Search
475 results for “naynay”
-
La Torture des Ténèbres – Episode VII – Revenge of Unfailing Valor Review
By Dear Hollow
La Torture des Ténèbres, in spite of the sadistic propensity for aural flaying, offers a unique voice in black metal. A one-woman show with an aesthetic evoking dystopian urban shimmer, decopunk, classic science fiction, and the space age, it conjures images of glittering mile-high cities built on the backs of the impoverished, brave women overcoming the adversity of the stars, the sneaking static cutting through a dictator’s commands through the radio, the jazzy bombasts of the elite’s decadent galas – and the loneliness of it all. There is no overselling just how noisy and jarring this act’s sound is on the ears, but lone mastermind JK has concocted a trademark stew that makes it stand out in nearly every way. Episode VII arrives a mere five months after its predecessor, expressing a fusion of its aesthetics.
Episode VII – Revenge of Unfailing Valor deals in a sound that retains La Torture des Ténèbres’ signature style, the vicious rawness and lonely melodic tremolo leads while fusing its two aesthetic influences. 2016 began with the formidably raw and ambient spacefaring canon of Choirs of Emptiness and Acadian Nights,1 but was reinterpreted by the more dystopian Civilization is the Tomb of Our Noble Gods, which set the tone for the following releases up to last year’s V and The Lost Colony of Altar Vista. In this way, Episode VII – Revenge of Unfailing Valor blends these two themes, dystopian civilizations set amongst the stars, its vast colonies and glorious cities plagued by inequality, sexism, and the hive mind’s whims.
La Torture des Ténèbres lives up to Revenge of Unfailing Valor’s description (“VOLITIONAL EXPLOITATION // SMOULDERING HIVES”) by channeling its trademark melodic template and ambient sensibilities into a fuller sound that amps violence while hinting at a tragic heart beneath machinelike mania. Its trademark is intact: the rawness and utter saturation of rawness is ubiquitous, as even its more placid moments of lonely melodies are scathing. However, one distinction is melodic motifs that tie the album into one cohesive whole: an ascending jazzy synth run (“Vast Black Claws Drag Her Back to Space,” “Metropolitan Warfare,” “Out of All the Years We’ve Come…”) and sanguine synth melodies (“The Second Piscean Abyss,” “Angels”). As always, this is communicated through the ebb and flow of three prongs of scathing second-wave blasting/tremolo/shrieking, lonely tremolo, and distorted vintage samples. This arsenal and dynamic are as intriguing as they are jarring, samples and melodies inviting comparisons to classic science fiction (“Vast Black Claws…,” “The Second Piscean Abyss”) and the roarin’ twenties worship of decopunk (“Breathe in the Fucking Sawdust and Die,” “Yes But Can a Camp Girl Do This”). The first act in particular utilizes a bombast of violent second-wave rawness in contrast with an over-the-top sample presence. A grandiosity pervades in a way that recalls predecessor V, but La Torture des Ténèbres‘ fuller sound adds to the assault – tinnitus is guaranteed.
The second half of Episode VII finds La Torture des Ténèbres taking risks – the samples are fewer, the melodies are far more tragic and empty, and there is rest to be found. The brutal mid-album climax in “The Second Piscean Abyss” allows for reinterpretation for “Metropolitan Warfare” and beyond, trademark and motifs carrying across in emptier and more tragic melodies and moments (i.e. the release of all sound but tinny tremolo and blastbeats in “Traditions” and total collapses into noise in “Out of All the Years…”). This reinforces the need for bulletproof songwriting rather than reliance on samples and jarring movements to do the heavy lifting, and JK is up to the task. “Angels” is placed perfectly, its minimalist, distorted, and aptly angelic sample providing rest for the weary ears – for the first time in La Torture des Ténèbres’ career.
La Torture des Ténèbres will not sway any naysayers of raw black or blackened noise. In fact, many will point to their ringing ears or pinched nerves2 and say “See??” after Episode VII concludes with the noise fadeout of “Out of All the Years…”. Those who are willing to endure will find treasures aplenty, an opus of hyper-atmospheric, excessively noisy, and endlessly tragic melodies and motifs. Episode VII – Revenge of Unfailing Valor sweeps you away to a universe yet to be explored; but even in the dead vacuum of space or within mankind’s hive-mind colonies, you can’t escape your humanity.
