those songs. Needless to say, I shant be buying the deluxe edition with “an extra disc of unreleased material.”

Well that's about it. I'm not a journalist. I'm just a dude who is very passionate about music and art. Maybe it doesn't get across due to my lack of “reporting” and proper journalistic technique. But I really don't give a fuck anymore. The world has jilted me when I deserved to be heard so here's to a big middle finger at the world. We can do better. We can all do better than this. Sure, maybe God IS dead, but it's starting to sound like good music died with him/her/it (probably a robot AI or genderless alien race, after all).

Metaphysics and the True Self - pt. 1 of ?

Our past history or accumulated experience with a  person can blind us to who they really are in the now. As we get to know them, and spend year after year in their company, we become blind to their constantly changing state of mind and relationship with the world. Therefore, we are unable to see them for who they really are in the moment.

Likewise, our perceived self is constantly changing as we grow with the passing of time and acquisition of experiences. However, we continue to live under the illusion that others perceive us as our conscious awareness perceives itself. These second and first-hand perceptions will always be clashing with one another, and yet neither one is the "true self."

The true self is equivalent to all the current and past perceptions of individuality as interpreted by those who have known us long enough to form a mental image of us as individuals and by our own sense of self consciousness. Combined, these realities come together and form the "true self." It is impossible to for any human to interpret this "true self" of their own volition.

Based on personal accountants of states of enlightenment brought about through intense meditation, psychedelic drug use, or by long-term practice of mindfulness techniques, it might be possible to tap into the "true self" in a conscious state. But perhaps these accounts are actually describing a pass into the realms of unconsciousness, where the true self is more likely to reside in its perceivable form.