'Come set me free, all pain is gone.'
-Combichrist: 'All Pain is Gone'

Ahh, it's been a while, my deviant darlings. Been a long, LONG while. While the while has indeed been long, I didn't see the point of being here. That was basically why I was almost completely absent, or 'lurking', as some would say.

Thus, today, I'll just pretend it's a normal day. Yeah, there is a change; I just can't seem to share anything with anyone lately. My 'innermost thoughts', as insignificant as they may be, I share with nobody. Thus, I'll just pretend it's just another day, as if I'm updating this page and this journal every five minutes like I used to, and talk about music, my favourite (and seemingly only) subject.

Lately, I've been abandoning my roots more. If you must know (or didn't already) my initial departure point is hard rock, nu-metal, which later branched out to almost all types of metal music; melodeath and progressive attracting me more than others. For some wierd reason, I always felt a compulsion for the more 'experimental' sides of progressive metal (yet, Strapping Young Lad, Ulver, Arcturus, Diabolical Masquerade, Pan.Thy.Monium and the like never attracted me particularly).

Then, with much influence from my valentine, (her saying 'This is the one band I keep to myself'; a condition I saw to the destruction of) I got introduced to the world of industrial music. It started off as the blatant darkwave, Diary of Dreams, with the well-known stuff, The Crüxshadows, Collide, the Last Dance, etc. Then it expanded from there. These days, I'm hooked on EBM a little bit more; as blatant as :wumpscut: and Combichrist, granted, but still...

There is some savage disorder to the orderly, almost repetitive and 'routine' structure of them both. Synthesizers and the heavy-on-the-bass, four-to-the-floor style kick drum and snare. It's the stuff you would expect to hear from party-intensive club pieces with the occasional freak remix; music you can just get off your ass and dance to. I don't know whether they were meant to be, but they can fuel raves right in your frakkin' living room, no questions asked. It's the synthesizer tunes filling the space in between the constant assault of oscillator lines and boobasses and kick drums that makes you lapse back into melancholy.

Funny thing, this standardized, each approach becomes different. The human touch in the otherwise mechanically precise and 'broken down' music is what shifts it slightly in entirely new directions. Points of comparison? Jesus On Extasy and Dope Stars Inc. both do industrial gothic rock. Jesus On Extasy is a little heavy on the melancholy and is 'slower', while Dope Stars Inc. focus on the 'dance' aspect a little more. They are essentially the same thing in different forms - the variations upon a theme.

It's brilliant, this thing they call music. I've never been able to get into making it myself, I consider myself more of a 'rofessional listener'. Well, okay, 'amateur listener', since I don't get paid for it. Someone remarked to me once that he was astonished I could hear all instruments at any given moment. Thing is, there is a small gap for the listener to squeeze into that small pocket of space and breathe WITH it, breathe IT in... music isn't external. Music that the maker pours himself into pulls you in and drowns you, force-feeds you the beauty and savagery of it: it doesn't get up on a pedestal and force you to watch from afar.

Latest favourites: Pelcher Femina, :wumpscut:, Combichrist, Dope Stars Inc., Neon Synthesis, Scorngrain, Shade Empire, The Last Dance, Collide, Zeromancer, Sero Overdose, Aythis, Clan of Xymox, Psyklon Nine, The Crüxshadows, Schoolyard Heroes (non-industrial).