Bone Machine

Band stuff: Been really digging in and trying to get better at writing coherent drum parts… still very much a work in progress, but the improvement is starting to show both in the actual beats and in getting them to sit in a mix. Gonna spend the next week or two focusing on fills and transitions.

Plan is that our next album is gonna be full-on black metal/ doom with elements of industrial/ harsh noise/ ambient/ and tribal drumming. Kind of a nod to what we were doing waaaaaay back in the day when DD and I first met and we were playing in a band called DOTS.

Oh yeah, I also just started working on the first set of lyrics I’ve written in a bunch of years. Which I guess means the new album is probably gonna have vocals.

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Muzak:

Old Man’s Child - Mid-tier black metal from a guy who I guess is also in Dimmu Borgir. This is one of those albums where I tend to throw it on less for the music and more for the memories of people and places that the music is wrapped up with.

I dunno... The area around my hometown was kinda ground zero for the opioid crisis and a lot of people I hung out with when I was a teenager got into stupid shit and died young.

I still think of them a lot.

All the stuff we did.

All the things we were gonna do.

The dumb high school bands we were in.

Nothing shows in nowhere towns that meant the world to us.

The short sharp jolts of excitement and electricity that kept us hanging on.

All the shit we listened to as we drove around endlessly looking for something to kill the boredom.

They were cool people. 

Now they're just memories.

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Bathory - Still on a wicked Bathory kick. Octagon is the album that’s been in heavy rotation over the past couple days… Classic band, possibly somewhat less than classic album, but I still dig it in all it's horrendously recorded, vaguely (and probably accidentally) industrial-tinged, glory.

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Immortal - I was mostly into grindcore back when I was in high school and Blizzard Beasts wound up being the album that finally made black metal "click" for me. Impossibly fast and raw and still a huge favorite of mine.

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Sugar - I never used to like Sugar but then they clicked for me about a year and a half ago and now I like ‘em just fine. Still like Husker Du better (obviously), but in the right mood Sugar are great… Especially the Beaster EP.

I kinda wanna do a heavy cover of Judas Cradle.

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Mission of Burma - I first heard Mission of Burma at a time in my life when I didn’t particularly wanna hear anything that wasn’t Sepultura “Chaos AD” so they unfortunately didn’t click for me until many, many, years later… But nowadays they’re one of my favorite things ever. Post punk with the volume and distortion cranked to the point of total transcendence/ obliteration. Clearly a huge influence on a ton of other bands I love, shame it took me almost 40 years to wise up and get with the program.

Actually you know what? I blame Moby.

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Pixies - Another one that didn’t do a whole hell of a lot for me until much later in my life. Now I get it. They were “pop”, but loud and weird and subversive. You can tap your toes and hum along, but they wrote lyrics about slicing up eyeballs which is fucking great. Works for me on a similar level as stuff like Brainiac and the Paper Chase.

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The Proletariat - I guess my head is a little stuck in Boston today. I miss Boston. A lot. Unfortunately most of what I miss is long gone and lives on only in my memories.

Anyway, The Proletariat ruled, and "Embraced" sounds almost like a lost Godflesh tune despite the fact it recorded something like seven years before Godflesh even existed. Man, I actually really wish Godflesh would cover that tune. Could you fucking imagine what that'd sound like?

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