home.social

Search

1000 results for “lost_in_chaos”

  1. The 1st Adam in the Hebrew Scriptures #2 Beginning of mankind

    Monyash Well Dressing 2009, In the Beginning God Created Man. Clay tablet decorated with coloured petals and stones.

    After the fifth period in creation the sixth session brought forth ‘living souls‘ or ‘living things’ or ‘living beings’ which could multiply, making the earth having more of their sort. They were not in the image of God, but on the ‘sixth day‘ the Divine Creator decided to make some living being after His image.

    This image and likeness of God in man is expounded, Ephesians 4:24, where it is written that man was created after God in righteousness and true holiness, meaning by these two words, all perfection, as wisdom, truth, innocence, power, etc. (Annotations in the 1599 Geneva Patriot’s Edition)

    24 And put on the new man, which 1after God is created unto 2righteousness, and 3true holiness.

    1 After the image of God.
    2 The effect and end of the new creation.
    3 Not fained nor counterfeit. (Annotations in the 1599 Geneva Patriot’s Edition)

    Man had received everything in him to be happy living for always. Though he was not immortal. The first living being, “a soul” that would be called “man”, was receiving a higher status than the previous created living beings. Man was made in the image of God, indicating that Adam had some similar elements of God and being in the likeness of the Most High Elohim he received in this way a sort of  “royal authority” to govern over God’s creation.

    All over the world we can find creation myths, showing that the “being” of it makes only sense when there is a reason for “being”. It is that sense of life so many people are looking for. Genesis uses a similar approach found in other ancient documents: Existence depends on function.

    Jackson Wu looks at creation and John H. Walton’s view in this way

    Genesis indeed explains the origins of the world but it tells a particular kind of story. It provides a “functional” (rather than a “material”) account of the world origins.

    and continues with a good example

    If I move beds and dressers out of a “bedroom” and replace it with a desk and file cabinets, what would we say? A “bedroom” no longer exists. I have now “created” a office or study.

    Similarly, Genesis 1 explains how God created the world to be a sacred space, a Temple where He would dwell with his people. This view of Genesis helps us to see who God is, who we are, and God’s design for the world. {When Did God Make China?}

    That original manly being was “to be red” (=Adam). Adam occurs approximately 500 times with the meaning of mankind. In the opening chapters of the Bereshith (the Book of the Beginnings or Genesis), with three exceptions (1:26; 2:5,20) it has the definite article indicating “man” or “the man” rather than “Adam”.
    The first undisputed occurrence of the name of Adam is in the genealogy of Genesis 5:1-5.

    Adam and Eve with Cain and Abel – Catacomb of the Via Latina

    1 This is the 1book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created Adam, in the 2likeness of God made he him,
    2 Male and female created he them, and blessed them, and called their name 1Adam in the day that they were created.
    3  Now Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a child in his own 1likeness after his image, and called his name Seth.
    4 aAnd the days of Adam, after he had begotten Seth, were eight hundred years, and he begat sons and daughters.
    5 So all the days that Adam lived, were nine hundred and thirty years, and he died.

    The 1st Adam indicates to be the first living creature of “red blood”  (hence red blooded or adam), flesh and bones. Of necessity that first fleshly creature out of which mankind would grow could be called the first created man or “the man” and the designation is equivalent to a proper name: Adam.

    This first soul or living being, came from the earth, and by receiving the Breath of God came to live. Animated by the divine breath created in the image of God was allowed to have dominion over all other life, animate and inanimate. He is other than God, with no actual physical descent from the Supreme Being or from any inferior deity. Notice also how only by the creation of this human being is mentioned that God “breathed … the breath of life”

    Genesis 2:

    7  The Lord God also 1made the man 2of the dust of the ground, and breathed in his face breath of life, band the man was a living soul.

    8 And the Lord God planted a garden Eastward in 1Eden, and there he put the man whom he had made.
    9 (For out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree pleasant to the sight, and good for meat: the 1tree of life also in the midst of the garden, 2and the tree of knowledge of good and of evil.

    Genesis 1:

    Satan Watching the Caresses of Adam and Eve — William Blake (1757-1827); William Blake’s illustrations of “Paradise Lost”, 1808.

    27 Thus God created the man in his image: in the image of God created he him: he created them imale and female.
    28 And God 1blessed them, and God said to them, jBring forth fruit, and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it, and rule over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the heaven, and over every beast that moveth upon the earth.
    29 And God said, Behold, I have given unto you 1every herb bearing seed, which is upon all the earth, and every tree, wherein is the fruit of a tree bearing seed: kthat shall be to you for meat.
    30 Likewise to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the heaven, and to everything that moveth upon the earth, which hath life in itself, every green herb shall be for meat, and it was so.
    31 lAnd God saw all that he had made, and lo, it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

    Genesis 2:

    18 Also the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be himself alone: I will make him an help 1meet for him.
    19 So the Lord God formed of the earth every beast of the field, and every fowl of the heaven, and brought them unto the 1man to see how he would call them: for howsoever the man named the living creature, so was the name thereof.
    20 The man therefore gave names unto all cattle, and to the fowl of the heaven, and to every beast of the field: but for Adam found he not an helper meet for him.
    21  Therefore the Lord God caused an heavy sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in stead thereof.
    22 And the rib which the Lord God had taken from the man, 1made he a 2woman, and brought her to the man.
    23 Then the man said, cThis now is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called 1woman, because she was taken out of the man.
    24 dTherefore shall man leave 1his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall be one flesh.
    25 And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and they were not 1ashamed.

    Man Made in the Image of God, as in Genesis 1:26 to 2:3, illustration from a Bible card published 1906 by the Providence Lithograph Company (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

    The Divine Creator had out of nothing or out of the blackness created elements which became ordered and received a function. As such the Most High Elohim Jehovah is the One God Who brings order out of (primordial) chaos and as such also being the God of order. [Chaos representing “non-order,” not “disorder.”]

    Man being set in God’s Garden, the Garden of Eden, got the allowance to name the other things but also got the obligation of obedience to the divine Will, in connection with the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

    When you follow the storytelling of creation you shall find God speaking or bringing out words, and then matter came into being. Every time it was God’s Word that brought action and life. Each stage of creation is also approved with the words

    “And God saw that it was good” (Genesis 1: 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, cf. 31),

    and the inference is that the creation of man was its consummation and climax.

    God wanted to have His Kingdom full of plants, animals and human beings in his likeness. He wanted to see a beautiful world where all of His creatures could live in peace with each other.

    The first Adam wanted a partner and God made him one. This person taken out of man, the mannin became the first woman and was to be Adam’s partner giving him children as part of God’s family.

     

    +

    * Bible quotes from 1599 Geneva Patriot’s Edition

    Preceding article: The 1st Adam in the Hebrew Scriptures #1 Beginning of everything

    Next: The 1st Adam in the Hebrew Scriptures #3 With his partner

    ++

    Additional reading:

    1. Looking for a primary cause and a goal that can not offer philosophers existing beliefs
    2. The World framed by the Word of God
    3. God’s Word Framing universe
    4. Creation Creator and Creation
    5. Creation of the earth out of something
    6. From waste and void coming into being by God’s Word
    7. The very very beginning 1 Creating Gods
    8. The very very beginning 2 The Word and words
    9. Genesis 1:26 God said “Let us make”
    10. The very very beginning 1 Creating Gods
    11. Scripture about Creation and Creator Deity
    12. The very very beginning 2 The Word and words
    13. Something from nothing
    14. Means of creations
    15. Coming to the creation of human beings in the image of God
    16. Creation of the earth out of something
    17. Creation of the earth and man #1 Planet for living beings in a pre-Adamic world
    18. Creation of the earth and man #10 Formation of man #2 Mortal bodies and Tartarian habitation
    19. Creation of the earth and man #11 Formation of man #3 Infant salvation and non-elect infant damnation
    20. Creation of the earth and man #12 Formation of man #4 Constitution of man
    21. Genesis 1 story does not take away an evolution
    22. Means of creations
    23. Creator and Blogger God 1 Emptiness and mouvement
    24. Creator and Blogger God 2 Image and likeness
    25. Creator and Blogger God 5 Things to tellCreation purpose and warranty
    26. Trusting, Faith, calling and Ascribing to Jehovah #3 Voice of God #1 Creator and His Prophets
    27. We all are changed into the same image from glory to glory
    28. Genesis – Story of creation 1 Genesis 1:1-25 Creation of things
    29. Creation of the earth and man #2 Evil Angels and moments of creation
    30. Genesis – Story of creation 3 Genesis 2:1-15 Story of Adam and Eve
    31. Creation purpose and warranty
    32. Divine Plan and an Imperfect creation
    33. Between Alpha and Omega – The plan of creation
    34. Necessity of a revelation of creation 2 Organisation of a system of things
    35. Story of Jesus’ birth begins long before the New Testament
    36. Man his beginnings or emerging, continuation, evolution and anthropology
    37. Old Earth creationists and other conservative Christians denying any evolution
    38. Al-Fatiha [The Opening] Süra 1: 4-7 Merciful Lord of the Creation to show us the right path
    39. Forbidden Fruit in the Midst of the Garden 1
    40. Forbidden Fruit in the Midst of the Garden 2
    41. Forbidden Fruit in the Midst of the Garden 3
    42. Why God permits evil
    43. An anarchistic reading of the Bible (2)—Creation and what follows
    44. Divine Plan and an Imperfect creation
    45. A look at the Failing man
    46. God’s Plan, Purpose and teachings
    47. Not about personal salvation but about a bigger Plan
    48. Because men choose to go their own way
    49. A Must Know Truth
    50. Men as God

    +++

    Further reading of interest

    1. A Unification of Creation and Evolution
    2. We Are Only Complete In Him
    3. An anarchistic reading of the Bible (2) – Creation and what follows
    4. Evolution is God’s creation!!!!
    5. Stop Listening to the story!!!Facts on God’s true creation!!!!!!!
    6. The Documentary Hypothesis
    7. The Genesis Sermon Series
    8. Simple Wisdom for Tuesday
    9. Cookie a day: Topic-God The Creator
    10. Breathing In With Adam, Breathing Out to God
    11. A Holy day…
    12. All creation speaks of God’s goodness: Psalm 19
    13. Did You Ever Wonder
    14. N T Wright, Historicity of Adam
    15. Adam: Something is Missing
    16. Two new lessons made October 10, 2016
    17. Were Adam and Eve Historical Figures?
    18. What is the big mistake of Adam and Eve? (part 1)
    19. What is the big mistake of Adam and Eve? (part 2)
    20. Eve as a symbol for the Church
    21. Why people suffer
    22. Be Skeptical of the One Who Offers You Power
    23. Adamned
    24. Sleep
    25. Hope Thou in GOD

    +++

    Save

    Save

    Related articles

    Save

    Rate this:

    #1Adam #Adam #AdamAndEve #BeginningOfTheUniverse #BookOfGenesis #Chaos #Creation #CreationMyth #DivineCreator #Eve #GardenOfEden #Genesis #Genesis1 #GodOfOrder #GodSpeaking #Human #HumanBeing #Image #ImageOfGod #InImageOfGod #LivingBeing #LivingCreature #LivingSoul #Man #ManninOr1Woman #ObedienceToGod #OriginOfTheUniverse #Temple #TempleOfGod #TreeOfKnowledgeOfGoodAndEvil #Universe #WordOfGod

  2. The 1st Adam in the Hebrew Scriptures #2 Beginning of mankind

    Monyash Well Dressing 2009, In the Beginning God Created Man. Clay tablet decorated with coloured petals and stones.

    After the fifth period in creation the sixth session brought forth ‘living souls‘ or ‘living things’ or ‘living beings’ which could multiply, making the earth having more of their sort. They were not in the image of God, but on the ‘sixth day‘ the Divine Creator decided to make some living being after His image.

    This image and likeness of God in man is expounded, Ephesians 4:24, where it is written that man was created after God in righteousness and true holiness, meaning by these two words, all perfection, as wisdom, truth, innocence, power, etc. (Annotations in the 1599 Geneva Patriot’s Edition)

    24 And put on the new man, which 1after God is created unto 2righteousness, and 3true holiness.

    1 After the image of God.
    2 The effect and end of the new creation.
    3 Not fained nor counterfeit. (Annotations in the 1599 Geneva Patriot’s Edition)

    Man had received everything in him to be happy living for always. Though he was not immortal. The first living being, “a soul” that would be called “man”, was receiving a higher status than the previous created living beings. Man was made in the image of God, indicating that Adam had some similar elements of God and being in the likeness of the Most High Elohim he received in this way a sort of  “royal authority” to govern over God’s creation.

    All over the world we can find creation myths, showing that the “being” of it makes only sense when there is a reason for “being”. It is that sense of life so many people are looking for. Genesis uses a similar approach found in other ancient documents: Existence depends on function.

    Jackson Wu looks at creation and John H. Walton’s view in this way

    Genesis indeed explains the origins of the world but it tells a particular kind of story. It provides a “functional” (rather than a “material”) account of the world origins.

    and continues with a good example

    If I move beds and dressers out of a “bedroom” and replace it with a desk and file cabinets, what would we say? A “bedroom” no longer exists. I have now “created” a office or study.

    Similarly, Genesis 1 explains how God created the world to be a sacred space, a Temple where He would dwell with his people. This view of Genesis helps us to see who God is, who we are, and God’s design for the world. {When Did God Make China?}

    That original manly being was “to be red” (=Adam). Adam occurs approximately 500 times with the meaning of mankind. In the opening chapters of the Bereshith (the Book of the Beginnings or Genesis), with three exceptions (1:26; 2:5,20) it has the definite article indicating “man” or “the man” rather than “Adam”.
    The first undisputed occurrence of the name of Adam is in the genealogy of Genesis 5:1-5.

    Adam and Eve with Cain and Abel – Catacomb of the Via Latina

    1 This is the 1book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created Adam, in the 2likeness of God made he him,
    2 Male and female created he them, and blessed them, and called their name 1Adam in the day that they were created.
    3  Now Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a child in his own 1likeness after his image, and called his name Seth.
    4 aAnd the days of Adam, after he had begotten Seth, were eight hundred years, and he begat sons and daughters.
    5 So all the days that Adam lived, were nine hundred and thirty years, and he died.

    The 1st Adam indicates to be the first living creature of “red blood”  (hence red blooded or adam), flesh and bones. Of necessity that first fleshly creature out of which mankind would grow could be called the first created man or “the man” and the designation is equivalent to a proper name: Adam.

    This first soul or living being, came from the earth, and by receiving the Breath of God came to live. Animated by the divine breath created in the image of God was allowed to have dominion over all other life, animate and inanimate. He is other than God, with no actual physical descent from the Supreme Being or from any inferior deity. Notice also how only by the creation of this human being is mentioned that God “breathed … the breath of life”

    Genesis 2:

    7  The Lord God also 1made the man 2of the dust of the ground, and breathed in his face breath of life, band the man was a living soul.

    8 And the Lord God planted a garden Eastward in 1Eden, and there he put the man whom he had made.
    9 (For out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree pleasant to the sight, and good for meat: the 1tree of life also in the midst of the garden, 2and the tree of knowledge of good and of evil.

    Genesis 1:

    Satan Watching the Caresses of Adam and Eve — William Blake (1757-1827); William Blake’s illustrations of “Paradise Lost”, 1808.

    27 Thus God created the man in his image: in the image of God created he him: he created them imale and female.
    28 And God 1blessed them, and God said to them, jBring forth fruit, and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it, and rule over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the heaven, and over every beast that moveth upon the earth.
    29 And God said, Behold, I have given unto you 1every herb bearing seed, which is upon all the earth, and every tree, wherein is the fruit of a tree bearing seed: kthat shall be to you for meat.
    30 Likewise to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the heaven, and to everything that moveth upon the earth, which hath life in itself, every green herb shall be for meat, and it was so.
    31 lAnd God saw all that he had made, and lo, it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

    Genesis 2:

    18 Also the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be himself alone: I will make him an help 1meet for him.
    19 So the Lord God formed of the earth every beast of the field, and every fowl of the heaven, and brought them unto the 1man to see how he would call them: for howsoever the man named the living creature, so was the name thereof.
    20 The man therefore gave names unto all cattle, and to the fowl of the heaven, and to every beast of the field: but for Adam found he not an helper meet for him.
    21  Therefore the Lord God caused an heavy sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in stead thereof.
    22 And the rib which the Lord God had taken from the man, 1made he a 2woman, and brought her to the man.
    23 Then the man said, cThis now is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called 1woman, because she was taken out of the man.
    24 dTherefore shall man leave 1his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall be one flesh.
    25 And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and they were not 1ashamed.

    Man Made in the Image of God, as in Genesis 1:26 to 2:3, illustration from a Bible card published 1906 by the Providence Lithograph Company (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

    The Divine Creator had out of nothing or out of the blackness created elements which became ordered and received a function. As such the Most High Elohim Jehovah is the One God Who brings order out of (primordial) chaos and as such also being the God of order. [Chaos representing “non-order,” not “disorder.”]

    Man being set in God’s Garden, the Garden of Eden, got the allowance to name the other things but also got the obligation of obedience to the divine Will, in connection with the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

    When you follow the storytelling of creation you shall find God speaking or bringing out words, and then matter came into being. Every time it was God’s Word that brought action and life. Each stage of creation is also approved with the words

    “And God saw that it was good” (Genesis 1: 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, cf. 31),

    and the inference is that the creation of man was its consummation and climax.

    God wanted to have His Kingdom full of plants, animals and human beings in his likeness. He wanted to see a beautiful world where all of His creatures could live in peace with each other.

    The first Adam wanted a partner and God made him one. This person taken out of man, the mannin became the first woman and was to be Adam’s partner giving him children as part of God’s family.

