The Sokushinbutsu were Japanese monks of the Shingon sect who committed suicide in a manner that caused them to become mummified.
The process to almost 9 years and much hardship. The monks that tried this were Shingon Buddhists, a major Japanese sect. It is believed that many hundred of monks tried this but only a few succeeded.
First let's discuss the why. The Sokushinbutsu and other Shingon Buddhists believed that life is an illusion and if you do not break from the illusion you will continue to be reincarnated in it. If you do break from the illusion you will become one with the enlightened being or Buddha. I have been taught that only death is real, different strokes I guess. An important aspect of the Shingon sect is the denial of the importance of their physical selves, often by physical degradation. It is common for Shingon monks to meditate under freezing waterfalls. The Sokushinbutsu achieved this by undergoing the long an difficult suicide process.I'd just shoot myself in the head and have a friend take pictures.
Or at least that's what I can get from reading a couple of websites. There's a lot I don't know about Buddhism, like how can a peaceful religion justify killing the shit out of people with their bare hands, death point strikes and whatnot? I really don't know or care much about any religions, but I hope I didn't offend any Buddhists reading this.
Now for the how. From start to end the entire process of mummification took 3000 days or almost 9 years. It was undertaken by elderly monks near the end of their lives anyways.
For the first 1000 days the monk would only eat nuts and seeds and subject himself to a very strenuous exercise regime. This reduced the monks fat deposits, and fat is easily decomposed.
The next 1000 the monk only ate bark and roots of pine trees. Near the end of this stage he began drinking tea made from the sap of the usrushi tree (Toxicodendron verniciflum), a poisonous sap usually used to lacquer bowls and furniture. The tea would induce vomiting, sweating and urination reducing his body moisture. It also made his body so poisonous that maggots couldn't eat it. By the end of the first 2000 days he had almost no body fat from the exercise and diet, was chronically dehydrated and poisonous from the urushi.
He would then be entombed in an airtight chamber with just enough room for him to sit in the lotus position. There was an airhole and a string tied to a bell outside. Everyday he would ring the bell to tell his crew that he was still alive. When the bell stopped ringing they would seal the airhole, leaving the monk to desiccate for another 1000 days. At the end they would unseal the tomb. Most of the they found a rotted body because of the bacteria that lives inside of humans. But every once in a while the monk would be successful in his mummification. The mummy would then be removed from the tomb and placed on display in the temple and viewed as a Buddha. Those that failed would be admired for their determination and endurance and retombed (dibs on band name).
Unfortunately the Japanese government pussied out and outlawed the practice in the 19th century. While suicide remains legal to this day there, assisted suicide and exhumation are not. There are about 16-24 known Sokushinbutsu in Japan and several can be seen to this day at various temples.
Punk has a long history of disparaging artists who forsake the aesthetic upon which they initially based their sound, to the extent that one of the most grievous sins a punk band can commit is to “go metal.” On one hand, this is a fairly ludicrous condemnation, as punk and metal have informed each other since the start, whether that was Lemmy playing in the Damned (or touring with Amebix), Anthrax covering Discharge, or any of the cross-genre mutations that have sprung up when less restricted musicians have seen fit to break down the oppressive and artificial boundaries established by the more tight-assed in their midst. On the other hand, while examples of punk bands who have turned towards more metallic tendencies are legion, examples of bands who have done it well are few. This was the sort of jumping ship that produced SSD's How We Rock, Discharge's Grave New World, and everything Corrosion of Conformity did after 1986 (amongst many others). This, however, isn't to say that no bands could make the transition, and it would take one of the most abrasive and extreme to do it well.
Tokyo's G.I.S.M were among the first punk bands to pop up in Japan, having started in 1980. Their music showed some metallic tendencies from the start, but the performances were chaotic and the recording quality of early releases leaned towards a low enough fidelity that most specific components of their sound were difficult to discern. Early releases like Detestation possessed a ramshackle energy that manages to be menacing in the way that many such bands aspire to and few achieve (aided in no small part by the violent propensities of singer Sakevi Yokohama. Then there's the broken English of songs like “Endless Blockades For The Pussyfooter” and “(Tere Their) Syphilitic Vaginas To Pieces” [sic] – titles that may not have made much sense on a conscious level, but on a visceral level are difficult to top.
