As my very clearly defined thesis of “yo, he’s not a bad motherfucker because he’s black- he’s a bad motherfucker because he’s a badass and perhaps a bit extra bad because he had to put up with a lot of baby back bullshit” has somehow been taken to mean “black people are magically delicious and uber-wonderful and the evil whitey is eeeeeevil” by the persistently illiterate and uncouth alleged homo sapiens who inhabit the American Deep South and Tidewater states, I was forced to reconfigure Part 2 of the Harold Poole series so that my point my be made even more succinct. After all, there is nothing that will hone a blade so much as the white-hot rage born of disgust that wells up in my chest every time I open Facebook, Messenger, or my email, and as they remain my sole means for communicating with the outside world at this time, I will just stay persistently disgusted.
As I deal with my inexplicable incel/MGTOW/Red Hat nuthuggers and their slimy-to-the-touch messages prophesying all manner of horrible shit from their parents’ basements I thought I’d pass along some of the more rad shit in terms of books, music, and movies across which I’ve come lately. The first book is basically required reading, insofar as any such thing exists in the Plague universe. I recommend the shit out of it, but I’ve also got the Cliff’s Notes linked in case you don’t want to go neck deep into one of the many reasons people can no longer communicate with one another. The rest of it isn’t in any way political, because although this site isn’t reflective of it, aside from my man Fwerfin losing his fistfight with a moving car, my life’s never been fucking better. Happily, the shit that Hollywood and various music scenes are producing are a rad backdrop to a life well lived, provided you’re chasing whatever your dream is rather than a buck. If you’re one of those, your tastes are likely as mysterious to me as mine are to you, so I’ve no idea if you’ll like any of this shit or not, but hopefully it’ll settle you down enough to have the presence of mind to police your crime scenes and dig some deep motherfucking holes when they’re needed.
To give you some idea of what I’ve been into lately, I’ve swung back and forth between beatdown, industrial numetalcore like Code Orange and Motionless in White, more rappy numetalcore, trap metal, and beatdown for music; the movies I’ve seen most recently range from Piranha DD to Dazed and Confused (which Tara and I watched back-to-back while high as fuck last night) to Shudder horror exclusives to Never Back Down 3 (which has a really rad scene in which MJW shows the applications of katas to sportfighting, which was really cool to Angry Birds 2 to a documentary about 2000AD called Future Shock!; and in regards to books I just finished American Nations along with Brian Keene’s The Complex, plus I am midway through A Little Hatred by Joe Abercrombie and Chasm City by Alastair Reynolds.
And finally, I’d like to reassert that the only side I am on from a political perspective is the side of the intelligent and the educated. So if you feel picked on and targeted by my writing, it is by design- with any luck you will eventually hate yourself enough to either end your worthless life or read a motherfucking book. I don’t care which.
To that end, here are books, movies, and music that will improve your life even as overwhelming weakness and stupidity that fills social media degrades your intellect and sanity.
Books
American Nations, by Colin Woodard
If you take issue with any of the things recently being said about your ethnicity and home region, there are plenty of great books you can read on the myriad ways in which all of our ancestors (yes, even the vaunted intellectuals of the Northeast) sucked beyond any reasonable expectation of horrible human behavior. One of which was recently recommended to me and I devoured it greedily while getting paid to do GPP at Amazon, and I will thus recommend it to you- American Nations, by Colin Woodard. If you don’t want to drop fifteen bucks on finding out all of the inventive ways your ancestors and mine cooked up to generally be awful to everyone around it, you will not be disappointed. If you want the Cliff’s Notes version, Business Insider has a good top-down view if you click these fancy, colorful words.
Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City, by K. J. Parker
Frankly, I’ve been listening to the new Joe Abercrombie and am not in love with it. I love that he’s tackled the social unrest of the industrial age in a grimdark Western fantasy, but halfway through it’s fucking dragging. Conversely, I read KJ Parker’s new book in only a couple of sittings, which is a rarity for me of late because I’ve been focusing far more heavily on non-fiction research for the site. This is a badass, clever but hardboiled grimdark Western fantasy in which an engineer rather than a great warrior is the ultimate salvation of a culture not his own. Parker’s characters are just as shrewd and cunning as those of Abercrombie’s first six Bloody Nine books, though not quite as bloodthirsty. The fighting is as rawly described as in Abercrombie’s books, and the ingenuity of the protagonist reminds me of Eric Flint’s characters in his out-of-time-style series that started with 1632. That series started out amazingly, though I only read the first two books in the event you want a solid series recommendation- the first two were far gnarlier than most alternate histories are.
“Of the people, by the people, for the people. I can’t remember offhand where that quote comes from; it was something to do with some bunch of wild-eyed idealists overthrowing the tyrant so they could become tyrants themselves. No good will have come of it, you can be sure. The people; God help us.”
