BSPH: Death Ride`69 - State of Decay

"State of Decay" is the song by an American tribal industrial gothic rock extraordinaires Death Ride`69. It was released in 1989 on an eponymous album "Death Ride'69". It is rockabilly psychout with some goth sensibilities and transgressive attitude.

Thematically, "State of Decay" covers an evergreen topic of ceasing to exist and explaining the nuances of this unknowable but intriguing process. It don't have much to say about it - but it repeats all the buzzwords over and over again in overly theatrical manner.

The songs starts with soft female voice humming "it is just a dream". After that the drums kick in and the word of the moment is "nightmare". The drum sound is wrapping the listener around with its rusty sheets. Over time the wrap gets tighter and tighter until it starts to squeeze the air out of the composition and then immobilizes it. Curiously, it all comes together neatly in the end.

The bass joins in a bit later. It jumps around in a checkerboard pattern. The arrangement of the bass line represent the throbbing heart trying to break free and break out of the chest. Supposedly, it wants to run away to some dark corner and just lay there. In the same time, the guitar is crooning in the background painting a lifeless wasteland that was burned into the crust that was then showered with rain for an eternity.

The voices whirl around with some spooky verbiage. It is limited to the key words so it can be considered as some sort of conditioning thing. After a while the words stop making sense and turn into just another sound in the song.

The thing with this song is that is sounds like a run a through the swamp that dried up, fossilized and turned into a dusty spacey tomb. The song is built around a tribal drum stomp. It was a war drum that went "nah! and just went syncopating and galloping forward towards nothing with an intention of making a direct impact that will never come.

The drums take the spotlight for a while and do absolutely nothing with it. They just go on pretending that nothing is happening and there is no reason to expect anything special with that particular thousand yard stare that suggests something exquisitely horrid going on behind it.

Then the guitar finally comes to the forth and does some buzzsaw swirls. It is like that Dumbo tornado that's too far away to make an impact but visible enough to make an impression. And since this didn't worked out - the sound abruptly ends with what can be described as hammering the final nails in the coffin.

BSPH: Vulcano - Bloody Vengeance 1986

Vulcano is probably the greatest black metal band that ever graced the face of this cursed earth. Seriously. Their 1986 album Bloody Vengeance is the textbook example of a record that mows through the listener and leaves no stone unturned. The album is only 24 minutes long and itleaves a lasting impression without wasting a moment.

The album kicks off with the bone crushing blast beat of Dominios of Death. The song sweeps through like a hurricane and wipes the plain so clean you can see your own reflection. It goes in several rounds so that there will be nothing left intact. That's how you start an album. The vocal are drowned in reverb so much it is basically an increasingly more menacing sounding glossolalia. The transition into the solo section of this song is like short and sweet dance on the grave. The solo itself is like strangling a wild tiger kiwi - it is piercing through with its high notes.

Spirits of Evil just starts with a little beatdown after which the onslaught ensues. The following blast beat and riffing section is nasty as if the song actually was trying to chase the listener and cub him to the bloody pulp. The transition into the stroll is terrifying - this song is going to beat the dust out of you. The verse-chorus parts follow the suit and with each iteration get more and more intense. The buffallo crowd stomp before the solo is amazing. The solo is like burning lazer tearing through the debris of the body - it goes through like knife through butter leaving quite a mess behind.

Ready to Explode is a wolf in sheep's clothes of the album. It is a hardcore punk song with some serious Slayer-style soloing. And it ends with a bang.

Holocaust is a centerpiece of an album. It got more riffs than any other song - they are piled onto each other.  The guitars sound as if they were boiling magma of the depth of hell flowing backwards and excessively fuming acidic steam. By the time the song gets to the first chorus it gets so hot the drummer picks up the tempo so much he gets ahead of the rest of the band so much he actually gets in sync somehow and the whole thing sounds as if a mountain range engaged in a deep sea diving.