The band's follow-up, 1987's M.A.N. (Military Affairs Neurotic) – the band loved their acronyms, with even their name variously representing Guerrilla Incendiary Sabotage Mutineers, God In The Schizophrenic Mind, Gnostic Idiosyncrasy Sonic Militant, and other monikers that may or may not make sense – was not as well-received. The songs were slower with more emphasis on melody, the production values somewhat cleaner, the approach more varied. Even die-hard G.I.S.M fans often have a hard time with M.A.N as it is often seen as work that lacks the abrasive gut punch of Detestation, but listening to the album clear of preconceptions reveals that these judgments are unduly harsh – while it may not have been the manic whirlwind of misanthropy and distortion that characterized its predecessor, it's actually a prescient metal album characterized by a marriage of guitar harmonies and shrieked vocals that would resonate throughout the metal world in the decades to come.
It's easy to try boiling M.A.N down to a formula – Iron Maiden guitars, vocals not far removed from the early Scandinavian black metal bands starting to make noise half a world away, and galloping drums all captured in the sort of tinny, reverb-heavy production preferred by discerning low-budget metal bands of the day. And that's a large chunk of what was going on with the album, but it's not quite the apt summation it might at first seem. What is most easily ignored is that M.A.N was imbued with a songwriting sense that many such bands fail to grasp. The songs weren't just a string of riffs, they were compositions that ebbed and flowed under their propulsive thrust. It's an attention to structure that's imbued in the album as a whole as well, not simply the individual songs. The record builds and releases tension, with the occasional eerie interlude that sounds not far removed from the creepier moments of Whitehouse or Throbbing Gristle. It was an embrace of structure and melody as a means of pushing an extreme agenda rather than as a step down the road to selling out and it was one that, while not always appreciated by their fans, was a testament to the band's creative power.
There's little question that their earliest work inspired legions of crustier hardcore bands but it's difficult to say what influence the band's later work had on metal bands that ended up playing music with similar characteristics. Whether G.I.S.M was aware of these bands is a matter of debate, but the fact that drummer Ironfist Tatsushima has played in traditional black metal band SSORC suggests that, at some point at least, there were some dots connected. Conversely, it's not hard to hear echoes of M.A.N in early Dissection or At The Gates, though such bands may or may not have been aware of G.I.S.M's work and definitely lacked their versatility, experimental tendencies, and sonic menace. Ultimately, G.I.S.M was always a cult band, one shrouded in mystery and notoriety, the type spoken of in reverent terms out of equal parts love and fear. Their influence might rear its head from time to time in unexpected places, but they constantly challenged both their detractors and supporters, making some killer records in the process.
As I'm sure many (if not most) of you are aware, the subject of cryptozoology is a particular favorite here at ICHQ, and when we aren't writing about metal, our minds tend to wander in that direction, or maybe just somewhere in between... The search for undiscovered species is an endeavor clouded by hoax, misinformation, disinformation, and pseudoscience--perhaps this is why the Illogical mind is drawn to it so strongly. We are indeed a blog dedicated to belief in that which is downright foolish, hence the relatively young mythology of the "ningen" is fertile ground for us.
"Ningen" (a Japanese word literally meaning "human") refers to a particular type of of aquatic cryptid, usually reported as enormous (20-30 meters in length), white in color, whale-like, and in possession, strangely enough, of a human face, arms, and hands. The first popular ningen story came from a supposed Japanese government "whale researcher" on the pages of 2Channel, and while I can't find any proper English translation of said posting, the fallout appeared in several places, including the magazine Mu, Pink Tentacle, and our old favorite, Mysterious Universe.
Part of the charm of the ningen mythology is its relative newness, as the first report of the massive, blubbery beast surfaced in 2006-'07. The thought of such a girthy were-whale evading science so thoroughly for so long is indeed an enticing one, and although the ningen stays relatively low on the cryptid-visibility scale (as opposed to Bigfoot, the Montauk Monster, or even the Mongolian Death Worm), its supporters are inversely fervent, ensuring that its legend will survive...
Pretty sure this picture ain't Shopped.
