VaccZine #1
The Plague Rages Podcast Newsletter
HI! I’m Shreddy, your friendly metal helper! I’m here to walk you through this first edition of the VaccZine, the Plague Rages Podcast newsletter! This is first section is the intro, containing half-assed, barely connected slop that Wolf Rambatz wrote in a state of highly caffeinated delirium. Enjoy!
SHHHHhhhhhrrrrrrrnk. I’ve been sucked into a parallel universe. A grizzled editor waddles to my desk, their breath heavy with noonday scotch and sandwich pickles. “Wolf, I want heavy metal bands, but stocks. 500 words. On my desk, ASAP.”
Ca-razy. I mean, imagine a world where media immediately tries to regurgitate a massively simplified version of the story of the moment as entertainme-
I’ll admit, I had a bit of fun pitching this idea around in my head over the weekend. BUY: A resurgent Napalm Death! SELL: Craft beer-swilling sludge boogie bands like Red Fang! Everyone, short the hell out of Iced Earth! And then I was like, Oh! Right! This is bleak as hell!
The Stonk Wars saga, the Reddit-born gamma squeeze that [insert hyperbolic reading here], has already been compared to so many other elements of modern culture because so many other elements of modern culture shares its same shade of bleakness. This was happening long before $GME spent a week at the top and then crashed as everyone bailed for…I don’t know, silver? I wrote this 10 minutes ago and it’s already dustier and than a Three Inches of Blood t-shirt.
I’m not going to get too into the weeds here since so many other outlets have already done this story far better than some dipshit part-time music writer. This is also, uh, ostensibly a heavy metal newsletter and we have slam to discuss.
Attribution unknown, h/t Doug Moore
However, it’s interesting/depressing that I was primed to toss metal into the template. While much has been made of the psychological mindfuck of Robinhood’s “gamification of investing,” it’s clear, to me at least, that most elements of society have been either gamified, or, in the case of entertainment, marketified so all can be better monetized. This puts everything on the same playing field, essentially maximizing the interchangeability of these elements no matter their respective bearing on real life. In a way, it turns the unreal into the real and vice versa.
Sometimes this unveiling is enjoyable! Part of the appeal of watching the WallStreetBets M.O. play out in the meatspace is that it exposes the “real” market as beholden to the same brand of lol-influenced batshittery that happens with regularity within the more airdrop-afflicted portions of “unreal” crypto. [*pushes up tortoise shell glasses*] AHEM MARKET WISDOM. That Dogecoin got a drive-by pump and then tanked is all the more perfect.
Most of the times, though, it’s bleak. A recent episode of The Jimquisition rightly connected the stock market, a playground for a few elites who do everything in their collective power to (a) make more money and (b) ensure others don’t, to the AAA video game industry, one rife with sexual harassment, discrimination, and woeful labor practices. That shit is very real and very bad, but video game fans have been given license to ignore those elements because…they rarely effect the end product? The only time the prototypical fan gets upset is when the end product sucks, a la the Cyberpunk 2077 kerfuffle. Game: not real. Pain required to make that game: real. The latter outweighs the former by many magnitudes, even if you feel very strongly about the sturm und drang of immersion-breaking bugs. The former gets the press push. Reality is stupid.
You can see that same shit in sports. You can also see this shit in the areas of music that carry cultural cachet.
Let’s talk about that last one. That independent music has become infected with marketshare concerns just shows how far this rot has traveled. The phenomenon of “type beats” in hip hop is…yikes, we’re here already? At best, that method of “democratizing” self-PR is born out of a need to trick algorithmic gatekeepers and secure wins for the little guy. (Really, it’s a lamer version of the Skynet prophecy in that we’ll have an army of T-800s judging potential DaBaby instrumentals within the year.) That there are so many YouTube videos fighting to be the one video you check out on how to game Spotify playlists or go viral on TikTok is the stuff of late-stage-capitalism dystopic night terrors.
Metal definitely has an enduring Gamergate-esque “but the riffs!” problem and its share of derpy cash chasers, but it’s mostly immune to the gamification/marketification aspect in an economic sense since very few people really give a fuck about it. The daydream scenario above, that an editor would come to my office desk at my office job and ask me to write an article that I’ll be paid for, is absolute pure, unstepped-on fantasy. I’m writing this free newsletter on my lunch during one of my part-time gigs.