Rating: 4.0/5.0
DR: 4 | Format Reviewed: PCM
Label: Self-Released
Website: latorturedestenebres.bandcamp.com
Releases Worldwide: March 7th, 2025#2025 #40 #AmbientBlackMetal #AmbientNoise #AtmosphericBlackMetal #CanadianMetal #Chaosophia #EpisodeVIIRevengeOfUnfailingValor #LaTortureDesTénèbres #Mar25 #Noise #RawBlackMetal #Review #Reviews #SelfReleased
-
La Torture des Ténèbres – Episode VII – Revenge of Unfailing Valor Review
By Dear Hollow
La Torture des Ténèbres, in spite of the sadistic propensity for aural flaying, offers a unique voice in black metal. A one-woman show with an aesthetic evoking dystopian urban shimmer, decopunk, classic science fiction, and the space age, it conjures images of glittering mile-high cities built on the backs of the impoverished, brave women overcoming the adversity of the stars, the sneaking static cutting through a dictator’s commands through the radio, the jazzy bombasts of the elite’s decadent galas – and the loneliness of it all. There is no overselling just how noisy and jarring this act’s sound is on the ears, but lone mastermind JK has concocted a trademark stew that makes it stand out in nearly every way. Episode VII arrives a mere five months after its predecessor, expressing a fusion of its aesthetics.
Episode VII – Revenge of Unfailing Valor deals in a sound that retains La Torture des Ténèbres’ signature style, the vicious rawness and lonely melodic tremolo leads while fusing its two aesthetic influences. 2016 began with the formidably raw and ambient spacefaring canon of Choirs of Emptiness and Acadian Nights,1 but was reinterpreted by the more dystopian Civilization is the Tomb of Our Noble Gods, which set the tone for the following releases up to last year’s V and The Lost Colony of Altar Vista. In this way, Episode VII – Revenge of Unfailing Valor blends these two themes, dystopian civilizations set amongst the stars, its vast colonies and glorious cities plagued by inequality, sexism, and the hive mind’s whims.
La Torture des Ténèbres lives up to Revenge of Unfailing Valor’s description (“VOLITIONAL EXPLOITATION // SMOULDERING HIVES”) by channeling its trademark melodic template and ambient sensibilities into a fuller sound that amps violence while hinting at a tragic heart beneath machinelike mania. Its trademark is intact: the rawness and utter saturation of rawness is ubiquitous, as even its more placid moments of lonely melodies are scathing. However, one distinction is melodic motifs that tie the album into one cohesive whole: an ascending jazzy synth run (“Vast Black Claws Drag Her Back to Space,” “Metropolitan Warfare,” “Out of All the Years We’ve Come…”) and sanguine synth melodies (“The Second Piscean Abyss,” “Angels”). As always, this is communicated through the ebb and flow of three prongs of scathing second-wave blasting/tremolo/shrieking, lonely tremolo, and distorted vintage samples. This arsenal and dynamic are as intriguing as they are jarring, samples and melodies inviting comparisons to classic science fiction (“Vast Black Claws…,” “The Second Piscean Abyss”) and the roarin’ twenties worship of decopunk (“Breathe in the Fucking Sawdust and Die,” “Yes But Can a Camp Girl Do This”). The first act in particular utilizes a bombast of violent second-wave rawness in contrast with an over-the-top sample presence. A grandiosity pervades in a way that recalls predecessor V, but La Torture des Ténèbres‘ fuller sound adds to the assault – tinnitus is guaranteed.
The second half of Episode VII finds La Torture des Ténèbres taking risks – the samples are fewer, the melodies are far more tragic and empty, and there is rest to be found. The brutal mid-album climax in “The Second Piscean Abyss” allows for reinterpretation for “Metropolitan Warfare” and beyond, trademark and motifs carrying across in emptier and more tragic melodies and moments (i.e. the release of all sound but tinny tremolo and blastbeats in “Traditions” and total collapses into noise in “Out of All the Years…”). This reinforces the need for bulletproof songwriting rather than reliance on samples and jarring movements to do the heavy lifting, and JK is up to the task. “Angels” is placed perfectly, its minimalist, distorted, and aptly angelic sample providing rest for the weary ears – for the first time in La Torture des Ténèbres’ career.
La Torture des Ténèbres will not sway any naysayers of raw black or blackened noise. In fact, many will point to their ringing ears or pinched nerves2 and say “See??” after Episode VII concludes with the noise fadeout of “Out of All the Years…”. Those who are willing to endure will find treasures aplenty, an opus of hyper-atmospheric, excessively noisy, and endlessly tragic melodies and motifs. Episode VII – Revenge of Unfailing Valor sweeps you away to a universe yet to be explored; but even in the dead vacuum of space or within mankind’s hive-mind colonies, you can’t escape your humanity.
