REALICIDE - RESISTING THE VIRAL SELF>

LP / CD constructed November 2007 - March 2009

produced by Robert Inhuman for REALICIDE YOUTH RECORDS

release date 29 March 2009 (CIDE#55)

 

www.realicide.com

 

Mission statement: Realicide, the collective band and publications label of the same name, is our endorsement of anti-hypothetical change, anti-narcissistic agenda, progressive anti-escapism, art as a catalyst for dialogue and interaction, art as a byproduct of a life lived, ethically sober compassion and self-sacrifice as an expression of love, against the hell of human institutions and wants. - Robert Inhuman, 2008

 

 

Robert Inhuman (Los Angeles / nomadic) lyrics, voice, sampling, all vocal recording and mixing via Cubase SX3, all edits via Cool Edit Pro 2.0, Fruity Loops 3, drawings, art and text layouts, [email protected]

 

Jim Swill (Cincinnati / Baltimore / Saint Louis) lyrics, voice, sampling, collages [email protected]

 

Vankmen (Oakland) Boss SP-505, Korg EA-1, Korg ES-1, Korg KP-2, Reason 3.0, scratches, Vankmachine (circuit bent Boss DR-550), [email protected]

 

Ryan Faris (Jacksonville) Alesis SR-16, Boss SP-202, Boss DD-6, Roland MC-909, Akai MPD-24, Mackie 1202-VLZ, Ableton Live 7, [email protected]

 

Evolve (Cincinnati) Yahmaha AN-200, tapes, “Resisting The Viral Self” cut-up, [email protected]

 

Steven Cano (Los Angeles) Korg MS-2000, Korg ES-1, Flower Electronics Little Boy Blue Synth, sampling, [email protected]

 

Simon Severe (New Orleans) all samples from "Century of The Self" documentary, [email protected]

 

Mavis Concave (Cincinnati / Saint Louis) all mastering of LP and CD via Ableton Live 7 with Waves Mercury, [email protected] 

 

Members not appearing on these recordings…

 

Vim Crony (Long Beach) live video projections, [email protected]

 

Jonathan Prunty (Dayton) live hardware electronics, [email protected]

 

 

Realicide – Punk’s Not Comfort. The confrontational nature of Realicide is the confrontational nature of this reality itself. The experience of Realicide is not intended to be comfortable, but rather meaningful. This in and of itself is very important. Take any music radiated on the public airwaves lately; its intention is to seduce and comfort but it is never very meaningful. This could be elaborated by innumerable facets of our mind-washed American culture: lil debbies comfort death television video games circumstance burger king blockbuster oblivion. When we remove ourselves from these past realities we can begin to form new realities and the image of the false self can not be held constant. I remember seeing Realicide at a little shitty punk club early on and the people who ran the club and hung out there were, to say the least, not into it. It radiated deep inside me the essence of rebirth and change. Back then it seemed just as confrontational to be a member of the audience as it was to be performing. At this time people were so resistant of Realicide's energy, its refusal to pay homage to dead rituals, its total lack of boundaries, with no obedience to the cultural norm. They hate it. There is no separation between band and audience in the ordinary fabricated sense. Realicide has always been far outside these clinical distinctions. It can not be contained within a boxed reality of what certain people think punk is or what certain people think punk should be and partly what punk has become thanks to people who create these cliché worlds they can drink, grow old, and die in. A faded reality blue as Earth itself. Realicide has always been outside this dying image, this faded flame, this false reality, this wishful arrogance. Realicide was birthed from this death and thus is change incarnate. This is its beauty; its life. With the blood of sacrifice we wash our hands clean...   - Evolve 2008

 

 

LP cide A:

 

01. BE A VESSEL FOR CHANGE

02. THE SHIT PUNX HATE 2

03. EVERYTHING IS A CAMERA

04. XENOPHOBIA

05. AUTONOMY

06. IF I AM HUNGRY

07. THE INSANE ANGEL

08. HxC FIGUREHEAD

 

LP cide B:

 

09. DEATH MACHINE

10. NEUTRALIZING OPIATE

11. ABSENT RAPIST Intro.

12. THE ABSENT RAPIST

13. CONSUMER LISTENING

14. NOT EVERYBODY IS "RICH"

15. I'M NOT A FUCKING DJ!

16. DEAD END PROTEST

17. CAN'T RELATE?

18. NOT ENOUGH

 

CD bonus tracks:

 

19. NUMB TO "REVOLUTION"

20. NO XENOPHOBIC HxC

21. KILL EACHOTHER SOMEPLACE ELSE

22. AFRAID IN YOUR GAMES

23. TALKING ABOUT TV SHOWS AND SCORING DRUGS

24. I HATE BARS

25. I HATE RAVE SOUND SYSTEMS

26. WORTHLESS ROCKER SMALLTALK

27. SUBLIMINAL SWILL

28. PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE

29. PURPOSE

30. HxC FIGUREHEAD (RMX

31. GOT YA BACK

32. NO PHONE

33. TRUTHFULLY UNABLE TO KNOW

34. TASTE OF BLOOD

35. DESPERATELY RETRO

36. PROVE ME WRONG

37. LOS ANGELES

38. WANT RUNS THIN

39. YOU MADE YOUR CHOICE

40. KILL THE SOUNDMAN

41. HYPOTHETICAL POPULARITY

42. I WILL PUNCH YOU IN THE FACE!

43. BRICKWALL HARDCORE (spoken)

44. I WANTED TO FEEL ALIVE (Swill mix)

45. BREAD & CIRCUS

46. DECONSTRUCTION PULSE

47. LIE

48. RESISTING THE VIRAL SELF CUT-UP

 

 

Robert Inhuman, MINIMALIZING THE MARGIN FOR MISINTERPRETATION...

 

This is the zine compiled specifically to accompany our album, with all its credits and lyrics, but also swarmed with essays describing the motivations and intentions of these songs and the people who've created them. Misinterpretation has been a difficult aspect of Realicide since it first began. I know we can never prevent misinterpretations altogether, but this zine is at least a solid effort to minimalize the margin for misinterpretation. It was inspired very rigorously by every comment we've received about "Hell yeah man, 666, stay evil forever!" or "Fuckin' brutal dude, totally sick!" - and especially by the baffling number of comments we've received regarding Swill's song "Absent Rapist" as an anthem endorsing domination and abuse... When a song with lyrics as clear as "Absent Rapist" gets misunderstood, I think any of our songs can. Nevertheless, if you really want to know what this whole record is "about", here are all its inner-workings spelled out as best we can, in this zine...

 

Note: As this zine is fairly long-winded at times, I wanted to point out that it is not meant to be read through in one sitting necessarily. It is simply a reference guide when questions come to mind. Likewise for the CD itself, I would actually recommend listening to it throughout 2, 3, or 4 times, so that you do not have to take in an overwhelming length of somewhat wrenching sound. Listening to the album in sections could help it seem less like an overload of mania, and let the ideas and nuances come through one by one. That’s just a suggestion I thought I should offer.

 

 

1. BE A VESSEL FOR CHANGE

Robert Inhuman: software electronics, edits.

 

"A vessel for new information that could change the social system that we live in." (Mark Sarich, Lemp Neighborhood Arts Center, Saint Louis)

 

REAL CIDE! REAL DEATH! REAL CHANGE!

YOUR ABILITY TO CHANGE!

"...see, it's a great way of promoting the status quo - promoting oppression, promoting prejudice, sexism, racism... any fucking 'ISM you can come up with - promoting it, not tolerating it, PROMOTING IT, using a language that acts as if it's trying to censor it... What a good joke..."

 

 

Jim Swill, RESISTING THE VIRAL SELF

 

This is no time for cheap imitations of human life!

Rock stars, movie stars, viral stars are null and void!

 

     Isn’t it so apparent that realities like that only deaden a person into a numbed shell engulfed in material hell, forever documented in shameful states, forever remembered as more human than a human can be, their true identity reduced to mere photographs and elaborate misinterpretations. A terrifying state of existence furthers us from discovering our innermost personal identity, stripping us from agenda and turning our awareness into mind-numbing cynicism! We’re here together, post 9-11, still stuck in a war with words in the middle east, force fed unnecessary medications that turn us into legal drug addicts, consuming nutrient-less food waste and cancerous chemicals, worrying about what happened to rock and roll, worrying about what people said about us on the internet, still living with ever increasingly totalitarian authority and an ever degrading economy to match. All of these realities blending and blurring together into a numbing information stream, pummeling our minds with trivial and tragic realities that hold little relevance to what is important to achieving happiness.  We’re here in this weird world together, but are we really together? If you have to email and text everyone you know is that really together? Have we really become so afraid of confrontation that we can't even face the voices of our companions? Do you have to hide behind an avatar, do you have to be more than a friend, do you have to provide entertainment, are you really too busy?  Are we just more focused on our egos than ever before? When we become too involved with a digital fix, we become numb to reality, and in case we forget - reality is always gonna be there. A world of hyper isolation, a world of total permanent humiliation, where sarcasm and cynicism reign supreme, and an attempt at a cause is deemed a failure prior to its existence. One thing I’ve learned through the shortcomings of punk culture is that although my efforts may never dissolve a government or majority ignorance, they can still change an immediate life, an instant reality, my reality, your reality, together instantly we can grab hold of a fleeting idea once known as  personal identity. An identity can’t be found in what is merely an extension of the ego, an identity can’t be found in thousands of myspace friends who didn’t even know they were in your list, an identity can't be found in self-glorification. NO, an identity is found by you and you alone. When you wake up in this world and see that it was never fair from the get go, when you see it’s just as prehistoric and Romanesque as ever, a prison planet, where challenging authorities is punishable by death or, even worse, deletion. A world where our history is getting converted over to text files, all imminently lost in an instant, erasing physical matter, ensuing an absolute information dictatorship. A world in which we are drilled into society with icons and anti-realities projected upon us to imitate and emulate! This is a harsh existence here and now. Human contact and compassion are so much more vital to the progress of our modern society.

 

     Every year it is more subversive but still present; instruments of alienation and self-satisfaction infecting the network of subcultures, drawing them up to the imminent demise of the mainstream, same as the rain is to the worms in the soil, marketing agents hang over our drowning writhing existence like starving birds itching to swallow us alive. How can we avoid such a sick and masturbatory reality? It starts with resisting self-gratification. It starts with reclamation of true community. Online networks are wielded as a dangerous weapon by corporations in order to provide a far more secretive and, in turn, effective method of conforming the youth into a self-serving, isolated, consumerist mass, incapable of appreciating social interaction outside of the available pre-programmed reality. Though these networking sites can be used as valuable additions to keeping in contact with the rest of our “global village”, we must keep in mind that everything must be kept within moderation. There is hardly anything that is more potent or intoxicating to human kind than the worship of the ego. Community is what will hold us together in the long run, so never forget what that means. Online community is more a symbol or a representation of community. It's text and images but it is not real or tangible. It won’t be there when you need an arm around you, it won’t be there when you need a voice, it won’t be there to cook you some food when you are sick, it won't be there to share an experience, it will only further advance alienation if we put our faith in it as our sole contact with the world. Remember what it is to be friend. Remember what it is to be a person. Remember we are not these bodies, we are not these images. Remember we are here together, all of us, human, alive right NOW.

 

 

2. THE SHIT PUNX HATE 2

Vankmen: hardware electronics.

Jim Swill: words, voice.

Robert Inhuman: words, voice.

 

waiting in line for your turn to talk

by the time you've got that microphone you're wasted drunk

and it's not about an idea it's about ROCK

how retro the sound sounds - I don't give a fuck

the same old worn out formula anger

all as good as Halloween with no sense of danger

I thought I could be a part cos I thought I was strange

but in the end to them I'm nothing but a stranger!!!

 

...when they're different the wrong way...

 

I'm from Cincinnati where the kids don't care

what the fuck you are saying or why you are there

they just criticize your technique, get all academic on everything or

bitch against your right to exist if they don't understand you immediately

the town I grew up in is bullshit today

and the only kids I can stand are the ones that punk rockers hate

in a fucked up way, too rigid to change, or accept some ideas

like they fucked up on some old age...

 

NOW! and PUNK AIN'T COMFORT!!!

NOW! and PUNK AIN'T COMFORT!!!

through the only few who ignore those games

that's the only acceptance that I've ever found!

PUNK AIN'T COMFORT!!!

it's a byproduct or catalyst at best - a distraction to save my life again - yeah!

 

punk rock is pop today - fuck you, the same way, every time, right, of course, easy...

 

we make our own hell - apocalypse or not it's just what we sell

a fist that doesn't move - just propped in the air to patronize the youth

wow, how alternative! it's edgy! it's cute! how retro and authentic - FUCK THAT

like a blank in the barrel - so what? fucking shoot! NO PUNK AIN'T COMFORT!!!

 

the same old worn out formula anger as real

as Halloween with no sense of danger

I thought I could be a part cause I thought I was strange

but in the end to them I'm nothing but a stranger

PUNK AIN'T COMFORT!!! what else?!

 

I run into this shit everywhere - I think I'll fit in, but I’m just too square

I don’t feel anything but rejected - well yeah I'm fucking strange

I thought that’s what punks accepted?

NO! PUNK AIN'T COMFORT!!! NOW!!! PUNK AIN'T COMFORT!!!

through the only few who ignore those games

that's the only acceptance that I've ever found! yeah! PUNK AIN'T COMFORT!!!

 

I don’t wear my ideals on my sleeve - rejected if my person ain’t easily perceived

you want my identity instantly - lightweight disgusted if you had to talk to me

it’s more than a romantic image of poverty, it's hardcore mentality, it's mental anxiety

 

"punk rock is just a / VICIOUS BLIND EYE"

 

 

Robert Inhuman, about "The Shit Punx Hate"

 

This is an alternate version of the song we made with Mavis in 2006, initially inspired by our origin in Cincinnati's stagnant and essentially cannibalistic punk scene. But as we started living in other cities it was confirmed that the general irony of punk rock, being a supposed refuge for true misfits and non-conformists yet shunning and ostracizing anyone outside a familiar or long-established uniformed subculture, was a problem to some degree nationally, Cincinnati just being a conveniently exceptional example of total distrust in the unfamiliar or the experimental. I don't think I need to explain this much to anyone who's read a lot of our songs from the past few years; many are very critical of the exact subcultures we come from, have adopted, or remain adhered to in some way. I have always believed that reasonable self-criticism is crucial for progress and also preventing social collapses. Think of how many things happen in the world, destructive things, that could be avoided if people just stopped to think for a moment "maybe it's not automatically the best idea just because I (capitol 'I') thought of it..."

 

The title of the song is supposed to have a double-meaning, because Realicide has always (especially where we grew up) been the shit conventional punk rockers (fucking retro rockers) hate. But in our definition of true punk ethics, where experimentation and the unexpected is favored as the only means of maintaining relevance and genuine excitement in our lives, then it's flipped around to mean that the retro rocker traditionalists are the shit that true progressive punks hate, because it let's a movement fossilize, become pigeon-holed, and become a rebellion in name only. So like Swill says in this version of the song, if they want to be up against us, in the fucking 21st century and all, bring it on cos they're just shooting blanks anyway. We've got another song that is basically about this situation called "Deathbomb".

 

 

3. EVERYTHING IS A CAMERA

Robert Inhuman: words, voice, software electronics.

 

"I can see it inside your face...

do I deserve to live?"

 

I'm looking for your eyes, everybody - I want to know if I'm wasting my breath

but all I see are flickering lenses - everything's a camera and you act like you're deaf

 

an audience of cameras - so intent to document

so much so that we bypass feeling - anything at all - yeah fuck it

clicking buttons instead of really - listening to what is right

in front of our faces, so after it all what do we got??

a million sterile token memories of shit that isn't what it seems on a screen...

turn to find console in your friend but all you're met with is another machine!

 

(let me explain)

supposed to preserve experience but it just replaces experience!

that photogenic twenty-first century game - cutting corners with your sincerity...

your friends don't give a fuck - not really

they'd rather see you as a URL and a password and another fucking number

does that make you feel good? how the fuck do you deal with that?

or do you react? DO YOU EVEN REACT?

even right now you aren't hearing this

you're fucking with a cell phone and might as well not be here...

 

an audience of cameras - so intent to document

so much so that we bypass feeling - anything at all - yeah fuck it

clicking buttons instead of really - listening to what is right

in front of our faces, so after it all what do we got??

AFTER IT ALL WHAT DO WE GOT?!

(what does it mean when we learn to be alright with)

everything's a camera...

 

 

Robert Inhuman, about "Everything Is a Camera"

 

Though this song is really awkward musically (I made in on headphones in Altadena, early 2008 when I was living in my car, made mainly from ES-1 samples from Mavis' previous song "Depression" among other stuff.) it is a song that really needed to be on this record. This song is not about thinking photography sucks, or that having pictures of shows you go to sucks, cos these things are great and can help hold on to awesome experiences, or be used to get new kids interested in something really great. This song is like most Realicide songs about drugs, alcohol, etc. in that it's against an abuse, and an asking for healthy moderation. The idea is that we are so used to viewing things on lit-up screens that we choose to see a live show through a camera rather than just look up and really be THERE with real people. It's like, if the experiences at the show are so great that you need to capture them for all time to look back on like "wow that was great" - why spend the whole time, during the actual experience you wanted to preserve after all, behind buttons and screens and lenses? It just seems ironic and concerning, if you see what I'm saying? Get a couple photos, hold onto your experiences with them, but meanwhile just BE THERE with us, feel the power of that moment, without the hang-up of if you'll have shit to upload once you're back home by yourself. Just like anything, AVOID ABUSE in any form it can take! Does this seem like a dumb thing to be thinking so much about?

 

 

4. XENOPHOBIA

Robert Inhuman: edits.

 

"That spider, why are you afraid of it? Because it has eight legs?

Because its mouth moves from side to side instead of up and down?

If it came toward you what would you do?"

 

"This..." (man crushes spider under boot)

 

"Exactly, as you'd destroy anything you didn't understand..."

 

 

Robert Inhuman, about the "Xenophobia" sample...

 

I think this originally came from The Day The Earth Stood Still, when I had a tape deck hooked up to my VCR in high school, but I could be wrong cos I haven't seen that movie since then. We've used it a lot of times over the years, lately even as the precursor into The Shit Punx Hate during shows. In the movie the guy is comparing a person's impulse to step on a spider to his similar reaction to alien life coming to Earth. It shouldn't be hard to see how this compares to most other times when groups of different kinds of people cross eachother, from foreign relations among whole countries down to small groups of young people with similar goals being uneasy working with eachother because of aesthetic differences like clothing, music, slang, anything. There are enough bigger things to have conflicts about in the world, things that deal with peoples' basic rights to exist and act on free will, why make conflicts out of things that are purely cosmetic or non-harmful rituals?

 

 

5. AUTONOMY

Evolve: hardware and software electronics.

Robert Inhuman: words, voice.

 

your crusade isn't mine - your jihad isn't mine

xenophobic on each side - your hate is defined by pride

 

NO WAR CAN BE WON

unless you accept a nation's children as fodder for a gun

that backfires and bloodstains our decisions

it's foreign - it's domestic - the same either way - victims

 

but am I among these "victims"

when I got a brain in my skull and warm blood in my body

can I really claim I ain't a cell in the system

when I had reach to the resources that could stop that gun from firing?

when I had reach to the resources that could keep my conscience from dying??

when I have access to a solution I call compassion combined with REALLY TRYING???