Incubus is the sonic equivalent of drilling the hole in the nondescript dense space and in the same time trying to stomp it to dust with the blast beat river dance. The vocalist is yelling some angry scary stuff - it sounds like he is trying to outbark the sleeping dog. The second part of the song cuts Slayer's throat, pulls out the tongue through it and fancies it as a necktie. The solo is sleazy - it sweeps up and down like splashes of blood.

Death Metal is the best song on the album. It is very much in the vein of classic New Wave of British Heavy Metal - Tygers of Pan Tang and Iron Maiden in particular. But not before long it gets bored with that and turns into a leviathan grinder that buzzsaws its way through the depths of eldritch nil to the surface of hideous zilch. The middle section sounds as if it saw Chtulhu, thought it was really bad idea and then ran scared without looking back not realizing it was running nowhere. And after realizing that it started to run even faster and actually started to disintegrate - the song ends rather abruptly.

Voices from Hell is something like Sparks filler track covered by Einstuerzende Neubauten but recorded haplessly wrong. It segues into Bloody Vengeance - the song starts with the satanic incantation that goes for some time to set the right mood. Then the song starts in earnest and it is an absolute murder. Unlike the rest of the album - it is mostly mid-tempo and it seems like it is meandering and going back and forth without apparent reason. In reality - it circles the listener around like the murderer who just cornered his victim.

How would you describe a rainbow in a poetic way?

I like fooling around on Quora.

Describing rainbow is tricky because it is an abstract thing that is interpreted differently by everyone. Basically, you can’t really describe a “rainbow”, you need to describe something related to rainbow that can be relatable to the reader.
In other words - not write about rainbow, but write around rainbow.
That’s one way of doing it.
However, if we take a step further and try to actually describe the thing - there are several things to note.

• rainbow can’t be described by ordinary words. It will neuter its impact.
• rainbow description doesn’t really work with specialized terms. It sounds cool, but it can be as well just some glossolalia.
• old and rarely used words can’t make it justice.

Then there is more technical approach. Since poetry creatively uses language and its nuances - the thing can be deconstructed and described from the inside out. Since regular color names are boring - there must be the other way around. For example, you can use Hex Color Designations.
To my taste - this is the most aesthetically intriguing and poetic way of describing a rainbow. At the very least - it will be much more interesting than just throwing some nice words and getting the “feels” out of it.
On the other hand, you can make it a conceptual thing and describe rainbow the optical phenomenon with the elements of a creative out of Rainbow the band.

My take on James Bond

There is a question on Quora: If you were in charge of writing a new 007 novel: What's the title, plot & ending?

Here's my take.

Every Bond villain ever somehow escapes and Bond is forced to go get them back. He manages to do it but he is very exhausted and barely able to keep it together. Then he is assaulted by someone and severely beaten. While Bond is recuperating it turns out that he actually snapped and it was he who beat him up. That puts him out of commission which makes him very sad.

But life goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on…

Bond is in a groundhog day scenario but not exactly because in reality he is trapped in virtual simulation orchestrated by supercomputer. Kinda like X-men danger room but with a little help of a parasitic flower which overtakes the victims mind and shows them something happy and pleasant.

Bond sees his life without the spy part of equation. Wife, kids, 9–5 job, boredom, etc. By the end of the day these fantasies fall apart and so the scenarios get more and more outlandish (basically all title sequences mashed into one narrative) to the point it goes full Moonraker and then due cooling failure the plant freezes and Bond frees himself and finds himself in an endless labyrinth (based on a screensaver) but the power runs out and he finds himself to in an actual spaceship with a supercomputer and he is actually literally right before the sun and the ship is slowly melting while the supercomputer is crazy from the heat and experiences sudden bout of prostration.

Unable to find any solution to the situation - Bond goes into outer space and freezes himself. He floats for quite some time (around a millenia) and then gets defrosted by the next generation of MI-6 who because of all the catastrophes and civilization collapses are around the same technology level as in the Bond’s day and age.

Bond gets back into the groove and his first mission he goes investigate hostage situation orchestrated by former operatives. During a mission he finds out that the leader of the terrorists looks exactly like him.

And then it turns out that he is a clone of Bond.