Rating: 4.0/5.0
DR: 4 | Format Reviewed: PCM
Label: Self-Released
Website: latorturedestenebres.bandcamp.com
Releases Worldwide: March 7th, 2025#2025 #40 #AmbientBlackMetal #AmbientNoise #AtmosphericBlackMetal #CanadianMetal #Chaosophia #EpisodeVIIRevengeOfUnfailingValor #LaTortureDesTénèbres #Mar25 #Noise #RawBlackMetal #Review #Reviews #SelfReleased
-
La Torture des Ténèbres – Episode VII – Revenge of Unfailing Valor Review
By Dear Hollow
La Torture des Ténèbres, in spite of the sadistic propensity for aural flaying, offers a unique voice in black metal. A one-woman show with an aesthetic evoking dystopian urban shimmer, decopunk, classic science fiction, and the space age, it conjures images of glittering mile-high cities built on the backs of the impoverished, brave women overcoming the adversity of the stars, the sneaking static cutting through a dictator’s commands through the radio, the jazzy bombasts of the elite’s decadent galas – and the loneliness of it all. There is no overselling just how noisy and jarring this act’s sound is on the ears, but lone mastermind JK has concocted a trademark stew that makes it stand out in nearly every way. Episode VII arrives a mere five months after its predecessor, expressing a fusion of its aesthetics.
Episode VII – Revenge of Unfailing Valor deals in a sound that retains La Torture des Ténèbres’ signature style, the vicious rawness and lonely melodic tremolo leads while fusing its two aesthetic influences. 2016 began with the formidably raw and ambient spacefaring canon of Choirs of Emptiness and Acadian Nights,1 but was reinterpreted by the more dystopian Civilization is the Tomb of Our Noble Gods, which set the tone for the following releases up to last year’s V and The Lost Colony of Altar Vista. In this way, Episode VII – Revenge of Unfailing Valor blends these two themes, dystopian civilizations set amongst the stars, its vast colonies and glorious cities plagued by inequality, sexism, and the hive mind’s whims.
La Torture des Ténèbres lives up to Revenge of Unfailing Valor’s description (“VOLITIONAL EXPLOITATION // SMOULDERING HIVES”) by channeling its trademark melodic template and ambient sensibilities into a fuller sound that amps violence while hinting at a tragic heart beneath machinelike mania. Its trademark is intact: the rawness and utter saturation of rawness is ubiquitous, as even its more placid moments of lonely melodies are scathing. However, one distinction is melodic motifs that tie the album into one cohesive whole: an ascending jazzy synth run (“Vast Black Claws Drag Her Back to Space,” “Metropolitan Warfare,” “Out of All the Years We’ve Come…”) and sanguine synth melodies (“The Second Piscean Abyss,” “Angels”). As always, this is communicated through the ebb and flow of three prongs of scathing second-wave blasting/tremolo/shrieking, lonely tremolo, and distorted vintage samples. This arsenal and dynamic are as intriguing as they are jarring, samples and melodies inviting comparisons to classic science fiction (“Vast Black Claws…,” “The Second Piscean Abyss”) and the roarin’ twenties worship of decopunk (“Breathe in the Fucking Sawdust and Die,” “Yes But Can a Camp Girl Do This”). The first act in particular utilizes a bombast of violent second-wave rawness in contrast with an over-the-top sample presence. A grandiosity pervades in a way that recalls predecessor V, but La Torture des Ténèbres‘ fuller sound adds to the assault – tinnitus is guaranteed.
The second half of Episode VII finds La Torture des Ténèbres taking risks – the samples are fewer, the melodies are far more tragic and empty, and there is rest to be found. The brutal mid-album climax in “The Second Piscean Abyss” allows for reinterpretation for “Metropolitan Warfare” and beyond, trademark and motifs carrying across in emptier and more tragic melodies and moments (i.e. the release of all sound but tinny tremolo and blastbeats in “Traditions” and total collapses into noise in “Out of All the Years…”). This reinforces the need for bulletproof songwriting rather than reliance on samples and jarring movements to do the heavy lifting, and JK is up to the task. “Angels” is placed perfectly, its minimalist, distorted, and aptly angelic sample providing rest for the weary ears – for the first time in La Torture des Ténèbres’ career.
La Torture des Ténèbres will not sway any naysayers of raw black or blackened noise. In fact, many will point to their ringing ears or pinched nerves2 and say “See??” after Episode VII concludes with the noise fadeout of “Out of All the Years…”. Those who are willing to endure will find treasures aplenty, an opus of hyper-atmospheric, excessively noisy, and endlessly tragic melodies and motifs. Episode VII – Revenge of Unfailing Valor sweeps you away to a universe yet to be explored; but even in the dead vacuum of space or within mankind’s hive-mind colonies, you can’t escape your humanity.