 

your crusade isn't mine - your jihad isn't mine

I'm not pacified just cos I'm not the one who's next to die

(what difference should that make?)

 

"in full force" 

...when winning is based on ethnocentric death

in our fucking civilization, based on who is left

after a game called genocide and another familiar one called wealth

burning to death in oil, so a few sociopaths can keep their good health

 

what could I have access to and would I grab it even if I did?

 

your crusade isn't mine - your jihad isn't mine

xenophobic on each side - your hate is defined by pride

your crusade isn't mine - your jihad isn't mine

using god as your alibi - you don't speak for me when you lie

your crusade isn't mine - your jihad isn't mine

I'm not pacified just cos I'm not the one who's next to die

(what should that matter?)

 

 

Robert Inhuman, about "Autonomy"

 

This song spells out a lot of how I feel about peoples' roles in our society; how fear and personal interests affect our choices to take action or not. The lyrics are prompted by a poster I designed during our summer tour in 2008, which was motivated by the suspense of the U.S. presidential election a few months later. The poster read something like this:

 

Can we afford not to care; to drop out this year?

 

Like inmates at the notorious Guantanimo Bay camp, even if proven innocent, we will be detained until this diabolically ironic "WAR ON TERROR" ends. Under current U.S. administration there is proudly no end in sight.

 

Can we afford not to care; to drop out THIS year? YOUR PRIVILEGE; quit fronting like it's otherwise. How will you use it?

 

A lack of action will never ensure your innocence. Will you contribute to the U.S. indulgence in a Kitty Genovese scenario multiplied by thousands? Will you aid in humanity's imperial legacy; humanity's cannibal lust for any resource classified as exclusive or satisfying of gluttony no matter how temporary?

 

Look at the Earth and every legitimate problem for life on it. What cannot be traced to human decision? Why would our decisions to solve these problems be without the very same flaws? "OUTSIDE MY SELF"

 

I'd always exempted myself from the farce of mainstream administrative processes, but even THIS year? U.S.A. / HUMANITY

 

The PRIVILEGE of one will always risk the TORTURE of many. Be it paraded on media headlines or far from blind eyes; celebrity does NOT make a pain's significance.

 

REAL CIDE = REAL DEATH = REAL CHANGE / your ability to change. "The only thing that needs to change is what's inside of me." I'd like to be more alert this time around...

 

 

REPORTS FROM THE COLISEUM (excerpt) by EVOLVE

 

     The coliseum is a romantic person's nightmare. I pledge allegiance to the perpetual cycle of indifferent fools. Scavengers of Earth that scorch her beauty. Tired highway speaking with the lonely night. Calm down: take a look inside one's self and breathe repeatedly. A focus can be reached beyond the television. Beyond the walls the coliseum built around us. Round and round and round, forever turning. The merry-go-round of life, we must step off. Step forward. It is a new age for man and woman that is NOW beginning. Begin new life with us. Join the resistance outside the coliseum. Outside of all indifferent futures that foolish men have preached. The governor is out of touch and can't be reached. He sits high atop a hill of buffalo skulls with a smeared ill giggling shit grin. Bubbling laughter that wraps around us like a strangling cape. He is sizing the crowds up in preparation for his entry in the coliseum. He rides in on a white tiger of leprosy. He is dressed like a lavish swindler, gold and diamonds shining. He says, "High up kites remove the guilt from me," the first of many uttered curse before the games begin. "We got it now we got it now so let's keep rolling. The wars that I create are always righteous. You are holy mind fuck to my righteous hard-on. My excrement is raspberry diamond ice cream; buy it for your children, or else GO HOME." The governor has never been one for speeches. He dematerializes instantly and returns to his perch high above the crowds.

 

(All lonely men are wicked sinners. Companionship and brotherhood are duties here on earth. Beyond the coliseum. Beyond the imaginary world of distant kings.)

 

     The light of hope is shining. The tunnel isn't darkness, it's a path that's filled with light. We are but a single entity in sight. We must go on. We must push forward. On and on we roam. We make a call and all is all, cosmic telephone. They make sarcastic comments with a whimpered kind of speech and they drink their beers in bars on blocks from places I can't reach. But I reach deep down, I reach within, you do not know my name. But it does not matter now our heartbeat's one the same. Everyone they gather round a distant kind of flame, we warm our hands, and our hearts, our minds, the status quo remain. If we focus one reality we all become the same. If we remove the "I" the "you" we don't know who to blame. The suffering of Earth increased by holocaustic rain. When we're all a one, a unity, we all suffer the same. We don't start wars with doubletalk pretending that there's blame. Recourse actions when all is blind the mammals do not see. The wickedness they harbor with their own hypocrisy. We move beyond the walls they build to keep us locked within. Statuesque and broadcast out with diplomatic grin. We don't pay much attention to such clinically defined, aristocrat barbarians without a heart or mind. We move beyond their barriers. We're pushing forward still. We're not taking corporate medicines that make us twice as ill. We're not falling for their microwave agendas or their thrills. Rollercoaster pills, side holster automatic beer can poster static and roasted swill. Television on the mind wave engraved make the pavement stain the same blood flag red of American pain. Citizens drifting in and out of a complacent flame. We all burn one and the same. Same as a building or gasoline ring. Circus humanity built up like stacks of wax. Generational deficit of organic tax. When we're talking about solid matter we're talking about something that's malleable and not fact. We need sustainable living here on Earth and that's a fact. That's that and there ain't no arguing back. Focused with a calm composure, the green movement is much bigger that your precious knapsack of this and that, this and that. Material vendetta goes flat... There ain't no heartbeat in that. Follow psychic alphabets to form new words and new worlds beyond one dimensional proverbs. Politicians trick the populist with double-meaning words that flip. They are acrobatic stage performers, their slimy entrails drip. Everyone around them sees that their costumes a disguise. But they fool them anyway with clever alibis. On and on around us the centuries of man unfold. Yes we've changed a little bit but now the change it must be bold. The centuries of man depleted worthless in our graves. Time bomb of the century a human pin grenade. Earth is sacred mother as we merge into her one. Time is not so infinite when time is finally done.

 

(An exert form the upcoming Evolve novel Reports From The Coliseum)

 

 

6. IF I AM HUNGRY

Robert Inhuman: words, voice, software electronics, edits.

 

"I try to quit while I'm ahead..."

"We must shape a new mentality... People must be trained to desire; to want new things even before the old have been entirely consumed; from a needs to a desires culture..."

"RIGHT NOW."

"...but I notice that I'm already killing."

 

fuck my whimpering body - that shell that would cripple those of any it could

I know that it would - this - my human body

manipulator and each time terminal mutilator

manifest viral extinguisher of itself and anything else

leave the choice to me and it's the zipper closing on this world's body bag

point of no return - point to prove to whom?

...til there's nobody left to use or gloat to

fuck my whimpering body - let it be a sacrificial tool

celebrate our death in order to honor all life on Earth

celebrate our death as a cure for a plague of all unjust hurt

wash away a failed species

 

"...a supreme conception that suffering is a mistake, or a sign of weakness, or a sign even of illness, when in fact the greatest truths we know have come out of people suffering." (Arthur Miller)

 

 

Robert Inhuman, about "If I Am Hungry"

 

I’m not gonna eat meat or gelatin anymore.

 

Anybody who knows me will know this has been a longterm goal for many years, and something that is extremely hard for me compared to many things I've wanted to change in myself throughout my life. I'd been pushing it back year by year, waiting for a time in which I am not being beaten down by depression, social anxieties, financial concerns, addiction to the comfort and luxury of humor. This needs to be the year though, because I'd be lying if I said I wasn't doing well in more ways than not. It's weird. This is the first year I've technically been homeless; and over 2 years now without federally monitored income; but I'm feeling strong and very positive about a lot of current and recent decisions.

 

My dietary decisions are NOT rooted in any attempt to preserve my own body. My decisions are based on the perspective and philosophy I've had since my late teens; I view humanity as plagued with the gift (yet the ultimate curse) of [ir]responsibility. We are separated from all other animal life on Earth based on our heightened ability to manipulate our environments. I don't think I need to give examples of how this is a terminal situation; look at the natural world we cage and tie down around every corner; look at the cement you walk on like a body bag to this world; any world apart from humanity's self-appointed manifest destiny is viewed as a savage threat and manipulated to the point of terminal mutilation; fucked to death - and our attempts to backtrack and correct these mistakes are little more than digging deeper into that same toxic hole.

 

My decisions are only a symbol for what I hope can be a nurtured compassion for animal life other than that of humanity. Fuck my crippling shell; my body! What about the bodies of those who are not capable of this calculated malice and gluttony we call humanity? When I'm dead let me be a sacrifice to their nature and not my own; not a species so VIRAL to all others it encounters.

 

I am fucking tired of being so firmly connected to food dependent on animal suffering and death. My choice to stop eating meats and gelatin is not solving a lot of anything, but it is at least a step in what I know is the right direction for myself. My diet is one of my most difficult vices. I don't have interest in alcohol or drugs or most entertainment, but food is a hard thing for me to be flexible about to say the least.

 

I would like to just drop out all the way, into veganism or at least only eat animal products I've collected and dealt with myself, but I know I'm not strong enough yet in this corner of my life. If I can take just this first step this year it will be a big deal to me; and I hope any of my peers that know very well how hard it will be for me can look at it as an example; just one instance of someone forcibly re-configuring how a certain aspect of their daily habits will be. I know the things that push me towards very necessary changes and challenges are often my witnessing these kind of examples in the people around me.

 

Thanks to everyone in my life who has encouraged me in a patient and genuine way to get myself together and live more closely in sync with what I feel is right. Without your friendship and conversation I would be able to hide too much more from my own weaknesses and undeveloped ambitions.

 

 

7. THE INSANE ANGEL

Ryan Faris: hardware electronics.

Robert Inhuman: words, voice.

 

I don't care what you say - you don't give a fuck about me

no matter what you said before - one in a million, hell nah just one among millions

(no matter what I said, pretend it don't mean nothing to me)

 

use me for my money, use me for my car,

use me for my cock, use me for my credibility

cos it's been a fucking lifetime since I felt anything at all

one momentary touch of your body even though you won't look at me

 

use me for my money, use me for my car,

use me for my cock, use me cos I'm easy

you wanna get fucked and you'll ask me to fuck you

under one condition that I'm not allowed to love you

pretend it don't mean anything, that it's just some time to kill

so I'll accept it for a taste and pretend I don't love you

 

…what about when I can't even feel pain

while I'm fucking you just once and I don't fall in love

growing old as fuck and courting affection with hate

this isn't at all how I wanted or what I dreamed of

left alone in a parking lot

ain't got not insane angel to touch my skin

left alone with my fucking thoughts

and they don't impress me, not the way they once did

 

 

Robert Inhuman, about "Insane Angel"

 

I wasn't sure if this one needed to go on the record, because it's kind of depressive in a more introverted way I think, but ultimately this song is about feeling used and being taught not to trust someone romantically, something many people can probably relate to. Even / especially in something like this I think the problem is rooted in abuse. Unfortunately it seems like abuse is extremely easy to learn or adopt and pass on to those we become involved with in relationships. I'm not exactly sure what to say as a warning against it, besides just try to see it for what it is when it's happening. And consider the idea that some kind of malfunction in a romantic relationship is not always ultimately the fault of the people involved, but quite possibly the circumstances and social SYSTEMS that fostered the relationship to begin with... Hopefully this can make things like compassion and forgiveness a lot more possible.

 

 

8. HxC FIGUREHEAD

Robert Inhuman: words, voice, software electronics.

 

"It's part of the whole ideology of this age, which is POWERMAD."

 

you're just a middle finger in the face of fucking nobody

you're not shocking to anybody and your mom's not fucking here

pretend it's anarchism - but it's a personal agenda not even well hidden

your ideas don't mean shit much more than some unarticulated fear

"so fuck you"

 

back your slogans up if you want to represent a politic

or just shut up - shut - up - and admit your hardcore band don't mean shit

"so fuck you"

 

if you're trying to speak for all of us you're going to need something much better to say

but you spend your energy on a personal agenda in that sabotaging fucked up way

 

I CAN SEE THROUGH YOU EVERY STEP YOU TRY TO TAKE

so fuck you kid, and fuck the authority you struggle to invent

(cashing in on anarchism)

 

 

Robert Inhuman, about "HxC Figurehead"

 

A hidden agenda or desire for special recognition when affiliated with any kind of serious Anarchist-related collective seems to be a really dangerous element in these places, like a sign that the effort is infected and there needs to be some kind of amputation... It's also supposed to be a reality check for people in bands, to remember that there's nothing that shocking today about yelling hostile words into a mic, unless you've literally invited peoples' grandparents to come hear it, but even then they might be like "eh, we've heard it all before". Being in a band is what it is, just a way to rally people, spark interaction and dialogue... Bands are not supposed to be some kind of cool chosen few who lead a crusade for a subculture. So of course along with being commentary on situations I've seen around me, it's (ironically?) also a serious reminder to myself about what I'm doing as someone who mainly makes records and tours in a band, to keep it in a healthy perspective. I believe music and everything surrounding it does have a valid social function, but it's not like the air we need to breathe. Anyone can have social worth, not just limited to people who specialize in art and music. This song is a warning to people affiliated with hardcore against becoming quixotic, and against compromising a collective effort for individual gain.

 

 

9. DEATH MACHINE

Robert Inhuman: words, voice, edits.

 

I jump into my death machine

and I immediately forget what this world was meant to be

and despite any moments of beauty and fragility

my life has no value in my death machine

 

indebted to convenience, and stubbornness, and even subtle greeds

when I try to look away, this machine can make hostages of anything

we each must work each day, no matter if we enjoy this working

just to scrape to pay for the maintenance of a weapon and a deathwish

 

but of course more than just a wish, this death machine is our religion

or rather one callous bible accessory to the religion that is our humanity

an origin not of death itself, but of its association to perversity

an origin not of death itself, but of the arbitrary on/off switches of our machines

an origin of machines, and their uncompromising lack of life

inventions that bypass compassion, inventions that degrade everything

an origin of ownership, of "point to prove", of disharmony

 

I jump into my death machine

I try to quit while I'm ahead, but I notice that I'm already killing.

 

 

Robert Inhuman, about "Death Machine"

 

I feel like the only positive aspect of cars is being able to go long distances with heavy equipment, but even that is up for debate. There is nothing else positive about them as far as I know. Being in a car somehow changes a person's mentality and ability to realize their own physical vulnerability. People often do things in cars that they might not do on foot or on a bike. I think it is partly the idea that any acts of violence or ruthlessness will be instantly left far behind due to the speed of the car, but ultimately the problem is much deeper than that, at the very core that crafts technology of any kind. So the piece shifts from being simply about the mentality of a car's driver, towards a broader misanthropy that I stand by very firmly. No matter if this is MY species or how my own life is actually panning out over these years, the opinions described in this piece are the basis of how I feel about humanity and the civilized world. If you can't understand what I'm getting at I'd be worried you might never know me very well at all, but I'm trying to explain myself as best I can in records like this.

 

Think of your life, how it is made up of countless experiences, relationships, dreams... Never forget that any other life you can encounter, regardless of your respect for it or lack of respect for it, has the same nature of having that many collected moments to hold onto, to cherish or revel in, have an identity comprised of them. Think of what it would mean to you for all your experiences to be disintegrated immediately based only on the convenience or luxury of one callous stranger. Always know that it is the same for lives other than your own. Always know that this Earth is bigger than any human empire; bigger than our wants no matter what. The strength of this Earth and the possibility of reasoning beyond my own human capacity is my only element of hope, and the basis of my chosen name and aims.

 

 

10. NEUTRALIZING OPIATE

Ryan Faris: hardware electronics.

Robert Inhuman: words, voice.

 

you say music has no power to inspire social action,

but isn't it true it's got the power to pacify and prevent social action?

I'd rather try to make a mark on this society (whose society?)

than ensure it remains on its current course

 

(You're right. I hate dance parties.)

entertainment is a tool as dangerous as a machine gun

who you gonna point it at and will you kill them when you do?

entertainment is a tool as dangerous as a machine gun

who you gonna point it at and will you kill them when you do?

 

and I believe music is a historically potent catalyst for social change

though it's not the change itself

and hardcore isn't necessarily about music as much as a vital spark

do you ever wish you were in a place where people might listen?

cos they won't here - I promise you they are drunk one way or another;

I promise you they don't give a fuck;

I promise that the only reason this matters is because it doesn't matter...

 

NO! RIGHT NOW! RIGHT NOW!

my entire life is not a vacation - NO!

and I'm NOT ALIVE TO BE PACIFIED - I'm not alive to wish I had died!

will you be on my end of this gun - RIGHT NOW

with a trigger that can break the silence - RIGHT NOW

my entire life is not a vacation - NO!

and I'm NOT ALIVE TO BE PACIFIED - I'm not alive to wish I had died!

will you be on my cide of this gun - RIGHT NOW

with a trigger that can break the silence - RIGHT NOW

(Right now I'm in France at another braindead dance party.

I wish I was in Saint Louis, I wish this mattered.)

 

"Be a vessel for new information that could change the social system that we live in."

 

 

Robert Inhuman, about "Neutralizing Opiate"

 

The words to "Neutralizing Opiate" are fairly self-explanatory and not especially poetic. It's the argument that music doesn't have to be another recreational drug; that it can have other functions and is not completely un-utilitarian. The "silence" mentioned in the song can often be in a place that is actually very loud, if you know what I mean. This song is about the frustration we feel in environments designed solely to let people forget the world they're living in, to forget themselves as responsible beings, while in an asylum of substance-fueled flashy sexy games. It always amazes me when people think it will work out to book Realicide at a dance party: Given the direction of our content, more and more each year, somehow it's as if I was heard to say "yeah dude, totally, we would really like to play in a place most able to completely DE-FANG what we are trying to say to people." This is a guaranteed way to let me know you haven't considered the best interests or intentions of this music for even a moment. "Thanks for wasting what could've been a night to really remember", to learn from eachother in some substantial way, or at least spark something that could blossom in the days to come, a celebration of a show's potential for this, somewhere else, a refuge not from reality but from pacification and imposing vacations... Basically, entertainment IS a weapon, that we've chosen in many instances for our purposes, but it's the same weapon I've been burnt by many times to say the least...

 

 

11. Absent Rapist Intro.

Jim Swill: script, voice.

Jean: voice.

Robert Inhuman: software electronics, mouse & keyboard sounds.

Vankmen: hardware electronics (w/ Wu Tang samples)

 

(sounds of clicking keyboard, heavy breathing, footsteps far away)

Woman: Honey? (from upstairs)

(typing becomes rapid, sounds of very distant lo-fi moaning and groaning, one heavy breath is taken, sound of footsteps coming down stairs)

Man: (very under breath) shit…

(groaning abruptly stops and a hard click is heard)

Woman: Hey hon’? (very close)

(sound of seat being turned around)

Man: Yeah?

Woman: Are you coming to bed soon?

Man: Yeah, I'm just really busy right now.

Woman: Well you always say that, you spend all night down here in the basement on that damn computer like some sort of vampire...

Man: Look, I’m just in the middle of something.

Woman: Fine, that’s fine, you'll be up later?

Man: Yeah, I'll be up later.

Woman: You're not still playing those internet gambling games are you? Now I don’t want some bill collec… (cut off)

Man: NO... no I haven’t played that shit in months.

Woman: Okay babe, I'm just saying, things like that can be really addictive...

Man: I know, but if you don't mind I'm kinda busy.

Woman: Oh yeah, I'll see you later tonight?

