V Přítmí – Prázdnota

I press the ‘play’ the button and immediately a hypnotic Silent Hill-esque dissonant drone starts to kick in through the I-pod phones. Burrowing its shrill, writhing radio frequency signal deep, deep down within the corroded recesses of my core, what was supposed to be a cheerful Sunday late ‘brunch’ inside a NYC pizza parlor has somehow transformed into a “Waiting For Godot” play,  but with metalheads waxing all Shakespearean-like about what it means to be mortal in this rendition of sorts.  Yes, the occupied greasy tables in the dining area now suddenly resembling mere tear-soaked stools from which suicide victims jump off of, the baker’s oven behind the counter.. now a creepy-looking charred black elementary school basement furnace, and the strangers milling about now simply vessels of mere composted, complex bacteria.. suddenly this world before our eyes has become an Eastern European purgatory of sorts as conceived by a Russian philosopher on acid.

The very slow, funeral paced progression in each movement on this thing of which consists of nothing more than the barest, most skeletal minimum of subtle nuances feels like the overall decaying/breaking down process that occurs over time with one’s aging, particularly one that would fit the protagonist of a Dostoyevsky novel where he revels in his depression, his sexual impotence, and growing resentment with mankind as he further justifies more audaciously cruel acts upon his neighbors.

The shrill-migraine inducing guitar feedback-for-riffs serving as dementia, the thudding pulse of the pedestrian snare drum serving as the feeble pumping of a dying heart, both of which in tandem tug at the very recesses of my corrosive id, I now somehow feel like I ought to be clad in a very outdated looking priest frock outfit putting discarded mental patients out of their misery in some rustic eastern European compound of sorts. Of course rites to be said in proper, dramatic vernacular Latin certainly guaranteed.. just out of sheer respect surely!

Then there’s the ultra fuzzy bass and the shadowy keyboard melody that while synched together provide the warm cushion of anti-depressant med induced euphoria needed to drown out the internal screams, moans heard throughout, not to mention the hallucinatory cockroaches crawling underneath one’s skin. Whoa, and speaking of skin.. why do both my hands and arms look shriveled and bony?? And why do I feel as though its January and that the pizza guy ought to take the industrial strength air conditioner out of the window already on account of it being too cold? Oh, and perhaps he should do away with the Italian ice stand and opt for a nurse with a pill cart to come around every hour on the hour in its place, that is if my companion and I’s lifeless husks continue to dwell here since we can no longer move, think, or feel at the moment..

So, did this Mexican artistic duo become so distraught one day over the admitted creative bankruptcy and subsequent final demises of both Xasthur and Bethlehem one day that they ended up completely losing it altogether? That is, by way of a mutual, ritualistic grazing of each others’ head with a 12 gauge shot gun, they nonchalantly decide to now live as they have always agonizingly felt deep, deep inside.. grotesquely disfigured? Indeed, and the wheezing, hissing, and gurgling through the mucus pipes is not only the intended soundtrack but also an instrument for which the discomfort and nausea voices itself. Mere thinking of it alone just might make me want to read Bret Easton Ellis’, “American Psycho” all over again!

Ahh.. depressive, nihilistic, suicidal black metal! How I love thee!