Eno's THE SHIP

by  shaun lawton 

As The Ship began streaming from my PC speakers the first thing I thought of was glass. A filament beneath fogged glass. A filament beneath fogged glass lighting up slowly. The light going from warm yellow toward white and then blending through the spectrum. The glass clarifies then liquefies then disappears altogether, leaving just the light to wallow in the vacuum. Pin pricks allow echoes to flower in the darkness. Deep below decks an engine switches on, muffled by steam engines behind sound proofed glass. The lights dance through the bricks of green glass slowly as more sounds come alive.  A symphony wakes up from its coma to gradually stretch out and yawn. The Ship was sprung from a willing land. Echoes of gaseous vapors steam off the surface of a crystal sea. And there's a globe of powdered sand. We live in clothes we wore. Air bubbles elongate as they plummet and drown. The Time is still. The Sky is young. Drawn on towards the gulf of stars whispering. And we are as the undescribed. Reverberations coalesce into an uprising. A voice through a vibraphone speaks. Distant percussion keeps time. My desert in a grain of sand. My life within a day. So stew the storms that some tied. The black plague is sitting. But we are as the undefined. Reeking of the wind. Whispers begin emanating underneath the skin. Shimmering Cymbeline trapped beneath quiet ice. The sail is down the wind is gone. The sky is black with mold. A slave to hope and destiny. Illusion of control. And we are as the unrefined. The waves about us roll. Spearheaded echos of crystal arrowheads repeatedly diminish triggering smaller fishes of their reflections. Awash in ambient protocols diffused in all directions. Sonar tones arise and sink. Submersibles arrive guided by phosphorescent headlamps. Deeper we go while more voices grow, probing our innermost thoughts. Penetrating the sunken canyons in our little dreadnoughts. The spotlights search left and right, revealing all the whispers in bone. The water is more like marrow here. Our thoughts are all we own. Memories ping and rebound off the inner rubber of our skulls. The pressure stretches these interlocking seams. Even deeper we fall further into fissures transformed to trenches. Microorganisms streaming by our windshield. The vibrations of our tectonic crust. Submerged under wave after wave after wave after wave. The last gossip gradually drowns in our skulls as the final light arrives to wink completely out. 

Open Up And Bleed

review'd by yr roving reporter Thornswrath 

Music for deeply scarred people.  
Burn out my eyes.  I don't want to see. 
The things that you have are not what I need. 
If you want to understand this rock'n'roll band
I suggest familiarizing yourselves with
their very first album from 1999. 
Otherwise, you're entering into a world
that will tackle you head over heels
into a mosh-pit of bewilderment and dismay. 
Take it back to the beginning and listen.

Understand this band represents
an anthem for the champion as well as
a paean for the downtrodden, ravaged
disgraced and tortured to the point of death
laughed at and spat in the face by an outcome
that seems to disregard us in favor of chaos
transformation and pain but along the way
our empty eyes are filled with the flickering
flame of renewal and rebirth as we're urged
to fight back for every last scrap of our lives
we can still hang onto for all that its worth
and to defend as our final shred of integrity
smiling through bloodstained lips 
at your apocalypse.  

Death is my only love, we are as one.
Death is our only love, there can be no other.
Together in harmony, sister and brother
and friend alike we wear our damaged armor 
woven from the fabric of electromagnetic
energy pulsing through the plasma beating
in our hearts to the current rhythms
manifesting from the harmonic choir
of demons and angels orchestrating our lives.  

The story takes us down to where the judgment
is over because the singer's ripped himself bare
and dared to fight back at a senseless world
bent on predatory attack so we say fuck that.

If you will only hold me tight then I know
everything's gonna be alright. The message
behind every album, every song, every lyric
this band ever released is the same one
any single one of us are entitled to by birth
in this nation and on this Earth. Its the personal
freedom to be your own thing and not suffer
the judgment of others.  If they don't get
the brilliant passion and love at the heart
of this expression against the hypocrisy
of our own fellow man, then they can just
fuck off and never mind what happens 
to their sorry asses later on down the line 
when each and every one of our own 
self-fulfilled destinies comes to fruition 
based on the karma we ourselves generate.