Man: Yeah, of course, I'll be up soon.

Woman: 'K hon’, goodnight. (sound of kiss)

(walking up steps, door closing, heavy breathing starts, clicking keypad and mouse, groaning is turned back on except sounds more violent, heavier breathing and swallowing)

Man: jesus...

 

 

12. THE ABSENT RAPIST

Vankmen: hardware electronics.

Jim Swill: words, voice.

 

"YOU! - Fuck You!"

 

you watch them cringe in fear and clenching your cock harder

you thirst for something more than most porn has to offer

sexually eroded - morally corroded

lustfully devoted to a world that is pure fiction

psychotically worshipping your own dirty addiction

 

you used to just take minutes but now it's taking hours

to get it off you gotta get your own small dose of power

through more and more rape sustenance your heart and soul devour

pixilated cunts and dicks - their pouty faces cower

what’s always been inside you is expressed in pixel fiction

the lust for death and power-madness clicked with all conviction

 

a wife that’s left with nothing but a sleepless empty bed

so distanced so far from your family you might as well be dead

you watch them fuck like dogs and rape like rape's a fucking business

you gotta get that terror in their eyes in every instance  

you like to think they want the pain, you gotta fuck them faceless

you wanna be their lord and master - you’re the absent rapist

a wife that’s left with nothing but a sleepless empty bed

so distanced so far from your family you might as well be dead

 

you’re a dominator - a real Xterminator

a sucker for those lonely helpless weakened plastered faces

you're a faceless phantom far away their absent rapist

 

alone and feeling nothing but the joy of empty ends

all those girls to give you what you want - every night - it never ends

you gave up hope to ever find a bonded decent lover

now you’d only want a girl if you could stand above her

who knows where all these girls come from to be bought and raped and traded

always looking vacant as they stand before you naked 

this virus is so common in our sex drenched generation

where all the love you feel is pure is pure imagination

 

you’re a dominator - a real Xterminator

a sucker for those lonely helpless weakened plastered faces

you're a faceless phantom far away their absent rapist

 

your wife, your mother, neighbor, and even your own  daughter

all make you sick to look at because you only see in vulgar

now its faceless, tasteless, bleeding through into your body

until your drug is not enough to keep your heart from rotting

it's only a matter of time before it becomes your normality

your absent rapist mindstate transfers into your reality  

you’re a dominator - a real Xterminator

a sucker for those lonely helpless weakened plastered faces

you're a faceless phantom far away their absent rapist

 

 

Jim Swill, about "The Absent Rapist"

 

The Absent Rapist was created in reaction to my own personal pornographic dependency and the addiction as a widespread phenomenon that goes fairly unspoken to this day. Many relationships, families, and marriages encounter this particular problem: boyfriends and husbands becoming addicted to pornography, losing emotional interest in the very family they brought into existence, as well as losing sexual interest in their girlfriends and wives, due to the symbolic representation of promiscuity and sexual power. Though not directly about rape “Absent Rapist” is more about a psychic vampire mentality, about the images and the person living vicariously through one another, about a set of domination and submission mind states that usurp a person's ability to function in a regular situation due to the over-saturation in a nonexistent sexual reality.

 

“You used to just take minutes, but now it's taking hours.”

 

Overtime as most people who’ve ever encountered a problem with porn would know, XXX media is very similar to drug abuse. You start with just small increments that rapidly turn into vast extensions, the amount of pornography seen with the amount of time invested. What was once 10 minutes quickly escalates into hours of searching without even masturbating, simply collecting the data, harvesting in a sense. The once tender area becoming a callous, and therefore not only the amount of material but the content gets upgraded as well. Especially for a lonely person there is not only sexual tension but resentment and anger as well. The porn industry knows this and it simply provides a harder drug to fulfill the high, the material becoming increasingly more violent, cruel, and degrading.

 

“You’re a faceless phantom far away their absent rapist.”

 

Pornography can take hold of carnal desire and bring some of the vilest human attributes to the surface. What makes it especially dark is the ability to become simply a spectator of violence and cruelty, satiating a perverse desire instead of overcoming it. This is by far the worst attribute of the pornographic addiction, hence it being addressed in the chorus. By providing relief instead overcoming our shortcomings, we are living lives like a bottle of cold medicine, simply relieving but lacking the ability to cure, making the sickness stronger and more resilient. 

 

“Alone and feeling nothing but the joy of empty ends, all those girls to give you what you want, every night it never ends. You gave up hope to ever find a bonded, decent lover. Now you’d only want a girl if you could stand above her.”

 

Engaging in pornography especially whilst in a relationship is without a doubt a form of legal adultery. Our culture encourages it; hyper sexual stimulation to the point where no real healthy relationship could fill the hole dug out by XXX media. It’s become a common problem across America for men being unable to perform in bed simply because of pornography and real sexuality not being as stimulating. It also would go hand in hand to say that even an interest in romance has waned, as we are overloaded with the fantasy of promiscuity on a massive scale as if it were a measure of manhood. Though I would agree it seems probable that the condition of an animal nature may enable the thoughts of wanting to impregnate as many living creatures in an instinctual ceremony of survival, I believe this to be a malleable part of being a human being. The idea of promiscuity is not entirely built on that premise of seed spreading, but more a worship of the individual and erasing what was once a family unit. By saying the person in the song feels “the joy of empty ends” I am saying they are satiating their desire for uncommitted sexual relationships, by creating the symbolism of promiscuity. The rest of the lyrics in that bar are a reiteration of the idea that as the content progressively becomes more hardcore, eventually the person’s idea of a relationship would degrade in a domination role.

 

“Your wife, your mother, neighbor, and even your own daughter all make you sick to look at because you only see in vulgar…”

 

These lines are more focused on the delusional reality induced by pornography. A man who can’t even look at his own children without a sexual flash. One of the most sinister aims of mainstream pornography is the strive to be pedophilic on a subversive level. So many sources make attempts to lie about the models' ages and whereabouts as if to say the girls are from high school, or live with their parents, fulfilling even more crude and disturbing desires built out of the inability to maintain the same mental high with more modest material.

 

“It’s only a matter of time before it becomes your normality your absent rapist mind state transfers into your reality.”

 

So in turn the character in the song is now plagued with sexual saturation, knowing instinctually that the thoughts are perverse and unnatural. I am also making a statement considered strong by some sexual liberation advocates to say that the pornography’s drug like hypnotism would only satisfy for so long, and eventually a person may venture out into the physical world in order to satisfy their addiction; leading to things such as adultery, divorce, solicitation of prostitutes, pedophilia, sexual harassment, sexual abuse, sexual assault, and possibly molestation and/or rape. That is why the title is “Absent Rapist”, for when engaged in the fictional reality they have the opportunity to be an observer, far away, detached from the act yet fulfilling the desire to do such a thing. An absentee participant.

 

 

13. CONSUMER LISTENING

Robert Inhuman: edits.

 

"What happens to music within a consumerist system? What happens to LISTENING within a consumerist system? How it's reduced; how you are incapable of appreciating anymore. You just look for what's familiar; kind of almost an animal pleasure. The system requires of you to shut off that judgment about what is actual quality. They want to decide for you what it is so that you'll buy it. So those decisions are not based on intrinsic information in the music they're based on what kind of clothes the person is wearing, what do they look like, and do they have celebrity. You no longer listen to the music to decide if it's any good; it MUST be good because it sold so many copies..." (Mark Sarich from an interview in 2006)

 

"You have to know that modern man often tries to work off his frustrations by spending on self-gratification"

 

 

Robert Inhuman, ABOUT STAGES...

 

Whenever it is possible we prefer to play our shows not on any kind of elevated stage. We've always felt like elevated stages send the implication of the band being higher than its observers in more ways than one. Anything to promote the scenario in which an audience and band are equal elements in what the "show" is, be it literally or symbolically, we'd like to aim towards. We want to be in a position in which we can physically reach out and touch a person in the audience, or vice versa. It is just a better implication in the context of punk and hardcore.

 

I guess when you become very popular and the audience becomes hundreds or thousands of people, the stage is used so that more people can see the performance than only a couple dozen in front. But at that level of popularity I think the entire nature of the show would have to change, if integrity is gonna be preserved. It would no longer be possible to adhere to the traditional punk rock format in that case; new aims and ways of interaction would be necessary. It is confusing how people build up massive cultural platforms of influence like that, but then don't utilize the opportunity in more effective and plausible ways. Maybe I just don't understand because I don't play to thousands of people every night. That's alright, I am fine with warehouses and basements for now.

 

Most things can be construed as a "stage" in one way or another. "Life is a stage" - shit like that. We are just interest in a figurative stage, not a physical one that keeps some people in and others out.

 

 

14. NOT EVERYBODY IS "RICH"

Ryan Faris: hardware electronics.

Robert Inhuman: words, voice.

 

(privilege... that abundant overflowing privilege... what you gonna do with it?)

have you ever been hungry and ain't shit you can do about it?

what if that was every day - not everybody is fucking rich

(your privilege and your attitude makes me sick)

fuck your world addicted to jokes and numbing games

like this world is so safe that we can indulge like it is

that insistence on luxury and that vicious BLIND EYE

makes me sick and I'm fucking up against it!

(same ultimate bastard in the city of angels)

 

 

Robert Inhuman, about "Not Everybody Is Rich"

 

Ok this song is a really pissed off note about my reaction to life in Los Angeles, and for the sake of limiting animosity and resentful tones I'm glad it is a short track. There are some things I really love about living in LA, mainly that there are so many people, you are bound to meet many that are interesting and fun to be around. But some of the trends there, like the idea that it's cool to pretend you're "rich" even if you're "not", simply make me sick. The total waste of privilege in the face of a world limping in constant agony. The scene in which any element of urgency or desperation is nothing but a sarcasm, a satire, a pose. The "ultimate bastard" is a phrase I began to think of in reference to humanity, basically now saying I find it in all corners of the United States, from the desolate remote small midwest towns, to the places on the west coast that are supposed to be American paradises...

 

 

15. I'M NOT A FUCKING DJ!

Vankmen: software electronics, scratches.

Robert Inhuman: words, voice, edits.

 

NO, I'm not a fucking DJ!

paid in cash and sex and cheap laughs - fuck you - I'd rather be an electronic Crass

use my body like a knife and fucking slash cos that's the only way I know how to dance

 

you look like a fucking zwinky - I'd rather look like I >ain't got shit

cept some conviction in these chipped teeth and I'm gonna fucking spit

 

my voice - my name - I am more than a buzzword

try to commodify me - you'll be sorry and I won't get paid

cos I'm not a fucking DJ!

 

I'm not a fucking DJ! I'm not a fucking DJ!

NO WAY! (you make me sick) NO WAY! (you fucking slime)

I'm not a fucking DJ! I'm not a fucking DJ!

I'm not a fucking DJ! NO WAY! NO WAY!

 

“…I’m with Vankmen!”

 

 

Robert Inhuman, I'M NOT A FUCKING DJ.

 

The night after I finished most of the final edits for this LP, I went and saw Rotterdam Terror Corps at a rave in L.A. - Now before I talk about this experience and any thoughts associated with it, I want to say that GABBER, despite the painful jockish lack of critical social implications in most cases, has been one of my very favorite sorts of music for years. It is the type of electronic music I am most instinctively drawn to, at a bizarre primal level. I love the sound and power inherent in gabber, and I know of course that Rotterdam Terror Corps is one of the pioneering names in classic Dutch hardcore. But I just saw the shit, and remembering the Gwar concerts I went to back in high school, I think Gwar is a lot better at the same game... (key word "game")

 

RTC consisted of one DJ in back, the show centered around an aryan jock MC dressed like a Roman soldier, flanked by two women dressed exclusively in RTC apparel, which they gradually stripped out of down to the nude, throwing shirts into an expectedly braindead audience who would love to own "hardcore" merchandise that had only moments earlier clung wets to fake tits. (Not like Gwar though, I mean the tits were surgically fake in this case.) The MC basically just re-iterated the word "hardcore", the name of the group, and slogans involving killing, like what you're hear in the trailer for a shitty horror or action movie. This was supplemented by groping the strippers' fake tits and posing with "evil" faces for people to take digital photos of. I noticed pretty quickly that I'd stopped dancing (and I don't really dance, but in this country I can't go to a straight up gabber rave too often, so if not there then where, huh?) - I realized I wasn't dancing cos I was caught up thinking - analyzing what was being offered to me, the audience... If I was gonna keep dancing through this RTC climax at the party, it would require consciously shutting off my natural impulse to analyze and evaluate what was entering my senses and feelings... I guess I've never been ready to operate that way.

 

Strangely in place like the Autonomous Mutant Festival, I had a short but memorable conversation with someone established in the breakcore scene, which got the gears turning in my head for several months, leading eventually to this piece. The main quote I remember the person saying to me was: "The hardest part about touring is always waiting around at the airport." - I don't know if the implications translate to you all from that simple statement, but it's what made me realize how important it is to write a piece specifically detailing why Realicide is a round peg within the square hole that is the lucrative electronic music world - why that is and why we want it that way.

 

DEFINITIONS OF TOURING

 

"The hardest part about touring is always waiting around at the airport." In the world of electronic music, often even in the case of completely D.I.Y.-affiliated acts, artists are flown to major cities primarily just for weekend dates, at the expense of the local promoters. The money involved in this procedure is usually separate from the money that is guaranteed to be paid to the artist for performing at the event. It is also not uncommon for hotel arrangements to be made, among other things to keep the artist comfortable before and after their obligations to the event.

 

Realicide tours in a car, almost always packed to absolute physical capacity with equipment, distro materials, sleeping bags, and last but not least however many actual people we can fit into the vehicle. We are directly tied to our means of transportation. (Although not as much as a growing number friends who tour in converted vegetable oil fueled vans!) We avoid situations involving guaranteed amounts of payment unless absolutely necessary in sustaining our ability to survive and / or maintain our vehicle. Our payment is not divided between travel costs and fees for performing. Usually it is a situation in which donations are collected and this is meant to cover primarily just the basic costs of traveling, with anything extra being in hospitality for if our next gig is not as successful somehow. Speaking of the next gig: it's usually the day after the last one. In the tradition of Black Flag (one of the most popular examples anyhow), we try as best we can to play a gig every day we are on tour; not just fucking weekends. And we don't just show up with a laptop.. or a fucking sampling pitchable CD player... To the best of our financial and logistical abilities, we travel with our own amps and speaker cabs. This way if we show up to a house that has little or no PA gear, we can still do the show. The need for PA gear is probably the #1 technical dilemma in touring with electronic music, at least when you play some of the places we play. Even in cases at huge venues with seemingly really nice sound, we've made a policy to use our own gear as well, cos things always end up going wrong. (See the piece accompanying our track "Kill The Soundman".) When you try to play more nights of the week, you don't have to demand being paid as much each show, unless of course you feel like you need more money by default at all times, but I'm not going to go there with this piece... Lastly, we almost always eat and sleep at the home of, or at least with, the local promoters (who are usually one of the bands we are playing with). Wasting money on a hotel room where we'd miss out on getting to know the people who were down with helping us visit them is absolutely asinine and not an option in almost any case. Everything I am listing here is supposed to point to one thing: being more connected to the people you're visiting on tour, and the means by which you get to their towns. Oh yeah, and we really like playing in small towns we've never heard of before, not just LA and NYC.

 

$$$ DEEJAY $$$

 

This essay is not about hating on the art of spinning records or mixing tracks. I hope it is readily clear that the arguments being made, the beef we've got, are with DJ and electronic music CULTURE, not the technical or artistic choices so much. With that said...

 

DJ's are usually paid a lot more than bands, even though their gig is showing up with a laptop or a box of records to tables / mixer provided by the promoter - whereas a band arrives with the burden of often very physically strenuous gear load-in, more costly transportation, multiple members, and often a seriously frustrating soundcheck. Bands aren't as traditionally tied to drug culture; I think this is a big factor in how this situation came to be what it is. I'm fucking straight edge so that doesn't mean shit to me. All I know is that live music on tour is about scraping by and aching the next day every day, and a motherfucker playing other peoples' records is laughing all the way to the fucking bank. (Again, this is NOT against the act of DJ'ing, it's about the imbalance in the general treatment of performers.)

 

A lot of people, really cool people even, have tried to steer us towards this world. You don't know how many people told me, months and months up until this record was sent to be pressed, that our "album" should be 10 minutes each side with 2 songs on each side, that no one would want to listen to it and it was not gonna be worthwhile because it wasn't designed for DJ's to spin... Okay look at this record; look at this fucking book that it came with! Would a Realicide "album" ever be 4 songs inside a blank black jacket? But in electronic music that is the norm in many cases. It's gotta be so fucking weird to them that we even have lyrics!

 

It came down to this though - obviously we take a lot of influence from bands like Atari Teenage Riot and the old 90's DHR scene. As I was editing down the tracks for this LP at the house in Los Angeles, my friend Brian had a copy of ATR's "Delete Yourself" - classic digital hardcore album. I listened to both sides while watching the time and the shit was well over 20 minutes each side. Did the length of their LP stop ATR from being accepted and saying what they wanted to say to a whole lotta people? I had trimmed our record down to 17 minutes each side and knew that was as much compromise as I oughta offer. If this record sounds awful I guess we should just make CD's instead, but I was kind of hoping the ideas and social implications could be the main focus, with the music's technical qualities in the backseat. What do you think?!

 

Note: We're not actually against trying to press shorter vinyl with higher sound quality, and are actually planning to allow other labels to use certain tracks in this way, but this record here is our ALBUM, and the punk albums I like hearing are not usually just 4 songs.

 

IS PHYSICAL STRAIN A NOVELTY?

 

I've also noticed, more and more, differences between a majority in the electronic music world and what we do when it comes to defining live performance. Of course this is a topic of much controversy in an age where it's becoming increasingly acceptable to perform pre-sequenced, and even pre-arranged and mixed, electronic beats. The extreme of this is a steadily growing decision by artists to set up a computer and simply "perform" by playing WAV files while attempting to trick the audience (who cannot usually see the computer screen) that some kind of advanced live manipulation is going on. Although this issue of very clear faux-performance is an important topic for debate, this piece is not really about the politics of pre-sequenced live music as much as the more physical aspects of a performance.

 

The idea of a live band performing physically strenuously is commonly seen as somewhat of a novelty in electronic music. This is because of the fact that to generate the sounds in the correct order equating a set of electronic songs does not inherently require almost any kind of physical force or inertia; the energy used is largely cerebral. So I have seen on many occasions scenes of a man behind a laptop headbanging while delicately clicking start and stop buttons, or a man playing electronic drum pads almost mockingly as if they require the same physical force of loud acoustic drums (the pads trigger samples and can be adjusted to be very sensitive) - I have seen people play guitars that are very low in the mix while sliced samples of bands that usually sound like Slayer (archetypal "evil" metal references that musicians seem to be desperate for like a fix) are playing in the foreground of the mix, sometimes the real guitar does not even seem to be plugged in, and so forth...

 

The argument I am trying to articulate here is not against these peoples' symbolic tributes to live bands and all the physical aspects involved in them. It is rather against their seemingly ignorant and disregardive attitudes towards what it really means to put forth a physical strain, to the point of exhaustion, transcending certain levels of calm reasoning, into an experience not unlike the attempt to escape the cages that are our bodies. In this act of release there is nothing casual or novel, and although music can be generated by false means (just in the sense of acoustic sound which synthetic and sample-based music is a representation of) there is nothing false about its spiritual implications. This is not a sarcasm and not a pose.