Weird, human-faced sea creatures are definitely nothing new to the field of cryptozoology--Hell, bizarre anthropomorphism abounds in the ocean depths (even in the realms of provable science). Anyone else read that story on the one-eyed, albino shark last week? That shit was fucked up. But the mythology of the ningen carries a strange humanism with it, beyond the outward appearance of the great beast. Or fish. Whatever. Something about the thought of a huge cetacean with a person's face gliding through the most remote depths of the Antarctic is haunting beyond message-board meme-ism, and I personally welcome the coming reign of our Ningen Overlords with open arms.
Left: There was a small uproar a couple years back when some folks claimed they saw what looked like a ningen in a Google Maps image off the coast of Namibia. To me, it kind of looks like some waves. But yeah, it's probably a ningen.
I'm not sure what percent of our readership can read/translate Japanese, but what little research I've done on the subject has turned up very little in English and a whole Hell of a lot in that particular language. I'm definitely interested in learning more about the subject, and I implore any readers who can supply further stories and/or information to do so. If not, hey, I guess I can just learn Japanese.
Kyoto, Japan's MORTALIZED have barely made a blip on the radar in their 15-year run on the international grind scene, probably due to their relatively miniscule amount of recorded output. I mean, through the course of three splits, a demo, a best-of compilation, and two EP's, the Mortalized catalog remains under 20 minutes total, leaving very little for the blast-hungry masses to chew on over the years. Take, for example, their first "non-split" release, 2003's Absolute Mortality. Containing four songs and clocking in at just over four minutes, it's hardly an ALBUM, which, I guess, Mortalized realized, following it up immediately with the almost SIX(!!!)-minute Absolute Mortality #2. Neither of them delicately-crafted prog rock epics by any stretch of the imagination, but hey, that's not the point. The point is this: Mortalized grind really hard and really intense, boasting a frenzied, Discordance Axis-esque dual vocal attack that carries all the subtlety of a surprise leopard-mauling. These guys never slow down or relent, and the pummeling ferocity of the Mortality duo, while only consisting of ten minutes of actual music, will leave you feeling like you just spent 2 hours in the pit with Cannibal Corpse. Complete fucking anti-Christian, speed-worshipping, war-metal brutality, no filler, no pretense, and no bullshit. I've combined parts 1 and 2 together in one file, please use it responsibly. PS: Their 2007 split with Swarrrm comes highly recommended as well.
Life works in mysterious ways, my friends. To wit: last Thursday I posted extensively on what I like to call the "Sirius 1973" phenomena (if you're too lazy to scroll down three posts, just click HERE), which involves Robert Anton Wilson and Philip K. Dick communicating with an alien meta-intelligence from Sirius around the same time in 1973-74, which just happened to coincide with a Dogon ceremony celebrating their own Sirian roots as well (signifigance lies within the fact that the ceremony only occurs every 60 years). Well, fast forward to last Friday (the day after I wrote about the Sirius Phenomena). I'm listening to an excellent episode of the now-defunct Out There Radio podcast (I wrote about them previously here), a two-hour affair about the lives of Timothy Leary and Terence McKenna aptly titled "The Psychedelic Torchbearers". I highly recommend checking it out, and you can do so here:
Anyhow, in said episode, hosts Raymond and Joe happened to bring up a rather interesting factoid--namely, that while Dr. Leary was imprisoned at Folsom in 1973 (next door to Charlie Manson, in fact), he started having weird dreams and visions akin to those concurrently being experienced by Robert Wilson, and in fact credited these dream-visions to an alien intelligence--from SIRIUS. Talk about some weird synchronicity... Not only in 1973, but in the present day as well. It turns out I wasn't, in fact, the first to make some connections about what happened back in '73--host Joe McPhall pointed out the strange similarities between PKD, RAW, and Leary's stories as well, actually taking it a step further to include the psychedelic/cosmic experiences of DMT guru Terence McKenna in the Amazon at almost the EXACT SAME TIME.
Leary wrote about his visions and theories about interstellar contact in 1973's Starseed (right), which you can begin reading HERE. A shortened version of his revelations from Sirius (which I found here) read as follows:
"It is time for life on Earth to leave the planetary womb and learn to walk through the stars.