     

    +

    * Bible quotes from 1599 Geneva Patriot’s Edition

    Preceding article: The 1st Adam in the Hebrew Scriptures #1 Beginning of everything

    Next: The 1st Adam in the Hebrew Scriptures #3 With his partner

    ++

    Additional reading:

    1. Looking for a primary cause and a goal that can not offer philosophers existing beliefs
    2. The World framed by the Word of God
    3. God’s Word Framing universe
    4. Creation Creator and Creation
    5. Creation of the earth out of something
    6. From waste and void coming into being by God’s Word
    7. The very very beginning 1 Creating Gods
    8. The very very beginning 2 The Word and words
    9. Genesis 1:26 God said “Let us make”
    10. The very very beginning 1 Creating Gods
    11. Scripture about Creation and Creator Deity
    12. The very very beginning 2 The Word and words
    13. Something from nothing
    14. Means of creations
    15. Coming to the creation of human beings in the image of God
    16. Creation of the earth out of something
    17. Creation of the earth and man #1 Planet for living beings in a pre-Adamic world
    18. Creation of the earth and man #10 Formation of man #2 Mortal bodies and Tartarian habitation
    19. Creation of the earth and man #11 Formation of man #3 Infant salvation and non-elect infant damnation
    20. Creation of the earth and man #12 Formation of man #4 Constitution of man
    21. Genesis 1 story does not take away an evolution
    22. Means of creations
    23. Creator and Blogger God 1 Emptiness and mouvement
    24. Creator and Blogger God 2 Image and likeness
    25. Creator and Blogger God 5 Things to tellCreation purpose and warranty
    26. Trusting, Faith, calling and Ascribing to Jehovah #3 Voice of God #1 Creator and His Prophets
    27. We all are changed into the same image from glory to glory
    28. Genesis – Story of creation 1 Genesis 1:1-25 Creation of things
    29. Creation of the earth and man #2 Evil Angels and moments of creation
    30. Genesis – Story of creation 3 Genesis 2:1-15 Story of Adam and Eve
    31. Creation purpose and warranty
    32. Divine Plan and an Imperfect creation
    33. Between Alpha and Omega – The plan of creation
    34. Necessity of a revelation of creation 2 Organisation of a system of things
    35. Story of Jesus’ birth begins long before the New Testament
    36. Man his beginnings or emerging, continuation, evolution and anthropology
    37. Old Earth creationists and other conservative Christians denying any evolution
    38. Al-Fatiha [The Opening] Süra 1: 4-7 Merciful Lord of the Creation to show us the right path
    39. Forbidden Fruit in the Midst of the Garden 1
    40. Forbidden Fruit in the Midst of the Garden 2
    41. Forbidden Fruit in the Midst of the Garden 3
    42. Why God permits evil
    43. An anarchistic reading of the Bible (2)—Creation and what follows
    44. Divine Plan and an Imperfect creation
    45. A look at the Failing man
    46. God’s Plan, Purpose and teachings
    47. Not about personal salvation but about a bigger Plan
    48. Because men choose to go their own way
    49. A Must Know Truth
    50. Men as God

    +++

    Further reading of interest

    1. A Unification of Creation and Evolution
    2. We Are Only Complete In Him
    3. An anarchistic reading of the Bible (2) – Creation and what follows
    4. Evolution is God’s creation!!!!
    5. Stop Listening to the story!!!Facts on God’s true creation!!!!!!!
    6. The Documentary Hypothesis
    7. The Genesis Sermon Series
    8. Simple Wisdom for Tuesday
    9. Cookie a day: Topic-God The Creator
    10. Breathing In With Adam, Breathing Out to God
    11. A Holy day…
    12. All creation speaks of God’s goodness: Psalm 19
    13. Did You Ever Wonder
    14. N T Wright, Historicity of Adam
    15. Adam: Something is Missing
    16. Two new lessons made October 10, 2016
    17. Were Adam and Eve Historical Figures?
    18. What is the big mistake of Adam and Eve? (part 1)
    19. What is the big mistake of Adam and Eve? (part 2)
    20. Eve as a symbol for the Church
    21. Why people suffer
    22. Be Skeptical of the One Who Offers You Power
    23. Adamned
    24. Sleep
    25. Hope Thou in GOD

    +++

    Save

    Save

    Related articles

    Save

    Rate this:

    #1Adam #Adam #AdamAndEve #BeginningOfTheUniverse #BookOfGenesis #Chaos #Creation #CreationMyth #DivineCreator #Eve #GardenOfEden #Genesis #Genesis1 #GodOfOrder #GodSpeaking #Human #HumanBeing #Image #ImageOfGod #InImageOfGod #LivingBeing #LivingCreature #LivingSoul #Man #ManninOr1Woman #ObedienceToGod #OriginOfTheUniverse #Temple #TempleOfGod #TreeOfKnowledgeOfGoodAndEvil #Universe #WordOfGod

  3. The 1st Adam in the Hebrew Scriptures #2 Beginning of mankind

    Monyash Well Dressing 2009, In the Beginning God Created Man. Clay tablet decorated with coloured petals and stones.

    After the fifth period in creation the sixth session brought forth ‘living souls‘ or ‘living things’ or ‘living beings’ which could multiply, making the earth having more of their sort. They were not in the image of God, but on the ‘sixth day‘ the Divine Creator decided to make some living being after His image.

    This image and likeness of God in man is expounded, Ephesians 4:24, where it is written that man was created after God in righteousness and true holiness, meaning by these two words, all perfection, as wisdom, truth, innocence, power, etc. (Annotations in the 1599 Geneva Patriot’s Edition)

    24 And put on the new man, which 1after God is created unto 2righteousness, and 3true holiness.

    1 After the image of God.
    2 The effect and end of the new creation.
    3 Not fained nor counterfeit. (Annotations in the 1599 Geneva Patriot’s Edition)

    Man had received everything in him to be happy living for always. Though he was not immortal. The first living being, “a soul” that would be called “man”, was receiving a higher status than the previous created living beings. Man was made in the image of God, indicating that Adam had some similar elements of God and being in the likeness of the Most High Elohim he received in this way a sort of  “royal authority” to govern over God’s creation.

    All over the world we can find creation myths, showing that the “being” of it makes only sense when there is a reason for “being”. It is that sense of life so many people are looking for. Genesis uses a similar approach found in other ancient documents: Existence depends on function.

    Jackson Wu looks at creation and John H. Walton’s view in this way

    Genesis indeed explains the origins of the world but it tells a particular kind of story. It provides a “functional” (rather than a “material”) account of the world origins.

    and continues with a good example

    If I move beds and dressers out of a “bedroom” and replace it with a desk and file cabinets, what would we say? A “bedroom” no longer exists. I have now “created” a office or study.

    Similarly, Genesis 1 explains how God created the world to be a sacred space, a Temple where He would dwell with his people. This view of Genesis helps us to see who God is, who we are, and God’s design for the world. {When Did God Make China?}

    That original manly being was “to be red” (=Adam). Adam occurs approximately 500 times with the meaning of mankind. In the opening chapters of the Bereshith (the Book of the Beginnings or Genesis), with three exceptions (1:26; 2:5,20) it has the definite article indicating “man” or “the man” rather than “Adam”.
    The first undisputed occurrence of the name of Adam is in the genealogy of Genesis 5:1-5.

    Adam and Eve with Cain and Abel – Catacomb of the Via Latina

    1 This is the 1book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created Adam, in the 2likeness of God made he him,
    2 Male and female created he them, and blessed them, and called their name 1Adam in the day that they were created.
    3  Now Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a child in his own 1likeness after his image, and called his name Seth.
    4 aAnd the days of Adam, after he had begotten Seth, were eight hundred years, and he begat sons and daughters.
    5 So all the days that Adam lived, were nine hundred and thirty years, and he died.

    The 1st Adam indicates to be the first living creature of “red blood”  (hence red blooded or adam), flesh and bones. Of necessity that first fleshly creature out of which mankind would grow could be called the first created man or “the man” and the designation is equivalent to a proper name: Adam.

    This first soul or living being, came from the earth, and by receiving the Breath of God came to live. Animated by the divine breath created in the image of God was allowed to have dominion over all other life, animate and inanimate. He is other than God, with no actual physical descent from the Supreme Being or from any inferior deity. Notice also how only by the creation of this human being is mentioned that God “breathed … the breath of life”

    Genesis 2:

    7  The Lord God also 1made the man 2of the dust of the ground, and breathed in his face breath of life, band the man was a living soul.

    8 And the Lord God planted a garden Eastward in 1Eden, and there he put the man whom he had made.
    9 (For out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree pleasant to the sight, and good for meat: the 1tree of life also in the midst of the garden, 2and the tree of knowledge of good and of evil.

    Genesis 1:

    Satan Watching the Caresses of Adam and Eve — William Blake (1757-1827); William Blake’s illustrations of “Paradise Lost”, 1808.

    27 Thus God created the man in his image: in the image of God created he him: he created them imale and female.
    28 And God 1blessed them, and God said to them, jBring forth fruit, and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it, and rule over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the heaven, and over every beast that moveth upon the earth.
    29 And God said, Behold, I have given unto you 1every herb bearing seed, which is upon all the earth, and every tree, wherein is the fruit of a tree bearing seed: kthat shall be to you for meat.
    30 Likewise to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the heaven, and to everything that moveth upon the earth, which hath life in itself, every green herb shall be for meat, and it was so.
    31 lAnd God saw all that he had made, and lo, it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

    Genesis 2:

    18 Also the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be himself alone: I will make him an help 1meet for him.
    19 So the Lord God formed of the earth every beast of the field, and every fowl of the heaven, and brought them unto the 1man to see how he would call them: for howsoever the man named the living creature, so was the name thereof.
    20 The man therefore gave names unto all cattle, and to the fowl of the heaven, and to every beast of the field: but for Adam found he not an helper meet for him.
    21  Therefore the Lord God caused an heavy sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in stead thereof.
    22 And the rib which the Lord God had taken from the man, 1made he a 2woman, and brought her to the man.
    23 Then the man said, cThis now is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called 1woman, because she was taken out of the man.
    24 dTherefore shall man leave 1his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall be one flesh.
    25 And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and they were not 1ashamed.

    Man Made in the Image of God, as in Genesis 1:26 to 2:3, illustration from a Bible card published 1906 by the Providence Lithograph Company (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

    The Divine Creator had out of nothing or out of the blackness created elements which became ordered and received a function. As such the Most High Elohim Jehovah is the One God Who brings order out of (primordial) chaos and as such also being the God of order. [Chaos representing “non-order,” not “disorder.”]

    Man being set in God’s Garden, the Garden of Eden, got the allowance to name the other things but also got the obligation of obedience to the divine Will, in connection with the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

    When you follow the storytelling of creation you shall find God speaking or bringing out words, and then matter came into being. Every time it was God’s Word that brought action and life. Each stage of creation is also approved with the words

    “And God saw that it was good” (Genesis 1: 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, cf. 31),

    and the inference is that the creation of man was its consummation and climax.

    God wanted to have His Kingdom full of plants, animals and human beings in his likeness. He wanted to see a beautiful world where all of His creatures could live in peace with each other.

    The first Adam wanted a partner and God made him one. This person taken out of man, the mannin became the first woman and was to be Adam’s partner giving him children as part of God’s family.

     

    +

    * Bible quotes from 1599 Geneva Patriot’s Edition

    Preceding article: The 1st Adam in the Hebrew Scriptures #1 Beginning of everything

    Next: The 1st Adam in the Hebrew Scriptures #3 With his partner

    ++

    Additional reading:

    1. Looking for a primary cause and a goal that can not offer philosophers existing beliefs
    2. The World framed by the Word of God
    3. God’s Word Framing universe
    4. Creation Creator and Creation
    5. Creation of the earth out of something
    6. From waste and void coming into being by God’s Word
    7. The very very beginning 1 Creating Gods
    8. The very very beginning 2 The Word and words
    9. Genesis 1:26 God said “Let us make”
    10. The very very beginning 1 Creating Gods
    11. Scripture about Creation and Creator Deity
    12. The very very beginning 2 The Word and words
    13. Something from nothing
    14. Means of creations
    15. Coming to the creation of human beings in the image of God
    16. Creation of the earth out of something
    17. Creation of the earth and man #1 Planet for living beings in a pre-Adamic world
    18. Creation of the earth and man #10 Formation of man #2 Mortal bodies and Tartarian habitation
    19. Creation of the earth and man #11 Formation of man #3 Infant salvation and non-elect infant damnation
    20. Creation of the earth and man #12 Formation of man #4 Constitution of man
    21. Genesis 1 story does not take away an evolution
    22. Means of creations
    23. Creator and Blogger God 1 Emptiness and mouvement
    24. Creator and Blogger God 2 Image and likeness
    25. Creator and Blogger God 5 Things to tellCreation purpose and warranty
    26. Trusting, Faith, calling and Ascribing to Jehovah #3 Voice of God #1 Creator and His Prophets
    27. We all are changed into the same image from glory to glory
    28. Genesis – Story of creation 1 Genesis 1:1-25 Creation of things
    29. Creation of the earth and man #2 Evil Angels and moments of creation
    30. Genesis – Story of creation 3 Genesis 2:1-15 Story of Adam and Eve
    31. Creation purpose and warranty
    32. Divine Plan and an Imperfect creation
    33. Between Alpha and Omega – The plan of creation
    34. Necessity of a revelation of creation 2 Organisation of a system of things
    35. Story of Jesus’ birth begins long before the New Testament
    36. Man his beginnings or emerging, continuation, evolution and anthropology
    37. Old Earth creationists and other conservative Christians denying any evolution
    38. Al-Fatiha [The Opening] Süra 1: 4-7 Merciful Lord of the Creation to show us the right path
    39. Forbidden Fruit in the Midst of the Garden 1
    40. Forbidden Fruit in the Midst of the Garden 2
    41. Forbidden Fruit in the Midst of the Garden 3
    42. Why God permits evil
    43. An anarchistic reading of the Bible (2)—Creation and what follows
    44. Divine Plan and an Imperfect creation
    45. A look at the Failing man
    46. God’s Plan, Purpose and teachings
    47. Not about personal salvation but about a bigger Plan
    48. Because men choose to go their own way
    49. A Must Know Truth
    50. Men as God

    +++

    Further reading of interest

    1. A Unification of Creation and Evolution
    2. We Are Only Complete In Him
    3. An anarchistic reading of the Bible (2) – Creation and what follows
    4. Evolution is God’s creation!!!!
    5. Stop Listening to the story!!!Facts on God’s true creation!!!!!!!
    6. The Documentary Hypothesis
    7. The Genesis Sermon Series
    8. Simple Wisdom for Tuesday
    9. Cookie a day: Topic-God The Creator
    10. Breathing In With Adam, Breathing Out to God
    11. A Holy day…
    12. All creation speaks of God’s goodness: Psalm 19
    13. Did You Ever Wonder
    14. N T Wright, Historicity of Adam
    15. Adam: Something is Missing
    16. Two new lessons made October 10, 2016
    17. Were Adam and Eve Historical Figures?
    18. What is the big mistake of Adam and Eve? (part 1)
    19. What is the big mistake of Adam and Eve? (part 2)
    20. Eve as a symbol for the Church
    21. Why people suffer
    22. Be Skeptical of the One Who Offers You Power
    23. Adamned
    24. Sleep
    25. Hope Thou in GOD

    +++

    Save

    Save

    Related articles

    Save

    Rate this:

    #1Adam #Adam #AdamAndEve #BeginningOfTheUniverse #BookOfGenesis #Chaos #Creation #CreationMyth #DivineCreator #Eve #GardenOfEden #Genesis #Genesis1 #GodOfOrder #GodSpeaking #Human #HumanBeing #Image #ImageOfGod #InImageOfGod #LivingBeing #LivingCreature #LivingSoul #Man #ManninOr1Woman #ObedienceToGod #OriginOfTheUniverse #Temple #TempleOfGod #TreeOfKnowledgeOfGoodAndEvil #Universe #WordOfGod

  4. "Science is crystal clear here. Our only chance to recover back to a stable and safe climate is to accelerate the phase-out of fossil-fuels, remove carbon and invest in nature (on land and in the ocean), and do that without trading off between them."

    /by #JamesDyke #JohnanRockström
    /via #TheConversation

    theconversation.com/the-world-

    #Cologne #ClimateJustice #Feminism #YouthForClimate

  5. #TheIndependet:
    "
    Tesla Cybertruck began to fail before the buyer even drove it off the lot, lawsuit says
    "
    ".. lost the ability to steer his brand-new Cybertruck and wound up in a drainage ditch"

    ".. Cybertruck, which suddenly veered off the road and crashed into a drainage ditch,.."

    ".. seeking a money judgment, with interest, to be determined by a jury, as well as attorneys’ fees and court costs."

    independent.co.uk/news/world/a

    29.4.2026

    #Cybertruck #EAuto #Elektromobilität #EV #Tesla

  6. @liying
    #TurboVision was and still is the best TUI framework system, by a huge margin.
    The love that has been put into the widget design, especially in the 2.0 release, still mesmerizes me.

    The C++ port lost some of the elegance of the Pascal API, but it's still in a different world than any other TUI framework ever made. I'm looking at you, ncurses!
    @nixCraft

  7. @liying
    #TurboVision was and still is the best TUI framework system, by a huge margin.
    The love that has been put into the widget design, especially in the 2.0 release, still mesmerizes me.

    The C++ port lost some of the elegance of the Pascal API, but it's still in a different world than any other TUI framework ever made. I'm looking at you, ncurses!
    @nixCraft

  8. @liying
    #TurboVision was and still is the best TUI framework system, by a huge margin.
    The love that has been put into the widget design, especially in the 2.0 release, still mesmerizes me.

    The C++ port lost some of the elegance of the Pascal API, but it's still in a different world than any other TUI framework ever made. I'm looking at you, ncurses!
    @nixCraft

  9. @liying
    #TurboVision was and still is the best TUI framework system, by a huge margin.
    The love that has been put into the widget design, especially in the 2.0 release, still mesmerizes me.