 

Realicide is meant to be a very honest attempt to seek out, or execute rather, the experience described above. The idea at our shows, for ourselves and what we would like to radiate into a receptive audience, is definitely that of transcendence - for a few moments to be somewhere else besides trapped in the total hell of our wants and continuous strife. It may seem strange that a band so abrasive and overtly combative would have this kind of goal, and I can't really say it's not an abstract idea, but this is the most accurate way I can explain what we are attempting as a live band. If this won't sound too disruptive, it is not unlike a communal prayer - publicly praying for a way OUT of the world we as a species (and all the private individual lives that make up this species) have let come into being. So in this way, the aims of Realicide in a live setting are a very focused example, although abstract, of my lifelong thirst for a "Spiritual Misanthropy". This is not meant to function as an escape though, or even as catharsis ultimately, but more as a way to access aspects of ourselves not available in a calmer, more reserved state of mind. This could be at least a small part of why we perform very jarring and abrasive music. (Did you think we wanted to sound "evil" like Slayer? Sorry guys.) From this momentary access it is the goal to bring back previously hidden, repressed, or dormant aspects of things like conscience, ambitions, and affirmation against social or cultural odds - bring things like these back into our waking life / primary consciousness.

 

Some of the decisions we've made regarding our set up and procedures for live shows have had the above goals specifically in mind I think. The ideas I've described are somewhat dependent on (within the context of hardcore at least) exerting a lot of anxiety and manic physical distress. When Mavis toured with Realicide 2005-08 he used exclusively hardware (ask him about it, he'll talk all day and night about gear) because it created the constant mental tension of having to string the drum patterns and samples together to form songs live, while me and Swill were following along on top of it - the anxiety of not knowing for sure what was coming next, if it would go the same as the last time in certain ways, put us on edge and with an initial basis of desperation, even if just musically. A sidenote, as I mentioned the computers concealing an artist's process to the audience 100% - I've always favored media (in art, music, politics, anything) where the process is as evident as possible to an audience - less smoke and mirrors - more honesty. This is also why we never use any kind of vocal effects at live shows. I don't have an especially "gifted" voice for "singing", but I'll give you all I've got, take it or fucking leave it.

 

Another ritual I've used for periods of time, to point myself towards the path away from this body and the hell it resides in, would be the harsh choking and gagging vocal techniques, sometimes accompanied by brief instances of strangulation. The idea is sort of like a much smaller version of what the suspensionists do, maybe, in that I am trying to access aspects of myself only available in moments of physical trauma. Choking is only one of a few ways I've attempted this during Realicide performances, but it is the method I've used most frequently because until after a couple years practicing it I was never in any kind of substantial physical risk. But eventually I became able to use the mic cable to choke myself until I would start to pass out, which is not how the show ought to end and not a healthy thing to nurture in myself habitually. The times I feel like this technique was most effective were when it would bring me to a point of disorientation, on top of the incredible social anxieties I already feel when I'm in front of a group of people. Unwrapping the mic cable from my neck and pulling myself back into the mix of the music, I found myself able to summon and string words together that would not have occurred to me previously. Many phrases of this sort have struck me as profound and very to-the-point later, and are where many of the slogans I use in Realicide have originated.

 

But again, these small acts of violence and anxiety used to unlock a spiritual side to a performance, might be the way they are because we are attempting this all in the context of hardcore music. I'm not giving a disclaimer, just the assurance that I think it is very possible to have the same goals and succeed through other kinds of music, or through things besides music altogether! Many kinds of trance induction that I've heard of or learned about seem to have a system for it that is basically all cerebral. I don't think losing blood, bile, or even sanity, is absolutely necessary in doing what we are trying to do ultimately. Hardcore is just where we've found our voice for the time being. "Church Of Gabber" right?! Before I continue on, one other sidenote: Props to big Swill who got his heart surgery at the start of 2009 - his fucked up heart basically made it so Realicide shows were going to KILL him! It's amazing he made it through as long as he did, and hopefully things are on track without THAT kind of physical strain anymore.

 

Bringing this back around to our experiences dealing with the electronic music scene; that issue of casualness. At events in which we've been the wild card, being the only live band and not a DJ, I've had a lot of experiences that imply a complete naivety or disregard for the essential aims and procedure described above. Audiences come and go freely, mingling amongst one another, and the band is very much a background element to their party. This traditional rave environment is something I did not understand for quite a while, but I have learned what I value about it. Like the roots of Industrial music, Rave was intended as an alternative to the conventional rock concert in which an audience is ONLY an audience, almost in mock worship of whatever fucking band is on the big tall stage. Rave is about the audience being the spectacle! The DJ's are not needed as an elaborate visual presence, just to set the tone and prompt the energy of all the people there. In that sense it is extremely awesome, and truly an empowering approach to events for the audience that had no power in the context of a rock concert, unless they got the show stopped by starting a fight or something stupid like that. But the problem for Realicide is that we ARE a band, and are asking for peoples' momentary attention. But unlike a normal rock band, we are trying to gather the audience for a MUTUAL attention, a dialogue on any levels possible. In this sense we are most akin to the tradition of punk and its descendent scenes, in that an interaction and blurring of the audience / performer boundaries is very much the goal. I don't have hard feelings towards rave audiences at this point though, because I know in many cases they just don't understand what we're trying to doing socially, even if they enjoy the cacophony while they are mingling or dancing off on their own somewhere. It is just a different language for shows that I did not grow up with, so it's just somewhat foreign to me. I appreciate the basis of why rave parties are the way they are, even though we do not fit too well in those settings, and no I am not saying any of this because of Rave's common tie to drug culture.

 

During our 2008 tour in Europe we shared our shows almost exclusively with DJ’s and laptop electronic producers. I had trouble understanding the difference between their DJ sets and their “live PA” sets. My friend Jonathan broke it down plain and simple: “Playing live usually just means you’re DJ’ing mostly your own tracks.”

 

One other thing that comes to mind is a moment in which a DJ at a rave style party was trying to ask me questions about the mix and sound system while I was performing (as the vocalist of this Realicide thing I keep mentioning) - Moments like these are the ones that spell out painfully clear how the perspective on, and definition of, live performances are very different as far as what we do versus the norm in electronic music. It used to mean I should write songs about how mad those situations make me, but now that those are written it just means I'd like to avoid being in those situations anymore. You can still find me at hardcore and breakcore raves once in a while, but while I'm down with some of the music and activities I'll probably always feel kind of weird and creeped out in those environments. (It's alright; I feel creeped out just being alive to begin with.)

 

R.I.P. HEINOUS RAVE 2003-2007

 

We came into knowledge of and practice of Gabber while entirely outside any rave or electronic scene around Ohio, where we started this band. I found out about it online in 2001 or 2002, and was just curious because I thought it was a weird name for a genre of music. I remember the first time I found DJ Promo's tracks, because his were definitely the first I'd found not tied to Happy Hardcore, and were very dark and menacing, the moment I understood that electronic hardcore could compete with other sorts of music I was becoming very interested around the same time, like Grindcore and Powerelectronics. I immediately began to seek out more of this grittier and rougher gabber, in my own way without really any point of historical or cultural reference, and tried to get my friends interested in it too.

 

We didn't know for a while about gabber's roots in the Netherlands. We listened to "Tokyo Style Speedcore" relentlessly long before we learned who M1DY actually was. We flocked to any tracks we could find with a fiendishly overblown kick and crude distorted samples of persons unknown yelling words like "hardcore!" and "speeeedcooore!" Of course the appeal, as soon as it clicked and to this day, is that of gabber as the raw electronic parallel to punk rock. This is what brings a lot of people to this music, as I've been excited to learn over the years. Gradually we stumbled through our own self-education in how to construct tracks, beginning with the common assumption that it's brainlessly easy and just requires the distorted 4x4 kick over whatever else is going on, but realizing before long that a more considerate attitude can make much better hardcore tracks, without compromising their forcefulness and mercilessness.

 

By the start of 2003 we'd been joking around with the word "RAVE", and what with our (at that time) very violent and vindictive attitudes would our OUR idea of the best kind of rave party. You've gotta keep in mind, as I've mentioned earlier, we were by no means anything close to "ravers" - our ideas were a very bastardized idea of "rave", actually not unlike how I've described the electronic scene's basic misconceptions of live bands, we were taking aspects of "rave" and injecting our own style and methods into it. This became known as "Heinous Rave" - an event series that took place during what was the peak of social vitality during my years as a promoter in Cincinnati.

 

Describing the bizarre experiences of Heinous Rave is even stranger as time goes on, because of my gradually decreasing ignorance to the orthodox traditions of electronic music and its parties. Heinous Rave occurred somewhat in a bubble, before we'd broken into contact with artists from other regions who were doing similar things. We did not know anyone else who was familiar with, let alone stoked about, gabber and speedcore.

 

Bringing this pseudo-RAVE to a crowd of kids who were used to punk and noise shows was at first a clumsy task. We would usually promote the event weeks beforehand, psyching up kids on the vague yet alluring ideas of a rave party that they could mosh to, with harsh noise blaring over the beats, and an excuse to show up sarcastically decked out in raver gear. We would open the show with punk and noise bands like SX, Destined To Fester, Vivi C. Diem, Those Damn Pirates, etc. Realicide would not usually perform as a band, in order to save ourselves for the grueling night ahead of us. After the last band we'd start the "rave", meaning we turned on our "gabber" tracks, just playing from a computer or even a CD stationed back by the PA amp. There was rarely any kind of live performance of the gabber material at all; it was a very true example of the party being about the people and not any one performer. We were not DJ's and we didn't pretend to be DJ's (minus our names on the flyers, such as DJ Thumper or DJ Inhuman, which were meant to add to the sense of parody) - in fact the only times Heinous Rave shows ended up SUCKING were specifically the instances in which we tried to add an actual DJ element. I won't even bother detailing the disaster that was "Heinous Rave 5", during which we attempted to work with representatives from the actual Greater Cincinnati rave community. It was a hideous mistake to say the least, but we corrected things a couple months later by offering Heinous Rave 5.5

 

Kids were at first fairly confused, and rightfully so, but we had at least a few who knew the game and would get everyone pumped about it during the first couple tracks. By that point there would be a total frenzy of kids with their fists in the air, moshing and yelling wildly, running laps around the room and plowing through dazed faux-ravers who crossed their path... With my most sentimental side exposed I want to tell you that it was beautiful. We would always have several microphones around the room, just loosely on the floor, for kids to pick up and scream like maniacs into. For some kids it was the first time they'd ever screamed into a mic, and for most I know it was the first time they'd had access to that kind of cacophonous voice of THEIR OWN during any show they'd been to! These events were often very violent - punching and slamdancing, at the first HR two girls went to the hospital to get stitches, and believe it or not people would do shit like bring glow sticks (for the parody again) break them in half and pour the chemicals on their genitals. I never did this but I hear it burns really bad...

 

That inane violence was the reality of what we were doing, but I am very confident in saying that it was not malicious, not out of animosity for eachother! In fact I think it was HR 3 or 4 in which a couple jock type guys came into the mix and thought it was about simply beating people up. When they started punching kids in THAT way, all the kids around them just stopped dancing and looked at them. The guys realized how stupid they looked and left the party! Like I said - these are beautiful memories. Crowd-surfing to D.I.Y. gabber in a warehouse in Cincinnati... Aaron Quinn playing harsh noise for an hour out of his half stack over the beats, among malfunctioning strobe lights... Iovae projecting live video feedback oscillations during most of these nights... One time a kid did a fucking backflip during SX right before HR 4 began... Changing kids' idea of what a show can mean; what FUN can mean; in the face of a city that offered no help in our struggle for a vital and radical identity!

 

In many ways I believe that if Realicide had stayed the course of more humorous pseudo-gabber remixing and wild fun sampling over overdriven beats that mocked our own interest in Happy Hardcore, we'd not only be able to tour with a lot more like-minded artists, but we'd be an extremely more popular band in general. These events were by far the most popular and well-attended events we orchestrated in Cincinnati before the scene's energy fizzled out (just for the time being I mean). I am nostalgic of Heinous Rave anytime I see a show with Captain Ahab, Extreme Animals, Narwhalz of Sound, etc. This "Ravesploitative" music is very special to me in remembrance of what we did for true and unconforming FUN in the struggling scene I grew up in. If we hadn't noticed that the world is dangerously addicted to fun, amidst the literal torture of many people we will and won't meet, we probably could've built happy careers and lives playing the music we made for the Heinous Rave shows.

 

"HEINOUS RAVE!... STOMP YOUR OWN GRAVE!!!" - Jim Swill, 2004

 

 

16. DEAD END PROTEST

Ryan Faris: hardware electronics.

Robert Inhuman: words, voice, edits. 

+ tapes by Evolve.

 

(passive observers just nod in shame)

protest all you want - it's ineffective and boring

passive observers just nod in shame - they have no voice in your sob story 

get them to agree (just words) so fucking what

still ain't got no resource to make this mean a fuck 

did you want to have voice or do you just want to complain

did you ever actually intend to cause anything to change?

 

first of all - convince me I should care

but more important - show me how I can matter...

 

 

Robert Inhuman, about "Dead End Protest"

 

This song is not against the idea of protesting. It's about the reality that a lot of protest efforts don't seem to be very well thought out or organized, rendering them little more than an incoherent blur in the eyes of the general public, all the easier for the media to distort or brush off. I feel like these situations are ones in which passers-by often agree with what's being said, but they are not given any guidance or foothold as to how to contribute to the proposed change; therefore the intended effects of the people protesting are rendered futile.

 

 

Simon Severe, about "Dead End Protest"

 

I feel I entered protesting after some golden era in America (Seattle) and through missing that I must have missed the point. My first demo was the '04 Republican Convention where I never felt such an utter sense of futility in my life. While in the midst of the crowds of New Yorkers watching us march around and yell at no one in particular, my fresh young eyes gazed upon the crowd and wondered "what ARE we trying to accomplish?" We obviously were not going to shut down the convention and we knew that. We were out there using a large amount of energy to make a statement: "WE DON'T LIKE THIS"... Ok, and...??? 

 

I wondered about the people standing on the sidelines watching; I wondered what exactly we were suggesting them to do. Many people were watching us and they very well may have thought, "Oh yeah, such and such (insert issue here), that is unfair." AND THEN...

 

The most profound experience I had during that week was when I left the largest march and started walking backwards. I kept going and, while I retraced the steps where the mass of a few thousand people had just been, I noticed that the streets were littered with refuse from the event: empty water bottles, torn bits of signs and food wrappers. Minus the beads it looked exactly like the streets of the French Quarter in NOLA on Ash Wednesday; the day after Mardi Gras. The city services had  recruited a legion of probably underpaid Chicano workers about 50 feet behind the parade sweeping up the trash. This trash was made by union organizers, immigrant rights activists, and many others who came out that day to raise their voice, among other things, in defense of the rights of these people, essentially, to get paid a fair wage to pick up their trash, when really they should be picking up their own trash (or not making trash). It dawned on me that it seemed to make more sense to help share in the work of the "working people" instead of just sending a message to whoever about their plight. I was tired of messages already, I wanted actions, and not just symbolic actions that send out a message stronger than words, actions that fix things, or try to. This was the realization that led me to have an obsession with the utilizations of our beliefs in our everyday lives, in every action we take, not just when we meet up to yell at the sky.

 

 

17. CAN'T RELATE?

Vankmen: hardware electronics.

Jim Swill: words, voice.

Robert Inhuman: voice.

 

the romance of identity, the romance of death

all parts of my youth that I'm beginning to regret

cos I see so many others just to caught up in themselves

by marketing their suffering, set in stone their way of hell

 

I see so many artists that just do it for their culture

no passion in the material - just an audience of vultures

incestuous and elitist - ignorant and bored

always tally up the score - next in line to play the whore

where we all get our rocks off by channeling an angst

that isn’t even there - punk rock is just a prank  

at first I felt abandoned when I just couldn’t relate

to the causes that have no basis - just unfiltered senseless hate

when there’s to much time exerted for the sake of all your clan

and you don’t even know yourself by the time it's too late and you’re a man

not a man any true respect, a child inside at best

not enough time to look at your mind - too much puffing out your chest

 

proud amongst your crowd and insecure when you’re in public

cos your character is comic and you hate it but you love it

it's not real, can't you see? we are simply circumstantial

we can’t base our lives on others' art and music as substantial 

 

how many people will I cross so willing to die?

each day is cruel monotony, creeping slowly by 

and all I ever wanted to do was make a break for it

but now that I'm running I can already see that

the only thing that needs to change is what’s inside of me

fantasies of culture and cause, of iconography and leadership

someday I’ll be nothing but dust and the metals we use for murder all just old corroded rust

and what I thought was love was just chemically created lust

 

it's time for the better way I've always felt dormant in me

give up the ghost of permanence - accept myself as momentary

I will not live forever and I will not die a waste

my words and spirit passed on to you as the soil covers my face 

I won’t be congratulated for being born with the right skin

we can’t desire someone else’s eyes or skeleton

and even if there’s no one there to watch us laugh or crying

at least we won’t be lying - at least were fucking trying

 

 

Robert Inhuman, ABOUT THE TITLE OF THIS RECORD...

 

I decided upon the title "Resisting The Viral Self" because it conveys a consistent theme in the material in some ways, especially the tracks on the LP which are meant to be the primary focus. The theme is that of a human nature to destroy - be it in our actions and also what we fail to take action towards. (Like the old idea that not raising your voice or taking action in the face of war is an act of violence in and of itself.) This situation is found continuously in the social world, but also very importantly acknowledged within ourselves and our own private ethical struggles that sort of act as atoms making up a "society". I guess the idea here boils down to living with at least a valid attempt to resist the aspects of humanity that tempt us to be destructively judgmental, self-serving, delusions of inane (and of course insane) grandeur, and so forth. The "SELF" in this regard being possibly the root of suffering and abuse, or at least clearly a gateway to injustice in the "civilized" world.

 

Even in the more poetic side of hardcore it is tempting to articulate the stuff we are against and let the more constructive phrases slip through the cracks or never be fully developed. But I chose not to have the title and cover of our record be something like "GUNS. BOMBS. HOLOCAUST. WE'RE FUCKED!" - instead attempting a more constructive path, and surprisingly through my own intense misanthropy a somewhat optimistic tone, allowing images and words meant to be affirming and positive, while still acknowledging the problems that are on our minds and hearts.

 

Through advice from Swill, I chose the word "Resisting" rather than "Resist" because, as he pointed out, if our music appeals to young people of a rebellious nature, they will rebel against anything - even other rebels. So a command in the title could be counter-productive, and we found our title to be more of an invitation to join our chosen path. This is also fortunately in league with our very crucial stance on what it is to actually "change" a person or the world. We believe that it is somewhat impossible to force another person to change directly. The way it is possible is by changing yourself into the sort of person you'd like the people around you to be - ethically, habitually, anything. People have does things nothing sort of miraculous by setting a positive example - I'm have an intense admiration for people like Gandhi of course...

 

This record is not really meant to be a how-to-fix-everything kind of thing, as no record really ought to be ultimately (maybe?) but it can at least stand for the affirmation of attitudes and methods we would want to endorse or influence others with. That is a good realistic and worthwhile goal in a band I hope.

 

 

18. NOT ENOUGH

Robert Inhuman: words, voice, edits.

 

"In order to love eachother and be equal with eachother, we have to destroy the kind of government that keeps us from asserting our positive values of life."

 

It's not enough to just not kill yourself.