Life was seeded on your planet billions of years ago by nucleotide templates which contained the blueprint for gradual evolution through a sequence of biomechanical stages.
The goal of evolution is to produce nervous systems capable of communicating with and returning to the Galactic Network where we, your interstellar parents, await you.
Life on planet Earth has now reached this halfway point, established itself, and evolved through larval mutations and metamorphoses to the seven brain stages.
At this time the voyage home is possible.
Assemble the most intelligent, advanced, courageous of your species, divided equally between men and women. Let every race, nationality, and religion be represented.
You are about to discover the key to immortality in the chemical structure of the genetic code, within which you will find the scripture of life. The time has come for you to accept the responsibility of immortality. It is not necessary for you to die.
You will discover the key to enhanced intelligence within the chemistry of the nervous system. Certain chemicals, used wisely, will enable your nervous system to decipher the genetic code.
All life on your planet is a unity. All life must come home.
Total freedom, responsibility and interspecies harmony will make the voyage possible. You must transcend larval identities of race. culture and nationality. Your only allegiance is to life. The only way you will survive is to make the voyage home.
The Japanese people are the most advanced race on your planet and will give protection to the company.
We are sending a comet to your solar system as a sign that the time has come to look to the stars.
When you arrive back home you will be given new instructions and powers. Your sperm ship is the flower of terrestrial life. As soon as the company is formed and the voyage begun, war, poverty, hatred, fear will disappear from your planet and the most ancient prophecies and celestial visions will be realize.
Mutate! Come home in glory."
HOT DAMN. Honestly, I don't know what to make of all this. Leary, Dick, Wilson, McKenna, and the ancient Dogon tribe, all claiming extraterrestrial contact almost simultaneously? Preeeeetty fucking loopy. This particular rabbit hole needs further exploration....
In the meantime, download Leary's 1970 "experimental" album (featuring Hendrix, among others), and don't forget to consume mass quantities of Out There Radio. Your Third Eye needs squeegee-ing.
TIMOTHY LEARY - YOU CAN BE ANYONE THIS TIME AROUND (1970)
This nearly-impossible-to-find score from the nearly-impossible-to-find film comes courtesy of IllCon Alumnus The Thing That Should Not Be, who submitted it in response to my pathetic pleas following our last foray into Tomita Territory. Having now heard this buried gem, I am utterly charmed by Mr. Tomita's seamless blend of sleazy wah-wah, Vegas horns, and nasty 70's funk, blended as it is with his omnipresent, reverbed-out synth--sort of like an absurd mix of Deep Throat, Tron, and Dead-On-A-Toilet Elvis. Fucking sweet.
But here's the rub. Now that I've heard the tunes, I REALLY need to see the movie (pulled from the shelves in 1980), which limited research has found described as such: "The film centers around the family of a scientist, Dr. Nishiyama (Tetsuro Tamba)... concentrating on hallucinogenic international imagery in a manner looking forward to such films as Koyaanisqatsi and Baraka. In the film, scientific advances cause an outbreak of giant slugs, oversized bats, children with genetic mutations enhancing their physical or mental abilities, and bizarre changes in weather, such as snow falling on the pyramids. The film gets bleaker and bleaker, until Dr. Nishiyama hypothesizes a scenario that re-edits the climactic war footage from The Last War, augmenting them with a scene of the surviving humans, looking like sufferers of neurofibromatosis, fighting over who gets to eat a snake." Whoa.
Another outstanding outing from an old-school IC favorite. FUCKING. TOMITA. RULING. SO. HARD. Thanks, Thing.
I'm not exactly sure why today's post reminded me of Brother Seanford's words during Guilty Pleasures Week, but it did, and in case you don't already have those words memorized (you really should), they were posted HERE and went something like this:
"...sometimes we as bloggers are compelled to post things based on a criteria that uses something other than quality as a measuring stick, a criteria which uses rarity and trueness to determine whether or not something is postable. Now im not accusing any particular blogger of posting records they’re not crazy about, I’m simply acknowledging an impulse which I believe exists amongst bloggers, perpetuated by a need for social dominance. Is it possible that posting obscure records has become too competitive? Is it possible that even the true catch themselves posing?"
