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  • Invisible Vermin and Vulgar Asceticism (10/22/25)

    Invisible Vermin and Vulgar Asceticism (10/22/25)

    These sleepless nights draw on and on, hanging like black velvet curtains over the great stage of this mortal coil and veiling things beyond from curious eyes. There is more to the affair of living than we perceive, and much of what we fail to see will return to haunt us in the dim future. The passage of time has become a grating, terrible thing, and I feel my connection to this world, these people around me diminishing at an ever increasing rate, like coil of old rope fraying and coming apart, just breaking down and unable to bear its load much longer. When it finally splits, I expect I’ll be launched headlong into some fresh nightmare, fouler still than anything I have dared to imagine thus far. I feel failure, regret, shame and exhaustion amassing within and about me like pandemonium-winds. It’s times like these when my mind wanders toward insalubrious notions, like the idea that smoking meth or crack will relieve this awful dissonance and put everything broken inside me right again, even if only for a day. I tell myself this relief comes with attachments that aren’t easily shaken off. I know better. I need to stop thinking about it because what little sanity I have can diminish further and I can lose more than just money and sleep.

    I hardly remember being a drug addict of the lowest order, though I know it happened despite my persisting disbelief. I even remember the exact moment I acknowledged that certain changes had come over me, and that I was wallowing in deeper shit than I’d ever previously imagined. I’m still not sure how I got out of that terrible place in my life, apart from by the grace of God himself, which played an inexorable part in my emancipation from the pits of addiction. I can’t help but wonder what parts of myself died during that period, and if I’m better or worse off without them.

    I’m not sure I know exactly who I am now anyway or if what’s survived is worth keeping. Misery abounds, even in the after-reek of addiction one continues to fester for a good long while, and some stains don’t ever wash out. It’s a tricky devil. Many never see it for the sleight of hand that it is, and even some who can comprehend in advance the severity of the circumstances of hard drug addiction seldom make it out. Adam is like that: a thirty-year veteran meth user whose life is on the wane. There’s not much left for him but what he’s already got at this rate. He’ll never hold a steady job or relationship, never own a home, he’s already been in congestive heart failure for years and suffered strokes and heart attacks, and he’ll die a toothless vagrant. What’s worse is that Adam is, by my reckoning, not a bad fellow. He deserves better, but he won’t get it and it’s precisely his own doing, though that doesn’t make it any less sad. He’s more meth than man now, and I believe it’s overtaken him. I don’t think he even minds the invisible bugs anymore. He probably doesn’t even notice them.

    I remember when I first felt them crawling across my face, like little lice, or gnats flitting about in my peripheral vision, hopping about erratically, and as I’d swat at them, they’d vanish. It didn’t take long for me to understand that there were no bugs. They simply weren’t there and that this was a side effect of smoking meth. It was a grim portent of what could be, and having seen it as such, I scaled back my consumption of the drug drastically. It’s not just bugs, though: there are noises too, and intrusive thoughts of all sorts of foul shit that come flooding into your brain on meth. There’s nothing more chilling than hearing an audible scream, or a whisper around the corner, or just outside a closed door, only to repeatedly check and find empty, silent nothing waiting for you, and realizing later one that you were simply chasing shadows, bogies made up inside your imagination. They’re pretty damn convincing when your down in the shit with them, though. I’ve seen things that weren’t there, too, after a five-day bender on IV crack without sleep, but that wasn’t as horrible and tormenting as the crashes, screams and murmurs of things you can’t find, or the bugs. It’s easier, or at least less maddening, to lock eyes with a grinning aberration that you can see at length than to be inundated with bursts of noises and sensations you can’t quite track down at brief intervals.

    Even still, quite some time later, drugs are precious to me. All the more reason to remember getting high is a curse, a mockery of religious experiences. In a sense, smoking hard drugs or shooting up is an anointment of sorts: once it touches you, it changes you forever. It’s a sort of vulgar asceticism in which you cast off money, family, friends, health, and hope in order to change something within you, something broken that calls out to be fixed. Abusing drugs is ritualistic, like flagellation. It equates to supplication before the throne of a benighted false heaven. It’s a lie, and an exceedingly beautiful one at that—which renders it all the more potent.

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  • A Whisper From the Past: Reflecting Upon That One Rad Time I Saw Sunn O))) Live

    I’m at the office working my overnight shift all alone with my thoughts, which are starkly contrasted by the eerie silence in this place, making them all the more agonizingly difficult to ignore. I feel strange emotions lately, wistful sadness, and a sort of nostalgia that aches like an old wound. Time is strange. I need to work on writing more than just these paltry little journal entries. It feels as if I’ve got something inside of me that this meager mortal frame is having difficulty containing, something I need to get out of me, but I’m not sure if I can – or should- allow that to happen. I am afraid, and it’s hard to articulate why.