 

 

Robert Inhuman, WHY WE ADOPTED THE CIRCLE 'A'...

 

I've used the Circle A image in a lot of satiric or kind of cynical ways over the years. This is because of the common social stigmas Anarchism obviously has, many of which I need not bother listing, primarily the turn-off for us has usually been its association with Anarchist groups that operate under the same clique-ish and elitist mentality we've been so disappointed by in Punk, Hardcore, Crust, even Noise scenes... Even though Anarchism is not inherently based on any single aesthetic, it often falls for the same traps as music scenes, in which people are rejected if they aren't speaking the same language or dialect through their clothing or mannerisms, despite what they might be saying with their voice. The cliché of wastoid Peter Panarchist / Bart Simpson wanna-bes does not help things any in the consideration of aligning ourselves with the Circle A; not when it's accompanied by "666" or "420"...

 

But there is a real alternative to this "Bart Simpson Anarchy", based genuinely on constructive, cooperative, socially-challenging yet respectful and encouraging COMMUNITIES. This is where that A inside the heart comes in. At first it can seem "cute" or less "badass" than the A spray-painted by Bart on the front door of his principal's house, but generally it doesn't seem like being more "badass" is going to teach more people to stay alive and consider the lives of everyone else encounter. Looking cool should not override distract from our respect for life and desire to find ways to constructively express that, and fight against our own impulses to be disrespectful towards what we know in our hearts is good.

 

The "A" we've used for this record is meant to align our ideas with Anarchism as an effort to recognize and utilize our autonomy and solidarity; our allegiance to the D.I.Y. ethic as a means of self-worth and survival, both culturally as "punks" and quite possibly in a physical sense if the world keeps going in the direction it's been going... The heart around this "A" is meant to distance ourselves from the negative stereotype briefly described above, and for those of you who have been burnt just the same by the elitist infections of your local Anarcho collectives - we want to be a counterexample to those unfortunate circumstances. The heart is supposed to be a reminder that being interested in Anarchism does not at all have to mean you subscribe to a vengeful attitude, pre-emptive violent resistance, or the "every man for himself" way of life. If Anarchism is not compatible with the pursuit of LOVE, in its truest sense, (and that is in fact what is without a doubt the most important goal) then I would not consider it for my own life, not to mention wouldn't reference it on my band's record. Is that overly optimistic? Maybe I'm dead wrong, but also I do tend to favor ideals that are basically unattainable. Setting the bar too high is the only way we can reach our absolute full potential, you know??

 

Note: In this piece I've just been capitalizing the "ism"s to make it easier to read them as the subject; not to imply they are something like God, or like Swill, or even like our cat Asphalt at the house in LA who ran away and I miss dearly.

 

 

19. NUMB TO "REVOLUTION" 

Robert Inhuman: edits.

Steven Cano: hardware electronics.

 

"It's about 'change'..."

 "It's at that party level, because people are confused by social change versus politics, which are not the same thing, in fact I think they're probably the opposite..."

"Is it wrong... to give people what they want... by taking away their defenses?"

 

"These words mean nothing to anyone anymore... They have no other choice but to just claw that all down and control every single facet of the media that they can possibly get ahold of. They're trying to reincorporate all these elements of part revolutions; basically commercialize them; dull them down and deaden them. Kind of just drive them into the ground until these words like 'revolution' and 'revolt' become meaningless over a while. They're thrown on things like car commercials; they're thrown on a McDonald's slogan like 'a hamburger revolution' - These words mean nothing to anyone anymore..." (Jim Swill from an interview in 2006)

 

"They never questioned the reality... they never questioned that it might itself be a source of evil, or something to which you could not adapt..."

"Choose what you want them to choose."

"What it takes to change..."

 

 

20. NO XENOPHOBIC HxC

Robert Inhuman: software electronics.

 

 

Robert Inhuman, ADVICE ON PROMOTING SHOWS WHEN IT'S AN UPHILL BATTLE...

 

I'm from a city that's not even that small, but the mentality definitely was. It was almost literally like pulling teeth to get a group of people together and interested regularly about the bands I was excited about. Though I've moved on since (Didn't want to be like the person in that old Big Black song "Kerosene", ya know?) I feel really proud and accomplished to have served a few years promoting alternative sorts of shows in that environment. There were some incredible high points in which the energy lasted from show to show, people actually took initiative to help, nurtured their own interests independently, it wasn't like starting from square one every time we put a date together. Things really fluxuate in most cities - some places this cycle is subtle; in others it is like night and day. But for kids who are beating their heads against the wall in small towns where if you don't play a more widely accepted sort of music you just can't get a gig for yourself or for a band that is touring through... here is my general advice from an email I sent to a guy a couple years ago...

 

- When a touring band contacts you that you actually appreciate and want to help, do it cos it means a LOT to the band. And don't be slacker about it, remember you represent the city's rep and if your show sucks they will mention it, even if not with bitterness, to bands all over the country.

 

- Try to get promotion started 1 month before the show. Not longer cos it is idiotic to promote 1 show for months in advance, people with stop even paying attention cos it gets annoying.

 

- Even though we mainly use the internet to find out about stuff now, make flyers, ones that don't suck if possible, and get them at a place that you can scam free copies so you can make at least a hundred each time. Flyers sometimes attract people but also for the outta town bands it shows them you are really TRYING. This means a lot even if the show doesn't go perfectly; they are a sign of respect and support even to this day.

 

- Send out a press release to every newspaper and local magazine you can find contacts for. It should basically be everything on your flyer typed out with brief descriptions of the acts and then possibly extra info or links online about them, especially about people touring through if possible. The press release should go out about 1 month before the show. In the possible event that a paper would wanna do a good write up or ask questions about it, they'd have time to get at you about that.

 

- Put same info above on all the local or regional online forums that could remotely apply to your event. There are a lot, just search them out and keep a check list of all this stuff for each time you're promoting a show. This is not an instruction to start spending a lot of time on local internet forums, because unfortunately that can be a really morbid way of life that I would never ever recommend unless I wished unspeakable misery on a person.

 

- Try to get bands there on time or earlier; it is almost impossible but at least try. It usually sucks to have it start an hour or two later than planned. Along with this keep in mind that more bands is definitely not automatically better, even if you really like the bands. For average bands playing around a half hour each, 3 to 5 can be a good amount to work with, depending on who can draw out an audience and whatnot. More than 5 acts, unless they are super short and can setup really efficiently, means people will get worn out and more stressed to be there than taking it all in well. If you've got the luxury of having a good number of local bands to work with, just keep switching em up for different shows, everybody should appreciate that usually. If there are acts that you really like that can't bring people in for one reason or another, maybe compromise with a local band that is somewhat popular in addition to the one you like but is not as popular.

 

- Be welcoming to everybody who bothers to give there time to come support your event; don't be cold to them if you can help it. If you are into having music between bands, make it happen - it can be a chance to show people new stuff you are into and get more experiences out of the show when it's all said and done.

 

- Make sure you've got somebody solid handling the door / admissions. Local bands do not need to be paid if there is a touring act, unless the circumstances are special somehow. The traveling people just want gas and food to keep going. If your show ends up going great, giving them more means if their next night is bad they will still be okay. Not everyone does this, but my policy whenever possible is saying "it's $5" (or whatever) when people enter, but if a kid comes and can't pay I still let em in cos not everybody has money all the time and I'm more interested in getting people together than getting paid. But that's if a kid just can't pay, not if they just don't give a fuck, there's a difference, you can probably figure that out.

 

- For anybody from outta town, unless they were straight dick and trashed the place or had a really bad attitude (it is uncommon), seriously try and make sure they have a place to sleep - comfortably if at all possible. This means a LOT to a touring band - just somewhere safe to sleep. Food or entertainment is a great plus, but shelter and space is the important thing. Try to figure this out ahead of time, especially if you've gotta ask friends if their houses are an option.

 

...that's basically it off the top of my head. I just followed a list of guidelines and hoped for the best. It is common sense and learning from experience, like most things in life. Some people will possibly (and mercilessly) hate you for trying to do any of this stuff, so decide beforehand how you want to react and deal with a negative reaction. If you know anybody who is looking for advice on starting to arrange stuff, feel free to forward any of this if it can help at all. It's just my way of going about it, but for me it seems ethical. Getting an audience excited about things is a whole other topic that is a lot more challenging in some cities. I never really figured out the science of it, so I ended up thinking I was either doing my P.R. calculations wrong, or I was living in a city where the kids were already dead and gone on the inside, and like zombies they couldn't rest as long as there were living people, unassimilated, around them... Good luck.

 

 

21. KILL EACHOTHER SOMEPLACE ELSE

Robert Inhuman: words, voice, edits.

 

macho insecurity, macho insecurity, macho insecurity, you can't stand yourself!

 

I never want to make music that will appeal to redneck jocks in polo shirts

get that hatemonger shit out of here - go kill eachother someplace else

don't get me wrong it'll be great when you're all dead

but we can't let you fuck us up in the process

hey you big cowards - go die someplace else - with something to prove

like greedy animals ramming your heads and pissing on eachother

get the fuck out of here!

 

 

Robert Inhuman, about “Kill Eachother Someplace Else”

 

“Stop it! Stop it! …Why? WHY?!” - The girl at a metal show right before the band stopped playing, at which point yet another macho fistfight won priority over people moshing and getting down to music. I recorded this, as I did ever show I was at for a few years, in a basement in the midwest, back in 2005. I remember the increased rate in which I was developing a shear desperation to continue making aggressive music, but find a way to distance myself from the sickening testosterone-fueled magnet to violence and rageful insecure prejudices…

 

I have a lifelong history of being fairly resentful of males, especially in larger social settings that tempt them to pillage whatever their guts or cocks hunger for. It has only been through a relationship, with a girl who does not identify with gender, that I’ve been able to reconsider my bias and hate for one gender over others. Even though I do detest the behavior of many males in situations of competition, territorial defenses/offenses, and especially the brutal farces that are their mating rituals… Singling out one group of people as inferior to another is not right, no matter how total the circumstances may imply (from my subjective perspective) – I must consider those disgusting men as merely poor examples of what could, under other circumstances, be an admirable and meritable gender. It has been a struggle that I am continuing with these days.

 

Another recording I had lined up in consideration for this piece, was from another midwestern basement show back in 2003. In that recording I am heard to taunt a large man who is strangely demanding Realicide stop playing our, at that time, gabbergrind songs – Instead he was specifically instant that we play the song “Paradise City”, and after a brief exchange of words thought I had called him a “Led Zeppelin Faggot” – I was then choked by a man the size of a refrigerator, pinned against a brickwall, and was surely about to meet my mortal demise until a total melee broke out among everyone in the basement. I will spare you the details, but it ended badly, though a ridiculous story in hindsight. That’s the other testosterone-injected bloodbath I ended up leaving out of this track...

 

 

22. AFRAID IN YOUR GAMES

Ryan Faris: hardware electronics.

Robert Inhuman: words, voice.

 

I'm just another P.C. faggot

watching your joking intolerance turn to endorsement

fuck your suburban hell of accidental bigotry

 

I'm just another straightedge asshole

and if I don't live like you I must be a threat to anybody like you - right? RIGHT?

 

your assumptions are pathetic - insecure and anorexic

you'll always hate my guts cos I've got the strength to give a fuck

violence, for no reason, other than to impress

violence, you wanna dominate, without an argument, just blind threats

 

macho insecurity = you can't stand yourself!

 

your assumptions are pathetic - insecure and anorexic

you'll always hate my guts cos I've got the strength to give a fuck

violence, for no reason, other than to impress

violence, you wanna dominate, without an argument, just blind threats

 

 

Robert Inhuman, about "Afraid In Your Games"

 

"PC Faggot" = I'm not interested in even joking around about bigotry. Call me "PC" if I'm not so carelessly nihilistic, but I know that historically the way fascism gets its foothold is first by breaking down society's objection to it through the Trojan Horse of humor. Starts with jokes and through your indulgence it can shape your reality. I am not gonna let myself become a bigot; especially not in such a roundabout pathetic way. But isn't it so shocking and avant-garde to make a band that shouts hateful racist, sexist, and homophobic slogans from the safe suburban cuddly context of a music venue's stage? Fuck you; we don't want anything to do with you.

 

"Straightedge Asshole" = I get tired of the painfully obvious insecurities people throw in my face when I don't live how they live. If I don't smoke or drink alcohol it doesn't fucking mean I am threatening your way of life. (or does it?) It just means I don't want it for myself. Is smoking and drinking like some kind of religion, in which it's your absolute duty to convert anyone who doesn't already partake in that shit? What's it say about someone if they are nervous doing something around someone who doesn't want to do it themselves? Don't get hostile with me; fucking take a look at yourself instead. I don't want to fight you; I'd rather just have nothing to do with you.

 

 

23. TALKING ABOUT TV SHOWS AND SCORING DRUGS

Ryan Faris: hardware electronics.

Robert Inhuman: words, voice.

 

hey! drugs! who wants to talk about drugs

hey! beer! who wants to talk about drinking

oh fuck! TV! let's review these TV shows

what you doing after work? gonna get fucked up and pass out in front of the TV.

gonna buy cable and I'm gonna buy some weed

I'm gonna buy a eightball and some sitcom DVD's

gonna spend my free time talking about drugs I wanna buy

why lie? it's what I'll do until I die (the sooner the better)

 

 

Simon Severe, WHERE'S THE HARM?

 

I've had many arguments with people about my utter hatred for video games. I guess I'll spare us the details of the arguments and skip to their ending points...

 

“What video games do is give you the feeling that you are doing something, most likely something that you will never be able to do, when all you are really doing is sitting on a couch pressing buttons.”

 

“It isn't hurting anything.”

 

That may be true. I guess the biggest problem I have with video games is that I resent the fact that we have time to waste. That we live in a world where we can buy everything. We don't have to spend time making things. Someone else does that. People all over the world are paid a slave wage with the motivation of making enough to survive so that we can afford to spend our time entertaining ourselves. I have a pretty big problem with that. I'd rather see people spending their time making things for themselves and others than wasting time with luxuries.

 

Sometimes I feel the same way about the arts. But at least sometimes the arts serve as a catalyst to bring people together and create a community in which we can share ideas and form networks of mutual aid and all that. It gets us out of the house, and if it doesn't then fuck it. Creating and sharing art  also serves to make a localized non-commercial alternative means of entertainment.  Someone who spends time on creative measures though I think needs to spend a lot of mental energy evaluating the social worth of their creation and avoid spending time furthering projects that only serve to entertain themselves and distract them from doing anything useful with their time.

 

I have at times felt the same way about intellectualized learning. Who are we that we have time to sit around reading and understanding the meaning of life or whatever. I don't really think that way anymore. It's the sort of thing that exists on a sliding scale and honestly only a few people get wrapped up in intellectualism to the point of becoming utterly useless to the world except to make more ideas to entertain themselves and their intelligentsia colleagues. I used to be one of those people. On a broad scale most people could benefit from a little more ideas in their lives... 

 

 

24. I HATE BARS

Ryan Faris: hardware electronics.

Robert Inhuman: words, voice.

 

I'm not supposed to be here. You're right... I'm not supposed to be here.

 

 

Robert Inhuman, ABOUT THE “FUCK ON COMMAND” TRACKS

 

The dozen short electronic grind-noise tracks on this CD are Ryan’s old “Fuck On Command” material, a band he worked on as a side project to Ultra//Vires and Capital Hemorrhage. FOC was meant to be a vicious noisecore project inspired by bands like Nikudorei. He didn’t have a specific set of lyrics for the songs, so he donated them to me while I was recording for our album. I don’t think I recorded for and mixed the FOC tracks nearly as noisy and insane as their original intent, as the material for the album had gone in a more mid-tempo punk / digital hardcore-inspired vein. At least there will always be Hentai Lacerator’s “Covered In Fun” session to look back on though… I just wanted to mention where these crazy blasts came from, in case they seem to stick out as odd.

 

 

25. I HATE RAVE SOUD SYSTEMS

Ryan Faris: hardware electronics.

Robert Inhuman: words, voice.

 

I hate rave sound systems - all bass - no substance

drunk in another way and we're on at 5am so I gotta wait.

 

 

Robert Inhuman, WHAT IS BREAKCORE SAYING?

 

Does your breakcore turn mainstream culture on itself like a weapon, or does it just comically parody the mainstream and de-fang the association we might have to breakcore as any kind of weapon at all? Is breakcore actually more like D.I.Y. suicide? The same clumsy nihilism I've seen define NOISE as something without much hope or relevance as a cultural movement? OF COURSE we like the way it sounds, but where the fuck is this going? A hard beat driving me forward - but to what?! Such a composed sentence, but the end is so clearly left BLANK. An elaborately decorated box with absolutely nothing inside?

 

 

26. WORTHLESS ROCKER SMALLTALK

Ryan Faris: hardware electronics.

Robert Inhuman: words, voice.

 

don't talk to me about music - don't talk to me about the way you spend your time

you fucking slime - but not like sexy, what I mean is I hate your life

 

working long hours to pay for cable TV - suck your friend’s dick

he plays guitar you know - he can fucking solo - while you flip through channels

"wait, go back, that was MTV2, no I don't like MTV either but wait I like this video the singer finally lost weight and I just bought pants like his..."

 

 

Robert Inhuman, about "Worthless Rocker Smalltalk"

 

A lot of these ridiculous Fuck On Command tracks I recorded over Ryan's hardware beats (are they even beats?!) are scraps of lyrics from a couple years ago and based on real interactions with people before I quit my last government-regulated job in 2006. This song is a blurry comment about contemporary rock n' rollers. I do not see them as culturally relevant, and even less as rebellious. I do not see rockers as living out any substantial alternatives to much of anything. They are often just clownish retro-cowardly consumers, afraid of the risks and discomforts of any actual counter-cultural efforts. Buy more magazines and DVD's that can help you maintain the aesthetic of your parents or grandparents? Like the ever-reunited "MISFITS" ...where the fuck don't they fit in?!

 

 

27. SUBLIMINAL SWILL

Jim Swill: edits.

 

"He was watching his favorite TV show..."

 

 

28. PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE

Ryan Faris: software electronics.

Robert Inhuman: edits.

 

"Political systematic waste of resources, of technology and the productive process..."

"They had turned the population into unwitting participants in a system of planned obsolescence..."

"Planned obsolescence." - "Systematic waste of resources."

(TECHNOLOGY IS A DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD.)

 

"There are some things in our society, some things in our world, to which I am proud to be maladjusted." (Martin Luther King)

 

"...so the notion that you could buy an identity replaced the original movement notion that you were perfectly free to create an identity, and you were perfectly free to change the world and make the world anything you want it to be..."

 

 

29. PURPOSE

Robert Inhuman: words, voice, edits.

 

I’m right - you’re wrong

I was born to elevate some things - others I was born to torture and destroy

we hate eachother - you despise my way of life - I hate yours 100%

everybody now just look at the Earth

I'm right and it's my identity, it's my job, my career to destroy you

 

 

Robert Inhuman, about "Purpose"

 

I definitely wrote this a few years ago when I worked at a job that I did not like at all. At the time it was a reaction to the people around me who I thought, and probably were, a psychic threat to the positive values I wanted to pursue in my life. But looking back on it, the specific type of rage that went into those words, I think it is a piece that could come from my voice, my co-workers', or anybody else who feels cornered by people who live differently than themselves. Environments like that plant seeds of destruction in anyone who is subjected to them and not extremely cautious. I am very glad not to be in an environment that inspires that kind of rageful animosity anymore. I want to avoid situations that let me be that way; let those ideas find a home in my voice. I don't think I hate the people I had been around at that time, but I hate the circumstances that developed those feelings in me.