Excellent observations on the part of our beloved second-in-command indeed, observations that do in fact make me question the motives of most music bloggers, observations that make me myself look inward at my own reasoning and internal impetus. Why do I do what I do? Am I looking for some sort of "social acceptance" by posting "obscure" music that may or may not be deemed "good" by my peers via the internet? Are my reasons for spending time almost every day sharing music with the public at large entirely altruistic, or are my attempts at connecting with people via shared opinions about music some sort of psychological compensation for other inadequacies? I think the answers to these questions boil down to one common denominator, hinted at by Seanford in his earlier quote. The denominator is this: Do I (and other music bloggers) post stuff because it is GOOD or because it is COOL? Let's take a closer look...
- GOOD MUSIC: I guess saying that one posts only "good" music would imply that motivation for sharing comes from some sort of internal barometer of quality, that the blogger in question writes, listens, and works solely out of love for the art form, not from any sort of desire for acceptance or need to be considered "cool" or "fashionable". Sounds which are pleasing to the ear, no matter who makes them or how they are delivered, will be propagated and shared, not through any prism of social judgment or peer approval, but through a sense of benevolence and, to drop an old phrase, sincere BRONESS.
- COOL MUSIC: The idea of posting about "cool" music would seem to indicate that the blogger in question is writing and uploading more out of a sense of inner emptiness and desire for heightened social standing than any real need to share good art. The hipster plague is no stranger to this concept, and while I try not to throw too many stones here in my glass pyramid, I think that many online publications (Pitchfork or Vice perhaps, maybe even certain sites closer to home) tend to hype COOL music rather than GOOD. But I digress.
I think my point is already pretty clear. We here at IllCon love GOOD music, and to prove it, I'm going to post four albums today that absolutely nobody else will like. These are tunes that are indeed close to my heart, that I believe with every fiber of my being resound with talent, integrity, heart, and intelligence. But they are also tunes that will earn myself and Illogical Contraption ZERO fuckin' "cool points" with the In Crowd. YOU won't like this music either, but you know what? I don't care. To me, these four releases are the summation of GOOD MUSIC. That's right: SHELBY COBRAS IS THE ONLY PURE MAN IN THE INDUSTRY.
If you're looking for quality jams, you need look no further than the collected works of Japanese synthesizer maestro Isao Tomita. Sure, I've posted about him in the past (three times, actually), but I've been on a major Tomita bender in the last couple weeks, and felt that it was time to purge a large section of my library. Some people might write Tomita off as some sort of second-tier Japanese Wendy/Walter Carlos clone, but in all honesty, I find Tomita's compositions to be far more creative and listenable than Carlos' (and I do consider myself a big Carlos fan). Dude shreds balls, and the intergalactic/transdimensional/alien aesthetic of his work vibrates in tune with my own inner Icke. He rules.
Anyway, this intro is way too long already. We've still got four albums to get through. Let's do this.
ELECTRIC SAMURAI - SWITCHED-ON ROCK (1972)
Tomita released this collection of tripped-out pop music standards under the moniker "Electric Samurai" way back in '72, between his early years composing themes for film and television and his mid-seventies forays into Moog-ified classical music. The track list here is pretty cheezy (4 Beatles songs, "Jailhouse Rock", and a couple Simon & Garfunkel jams can all be found herein), but Tomita's psychedelic interpretations breathe spastic new life into these tired numbers, and although the album takes a song or two to really get moving, it's fucking unstoppable once it hits stride. The fact that Switched-On Rock appeared a full four years after Walter Carlos' Switched-on Bach does little to further Tomita's case for artistic independence, but this album is nonetheless an excellent cocktail-party soundtrack and/or late-night hash-smoking companion, depending on your intoxicant of choice. Super mellow but pretty freaky too.
Tomita's electronic interpretation of Claude Debussy's Children's Corner "tone paintings" earned him three Grammy nominations (including one for Best Classical Album) in 1975, and, if that weren't enough already, also contained the theme for the PBS series Jack Horkheimer: Star Gazer ("Arabesque No. 1").
