The 2016 edition of the NDF might probably have the greatest bill of all time. Autopsy, Blasphemy, Angelcorpse, Morpheus Descends, Magrudergrind (ah ah no, just kidding on this last one) and so on. Stuff to make you sleep like shit at night, especially when you’re not going to attend it. Yeah, a bunch my fave bands ever are (is?) playing in Europe and I am not going for some miserable aspect of my life I don’t want to publicly share here.

Hating myself since my birth however allowed me to channel my energy into the realm of possibilities and make pretending. Since I could no accept it, I will pretend to be there and have fun and share beers with friends while listening to “In The Grip of Winter” live. With the right dose of booze, I can project my astral form and attend the show even if I am not, how cool is that? Wiggle your fingers, Magician Mick!

TRIP TO TILLBURG

I decided to wake up earlier this time and have a long workout in my basement with cardio and some clean and jerks and PR deadlifts before getting a good shower and an healthy breakfast. Positive and full of energy like I am always in the morning* I control once last time the checklist of items to pack in my hand bag. weighing it once more to be certain the airport is not going to create any problems. ID check, money check, credit card check, phone and adapters check, Disma shirts check,

I feed my cat and make sure my neighbor has all the correct instructions to keep her litter clean, her water fresh and her food bowl full to the brim. My brand new*, problem-less* car drives me uneventfully to the airport where I park in the extended-time lot. I take a healhty snack with some carrots and celery* while waiting for the plane to land. At the airport I meet with all the 72 friends that Facebook assured me will be attending to the great event. happy to see you all here, pals*!

Since I am still in good shape when the plane arrives in Tilburg and I have some time left before the sunset I visit the beautiful church os St. Josef not too far from the venue. Built in 1899, the church looks still cool. It still has you know, the towers, the grey stones, everything looks right.

The Auberge Du Bonheur is as enchanting as I expected. I leave my bag in the hotel room and plan a quick drink with friends. On the way out, probably attracted  by my DISMA shirt these two girls try to hook me up and get me laid. I tell them I have no time for that shit and I am there just for the music. Making the sign of the horns with my right hand while sticking my tougue out like a true metal warrior.

Prerelase party

Quick ice cream at the Intermezzo and I head to the Kandinsky pub (yes, like the Russian painter, lots of originals hanging at the walls actually!). My feet are sore and the beer is so refreshing at that time of the evening, but what a surprise! I could share a few of these with my friends and the guys in Autopsy that justs dropped by for a last sip before rest. We take some pictures together but I tell them I have to leave because I want to be perfectly in shape for the morn after.  We take one last shot and we have a look at the bands playing tomorrow: lots of grindcore… grindcore… ah yes also Undergang and Vitamin X.

Wait: Vitamin X? Jeez.

Anyway I say hello to Eric, Chris and Danny and I go to sleep.

Stay tuned for the festival proper!

Posted on January 22, 2016 by Nuclear Abominations

Here I am again for another 15 minutes of rants about older shit.

Here is another video for consumption. As always my spoken english sucks more than my written one ahah. But what the fuck.

Yeah might sound naive, but at the moment it looks like the fastest way to update this website and drop some review of older shit while I put together material for the paper zine. Hypotetically, the printed version will hold only reviews of records released in 2014 to 2016, while I’ll save older stuff for YouTube. Let me know if you like the idea.

Metal is Death, Death is Metal
Nunslaughter Death Metal

This might certainly sound like the single weirdest article you might read on the departure of Jim Konya/Sadist/Lasagna, as I won’t hide the fact I never met this guy in my life. I cannot really understand why I never had the chance to talk with him, by chat or letter or face to face, as exploring the dozens of posts and memories that have popped on the Internet recently we certainly had a lot to share. In any case, putting together all the pieces of the puzzle from the various sources, not to mention some interviews I have read/watched lately, there is a lot we can learn from this guy. He definitely knew how to live this life properly.

I had a friend like him once who died of liver cancer just a couple of years ago. Still today he is my greatest if not the only role model I have ever had, the person I think of when I am going through difficult times. What would he do if he was in my situation? Something just reverberates correctly when I think about the passion and generosity of such persons. It might sound unfair to file them under a common roof as each one of them was certainly unique, but I find so many similiarities I just find it impossible not to. Luckily I know a couple of other people with that spirit. Not more than five or six, and they’ve been the only ones I have kept in touch during the long time during which I was basically out of the whole music “scene”. Unsurprisingly, they’re the ones who always manage to drag me into this “scene” every time.