 

I do not want to hate anyone no matter what they've done to me or my world. I hate the circumstances, the situations, that allow for the development of things like violence, vengefulness, deceptiveness...

 

 

30. HxC FIGUREHEAD (RMX

Robert Inhuman: words, voice, software electronics.

 

 

Robert Inhuman, DxIxY DOESN'T = INFERIOR...

 

D.I.Y. punk is not a stepping stone to legitimate publishing and media. It doesn't need to equal a fucking muddy CDR with spray paint on the bottom that has mp3's that sound like water and the band's name illegibly scribbled on the disc with a sharpie... or a half dried up sharpie. D.I.Y. punk isn't supposed to be a novelty and doesn't have to equal BRAINDEAD.

 

 

31. GOT YA BACK

Ryan Faris: hardware electronics.

Robert Inhuman: words, voice.

 

love changes, a thug changes, and best friends become strangers

turned your back - stabbed in the back - got your back

but you're best to watch your front - who's gonna kick you in the guts

trust versus luck - when I had your back why'd you let me get fucked?

 

 

Robert Inhuman, IN RESPONSE TO VARIOUS ANONYMOUS THREATS...

 

The next time you want to write to me or call me on the phone with any kind of anonymous threats, I'm challenging you to ask yourself: "Why do I have so much free time to make attempts to intimidate someone I will probably never take the initiative to meet in real life?" Ask yourself: "Do I really hate this person or their ideas so much, or am I simply scapegoating them out of an unrelated hate for my own circumstances, and choices possibly, that have allotted me so much free time with so little constructive drive that I resort to searching for scraps of information to base anonymous threats around?"

 

Do I scare you that much that you need to dedicate so many moments convincing yourself and your peers that Realicide has no value or potency? I've said it before and I'm saying it again - I want very much to have friends, but I'm not afraid to be your enemy if that's how you're insisting things be.

 

 

32. NO PHONE

Ryan Faris: hardware electronics.

Robert Inhuman: words, voice.

 

no phone - no friend - no nothing - nothing to do

no phone - nobody - no nothing

I got nothing to think of - nothing to do

 

drown here in the basement - at least I can say I got a room

ain't got no windows - and ain't got nothing fucking at all to do

 

 

Robert Inhuman, NO TIME LEFT

 

No time left for myself – but what did I ever spend it on anyway? Like anybody who’s ever made me feel kinetic or enabled, I wonder if you’re alive tonight, no matter how much I dread the pressure of just knowing you ever were, I still wonder if you’re alive tonight. Though I feel strong, and with a grip on some kind of purpose, I haven’t forgotten the wrenching deserts I’ve been alone in before, knowing I could return and that at any greater depth than the last I could die all the way, but this doesn’t phase me or intimidate me, it just means try to hang on, try to make my minutes count for more, brief hours of sunlight and clear-mindedness, take this and use it now before I test my luck again, I can’t afford to if I’ll find a worth of much at all. Death anxiety – even in moments of revelation and conviction. Death coexistence – Death acceptance, accompanying my difficult acceptance of life. My deadline to drop out of an automatic guilt and role in mechanical torture, I have to take these steps. To any of you who have helped me to take these steps, in anxious celebration I just wonder if you’re alive tonight. There’s no time left for myself, and it feels like I’m doing something right. There’s no time left to wonder, I’ve gotta be happy with whatever I’ve had.

 

 

33. TRUTHFULLY UNABLE TO KNOW

Ryan Faris: hardware electronics.

Robert Inhuman: words, voice.

 

words bucking at me in such a way that stamps out every tear welled up in my body

(to relate to) wrenched out a bath of tears until dry (to know the words another may use)

all I say is an advertisement for a secret or alien pain - to relate to a vague deja vu

but still alien and ultimately desolate (but alien, unknown, and truthfully alone after all that)

 

 

Jim Swill, ON ANARCHO SEXUALITY...

 

It may be a personal stigma, but sexuality is one of the most crucial elements to preserving a healthy mind state, ESPECIALLY in the world of today. More often than not I find myself faced with a very common dilemma over the sacredness and / or importance of sex with members of counter-cultural alliances. Over the years of stumbling through numerous anarcho-based zines and chapbooks, there is a common approach to sex that I cannot relate to on any level.

 

In “punk” culture, monogamy is discarded fairly often, as well as any other idea considered an archaic family value. Within such chapbooks, sexuality is discussed as almost completely animal pleasure. Though it makes sure to use buzz words such as “care” and “affection”, and then scare you off of your own mind track with words like “rape”, the common approach is sex doesn’t matter who it’s with, as long as you’re comfortable. As if we live in some sort of hamster cage, and asking someone to have sex with you is as easy as saying "pass the salt". This is a prime example of the phrase “throwing the baby out with the bath water”. By which I am inferring in counter-culture communities we often discard some elements of society for the sake of discarding social structure; for the sake of rebellion when it’s not necessary and personally detrimental. We are social creatures, we are designed to desire mates, not just orgies and rapid fire genital-smashing. It’s thrown off as if sex is simply an animalistic function necessary for release, but it is not based completely on the act of thrust / grind / orgasm, it’s a need for personal connection with another human being on an intimate level. In fact it appears to me when we distance ourselves from intimacy to the level of promiscuous sex partners for the sake of sex, we are falling more in line with the constrains of mass media and the “porno anti-reality”.

 

We live in a time where people are isolated to neurotic frenzy. If you even so much as ride the bus you’ll find yourself faced with rows of passengers staring into glowing screens. This is not a time to dismiss intimacy and title it an extension of a free love movement. Sexuality is one of our only opportunities in this society to have a sense of open connection that is deeper than a layer of touching flesh. It is in no way more “anarchist” and more “punk” to rattle through a gauntlet of bodies and mediocre orgasms than to pour yourself into another human being and experience an act that can be similar to a trance. Sex is crucial to our stability as mentally healthy people, but sex is also not an element of life to be taken for granted just because partners and “monogamy” are not cool to punk media. Maybe I’m just a different kind of person, but zine after zine telling me I should just fuck whoever is cool with it makes me pretty depressed. I know that I am an extremely sexual person, I desire sex to a degree that makes me quiver with anticipation, but I also know how much better sex is with someone who is REALLY worth it. We’ve all had our one night encounters of bland feel ups and fast motion intercourse. This is not some attribute I’d like to permanently attach to my approach to sexuality; in fact sex along those lines makes me feel like dry heaving. There’s nothing worse to me sexually than dismissing the most important part which is the fucking passion! By degrading our sexuality, we’re erasing a crucial part of human connection! Maybe I’m pickier than some, but when it becomes a chore to get a person to really be intimate and honestly open up parts of themselves they keep reserved in society, or just simply pay attention to you, not your genitals, you know there’s something wrong with the counter-cultural system of things. So keep sex as a major priority in your life, but don’t detach yourself from it.

 

 

34. TASTE OF BLOOD

Ryan Faris: hardware electronics.

Robert Inhuman: words, voice, edits.

 

"A very sadistic..."

your tiny body crushed - taste of blood - taste of blood

and I'm sorry - the perfect - can't touch hands like this

"...and bad species."

 

 

Robert Inhuman, ANTI-NATURAL SPECIES (from an email conversation in 2008)

 

Hate is a one way ticket to misery and desolation. These kinds of songs are not about hate so much as disappointment and humility. The reason humanity is critisized harshly is because our species is the root of every problem that opposes the natural world, or more specifically a world where sentient life does not have the temptation to manipulate its environment for a show of power, this is what sets humans apart from all other animal life. Our "progress" is only a mounting viral stranglehold on a world that would've been extremely balanced and self-sustaining in our absence. One of our root terminal flaws is narcissism, in which we are unable to be self-critical in the ways that can prevent these problems from getting so massive. Even our solutions are tainted with the same irresponsible and destructive tendencies. We are inherently imperial. That's my perspective at least, and I'm not alone in it.

 

I don't think I have a very extensive vocabulary, but this is a topic I've thought about quite a bit since my mid-teens, so I know pretty much what I want to say about it. The human species biologically is natural, but our instincts are to manipulate, almost always to the point of abuse, the world around us. How else could I describe a "civilized" world that literally wraps its Earth in cement and metal, choking it under a discipline for the sake of making life more convenient for only 1 species?

 

The problem with human happiness is that OUR happiness is at the expense of EVERYTHING else, regardless of longterm effects, regardless of an increase of suffering of certain species while our level of happiness increases. The challenge in most forms of constructive anarchism and green life philosophy seems to be REDEFINING what it means to be happy. I can make happiness mean being more in balance with the world that hosts me, instead of basing happiness on what I can OWN or what I can abuse at my every whim.

 

Capitalists and government representatives and religious fundamentalists are not the problem, everybody contributes to this problem, everybody we hate and love, you and me. And the tricky part is since the problem is at its base our inherent perspective on ourselves and our world, the solutions concocted by this same perspective are going to be flawed. That's why even in humanity's solutions it invents for itself, there is vanity and irresponsibility, it's not going to ultimately re-balance the world, it will at best just make us feel good about ourselves for a while.

 

My solution, what I choose for myself, and informed sober choice is one of the primary things my band is supposed to be about, is to try and look beyond my own wants and impulses, in favor of compassion and self-sacrifice even if it inconveniences me or does not make me feel the best always. That is the idea of being "inhuman", not in the sense of being brutal or heartless, but in the sense of trying to be something besides human, in my motives at least. It is a goal I have, a really difficult goal. Then, springing from this in myself, I hope to influence the people I encounter by example. That's what people like Gandhi were going for, and it seems like a pretty decent way to work with the circumstances we've been offered.

 

 

35. DESPERATELY RETRO

Jim Swill: words, voice.

Steven Cano: hardware electronics.

Robert Inhuman: edits.

 

In the dance club I saw wolves bear teeth. Drunken and rapist.

All 1970's retro overload, fashion overtones that alienate me. Womens' hands touch you all over.

Every step you take a hand runs down your body somewhere. Anonymous Aryan orgy.

Trying so hard; everyone forcing forcing forcing; painfully squeezing the conformity heart;

clenching out all its blood over their child minds; sexual and blunt.

A girl says "spread the news, I’ll spread the legs." Camera phones and I-pods galore.

Washing over flesh with bleach and hard cleansers.

Taking sandpaper to scrotums and high-pressure hoses to vaginas;

all waxed and ready for semi-child pornographic fantasies; hipster slick grime.

But course it's unspoken; nobody dressed so clean could be so polluted right?

Cigarettes held, big smiles whine, phones out and on, texting while gabbing lies.

A few lies hear and there and throw down.

Guts swoll with liquor. Dicks soft and flaccid. Pussies dry and resistant.

But thru the drunk haze it remains the aim held out over the edge

waiting to choke on oily ejaculates and colognes 30 years down the line.

Shotgun suicide in midlife crisis. Youth wasted on desperation.

Empty and brightly lit. Aryan orgy hipster fucks.

 

"There are very many reasons why most people prefer to live in the age just behind them. To live right on the shooting line, right on the frontier of change and so on is terrifying." (Professor Marshall McLuhan)

 

 

Robert Inhuman, ANOTHER GAME I WON'T PLAY...

 

I have never mailed out a Realicide record to anyone for them to write a review in a magazine or webzine. I almost never read reviews unless something happens to cross my path while I am really bored. (And fuck me for ever being bored anyway!) I don't ask for reviews, or read them, because I do not value them for the most part. Even though I am trying to survive off a small publications label, I don't have time or energy to keep up with the continuous "who's who" tide of competitive media, especially online where this tsunami of parasitic swill would threaten to engulf my mere 24 hours a day entirely.

 

And I'm very sure that the word IS "parasitic". The reviewers in the press sculpt their own identities only from the mangled scraps of those of the artists they desiccate in their written pseudo-propagandas. Without us as fodder they cannot exist. And even in the case of positive reviews, we are their crutch, and it doesn't make the situation seem more pleasant when they are used as our's in return! I don't want to be known fondly because of what someone wrote in a newspaper or on a blog. Let my actual life and public works speak for themselves. Let me work with distributors who can get the direct information into peoples' hands, instead of just hearsay and speculation that encourages or discourages people to spend their money on the material.

 

Something that I think confuses me the most, when I read something written about a Realicide record, is that since I am largely unfamiliar with these magazines I do not have any associations to the names tagged on, "...by Bobby Such-and-such" etc. Why am I supposed to follow the advice of someone whose credentials and agenda are a complete mystery to me? These reviews are only of use to people who are record COLLECTORS, who can follow along with a language and value system entirely dependent on name-dropping and obscure pseudo-cultural references, and what use is that in the big scheme of it all?

 

My refusal to cooperate (AKA suck-up) to the press means the road somewhat less traveled in my means of selling the records my label puts forth. Most of these sales happen on tour, through face-to-face encounters with as many kids who show interest in Realicide as possible. This directness is something I wouldn't trade for the world (well, unless the world starts to be a lot cooler) and is one of the things that still motivates me when I am feeling worn down by a nomadic and sometimes unstable life. To a fair degree, I am able to know exactly who the records are reaching, and more than that I am able to directly THANK the people who are supporting the project, keeping me alive and active! These people, whether they are at all similar to myself or not, deserve my gratitude. Just because I've chosen to spend all my time, energy, and money making and doing these things does not equate anyone owing me anything. Any attitude that contradicts that important point is one I do not want to be affiliated with. So let the press front like they can "make" or "break" and project like this.

 

They might have the leverage to eclipse an artist's credibility in the minds of collectors and those living vicariously, but to OUR demographic they have no potency and are no threat.

 

 

36. PROVE ME WRONG

Ryan Faris: hardware electronics.

Robert Inhuman: words, voice, edits.

 

(talking about that automatic ACCIDENTAL NIHILISM...)

 

no shit-talking! no condescending! don't talk down to me!

I was never like you! you weren't like me!

we're nothing like you - we don't want the shit you want or do - no misrepresentation

envious and boring fuckers - envious and boring

I was never like you - you weren’t like me

glory - aimless glory for what - fuck you - count me out

what do you believe in - you don't have shit to show

what do you believe in - nothing - a default - a defense - lazy old fuckers

born brats, born fucking old - can't keep up so you gotta talk shit

fuck you - I quit - I can move on - can you?

what else do you have - nothing - a default - a defense - absolutely nothing

you can't keep up - you're dead to me - rotting in the dullest shit in Cincinnati!!!

 

hobbies can fucking suck it and sound for sound's sake fucking sucks too

don't you waste my time - tell me tell me tell me what - all you say or do is shit! 

why are you here in my fucking face - careful to keep every word you say vague

you're scared I'll find out you're still figuring shit out

who the fuck isn't if they ain't it's a lie yeah - all you say or do is shit!

and expect me to automatically put up with it

tell me tell me tell me what you're doing to lift a single life up

vague - scared - desperate - I won't stand by this!

 

 

Robert Inhuman, about "Prove Me Wrong"

 

This is definitely too much of a juvenile "fuck you" with little explanation to accompany it, but nevertheless it is my informal resignation letter to the noise scene a couple years ago. I had tried to be involved in an organization of artists somewhat older than myself, representing a minority interest in experimental music in the city I grew up in. I became frustrated with the noise scene's seemingly intentional alienation of the public, combined with their complaints that this same public wouldn't give their artistic interests a chance. It seemed self-defeating and a really pathetic dead end. It was something that fronted as an alternative communication, but seemed to intentionally fail at communicating on almost every level, even through things as basic as offering a welcoming atmosphere and tone of voice towards new faces at shows. The thing that compounded my inability to stay aligned with this organization was that the older members assumed that my aims were the same as their own, and that they were similar to me when they were younger. But I disagreed, because I was not interested in being involved in Anti-art  just as an excuse to say that I'm misunderstood, or an excuse to be angry at a world that has different values than me. I don't want to conform to a majority aesthetic or value system, but I want to represent a minority with a good attitude, not some hidden "I used to get bullied at school" agenda, and not destroy the few communicative devices that seem to actually work within an underground scene. So, if you see what I'm saying, this is not about discrediting noise music or the communities that keep it going, it's honestly about refusing to accept the identity of a vengeful passive-aggressive nerd.

 

 

37. LOS ANGELES

Ryan Faris: hardware electronics.

Robert Inhuman: words, voice, edits.

 

“…right… but nothing seems to change… sit around waiting for a holiday…

I’ve got a mess I can’t reject inside of me…” (Babyland 15 July 2006, at The Smell)

 

say it easy but you're so far away - I have no idea when I’ll be back

my only chance, my only idea, out of reach, of all things by physical distance

the power to dissolve my interest (in the past)

I hope the distance can force me to find a way, I gotta get out, I gotta get back...

 

I'm not looking for handouts - I know I'm too old to beg

though I ain't got much to eat - but still not sucking down drugs

 

did I fuck up my chance with you cos I'm not drunk every night

I did everything I said I'd do but the shit you said to me didn't last 

I don't give a fuck what I must taste like

when you got who knows what up your nose

and really fucking fast change your plan for tomorrow 

as long as you're warm it don't mean shit if I'm cold

 

punch me in my chipped teeth - I feel good as fuck tonight

got a destination and a dare to set shit right 

you know I thought I'd be dead - I remember when I thought I was

but I got a reason and a energy straight ahead

gonna be homeless but I got no pain just cos 

I'm coming to LA and I'm gonna see you there alright

my body is a bullet no matter what the fuck I look like

got a destination and the heart to hate where I've been

I'm coming to LA and I don't care what happens

I don't care what happens...

 

 

Robert Inhuman, about "Los Angeles"

 

The first segment of this song was written in the summer of 2006, after my first substantial tour to Los Angeles. The sound behind this spoken intro is a live recording of Babyland from the show we did with them; Realicide's first visit to The Smell. I had never heard of Babyland before, but the show was really memorable and they gave us all their CDs. Their album "The Finger" became somewhat of a temporary soundtrack to my life falling terribly apart as soon as I got "home" from that tour, meanwhile desperately trying to stay in touch with the friends I'd met out in the LA area. This gradually led to a lot of experiences that would periodically build up and tear down my romanticized attitude about being out there, far away from where I was previously from.

 

 

38. WANT RUNS THIN

Ryan Faris: hardware electronics.

Robert Inhuman: words, voice, edits.

 

(imagine the cuts every night)

"I wanted to live a different life..."

 

want runs so thin - finite in every way

I feel drained - I feel close to dead - whatever that means

 

"A different life that wasn't available to me in the image I was born."

 

 

Robert Inhuman, ABOUT THE REALICIDE "HARDCORE FIST"...

 

The Realicide Youth Records "logo", the fist pointed at the viewer, has a very specific origin. It is taken from a photo after our show in Cincinnati, 19 July 2003, which was basically the first Realicide hardcore show realized. This summer followed a year of gradually deciding to focus on influences of very harsh gabber, grindcore, and noise instead of just early industrial and synth punk, which were our primary influences when we formed the band in 2002. On this record's cover we've got a rare element for Realicide imagery: color. This time you can see that the fist is in fact covered in blood, not just an effect of a crappy black & white xerox. It's my fist after the dawn of Realicide as a contemporary hardcore band, complete with lacerations between early knuckle and a severed tendon on my left middle finger. The story about the punching glass is old news, and if you're unfamiliar with what I'm talking about just write to me and I'll show you my thesis essay from 2004 which goes into detail about that experience. This can also make slightly more clear some of the motifs lyrically and otherwise, within Realicide during certain periods of time.