From Wikipedia: "The use of the term tone paintings here describes the nature of a large portion of Debussy's work, which was concerned with mood and colour, eschewing traditional tonality in favour of constructions such as the full-tonal scale, parallel chords, bitonality, and to a certain extent atonality, in order to achieve a greater degree of musical expression not allowed by strict adherence to a single key. Thus, the term tone painting is quite appropriate, in that Debussy's compositions often experimented with a much broader palette of tones, allowing each to behave similar to a colour within an illustration."
Also endearing to me is Tomita's penchant for listing every single piece of equipment he used during recording in the liner notes of each album, a list that, for Snowflakes, read as such:
- Moog synthesizer
One 914 extended range fixed filter bank Two 904-A voltage-controlled low-pass filters One 904-B voltage-controlled high-pass filter One 904-C filter coupler One 901 Voltage-controlled oscillator Three 901-A oscillator controllers Nine 901-B oscillators Four 911 envelope generators One 911-A dual-trigger delay Five 902 voltage-controlled amplifiers One 912 envelope follower One 984 four-channel mixer One 960 sequential controller Two 961 interfaces One 962 sequential switch Two 950 keyboard controllers One 6401 Bode ring modulator
- Tape recorders
One Ampex MM-1100 16-track One Ampex AG-440 4-track One Sony TC-9040 4-track One Teac A-3340S 4-track One Teac 7030GSL 2-track
- Mixers
Two Sony MX-16 8-channel mixers Two Sony MX-12 6-channel mixers
- Accessories
One AKG BX20E Echo unit One Eventide Clockworks "Instant Phaser" Two Binson Echorec "2" units One Fender "Dimension IV" One Mellotron
This is a relatively short list, compared to his later releases.
Another standout in a seemingly endless stream of classical-via-Moog releases in the mid-70's, Tomita's reworking of Mussorgsky's Pictures At An Exhibition (released the same year as his excellent Firebird Suite) finds him at the top of his game creatively, melting faces not only with his nimble fingers but also with a constant barrage of special effects, delay, oscillation, and all manner of other assorted electronic tomfoolery. The original Pictures, written in 1874, was a tribute by Mussorgsky to his recently-deceased friend, painter Viktor Hartmann, and is meant as an aural analog to attenting one of Hartmann's art shows. It is by far Mussorgsky's best-known work, being interpreted by many a conductor over the years--none of whom could match Tomita's Technicolor treatment, of course.
Wiki again: "Mussorgsky links the suite's movements in a way that depicts the viewer's own progress through the exhibition. Two "Promenade" movements stand as portals to the suite's main sections. Their regular pace and irregular meter depicts the act of walking. Three untitled interludes present shorter statements of this theme, varying the mood, colour and key in each to suggest reflection on a work just seen or anticipation of a new work glimpsed. Mussorgsky, not generally known for cutting a svelte figure, wrote to Stasov: "My physiognomy can be seen in the interludes." A turn is taken in the work at the "Catacombae" when the "Promenade" theme stops functioning as merely a linking device and becomes, in "Cum mortuis", an integral element of the movement itself. The theme reaches its apotheosis in the suite's finale, The Bogatyr Gates."
Our final Tomita effort today is The Bermuda Triangle, which, unlike the other albums posted here, contains quite a bit of Tomita's own composition. Other sections by Prokofiev and John Williams (you'll know it when you hear it) round this one out, with the whole package being a diverse and wholly sci-fi excursion into creepy, spacey realms of pure fantasy and high weirdness. Bermuda is probably my favorite of the four records presented in this post, not only for the completely top-notch music, but for the track listing as well. Check it out:
1. The Round Space Ship Landing on the Earth While Emitting Silvery Lights (The Arrival of UFO and the Mysterious Electric Waves) 2. Look Out the Bermuda Triangle, Look Out the Bermuda Triangle, Look Out 3. Strong Electromagnetic Waves 4. The World of the Different Dimensions 5. The Giant Pyramid Sitting at the Bottom of the Sea of Bermuda and the Ancient People 6. The Venus Wearing the Space Uniform Shining in Florescent Light Color (The Return of UFO) 7. The Children Playing in Agharta, the Deep Underground Kingdom 8. The Hollow Vessel Called the Earth 9. The Song of Venus 10. The Dawn at Bermuda 11. The Mysterious Electric Waves (Computer Data Signals) 12. The Dazzling Bright Cylindrical Object Which Had Crashed Into Tunguska, Siberia 13. The Harp Being Played by the Ancient People and the Venus and Her Space Children Singing the Song of the Future 14. The Visionary Flight to the 1448 Nebular Group of the Bootes (The Departure of UFO) 15. Now, You Have Been Carried Away from the Earth
That's right, my friends: Hollow Earth Theory, UFO's, the Bermuda Triangle, and an insurmountable wall of swirling Moogs all in one place. Please try to contain your excitement.