    The C++ port lost some of the elegance of the Pascal API, but it's still in a different world than any other TUI framework ever made. I'm looking at you, ncurses!
    @nixCraft

  10. @liying
    #TurboVision was and still is the best TUI framework system, by a huge margin.
    The love that has been put into the widget design, especially in the 2.0 release, still mesmerizes me.

    The C++ port lost some of the elegance of the Pascal API, but it's still in a different world than any other TUI framework ever made. I'm looking at you, ncurses!
    @nixCraft

  11. Contrite Metal Guy: It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Wrongness, Volume the Second

    By Cherd

    The life of the unpaid, overworked metal reviewer is not an easy one. Cascading promos, unreasonable deadlines, draconian editors, and the unwashed metal mobs – it makes for a swirling maelstrom of music and madness. In all that tumult, errors are bound to happen and sometimes our initial impression of an album may not be completely accurate. With time and distance comes wisdom, and so we’ve decided to pull back the confessional curtain and reveal our biggest blunders, missteps, oversights and ratings face-plants. Consider this our sincere AMGea culpa. Redemption is retroactive, forgiveness is mandatory.

    As those of us who follow the Gregorian calendar and partake in Judeo/Christian cultural traditions prepare to face the final bosses of the holiday season, we experience a wide range of feelings. Anticipation, at the prospect of gorging on holiday treats as we shuffle from one party to another thrown by family and friends. Nostalgia, of course, as we uphold our traditions and reflect on the celebrations of yesteryear. And, for those who write music reviews for a non-living, contrition. Intense embarrassment and remorse as we prepare for Listurnalia, revisiting records we thought we had judicated accurately only to discover the depth of our wrongheadedness. Sometimes our self-reproach has nothing to do with impending lists. Sometimes, shortly after writing a review, an ember of doubt will ignite, smoldering just under our calm exteriors, growing until we want to shriek “Dissemble no more! I admit the deed! — tear up the planks! — here, here! — it is the beating of his hideous heart!” It’s been over three years since the last time we unloaded our disgrace onto you, the unsuspecting reader, so expect this to be a long self-flagellation session.

    – Cherd

    Carcharodon

    Verses in contrition

    Earlier this year, I described Hulder’s Verses in Oath as spellbinding, going on to ward it a lofty 4.5. I’ve taken a fair amount of stick for that in the months since, both in the comments and round the staffroom feeding trough. And while that’s fine—you’ve all been wrong before and I have absolutely no doubt you’ll all be wrong again—it’s only fair that such consistent criticism should cause me to reflect a little. And reflect I have. Now, it’s true that, as I said in my review, Verses in Oath is dark and vicious, but also haunting and ethereal. But it’s also true that, although well executed, it lacks true originality and I got carried away. It happens. I loved all the constituent elements of the record and I still think that they are woven together with skill and good songcraft. However, it’s not an album I’ve returned to as much as I thought I would and (spoilers!) it’s not going to make my year end list. Which makes it rather hard to defend the 4.5 any longer. So I won’t. It’s a very good album but no more than that.

    Original score: 4.5
    Adjusted score: 3.5

    We came here to apologize

    Minnesota’s Ashbringer has always been a band of shades, shifting between atmo-black, shoegaze, post-metal, and more. On last year’s We Came Here to Grieve, they added heavily fuzzed blues melodies and languid Incubus-esque post-rock, which I lapped up. Looking, and of course listening, back, there’s still a lot to like about the album but—and it’s a big but—I wince at those clean vocals. I suggested in my review that, while the cleans were not great, there was a sort of vulnerable authenticity to Nick Stanger’s voice that meant he just about got away with it. I can only think I was in a very vulnerable place at the time because he absolutely does not get away with it, nor should he be allowed to. Much as I enjoy Stanger’s harsh post-hardcore vox, his cleans are outright bad in places, which should have placed a very hard ceiling on the score that the album could achieve. Somehow, We Came Here to Grieve shattered that ceiling. It must now be repaired.

    Original score: 4.0
    Adjusted score: 3.0

    Glare of the Noise

    To more recent errors: in September, I did an injustice to Glare of the Sun’s TAL. I’m ashamed to say it but I went into that review looking for flaws—and I did find a couple—because I’d already done what you would all see next: Kanonenfieber. I didn’t lightly award that 5.0 and I stand by it but I was painfully conscious of it sitting there, on the assembly line and that affected my assessment of Glare of the Sun. While I think TAL could, and probably should, have been shorter and that there were a couple of less impactful songs (“Leaving Towards Spring,” for example), there are no real missteps here and it’s a great album. I stand by the words in my review but not the score, which should have been a 4.0.

    Original score: 3.5
    Adjusted score: 4.0

    Noisy remorse

    I can keep this brief because I’ve already publicly admitted to underscoring Leiþa’s Reue. I gave it a 3.5 but knew at the time that it deserved a 4.0, something duly confirmed by AMG Himself, when he awarded it Record o’ the Month for January 2023, hinting that he might even have supported a 4.5. I think that might be going a touch far but, when I look back at my review, it reads like a 4.0 and it should’ve been a 4.0. The only reason it wasn’t, was that Noise (of Kanonenfieber, Leiþa and Non Est Deus) just makes too much damned good black metal, much of which I’d already gushed about. Ironically, given it was also a Noise project that led to me shortchanging Glare of the Sun, here his excellence also caused me to underrate his own album. Fool.

    Original score: 3.5
    Adjusted score: 4.0

    Dear Hollow

    Iconic in a different universe

    Rarely do I bestow 4.0s out of spite, but that’s exactly what happened with Fractal Generator. While I have liked their follow-up Convergence much more for its punishingly dense palette, I simply could not find any distinct fault with Macrocosmos. In hindsight, the album’s inhuman technicality and dissonance doesn’t play nice with the organicity and warmth the production offers, but more glaringly, I never returned to the album. Sure, some tracks really stand out and rip a hole in the space-time continuum (“Aeon,” “Chaosphere,” “Shadows of Infinity”), but for all its experimentalism and alien dissonance paired with deathgrind, Fractal Generator’s debut was simply unmemorable. Deathgrind bruisers like Knoll and Vermin Womb simply do it better, as the Italians never quite cut loose in the same way deathgrind ought to. What’s left is largely a pale imitation of Misery Index with an added shot of Portal’s IONian dissonance. It’s still good and improved with Convergence, but it is not the cosmos wrecker I thought it was.

    Original score: 4.0
    Adjusted score: 2.5

    Cold ‘n’ what?

    I have a bad habit of pretense, and Calligram’s The Eye is the First Circle was one hell of a pretense. Bestowing the same honor to Position | Momentum seemed like an open-and-shut case, but like Fractal Generator, I never returned to it and it never made any appearances on any year-end lists. It boasts more icy punk-infused black metal that would be sure to get the, like, four fans of Darkthrone’s Circle the Wagons or the underground cult of the gone-but-unforgotten Young and In the Way going, but it more exemplified the way-too-safe crash back to earth after The Eye. The experimental focus is still there with melancholic jazz (“Ostranenie”) and post-rock crescendos (“Seminari Dieci”), and the blackened punk is still a barnstormer (“Sul Dolore,” “Tebe”), but the absence of the two-ton sludge that weighted The Eye is felt – as if Calligram got blown away in a blizzard. In many ways, Position | Momentum is the Italian act’s more kvlt offering, but it alienates its widespread appeal with its now-limited audience. Great for some, less for others.

    Original score: 4.0
    Adjusted score: 3.0

    TAKE ME TO FUCKIN’ CHURCH

    Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter’s past in Lingua Ignota is certainly noteworthy, but when she dispels all the bells and whistles, we’re left with the horror of SAVED! It’s stripped to the bone, deceptively straightforward, with only some experimental tricks to make the subtle shift from Jesus lover to Jesus hater. Likely the most returned-to album I’ve ever reviewed,1 vicious and jaded sardonicism (“All My Friends Are Going to Hell”), hymns crashing into uncanny valley (“There is Power in the Blood,” “Nothing But the Blood”), and ominous dirges (“Idumea,” “The Poor Wayfaring Stranger”) all collide in a subtle yet earth-shaking affair that I have yet to shake. This is not even mentioning some of the most punishing sounds to shake Appalachia with Pentecostal and blasphemous fury: truly, the dissonant swell of “I Will Be With You Always” and Hayter’s tortured screaming and glossolalia in “How Can I Keep From Singing” have never left me. While the sentiment of a 3.5 is certainly merited in its divisive approach, the impact of SAVED! cannot be understated.

    Original score: 3.5
    Adjusted score: 4.5

    Thus Spoke

    Meditations on contrition

    In my first year as a newly promoted writer, I let the chill vibes of a summer holiday get to my head with Bong-Ra’s Meditations. It’s a good album, that much is still true. It is, as I pointed out at the time, immersive and engaging despite being totally instrumental. It’s also undeniably unique thanks to Bong-Ra’s choice to combine saxophone and oud with piano and guitar, and the striking way that volume is used to build tension. I do think I over-emphasized this novelty and strength, but it’s there regardless. Have I revisited it since 2022? The answer is no, and it is mainly for this reason that I concede I overrated it.

    Original score: Excellent
    Adjusted score: Very Good

    Between the scores of right and wrong

    I think I must have been in an exceptionally bad mood the week I wrote my review of Between the Worlds of Life and Death. Yes, Vale of Pnath disappointed a little with a turn in the direction of deathcore, but the result is hardly itself disappointing. My first inkling I’d done Between the Worlds of Life and Death a disservice was when I realized I’d been listening to it in the gym an awful lot, several months after giving my official score. I gestured towards anticlimactic song structures and distracting theatricality, and while I still think Vale of Pnath could have refined their templates, these compositions have stood the test of time, and of leg day. It may take them one more record to solidify their new sound, but this was a cracking record I was evidently in the wrong mindset to appreciate when it first landed in my hands.

    Original score: Good
    Adjusted score: Very Good

    Cutting the throat of an incorrect score

    When my review of Cutting the Throat of God went live, I noticed several questions in the comments to the effect of “where’d the ‘Iconic’ get lost?” Well, here I am, barely six months later, to set things right. After spending the best part of that time listening and relistening daily; after seeing the band live this October and falling in love all over again; after running through the band’s back catalogue and confirming that I do indeed like this one best, I can no longer deny what I knew from the start. Call me over-eager, fawning, blinded by infatuation. I don’t care. Ulcerate are the undisputed masters of their craft and this is an album I’ll be listening to for the next ten years at least. My only regret is not doing this the first time around.

    Original score: Excellent
    Adjusted score: Iconic

    Sparagmos (of my original rating)

    In line with my habit of taking the least linear route possible into a subgenre, I became enamored with what I now know to be basically ‘diSEMBOWELMENT-core’ before ever listening to diSEMBOWELMENT themself. Think Worm, Tomb Mold, and the current subject, Spectral Voice. Without the obvious reference point, the undeniably crushing, cavernous might of Sparagmos stunned me perhaps more than it had any right to. Make no mistake, Sparagmos remains a behemoth of intensely frightening doom death, one that’s fully capable of dragging me into its abyssal depths. And its ability to immerse in spite of its length and creeping pace still impresses me. But now that the ritual haze has lifted a little, I can recognize that it’s not quite the pinnacle of perfection I was fooled into believing it was.

    Original score: Excellent
    Adjusted score: Great

    Score of unreason

    I’m not sure exactly what held me back from awarding a higher score to Age of Unreason, especially considering that a quick look at my average would show I’m not usually one for restraint. Whatever the reason, I deemed ColdCell to have taken a slight step down from their previous effort, The Greater Evil, but with the benefit of hindsight, I see I had this entirely the wrong way around. Age of Unreason is emotionally poignant and refreshingly vulnerable, and it’s delivered in a unique, compelling black metal package. Dark and somewhat mysterious, like all of ColdCell’s output, it has the benefit of being much sharper, and more skilfully edited, which makes it endlessly relistenable. I recognize now that this is, in fact, ColdCell’s best album.

    Original score: Very Good
    Adjusted score: Great

    Dolphin Revisioner

    Premature coagulation

    It’s not that Coagulated Bliss doesn’t contain any great music. Between the heavier bright and fiery noise rock cuts (“Half Life Changelings”), martial stomps (“Doors to Mental Agony”), and Discordance Axis powergrind (“Vomiting Glass”) it represents among the best stretches of Full of Hell offerings. Coagulated Bliss also boasts a fantastic soundstage. As a rhythmically interesting band with more to say than simple blast beats and hammer shows, Full of Hell brings it with the powerviolence escalations (“Transmuting Chemical Burns”) and sliding grooves (“Schizoid Rapture”) in a clear and punchy manner for which I’d always hoped. But as time marched on and I continued to revel in these many reasons to celebrate Full of Hell, I came too to find a distaste for the most pandering and unnecessary tracks—cameo performances that rob the luster of Full of Hell’s raw energy. Does it feel silly to say that a twenty-five-minute album runs almost five minutes too long? No, not at all when that five minutes of completely avoidable downtime kills a historic run. As such, I’m left to remember Coagulated Bliss more for its near greatness, its finish line stumble— yet, I long for where this puts Full of Hell next.

    Original score
    : 4.0
    Adjusted score: 3.5

    Third eye open

    Emergent is unbelievably dense for an album that lets shrill, alien leads dance about the spaciousness of a booming, metallic floor—a bass-rich, industrial pulse that has allowed Autarkh’s sophomore strike to rattle with an upward energy. An album doesn’t always lend itself well to the constraint of a review cycle, especially when its biggest boom rests in amplification, loudness, and feeling. While I try to cycle everything I review through a number of listening platforms, a extra abandon on extended commutes allows cranked tones to work their wonders. And in Emergent’s meticulous design I’ve continued to discover swirling and diving synth chirps, buzzing and scuzzing low-end traps, all of which frame their eerie and jazzy progressive howl with unshakable, unrelenting rhythms. Intention lives in every panning channel hum, emotion lives in every broken-voiced, discordant cry, and exploration lives both in the bulge of every swell and spread of every break. Though Emergent received two scores in its initial stand, it would seem that neither I nor Kenfren had the proper perspective to grant Autarkh the right score. But time settles all debts, and with nothing in the metalverse sounding quite like Autarkh, Emergent holds an esteemed and flourishing spot in my rotation.

    Original score
    : Very Good.
    Adjusted score: Great!

    Mystikus Hugebeard

    Traverse the regret

    I have made no secret of my contrition over Sgaile’s Traverse the Bealach (my regret was even deep enough to mention it on the 15 year anniversary piece). Both commenters and staff alike recognized my underrating, but the miserable truth is I knew it before even they did. In my review, I allowed every perceived flaw to become a glaring boil out of some misguided belief that I had to be hypercritical of something I loved lest I not be taken seriously as a Super Important Music Reviewer. I do think Traverse the Bealach’s second half isn’t quite as strong as the first half, but it’s nowhere near as damaging as I’d initially tried to convince myself. Sgaile’s Traverse the Bealach is never anything less than a delightful listen with some of the most cohesive, satisfying songwriting from any band I’ve heard, and is just as enjoyable a year later as it was on release. Tune in to next year’s Contrite Metal Guy when I adjust the score even higher, but for now just call me Mystikus Absolvedbeard.

    Original Score: 3.5
    Adjusted Score: 4.0

    #2024 #AgeOfUnreason #Ashbringer #Autarkh #BetweenTheWorldsOfLifeAndDeath #BongRa #Calligram #CoagulatedBliss #ColdCell #ContriteMetalGuy #Convergence #CuttingTheThroatOfGod #Emergent #FractalGenerator #FullOfHell #GlareOfTheSun #Hulder #Leitha #Meditations #Reue #ReverendKristinMichaelHayter #Saved_ #Sgaile #TAL #TheEyeIsTheFirstCircle #TraverseTheBealach #Ulcerate #ValeOfPnath #VersesInOath #WeCameHereToGrieve

  12. Contrite Metal Guy: It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Wrongness, Volume the Second

    By Cherd

    The life of the unpaid, overworked metal reviewer is not an easy one. Cascading promos, unreasonable deadlines, draconian editors, and the unwashed metal mobs – it makes for a swirling maelstrom of music and madness. In all that tumult, errors are bound to happen and sometimes our initial impression of an album may not be completely accurate. With time and distance comes wisdom, and so we’ve decided to pull back the confessional curtain and reveal our biggest blunders, missteps, oversights and ratings face-plants. Consider this our sincere AMGea culpa. Redemption is retroactive, forgiveness is mandatory.

    As those of us who follow the Gregorian calendar and partake in Judeo/Christian cultural traditions prepare to face the final bosses of the holiday season, we experience a wide range of feelings. Anticipation, at the prospect of gorging on holiday treats as we shuffle from one party to another thrown by family and friends. Nostalgia, of course, as we uphold our traditions and reflect on the celebrations of yesteryear. And, for those who write music reviews for a non-living, contrition. Intense embarrassment and remorse as we prepare for Listurnalia, revisiting records we thought we had judicated accurately only to discover the depth of our wrongheadedness. Sometimes our self-reproach has nothing to do with impending lists. Sometimes, shortly after writing a review, an ember of doubt will ignite, smoldering just under our calm exteriors, growing until we want to shriek “Dissemble no more! I admit the deed! — tear up the planks! — here, here! — it is the beating of his hideous heart!” It’s been over three years since the last time we unloaded our disgrace onto you, the unsuspecting reader, so expect this to be a long self-flagellation session.

    – Cherd

    Carcharodon

    Verses in contrition

    Earlier this year, I described Hulder’s Verses in Oath as spellbinding, going on to ward it a lofty 4.5. I’ve taken a fair amount of stick for that in the months since, both in the comments and round the staffroom feeding trough. And while that’s fine—you’ve all been wrong before and I have absolutely no doubt you’ll all be wrong again—it’s only fair that such consistent criticism should cause me to reflect a little. And reflect I have. Now, it’s true that, as I said in my review, Verses in Oath is dark and vicious, but also haunting and ethereal. But it’s also true that, although well executed, it lacks true originality and I got carried away. It happens. I loved all the constituent elements of the record and I still think that they are woven together with skill and good songcraft. However, it’s not an album I’ve returned to as much as I thought I would and (spoilers!) it’s not going to make my year end list. Which makes it rather hard to defend the 4.5 any longer. So I won’t. It’s a very good album but no more than that.