    It’s been quite a while since my last post here. No, this isn’t over yet, but it is changing in ways I’m not quite able to understand myself yet. This blog began as a way to share and promote the music I loved and grew up with, as well as serving as a creative outlet, but the older I get, the more I feel disconnected from these things, and from humanity in general. I have been ruminating on this for some time now… But not everything that comes with that is bad. I’ve dredged up at least one fond memory from nearly a decade ago that still makes me smile.

    I remember seeing Sunn O))) in Jacksonville back in 2016 with my friend Shawn (HeyDude!) in an antiquated movie theater called Sun-Ray Cinema which had been renovated and used sometimes as a music venue. Like any good movie theater, there were padded seats with armrests, and snacks and drinks were also available in the lobby. Sitting comfortably for the duration of the show didn’t seem a bad idea anyway, as I highly doubted that Sunn O))) would take the stage and jump into a furious breakdown preceded by a mosh call (though that would have been hilarious –  just imagine: “This is it! This is your last chance! Open this pit up!” [insert generic hardcore breakdown]). 

    The opening act of the evening was a two-piece (I think) called Big Brave, which I had never listened to before but ended up enjoying, though I can scarcely recall the details of their set now, almost a decade later. What I do remember is vague, but I remember enjoying it.

    When Sunn O))) came on they seemed to float onto the stage in a haze of smoke and feedback, cloaked figures limned with gloom and set against a towering wall of amplifiers as a backdrop, stacked double and triple high in places, enveloping the stage at length: even with earplugs, this was the loudest concert I had ever been to. The thrum of each note pulsed the very air, rattled me to my bones. Sunn O))) seemed nearly frozen as time and space vibrated around them, each motion deliberate and precise, as in a dim ritual of some old religion of a long bygone order, and truthfully there seemed to be some otherworldly power which hung heavy in the smoke-sodden gloom of that theater, piercing and resonating, suffusing and engulfing. The music was palpable, as were the various sensations of delight and wonder evoked that evening. It was so simple, just droning notes and chords, but amplified times a million and seemingly executed as deftly as music played a million times faster. Timing was everything; and yet, time was nothing. This performance remainse one of my favorite memories in many decades of live shows and underground art, and changed my perception of what music could be forever.

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  • A New Age of Hell

    A New Age of Hell

    Things haven’t gone horribly since I last posted here, but they’re not great, either. I admit my passion for reviewing and even listening to most dark, heavy music (metal and otherwise) has diminished for a few reasons: namely, that I’m not as bitter as I once was about the world. Having a daughter – and a son on the way- has changed my outlook drastically, as well as my priorities, which are mostly centered lately around my library and outings with my family. It’s hard to listen to some of the heavier, darker stuff I used to enjoy so much when I’ve become, dare I say it, happy-ish? The nostalgia is there, but I don’t feel the need to immerse myself in dank, dreary things to the same degree that I used to. I love music, particularly metal, but it’s no longer at the foreground of my thoughts. So what’s all this about then?

    I’m working on becoming a better husband and father, but while I’ve been doing this, I’ve felt something has been missing from my life. With the advent of AI generated art and music, and in a world where articles can be compiled by prompts and scraped from the dregs of the internet by computers at the click of some nerd’s mouse, part of me wonders if I should even bother trying to create anything anymore.

    But you know what? Fuck these machines, and fuck the people who use them for plagiarized styles and sounds. I think now more than ever, for better or worse, actual human beings should be actively creating unique, individual projects of all varieties. If you have a platform, or a voice or artistic medium of any kind, you should be using it to the best of your ability, even if that ability isn’t flawless. The minute we stop, the fucking bots win.

    With that said, my intention is to – when possible – keep on truckin’ and get back to reviewing music, and with any luck, those efforts may be translated to a physical format in the near future. I feel original content in physical form is going to become increasingly important in the coming years… But what I love about heavy music is the underground lunatics who support it and the DIY attitude most of us have. It’s a labor of love, an undying obsession, true, unadulterated and pure. Also, if you’re reading this, check out this article from https://mystificationzine.com/. If I hadn’t seen it, I wouldn’t be back on here now.

    DIY or die. Time to get back to work.

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  • Cruisin’ US-1

    The junkies, drifters, and other unfortunate souls that wander US-1 in Daytona in various states of decay are out in droves tonight. There are more and more and ever more of them lately. One of them, emaciated, clothed in muddy looking rags with bare legs visibly swollen from infection wandered into traffic on my way home and locked eyes with me as she shambled toward my car at a red light. Her eyes were glossed over like a dead animal, locked in a state of hopeless resignation.