Metal just doesn’t make money. Earnings, or the potential for earnings for others, is kind of how importance is gauged in a highly capitalistic society. Even if you are an arena-stuffer or have a killer merch game, you’re not really making, like, Fortune 500 profits even if you’re in the Top 20 of Metal Injection’s monthly Spotify check in. That is to say, even among bigger draws, it’s a pretty janky affair. Preeminent cheesemongers Nightwish are releasing a fucking jigsaw puzzle, for Christ’s sake. That type of cheddar munching looks all the more craven the deeper into the underground you go. Someone joked to me that a recent Century Media signee had more t-shirt designs than songs. The best you can hope for as a death metaller is, like, a nice middle class existence. That’s the soul-eating mountaintop. That Cannibal Corpse resides atop that br00ful K2 and still sounds good, as recent leaks suggest, is nothing short of miraculous.
To an extent, this inability to make money is almost kind of the point as underground metal is a reaction to the wants and needs of a fictitious mainstream. People like metal because it speaks to some niche personal trait that’s not widely shared. Everyone kinda gets that going in. Like, you don’t spend your 10,000 hours playing hyperblasts on a trashcan snare thinking that there’s a mansion on the other side. This is a for-the-love-of proposition almost exclusively. I always think of this Colin Marston quote to Stereogum whenever I write that a band is getting “big” or “blowing up”:
Hold the phone — “professional-level bands” implies that they make money. The last Behold The Arctopus tour netted a cool $10 (to be split amongst 3 people). The last Dysrhythmia tour lost about $300. Gorguts is the only band I play in where there is money at the end of tour; however, with the exception of one tour out of about ten, I still haven’t made enough to cover my regular monthly expenses. If you take into account the time it takes to write, learn, practice, and deal with logistical stuff, I probably make one cent per day.
THAT SAID, these are the 2020s we’re talking about here. Every aspect of life is through the looking glass. It’s not unreasonable to think something like buying shares of a metal band might be on the horizon, if only because the great blurring of real/unreal, the furious gamification/marketification mutual handjob, is rubbing off on other unreasonable areas of reality.
NBA player Spencer Dinwiddie tried to “tokenize” his contract in 2019 before the league wagged the Mutombo finger at his plans. (Dinwiddie recently tried to raise $25m in Bitcoin and said fans could decide his next team.) Ah, but you can buy limited edition highlight clips of Dinwiddie on the NBA-licensed Top Shot. It’s like...sports cards...but highlights...and it lives on the blockchain, finally turning crypto into the sports card shoebox that your mom threw out that crypto has always wanted to be. (As with all things, imagine explaining this to a 10-years-younger version of yourself.) A Lebron James dunk fetched $71,000. Darren Rovell is horny for it. Of course he is.
If you squint hard enough, particularly to the point where you feel like you’ll pass out, you can almost see this making its way to the realm of music. What if you tore open a digital pack of Top Tracks from Relapse and, after sorting out the trend-biting popgaze commons, found a limited edition of “Praise the Lord (Opium of the Masses)”? The track would live in your crypto wallet and the owner would get a scaling cut, based on the edition’s rarity, of the meager Spotify streaming royalti-oh my god, stop reading this now. I didn’t mean any of it. None of this is real! Oh god. Oh god what have I done.
NEW ARRIVALS
Shreddy here! This section collects all of the new tunes Wolf has been jamming. Its format in no way rips off the old weekly lists from Aquarius Records (RIP).
SPOTLIGHT
Starcave Nebula - When the Ego Succumbs to Death… (Food For Dogs Productions)
Gloriously drug-fueled, improvised, galaxy black metal. When you read that, what comes to mind? Like, Oranssi Pazuzu? Maybe Mörkö if you’re nasty? It’s rarely raw-ass, ripping trems on the lofi spectrum. Welp, here’s a rare one. I’m on record describing this as if “Turia turned into Weakling” and hooted a vial of toad dust. Your move, John Gossard. I stand by that, but that’s the budget blurb. Really, there are layers to this thing as it gets more ensorcelled and frenzied and fucked up as it goes. As soon as you gain your bearings, the guitars descend into discordance, drumming takes the lead, and you breach an event horizon and enter a new dimension. Happens about, ohhhhh, once a minute. What Outerspace Woman (vox, drums, synth) and Outerspace Man (vox, guitars) have pulled off here is really something, as the two tap into the kind of shared improvisational consciousness that delivers satisfying results and surprises. You only get these kind of moments when the makers love real black metal. They sure do. Look for an interview with Food for Dogs Productions next zine.
HIGHLIGHTS
Congenital Deformity - Sacrifice (Unholy Domain Records / Frozen Screams Imprint / Morbid Chapel Records / Rotten Tomb Records)
Songwriting? Pfft. This Italian two-piece prioritizes the riff. Spudly juns aplenty. And why are these OSDM tubers extra starchy? Ex-member of Profanal, the world’s filthiest tenured instructor.