    Original score: 4.5
    Adjusted score: 3.5

    We came here to apologize

    Minnesota’s Ashbringer has always been a band of shades, shifting between atmo-black, shoegaze, post-metal, and more. On last year’s We Came Here to Grieve, they added heavily fuzzed blues melodies and languid Incubus-esque post-rock, which I lapped up. Looking, and of course listening, back, there’s still a lot to like about the album but—and it’s a big but—I wince at those clean vocals. I suggested in my review that, while the cleans were not great, there was a sort of vulnerable authenticity to Nick Stanger’s voice that meant he just about got away with it. I can only think I was in a very vulnerable place at the time because he absolutely does not get away with it, nor should he be allowed to. Much as I enjoy Stanger’s harsh post-hardcore vox, his cleans are outright bad in places, which should have placed a very hard ceiling on the score that the album could achieve. Somehow, We Came Here to Grieve shattered that ceiling. It must now be repaired.

    Original score: 4.0
    Adjusted score: 3.0

    Glare of the Noise

    To more recent errors: in September, I did an injustice to Glare of the Sun’s TAL. I’m ashamed to say it but I went into that review looking for flaws—and I did find a couple—because I’d already done what you would all see next: Kanonenfieber. I didn’t lightly award that 5.0 and I stand by it but I was painfully conscious of it sitting there, on the assembly line and that affected my assessment of Glare of the Sun. While I think TAL could, and probably should, have been shorter and that there were a couple of less impactful songs (“Leaving Towards Spring,” for example), there are no real missteps here and it’s a great album. I stand by the words in my review but not the score, which should have been a 4.0.

    Original score: 3.5
    Adjusted score: 4.0

    Noisy remorse

    I can keep this brief because I’ve already publicly admitted to underscoring Leiþa’s Reue. I gave it a 3.5 but knew at the time that it deserved a 4.0, something duly confirmed by AMG Himself, when he awarded it Record o’ the Month for January 2023, hinting that he might even have supported a 4.5. I think that might be going a touch far but, when I look back at my review, it reads like a 4.0 and it should’ve been a 4.0. The only reason it wasn’t, was that Noise (of Kanonenfieber, Leiþa and Non Est Deus) just makes too much damned good black metal, much of which I’d already gushed about. Ironically, given it was also a Noise project that led to me shortchanging Glare of the Sun, here his excellence also caused me to underrate his own album. Fool.

    Original score: 3.5
    Adjusted score: 4.0

    Dear Hollow

    Iconic in a different universe

    Rarely do I bestow 4.0s out of spite, but that’s exactly what happened with Fractal Generator. While I have liked their follow-up Convergence much more for its punishingly dense palette, I simply could not find any distinct fault with Macrocosmos. In hindsight, the album’s inhuman technicality and dissonance doesn’t play nice with the organicity and warmth the production offers, but more glaringly, I never returned to the album. Sure, some tracks really stand out and rip a hole in the space-time continuum (“Aeon,” “Chaosphere,” “Shadows of Infinity”), but for all its experimentalism and alien dissonance paired with deathgrind, Fractal Generator’s debut was simply unmemorable. Deathgrind bruisers like Knoll and Vermin Womb simply do it better, as the Italians never quite cut loose in the same way deathgrind ought to. What’s left is largely a pale imitation of Misery Index with an added shot of Portal’s IONian dissonance. It’s still good and improved with Convergence, but it is not the cosmos wrecker I thought it was.

    Original score: 4.0
    Adjusted score: 2.5

    Cold ‘n’ what?

    I have a bad habit of pretense, and Calligram’s The Eye is the First Circle was one hell of a pretense. Bestowing the same honor to Position | Momentum seemed like an open-and-shut case, but like Fractal Generator, I never returned to it and it never made any appearances on any year-end lists. It boasts more icy punk-infused black metal that would be sure to get the, like, four fans of Darkthrone’s Circle the Wagons or the underground cult of the gone-but-unforgotten Young and In the Way going, but it more exemplified the way-too-safe crash back to earth after The Eye. The experimental focus is still there with melancholic jazz (“Ostranenie”) and post-rock crescendos (“Seminari Dieci”), and the blackened punk is still a barnstormer (“Sul Dolore,” “Tebe”), but the absence of the two-ton sludge that weighted The Eye is felt – as if Calligram got blown away in a blizzard. In many ways, Position | Momentum is the Italian act’s more kvlt offering, but it alienates its widespread appeal with its now-limited audience. Great for some, less for others.

    Original score: 4.0
    Adjusted score: 3.0

    TAKE ME TO FUCKIN’ CHURCH

    Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter’s past in Lingua Ignota is certainly noteworthy, but when she dispels all the bells and whistles, we’re left with the horror of SAVED! It’s stripped to the bone, deceptively straightforward, with only some experimental tricks to make the subtle shift from Jesus lover to Jesus hater. Likely the most returned-to album I’ve ever reviewed,1 vicious and jaded sardonicism (“All My Friends Are Going to Hell”), hymns crashing into uncanny valley (“There is Power in the Blood,” “Nothing But the Blood”), and ominous dirges (“Idumea,” “The Poor Wayfaring Stranger”) all collide in a subtle yet earth-shaking affair that I have yet to shake. This is not even mentioning some of the most punishing sounds to shake Appalachia with Pentecostal and blasphemous fury: truly, the dissonant swell of “I Will Be With You Always” and Hayter’s tortured screaming and glossolalia in “How Can I Keep From Singing” have never left me. While the sentiment of a 3.5 is certainly merited in its divisive approach, the impact of SAVED! cannot be understated.

    Original score: 3.5
    Adjusted score: 4.5

    Thus Spoke

    Meditations on contrition

    In my first year as a newly promoted writer, I let the chill vibes of a summer holiday get to my head with Bong-Ra’s Meditations. It’s a good album, that much is still true. It is, as I pointed out at the time, immersive and engaging despite being totally instrumental. It’s also undeniably unique thanks to Bong-Ra’s choice to combine saxophone and oud with piano and guitar, and the striking way that volume is used to build tension. I do think I over-emphasized this novelty and strength, but it’s there regardless. Have I revisited it since 2022? The answer is no, and it is mainly for this reason that I concede I overrated it.

    Original score: Excellent
    Adjusted score: Very Good

    Between the scores of right and wrong

    I think I must have been in an exceptionally bad mood the week I wrote my review of Between the Worlds of Life and Death. Yes, Vale of Pnath disappointed a little with a turn in the direction of deathcore, but the result is hardly itself disappointing. My first inkling I’d done Between the Worlds of Life and Death a disservice was when I realized I’d been listening to it in the gym an awful lot, several months after giving my official score. I gestured towards anticlimactic song structures and distracting theatricality, and while I still think Vale of Pnath could have refined their templates, these compositions have stood the test of time, and of leg day. It may take them one more record to solidify their new sound, but this was a cracking record I was evidently in the wrong mindset to appreciate when it first landed in my hands.

    Original score: Good
    Adjusted score: Very Good

    Cutting the throat of an incorrect score

    When my review of Cutting the Throat of God went live, I noticed several questions in the comments to the effect of “where’d the ‘Iconic’ get lost?” Well, here I am, barely six months later, to set things right. After spending the best part of that time listening and relistening daily; after seeing the band live this October and falling in love all over again; after running through the band’s back catalogue and confirming that I do indeed like this one best, I can no longer deny what I knew from the start. Call me over-eager, fawning, blinded by infatuation. I don’t care. Ulcerate are the undisputed masters of their craft and this is an album I’ll be listening to for the next ten years at least. My only regret is not doing this the first time around.

    Original score: Excellent
    Adjusted score: Iconic

    Sparagmos (of my original rating)

    In line with my habit of taking the least linear route possible into a subgenre, I became enamored with what I now know to be basically ‘diSEMBOWELMENT-core’ before ever listening to diSEMBOWELMENT themself. Think Worm, Tomb Mold, and the current subject, Spectral Voice. Without the obvious reference point, the undeniably crushing, cavernous might of Sparagmos stunned me perhaps more than it had any right to. Make no mistake, Sparagmos remains a behemoth of intensely frightening doom death, one that’s fully capable of dragging me into its abyssal depths. And its ability to immerse in spite of its length and creeping pace still impresses me. But now that the ritual haze has lifted a little, I can recognize that it’s not quite the pinnacle of perfection I was fooled into believing it was.

    Original score: Excellent
    Adjusted score: Great

    Score of unreason

    I’m not sure exactly what held me back from awarding a higher score to Age of Unreason, especially considering that a quick look at my average would show I’m not usually one for restraint. Whatever the reason, I deemed ColdCell to have taken a slight step down from their previous effort, The Greater Evil, but with the benefit of hindsight, I see I had this entirely the wrong way around. Age of Unreason is emotionally poignant and refreshingly vulnerable, and it’s delivered in a unique, compelling black metal package. Dark and somewhat mysterious, like all of ColdCell’s output, it has the benefit of being much sharper, and more skilfully edited, which makes it endlessly relistenable. I recognize now that this is, in fact, ColdCell’s best album.

    Original score: Very Good
    Adjusted score: Great

    Dolphin Revisioner

    Premature coagulation

    It’s not that Coagulated Bliss doesn’t contain any great music. Between the heavier bright and fiery noise rock cuts (“Half Life Changelings”), martial stomps (“Doors to Mental Agony”), and Discordance Axis powergrind (“Vomiting Glass”) it represents among the best stretches of Full of Hell offerings. Coagulated Bliss also boasts a fantastic soundstage. As a rhythmically interesting band with more to say than simple blast beats and hammer shows, Full of Hell brings it with the powerviolence escalations (“Transmuting Chemical Burns”) and sliding grooves (“Schizoid Rapture”) in a clear and punchy manner for which I’d always hoped. But as time marched on and I continued to revel in these many reasons to celebrate Full of Hell, I came too to find a distaste for the most pandering and unnecessary tracks—cameo performances that rob the luster of Full of Hell’s raw energy. Does it feel silly to say that a twenty-five-minute album runs almost five minutes too long? No, not at all when that five minutes of completely avoidable downtime kills a historic run. As such, I’m left to remember Coagulated Bliss more for its near greatness, its finish line stumble— yet, I long for where this puts Full of Hell next.

    Original score
    : 4.0
    Adjusted score: 3.5

    Third eye open

    Emergent is unbelievably dense for an album that lets shrill, alien leads dance about the spaciousness of a booming, metallic floor—a bass-rich, industrial pulse that has allowed Autarkh’s sophomore strike to rattle with an upward energy. An album doesn’t always lend itself well to the constraint of a review cycle, especially when its biggest boom rests in amplification, loudness, and feeling. While I try to cycle everything I review through a number of listening platforms, a extra abandon on extended commutes allows cranked tones to work their wonders. And in Emergent’s meticulous design I’ve continued to discover swirling and diving synth chirps, buzzing and scuzzing low-end traps, all of which frame their eerie and jazzy progressive howl with unshakable, unrelenting rhythms. Intention lives in every panning channel hum, emotion lives in every broken-voiced, discordant cry, and exploration lives both in the bulge of every swell and spread of every break. Though Emergent received two scores in its initial stand, it would seem that neither I nor Kenfren had the proper perspective to grant Autarkh the right score. But time settles all debts, and with nothing in the metalverse sounding quite like Autarkh, Emergent holds an esteemed and flourishing spot in my rotation.

    Original score
    : Very Good.
    Adjusted score: Great!

    Mystikus Hugebeard

    Traverse the regret

    I have made no secret of my contrition over Sgaile’s Traverse the Bealach (my regret was even deep enough to mention it on the 15 year anniversary piece). Both commenters and staff alike recognized my underrating, but the miserable truth is I knew it before even they did. In my review, I allowed every perceived flaw to become a glaring boil out of some misguided belief that I had to be hypercritical of something I loved lest I not be taken seriously as a Super Important Music Reviewer. I do think Traverse the Bealach’s second half isn’t quite as strong as the first half, but it’s nowhere near as damaging as I’d initially tried to convince myself. Sgaile’s Traverse the Bealach is never anything less than a delightful listen with some of the most cohesive, satisfying songwriting from any band I’ve heard, and is just as enjoyable a year later as it was on release. Tune in to next year’s Contrite Metal Guy when I adjust the score even higher, but for now just call me Mystikus Absolvedbeard.

    Original Score: 3.5
    Adjusted Score: 4.0

    #2024 #AgeOfUnreason #Ashbringer #Autarkh #BetweenTheWorldsOfLifeAndDeath #BongRa #Calligram #CoagulatedBliss #ColdCell #ContriteMetalGuy #Convergence #CuttingTheThroatOfGod #Emergent #FractalGenerator #FullOfHell #GlareOfTheSun #Hulder #Leitha #Meditations #Reue #ReverendKristinMichaelHayter #Saved_ #Sgaile #TAL #TheEyeIsTheFirstCircle #TraverseTheBealach #Ulcerate #ValeOfPnath #VersesInOath #WeCameHereToGrieve

  13. Contrite Metal Guy: It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Wrongness, Volume the Second

    By Cherd

    The life of the unpaid, overworked metal reviewer is not an easy one. Cascading promos, unreasonable deadlines, draconian editors, and the unwashed metal mobs – it makes for a swirling maelstrom of music and madness. In all that tumult, errors are bound to happen and sometimes our initial impression of an album may not be completely accurate. With time and distance comes wisdom, and so we’ve decided to pull back the confessional curtain and reveal our biggest blunders, missteps, oversights and ratings face-plants. Consider this our sincere AMGea culpa. Redemption is retroactive, forgiveness is mandatory.

    As those of us who follow the Gregorian calendar and partake in Judeo/Christian cultural traditions prepare to face the final bosses of the holiday season, we experience a wide range of feelings. Anticipation, at the prospect of gorging on holiday treats as we shuffle from one party to another thrown by family and friends. Nostalgia, of course, as we uphold our traditions and reflect on the celebrations of yesteryear. And, for those who write music reviews for a non-living, contrition. Intense embarrassment and remorse as we prepare for Listurnalia, revisiting records we thought we had judicated accurately only to discover the depth of our wrongheadedness. Sometimes our self-reproach has nothing to do with impending lists. Sometimes, shortly after writing a review, an ember of doubt will ignite, smoldering just under our calm exteriors, growing until we want to shriek “Dissemble no more! I admit the deed! — tear up the planks! — here, here! — it is the beating of his hideous heart!” It’s been over three years since the last time we unloaded our disgrace onto you, the unsuspecting reader, so expect this to be a long self-flagellation session.

    – Cherd

    Carcharodon

    Verses in contrition

    Earlier this year, I described Hulder’s Verses in Oath as spellbinding, going on to ward it a lofty 4.5. I’ve taken a fair amount of stick for that in the months since, both in the comments and round the staffroom feeding trough. And while that’s fine—you’ve all been wrong before and I have absolutely no doubt you’ll all be wrong again—it’s only fair that such consistent criticism should cause me to reflect a little. And reflect I have. Now, it’s true that, as I said in my review, Verses in Oath is dark and vicious, but also haunting and ethereal. But it’s also true that, although well executed, it lacks true originality and I got carried away. It happens. I loved all the constituent elements of the record and I still think that they are woven together with skill and good songcraft. However, it’s not an album I’ve returned to as much as I thought I would and (spoilers!) it’s not going to make my year end list. Which makes it rather hard to defend the 4.5 any longer. So I won’t. It’s a very good album but no more than that.

    Original score: 4.5
    Adjusted score: 3.5

    We came here to apologize

    Minnesota’s Ashbringer has always been a band of shades, shifting between atmo-black, shoegaze, post-metal, and more. On last year’s We Came Here to Grieve, they added heavily fuzzed blues melodies and languid Incubus-esque post-rock, which I lapped up. Looking, and of course listening, back, there’s still a lot to like about the album but—and it’s a big but—I wince at those clean vocals. I suggested in my review that, while the cleans were not great, there was a sort of vulnerable authenticity to Nick Stanger’s voice that meant he just about got away with it. I can only think I was in a very vulnerable place at the time because he absolutely does not get away with it, nor should he be allowed to. Much as I enjoy Stanger’s harsh post-hardcore vox, his cleans are outright bad in places, which should have placed a very hard ceiling on the score that the album could achieve. Somehow, We Came Here to Grieve shattered that ceiling. It must now be repaired.

    Original score: 4.0
    Adjusted score: 3.0

    Glare of the Noise

    To more recent errors: in September, I did an injustice to Glare of the Sun’s TAL. I’m ashamed to say it but I went into that review looking for flaws—and I did find a couple—because I’d already done what you would all see next: Kanonenfieber. I didn’t lightly award that 5.0 and I stand by it but I was painfully conscious of it sitting there, on the assembly line and that affected my assessment of Glare of the Sun. While I think TAL could, and probably should, have been shorter and that there were a couple of less impactful songs (“Leaving Towards Spring,” for example), there are no real missteps here and it’s a great album. I stand by the words in my review but not the score, which should have been a 4.0.

    Original score: 3.5
    Adjusted score: 4.0

    Noisy remorse

    I can keep this brief because I’ve already publicly admitted to underscoring Leiþa’s Reue. I gave it a 3.5 but knew at the time that it deserved a 4.0, something duly confirmed by AMG Himself, when he awarded it Record o’ the Month for January 2023, hinting that he might even have supported a 4.5. I think that might be going a touch far but, when I look back at my review, it reads like a 4.0 and it should’ve been a 4.0. The only reason it wasn’t, was that Noise (of Kanonenfieber, Leiþa and Non Est Deus) just makes too much damned good black metal, much of which I’d already gushed about. Ironically, given it was also a Noise project that led to me shortchanging Glare of the Sun, here his excellence also caused me to underrate his own album. Fool.