I just want to give a holler out to the boss
and up front Story-teller for grabbing on
to the mic and not letting go until
the greatest rock and roll band in the world
(since Motorhead and the Supersuckers) 
rolled into town destroying everything
in their path taking no prisoners holding
no quarter giving no apologies just
straight up slaying it from day one 
with the core of the soul on the killing 
floor like no one's ever gone and done 
before with quite as much boldness as this
so from me and every last one of the slugs
we salute you with a Thank You and hugs.
I love this feeling don't ever let me land
I never want this to end.
Burn out our eyes. 
Slugcult Rise!



~thoRnswrAth 

I'm a Blackstar!

notes scratch'd down

  in a hurry by shaun 

Here's the original version of David Bowie's song 'Tis a Pity She Was a Whore, which appears as the 1st track on the 10" single of Sue (In A Season of Crime).  The b-side is a 7 minute plus version of Sue.  I'm lucky I scored the vinyl on RSD last year.  Now the version on the LP Blackstar which I just acquired and listened to has really been amped up for prime time FM radio bandwidth and mp3 download.  Vinyl's resurgence is real because even Randy's Records in downtown SLC have gotten rid of their CDs entirely. I asked the clerk there and he said "CDs don't sell."  Lucky for me I preordered db's clear die hard edition of Blackstar because little did I or anyone else know that he knew all along he was going to die and had carefully prepared his final album as a swang song love letter to his fanbase, which turns out to be pretty much the entire planet Earth.

Now this second track is the official LP version of 'Tis a Pity She Was a Whore, off Blackstar.  This is a great song that has morphed into a full blown contemporary avant garde track which easily shatters all present commercial airwave expectations with an inescapable defiance. It sets the mark and draws the line for an entire new generation of artists and musicians to springboard from. It clears the field and resets the playing ground to zero. And it does it with such an air of casual finesse, setting a bar high enough to reach for and only dream of aspiring to touch the stars.  The entire album Blackstar comprised of just seven songs acquires a new watermark for the legendary performer and as far as I'm concerned he's aimed for the moon and somehow achieved the impossible dream.

I bravely shout out to the crowd "I'm a Blackstar!" and I think you should to. It's what David Bowie would want us all to do.   Rest in peace you crazy diamond dreamer singer songwriter poet actor painter rocker super star! Not to mention grade-A gentleman and human being. You tore down all the fucking walls there are to be had in this insane world!


(to be cont.)

a Generation Behind

by thornswrath

If you haven't discovered Cancerslug yet

I kinda feel sorry for you but not really

cuz we all deserve what we get

a generation behind

It doesn't really matter if we live or die

Burn out my eyes.
I don't want to see.

Burn out my eyes.
I don't want to see.
The things that you have
are not what I need.

Burn a candle for me.
My hope, my disease
consumes your greed.

Death waits over me planting every seed.
Hypocrisy lies at my feet.
Burn a candle for me.

Empty but free.
Drown everything inside your greed.

DIE! Death waits over me.
Takes my every need, my everything.
You can't take away.

You can't handle me.
You can't penetrate.
Shot through your greed.

The things that you have are not what I need.
Burn a candle for me.

My hope, my disease consumes your greed.




When it comes to horror punk, this band from Alabama takes the proverbial wedding cake and just rapes it in front of everyone too dumbfounded  to do anything about it except blink a few times and go "okay then, carry on" realizing that punk's not quite dead, yet.  Yes, this is the next generation after the Misfits and Samhain and Danzig it's Alex Story and his band Cancerslug from Alabama now that you've been introduced best get out of their way cuz they're coming through your town soon in their van and they mean business.



Death is my only love we are as one
Death is my only love there can be no other one

To all you devils and rebel angels
I can take you down to where the judgment is over
To all the idiots trapped in oblivion
I can take you down to where the judgment is over