― K.J. Parker, Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City
Movies
Becky
This is one for which you’ve gotta pay, but it’s well worth the six bucks. Starring the King of Queens and the host of talk soup, this flick pits Kevin James and his gang of felons in a home invasion of Joel McHale’s family cabin, which happens to house McHale’s future serial killer of a cute little daughter. This is a rad entry into the home invasion movie genre if for no other reason than its cast. Half the people I recommended this flick to didn’t like it, but given the fact I can’t decide if most human beings are even worth the bullet it would take to remove them from the global overpopulation problem, I recommend it anyway. I certainly enjoyed the shit out of it, as did Tara.
Rent it on Amazon or wherever you rent shit.
Incident In a Ghostland
It’s rare these days that I am surprised at the ending of a film, but with this film I could at no point accurately guess the fucking direction. And though it’s got more twists to it than the Elephant Man’s spine and makes M. Knight look positively pedestrian in his plot development, it’s also gnarly as fuck. The premise is that the entire movie is the result of the aftermath of one night in which a French-Canadian mom and her two quarrelling, ying-and-yang sisters are violently accosted by a ripped, glowering witch and her simpleton-with-super-strength mega-Sloth son driving an evil ice cream truck. Throats are slashed fingers and brutally snapped, half the cast is stabbed at least four times and the other half is dead before they have the opportunity to get stabbed that much.
Like half of the other awesome shit about which I write, this thing is free on Shudder.
Beach House
Another Shudder exclusive, I had no fucking idea what I was getting into when I threw this on- I assumed it was going to be like M. Night’s best flick, The Visit, except set at the beach. I could not have been more wrong. After a slow build the movie transforms into a kind of mashup of Color Out of Space and The Mist, making it a pretty rad piece of cosmic horror in retrospect. If you stay with this one you’ll see a rad homage to my favorite unknown horror gem, The Ruins, as well as one of the most thought provoking endings I’ve seen in a horror flick in years.
The basic plot is that a young couple who are on a break take a vacation to a beach house, only to find that some of their parents’ elderly friends are already there and acting extra weird. Unsure if it’s the glowing fuscia algae in the water or the woman’s rapidly progressing dementia (which in it self has shades of the awesome possession flick The Taking of Deborah Logan) or something much more evil, like someone giving money to Logan Paul for anything at all, or someone buying a sandwich for a hungry incel. As it happens, it’s not dementia, unless dementia turns you into a foaming-at-the-mouth zombie that then sloughs off its skin to become a squid-human hybrid thing.
Music
As I seem to be the only person who likes owning music anymore (being dependant on streaming the music never works out in my favor for whatever reason), I linked Spotify this time rather than Bandcamp to make shit easier for everyone. I encourage you guys to buy shit on BC if you like it, as it supports the artists who make the music you love, and if there is one thing I’ve learned in the last decade, it’s rarely the most talented people in the world who are living comfortably off their art. As to why the player Spotify has in their add-on is so fucking big, I have no idea- I’ve long hated their shitty programming. That said, it is convenient, so I guess we’ll just deal with these weirdly over-large music players.
If you guys are interested, I’ve got a pretty rad playlist on Spotify that has all of the artists I listed below in a pretty broad-spectrum interpretation of what’s numetal, but it’s what I typically rock at Amazon while I’m casually flexing my ass off at work while flirting with random chicks (and fun fact, if you look good enough and are nice enough, chicks will just hand you free edibles for being the shit). It’s aggressive enough to keep me throwing shit around like it’s weightless but cheerful enough that the heat and random annoyances that come with working don’t really penetrate my generally good-natured aggressiveness.
Omerta
Know what you get when you raise five kids on nothing but Slipknot’s first two albums, Hatebreed’s Satisfaction album, and Limp Bizkit’s 3 Dolla Bill$, Y’all? Fucking Omerta. If you like Slipknot’s old shit, just buy this and listen later- it could hardly disappoint you.
You thought that I’d forget the past
I’m ’bout to take your ass to class
You ignite my flame like gas
And I’ma burn you down to ash
Shattering your teeth like glass
I put my foot up in your ass
Then carve my name into your back
So you remember who I am
FFO: old Hatebreed, old Slipknot, old Limp Bizkit, Hunt the Dinosaur, Emmure
Recommended Starter Song: Cidephile
City Morgue- Toxic Boogaloo
Trap metal falls under the overarching umbrella of numetal in my mind, and this album is probably harder than half the shit on your lifting playlist. Note that I didn’t say heavier- this is an instance of the feral rage and rawness of hardcore punk being far more impactful that the guttural brutality of deathmetal due to the energy of the music (and the vocal delivery, which is much more aggressive in hardcore than metal). Anyway, the two goofs in City Morgue scream trap lyrics over metal beats in such a way as to make a nice nod to Sutter Cain while blowing him directly out of the fucking water. If you hated City Morgue’s sophomore album as much as I did, here is the redemption you never fucking thought you would receive- holy fucking shit this album is vicious.