Rating: 4.0/5.0
DR: 4 | Format Reviewed: PCM
Label: Self-Released
Website: latorturedestenebres.bandcamp.com
Releases Worldwide: March 7th, 2025#2025 #40 #AmbientBlackMetal #AmbientNoise #AtmosphericBlackMetal #CanadianMetal #Chaosophia #EpisodeVIIRevengeOfUnfailingValor #LaTortureDesTénèbres #Mar25 #Noise #RawBlackMetal #Review #Reviews #SelfReleased
-
Dr. A.N. Grier’s Top Ten(ish) of 2024
By Dr. A.N. Grier
If I were to rate the year of our Lord 2024, I’d give it a solid 4.5/5.0. No, I joke. FUCK 2024. Good riddance, fuck off, goodfuckingbye. This year, the layoffs continued (even affected some of our writers here), the prices skyrocketed, the World Series was bullshit, and landfills across the States are twice their capacity thanks to useless election fliers. This year has resulted in practically zero time to work on AMG efforts, write reviews, or listen to music as I continue to try to keep my job. Yay. Cheers to you, 2024—you sack of horse shit. Let’s go, 2025, you sassy bitch who suggests great things to come but probably won’t deliver. If only you could promise me more time doing the things I love—listening to metal, writing about it, and pretending to edit the other writers’ reviews while completely hammered. If so, I’d kiss you as the ball drops, take you to the back alley during the after-party, and promise not to poison your coffee the next morning.
But we aren’t there yet. We are still stuck in the past, looking over a mediocre year of metal, regurgitating the same shit we already wrote for each album on our lists. That way, you all can praise, argue, and whine about each choice and its placement. Thankfully, my lists rarely overlap with anyone else’s and no one actually gives a fuck, so my sleep patterns remain the same. Having passed the ten-year mark at this amazing madland, my tastes remain the same, and no one will be surprised that most of the selections here are the items I alone reviewed. That changes occasionally but with no time to think about music this year, you’ll be treated to odd takes and albums that only scored a 3.0. Oh no!1
Thank you to the AMG staff for their lackluster productivity and overrating tendencies. To Dolph, Kenny, and Sharky for introducing new segments and keeping legacy ones alive. And to Cuervo and GardensTale for the additional year-end contributions they deliver. I also have to give a huge shoutout to the top bosses—AMG and Steel Daddy—for all they do2. I guess I should also thank all of you for your continued support. I guess. May this list find you well as we are thrust into 2025 and the potential nightmares that it’ll bring. Cheers.
#ish. I Am the Intimidator // I Am the Intimidator – What? You fucking knew this was coming. When Steel told me to review an album about NASCAR and Dale Earnhardt, I couldn’t not do it. I mean, this one-off, self-titled record from a one-off band was a perfect opportunity to unleash my rage. And then… wait, what the fuck? It’s actually kinda good? In a weird year where I reviewed two racing-related albums, I Am the Intimidator sports3 six wild tracks that combine Dio and Iron Maiden with Ministry. What the fuck? And, somehow, the lyrics would be fucking hilarious if they weren’t so passionate. OK, the lyrics of the surprisingly delicious and crushing “Gasoline” are fucking hilarious, and a regular, all-caps attack in the AMG channels. After all the chaos and wild influences that make up this tight, six-track album, the passion for “The Intimidator” is true, even if it’s weird. But, I can’t stop listening to this album any more than I can stop drinking beer.
#10. Dust Bolt // Sound & Fury – Like so many other Grier lists, there’s always an album that becomes the most frequented in my shit-filled ears. Yup, I know, you all fucking hate it, and I couldn’t care less. For the band (and style), Sound & Fury is a brave effort that I find addictive, fun, and hilarious trolling material when Steel talks shit. Is it thrash? No, but that didn’t stop me from proclaiming Load as Metallica’s best album. Shifting away from the overused thrash concept and mediocre record releases, Dust Bolt chose the unconventional route of cleaner vocals, smoother production, and catchier choruses to remove themselves from their past outings (and, some would argue, from thrash and metal in general). For you naysayers, there are plenty of headbangable moments on Sound & Fury, so you don’t have to feel like a poser singing these new songs in your mom’s shower.
#9. Midnight // Hellish Expectations – Perhaps one of the most prolific metal bands out there, what can I say about Midnight that I haven’t said already? Oh yeah, they’re badass and if you don’t like them, you’re shit. Also, fuck you. Like previous releases, Midnight continues to speed through riffs that bring to mind classic outfits like Darkthrone, Motörhead, Venom, and Celtic Frost at a relentless speed. While other Midnight records are better, Hellish Expectations joins its compatriots in a discog that can do no wrong. Unless, of course, you don’t like this band’s style. In that case, read above regarding that “fuck you” thing. What makes Hellish Expectations great in this frustrating year is that it caps at twenty-five wonderful minutes—which is the same amount of time it takes to shit out your morning coffee. So, this is a chance to correct your poserness. If you like this band, you already know Hellish Expectations is a fun ride that’ll keep your spikes sharp and your leather pants shit free.
