Random Blah Blah About Bands, Life, etc.

- Tossed pretty much everything we’ve ever recorded up on our bandcamp so it’s all in one place for what might be the first time ever. Only things missing are a Static Towers CD that I might have on a shelf somewhere (no promises, but I’ll keep an eye out for it), the DOTS demo that I prefer to leave alone due to bad blood with a couple former bandmates, and a couple of Rusteater demos that I’m pretty sure are gone for good.

- Currently working on a new Six Billion Light-Years EP which will probably be called “Liminal.” Should be a handful of longish tracks… Psychedelic low-BPM techno/ shoegaze/ kraut-ambience for an increasingly isolated world.

- After the 6BL-Y EP I personally wanna work on a couple of Inverted Tower tracks.

- Infestation Ritual and THNGRVD are currently in the “who knows” zone. Never quite dead, but never really “here” either. Most I can say is that there will be new stuff whenever there is new stuff.

- The world outside is ever more fucked, current headspace demands icy ambient zone out.

- Ran into some friends of ours we hadn’t seen since before the pandemic and had a couple of real nice conversations, It was a welcome change of pace after the weirdness with that other dude.

- Looking at buying a house up in Canada maybe? DD is a Canuck and we’re pretty serious about trying to get out of the US before the next civil war pops off.

Suicidal Tendencies

When I was a kid I used to look at my parents and wonder what the fuck happened to them and how they became basically flesh and blood automatons locked in an endless cycle of work/ food/ sleep with no friends and no social life. Now I'm about the age they were back then, give or take a couple years, and find myself in a pretty similar situation. Well, except that I remember "how it was" just enough to keep me raging against the dying of the light, which I'm beginning to suspect actually makes it hurt worse than just shutting down and going numb the way they did.

Needless to say I've been l feeling this tune HARD lately.

Alive Or Just Breathing?

Fuck man... This has been a long week. In a long month. In a long year. Here's the Cliff's Notes version to get some of it out of my head and down on paper.

-Lost my uncle Mike recently and it hit hard because he was like a father to me. Only member of my immediate family that ever encouraged my art or music when I was a kid, and that was probably the one of the main reasons I kept on keeping on with any of it.

-Mike was also a totally lovable wild-man that I now realize was a huge influence on my personality and I find myself wishing I could give him a hug and have a cookout with him one more time and just kinda tell him thanks for everything.

-DD collapsed this past weekend and wound up in the hospital it was scary as fuck but after tons of bloodwork and tests it looks like it was nothing particularly serious. Something called a vasovagal syncope which I'm pretty sure is just medical jargon for "I dunno."

-If we hadn't wound up in the hospital on Saturday there's every chance we would have been up on South Street when that mass shooting popped off? 'Cos we were heading that way when she collapsed. Scary as fuck.

-She was down with a headache yesterday, probably 'cos we had a couple late nights in a row and she's still recovering from all the blood they took at the hospital, but it fucking rattled me 'cos all I could think was: "did they fucking miss something?"

-DD is my wife, my bandmate, and my best friend and if she was gone I literally don't know what the fuck I would do... At this point in my life I have no friends, no family, and my world is pretty much just her, a room full of music gear, and a small handful people I email about music every once in a while... The rest of the world feels empty, hostile.

-I was gonna quit doing this webzine because it honestly kind of feels like a waste of time sometimes, but now I'm thinking I might as well keep going because it gives me something to do that takes my mind off the other bullshit.

-I've been missing a lot of dead friends lately. To the point a random memory of playing the Darkstalkers arcade machine with my friend Anthony almost made me cry yesterday.

-All of this shit has hit my sense of well being like a ton of bricks and left me feeling really fucked up and off balance, but I guess I'll just grit my fucking teeth and keep fighting through it.

-One foot in front of the other. Keep Breathing.

Our days are filled with graves.

Just found out that two of my old friends passed away. One back in 2020 one in 2021. Hadn’t been in touch with either of them for 20+ years but it still feels pretty shitty. The passage of time is fucking weird man.

New England

This will probably mean very little to anyone who grew up outside Massachusetts (and who isn't a huge fucking nerd), but I just found a piece of semi-lost media that I've been obsessively tracking down for almost 30 years now...

This video was a huge piece of my childhood and I'm sooooo stoked to finally see it again.

Electro Lobotomy

 Three new devices on their way to us right now. Can't wait to play around with these things.

Andy

The guitarist of the grind band I played in for over a decade was gay. He was also one of the best friends I ever had (RIP Andy), and in all the time I knew him he never once hit on me, dated anyone underage, or engaged in any behavior I would have deemed sketchy, creepy, or otherwise fucked up and unsavory.

We hung out, we laughed a lot, we played ugly music together, we watched ECW, we played N64, we ate a ton of fucking Chinese food, we lived in the same house for a bunch of years, etc.

Dude even got me into Cripple Bastards, Rupture, Discordance Axis, Regurgitate, Driller Killer, and Denak.

He was solid. Period.

That's why it bugs the shit out of me to see a bunch right wing weirdos racing back to the 1950's with the gay = pedophile "they cant control their urges" shit... It's just absolutely not so.

Am I saying gays can't be predators, groomers or whatever the pearl clutching buzz-word of the day is? Absolutely not. It's just that I think that they're not any more or less likely than anyone else, straight white evangelicals included.

Unfortunately, whatever "intel" you think you've gleaned from watching the TV and screwing around on the internet, most kids are victimized by people they know and trust... That is: family, friends, coaches, etc. Not a shadowy cabal of satanic human trafficking gays.

Don't agree? Well then, as long as you're over 18 you have my express written consent to fucking blow me.

World of Strangers

Been trying to keep the more "personal" stuff off this new site as much as possible, but me and DD had a really weird moment the other day and I felt like writing it out just to get it out of my head and down on paper.

So yeah, we were out taking a walk this past weekend and we saw a guy who had been a pretty good friend of ours pre-pandemic. I had just noticed him and was just about to say "hey" when he averted his eyes and sped up to get away from us.

That shit has been wigging me the fuck out for a couple days now 'cos thinking back probably the only time I've had people duck me like that was way back when I was a whole lot younger and angrier than I am today, and the person in question either owed me money or had done something pretty serious to "provoke the wrath."

And like, as far as I knew we were on pretty good terms with this dude and the only reason we hadn't been in touch is because COVID took a huge runny dump and smeared it across the last two years.

I dunno, that's really all I've got. I feel kinda disrespected, but mostly I feel lonely and confused.

Weak Flesh

Picked up my weights for the first time in ages aaaand… It actually wasn’t anywhere near as horrible as I was expecting. Now, granted, I was putting up significantly less than usual, but I figured that finding out if I was gonna hurt myself by actually hurting myself wasn’t the best way to start back up.

Gonna try to get back into the groove and lift every other day starting this week.