FFO: Denzel Curry, RATM, Hunt the Dinosaur, Emmure, Bone Crew, Ghostemane, Biohazard, Cameron Azi, PRXJEK, Nascar Aloe, Boxcutter, Fury of Five, Skarhead
This album is so fucking short it might as well be an Agoraphobic Nosebleed cd- just listen to the entire fucking thing.
Code Orange- Underneath
Though I’ve enjoyed Code Orange in small doses in the past (I am King is a rad fucking lifting song), I never really understood their rep or their direction. They were billed as moshcore, but their songs are generally pretty fucking depressing, which to me isn’t a signal for violence, but that would explain why it’s only people who don’t dance who get punched these days. This band seems like they were on a mission the crux of which was mysterious even to them, however, and they’ve produced one of the greatest metal albums in history. If Trent Reznor turned NIN into a moshcore band and enlisted the aid of the original singer of Iwrestledabearonce to do backup vocals, you’d get Code Orange’s badass new album. They do the electronicore thing like no other band- where Attack Attack! was bright, autotuned, and upbeat, Code Orange is the musical version of Saw- brutal, grimy, and dark as fucking hell.
FFO: Fear Factory- Remanufacture, Nailbomb, NIN, Varials, Jesus Piece, Catalepsy, Excision
Recommended Starter Song: In Fear
Deaf Ear
Deaf Ear doesn’t have quite the same Slipknot-y goodness of Omerta, but it’s a fucking good band anyway. They’re from the same scene that produced such rad beatdown as Drowning, No Zodiac, and Harm’s Way, and Deaf Ear plays a style of stompy beatdown that is just as close to Soulfly’s Primitive album as it is to Bodysnatcher’s Death of Me. Though it’s not raw as fuck like old school Trash Talk, it’s not overproduced like Vincent Void’s solo album, either. If nothing else, the first song makes for a great addition to a lifting playlist on Spotify.
Now it’s hands on sight
I don’t play games bitch
This is not Fortnight.
FFO: Pintglass, Soulfly, Primer 55, Fury of Five, Boxcutter
Recommended Starter Song: Deaf Ear Penitentiary
Sunami
If you like mid-90s beatdown, whether it’s Bulldoze, Boxcutter, or Billy Club Sandwich, you’ll recognize Sunami’s tried-and-true formula. Nah, they’re not really numetalcore, but as they’re sorta rapcore, they fit into a numetalcore playlist nicely. Breakdowns and wignorance abound- this is what hardcore sounded like when people stwill made contact with each other in the pit.
Strength to hold your tongue, it’s what you lack
All you fucking pussies best watch your back
Words with no action, think that you’re safe
See how you feel when we’re up in your face.
FFO: Bulldoze, old Hatebreed, old Throwdown, old Bury Your Dead, Until the End, Warriors, Knocked Loose, Biohazard
Recommended Starter Song: Y.A.B.
Jynx- G.O.A.T
Violent, moshy beatdown rapcore. I shouldn’t need to draw you a map to get this to your ear or your fist to someone’s face.
FFO: Primer 55, Limp Bizkit, E-Town Concrete, Gift Giver, Emmure, Attila, Hunt the Dinosaur, Bone Crew
Recommended Starter Song: G.O.A.T.
ChuggaBoom
The band’s as badass as their name is ridiculous, and to prove it, they did an entire album covers of rad deathcore classics, like “Entombment of a Machine” and “Pray for Plagues,” in addition to their numetalcore stuff. As much as I know you’re going to be disinclined to check this shit out, I’d encourage you to at least give it a listen- if nothing else it’s a reasonable compromise to have with a chick who doesn’t love deathcore and you need music for the car. I can’t really compare them to anyone other than maybe Eskimo Cowboy, although they’re a far better band than EC. Yeah, it’s crabcore, but crabcore can be fun from time to time.
When God gives you lemons
You give them straight back
I got a bucket full of limes
And Corona on tap
I’ve heard that defense is the best form of attack
I got a bucket full of limes
And Corona on tap
FFO: Dr. Acula, Emmure, Iwrestledabearonce, Atilla, I See Stars, and anyone who will take the time to realize that this band is just taking the piss out of the scene.