    I didn’t know what she wanted. The light was about to turn, and I pointed at it as it did and drove off as she meandered toward another stopped vehicle. Wounded, wasted, rotting away, but still moving. I used to think motion meant life, drive, direction, all that. Motion happens when maggots swarm, too. Chaos is motion, the buzzing of flies bursting from a carcass is motion, the running of blood in rivulets down a slit wrist -these things, too, are motion.

    Further down the road, on the corner of international and US-1 across from a derelict car wash I saw a couple of sun-baked women with skin like leather passing a cardboard sign back and forth as traffic shifted that read “Why lie? I need a beer” and smiling as they did.

    Even further down the road, between two seedy motels just past Shady Street on the west side of the road, I saw a disheveled looking black man lying on his back in a flower bed; a heavy, sagging white woman with sun-parched skin lay partially atop him, her head rested face down in his lap. Neither moved. Did she nod out sucking him off? The sun was still out, but I still wondered.

    All this misery heaped into one place. It’s contagious, too. This I know well. I carry it with me always.

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  • The End is Nigh || Omens and Portents

    The more I look at our world, the more it appears that good and evil begin to blur as various global orders begin to intertwine. Tighter and tighter are we bound to one another until we collapse into singularity under a common rule. There is a puppet master, a terrible beast atop the ziggurat pulling strings of influencers and politicians and entities less obvious behind the veil. Fifth generation warfare abounds, misinformation is everywhere and meaningful action on any side can be devoured and regurgitated as propaganda for supporters and detractors alike. We are all unwitting pawns in a grandiose and terrible cosmic game.

    I don’t wish to speak any more terrible things into existence, the world’s gone mad enough. I don’t know what to do apart from praying that we’ll all be saved by the grace of a god more merciful than we ever dreamed. My highest ambitions have been mercilessly shot to Hell. All I can do now is sit here in my tattered office chair and listen to Abyssic Hate while I wait for the sun to collapse. I hate this, all of this and I am in constant, unbearable pain. I have seen a portent of the coming doom of man, I have beheld the collapse of civilization as we know it in a half-remembered dream. We are a living fever, and we too shall pass into the unknown.

  • New Year || Same Hopeless Depression

    New Year || Same Hopeless Depression

    I have no story worth telling.

    I am a living phantom, a nobody, a shadow on an alley wall projected from a gutter, gone in the flash of a police light and swallowed back up by blackness in its passing. There is nothing here for me, and though I despise this place, I cannot dream of one better. Misery is my constant companion in a very literal sense. It speaks to me, building me up, just to tear me down again later. I can’t turn it off. The scum that fills my veins piles up in my brain and pours occasionally from my rotten mouth. My body is positively erupting with bad vibes and filthy undercurrents, and I let anyone within screaming distance know about the constant anguish I feel whether they want to hear it or not (they don’t). My reflection is another faded memory of a John disappeared after a night of drugging and whoring, returned to an empty bed waiting to exit an emptier life; like an escalator that keeps going up or down or wherever that leaves one with the choice of waiting for infinity or leaping into an equally infinite abyss to get off.

    One day, it will be as if I never existed.

    What a waste.

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  • Seasonal Depression || Empty Seats at a Forlorn Table

    The holiday months have arrived and we’re nearing the end of another year. When I was young, I loved the festivities and pageantry of it all. Christmas lights, garland, huge family gatherings and sprawling feasts; all of those memories I still hold dear, though their vibrancy has faded with the passing of decades, and many, many empty places at a table which no longer exists in a house that isn’t mine anymore. Now more than ever, I’ve entered the season of depression: where holiday cheer and longing has eroded into creeping gloom that amplifies feelings of loss and isolation; when the suicide rate leaps up and screams “Look at me! Look here!” almost as if it’s calling me by name, imploring me to plunge headlong into the indigo abyss of demise.

    But there’s more to be done and much to prove. I’m not dead yet. I keep my faith in my heart, and my family and their well-being next to that. The joyous times haven’t gone entirely and I continue to focus on the good things I still have to look forward to rather than lamenting the past. It’s a vicious cycle. What else can I say?

    I picked up some zines of excellent quality from the Crucial Blast Bandcamp page; one called “Abysm”, which is more or less a catalog of the label’s releases (A – E) with vivid descriptions of each; the other is issue zero/void of the forthcoming Crucial Blast zine which contains all manner of oddities. There is some special and exciting material here, and I’m feeling inspired to produce something like this myself. Crucial Blast has always been a source of inspiration for me, and the aesthetic this label has cultivated is superbly dark and weird. When I want truly off-the-beaten-path, off-kilter art, this is where I wind up. The heart of the underground continues to pulsate.