#8. Bombus // Your Blood – Like another band on my list, this Swedish heavy metal, hard rock band has seen a lot of ups and downs in their career. And, for some reason, their co-founding vocalist and guitarist walked. But that didn’t stop Bombus. Not only did they find someone to fill those two slots, but they also added another guitarist to round it out to three. With these new additions, the skill displayed on Your Blood is superior to anything the band has ever done. There’re solos, harmonizing leads, and riffs up the fucking wazoo. I’m uncertain if it’s due to this new skillset or an increase in motivation with five years between albums, but Bombus held nothing back for Your Blood. While there are plenty of the bangers you would expect from a band of this caliber, like the addictive “Take You Down,” there are also other interesting inclusions that I should hate, yet love. For example, the weird, Spaghetti Western qualities of “Your Blood,” the Nick Cave-meets-The White Stripes musings of “The One,” and the bizarreness that is “Carmina.” With Your Blood, the band has found their groove and passion again, delivering their best album yet.
#7. Vanessa Funke // Void – This year brought a surprising new addition to my favorite bands of all time. In this case, it was the newest release from the multi-instrumentalist, Vanessa Funke. With a small but stellar catalog, Ms. Funke continuously dabbles in new influences and song approaches with each album and Void is no different. Coming off last year’s acoustic masterpiece Vanessa Funke rewinds to her debut record, Solitude, alternating between rasps and cleans, acoustic and distorted guitars, and her perfectly molded combination of folk, melodeath, and atmospheric black metal. The textures created by the vocals, guitars, keys, and piano take Void down into some incredible depths, engulfing its listeners in blankets that can be both soft and stabby. Albums like this are rare for me these days, so when they do completely submerse me to the point that I can’t think of anything else, there’s no doubt it’ll make it on my year-end list.
#6. Crystal Viper // The Silver Key – Maybe not everyone’s favorite Polish act,4 Crystal Viper’s founding vocalist and guitarist, Marta Gabriel, has been knocking around her blend of heavy and power metal for nearly two decades. But, it’s been a rocky road of great, mediocre, and rage-inducing records. Where Crimen Expecta shines like a bright star in the sky, Tales of Fire and Ice is a dumpster fire that topped my most disappointing album of 2019. When I approached this year’s The Silver Key, I was expecting another mid album (or worse) but was immediately engrossed—maybe even more than Crimen Expecta. Though many of you dislike the vocals, Gabriel is in top form. But, her vocal performance is only one aspect of the Crystal Viper sound. Her guitar work is some of the best of her career, lending new ideas to the song structures and album flow. While plenty of bands are—and are not better—than Crystal Viper, The Silver Key is undeniably one of the best albums of their career.
#5. Sidewinder // Talons – Most likely one of the only overlaps I’ll have with the cunts that work here,5 Sidewinder’s newest release, Talons, threw me for a loop. Not expecting anything from a band I’ve never heard about, Talons immediately got my noggin’ bobbin’ in the most pleasing way. I can’t pinpoint exactly why I like this style of heavy, bounding stoner metal, but every time I hear it, it clicks. And nothing is better than diving right into a record where one of the band’s best pieces is the opener. “Guardians” is a quintessential Sidewinder piece that personifies the band and everything they stand for. But that’s only the beginning, as the guitars cruise down the road and the bass rumbles through the gravel. Clocking in at a mere thirty-four minutes, this eight-track beauty never reaches beyond its means, ensuring the songs are straight and tight, allowing Jem’s powerful vocals to direct the varying moods. While the band resides in the lush and beautiful landscapes of New Zealand,6 if a sound could represent the harsh desert lands of my home, this would be it.
#4. Aborted // Vault of Horrors – As many know, death metal is not my cup o’ tea. Once upon a time, death metal was my life, but that ship sailed when my favorites grew old and repetitive, and what you all call death metal these days bores me to tears. But the one band that continues to make me salivate is Aborted.7 And, boy, did this year’s Vault of Horrors deliver. With tracks like “Dreadbringer,” “The Golgothan,” and “Malevolent Haze,” this new release offers some incredible depth and relentless brutality. Aborted has always delivered good-to-great albums but after nearly thirty years, how can these lads continue to improve and produce such quality releases? Vault of Horrors is a great record and arguably one of the band’s best. It’s been several months since this beauty was released, so if it passed by you, rectify your posersivity.