    Original score: 3.5
    Adjusted score: 4.0

    Dear Hollow

    Iconic in a different universe

    Rarely do I bestow 4.0s out of spite, but that’s exactly what happened with Fractal Generator. While I have liked their follow-up Convergence much more for its punishingly dense palette, I simply could not find any distinct fault with Macrocosmos. In hindsight, the album’s inhuman technicality and dissonance doesn’t play nice with the organicity and warmth the production offers, but more glaringly, I never returned to the album. Sure, some tracks really stand out and rip a hole in the space-time continuum (“Aeon,” “Chaosphere,” “Shadows of Infinity”), but for all its experimentalism and alien dissonance paired with deathgrind, Fractal Generator’s debut was simply unmemorable. Deathgrind bruisers like Knoll and Vermin Womb simply do it better, as the Italians never quite cut loose in the same way deathgrind ought to. What’s left is largely a pale imitation of Misery Index with an added shot of Portal’s IONian dissonance. It’s still good and improved with Convergence, but it is not the cosmos wrecker I thought it was.

    Original score: 4.0
    Adjusted score: 2.5

    Cold ‘n’ what?

    I have a bad habit of pretense, and Calligram’s The Eye is the First Circle was one hell of a pretense. Bestowing the same honor to Position | Momentum seemed like an open-and-shut case, but like Fractal Generator, I never returned to it and it never made any appearances on any year-end lists. It boasts more icy punk-infused black metal that would be sure to get the, like, four fans of Darkthrone’s Circle the Wagons or the underground cult of the gone-but-unforgotten Young and In the Way going, but it more exemplified the way-too-safe crash back to earth after The Eye. The experimental focus is still there with melancholic jazz (“Ostranenie”) and post-rock crescendos (“Seminari Dieci”), and the blackened punk is still a barnstormer (“Sul Dolore,” “Tebe”), but the absence of the two-ton sludge that weighted The Eye is felt – as if Calligram got blown away in a blizzard. In many ways, Position | Momentum is the Italian act’s more kvlt offering, but it alienates its widespread appeal with its now-limited audience. Great for some, less for others.

    Original score: 4.0
    Adjusted score: 3.0

    TAKE ME TO FUCKIN’ CHURCH

    Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter’s past in Lingua Ignota is certainly noteworthy, but when she dispels all the bells and whistles, we’re left with the horror of SAVED! It’s stripped to the bone, deceptively straightforward, with only some experimental tricks to make the subtle shift from Jesus lover to Jesus hater. Likely the most returned-to album I’ve ever reviewed,1 vicious and jaded sardonicism (“All My Friends Are Going to Hell”), hymns crashing into uncanny valley (“There is Power in the Blood,” “Nothing But the Blood”), and ominous dirges (“Idumea,” “The Poor Wayfaring Stranger”) all collide in a subtle yet earth-shaking affair that I have yet to shake. This is not even mentioning some of the most punishing sounds to shake Appalachia with Pentecostal and blasphemous fury: truly, the dissonant swell of “I Will Be With You Always” and Hayter’s tortured screaming and glossolalia in “How Can I Keep From Singing” have never left me. While the sentiment of a 3.5 is certainly merited in its divisive approach, the impact of SAVED! cannot be understated.

    Original score: 3.5
    Adjusted score: 4.5

    Thus Spoke

    Meditations on contrition

    In my first year as a newly promoted writer, I let the chill vibes of a summer holiday get to my head with Bong-Ra’s Meditations. It’s a good album, that much is still true. It is, as I pointed out at the time, immersive and engaging despite being totally instrumental. It’s also undeniably unique thanks to Bong-Ra’s choice to combine saxophone and oud with piano and guitar, and the striking way that volume is used to build tension. I do think I over-emphasized this novelty and strength, but it’s there regardless. Have I revisited it since 2022? The answer is no, and it is mainly for this reason that I concede I overrated it.

    Original score: Excellent
    Adjusted score: Very Good

    Between the scores of right and wrong

    I think I must have been in an exceptionally bad mood the week I wrote my review of Between the Worlds of Life and Death. Yes, Vale of Pnath disappointed a little with a turn in the direction of deathcore, but the result is hardly itself disappointing. My first inkling I’d done Between the Worlds of Life and Death a disservice was when I realized I’d been listening to it in the gym an awful lot, several months after giving my official score. I gestured towards anticlimactic song structures and distracting theatricality, and while I still think Vale of Pnath could have refined their templates, these compositions have stood the test of time, and of leg day. It may take them one more record to solidify their new sound, but this was a cracking record I was evidently in the wrong mindset to appreciate when it first landed in my hands.

    Original score: Good
    Adjusted score: Very Good

    Cutting the throat of an incorrect score

    When my review of Cutting the Throat of God went live, I noticed several questions in the comments to the effect of “where’d the ‘Iconic’ get lost?” Well, here I am, barely six months later, to set things right. After spending the best part of that time listening and relistening daily; after seeing the band live this October and falling in love all over again; after running through the band’s back catalogue and confirming that I do indeed like this one best, I can no longer deny what I knew from the start. Call me over-eager, fawning, blinded by infatuation. I don’t care. Ulcerate are the undisputed masters of their craft and this is an album I’ll be listening to for the next ten years at least. My only regret is not doing this the first time around.

    Original score: Excellent
    Adjusted score: Iconic

    Sparagmos (of my original rating)

    In line with my habit of taking the least linear route possible into a subgenre, I became enamored with what I now know to be basically ‘diSEMBOWELMENT-core’ before ever listening to diSEMBOWELMENT themself. Think Worm, Tomb Mold, and the current subject, Spectral Voice. Without the obvious reference point, the undeniably crushing, cavernous might of Sparagmos stunned me perhaps more than it had any right to. Make no mistake, Sparagmos remains a behemoth of intensely frightening doom death, one that’s fully capable of dragging me into its abyssal depths. And its ability to immerse in spite of its length and creeping pace still impresses me. But now that the ritual haze has lifted a little, I can recognize that it’s not quite the pinnacle of perfection I was fooled into believing it was.

    Original score: Excellent
    Adjusted score: Great

    Score of unreason

    I’m not sure exactly what held me back from awarding a higher score to Age of Unreason, especially considering that a quick look at my average would show I’m not usually one for restraint. Whatever the reason, I deemed ColdCell to have taken a slight step down from their previous effort, The Greater Evil, but with the benefit of hindsight, I see I had this entirely the wrong way around. Age of Unreason is emotionally poignant and refreshingly vulnerable, and it’s delivered in a unique, compelling black metal package. Dark and somewhat mysterious, like all of ColdCell’s output, it has the benefit of being much sharper, and more skilfully edited, which makes it endlessly relistenable. I recognize now that this is, in fact, ColdCell’s best album.

    Original score: Very Good
    Adjusted score: Great

    Dolphin Revisioner

    Premature coagulation

    It’s not that Coagulated Bliss doesn’t contain any great music. Between the heavier bright and fiery noise rock cuts (“Half Life Changelings”), martial stomps (“Doors to Mental Agony”), and Discordance Axis powergrind (“Vomiting Glass”) it represents among the best stretches of Full of Hell offerings. Coagulated Bliss also boasts a fantastic soundstage. As a rhythmically interesting band with more to say than simple blast beats and hammer shows, Full of Hell brings it with the powerviolence escalations (“Transmuting Chemical Burns”) and sliding grooves (“Schizoid Rapture”) in a clear and punchy manner for which I’d always hoped. But as time marched on and I continued to revel in these many reasons to celebrate Full of Hell, I came too to find a distaste for the most pandering and unnecessary tracks—cameo performances that rob the luster of Full of Hell’s raw energy. Does it feel silly to say that a twenty-five-minute album runs almost five minutes too long? No, not at all when that five minutes of completely avoidable downtime kills a historic run. As such, I’m left to remember Coagulated Bliss more for its near greatness, its finish line stumble— yet, I long for where this puts Full of Hell next.

    Original score
    : 4.0
    Adjusted score: 3.5

    Third eye open

    Emergent is unbelievably dense for an album that lets shrill, alien leads dance about the spaciousness of a booming, metallic floor—a bass-rich, industrial pulse that has allowed Autarkh’s sophomore strike to rattle with an upward energy. An album doesn’t always lend itself well to the constraint of a review cycle, especially when its biggest boom rests in amplification, loudness, and feeling. While I try to cycle everything I review through a number of listening platforms, a extra abandon on extended commutes allows cranked tones to work their wonders. And in Emergent’s meticulous design I’ve continued to discover swirling and diving synth chirps, buzzing and scuzzing low-end traps, all of which frame their eerie and jazzy progressive howl with unshakable, unrelenting rhythms. Intention lives in every panning channel hum, emotion lives in every broken-voiced, discordant cry, and exploration lives both in the bulge of every swell and spread of every break. Though Emergent received two scores in its initial stand, it would seem that neither I nor Kenfren had the proper perspective to grant Autarkh the right score. But time settles all debts, and with nothing in the metalverse sounding quite like Autarkh, Emergent holds an esteemed and flourishing spot in my rotation.

    Original score
    : Very Good.
    Adjusted score: Great!

    Mystikus Hugebeard

    Traverse the regret

    I have made no secret of my contrition over Sgaile’s Traverse the Bealach (my regret was even deep enough to mention it on the 15 year anniversary piece). Both commenters and staff alike recognized my underrating, but the miserable truth is I knew it before even they did. In my review, I allowed every perceived flaw to become a glaring boil out of some misguided belief that I had to be hypercritical of something I loved lest I not be taken seriously as a Super Important Music Reviewer. I do think Traverse the Bealach’s second half isn’t quite as strong as the first half, but it’s nowhere near as damaging as I’d initially tried to convince myself. Sgaile’s Traverse the Bealach is never anything less than a delightful listen with some of the most cohesive, satisfying songwriting from any band I’ve heard, and is just as enjoyable a year later as it was on release. Tune in to next year’s Contrite Metal Guy when I adjust the score even higher, but for now just call me Mystikus Absolvedbeard.

    Original Score: 3.5
    Adjusted Score: 4.0

    #2024 #AgeOfUnreason #Ashbringer #Autarkh #BetweenTheWorldsOfLifeAndDeath #BongRa #Calligram #CoagulatedBliss #ColdCell #ContriteMetalGuy #Convergence #CuttingTheThroatOfGod #Emergent #FractalGenerator #FullOfHell #GlareOfTheSun #Hulder #Leitha #Meditations #Reue #ReverendKristinMichaelHayter #Saved_ #Sgaile #TAL #TheEyeIsTheFirstCircle #TraverseTheBealach #Ulcerate #ValeOfPnath #VersesInOath #WeCameHereToGrieve

  14. It's just over 3 hours until the first public broadcast of the long lost recording of this hugely influential #ProtoBonk recording by Bonkman Sam and his Wavelets.

    Don't miss this and many more #Unbonked recordings at the launch party for Not What I Call Bonk Wave - Volume 003 - Disc B - Bonked and Unbonked!

    Tune in at 21:00 UTC at party.bonkwave.org and join our friendly hangout and chat.

    More info and timezone help: mastodon.online/@keefmarshall/

    #BonkWave #NotBonkWave #NWICBW3

  15. Finally Friday Reads: It’s all as Bad as you Think

    “Arrgh, Matey!” John Buss, @repeat1968

    Good Day, Sky Dancers!

    For the moment, the BLS is still providing reliable measurements of economic activity in the USA. The employment numbers are showing signs of bad policy and Trump-inflicted wounds. The strain from the tariffs is beginning to show. This is from The Guardian. “US added just 22,000 jobs in August, continuing slowdown amid Trump tariffs. The latest report also contained more bad news – the US lost 13,000 jobs in June, according to the latest survey.”

    “The US jobs market stalled over the summer, adding just 22,000 jobs in August and continuing a slowdown in the labor market as businesses adjusted to disruptions caused by tariffs.

    The latest jobs report also contained more bad news. The US lost 13,000 jobs in June, according to the latest survey, the first time it went into the negative since December 2020.

    The unemployment rate for August inched up to 4.3%, the highest it’s been since 2021.

    The healthcare sector added 31,000 last month but most other sectors were flat or lost jobs.

    Trump’s new BLS leader has a disgusting past. This is from CNN. “Trump’s pick to lead BLS ran Twitter account with sexually degrading, bigoted attacks.”  As usual, Trump hires “only the very best.”   Go see his photos. He’s as creepy as Stephen Miller.

    President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics operated a since-deleted Twitter account that featured sexually degrading attacks on Kamala Harris, derogatory remarks about gay people, conspiracy theories, and crude insults aimed at critics of President Donald Trump.

    E.J. Antoni, a 37-year-old economist for the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, posted the comments from approximately 2017 through 2020 under a series of usernames and display names. CNN verified that all of Antoni’s posts came from the same Twitter account and that the posts from the anonymous aliases shared strikingly similar biographical details as Antoni.

    An outspoken critic of the nonpartisan BLS, which calculates US job growth and unemployment figures, Antoni is a stout Trump loyalist. NBC News reported and CNN confirmed that he was a “bystander” at the US Capitol riot on January 6, 2021. There is no evidence he entered the Capitol.

    His appointment comes after Trump fired the Biden-appointed BLS commissioner and accused the agency without evidence of corruption after a report showed job growth in May and June was weaker than previously estimated.

    Antoni has positioned himself as a watchdog for government accountability in media appearances and Heritage Foundation blog posts. But his own digital trail reveals a pattern of incendiary rhetoric that veered frequently into conspiracy theories and misogyny.

    In 2019, the since-deleted account known as “ErwinJohnAntoni” changed its username to “phdofbombsaway.” The account posted at least five sexually suggestive tweets implying that then Sen. Kamala Harris had advanced her career through sexual favors.

    Shortly after Harris ended her 2020 presidential campaign, Antoni wrote, “You can’t run a race on your knees,” in response to a tweet of a doctored campaign poster that depicted a sexually explicit image of Harris.

    Antoni also referred to Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who accused Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault, as “Miss Piggy.” In February 2020, he retweeted a post titled “Advice For Women: How To Land a Great Guy,” which instructed women to “be in shape,” “grow your hair long,” “be sweet,” “learn to cook,” and “don’t be annoying.” The post concluded: “Angry feminists and simps will try to sabotage you in the comments. Don’t listen to them. Listen to me.”

    Disgusting.

    Speaking of disgusting Trump appointees, Steven Miller is evidently the one running the District into the ground, according to the Washington Post. “How Stephen Miller is running Trump’s effort to take over D.C.” It’s amazing how many young NAZIs are in his employ.

    From the head of the conference table in the White House’s Roosevelt Room, Stephen Miller was in the weeds of President Donald Trump’s takeover of policing in the nation’s capital.

    The White House deputy chief of staff wanted to know where exactly groups of law enforcement officers would be deployed. He declared that cleaning up D.C. was one of Trump’s most important domestic policy issues and that Miller himself planned to be involved for a long time.

    Miller’s remarks were described to The Washington Post by two people with knowledge of the meeting who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal White House business. The result is a behind-the-scenes glimpse of one of Trump’s most trusted aides in action, someone who has emerged as a key enforcer of the D.C. operation in the month since Trump federalized the local police department and deployed thousands of National Guard troops to patrol city streets. While widely seen as a vocal proponent for the president’s push on immigration and law and order, Miller’s actions reveal how much he is actually driving that agenda inside the White House.

    The deputy White House chief of staff has emerged as a key enforcer of the D.C. operation in the month since Trump federalized the local police department.

    “It’s his thing,” one White House official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters. “Security, crime, law enforcement — it’s his wheelhouse.”

    Miller’s team provides an updated report each morning on the arrests made the night before to staff from the White House, Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security, among others. The readouts include a breakdown of how many of those arrested are undocumented immigrants.

    He has also led weekly meetings in the Roosevelt Room with his staff and members of the D.C. mayor’s office. Last week, he brought Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, according to two people briefed on the meeting. It’s unclear why Bessent attended the meeting.

    A person familiar with Bessent’s thinking said he was encouraged by D.C. officials’ enthusiasm and collaborative tone.

    Yam Tits and Miller know they have the District’s leaders over a barrel. Its special status gives the federal government a lot of power over the District. Its leadership is undoubtedly trying to avoid Trump taking the entire District over and removing them.

    The source of all federal power over Washington comes from Article I, Section 8, Clause 17 of the Constitution. It grants Congress authority “To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever” over the federal district.

    That phrase—”exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever”—is absolute. It establishes a power imbalance between the federal government and D.C. residents that has defined their relationship for over two centuries.

    Undoubtedly, the Supreme Court would give Orange Tits whatever he wanted.

    Trump’s approach to the economy and foreign policy continues to bring one failure after another. The Washington Examiner reports that “Immigration officers raid Hyundai EV manufacturing site in Georgia.” This is a bizarre strategy given that any produced in the United States goes to the US GDP numbers despite foreign ownership. Additionally, these are good jobs for parts of the country that really need them. Then there’s the factor that we just pissed off one of our major trade partners. This makes no sense whatsoever.

    An Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesperson told the Associated Press that agents were focused on the electric vehicle battery plant construction site.

    The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that agents executed a search warrant “as part of an ongoing criminal investigation into allegations of unlawful employment practices and other serious federal crimes.” It did not say whether anyone was detained or arrested.

    Georgia State Patrol troopers blocked the road to the Hyundai plant, and the state Department of Public Safety said it was assisting. A social media video showed agents telling workers that they were with DHS and that they had a search warrant.

    “We need construction to cease immediately,” the man said. “We need all work to end on the site right now.”

    Operations at Hyundai’s EV manufacturing plant weren’t stopped, a spokesperson said.

    The joint venture, HL-GA Battery Company, “is cooperating fully with the appropriate authorities,” the company said. “To assist their work, we have paused construction,” they added.

    The administration has targeted other businesses in large raids as well. Two California cannabis farm raids in July yielded more than 300 arrests. One farm worker died after sustaining injuries during the raid.