 

When I punched through that first piece a few years ago, it changed the course of my art and music and overall attitude about daily life and my own existence. It was something I obsessed over for quite a while afterwards; years in fact. I think for me personally at least, that one action was so profound and the embodiment of everything my life had led me to up to that point, it was simultaneously beautiful and frightening, all my loves and agonies and everything in between summoned in an overwhelming array of memories compiled to equal "my life". 

 

So I decided to design the cover art for this record as the fist in its center, surrounded by smashed panels of glass. Like a ritual tribute to the violent baptism of Realicide (just without the trip to the Emergency Room this time around) into contemporary hardcore, the sharp splinters and panels are filled photos representing memories from through the time "Resisting The Viral Self" was created, starting around November 2007. The small images of blood each have graff arrows going upward, another tribute as the summer of 2003 was the advent of my interest in bombing and tagging, which saved my ability to draw after it was stolen away by going to an art college. The arrows also are in remembrance of the high I felt when I confronted my body as a fragile shell, or cage even, of the real "me".

 

The Realicide hardcore fist is meant to be a symbol of power and of challenge. Sometimes people seem to think that since our music is abrasive and we use words like "fight" or use cartoon images of violence, that we must want to start fights with people. But the only fighting we have any interest in is of a spiritual and cultural nature. Physical violence and abuse is of no appeal and is not meant to be endorsed by this band. A fist is a metaphor and a threat to something besides a person's body, which we think of as essentially just a fleeting shell of what is the real person inside it.

 

 

39. YOU MADE YOUR CHOICE

Ryan Faris: hardware electronics.

Robert Inhuman: words, voice.

 

SIX ONE FOUR!

stop fucking calling me - in the middle of the night

I told you I wish you were dead - stay the fuck out of my life

and your memory of me will be the knife turning in your guts forever

 

I don't want to know you're alive - you'll never be a friend of mine

you crossed a fucking line - deranged daydream of murdering you

but I know I'll still fucking dream about you tonight

(my enemy, my devil inside my bitter crippled head)

 

 

40. KILL THE SOUNDMAN

Ryan Faris: hardware electronics.

Robert Inhuman: words, voice.

 

I am about to kill the sound man

'don't touch that dial we'll be right back after this'

what the fuck are we paying you for?!

so again you wanna rob me - try robbing your own fucking body from the hospital

 

 

Robert Inhuman, about "Kill The Soundman"

 

The idea here is kind of a running joke with Realicide. We almost always have terrible problems working with soundguys at venues, leading to the preference of bringing our own PA gear (as much as we can afford during any given time and will fit in a car) instead. The soundcheck always goes fine, but during the show they always turn us down. There have been a few occasions in which nothing is coming out of the venue's system whatsoever, just our own beat up overblown cabs. If the sound being ruined isn't bad enough, these guys are often being paid a flat rate while we are paid whatever is left over from the admissions money. So I'm talking about situations in which we're paying a guy the money that would go towards our travel costs, against our will, to fuck up the sound or not even allow us to run through the equipment he's being paid to operate. Fucking idiotic every time; I don't care if they have training or not! And what is up with places that have these huge raver sound systems but can't even get a fucking vocal mic to turn on? When we were traveling with our friend BIRTH, whose setup is one loop pedal and a vocal mic, and the MIX wasn't coming out right, you've gotta wonder how it can go wrong! It's gotta be either lazy, inept, or malicious, don't you think?

 

 

41. HYPOTHETICAL POPULARITY

Ryan Faris: hardware electronics.

Robert Inhuman: words, voice.

 

Somebody told me if you have enough "friends", on Myspace I mean, you can get signed with a fucking record label. Automatically.

 

 

Robert Inhuman, THE LOWEST COMMON DENOMINATOR

 

I can't deal with people who limit their research or knowledge of anything to the first few seconds of something they've found on Myspace or Youtube. You can argue whatever the fuck you want about this, but I am really firm and ultimately disappointed in this statement and the world it pertains to. When someone approaches me on tour and says shit about "I follow everything you've done, everything you've said and been part of" - I usually never want to talk to or even see that person again. Because in these years, what they mean is that they've investigated everything that came up in their google search, or often even much less than that. They actually mean they've seen the first few seconds of a couple Youtube videos and a couple seconds of a watery lo-fi mp3 on an opiate-like networking site completely controlled by mainstream "news" companies and NOT the band. They've researched the easiest, most convenient, LOWEST COMMON DENOMINATOR of information available in the current popular world. Resorting to a DEFAULT method, and then these people think they're ready to talk to, or often combatively criticize Realicide and its history. Even the laughable "punks" and "radicals" surprise me with this lazy, pigeon-holing shit. It makes me feel a little more alone in the world, and my stance on humanity and its deadly short-comings grows morbidly in conviction.

 

These years, everybody is suddenly an (anonymous, self-proclaimed) expert - cos it's true, with online media everybody basically does have access to all information in some way or another. We have access, but don't really make use of it. We grab at paraphrases, summaries, re-caps, EDITS, vulnerable fiendishly to total misinformation, under a delusion that because we have ACCESS to real information we are automatically informed and knowledgeable - fucking high school diploma when you can't even read, you fucking slug... So if that is how you "learn" about shit, and you never dig deeper or go to more direct sources, if you rely solely on hearsay, on rumor, on statistics, on popular vote... Don't talk to me about Realicide. Don't talk to me at all, cos it's not about choosing the easy path.

 

I come from a place that showed me no compassion or opportunity, but I rise out of that knowing that its opposite is what I need to be. Pay attention - fucking slugs I meet via Myspace and Youtube - these sites are supposed to be tools, but it's like you'd just set a hammer on the floor next to a box of nails, step back saying "There - work's all done - time for bed." Enemy species. But none of you will even read this unless I type it out and put it on a blog with a cynically abbreviated title...

 

 

42. I WILL PUNCH YOU IN THE FACE!

Robert Inhuman: software electronics, edits.

 

"The corporations had realized that it was in their interest to encourage people to feel that they were unique individuals and then offer them ways to express that 'individuality'. A world in which people felt they were rebelling against conformity was NOT A THREAT TO BUSINESS."

 

"I will punch you in the face!"

 

 

Robert Inhuman, ABOUT HUMOR...

 

About humor - humor is a great tool. It can really save lives and it does every day, I watch it happen, even in me after all! I love humor, but like anything, it is able to be abused and that is what turns it from a constructive tool into an OPIATE, which can make people very sedate and passive. Humor should be empowering and a way to make people comfortable enough to face things that are otherwise too intimidating, as many important things are. It is the abuse of humor that I can't stand, and it is so popular, on par with the abuse of drugs and such. Just like my perspective on straight edge, I do not care about friends using substances, it's just the abuse of those substances that is the concern. So my take on humor is about balance and treating it carefully like you would anything more stern or more emotional, you know?

 

 

43. BRICKWALL HARDCORE (spoken)

Robert Inhuman: word, voice, edits.

Steven Cano: hardware electronics.

 

"I wanted to live a different life that wasn't available to me in the image I was born..."

 

microphone bruises - I feel like I'm drowning so I count each minute

deadline - time's up - black exit - let's go

I can't take this world no more - I never liked games and I feel it swallowing me

tear at digest me every minute - electronic cage

each word and touch pierces my clothing and skin

 

companionship is the gun at the back of my head

companionship is a bleeding cut on my body while I give her head

companionship is the taperecorded glass breaking and marrying my skin

I can't stand being alone with my thoughts but when I'm with you I know I'm just wasting them

 

every time stuck in a pit - thinking I wish this was REAL CIDE

then immediately thinking I wish Realicide was something more - something better

didn't you hear me gasping? did you wonder what the fuck I'm trying to breathe in!!!

scraping and clutching like I'm gonna radiate an exit - like I'd be a doorway 

lord look at me drowning in my thoughts - my brickwall hardcore

look at me as that junkie for more or that shell starved dry or

that demented fiend - forgot what I was hoping for

 

every day is all night - even when I'm sleeping, caked in the friction of my mind

I dreamed of a kid stabbing another kid like an assassin

am I an assassin or did I just get stabbed?

 

plague in my head - terminal - echoing continuously

crippled decisions drunk on isolation

plague dragging my legs every step I try and make

invading my guts with every breath I try and take 

repossessed - replaced - renamed - erased

I found out anything can be erased

and so I'm scanning for betrayal on my best friend's face 

you'd bite my face when I lean to kiss you...

 

 

Robert Inhuman, about "Brickwall Hardcore"

 

This is a spoken take of the song from the unfinished "The Shit Punx Hate" album of 2007. I wrote it right after 2006 ended, in that winter, and it represents the aspects of Realicide driven by wrenching social anxieties and fears concerning loyalty, identity, and worth. The somewhat vaporous idea is thinking of hardcore as a fistfight and yelling match with a solid brick wall. Life can feel that brutal and futile, right? This piece is about a feeling of being rightfully paranoid and defeated, but still with a vehement inertia that suggests hope for a more stable existence if focus can be disciplined better somehow. It's definitely a "poem" that reflects how I feel before I've assigned myself any specific ambitions or purpose as an artist and human being.

 

 

44. I WANTED TO FEEL ALIVE (Jim Swill improvised session 2007) 

Jim Swill: words, voice.

Mavis Concave: Korg ES-1 loop.

Robert Inhuman: background voice, edits.

 

...and they'd say, if they could ask you,

"Did you really wanna die?" Fuck no, I wanted to feel alive!

They’d say "Did you really wanna die?"

Fuck no - I wanted to feel alive... Just a slow agonizing DEATH.

 

Comatose. Unaware. Trapped inside your body!

Trapped in side the hospital! Trapped inside those people who will never know you!

To die in a place so alien to me! I just can’t understand - so many dead on a sterile bed.

And when you die they’ll just clean it off and let another person die in the same bed.

Tied up to machines... I just wanted to feel alive...

So many people... so many people will say that it’s crazy...

It’s just something we can all relate to.

Did you really wanna die? Fuck no, I just wanted to FEEL ALIVE!

I just wanted to HAVE CONTROL! I just wanted to take hold of SOMETHING!

Everything forced upon us. Everything forced into you.

The medicine... All that medicine that never does shit!

And though they’d try to call you crazy. I’m sure they’d call it crazy.

I’m sure they’d always call it crazy. It's jus something I can feel as well

But there must’ve been a better way out of this...

Just waiting, just waiting, waiting, waiting wondering if you’ll die!

Wondering if you want to! Wondering if you have to! Wondering if its better!

Will it be better somewhere else?  Wherever that might be...

Just another grave that no one comes to visit.

Just another name that everyone forgets.  

Just another moment that everyone regrets they had to share! Well no one cares.

And I stood there in that line.

I wondered if their tears were real, or if they just felt fear for their own selfish selves?

You wonder if anyone would care... 

Just another name, another name that I didn’t choose!

On my grave that I didn’t want! Buried in the ground...

Taking up more space than I did when I was alive...

Dying as a lie; a testimony to all this bullshit!

Just another pile. Another fiend for worth.

Just another glorification of just my body... I’m not that body!!! You’re not that body!!!

And I stood there in that line. I watched them all cry.

And then I watched them laugh an hour later as before.

Didn’t really feel like anything to them... Does it really feel like anything to anyone?

And I think of all the kids that I’ve heard doing the same thing in the same neighborhood

and no one gives a shit and no one does a shit about it - no one gives a shit about them!

Just another kid. Just another case.

Just another number. Another bad memory they have to erase

A product of suburbia. A product of dementia.

A product of the same old shit. A product of repetition...

You crashed into that window! And you gave them a taste of what they fear!

And I know they call it crazy! And I know they’d call us crazy!

But anyone can relate! Deep down inside! Everything they try to hide! Exposed... 

Everyone’s so fragile. And everyone’s afraid.

Everyone thinks out there that everyone’s got it made.

But all those kids, just suffering inside.

Sleeping on their comfortable beds. Just living out a lie!

That their parents gave to them. That their country gave to them

Aren’t they happy aren’t they happy aren’t they happy? No they’re fucking not!

Because they lack anything real! Anything that’s real! And they know it!!!

Sterile - sterile just like that hospital!

 

Another card house dealt. Another thing they’ve built.

Another card house built.  For those people. For those graves.

For those walking graves! Those living graves!

 

 

Robert Inhuman, about Swill's "Feel Alive" session...

 

This is an alternate improvised version of the "I Wanted To Feel Alive" track I recorded for the unfinished Realicide album in 2007. You can subtly hear my voice behind Swill's throughout the piece.

 

"I Wanted To Feel Alive" is a song we developed gradually after the death of a kid in the suburbs of Cincinnati, early 2005. It was a suicide that they blamed partly on a reaction to some kind of anti-depressant medication his parents had him on; a popular way of dealing with kids' problems in the neighborhood he lived in. You know on TV commercials for anti-depressants, at the end when they say things like "tell your doctor if you have escalating thoughts of suicide"? Harold is only one of a mass grave of kids who ended up the way he did. We all really took the situation to heart, not because we were close with him, but just cos we have a dedicated interest in trying to help kids out of the morbid scenarios they've been born into. I think Swill had a slightly more "close to home" reaction because he had lived out in that same suburb basically. We met Swill out there when he was about 15, and I'm not exactly sure would've happened to him or us is he hadn't joined up with us and simultaneously broken away from the environment that he'd initially been offered by that suburban hell.

 

In the background I've inserted a few clips from drug advertisements; mainly just promises of being able to conquer depression and all the side effects that are very much the gamble of the medication, including the risk of suicide. Toward the end, a medley of reports about fatal school shootings and the medications the shooters were taking fades in from Fox News, ending of course with a summary of the Columbine shootings. Lyrically, this track is completely improvised, separate in lyrics from the other more composed version of the song for "The Shit Punx Hate" album. I think it's pretty clear in his tone what's going on. It's a very "That could've been me." tone...

 

 

45. BREAD & CIRCUS

Jim Swill: words, voice.

Steven Cano: hardware electronics.

Robert Inhuman: edits.

 

Movies are only made of rockstars; of people with troubles to a certain degree.

We watch the screen and think 'why not me? why not me?'

Because my body is decaying faster and I'm running out of time;

each precious second documented line by tiny line.

I can see now I'm just as much as a poet as the marine or the taco bell,

as a painter or a police officer, I just write it down.

Art communities fade worthlessly; arrogant with ignorance; acceptance of abstractions;

exaggerations of the simplest ideas; confused to mislead you believing there's actions.

In this entropy we call a scene. In this coffin we call a carnival.

Bread and circus, bread and circus,  in the end its empty hungry, worthless.

Birthless cultures simply built from nineteen-anything retro chum.

Waiting our turn in line after line for a place in the flashbulb sun...

 

 

A brief note on commercialized individuality and the symbolic representation of human experience through this practice. – by Jim Swill

 

Anti-social desires are satiated by symbolic representation. When there is hostility against our government we are given violent programs: video games, cinema, and music. In Roman times tactics such as “bread and circus”, as well as gladiator fights, soothed social unrest and political involvement, turning a potentially uproarious and participatory society into docile observers of the spectacle. 

 

New Age marketing is moving towards minimalism. From cell phones, to cars, to Ipods and computers, even furnishings are now embraced into the vein of minimalist artwork. It comes as no surprise in a time of such rapid information trade and over-exposure. It appears to me that for well over a solid decade the idea of consumerism has gradually developed lingering negative attributes. Americans’ awareness of consumption is also more glaring in a time of such economic decline. Spending down, worldly possessions losing value to the necessities, and community beginning to bud, nearly revitalized. What better way to postpone corporate abandon than to attribute a sense of individuality as well as literal physical space to products? Insecure times would naturally induce community bonding, but it has now become diluted.

 

Security is now measured in privacy, individuality, idolatry, conformity in very subversive manners. Global village has manifested in internet social networks: information free to roam, people’s voices heard for the first time openly and searchable. The symbol of community replaces community, TV outdated, voluntary subjugation to advertisements within the confines of your digital personal area. At this point in time even preteen generations are accustomed to the idea of individuality. This idea of individuality is a weapon. Community is how people hold power. A symbol / idol of community replacing human interaction are in some sense of the phrase “mind control”. Whether it is deliberate or not, this system is just one of many human kamikaze missions our commercial age has embarked upon. More so with global village symbolism is the possessions. Less material is simply now a representation of transient freedom to my generation. But true knowledge is never obtained through such procedures. True knowledge can never be truly understood in the sense of the word when the actual experience variable of the life is removed. The catalogue of experience, the symbol of experience, in endless data and information. Information is not knowledge.

 

I believe that this wave of information is in turn being turned into over saturation which inevitably leads to somewhat of an overload, resulting in a state of being unsure and undecided about every last facet of existence. This leads to a hypothetical mind state, and instead of actually consciously advancing, we deny all things of conviction. We become addicted to sarcasm out of fear, which breeds cynicism, which breeds hatred, anger, resentment, jealousy, and then finally the ever fleeting idea of community is destroyed out of sheer fear of the human experience, the human interaction. The symbol of experience, the symbol of life, will never compensate for the basic skills lost in our dependency to information trade that is channeled through commercial agencies. Commercial agencies are autonomous entities, they are not human, they are the quintessential example of human error. A modern day Tower of Babble, a detached dictatorship, so far out of touch with human life that it must create a false world in order to survive. This digital world will never be the real world in which our instincts long for, in which our life compels us to understand. We must be there for one another; these forces will never be there for a real relation. 

 

 

46. DECONSTRUCTION PULSE

Evolve: words, voice, tapes, hardware electronics.

Steven Cano: hardware electronics.

Robert Inhuman: edits.

 

"...we livin' in comfort yeah but what is the cost? And we livin' in vanity yeah we live in a box. And we recycle our loss; we gain but it's loss... Loss... really it's loss..." - Evolve

 

"All media are extensions of some human faculty, mental or physical. The wheel is an extension of the foot; the book is an extension of the eye; clothing is an extension of the skin; electric circuitry is an extension of the central nervous system. The extension of any one sense displaces the other senses and alters the way we think, the way we see the world, and ourselves. When these changes are made, men change. Literate culture is visual and detached. It created the civilized man; the de-tribalized man; the man who is not involved. And the effect of the electric revolution is to create once more an involvement that is total." (Professor Marshall McLuhan)

 

"...and fear is their weapon. Fear is the control factor's greatest weapon. And love destroys them. Love we force it in destroys them. And love is more powerful than guns and bombs. And love is more powerful than guns and bombs. And love is more powerful than guns and bombs. And love is more powerful than guns and bombs..." - Evolve

 

"In other words taking ownership of who you are... and how you act... and how you feel... your whole being in the world... in other words giving you AUTONOMY."

"It was society that made these drives dangerous by repressing and distorting them."

"It created the civilized man; the de-tribalized man; the man who is not involved."

 

 

THE FUNCTION OF MEDIA, by Split Horizon 2009


Internet vs. hard copy, analog vs. digital, 'physical' or 'virtual’, my media or your media - it's an argument with one basic message: "My way of communicating is best." No matter how much energy is funneled into this tired debate it still leaves a curious, empty feeling. Subtle but absolutely essential, message falls by the wayside as rivals fight bitterly over what type of images and sound our future can be built out of. This classic, and even anachronistic, struggle leads to bounded lists of 'acceptable' and 'unacceptable' formats, instruments, and practices, while real discourse fails to materialize. The theory of media is a story of media about media, a discussion that today has become the worst kind of abstraction: an empty one. Perhaps it is time to take a step back, could something be missing? Media is humankind's platform for abstraction but it's lessons are outside of, not within, its dreams and nightmares. The role of media is found not in it's production but in its application; the message is not the medium, but how the medium is used.