However, upon disposing him Bond activates some sort of mechanism which blasts Bond through the universe until he is disintegrated.

He turns into dust that roams the universe until it gets to the noise of some fella. That fella sneezes and the whole world falls down as this was the man who was holding it. Now the blood cells of this man are trying to hunt down Bond within the body. Bond goes full Rambo on them but in the end - what’s the point of all of this again?

MFT: Deep Purple - Speed King but only lyrics and transliterated

Deep Purple's song "Speed King" needs no introduction. It is "all guns blazing" full throttle rocker that blasts its way through the listener's mind as if it was mere sour cream with mashed potatoes and boiled nuts. The song signified Deep Purple's complete reinvention from Mark 1 meandering sorta-kinda prog to bone crunching hard rock with a slight flavor of brutal prog. It is a showcase of the new line-up - every member gets a moment to shine and they all sound like one bad slab of distorted avalanche of sound. 

The other way Speed King is significant are lyrics. Ian Gillan writing style is very unusual. He wasn't writing lyrics straight - that's too simple. He was combining every imaginable blues, rhythm-n-blues, soul, funk and rock-n-roll lyrical cliche into one Molotov Cocktail. His lyrics were generic but in the same there was something that made them stand apart from the rest. It was like very brutal mad lib word salad. Truly rock and roll dada. 

Speed King lyrics make sense, but not very much but you don't care about it because it sounds cool and totally fits the song's overall sonic aesthetic.  

The only way the song this great can be improved is by transforming it into something different and yet still retaining the defining features of the original.

Case in point - this thing. 

This is Deep Purple's Speed King lyrics. But not exactly. These are Deep Purple's Speed King Lyrics but they are transliterated in russian. Why? So that the russian-speaking fans could sing along the lyrics correctly. I guess Faith No More would've liked to adapt this version.

The resulting text closely recreates how the song's lyrics are written in english except in intensely clumsy russian transliteration. It is so clumsy - chances are you will stumble more than once while reading it and those stumble will thud with this particular perpetuating echo.

If you think about it for a moment - this is a very interesting case of mutation of the original text. It is still there but it is transformed enough to be a distinct version. 

MFT: Austin McConnell - A Solid 10 minutes of useless information

This is Gregory Austin McConnell. He's doing videos on various topics on YouTube - basically anything that incites his interest. And that's what makes him so good - he is unpredictable. You can get a video about printer cartridges scamming consumers, you can get a storytime about his involvement with LonelyGirl17 franchise and so on. He's cool. Every time he releases a video - the world becomes a better place. You have to respect the man for making content that is interesting to him first and foremost. Anyway...

Not every member of his audience appreciates the effort and sometimes it results in some very disrespectful comments. One of them made Mr. McConnell so rigid that he made an entire video because of it. Mostly because it caught his interest.

The comment said "Sick of this channell being full of nothing but useless information". Yep. Seriously. What an entitlement. Oh boy. You don't say such things to a creative person. First of all, it is pointless. Secondly - it is like taunting a bear - you all know what's coming afterwards. So - Austin read this comment and he thought "you want to dance, huh?" and made a video that is exactly what the comment said - useless information - a solid ten minutes of useless information.

And you know what - it is majestic.

The thing is - it is just an arrangement of random facts presented in a machine gun tempo. It is peculiar, relentless and explosive. Basically it is borderline nonsensical stream of consciousness that goes nowhere with a sway and tilt. But because of that it becomes something else entrirely. Brion Gysin once said "Eliminate all rational thought". This video is just that.

I guess the whole sequence of facts is a result of an intense session of Wikipedia Random Article Crusade. This technique never gets old and always delivers some exquisite unintentional cognitive dissonance. On their own the facts make sense. But coupled together - they neuter one another and hoard on top of each other until the mind perceptive mechanisms give up and it all turns into a sophisticated form of informational noise. In addition to that, the whole thing is peppered with random remarks built on association.

In a way, it is a piece of conceptual writing. And a very good one at that. I think its scripts deserves to be published and performed.