    The Trump administration has made deporting numerous illegal immigrants and migrants a top priority.

    The Wall Street Journal reports, “Hundreds Arrested in Immigration Raid at Hyundai Site in Georgia. South Korea protests after more than 300 Korean company workers are detained.”

    Nearly 500 people were arrested as part of an immigration raid at a Hyundai Motor battery plant under construction in Georgia as part of a criminal investigation into employment practices at the site, a Homeland Security official said Friday.

    The operation Thursday resulted in the arrest of 475 individuals. More than 300 were South Korean nationals, according to an official from the country.

    Those arrested had illegally crossed the border, entered through a visa waiver program that prohibited them from working or had overstayed their visas, Steven Schrank, a special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in Atlant a, said at a press conference Friday morning.

    “This was the largest single site enforcement operation in the history of Homeland Security investigations,” Schrank said.

    No criminal charges were filed as of Friday, he said, and the investigation remains ongoing.

    “Those who exploit our workforce, undermine our economy, and violate our federal laws will be held accountable,” Schrank said. Schrank said the government’s investigation has been ongoing for months.

    The carmaker has pledged $26 billion in U.S. investments in recent weeks.

    South Korea protested the action to the U.S. and said it was trying to secure the release of its citizens.

    “This was not an immigration operation where agents went into the premises, rounded up folks and put them on buses,” Schrank said. “This has been a multimonth criminal investigation where we have developed evidence, conducted interviews, gathered documents, and presented that evidence to the court in order to obtain a judicial search warrant.”

    A search warrant in the case was issued Aug. 31, according to a court filing. The government filed a motion to unseal a redacted version of the warrant Friday, and a judge granted the request. A copy of the warrant wasn’t immediately available.

    “The United States is proud to be a home for major investments and looks forward to continuing to build on these historic investments and partnerships that President Trump has secured,” said Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman. “Any foreign workers brought in for specific projects must enter the United States legally and with proper work authorizations. President Trump will continue delivering on his promise to make the United States the best place in the world to do business, while also enforcing federal immigration laws.”

    The New York Times (gifted article) reports that we now have a diplomatic issue with an ally, South Korea. “South Koreans Swept Up in Immigration Raid at Hyundai E.V. Plant in Georgia. They were among nearly 500 workers apprehended at a construction site for a South Korean battery maker, officials said. The episode prompted diplomatic concern in Seoul.” Like I said previously, why would you want to disturb a huge plant that is creating good jobs and value for our country?

    The battery manufacturer, LG Energy Solution, which co-owns the plant with Hyundai Motor Group, said in a statement that employees of both companies had been taken into custody.

    Hyundai said in a statement that none of those detained were Hyundai employees, as far as the company was aware.

    “We are closely monitoring the situation and working to understand the specific circumstances,” Hyundai said on Friday.

    South Korea’s Foreign Ministry confirmed on Friday that South Koreans were among those in custody, without saying how many. Mr. Schrank told reporters at the plant on Thursday that some U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents had been detained initially and were being released.

    The agencies involved in the operation included the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the F.B.I., according to the Atlanta division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which also participated.

    The operation, part of President Trump’s crackdown on immigration, caused diplomatic alarm in South Korea. Just over a week earlier, Mr. Trump hosted President Lee Jae Myung of South Korea at the White House, where the South Korean leader pledged to invest an additional $150 billion in the United States, including in battery manufacturing.

    The lithium-ion battery plant, which predated Mr. Lee’s pledge, was expected to start operating next year. It is the kind of large-scale, job-creating investment that the United States has pushed for from South Korea and other nations.

    The Ellabell site is part of one of Georgia’s largest manufacturing plants. Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia, a Republican, has promoted the $7.6 billion Hyundai E.V. factory there as the largest economic development project in state history.

    Yes, I saved the most disgusting for last. The RFK Jr. hearing yesterday was on a whole different level as the pathological liar and loony proved himself unfit again and again. There were some major players in the Senate Committee showing exactly how ignorant Worm Boy is of his own department and science. The one thing I found amazing was the number of Republicans giving him a difficult time. There are likely several reasons for this. NBC News‘ Berkley Lovelace reports the story. “Ahead of Kennedy hearing, GOP saw poll showing Trump voters support vaccines. The poll, conducted by veteran Republican pollsters, found that a majority of Trump voters believe vaccines save lives and support immunizations against measles and hepatitis B.”

    Polling showing that a majority of President Donald Trump’s voters support vaccines was shared with several Republicans lawmakers’ staffers in a closed-door meeting Wednesday, according to two people familiar with the meeting.

    NBC News obtained a copy of a memo, dated Aug. 26, summarizing the poll results. It was conducted by veteran Republican pollsters Tony Fabrizio and Bob Ward and concluded “that there is broad unity across party lines supporting vaccines such as measles (MMR), shingles, tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis (TDAP), and Hepatitis B.” Fabrizio and Ward presented the findings during the meeting, the sources said.

    In an email to NBC News, Ward confirmed the memo was authentic but declined to comment about the meeting. It’s unclear who commissioned the poll or arranged the meeting. A source close to the White House denied that the administration requested the poll.

    The poll results may explain the shift in tone from some GOP senators at Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s hearing Thursday before the Finance Committee.

    Among those at Wednesday’s meeting were staff members for senators on the Finance Committee, according to one of the sources.

    The hearing grew contentious at times, with Kennedy facing questions from both Democrats and Republicans about limiting access to this fall’s Covid vaccines and the dismissal of newly confirmed Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez.

    Alexander Bolton from The Hill provides a similar analysis. “GOP senators signal to Trump that Kennedy is on thin ice.”

    Republican senators are sending clear signs of disapproval and unhappiness with Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., making it plain to President Trump that they want the administration to address the chaos Kennedy has caused by trying to rewrite the nation’s vaccine policies.

    GOP senators have stopped short of calling on Kennedy to resign and haven’t yet said they regret voting for him in February, but they want him to back off efforts to change vaccine policy recommendations without sound scientific backing as the administration faces a growing public backlash.

    Kennedy received an unusual admonishment from Senate Republican Whip John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), an orthopedic surgeon, when he testified before the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday.

    “I support vaccines. I’m a doctor. Vaccines work,” said Barrasso, the Senate’s No. 2-ranking Republican leader.

    “Secretary Kennedy, in your confirmation hearings, you promised to uphold the highest standards for vaccines,” he said. “Since then, I’ve grown deeply concerned.”

    Barrasso pointed to a national measles outbreak, the sudden ouster of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Susan Monarez, and questions raised by the leadership of the National Institutes of Health over mRNA vaccines as raising troubling questions.

    “Americans don’t know who to rely on,” he said. “If we’re going to make America healthy again, we can’t allow public health to be undermined.”

    Here’s Elizabeth Warren shredding the Worm Guy.

    Some smart aide to my Senator Bill Cassidy evidently suggested that he kiss up to Yam Tits while shredding Worm Guy. He’s not so popular down here for reelection. The MAGA crowd calls him a Rhino and hates that he actually voted to impeach Trump.  That vote was one of the few things he’s ever shown a spine about.

    The drama between the rest of the world and Orange Caligula continues.  Here are some headlines, including one of those “praise dear leader” by the tech businesses.

    I’m still waiting for the latest on our new Department of War and our open hostilities with Venezuela. Feeling great and safe yet?

    Here’s one last article about one of the major loonies in the Supreme Court. This is from NBC News. “Justice Amy Coney Barrett says country is not in a ‘constitutional crisis’. Speaking to Free Press founder Bari Weiss to promote her new book, the conservative justice said the American people should trust the Supreme Court.” The last group of people I would trust with anything are the so-called conservatives on the Supreme Court.

    Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett said Thursday she does not believe the United States is in a constitutional crisis as President Donald Trump seeks to unilaterally reshape the government and his administration frequently feuds with judges.

    Barrett, a Trump appointee who is part of the Supreme Court’s 6-3 conservative majority, defended the Supreme Court as an institution and said Americans should have faith in its ability to address probing problems with integrity.

    “I think the Constitution is alive and well,” Barrett said in an interview with Bari Weiss, hosted by the Free Press in New York, to promote her new book.

    “I don’t know what a constitutional crisis would look like. I don’t think that we are currently in a constitutional crisis, however,” she added. “I think our country remains committed to the rule of law. I think we have functioning courts.”

    A constitutional crisis would have arrived if “the rule of law crumbled,” Barrett said. But, she added, “that is not a place where we are.”

    Lower courts have frequently blocked Trump’s executive actions as unlawful exercises of power, only for the Supreme Court in most cases to then rule in favor of the administration via brief orders that often include no reasoning.

    And Weirdo Kavanaugh thinks shadow docket is too truthy and wants it renamed “interim docket”.  This does not feel like the country I grew up in at all.

    What’s on your Reading, Blogging, and Action list today?

     

     

    #AmyConeyBarrett #andRacist #DC_ #DepartmentOfWar #EJAntoni #FederalOccupationOfWashington #ICERaids #NAZI #RFKJrWeirdo #sexist #shadowDocket #StephenMiller #TrumpTanksTheEconomy #Weirdo

  16. Finally Friday Reads: It’s all as Bad as you Think

    “Arrgh, Matey!” John Buss, @repeat1968

    Good Day, Sky Dancers!

    For the moment, the BLS is still providing reliable measurements of economic activity in the USA. The employment numbers are showing signs of bad policy and Trump-inflicted wounds. The strain from the tariffs is beginning to show. This is from The Guardian. “US added just 22,000 jobs in August, continuing slowdown amid Trump tariffs. The latest report also contained more bad news – the US lost 13,000 jobs in June, according to the latest survey.”

    “The US jobs market stalled over the summer, adding just 22,000 jobs in August and continuing a slowdown in the labor market as businesses adjusted to disruptions caused by tariffs.

    The latest jobs report also contained more bad news. The US lost 13,000 jobs in June, according to the latest survey, the first time it went into the negative since December 2020.

    The unemployment rate for August inched up to 4.3%, the highest it’s been since 2021.

    The healthcare sector added 31,000 last month but most other sectors were flat or lost jobs.

    Trump’s new BLS leader has a disgusting past. This is from CNN. “Trump’s pick to lead BLS ran Twitter account with sexually degrading, bigoted attacks.”  As usual, Trump hires “only the very best.”   Go see his photos. He’s as creepy as Stephen Miller.

    President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics operated a since-deleted Twitter account that featured sexually degrading attacks on Kamala Harris, derogatory remarks about gay people, conspiracy theories, and crude insults aimed at critics of President Donald Trump.

    E.J. Antoni, a 37-year-old economist for the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, posted the comments from approximately 2017 through 2020 under a series of usernames and display names. CNN verified that all of Antoni’s posts came from the same Twitter account and that the posts from the anonymous aliases shared strikingly similar biographical details as Antoni.

    An outspoken critic of the nonpartisan BLS, which calculates US job growth and unemployment figures, Antoni is a stout Trump loyalist. NBC News reported and CNN confirmed that he was a “bystander” at the US Capitol riot on January 6, 2021. There is no evidence he entered the Capitol.

    His appointment comes after Trump fired the Biden-appointed BLS commissioner and accused the agency without evidence of corruption after a report showed job growth in May and June was weaker than previously estimated.

    Antoni has positioned himself as a watchdog for government accountability in media appearances and Heritage Foundation blog posts. But his own digital trail reveals a pattern of incendiary rhetoric that veered frequently into conspiracy theories and misogyny.

    In 2019, the since-deleted account known as “ErwinJohnAntoni” changed its username to “phdofbombsaway.” The account posted at least five sexually suggestive tweets implying that then Sen. Kamala Harris had advanced her career through sexual favors.

    Shortly after Harris ended her 2020 presidential campaign, Antoni wrote, “You can’t run a race on your knees,” in response to a tweet of a doctored campaign poster that depicted a sexually explicit image of Harris.

    Antoni also referred to Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who accused Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault, as “Miss Piggy.” In February 2020, he retweeted a post titled “Advice For Women: How To Land a Great Guy,” which instructed women to “be in shape,” “grow your hair long,” “be sweet,” “learn to cook,” and “don’t be annoying.” The post concluded: “Angry feminists and simps will try to sabotage you in the comments. Don’t listen to them. Listen to me.”

    Disgusting.

    Speaking of disgusting Trump appointees, Steven Miller is evidently the one running the District into the ground, according to the Washington Post. “How Stephen Miller is running Trump’s effort to take over D.C.” It’s amazing how many young NAZIs are in his employ.

    From the head of the conference table in the White House’s Roosevelt Room, Stephen Miller was in the weeds of President Donald Trump’s takeover of policing in the nation’s capital.

    The White House deputy chief of staff wanted to know where exactly groups of law enforcement officers would be deployed. He declared that cleaning up D.C. was one of Trump’s most important domestic policy issues and that Miller himself planned to be involved for a long time.

    Miller’s remarks were described to The Washington Post by two people with knowledge of the meeting who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal White House business. The result is a behind-the-scenes glimpse of one of Trump’s most trusted aides in action, someone who has emerged as a key enforcer of the D.C. operation in the month since Trump federalized the local police department and deployed thousands of National Guard troops to patrol city streets. While widely seen as a vocal proponent for the president’s push on immigration and law and order, Miller’s actions reveal how much he is actually driving that agenda inside the White House.

    The deputy White House chief of staff has emerged as a key enforcer of the D.C. operation in the month since Trump federalized the local police department.

    “It’s his thing,” one White House official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters. “Security, crime, law enforcement — it’s his wheelhouse.”

    Miller’s team provides an updated report each morning on the arrests made the night before to staff from the White House, Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security, among others. The readouts include a breakdown of how many of those arrested are undocumented immigrants.

    He has also led weekly meetings in the Roosevelt Room with his staff and members of the D.C. mayor’s office. Last week, he brought Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, according to two people briefed on the meeting. It’s unclear why Bessent attended the meeting.

    A person familiar with Bessent’s thinking said he was encouraged by D.C. officials’ enthusiasm and collaborative tone.

    Yam Tits and Miller know they have the District’s leaders over a barrel. Its special status gives the federal government a lot of power over the District. Its leadership is undoubtedly trying to avoid Trump taking the entire District over and removing them.

    The source of all federal power over Washington comes from Article I, Section 8, Clause 17 of the Constitution. It grants Congress authority “To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever” over the federal district.

    That phrase—”exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever”—is absolute. It establishes a power imbalance between the federal government and D.C. residents that has defined their relationship for over two centuries.

    Undoubtedly, the Supreme Court would give Orange Tits whatever he wanted.

    Trump’s approach to the economy and foreign policy continues to bring one failure after another. The Washington Examiner reports that “Immigration officers raid Hyundai EV manufacturing site in Georgia.” This is a bizarre strategy given that any produced in the United States goes to the US GDP numbers despite foreign ownership. Additionally, these are good jobs for parts of the country that really need them. Then there’s the factor that we just pissed off one of our major trade partners. This makes no sense whatsoever.

    An Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesperson told the Associated Press that agents were focused on the electric vehicle battery plant construction site.

    The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that agents executed a search warrant “as part of an ongoing criminal investigation into allegations of unlawful employment practices and other serious federal crimes.” It did not say whether anyone was detained or arrested.

    Georgia State Patrol troopers blocked the road to the Hyundai plant, and the state Department of Public Safety said it was assisting. A social media video showed agents telling workers that they were with DHS and that they had a search warrant.

    “We need construction to cease immediately,” the man said. “We need all work to end on the site right now.”

    Operations at Hyundai’s EV manufacturing plant weren’t stopped, a spokesperson said.

    The joint venture, HL-GA Battery Company, “is cooperating fully with the appropriate authorities,” the company said. “To assist their work, we have paused construction,” they added.

    The administration has targeted other businesses in large raids as well. Two California cannabis farm raids in July yielded more than 300 arrests. One farm worker died after sustaining injuries during the raid.

    The Trump administration has made deporting numerous illegal immigrants and migrants a top priority.

    The Wall Street Journal reports, “Hundreds Arrested in Immigration Raid at Hyundai Site in Georgia. South Korea protests after more than 300 Korean company workers are detained.”

    Nearly 500 people were arrested as part of an immigration raid at a Hyundai Motor battery plant under construction in Georgia as part of a criminal investigation into employment practices at the site, a Homeland Security official said Friday.

    The operation Thursday resulted in the arrest of 475 individuals. More than 300 were South Korean nationals, according to an official from the country.

    Those arrested had illegally crossed the border, entered through a visa waiver program that prohibited them from working or had overstayed their visas, Steven Schrank, a special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in Atlant a, said at a press conference Friday morning.

    “This was the largest single site enforcement operation in the history of Homeland Security investigations,” Schrank said.

    No criminal charges were filed as of Friday, he said, and the investigation remains ongoing.

    “Those who exploit our workforce, undermine our economy, and violate our federal laws will be held accountable,” Schrank said. Schrank said the government’s investigation has been ongoing for months.

    The carmaker has pledged $26 billion in U.S. investments in recent weeks.

    South Korea protested the action to the U.S. and said it was trying to secure the release of its citizens.

    “This was not an immigration operation where agents went into the premises, rounded up folks and put them on buses,” Schrank said. “This has been a multimonth criminal investigation where we have developed evidence, conducted interviews, gathered documents, and presented that evidence to the court in order to obtain a judicial search warrant.”

    A search warrant in the case was issued Aug. 31, according to a court filing. The government filed a motion to unseal a redacted version of the warrant Friday, and a judge granted the request. A copy of the warrant wasn’t immediately available.

    “The United States is proud to be a home for major investments and looks forward to continuing to build on these historic investments and partnerships that President Trump has secured,” said Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman. “Any foreign workers brought in for specific projects must enter the United States legally and with proper work authorizations. President Trump will continue delivering on his promise to make the United States the best place in the world to do business, while also enforcing federal immigration laws.”