PS: If anyone has a link for Tomita's soundtrack to Catastrophe 1999: The Prophecies of Nostradomus, please send it my way. I have, as of yet, been unable to locate it through conventional means....
So yeah, I try to do one of these "anti-mixtapes"on the first day of each new season, but I somehow missed the first day of Spring 2011 through a horrendous barrage of wind and near-freezing rain. So you guys are getting this one a week late (which is better than never). It's a pretty hefty mix this time around (over two hours of tunes), custom-made (as always) to play in order when dropped into an iTunes playlist.
I tried to challenge myself by playing a little word game with this one. I'm sure you guys can figure it out (please note that the first band is POWER Quest and the last band is POWERmad).
Enjoy!
1. POWER QUEST "Far Away"
2. QUEST FOR BLOOD "Noise"
3. PAGAN BLOOD "The Call of Gods"
4. PAGAN ALTAR "Flight of the Witch Queen"
5. BLACK ALTAR "The Revelation of Scourge"
6. BLACK DEATH "Night of the Living Death"
7. NAPALM DEATH "Nazi Punks Fuck Off"
8. EXTREME NAPALM TERROR "Part 5"
9. SLEEP TERROR "Ascetic Meditation"
10. ETERNAL SLEEP "... To The End"
11. HATE ETERNAL "Praise of the Almighty"
12. HATE FOREST "With Fire And Iron"
13. FOREST OF FOG "Die Klage des Windes"
14. FOG OF WAR "M.O.S.H."
15. INVOCATION WAR "Infinite Power"
16. BURIAL INVOCATION "Desecration Remains"
17. BURIAL CHAMBER TRIO "Untitled"
18. SKIN CHAMBER "On A Drunk"
19. SKIN INFECTION "Locust Swarm"
20. DEAD INFECTION "Autophagia"
21. DEAD CONGREGATION "Voices"
22. MOURNFUL CONGREGATION "As I Drown In Loveless Rain"
Hopefully, a couple of you pulled your fucking heads out of your asses long enough to take a chance on Geinoh Yamashirogumi's Akira OST, as well as their amazing 1976 and 1986 releases Osorezan/Dounokenbai and Ecophony Rinne, respectively. Most of you probably didn't, though, because you were too busy jerking off to the new Rabbit! and Marshmallow Overcoat albums. And that's OK. Music this weird and mind-blowing isn't meant for mass consumption, or even micro-mass consumption. If you need any explanation regarding the Geinoh Yamashirogumi experimental music collective, please click either of the previous links. I'll expend no further energy doing that here. Chi no Hibiki Higashi Yuroppu wo Utau was their second release, coming out the same year as their much more psychedelic debut, Osorezan. This is no hippie-dippy daydream, rather it is a choral excursion/exploration into the deepest realms of Eastern European folk chanting. Yeah, wrap your head around that one, buddy. The other three of you that might have downloaded and/or enjoyed that Hildegard von Bingen stuff would do well to check this shit out. It is fucking beautiful in a way that the tiny gaijin mind cannot fathom.
Few black metal bands are as divisive as Tokyo's native weirdos SIGH. Sure, they're off-kilter as fuck and their albums are mixed all wrong and they're oddly commercial in an unpleasant, Cradle of Filth-y kind of way and they play saxophones and shit, but hey, this is a band that I'm 100% in favor of, always have been and (probably) always will be. I thought 2010's Scenes From Hell was fucking great (strange production be damned), and I can listen to--and enjoy--just about any release from the duration of their 20-year career (besides those Venom covers). Fucking sue me. But I think that when people are busy arguing about whether or not Sigh has "sold out" or the merits of a chick in angel wings prancing around onstage during their performances or whatever, one cold, hard fact often gets glazed over: back in the day, Sigh was comprised of three denim-and-leather clad Bros, who, way way way before any sort of fame or recognition, were still composing some really disturbing and angular music, every bit as fucked up and compelling as their newer stuff, without any sort of interest from their immediate "scene" or "social circle".