“Scene” is a word the guys in Isten (most possibly just Mikko I guess but bear with me) just could not stand. Over fifteen years ago it (I’ll talk of Isten as a single, free willed entity) realized that things were not aligning properly. Scene demands proper form. Scene demands brotherhood, blindfold support (even of shitty bands), demands proper attire and as much homogenous thinking as possible. Weird stuff, for a music apparently created by the Devil, rebel card number 1. I personally mostly skipped the habits of scene-dom for the most of my life, save probably my very first years into it, could not care less you know. Every couple of years a new trend sets in, some I like, some I don’t, hell sometimes I just don’t care about listening to music at all for weeks.

But basically, are people like Jim and Isten on the opposite sides of the spectrum? I personally believe not. Isten certainly has its snobbish halo, and that I never liked, but it was undoubtedly spot on regarding the whole “Scene” thing: scene is glossy, big cumbersome and glossy as national metal magazines can be, all of them aligned to lick the ass to the same people. But above anything else it is false, it is form above content, and I could set my balls on a grill if Jim was into punk and metal for anything else but content. Obviously in metal appearance and aesthetics ARE content as well, but that is another story entirely. I am not talking about patches and metal vests here. The question is now: can you be as well liked like him without being a “scene queen”? Your answer resides in a couple dozens of articles like this that have been written ever since Jim’s departure.

I have never lived music as a religion. My passion and interest wanes and grows in cycles and it always did. When I am into it, I am really into it and that is the single most important lesson I have learned from people like Jim and my old friend. Life’s to short to live anybody elses life, even if it’s called “scene”.

Passion, honesty, truth, sharing good music for free, actually listening to the records you buy and not fearing to say an album is shit when everybody else is praising it. That is the lesson I believe we all should learn from these people. Since Jim is no more, it’s really up to us to fill his void by trying to live a little bit of his legacy, I certainly will try to. This time, this is really a call to arms.

Sorry pal for having never managed to meet you on this Earth, we have a lot of sick shit to trade down in the pits of Hell, wait for me.

Horns up.

In one of my previous posts I mentioned that the trip to Finland gave me some renewed energy and hope for the whole music “thing” going on today. Since I came back I recovered a few habits I almost lost over time: I listen to music more carefully, I truncate bullshit as soon as it turns out, I also have some creative ideas I cannot wait to put into effect. basically there is some good shit going on nowadays. Certainly way better than that obscure period that went from 1994 to 2000. I am not entirely sure about 100% of this “old school renaissance” but for sure I can tell you there are some ripe fruits here and there and certainly some sincere enthusiasm which is basically what we all should focus on, I believe.
The first project I have in mind is to go back to print. I came back home with a couple of flyers and some ‘zines and caught in a stream of consciousness I went back to my old fanzines, and started browsing for hours. Ten it just clicked.

In the past brewed the idea to collect all the reviews of the last 10 years or so that appeared on the webzine/blogzine on paper, but at the moment the idea doesn’t sound to me as satisfying as writing new ones, possibly with stuff not older than two years (time in this brand of music moves slowly after all, and I already stressed enough the fact that nobody reads paper zines anymore for “fresh data” – just have a look at Compilation of Death, the various opera omnias of Isten, Voices from the Darkside or Slayer, or this recent Reborn from Ashes). Yet again just going through old zines and copying and pasting other people works definitely does not suit me. And on top of that, I can think of very, very few fanzines that covered goregrind extensively, Impaired from France was possibly the only one with some regularity. There are a few good fanzines today, but I found many of them either too glossy and too professional looking, or too thin and amateurish. And then there’s the clones, they stand in a category of their own. What I seldom gather today is passion, reading these recent fanzines is seldom entertaining. I am not sure if I can win the challenge of doing something different, but I will try.

So that is why I will be busy in the next weeks. Hopefully not years, although with fanzines you’ll never know. Wisdom heartily invites me to work full time on the distro so to collect money for releases long due, but at the end of the day, like Morbid Angel say, “you only die once”, so let’s just go with the wind.