All posts by Indy

>Earth Hour

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Earth Hour makes me sick. It’s straight up hypocrisy, the masses being orchestrated by the media to turn out the lights for one hour once a year. Wow. Big deal. Everybody at the same time: We did it! We love life!
Earth Hour does practically nothing but speaks to our bad conscience.

Also, Earth Hour always starts at an hour where all big businesses are shut down. Instead of the big businesses taking responsibility for the destruction of the Earth and shutting down in the middle of the day, the joke’s on us: Turn out the lights on your free time, please, and welcome back to work tomorrow. Work, eat, consume, sleep.

Usually, I’m all for small actions leading to big change, but this, as well as the International Women’s Day and such manifestations, is like spitting in the face of real change. One hour, or one day, and then it’s all back to normal, i.e. the mindless egotistic destruction we always occupy our time with.
Mankind will never learn.

Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals
But then how did that other “gloomy business,” the consciousness of guilt, the whole “bad conscience” come into the world?—And with this we turn back to our genealogists of morality. I’ll say it once more—or have I not said anything about it yet?—they are useless. With their own merely “modern” experience extending through only a brief period [fünf Spannen lange], with no knowledge of and no desire to know the past, even less a historical instinct, a “second sight”— something necessary at this very point—they nonetheless pursue the history of morality. That must justifiably produce results which have a less than tenuous relationship to the truth. Have these genealogists of morality up to now allowed themselves to dream, even remotely, that, for instance, that major moral principle “guilt” [Schuld] derived its origin from the very materialistic idea “debt” [Schulden]? Or that punishment developed as a repayment, completely without reference to any assumption about freedom or lack of freedom of the will?—and did so, by contrast, to the point where it always first required a high degree of human development so that the animal “man” began to make those much more primitive distinctions between “intentional,” “negligent,” “accidental,” “responsible,” and their opposites and bring them to bear when meting out punishment? That idea, nowadays so trite, apparently so natural, so unavoidable, which has even had to serve as the explanation how the feeling of justice in general came into existence on earth, “The criminal deserves punishment because he could have acted otherwise,” this idea is, in fact, an extremely late achievement, indeed, a sophisticated form of human judgment and decision making. Anyone who moves this idea back to the beginnings is sticking his coarse fingers inappropriately into the psychology of older humanity. For the most extensive period of human history, punishment was certainly not meted out because people held the instigator of evil responsible for his actions, and thus it was not assumed that only the guilty party should be punished:—it was much more as it still is now when parents punish their children out of anger over some harm they have suffered, anger vented on the perpetrator—but anger restrained and modified through the idea that every injury has some equivalent and that compensation for it could, in fact, be paid out, even if that is through the pain of the perpetrator. Where did this primitive, deeply rooted, and perhaps by now ineradicable idea derive its power, the idea of an equivalence between punishment and pain? I have already given away the answer: in the contractual relationship between creditor and debtor, which is, in general, as ancient as the idea of “legal subject” and which, for its part, refers back to the basic forms of buying, selling, bartering, trading, and exchanging goods.

>The best albums of 2009

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Better late than never. Just when I was about to do this post my CP crashed and everything was lost – until now. Like I said earlier, I haven’t been quite up to par with what’s been happening musicwise in 2009, so most of this stuff is what I’ve encountered as a freelance writer for Sweden Rock Magazine.
Anyhow, hopefully you’ll find some interesting music when browsing through the list. I’d say that’s the sole purpose of all kinds of lists; to interact and discover stuff of personal value.

I haven’t got the time to write about all albums, so I’ll just write them down in no particular order. One of these albums caught my attention at a very late stage, though, and judging by how many times I’ve listened to it already, I’d say this is the album of 2009:  
Ormar i gräset, Roffe Ruff. Usually, I hate Swedish hiphop, but this is no joke.