OUT NOW
Ｎｅｐｅｎｔｈｅｓ Ｉｎｆａｕｎａ- 박차 2 개 (self-released)
Alright, so: LDOH-styled pinging grind noise plus vaporwave. Does it work? Eh. Did I ever expect to hear this pairing? Narp. Stay weird.
OUT NOW
Silvanthrone - Forbidden Pathways to Ancient Wisdom (Nihilistic Noise Propaganda)
In terms of tempo, this reminds me of Void Omnia. Silvanthrone similarly climbs frantically towards higher perches of intensity. The swirl, though, is right in that Amor Fati zone of bands that like to spin their trems up in a wind tunnel. There’s also that ever-so-slight French castle metal vibe that really works here. The neatest thing about this Pennsylvania(!) band, though, is its warmth. The bass always seems to burble up at the right moments like a hot spring. Cool shit.
OUT NOW
Torture Rack - Pit of Limbs (Extremely Rotten Productions / Parasitic Records / Headsplit Records)
Churning OSDM nastiness. Undergang + Autopsy is the comp. Usually not my thing but it’s rare when bands like this go this hard and keep the songs this short.
OUT NOW
Want to keep up with what I think is good this year? Follow my list on RateYourMusic.
THE LISTICLE
This is a rotating section that houses goofy bullshit. Got a request or a question? Send us an email at plagueragespod at gmail. Sometimes I wonder how my pixelated eyes stay in place like that and I wish for the sweet relief of death.
Five recent-ish good bands with purposefully unbrutal names that actually fit. h/t Mike Teal for the idea.
5. Rainbow of Death
Emilie Bresson from Monarch fronted this power-pop-violence duo on its sole release, 2007’s self-titled 10”. Can something be buoyantly brutal? This is that, like if someone did the Mary Tyler Moore hat toss in a circle pit. It’s too bad they never cut a split with Hummingbird of Death.
4. Pretty Little Flower
Dave Callier’s long-running blast of grindy thrash formally adopted P.L.F. in 2007, additionally flipping the acronym’s meaning to “Pulverizing Lethal Force.” Fair descriptor, but I prefer the original.
3. PSUDOKO/Brutal Blues
Ah, Steinar. The Norwegian nutter definitely doesn’t skimp on the weirdness, saving an extra dollop for the names. Gotta say, dubbing his progfuck masterwork PSUDOKO sure hasn’t helped me recommend it to many headbangers. Still, what else would you call it? As for the equally wild Brutal Blues, I actually interviewed Steinar about meaning of the name way back in the day and he was basically like, “It’s just a name, you idiot.” Right on all accounts, Steinar!
2. Little Puppy Princess
Not to be confused with Little Princess, the ‘90s powerviolence weirdos. As my compatriot Doug Moore would say, this band has successfully unlearned how to make music. Bloody rare, banshee-screech grind from South Korea. Like if old Discordance Axis gave up on any pretense of writing songs.
1. Slugdge
The be all end all of fitting name fakeouts. You think you’re getting a gimmick, some slug + sludge inanity. Instead, you get a gimmick wrapped in wonderfully dense layers of Edge of Sanity. Praise Molluska.
FROM THE VAULTS
The dumping ground for any band/album I found late. Years don’t matter, but the music writer industrial complex won’t tell you that.
Lock Down - Hellbound EP
I am on the tail end of a Disembodied binge and the only thing that makes sense to my burned out brain is ignorant chungus juds. Enter Portland’s Lock Down. These beatdown artists dropped this EP at the tail end of 2019. It’s stuffed with stupid riffs. And, most blissfully, free of deathcore. I’m assuming these dudes come from a legit death metal background as the rhythms are more fluid than, like, some sub-Death Threat brass knuckle wearers. There’s also a ton of grit caked on the chonk. No toughguy could handle that much amp noise. That’s why it works for me. You, though, are probably here for haymakers. This throws them. Rules.
BUT I GOT ONE THING LEFT TO SAY
Named after Throwdown’s “You Can’t Kill Integrity,” the song that houses the immortally dumb couplet “Yeah that's all there is to say/ But I got one thing left to say.” This is just whatever.
If you’re reading this on its publication date, it’s Bandcamp Day. Buy some shit. Jute Gyte is donating “100% of sales to the National Alliance to End Homelessness.” Do that.
I’m…not sure how often I’m gonna get this out in the beginning since everything [*waves hands wildly at world*] sucks. Like, the NEW ARRIVALS section is gonna be dry for a bit. But, we’ll see. Stick with me. I’m going to aim to have #2 up in a couple weeks. I don’t think this will ever go paid subscription, so there’s that, too.
If you wanna read the old stuff, you can find it here: https://plagueragesmfh.wordpress.com/
PODCAST UPDATE: I’m working on it. We should be recording soon.
RIP SOPHIE. You were more metal than a lot of metal.