    The New York Times (gifted article) reports that we now have a diplomatic issue with an ally, South Korea. “South Koreans Swept Up in Immigration Raid at Hyundai E.V. Plant in Georgia. They were among nearly 500 workers apprehended at a construction site for a South Korean battery maker, officials said. The episode prompted diplomatic concern in Seoul.” Like I said previously, why would you want to disturb a huge plant that is creating good jobs and value for our country?

    The battery manufacturer, LG Energy Solution, which co-owns the plant with Hyundai Motor Group, said in a statement that employees of both companies had been taken into custody.

    Hyundai said in a statement that none of those detained were Hyundai employees, as far as the company was aware.

    “We are closely monitoring the situation and working to understand the specific circumstances,” Hyundai said on Friday.

    South Korea’s Foreign Ministry confirmed on Friday that South Koreans were among those in custody, without saying how many. Mr. Schrank told reporters at the plant on Thursday that some U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents had been detained initially and were being released.

    The agencies involved in the operation included the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the F.B.I., according to the Atlanta division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which also participated.

    The operation, part of President Trump’s crackdown on immigration, caused diplomatic alarm in South Korea. Just over a week earlier, Mr. Trump hosted President Lee Jae Myung of South Korea at the White House, where the South Korean leader pledged to invest an additional $150 billion in the United States, including in battery manufacturing.

    The lithium-ion battery plant, which predated Mr. Lee’s pledge, was expected to start operating next year. It is the kind of large-scale, job-creating investment that the United States has pushed for from South Korea and other nations.

    The Ellabell site is part of one of Georgia’s largest manufacturing plants. Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia, a Republican, has promoted the $7.6 billion Hyundai E.V. factory there as the largest economic development project in state history.

    Yes, I saved the most disgusting for last. The RFK Jr. hearing yesterday was on a whole different level as the pathological liar and loony proved himself unfit again and again. There were some major players in the Senate Committee showing exactly how ignorant Worm Boy is of his own department and science. The one thing I found amazing was the number of Republicans giving him a difficult time. There are likely several reasons for this. NBC News‘ Berkley Lovelace reports the story. “Ahead of Kennedy hearing, GOP saw poll showing Trump voters support vaccines. The poll, conducted by veteran Republican pollsters, found that a majority of Trump voters believe vaccines save lives and support immunizations against measles and hepatitis B.”

    Polling showing that a majority of President Donald Trump’s voters support vaccines was shared with several Republicans lawmakers’ staffers in a closed-door meeting Wednesday, according to two people familiar with the meeting.

    NBC News obtained a copy of a memo, dated Aug. 26, summarizing the poll results. It was conducted by veteran Republican pollsters Tony Fabrizio and Bob Ward and concluded “that there is broad unity across party lines supporting vaccines such as measles (MMR), shingles, tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis (TDAP), and Hepatitis B.” Fabrizio and Ward presented the findings during the meeting, the sources said.

    In an email to NBC News, Ward confirmed the memo was authentic but declined to comment about the meeting. It’s unclear who commissioned the poll or arranged the meeting. A source close to the White House denied that the administration requested the poll.

    The poll results may explain the shift in tone from some GOP senators at Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s hearing Thursday before the Finance Committee.

    Among those at Wednesday’s meeting were staff members for senators on the Finance Committee, according to one of the sources.

    The hearing grew contentious at times, with Kennedy facing questions from both Democrats and Republicans about limiting access to this fall’s Covid vaccines and the dismissal of newly confirmed Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez.

    Alexander Bolton from The Hill provides a similar analysis. “GOP senators signal to Trump that Kennedy is on thin ice.”

    Republican senators are sending clear signs of disapproval and unhappiness with Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., making it plain to President Trump that they want the administration to address the chaos Kennedy has caused by trying to rewrite the nation’s vaccine policies.

    GOP senators have stopped short of calling on Kennedy to resign and haven’t yet said they regret voting for him in February, but they want him to back off efforts to change vaccine policy recommendations without sound scientific backing as the administration faces a growing public backlash.

    Kennedy received an unusual admonishment from Senate Republican Whip John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), an orthopedic surgeon, when he testified before the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday.

    “I support vaccines. I’m a doctor. Vaccines work,” said Barrasso, the Senate’s No. 2-ranking Republican leader.

    “Secretary Kennedy, in your confirmation hearings, you promised to uphold the highest standards for vaccines,” he said. “Since then, I’ve grown deeply concerned.”

    Barrasso pointed to a national measles outbreak, the sudden ouster of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Susan Monarez, and questions raised by the leadership of the National Institutes of Health over mRNA vaccines as raising troubling questions.

    “Americans don’t know who to rely on,” he said. “If we’re going to make America healthy again, we can’t allow public health to be undermined.”

    Here’s Elizabeth Warren shredding the Worm Guy.

    Some smart aide to my Senator Bill Cassidy evidently suggested that he kiss up to Yam Tits while shredding Worm Guy. He’s not so popular down here for reelection. The MAGA crowd calls him a Rhino and hates that he actually voted to impeach Trump.  That vote was one of the few things he’s ever shown a spine about.

    The drama between the rest of the world and Orange Caligula continues.  Here are some headlines, including one of those “praise dear leader” by the tech businesses.

    I’m still waiting for the latest on our new Department of War and our open hostilities with Venezuela. Feeling great and safe yet?

    Here’s one last article about one of the major loonies in the Supreme Court. This is from NBC News. “Justice Amy Coney Barrett says country is not in a ‘constitutional crisis’. Speaking to Free Press founder Bari Weiss to promote her new book, the conservative justice said the American people should trust the Supreme Court.” The last group of people I would trust with anything are the so-called conservatives on the Supreme Court.

    Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett said Thursday she does not believe the United States is in a constitutional crisis as President Donald Trump seeks to unilaterally reshape the government and his administration frequently feuds with judges.

    Barrett, a Trump appointee who is part of the Supreme Court’s 6-3 conservative majority, defended the Supreme Court as an institution and said Americans should have faith in its ability to address probing problems with integrity.

    “I think the Constitution is alive and well,” Barrett said in an interview with Bari Weiss, hosted by the Free Press in New York, to promote her new book.

    “I don’t know what a constitutional crisis would look like. I don’t think that we are currently in a constitutional crisis, however,” she added. “I think our country remains committed to the rule of law. I think we have functioning courts.”

    A constitutional crisis would have arrived if “the rule of law crumbled,” Barrett said. But, she added, “that is not a place where we are.”

    Lower courts have frequently blocked Trump’s executive actions as unlawful exercises of power, only for the Supreme Court in most cases to then rule in favor of the administration via brief orders that often include no reasoning.

    And Weirdo Kavanaugh thinks shadow docket is too truthy and wants it renamed “interim docket”.  This does not feel like the country I grew up in at all.

    What’s on your Reading, Blogging, and Action list today?

     

     

    #AmyConeyBarrett #andRacist #DC_ #DepartmentOfWar #EJAntoni #FederalOccupationOfWashington #ICERaids #NAZI #RFKJrWeirdo #sexist #shadowDocket #StephenMiller #TrumpTanksTheEconomy #Weirdo

  17. @denysdavydov.bsky.social
    Ep 4-15-2025 📰

    Update from Ukraine | Chaos in #Ruzzian Army | They Lost their Forces | Trump turns against #Ukraine

    youtu.be/bDnRrS5xiOQ?feature=s

  18. A global burger chain in Finland suddenly lost all access to its critical operational data — no warning, no outage alert, just instant silence. A third-party supplier had cut them off overnight, and the kitchens were about to feel it.

    This episode takes you inside the rapid-fire DevOps rescue that brought the data back before chaos hit the lunch rush.

    Listen now to IT Horror Stories with Jack Smith.

    ithorrorstories.eu/#ep08

    #tech #podcast #devops #ithorror

  19. A global burger chain in Finland suddenly lost all access to its critical operational data — no warning, no outage alert, just instant silence. A third-party supplier had cut them off overnight, and the kitchens were about to feel it.

    This episode takes you inside the rapid-fire DevOps rescue that brought the data back before chaos hit the lunch rush.

    Listen now to IT Horror Stories with Jack Smith.

    ithorrorstories.eu/#ep08

    #tech #podcast #devops #ithorror

  20. A global burger chain in Finland suddenly lost all access to its critical operational data — no warning, no outage alert, just instant silence. A third-party supplier had cut them off overnight, and the kitchens were about to feel it.

    This episode takes you inside the rapid-fire DevOps rescue that brought the data back before chaos hit the lunch rush.

    Listen now to IT Horror Stories with Jack Smith.

    ithorrorstories.eu/#ep08

    #tech #podcast #devops #ithorror

  21. A global burger chain in Finland suddenly lost all access to its critical operational data — no warning, no outage alert, just instant silence. A third-party supplier had cut them off overnight, and the kitchens were about to feel it.

    This episode takes you inside the rapid-fire DevOps rescue that brought the data back before chaos hit the lunch rush.

    Listen now to IT Horror Stories with Jack Smith.

    ithorrorstories.eu/#ep08

    #tech #podcast #devops #ithorror

  22. A global burger chain in Finland suddenly lost all access to its critical operational data — no warning, no outage alert, just instant silence. A third-party supplier had cut them off overnight, and the kitchens were about to feel it.

    This episode takes you inside the rapid-fire DevOps rescue that brought the data back before chaos hit the lunch rush.

    Listen now to IT Horror Stories with Jack Smith.

    ithorrorstories.eu/#ep08

  23. Meet the quantum mechanic.

    Transformers Titans Return Nautica (Chaos on Velocitron set, 2017)

    Nautica's Titans Return figure is her only official toy so far, despite being a major character in IDW's MTMTE/Lost Light comics for several years. It’s not bad for a retool, but it doesn't particularly resemble her comic design.

    #Transformers #ToyPhotography #WomensHistoryMonth

  24. Cronos Compulsion – Lawgiver Review

    By Tyme

    We here at AMG spend a fair amount of time pontificating on album length. Why some 72-minute, Silmarillion-based black metal contains no bloat whatsoever, but a 40-minute thrash album can suffer from fatty-track disease is proprietary information, which we don’t share with readers. I mention this because I was surprised to discover that Denver-based Cronos Compulsion’s1 debut album Lawgiver—dubbed by the label as ‘a genre-defying blend of death-doom, chaotic metal, and noise-laced breakdowns’—clocks in at a scant 24 minutes. Now, I’ve never been one to associate death-doom with brevity, so I was anxious to dive into my analysis of Lawgiver, wondering how Cronos Compulsion would incorporate their intriguingly dichotomous array of genre tags into such a tight package.

    Cronos Compulsion play death metal, and at times, they play it at a doom’s pace. Far from doom, however, is the album opener, “Obligate Condition,” which crashes through your speakers like Kool-Aid Man through a wall in a massive wave of sound full of turgid, sludgy riffs, blast beats, and guttural vocals. Cavernous, cave-man-ic, and knuckle-dragging, Cronos Compulsion use tons of brute force to deliver their rant against late-stage capitalism and the basest instincts of humanity. There are tons of Incantationanigans2 at play on Lawgiver; Wil Wilson’s vocals, in particular, so closely mirror those of John McEntee that I had to reference the promo blurb to confirm John wasn’t filling a guest spot. Wilson’s and Raye Mokarry’s guitar attack causes suffering through brutality with solo-less, chest-caving chuggery (“Mortal Dissolution,” “Gyre of Decaying Filth”) and discordant dissonance (“Neolithic Meditations,” “Lawgiver”). Zach Johnson’s blasts, cymbal crashes, and fills keep things drumming along, while Addison Herron-Wheeler’s bass grounds Cronus Compulsion’s sound with spinal heaviness. Cronus Compulsion are good at what they do—Lawgiver is proof of that—I’m just not sure they do enough of it.

    As effective as a sledgehammer, Lawgiver is crushing in its simplicity. With no bells, whistles, or frills, Cronos Compulsion chops away at its opponents one slug at a time. Reworked from their 2021 Cursed and Decaying EP, “Neolithic Meditations” is Lawgiver’s most developed track and, at four minutes, its longest, furiously swirling with discordant riffs, cool lead runs that sadly get swallowed up by the production at times, and some trademark Incantation harmonic pinching. I also enjoyed “Sun Devouring Wound,” with its light, inquisitive guitar introduction that immediately evoked a mystery movie scene, where the lead detective, with one eyebrow cocked and finger on chin, contemplates the significance of a new clue. This respite occurs in the space of thirty seconds before the track evolves into a devastatingly doomy plod-fest, with Wilson’s growls sounding particularly decimating.


    Like an Oreo cookie, it’s Lawgiver’s middle that offers the most flavor for my tastes and marks one of Cronos Compulsion’s flaws. While most often, albums are critically weighted to either the front or back, Lawgiver carries the weight in its beer belly. From the first swig of “Obligate Condition,” which only clocks one minute, sixteen seconds, through “Ancestral Remains,” the first four tracks are fine but feel half-finished, like decent sections removed from longer compositions and presented here as standalone songs. While the front suffers from unrealized ideas, the back contains Lawgiver’s biggest misstep. Album closer “Incursion of Deific Chaos” is a mix of unsettlingly, and not in a good way, restless riffs, drunken, out-of-tune guitar leads, and the end-‘o-song kicker: a full minute of noisy, squeaky, bleepy feedback screeches that are horribly annoying and end so abruptly it had me looking to see if I’d lost my speaker connection.

    Cronos Compulsion play decent doomy death metal. I didn’t find anything particularly chaotic about their music; it’s pretty straightforwardly brutal, and they should immediately dissociate themselves from any ‘noise’ category. For example, the last minute of Lawgiver perfectly meets the Metallica definition of “The Thing That Should Not Be.” With some added focus on composition, giving room for ideas to expand and develop—a well-placed guitar solo here and there would be nice—Cronos Compulsion could be pretty lethal. There are plenty of bones on this skeleton to which meatier, more defined muscles could be attached, and I’ll be watching Cronos Compulsion to see what they do after exiting the gym.

    Rating: 2.5/5.0
    DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320kbps mp3
    Label: Avantgarde Music (Unorthodox Emanations) | Bandcamp
    Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook
    Releases Worldwide: July 11th, 2025

    #25 #2025 #AmericanMetal #AvantgardeMusicUnorthodoxEmanations_ #CronosCompulsion #DeathMetal #DoomMetal #Incantation #Jul25 #Lawgiver #Review #Reviews

  25. @ligasser OK, I am not too familiar with iOS, but I guess directly opening an app from #poppy would be technically feasible.
    And the idea of regularly checking in on «lost friends» is nice!
    The point is that most people will do this via their existing connections (WA, Insta, FB, ...), so the (implicit) claim to «enhance» by not collecting data is #privacywashing
    #social_media #messenger

  26. Psycho-Frame – Salvation Laughs in the Face of a Grieving Mother Review

    By Dear Hollow

    Deathcore doesn’t give a shit. There was a moment when bands like Lorna Shore and Slaughter to Prevail attempted to make deathcore more accessible to other metal fans, incorporating blackened/symphonic textures or nu-metal influences. However terrible, solid, milquetoast, or well-intentioned you found it, that’s not the spirit of deathcore. Psycho-Frame has steadily been building a fanbase around their particularly unhinged take on deathcore with the release of 2023 EPs Remote God Seeker and Automatic Death Protocol, and we’re finally faced with a full-length debut: Salvation Laughs in the Face of a Grieving Mother. But don’t expect heavyhandedness – expect just heavy. Dumb heavy. Basically, the music for the sellout. Get those fists swingin’, Hot Topic frequenters! We’re goin’ to the mall.

    Psycho-Frame embodies a trend in deathcore that is layered in nostalgia. Fearing that the style has lost its teeth, bands like the nation-spanning six-piece1 embrace the days of MySpace (think old-school Chelsea Grin or Bring Me the Horizon). It’s raw, groovy, and devastating, brandishing a brand wavering between thick-ass breakdowns settling on the ocean floor and lightning-fast blastbeats and unhinged technical thrills. Psycho-Frame otherwise benefits from a two-vocal attack, with Mike Sugars relying on a tough Frankie Palmeri bark attack while Jonathan Whittle offers fierce shrieks, horrific bellows, and the occasional pig squeal. It’s big, dumb fun that doesn’t overstay its welcome, embracing a savage edge contrary to contemporary acts off the same ilk: the rawness of Killing of a Sacred Deer or the melodic technicality of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Psycho-Frame emerges as the elite, its loud and ouchy production amped to louder and ouchier, its vocal attack barbaric and ominous, and its songwriting whiplash-inducing. It’s everything you love – and loathe – about deathcore.

    There’s little nuance in Salvation Laughs – if it’s thoughtful songwriting and careful construction you’re after, Psycho-Frame ain’t it. It doesn’t have a lick of the tragedy its title implies because, remember, deathcore doesn’t give a shit. It recalls the chaos of This is Exile-era Whitechapel, The Cleansing-era Suicide Silence, or self-titled Chelsea Grin in its chunky viciousness and stonewalled rigidity. Neck-snapping tempo shifts are a norm, downtempo Black Tongue chugdowns assaulting your ears one second before ravaging them with ripping blastbeats and shredding riffs. Riffiness is a trait not often expounded upon by deathcore, but it appears often throughout Salvation Laughs, giving an unexpected head-bobbing groove and pinch harmonics (“Blueprints for Idol Genocide,” “Endless Agonal Devotion”), jaw-dropping fretboard wizardry that recalls Beneath the Massacre and pairs neatly with numbskull density (“Apocalypse Through Lysergic Possession”), while slam’s gurgling lurch a la Ingested adds nice sonic depravity (“Filleted and Fucked,” “Still Water Salvation”). Each member offers his best, the dual shrieks and roars commanding charisma, the guitars offering flaying technicality and caveman knuckle-dragging meatheadedness equally, bass holding up the sound amid the fray, and drums retain a sharp metallic ring that adds to the unhinged quality Psycho-Frame possesses.