To me, hiphop died a long time ago. Last time I heard a solid rap album was back in 2001 (Smut Peddlers Porn Again and Cannibal Ox The Cold Vein. I might add The Ownerz by Gang Starr, but it’s not rock solid). Swedish rap was dead before it was even born (some exceptions, like Looptroop, early Brigade, early Infinite Mass, MBMA, Chords, The Latin Kings, Mics of Fury…). That’s why I’m so amazed by the grim flow, the beats, the lyrics, the artwork, the image, the secrecy, the humour, the depth, the seriousness and awareness of real hiphop and real issues on this album. Roffe Ruff is the shit. And his music is for free. The album is available here for your pleasure. A new one is about to be released two days from now. I’d be damned if it’s as good as Ormar i gräset. Also, Raekwon released Only Built 4 Cuban Linx II, which was a total killer. Maybe hiphop is back on track?

With that said, let’s get on with the program.
Click on the band name for MySpace links.

RAP

Roffe RuffOrmar i gräset [DOWNLOAD]
RaekwonOnly Built 4 Cuban Linx II
O.C. & A.G.Oasis
Blaq PoetTha Blaqprint
DOOMBorn Like This

MISCELLANEOUS

Dinosaur JrFarm
DragontearsTambourine Freak Machine
First Band From Outer SpaceThe Guitar is Mightier Than the Gun
Sunn O)))Monoliths & Dimensions
Master Musicians of BukkakeTotem One
Sonic YouthThe Eternal
OmGod is Good
Abramis BramaSmakar söndag
HorisontTvå sidor av horisonten

METAL/PUNK

Funeral MistMaranatha
GriftegårdSolemn-Sacred-Severe
TeitanbloodSeven Chalices
Switch OpensSwitch Opens
BeheritEngram
PortalSwarth
MastodonCrack the Skye
Master’s HammerMantras
UnanimatedIn the Light of Darkness
KatharsisFourth Reich
ObliterationNekropsalms
Die HardNihilistic Vision
MyrkrBlack Illumination
Slough FegApe Uprising!
Switchblade – S/T
KonghShadows of the Shapeless
Count RavenMammons War
Ocean ChiefDen förste
ArchgoatThe Light Devouring Darkness
AhabThe Divinity of Oceans
CobaltGin
Bestial HolocaustTemple of Damnation
NefandusDeath Holy Death
AbandonThe Dead End
Arckanumþþþþþþþþþþþ
CandlemassDeath Magic Doom
The Gates of SlumberHymns of Blood & Thunder
NecrophobicDeath to All
TormentedRotten Death
NödvärnSlutstationen
Anal VomitGathering of the Putrid Demons
TribulationThe Horror
PyramidoSand
Katatonia – Night is the New Day

People said 2009 was a bad year for good records. That’s 48 albums right there.
What did I forget?

>How can it feel this wrong?

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Till Maria

Oh, can’t anybody see,
We’ve got a war to fight,
Never found our way,
Regardless of what they say.

How can it feel, this wrong,
From this moment,
How can it feel, this wrong.

Storm,
In the morning light,
I feel,
No more can I say,
Frozen to myself.

I got nobody on my side,
And surely that ain’t right,
Surely that ain’t right.

>A Necrologue for the Elite

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Many are governed by few. People are born free but are everywhere in chains. The power of the sword is the founder of all governments. Governors rule by force, not opinion. Society must be protected from unwanted truths, since the common person follows not reason, but faith. It is a fundamental human need – and hence a fundamental human right – to inquire and create, free of external force.

As we have seen over the past couple of years, with the FRA, IPRED, HADOPI etc. gone haywire, control of thought is far more important in free countries than it is in military states. A military state can control and submit its domestic enemy by force, but as the state loses this weapon, other devices are required to prevent the ignorant masses from interfering with public affairs. The public must be reduced to observers, not participants.
One of the most important tasks for the elite in a democratic society, a free society, is to govern and manipulate the organized habits and opinions of the masses. Population control is necessary to keep the public marginalized in the public arena. After work (work is, for the most of us, where we are turned into instruments for other ends, rather than acting as human beings fulfilling our inner needs), each person should be alone in front of the TV watching soap operas and “reality” shows, in order not to be able to think about what they believe in, not to formulate their own concerns and programs and not act to realize them. 
Eduardo Galeano writes that ”the majority must resign itself to the consumption of fantasy. Illusions of wealth are sold to the poor, illusions of freedom to the oppressed, dreams of victory to the defeated and of power to the weak.”
These are the central themes of modern political culture.

 The condition of revolt exists in women towards men, in oppressed nations towards their oppressors, and above all in labour towards capital.
Bertrand Russell