#3. The Vision Bleak // Weird Tales – I don’t know what it is about The Vision Bleak but they fucking hit me and hit me hard. On the surface, their style is quite simple, but it’s the layers, stories, mood, and damning vocal performances that draw me in like I’m viewing a Vincent Price horror marathon. Combining their Type O Negative vocal characteristics with atmospheric moods that can be depressive at one point and ethereal at another, The Vision Bleak took a massive leap by releasing Weird Tales as (technically) a one-song album. Eight years since their incredible The Unknown, Weird Tales doesn’t skip a beat, maintaining the duo’s title as one of the greatest bands in gothic metal. With magnificent builds, eerie transitions, mind-bending fluidity, and heart-wrenching passages, the haunting nature of Weird Tales leaves you contemplating your existence in a world controlled by the fate instilled in it by the late, great H.P. Lovecraft.
#2. Kingcrow // Hopium – For fucking months, our progressive cunt, Dolphin Whisper, tried desperately to steal Kingcrow’s Hopium from me—somehow thinking he’s better than me when it comes to describing the lushness of Kingcrow. The fuck. Even though Kingcrow hasn’t released an album in six years, there’s no way some flipper fucker would take this from me. Sure, I’m not a huge fan of progressive metal, but at least I know what’s good progressive metal instead of lazily making love to everything with the tag of “prog.” Anyway, Hopium continues to deliver gorgeous tapestries painted with soothing vocals, synthy atmospheres, and impressive performances for all involved. Though I consider Eidos their best, Hopium is not far behind. While tapping into common influences like Dream Theater and Spock’s Beard, this Italian outfit is very much on a level all its own. If you like prog, you’ll find Hopium—with such wildly varying tracks like “Vicous Circle,” “Parallel Lines,” and “White Rabit’s Hole”—to be the most diverse prog record of the year.
#1. Borknagar // Fall – Goddammit, I love Borknagar. Few bands have such high album scores for a career that spans thirty years and a dozen albums—especially with a constant rotation of players and vocalists. Though, how can you be pissed off about having any of the great vocalists Borknagar has employed throughout the years? Since the beginning, the band has continuously introduced more melody and keys in their music, but Fall is special compared to the output in the last twenty years. Though this new album hasn’t hung up that hat by any means, Øystein G. Brun, Lars A. Nedland, and crew dug through the ashes of the past to bring some of those old-school black metal moments back into the mix. From the blackened assault of “Summits” and the Dimmu Borgir-esque vibes of “Northward,” the band continues to shock and surprise, avoiding a repetition from a previous album. So, dive into the best album o’ the year in all its glory.8
Honorable Mentions
- Portrait // The Host – While I didn’t like the production of Portrait’s The Host, I’m still a slut for King Diamond and Meryful Fate-adjacent metal. Especially when it comes to Portrait, who continues to be less like a copycat and more like a pioneer of the style.
- Attic // Return of the Witchfinder – More King Diamond-core! Easily one of the best examples of the sound, Attic continues to keep me coming back with each release. As their predecessor, Return of the Witchfinder brings a new story, more twists, and those pleasing falsettos that trigger my “O” face.
- Sarke // Endo Feight – Sarke (the artist) and crew have had one hell of a busy couple of years. This year, in particular, sees not only a new Sarke release but also a new Khold record (see below). Endo Feight is a wonderful addition to the band’s catalog and, by god, it’s wonderful to see the man himself back behind the kit.
- Khold // Du dømmes til død – See? I told you it would be here. While 2022’s Svartsyn was better record than Du dømmes til død (and a fantastic comeback), Du dømmes til død still has those elements that make the band so unique and fun to listen to.
- Blood Red Throne // Nonagon – Three years ago, Blood Red Throne released not only one of their best albums but 2021’s best death metal record. Unsurprisingly, it’s difficult to follow something like Imperial Congregation without some hiccups. That said, Nonagon is still a brutal piece of work worthy of mentioning.
Disappointments o’ the Year
- Darkthrone // It Beckons Us All……. – Like Sarke, Nocturno Culto has also been busy this year. If that’s part of the reason for the utter bore that’s It Beckons Us All……., I don’t know. But, this new record feels like Darkthrone is going through the motions. While I respect that they don’t care what the fuck any of us think, this is one of their worst albums.
- Exhorder // Defectum Omnium – After Exhorder’s incredible comeback album, Mourn the Southern Skies, I was more than a little excited for this new one. Unfortunately, like Darkthrone’s newest, Defectum Omnium is a dreadfully boring record that lacks all the passion of Exhorder’s comeback, leaving me confused and pissed the fuck off.