Scorn Defeat, despite its many WTF? moments (see the horrendous guitar solo in the middle of "A Victory of Dakini" and/or the six-minute ambient/organ/piano opus "Gundali"), is Sigh's first "real" mission statement, and is a full-length debut album so full of vision, ambition, and weirdness that it's no surprise Euronymous snatched them up and signed them to Deathlike Silence so quickly. I don't know if it's a "corny" move to post Sigh's first record, but I felt compelled to either way. This shit rules, and I still listen to it on the regular. I just wish I could have been running around in the back yard with these dudes back in 1990, fighting with medieval weapons made out of cardboard and duct tape, getting baked on whatever the Japanese version of Mexican brickweed is--just to get that glimpse into their brains, to see what sort of twisted minds it took to create something this strange (and this GOOD) in such isolation and amongst such societal constraint.
The three-song EP that immediately preceded Scorn Defeat. Two of these jams were re-recorded for the full-length in slightly lengthier forms, while the third, "Desolation of My Mind", is an ugly, doomy ode to the screaming anguish of early Abruptum. Bad production and an overall atmosphere of murk and filth. Highly recommended!
Abhorer first formed under the name Tombcrusher in Singapore in 1987, and are widely credited as the second Asian black metal band in history, just behind Japan's Sabbat. And while Sabbat's Bro-Cred is absolutely unquestionable, Abhorer's particular blend of blackened deathrash is quite a bit more violent, ugly, and blast-laden. Releasing a string of demos, splits, and singles throughout the end of the 80's and the beginning of the 90's, their only proper full-length came almost a decade into their career, in the form of the angularly-named Zygotical Sabbatory Anabapt. And this thing is 100% worth the wait. I don't usually publish track listings with my downloads, but I had to make an exception on this one. Fuck this band rules.
1. Invoking Nana Sahib, Satyrical Goat of Mendes 2. Concubinal Celibatic Myrmidonian Whores 3. Abandonment of Chastity 4. Hymeneal Altar of Messianic Salacitation 5. Phlegethonic Sybaritical Demimonde 6. Dom Abaddoniel Abysstic Demonolatry 7. Zygotical Sabbatory Anabapt 8. Expiation of Seraphic Patriarch 9. Saith... Empyrean Sabaoth of Azarak
From Kuwana-Japan come samurai HEAVY METAL lords with maximum extreme HEAVY METAL ACTION! METALUCIFER does the NWOBHM with maximum punching and KICKING power action, be false and DIE if making POSER! METALUCIFER is maked by GEZOLUCIFER from heavy metal SABBAT band, and fire and steel and metal. Number one HEAVY METAL is super violence, MAXIMUM VIOLENCE! Thunder weapon is FUCKING INSANE for SPEED! Eat shit for posers, METAL IS METAL!!!!!
First let's discuss the why. The Sokushinbutsu and other Shingon Buddhists believed that life is an illusion and if you do not break from the illusion you will continue to be reincarnated in it. If you do break from the illusion you will become one with the enlightened being or Buddha. I have been taught that only death is real, different strokes I guess. An important aspect of the Shingon sect is the denial of the importance of their physical selves, often by physical degradation. It is common for Shingon monks to meditate under freezing waterfalls. The Sokushinbutsu achieved this by undergoing the long an difficult suicide process.I'd just shoot myself in the head and have a friend take pictures.
He would then be entombed in an airtight chamber with just enough room for him to sit in the lotus position. There was an airhole and a string tied to a bell outside. Everyday he would ring the bell to tell his crew that he was still alive. When the bell stopped ringing they would seal the airhole, leaving the monk to desiccate for another 1000 days. At the end they would unseal the tomb. Most of the they found a rotted body because of the bacteria that lives inside of humans. But every once in a while the monk would be successful in his mummification. The mummy would then be removed from the tomb and placed on display in the temple and viewed as a Buddha. Those that failed would be admired for their determination and endurance and retombed (dibs on band name).
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