    For the same reasons, some will love Psycho-Frame, others will understandably loathe it. In many ways, it feels like the insanity of mid-2000s deathcore distilled into a bullying thirty-eight minutes. It’s relentless, it’s over-the-top, and perfect to make frowny faces at while you windmill your way through the pit. That being said, some parts of the album are guiltier than others: when groove dominates, the result is an insane little number, but when that’s toned down to channel Suicide Silence, it sounds pitifully stale (“The Portal,” “BLACK_WAVE II”). Furthermore, there are short-lived spoken word samples scattered throughout the album, which provide more of a blush than the creepiness factor they are attempting to instill. But apart from the nitpicks, for nearly all the reasons mentioned in the paragraph above, Salvation Laughs in the Face of a Grieving Mother can be the thorn in a metalhead’s side – Psycho-Frame is truly an apt representative of deathcore.

    For better or worse, Psycho-Frame is deathcore, and it doesn’t pretend to be anything else. It’s big and dumb, overly loud and obnoxious, with enough groove, rawness, and wonky tricks to carry its dual vocal attack into something resembling enjoyment. It’s a low-ceiling, low-floor situation, because Salvation Laughs in the Face of a Grieving Mother can either bring some fun into your day or utterly ruin it. I had fun with Psycho-Frame because of its refreshing simplicity and relentless brutality – but it’s still a cautionary tale.

    Rating: 3.0/5.0
    DR: N/A | Format Reviewed:
    Label: Sharptone Records
    Websites: psychoframedc.bandcamp.com | psychoframe.com | facebook.com/psychoframedeathcore
    Releases Worldwide: July 25th, 2025

    #2025 #30 #AmericanMetal #BeneathTheMassacre #BlackTongue #BringMeTheHorizon #ChelseaGrin #Deathcore #Ingested #Jul25 #KillingOfASacredDeer #LornaShore #PsychoFrame #Review #Reviews #SalvationLaughsInTheFaceOfAGrievingMother #SharpToneRecords #SlammingDeathcore #SlaughterToPrevail #SuicideSilence #ThusSpokeZarathustra #Whitechapel

  27. Psycho-Frame – Salvation Laughs in the Face of a Grieving Mother Review

    By Dear Hollow

    Deathcore doesn’t give a shit. There was a moment when bands like Lorna Shore and Slaughter to Prevail attempted to make deathcore more accessible to other metal fans, incorporating blackened/symphonic textures or nu-metal influences. However terrible, solid, milquetoast, or well-intentioned you found it, that’s not the spirit of deathcore. Psycho-Frame has steadily been building a fanbase around their particularly unhinged take on deathcore with the release of 2023 EPs Remote God Seeker and Automatic Death Protocol, and we’re finally faced with a full-length debut: Salvation Laughs in the Face of a Grieving Mother. But don’t expect heavyhandedness – expect just heavy. Dumb heavy. Basically, the music for the sellout. Get those fists swingin’, Hot Topic frequenters! We’re goin’ to the mall.

    Psycho-Frame embodies a trend in deathcore that is layered in nostalgia. Fearing that the style has lost its teeth, bands like the nation-spanning six-piece1 embrace the days of MySpace (think old-school Chelsea Grin or Bring Me the Horizon). It’s raw, groovy, and devastating, brandishing a brand wavering between thick-ass breakdowns settling on the ocean floor and lightning-fast blastbeats and unhinged technical thrills. Psycho-Frame otherwise benefits from a two-vocal attack, with Mike Sugars relying on a tough Frankie Palmeri bark attack while Jonathan Whittle offers fierce shrieks, horrific bellows, and the occasional pig squeal. It’s big, dumb fun that doesn’t overstay its welcome, embracing a savage edge contrary to contemporary acts off the same ilk: the rawness of Killing of a Sacred Deer or the melodic technicality of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Psycho-Frame emerges as the elite, its loud and ouchy production amped to louder and ouchier, its vocal attack barbaric and ominous, and its songwriting whiplash-inducing. It’s everything you love – and loathe – about deathcore.

    There’s little nuance in Salvation Laughs – if it’s thoughtful songwriting and careful construction you’re after, Psycho-Frame ain’t it. It doesn’t have a lick of the tragedy its title implies because, remember, deathcore doesn’t give a shit. It recalls the chaos of This is Exile-era Whitechapel, The Cleansing-era Suicide Silence, or self-titled Chelsea Grin in its chunky viciousness and stonewalled rigidity. Neck-snapping tempo shifts are a norm, downtempo Black Tongue chugdowns assaulting your ears one second before ravaging them with ripping blastbeats and shredding riffs. Riffiness is a trait not often expounded upon by deathcore, but it appears often throughout Salvation Laughs, giving an unexpected head-bobbing groove and pinch harmonics (“Blueprints for Idol Genocide,” “Endless Agonal Devotion”), jaw-dropping fretboard wizardry that recalls Beneath the Massacre and pairs neatly with numbskull density (“Apocalypse Through Lysergic Possession”), while slam’s gurgling lurch a la Ingested adds nice sonic depravity (“Filleted and Fucked,” “Still Water Salvation”). Each member offers his best, the dual shrieks and roars commanding charisma, the guitars offering flaying technicality and caveman knuckle-dragging meatheadedness equally, bass holding up the sound amid the fray, and drums retain a sharp metallic ring that adds to the unhinged quality Psycho-Frame possesses.

    For the same reasons, some will love Psycho-Frame, others will understandably loathe it. In many ways, it feels like the insanity of mid-2000s deathcore distilled into a bullying thirty-eight minutes. It’s relentless, it’s over-the-top, and perfect to make frowny faces at while you windmill your way through the pit. That being said, some parts of the album are guiltier than others: when groove dominates, the result is an insane little number, but when that’s toned down to channel Suicide Silence, it sounds pitifully stale (“The Portal,” “BLACK_WAVE II”). Furthermore, there are short-lived spoken word samples scattered throughout the album, which provide more of a blush than the creepiness factor they are attempting to instill. But apart from the nitpicks, for nearly all the reasons mentioned in the paragraph above, Salvation Laughs in the Face of a Grieving Mother can be the thorn in a metalhead’s side – Psycho-Frame is truly an apt representative of deathcore.

    For better or worse, Psycho-Frame is deathcore, and it doesn’t pretend to be anything else. It’s big and dumb, overly loud and obnoxious, with enough groove, rawness, and wonky tricks to carry its dual vocal attack into something resembling enjoyment. It’s a low-ceiling, low-floor situation, because Salvation Laughs in the Face of a Grieving Mother can either bring some fun into your day or utterly ruin it. I had fun with Psycho-Frame because of its refreshing simplicity and relentless brutality – but it’s still a cautionary tale.

    Rating: 3.0/5.0
    DR: N/A | Format Reviewed:
    Label: Sharptone Records
    Websites: psychoframedc.bandcamp.com | psychoframe.com | facebook.com/psychoframedeathcore
    Releases Worldwide: July 25th, 2025

    #2025 #30 #AmericanMetal #BeneathTheMassacre #BlackTongue #BringMeTheHorizon #ChelseaGrin #Deathcore #Ingested #Jul25 #KillingOfASacredDeer #LornaShore #PsychoFrame #Review #Reviews #SalvationLaughsInTheFaceOfAGrievingMother #SharpToneRecords #SlammingDeathcore #SlaughterToPrevail #SuicideSilence #ThusSpokeZarathustra #Whitechapel

  28. Psycho-Frame – Salvation Laughs in the Face of a Grieving Mother Review

    By Dear Hollow

    Deathcore doesn’t give a shit. There was a moment when bands like Lorna Shore and Slaughter to Prevail attempted to make deathcore more accessible to other metal fans, incorporating blackened/symphonic textures or nu-metal influences. However terrible, solid, milquetoast, or well-intentioned you found it, that’s not the spirit of deathcore. Psycho-Frame has steadily been building a fanbase around their particularly unhinged take on deathcore with the release of 2023 EPs Remote God Seeker and Automatic Death Protocol, and we’re finally faced with a full-length debut: Salvation Laughs in the Face of a Grieving Mother. But don’t expect heavyhandedness – expect just heavy. Dumb heavy. Basically, the music for the sellout. Get those fists swingin’, Hot Topic frequenters! We’re goin’ to the mall.

    Psycho-Frame embodies a trend in deathcore that is layered in nostalgia. Fearing that the style has lost its teeth, bands like the nation-spanning six-piece1 embrace the days of MySpace (think old-school Chelsea Grin or Bring Me the Horizon). It’s raw, groovy, and devastating, brandishing a brand wavering between thick-ass breakdowns settling on the ocean floor and lightning-fast blastbeats and unhinged technical thrills. Psycho-Frame otherwise benefits from a two-vocal attack, with Mike Sugars relying on a tough Frankie Palmeri bark attack while Jonathan Whittle offers fierce shrieks, horrific bellows, and the occasional pig squeal. It’s big, dumb fun that doesn’t overstay its welcome, embracing a savage edge contrary to contemporary acts off the same ilk: the rawness of Killing of a Sacred Deer or the melodic technicality of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Psycho-Frame emerges as the elite, its loud and ouchy production amped to louder and ouchier, its vocal attack barbaric and ominous, and its songwriting whiplash-inducing. It’s everything you love – and loathe – about deathcore.

    There’s little nuance in Salvation Laughs – if it’s thoughtful songwriting and careful construction you’re after, Psycho-Frame ain’t it. It doesn’t have a lick of the tragedy its title implies because, remember, deathcore doesn’t give a shit. It recalls the chaos of This is Exile-era Whitechapel, The Cleansing-era Suicide Silence, or self-titled Chelsea Grin in its chunky viciousness and stonewalled rigidity. Neck-snapping tempo shifts are a norm, downtempo Black Tongue chugdowns assaulting your ears one second before ravaging them with ripping blastbeats and shredding riffs. Riffiness is a trait not often expounded upon by deathcore, but it appears often throughout Salvation Laughs, giving an unexpected head-bobbing groove and pinch harmonics (“Blueprints for Idol Genocide,” “Endless Agonal Devotion”), jaw-dropping fretboard wizardry that recalls Beneath the Massacre and pairs neatly with numbskull density (“Apocalypse Through Lysergic Possession”), while slam’s gurgling lurch a la Ingested adds nice sonic depravity (“Filleted and Fucked,” “Still Water Salvation”). Each member offers his best, the dual shrieks and roars commanding charisma, the guitars offering flaying technicality and caveman knuckle-dragging meatheadedness equally, bass holding up the sound amid the fray, and drums retain a sharp metallic ring that adds to the unhinged quality Psycho-Frame possesses.

    For the same reasons, some will love Psycho-Frame, others will understandably loathe it. In many ways, it feels like the insanity of mid-2000s deathcore distilled into a bullying thirty-eight minutes. It’s relentless, it’s over-the-top, and perfect to make frowny faces at while you windmill your way through the pit. That being said, some parts of the album are guiltier than others: when groove dominates, the result is an insane little number, but when that’s toned down to channel Suicide Silence, it sounds pitifully stale (“The Portal,” “BLACK_WAVE II”). Furthermore, there are short-lived spoken word samples scattered throughout the album, which provide more of a blush than the creepiness factor they are attempting to instill. But apart from the nitpicks, for nearly all the reasons mentioned in the paragraph above, Salvation Laughs in the Face of a Grieving Mother can be the thorn in a metalhead’s side – Psycho-Frame is truly an apt representative of deathcore.

    For better or worse, Psycho-Frame is deathcore, and it doesn’t pretend to be anything else. It’s big and dumb, overly loud and obnoxious, with enough groove, rawness, and wonky tricks to carry its dual vocal attack into something resembling enjoyment. It’s a low-ceiling, low-floor situation, because Salvation Laughs in the Face of a Grieving Mother can either bring some fun into your day or utterly ruin it. I had fun with Psycho-Frame because of its refreshing simplicity and relentless brutality – but it’s still a cautionary tale.

    Rating: 3.0/5.0
    DR: N/A | Format Reviewed:
    Label: Sharptone Records
    Websites: psychoframedc.bandcamp.com | psychoframe.com | facebook.com/psychoframedeathcore
    Releases Worldwide: July 25th, 2025

    #2025 #30 #AmericanMetal #BeneathTheMassacre #BlackTongue #BringMeTheHorizon #ChelseaGrin #Deathcore #Ingested #Jul25 #KillingOfASacredDeer #LornaShore #PsychoFrame #Review #Reviews #SalvationLaughsInTheFaceOfAGrievingMother #SharpToneRecords #SlammingDeathcore #SlaughterToPrevail #SuicideSilence #ThusSpokeZarathustra #Whitechapel

  29. Psycho-Frame – Salvation Laughs in the Face of a Grieving Mother Review

    By Dear Hollow

    Deathcore doesn’t give a shit. There was a moment when bands like Lorna Shore and Slaughter to Prevail attempted to make deathcore more accessible to other metal fans, incorporating blackened/symphonic textures or nu-metal influences. However terrible, solid, milquetoast, or well-intentioned you found it, that’s not the spirit of deathcore. Psycho-Frame has steadily been building a fanbase around their particularly unhinged take on deathcore with the release of 2023 EPs Remote God Seeker and Automatic Death Protocol, and we’re finally faced with a full-length debut: Salvation Laughs in the Face of a Grieving Mother. But don’t expect heavyhandedness – expect just heavy. Dumb heavy. Basically, the music for the sellout. Get those fists swingin’, Hot Topic frequenters! We’re goin’ to the mall.

    Psycho-Frame embodies a trend in deathcore that is layered in nostalgia. Fearing that the style has lost its teeth, bands like the nation-spanning six-piece1 embrace the days of MySpace (think old-school Chelsea Grin or Bring Me the Horizon). It’s raw, groovy, and devastating, brandishing a brand wavering between thick-ass breakdowns settling on the ocean floor and lightning-fast blastbeats and unhinged technical thrills. Psycho-Frame otherwise benefits from a two-vocal attack, with Mike Sugars relying on a tough Frankie Palmeri bark attack while Jonathan Whittle offers fierce shrieks, horrific bellows, and the occasional pig squeal. It’s big, dumb fun that doesn’t overstay its welcome, embracing a savage edge contrary to contemporary acts off the same ilk: the rawness of Killing of a Sacred Deer or the melodic technicality of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Psycho-Frame emerges as the elite, its loud and ouchy production amped to louder and ouchier, its vocal attack barbaric and ominous, and its songwriting whiplash-inducing. It’s everything you love – and loathe – about deathcore.

    There’s little nuance in Salvation Laughs – if it’s thoughtful songwriting and careful construction you’re after, Psycho-Frame ain’t it. It doesn’t have a lick of the tragedy its title implies because, remember, deathcore doesn’t give a shit. It recalls the chaos of This is Exile-era Whitechapel, The Cleansing-era Suicide Silence, or self-titled Chelsea Grin in its chunky viciousness and stonewalled rigidity. Neck-snapping tempo shifts are a norm, downtempo Black Tongue chugdowns assaulting your ears one second before ravaging them with ripping blastbeats and shredding riffs. Riffiness is a trait not often expounded upon by deathcore, but it appears often throughout Salvation Laughs, giving an unexpected head-bobbing groove and pinch harmonics (“Blueprints for Idol Genocide,” “Endless Agonal Devotion”), jaw-dropping fretboard wizardry that recalls Beneath the Massacre and pairs neatly with numbskull density (“Apocalypse Through Lysergic Possession”), while slam’s gurgling lurch a la Ingested adds nice sonic depravity (“Filleted and Fucked,” “Still Water Salvation”). Each member offers his best, the dual shrieks and roars commanding charisma, the guitars offering flaying technicality and caveman knuckle-dragging meatheadedness equally, bass holding up the sound amid the fray, and drums retain a sharp metallic ring that adds to the unhinged quality Psycho-Frame possesses.

    For the same reasons, some will love Psycho-Frame, others will understandably loathe it. In many ways, it feels like the insanity of mid-2000s deathcore distilled into a bullying thirty-eight minutes. It’s relentless, it’s over-the-top, and perfect to make frowny faces at while you windmill your way through the pit. That being said, some parts of the album are guiltier than others: when groove dominates, the result is an insane little number, but when that’s toned down to channel Suicide Silence, it sounds pitifully stale (“The Portal,” “BLACK_WAVE II”). Furthermore, there are short-lived spoken word samples scattered throughout the album, which provide more of a blush than the creepiness factor they are attempting to instill. But apart from the nitpicks, for nearly all the reasons mentioned in the paragraph above, Salvation Laughs in the Face of a Grieving Mother can be the thorn in a metalhead’s side – Psycho-Frame is truly an apt representative of deathcore.

    For better or worse, Psycho-Frame is deathcore, and it doesn’t pretend to be anything else. It’s big and dumb, overly loud and obnoxious, with enough groove, rawness, and wonky tricks to carry its dual vocal attack into something resembling enjoyment. It’s a low-ceiling, low-floor situation, because Salvation Laughs in the Face of a Grieving Mother can either bring some fun into your day or utterly ruin it. I had fun with Psycho-Frame because of its refreshing simplicity and relentless brutality – but it’s still a cautionary tale.

    Rating: 3.0/5.0
    DR: N/A | Format Reviewed:
    Label: Sharptone Records
    Websites: psychoframedc.bandcamp.com | psychoframe.com | facebook.com/psychoframedeathcore
    Releases Worldwide: July 25th, 2025

    #2025 #30 #AmericanMetal #BeneathTheMassacre #BlackTongue #BringMeTheHorizon #ChelseaGrin #Deathcore #Ingested #Jul25 #KillingOfASacredDeer #LornaShore #PsychoFrame #Review #Reviews #SalvationLaughsInTheFaceOfAGrievingMother #SharpToneRecords #SlammingDeathcore #SlaughterToPrevail #SuicideSilence #ThusSpokeZarathustra #Whitechapel

  30. From an other place:

    Discover her footprints in the lost places,

    The forgotten zones, the buried ancient sites.

    She was long before she was here, now.

    Upon this mark, eye unite the worlds.

    #LS #Ellis #linkingsigil #Sigil #Magick #ChaosMagick #Art #Transmission #photoshop #collage #psychedelic #uponthismarkiunitetheworlds