Songs o’ the Year
- Kingcrow – “White Rabbit’s Hole” – With an album full of great songs, there’s just something about the energy of this track that makes me so happy.
- Sidewinder – “Guardians” – This song represents some of the best stoner metal of 2024, and I can’t stop listening to it.
- Bombus – “Take You Down” – This song is just badass. I couldn’t care less what you think. Die.
Show 8 footnotes
- Fuck off, this happens every year. ↩
- Don’t call me Steel Daddy ever again! – Steel Daddy ↩
- See what I did there? ↩
- They can’t all be Vaders, ya fucks! ↩
- Love you, GardensTale. ↩
- Well, that’s what the Lord of the Rings movies tell me. ↩
- Yeah, yeah, bitch all you want about including this band into my collective bubble of “death metal.” ↩
- Also, stop listening to “Nordic Anthem” by itself. Fucking idiots. ↩
#2024 #Aborted #Attic #BlogPosts #BloodRedThrone #Bombus #Borknagar #CelticFrost #CrystalViper #Darkthrone #DimmuBorgir #Dio #DrANGrierSTopTenIshOf2024 #DreamTheater #DustBolt #Exhorder #IAmTheIntimidator #IronMaiden #Khold #KingDiamond #Kingcrow #Lists #MercyfulFate #Metallica #Midnight #Ministry #Motörhead #NickCave #Portrait #Sarke #Sidewinder #SpockSBeard #TheVisionBleak #TheWhiteStripes #TypeONegative #Vader #VanessaFunke #Venom
-
Dr. A.N. Grier’s Top Ten(ish) of 2024
By Dr. A.N. Grier
If I were to rate the year of our Lord 2024, I’d give it a solid 4.5/5.0. No, I joke. FUCK 2024. Good riddance, fuck off, goodfuckingbye. This year, the layoffs continued (even affected some of our writers here), the prices skyrocketed, the World Series was bullshit, and landfills across the States are twice their capacity thanks to useless election fliers. This year has resulted in practically zero time to work on AMG efforts, write reviews, or listen to music as I continue to try to keep my job. Yay. Cheers to you, 2024—you sack of horse shit. Let’s go, 2025, you sassy bitch who suggests great things to come but probably won’t deliver. If only you could promise me more time doing the things I love—listening to metal, writing about it, and pretending to edit the other writers’ reviews while completely hammered. If so, I’d kiss you as the ball drops, take you to the back alley during the after-party, and promise not to poison your coffee the next morning.
But we aren’t there yet. We are still stuck in the past, looking over a mediocre year of metal, regurgitating the same shit we already wrote for each album on our lists. That way, you all can praise, argue, and whine about each choice and its placement. Thankfully, my lists rarely overlap with anyone else’s and no one actually gives a fuck, so my sleep patterns remain the same. Having passed the ten-year mark at this amazing madland, my tastes remain the same, and no one will be surprised that most of the selections here are the items I alone reviewed. That changes occasionally but with no time to think about music this year, you’ll be treated to odd takes and albums that only scored a 3.0. Oh no!1
Thank you to the AMG staff for their lackluster productivity and overrating tendencies. To Dolph, Kenny, and Sharky for introducing new segments and keeping legacy ones alive. And to Cuervo and GardensTale for the additional year-end contributions they deliver. I also have to give a huge shoutout to the top bosses—AMG and Steel Daddy—for all they do2. I guess I should also thank all of you for your continued support. I guess. May this list find you well as we are thrust into 2025 and the potential nightmares that it’ll bring. Cheers.
#ish. I Am the Intimidator // I Am the Intimidator – What? You fucking knew this was coming. When Steel told me to review an album about NASCAR and Dale Earnhardt, I couldn’t not do it. I mean, this one-off, self-titled record from a one-off band was a perfect opportunity to unleash my rage. And then… wait, what the fuck? It’s actually kinda good? In a weird year where I reviewed two racing-related albums, I Am the Intimidator sports3 six wild tracks that combine Dio and Iron Maiden with Ministry. What the fuck? And, somehow, the lyrics would be fucking hilarious if they weren’t so passionate. OK, the lyrics of the surprisingly delicious and crushing “Gasoline” are fucking hilarious, and a regular, all-caps attack in the AMG channels. After all the chaos and wild influences that make up this tight, six-track album, the passion for “The Intimidator” is true, even if it’s weird. But, I can’t stop listening to this album any more than I can stop drinking beer.