    That’s a wrap for the time being. I’ve got a lot of work to do…

  • The End Is Nigh || Brain Stew for Dinner

    The machine is failing, spewing blood and oil and the collected essence of millions -if not untold billions- of human sacrifices out into the aether; this moribund amalgamation of flesh and steel and piss within which our lives all become entangled like the intestines of a medieval man nailed to a breaking wheel, and the wheel keeps turning and our innards keep spewing out like so many first prize ribbons at a county fair. We are livestock trotting along toward an abattoir, only dimly aware of the captive bolts waiting around the corner. Our captors dance in our blood, feast upon the stew of our collected gray matter as it is scraped from the slaughterhouse walls. What isn’t immediately eaten is processed and fed to our offspring; we are cannibals, all.

    It’s October now. Fall is here, and with is comes nostalgia and bittersweet memories wrapped in melancholy. I’m getting older, life seems so much different than it once was. Things aren’t as simple anymore and this isn’t the world I grew up in. That world is buried under so many spent aspirations and failures, but that’s the thing about life: like it or not, with or without us, it simply grinds onward. I see terrible ugliness in this place that wasn’t as prominent in decades past, demons marauding openly among us with relative impunity as our corrupt moral codes wither into excess and filth. We’ve built quite a nasty, stinking cage for ourselves and called it a castle, which, the way I see it, we’ll all be conveniently crammed into under lock and key before our wardens douse the whole edifice in pitch and set it ablaze.

    I don’t know why I still do this. It’s a strange compulsion that overwhelms my nerves every once in a while, that I must write something, so I come here to vomit out my paltry musings and reflect upon my own failures. I don’t know what I’m doing anymore, but I’m still alive for now.

    God help me.

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  • The End is Nigh || Apocalyptic Introspections

    The End is Nigh || Apocalyptic Introspections

    I have plumbed the nether regions of my inner self and found fears lurking there which surely drive the whole of my being from unseen depths toward unknown ends. These observations have been made possible by stripping away the outer layers of my psyche and probing inward by means of consuming THC or psilocybin in large doses. I have seen the brink of my own madness, and it’s nearer than I had dared to dream. Pain is inevitable. Death lurks around every corner. None of us are safe. Man is only truly saved through the mercy of divinity. I personally ascribe to the belief that Jesus Christ is the redeemer of all mankind and our sole deliverer from sin and darkness.

    Existence is pain. We are born shrieking in confusion and agony, and we die whimpering in the same state. God and the devil are real, and I am beleaguered constantly by terrifying visions of loss and demise. I no longer trust my memory, and I can feel the past, like an illusory veil, coming unwound as I lose what sense of identity I have kept, floating idly in a lengthy fever-dream waiting to awaken, and hoping I won’t be worse off having done so.

    I sense the end is very fucking nigh – or if not the end, an end. But an end to what? I feel lost in an unfamiliar and abhorrent world where blood-soaked nightmares and murderous devils abound in excess: I mean this in both a literal and figurative sense. In my silent, innermost prayers, I hope that whatever end is coming is quick and as painless as possible. This world is fallen, but there are things worth saving here. I only hope that salvation is still possible.

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  • Downfall || Heaped Shit and Spoiled Ambitions

    There is a great urge within me to lie down and let my body assimilate with the bones and detritus of all that have walked this Earth before me, to curl up beneath a blanket of moss and loam and return my body to the ground and let my spirit soar ever onward. At times, it is as if a great arm is reaching out to grab me and pull me down into the morass with the rest of our forgotten dead.

    I’m terrified and miserable tonight. I feel uneasy and my eyes are burning, straining against the unnatural LED ceiling fan light hanging above me in my home office. My belongings are packed away in containers apart from a few select books I’ve set aside to mull over in my spare time. Good things have happened, but my outlook generally remains bleak. I have less and less to say. Nothing seems of any use. The world is fallen and we’ve nowhere left to hide from society. All that’s left is borrowed hope for a quick and painless death. I feel a strong urge to delve a vast network of secret tunnels and live underground with all of my weird friends. This is simply how I feel, here, in this particular moment. My despair is recurrent. I’m beating it back as often as I can. I’m exhausted.

    It has begun to rain outside, the patter of raindrops across my roof still makes me nervous, though our roof was repaired early this year. I keep telling myself that at least I’m not smoking meth or crack anymore. I hope this storm will pass and take my present anxiety with it. I haven’t written anything in quite a long time apart from journal entries. I haven’t kept up with this site. I feel cold and gray inside. My mind has turned to lukewarm gruel encased in a prison of bone. Nothing much matters anymore.

    Something horrible occurred to me I’m not sure when but recently, that like so many others, I’ve been duped into fulfilling the dreams of another entity and sacrificing my own to do so, and that the ultimate dream of this entity or entities is neither benevolent nor humane, but one that feeds endlessly on suffering, drinks deep of it as it propagates false hope among doomed men. The shit keeps piling up and we just can’t shovel fast enough to get out of the cesspit, and the more we dig, the deeper it gets. Violence is coming. Ours is the end of an age.

    God help us.