Recommended Starter Song: Corona Matata
I used to work for Amazon too. Decent job, I was in distribution down in Dallas. There was part of the paperwork they had me sign when I did that I would think would have given you pause. It may have changed- its been almost 5 years since I signed it. But there is (was) an intellectual property clause in there, essentially anything you create while under the employ of the Company (books, music, art, inventions, etc), even in your free time, they have a claim over. Again, I don’t know if that’s still in there, and it didn’t change my life in the slightest. But I had a couple buddies in bands who quit when they realized what that meant for them. Just trying to look out. Otherwise, they’re a damn solid employer, and what they were doing with robotics at my distribution center was about 100,000 sorts of cool. Anyways. Carry on.
Interesting. I have no recollection of such a clause, but none of this makes the slightest money anyway, so the point is moot anyway, haha. It’s hard to steal from a man with nothing to steal. Shit, at this point I’d like them to start suing motherfuckers for stealing my shit- at least none of the bitchmade, thieving “coaches” who rip me off incessantly will earn a profit from it. If you don’t have the money to enforce them, your intellectual property rights aren’t worth shit anyway, so I’m not gonna lose any sleep over the idea Amazon might suddenly own all of my work.
I definitely get being leery of that shit while in a band- there are too many horror stories of musicians getting fucked out of their money in music. Luckily for me, no one spends anything on books, so there’s no money to lose.
And Amazon has changes a LOT in the last year. All of the rules that drove people away from that place have been abandoned- it’s a pretty rad side gig. The only job I’ve had I enjoyed more was working at an indie record store in the late nineties/early oughts, though I’d imagine I will get far more ass at Amazon, haha.
A bit dated (apprx 5 years) piece on Amazon. I am not sure what yiu mean by “rad side gig” – my experience of warehouse is fulltime work, pressure, tiring, mostly isolated. It appealed to my sense of physical endurance, but walking hours a day pushing a trolley gets old fast. I am lucky to have other irons in the fire, sources of income, I don’t have to do these jobs for long, but most people there had no other option.
http://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2014-02-15/amazon-–-a-modern-capitalist-microcosm
Steve,
When you say “but most people there had no other option”, do you mean… like the people who have sunk a metric fuckload of money into a website that you constantly hijack, despite being told in NO UNCERTAIN TERMS TO KNOCK YOUR BULLSHIT OFF, to espouse communism 4 out of every 5 comments, but can’t be bothered to contribute to financially (unlike a lot of Jamie’s fans who support the site with whatever they can), despite using it as your primary platform to spout your fuckery. Or do you mean people like me, who has had to work MULTIPLE JOBS to help keep everything afloat including while unable to walk or speak properly, so that hypocrites like you have a place to run your mouth while checking to see how all your stocks are doing? Or people like Jamie, who has continually busted his ass 60+ hours a week to bring people content, while cheap lazy sacks of shit like you roll in and flap your gums with your psuedo intellectual, sanctimonious tripe, despite your abject lack of contribution of ANYTHING of value.
I enjoy the site, I PROMISE no comments from me for a long time. Btw I sold all my shares very recently (but I just transferred the money into a pension fund so I guess its still on the market). I earned my money in my youth on construction sites, labouring on bricklayers. (Despite being a graduate to which I later returned as a teacher of Spanish when I was fed up of shovelling gold sovereigns breaking my back on bricks and mortar). I invested in housing, am now a landlord with three rental properties. You seem to be going off on a moral tangent, the unfairness of it all, but none of this is a moral question. More a question of understanding reality. Anyway, I am keeping it zipped for at least months, maybe longer. Best of luck to you, no ill feeling, passive aggression etc. thanks.
I love when Jamie doubles down on topics that upset his more fragile readers, their butthurt comments are tantamount to admitting they have a lower testosterone level than Fwerfin.
Hahahaha. Man, there is quite the spate of them recently, and I think it all came from their early misinterpretation of my writing as anti-women, hahaha. It never fails to astonish me how weak most people actually are under all of their fucking bluster.
Any plans for the articles where you interview some other weirdo about their esoteric strength moves?
I am currently out of any such weirdos. I was supposed to interview a dude who fought a 100-man kumite about his training methods, but as with many of these things, he vanished. Given my own experience, it’s likely he forgot about it and is now embarrassed he did so and just hoping I’ll forget, haha. I’ll send him another message when I come up with his name, haha. The Aussie kyokushin guy who had a documentary about him- the interview is just waiting for him to fill it out.
Man that documentary was cool, the guy looked tough as hell. I always think if you’ve got a dozen guys coming for you someone like that is going to better than the guy with the perfect combo or whatever.
Dude, in a barfight, I’d imagine almost anyone you could choose would be a worse choice than a kyokushin black belt. If nothing else, they’re hard motherfuckers to knock out or down.
I mean… when are you free to be interviewed?
(And part of my reasoning is you endlessly crack me up sometimes while offending me. lol)
If I could articulate my own weird thoughts on training I would, but it’s basically a form of solar worship.