Mediate is what media does; by definition it is a metaphor of reality, not reality itself. Still, mediation does not exist to abstract away our messages, but rather to give us an ever increasing level of insight into what that message is. There is no intrinsic action, no immovable statement inherent in any medium. Any media provides us with a scope: a range of things that might be said and a range of ways to say them. Television can expand our vision or manipulate our minds; the web can augment our education or encourage our addictions. Sometimes a new medium can give us ways to say things that couldn't be said before; the same is true of an old medium used in a new way. Nevertheless, what we choose to say is most important.


When we critique media, we should discuss its messages. We should recognize the different ways a format can be leveraged, and identify this use as part of its message. It is common to blame 'television' for various societal ills and situations, but the responsibility actually lies with the creators of television programming. When we discuss the pros and cons of our global information web, we must also remember that the difference between a vast porn popularity contest and a visionary, unrestricted digital library lies with the people who use this technology. The question is one of responsibility and thoughtful practice, not one of technological innovation vs. reactionary atavism; the realities of what our media is, or has become, rest with one party alone: humans. Unfortunately, an endless argument between old and new media completely clouds this necessary engagement. Often we imagine that something twenty or thirty years older is innately more human than something we are experiencing for the first time. Seriously now, which formats, instruments, and practices are best? The answer can be any of them - if they are leveraged in a useful, interesting, and insightful way. The responsibility for what is communicated, for what is said through any channel, lies not with the channel but with the person who said it. The corollary to this is that defense of a particular modality should never masquerade as an actual message. All tools available to us can be celebrated or debased, but whether we allow their individual abstracting powers to destroy or expand our lives is our choice. We cannot expect these tools to make the decision for us.


Each generation must use its media in ways appropriate to its time. This isn't a cue to celebrate some miraculous solution to all problems nor is it a challenge to the nature of humanity to be resisted at all costs. Rather, the expanding awareness brought through media follows exactly the human experience that has been unfolding for millennia. Some indulge themselves pining for the spirit of the past while others imagine a sci-fi fairy tale future, but life is about grappling with what exists in the moment. Yesterday we grappled with television and telephone, before that we examined both the dominating and freeing vectors of fonts and paper. Today, our moment is postmodern. We grapple with fragmentation, the arrival of advanced tools of media creation, and huge access to information. These features of our current stage in history don't erase our humanity, they simply define it as it exists now.

All media, from cave wall scratchings and oral stories to synthesizers or computers, are tools of abstraction built out of physical substance. By configuring this substance, be it air and ears, paper and ink, or electrons and bits, we externalize our memories and use perception to catalog and break down experience. Does playing an analog synth or hand drum constitute a defense of reality? Does chopping up a digital audio file in a computer constitute a radical statement on the position of mankind? No, they do not. The exploration of media is a valuable phase in development, but it is a stepping stone, not a goal. Context arises from what our discoveries are used to say, from what they accomplish. If the intent is self-superiority, then media participates in the process of domination. If its statement amounts to little more than a gag, it threatens to enhance the practice of careless living. But instead, if media is cooperatively oriented toward freedom and expansive thought, it will support reflective living, human awareness, and simply, and perhaps most importantly, making good decisions. This is the function of media.

 

 

47. LIE

Robert Inhuman: words, voice, edits.

 

decide… decide whether or not to lie

 

 

Robert Inhuman, IS THIS BAND JUST A DEAD END?

 

Is this band a dead end? Does art have any function above amusement and distraction from the bleakness of daily life? Is sociopolitically-driven music completely futile and a useless headache that everyone would be better off without? Does gabber have no reasonable niche in the United States, especially after the 1990's?! These conversations go on and on, and though from time to time they can make me reconsider the effectiveness of what I've chosen to focus on through music, it always comes back to this: Remember that old Minor Threat song??

 

"AT LEAST I'M FUCKING TRYING!!! WHAT THE FUCK HAVE YOU DONE?!"

 

How effective has this band been? I struggle with that question at all times. But the reason I continue and try harder / smarter however I can is cos over the years I've gotten a lot of responses and comments from people, especially teens, things like "I started my first band after I found out about you guys" or "I decided to quit drinking cos of what it said in your CD" and once in a while surprisingly "I had been planning to kill myself the past few days but have decided not to after seeing you guys." Stuff like that is what makes me think this can actually have a decent and positive affect on people, even in the smaller ways. So I want to do it better, build a better platform and use it to project a better statement. It can be really hard to keep the band together cos people flip out and quit on / off every year, but it just changes forms and things continue.

 

 

48. RESISTING THE VIRAL SELF CUT-UP, by Evolve with Jim Swill

 

The tape cut-up process is a very versatile medium of magickal expression that can be used to focus one's intent and expand reality beyond the pre-programmed limitations of our societal focus. Resisting The Viral Self cut-up COUNTERACTS CONTROL in two major ways. In the instance of a mangled Pepsi commercial, the cut-up seeks to disfigure brand recognition by deconstructing, destroying, and abstracting their messages. Other elements are interjected as a necessary balance, a conscious message of hope, intended to counteract the spiraling effect of such media desperation. Mass media produces epidemics of schizophrenia, attention deficit disorder, insomnia, and stress manifest cancer. Mass media also produces a general nihilism in the youth. Due to programming, many young people feel nothing anymore is sacred and they curse their mother Earth with littered minds. We go beyond re-run logic canceled program mind, we quit the rat race. Grow a little broccoli next to gun smoke. It's just that easy folks, everything’s a cut-up, and reality is exactly what you make it: so design away. Designers welcome. A necessary growth forever reaching.

 

Cut-ups are a cure for poison programming and mind traps designed to resonate with captured meaning. Beyond these walls the lights are always luminous, not bleak, and the tired speech they force upon us has no meaning. Cut-ups are a form of mental healing. Anyone can exercise this technique so do it NOW. Try to live in a reality outside the box and see what fruit will grow. New seeds need planted. New ideas, new words are needed to speak with.

 

One universal truth that cut-ups reveal to us is that everything is one and the same and because of this all things exist in relation to one another. The multidimensional nature of our existence is fully illuminated when we fully engage in the cut up process and produce results thru directed focus. Directed focus can break down the barriers of routine and even give sight to the blind when necessary. Just because you don't get results the first time doesn't mean you don't keep on trying. Action alone produces results, so stay in motion, keep on doing, and remain receptive. Things are changing even if the change is gradual and slow. The magickal process can resurrect the civilized mind from the decadent burial of modern routines: hospital beds / post office windows / grocery stores, all the same representational focus. Engagement with the light of truth is necessary to dissolve such meanings. Cut-ups could be viewed as a dissolving medium; cosmic compost heaps renewing structures of the mind in solid form. 

           

Resisting The Viral Self cut-up was edited from much larger sections of raw tape cut-up. Once edited it was further layered and condensed in various ways digitally. The tape cuts were divided into one hundred unique sections and then numbered accordingly. We then numbered one hundred squares of paper. We placed the numerical scraps in a drinking glass full of Kombucha residue and allowed them to be charged in the sun. The sun's energy symbolizes the masculine role of creation. The Kombucha residue and the sun charged the numerical scraps with the powers of creation. This was a very necessary balance with our sorcery, because at times the cut-up process can be very destructive with all the force and passion of creative ends.

 

Tape cut ups are a general link to the subconscious mind; they deal with the manipulation of time and space, and the manifestation of our intentions whatever they may be. This manifestation occurs in the timeless time of all time. We must always cut with absolute generational abandon. A time rift could be created, an earth quake, a garden; limitless possibilities exist on the same level playing field. All possible circumstances have invested chance and rarely outside of time loops do the same events occur over and over again. I propose that the corporate time loop represents the strangled mind. It exists as the ultimate barrier now to human progress. The intention of the cut-ups produced and associated with the Evolve project is to obstruct mind control devices and compositionally break down corporate time loops of every size, variety, and shape. They also demonstrate the schizophrenic, chaotic, maddening nature of mass media, advertising, and television. If the television becomes nauseating after listening to large portions of cut up, then they have worked their magick, continue focus. Through discipline and focus the mind can become liberated from control forces in total form.

 

Our primary method of working with these tape cut-ups is to randomly generate videos on Youtube and then cut them up using the pause button on an old tape deck. All cuts are random. The cutter does not watch or listen to the video as they cut. We also use radio. We use Jim Swill's poetry cut-up. We view society’s mind as a battle ground, they wage war against our cultural expression, there's an eject button on the tape deck so we push it. Youtube is essentially utilized as an icon generator. It is a way for us to engage with our collective experience of cultural mass media. We use it to access old commercials and cartoon shows, things that are locked inside our subconscious minds and still to this day instigated as systems of control and manipulation; conforming the mind to corporate modeled expressions and catch phrases. We are attempting to short-circuit and defile media manipulation by investigating our subconscious relationship with their control. Cut-ups are one way we gain liberation from the shackles of corporate normality. Escape from a twisted ozone bleaching white. We can project into a new reality as just another cut that’s made the ultimate expression of a dissected universe, no repeat.

 

Cut-ups can be similar to hypnosis techniques where one enters into a past experience and uses this to change the memory of what actually happened. This can permanently alter the circuitry of the brain. It can be a very useful technique for those who have been molested or exposed to other such monstrosities. I propose that our minds have been molested by corporate identity forms and patterns of deception that need not repeat. Mass media is a monstrosity and exists simply as a reservoir of pain; a gathered suffering that extends to us with hands. Through internet channels like Youtube we are granted access to the history of mass media. We can access both past and current experiences of mass media. Take something like a Burger King commercial, cut it up, and then listen in a new way. Listen over and over again to the cut-ups if necessary. Listen for new sounds that you are creating. When we access new sounds and new ideas, we abstract the recognition of corporate identity and this of course is no small matter. The reason big business spends so much money advertising is that they need to keep their unreality constant. It's a form of primitive hypnotism and never forgets this. Brand recognition is essential to corporate success. If we all instantly forget then they can no longer maintain a system of control. Control so McDonalds sponsors the Olympics, cruelty is just another tax write off, cooperation and unity are laughed at in the boardroom. There are fast food restaurants in hospitals where people are sick with heart disease. The church doors are locked at night. No one trusts each other anymore. All we can hear is canned laughter from the 1950's. Dead men laughing on tape playback. It is for these and many other reasons that we must take back control of our own lives and our sense of community that seems technologically obstructed by CONTROL.

           

The best way to maneuver thru time and space is to interject one's self directly into the medium of now. The past can be used to bind us to illusionary realities of regret which could be likened to the Christian concept hell. We are also manipulated by the promise of a big feast in the future. The idea that we can achieve great rewards by obeying authoritative systems of control can be likened to the christian concept heaven. Heaven and hell are instigated as systems of control within the populist mind. It is best to be outside such conceptual limitations in the timeless time of all time to create THE NEW, THE NOW, THE ONE. DO CUT-UPS. Resurrect the mind from routines of boredom. When we surrender to the now, we make connections with the universe's guidance, and obliterate distractions that would prevent us from accessing our true human potential.

 

Cut-ups are a definite tool used to contact the subconscious mind. They allow us to form new realities and new possibilities through the combination of chance and magick. Cut-ups allow us to access the universal guidance we are all so desperately seeking. Cut-ups can be used for divination. They can be used in the same way as other subconscious processes like the casting of runes, the reading of tarot cards, the I-ching, or even the simple flip of a coin. Anything that surrenders one’s potentiality to the universe is a prime decision. Cut-ups are simply an updated form of magick, a semi-technological magick if you will. To participate in a process of divination simply pose a question involving a future reality and form a cut. (television, radio, and Youtube are all excellent sources for magickal exploitation) Finally listen to your cut. What does the cut-up reveal? What words pop out or what new words form from the deconstructed syllables of former words? Cut-ups comprised of many past realities will inevitably project the future. The future is formed from the compost of past realities. By focusing our attention NOW we can truly form a future beyond these walls. There is a conscious future, a brighter future that we all can willingly create together. The barriers of the mass-media-mind need deconstructing and thus the cut-up process, etc. and so on. Cut-ups for a new reality. Cut-ups for the mind and for the future. We can, all of us, permanently obstruct control. We can live beyond the corporate modeled nonsense logic…  beyond the mass media infection of the mind. - Evolve 2009

 

 

POST-SUICIDE INERTIA! by Robert Inhuman

 

NO JOB BUT I WANT TO WORK HARD

 

Most of the lyrics I made for this record were written before, during, or after shows on tour. I guess it's because I am touring a lot and the shows are my most readily available social situations to observe and react to. I would like to be more careful not to limit my social experiences to just things related to being in a band, but for the time being it's just very directly how I survive; it's my job; it's A job. In April of 2006 I embarked upon the experiment of wanting to make records and travel instead of be pinned down for the remainder of my youth in more conventional government-regulated forms of employment. It has been shaky at times, but determination combined with the miserable memories of uselessly demeaning jobs and the idea that there are very few things this world has to offer that I am interested in paying money for, has turned this experiment into an increasingly longterm (and awesome) venture.

 

It seems like every year I tell myself I will not need to be on the road so much, especially after 2007 when I accidentally ended up playing over 100 shows in a year. But like most career paths, some type of annual expansion ends up being needed, either to survive the current economic circumstances, or just to keep things challenging and not dull for the audiences who allow me to continue on this chosen path. Sometimes I do not like being on tour. Even through the grueling year of 2008, especially as I was first setting out on a 4 month all-summer North American tour, I did not especially "feel" like being in public every day, with all its persistent anxieties and social frustrations. Why should I do something like this if I don't really feel up to it? Aside from the fact I was homeless at the time and needed a way to avoid acknowledging it, there are more significant reasons that have been revealing themselves to me over the past couple years...

 

DEPRESSION CONQUERED THROUGH SELF-SACRIFICE

 

I have a lifelong history with depression. For most of my youth it has romantically, numbingly, and unfortunately dictated many of my decisions and basic abilities to function or feel compassion for myself. Though in my stronger moments I feel an impulse to create or endorse things that are positive and life-affirming in any variety of ways, suddenly for reasons clear or not I emotionally feel like I'm trying to walk through a tar pit, as anyone fluent with depression can probably understand. I was always really beat down by the fact that depression stops me from being good to myself, from living my own life in quality, but it wasn't until the past couple years, as Realicide has placed a higher priority on the propaganda of youth outreach, I finally started to realize something that has led unexpectedly to a way out of the crippling effects of depression. I finally realized that depression doesn't just fuck up my own life, it also prevents me from reaching my potential as a servant to the people I care about and the world that is gracious enough to let me inhabit it.

 

Just because I am not always quite so stoked on the whole "being alive" thing (GOTH AS FUCK) does not mean I can't still be a resource to people who have constructive potential in this world. By shifting the motivations of Realicide from simply self-expression towards more socially-edged aims, I inadvertently found a new instance of the 3rd function of art in my life. (Art's function = 1. byproduct of a life, 2. catalyst for dialogue, 3. distraction to save a life) By focusing on promoting positive ideas and ideals, even those I very admittedly struggle with in my own life, I felt the weight of depression easing off my mind and body a bit. Even in music that talks about intense personal struggling, it doesn't have to stay an endorsement of total sorrow. Of course people gravitate towards songs about things that are sad or enraging, but I don't want to just say "all this life shit sucks and it's just gonna be that way til you're dead so you might as well fucking die as soon as you can". I feel like Realicide is meant to be saying "Life fucking sucks. Why's it like that and what can be done about it?!" or ultimately just "LIFE SUCKS BUT IT DOESN'T HAVE TO." With courage and conviction I am finding that to be very true in many ways.

 

Note: Working beyond a paralyzing depression hasn't cured my rather vehement streak of misanthropy. Being a very convinced and unshakable misanthrope, I have found the best way to handle myself / my role in this world is basically the whole "when life gives you lemons, make lemonade" thing. Not to sound dumb, I am just in a situation in which I have a lot of deep-rooted distrust for humanity, while I still feel an instinct to interact with people and do so in as positive of ways as I can. Maybe one of those will change over time, I am really not sure.

 

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR

 

It concerns me when people I meet on tour are overtly envious of someone who is in a different city every day, always moving, networking and hustling. Being in a touring band has been my ticket out of conventional employment, and the way I've met most of my closest and most respected friends, but this lifestyle is not without some drawbacks worth mentioning. When I am never in a city for more than a couple weeks, and often not more than a couple days, I lose track of something very valuable: what it means to be part of a community.

 

Realicide is intended to be generally against indulging in escapism. Ironically, being in a different city every day can quickly escalate from sampling the social climate of various regions to being just another way of running from reality and what it means to commit to a collective effort; to just know what it means to work through differences within a group of people day by day. This escape, like most escapist outlets, can be very addictive. It is hard to not be on tour after you've been out for months, sustaining yourself financially and riding the high of new people and experiences constantly. But there is something crucial about really KNOWING a place; not just catching a blurry glimpse. Also of course the issue of only being able to meet people directly related to the show we're in town for in some way. I have a feeling that there are a lot of really awesome, high caliber people in these cities that probably wouldn't come out to a Realicide show, you know? That's important to remember when your opinion of a place depends on how your band is received. The world is fortunately a lot bigger than any subcultural niche...

 

WE DON'T WANT FANS. WE WANT FRIENDS.

 

But not like on Myspace; that shit seriously does not count. We aren't trying to sell you records so that you'll follow another band mindlessly. These records are supposed to be one application of the 2nd function of art: something to start a conversation; talk about what you agree and disagree with or any questions resulting from either. Here is what we're doing; what are you doing? We leave the comfort of homes in order to enable relationships with people far away from where we were geographically born into; get a slightly wider perspective on the world and who is active in it. Fans are very seldom more than passive observers. A friend is interactive - always preferred. (Even enemies are better than fans or mere passive observers, but although we aren't going to deny that for one reason or another there are people who have chosen to be our enemies, we would really prefer friendships whenever the choice is up to us.)

 

THE FIRST PART OF "D.I.Y." IS "DO"

 

Anyone who does not have children or other dependents can probably do any of this D.I.Y. band stuff I've ended up doing. Some people with kids do it a lot better than I can even. In most ways I really have no business fucking with music. I obviously have very little understanding of it academically, not to mention a complete lack of natural musical talent. The more I hear young people, with nothing in particular holding them back from being in a serious band or doing anything else constructive with their lives for that matter, bitch about what they wanna do and why they "can't" get it underway, that old CRASS song really takes full meaning and becomes worth renewing as somewhat of a daily mantra... Take responsibility. Claim autonomy. Remember their old words of wisdom?

 

"...The problems that you suffer from are the problems that you make.

The shit we have to climb through is the shit we choose to take.

If you don't like the life you live, change it now, it's yours!

Nothing has effect if you don't recognize the cause..." (CRASS, from "Big A little A")

 

"The only thing that needs to change is what's inside of me!" Are you gonna wait for that mythical day in which all circumstances line up perfectly for you to actualize your goals with total ease and no sacrifice or risk? Wait like that til you're too wasted away in body and mind to do otherwise, or change what's yours to change while you still can and see if it might influence the world you're living in. "At least we're fucking trying!!!" AWARENESS DOES NOT HAVE TO EQUAL DESPAIR. RESIST THE VIRAL SELF.

 

 

REALICIDE = www.realicide.com

 

CONTACT = [email protected] 

 

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