#10. Dust Bolt // Sound & Fury – Like so many other Grier lists, there’s always an album that becomes the most frequented in my shit-filled ears. Yup, I know, you all fucking hate it, and I couldn’t care less. For the band (and style), Sound & Fury is a brave effort that I find addictive, fun, and hilarious trolling material when Steel talks shit. Is it thrash? No, but that didn’t stop me from proclaiming Load as Metallica’s best album. Shifting away from the overused thrash concept and mediocre record releases, Dust Bolt chose the unconventional route of cleaner vocals, smoother production, and catchier choruses to remove themselves from their past outings (and, some would argue, from thrash and metal in general). For you naysayers, there are plenty of headbangable moments on Sound & Fury, so you don’t have to feel like a poser singing these new songs in your mom’s shower.
#9. Midnight // Hellish Expectations – Perhaps one of the most prolific metal bands out there, what can I say about Midnight that I haven’t said already? Oh yeah, they’re badass and if you don’t like them, you’re shit. Also, fuck you. Like previous releases, Midnight continues to speed through riffs that bring to mind classic outfits like Darkthrone, Motörhead, Venom, and Celtic Frost at a relentless speed. While other Midnight records are better, Hellish Expectations joins its compatriots in a discog that can do no wrong. Unless, of course, you don’t like this band’s style. In that case, read above regarding that “fuck you” thing. What makes Hellish Expectations great in this frustrating year is that it caps at twenty-five wonderful minutes—which is the same amount of time it takes to shit out your morning coffee. So, this is a chance to correct your poserness. If you like this band, you already know Hellish Expectations is a fun ride that’ll keep your spikes sharp and your leather pants shit free.
#8. Bombus // Your Blood – Like another band on my list, this Swedish heavy metal, hard rock band has seen a lot of ups and downs in their career. And, for some reason, their co-founding vocalist and guitarist walked. But that didn’t stop Bombus. Not only did they find someone to fill those two slots, but they also added another guitarist to round it out to three. With these new additions, the skill displayed on Your Blood is superior to anything the band has ever done. There’re solos, harmonizing leads, and riffs up the fucking wazoo. I’m uncertain if it’s due to this new skillset or an increase in motivation with five years between albums, but Bombus held nothing back for Your Blood. While there are plenty of the bangers you would expect from a band of this caliber, like the addictive “Take You Down,” there are also other interesting inclusions that I should hate, yet love. For example, the weird, Spaghetti Western qualities of “Your Blood,” the Nick Cave-meets-The White Stripes musings of “The One,” and the bizarreness that is “Carmina.” With Your Blood, the band has found their groove and passion again, delivering their best album yet.
#7. Vanessa Funke // Void – This year brought a surprising new addition to my favorite bands of all time. In this case, it was the newest release from the multi-instrumentalist, Vanessa Funke. With a small but stellar catalog, Ms. Funke continuously dabbles in new influences and song approaches with each album and Void is no different. Coming off last year’s acoustic masterpiece Vanessa Funke rewinds to her debut record, Solitude, alternating between rasps and cleans, acoustic and distorted guitars, and her perfectly molded combination of folk, melodeath, and atmospheric black metal. The textures created by the vocals, guitars, keys, and piano take Void down into some incredible depths, engulfing its listeners in blankets that can be both soft and stabby. Albums like this are rare for me these days, so when they do completely submerse me to the point that I can’t think of anything else, there’s no doubt it’ll make it on my year-end list.
#6. Crystal Viper // The Silver Key – Maybe not everyone’s favorite Polish act,4 Crystal Viper’s founding vocalist and guitarist, Marta Gabriel, has been knocking around her blend of heavy and power metal for nearly two decades. But, it’s been a rocky road of great, mediocre, and rage-inducing records. Where Crimen Expecta shines like a bright star in the sky, Tales of Fire and Ice is a dumpster fire that topped my most disappointing album of 2019. When I approached this year’s The Silver Key, I was expecting another mid album (or worse) but was immediately engrossed—maybe even more than Crimen Expecta. Though many of you dislike the vocals, Gabriel is in top form. But, her vocal performance is only one aspect of the Crystal Viper sound. Her guitar work is some of the best of her career, lending new ideas to the song structures and album flow. While plenty of bands are—and are not better—than Crystal Viper, The Silver Key is undeniably one of the best albums of their career.
#5. Sidewinder // Talons – Most likely one of the only overlaps I’ll have with the cunts that work here,5 Sidewinder’s newest release, Talons, threw me for a loop. Not expecting anything from a band I’ve never heard about, Talons immediately got my noggin’ bobbin’ in the most pleasing way. I can’t pinpoint exactly why I like this style of heavy, bounding stoner metal, but every time I hear it, it clicks. And nothing is better than diving right into a record where one of the band’s best pieces is the opener. “Guardians” is a quintessential Sidewinder piece that personifies the band and everything they stand for. But that’s only the beginning, as the guitars cruise down the road and the bass rumbles through the gravel. Clocking in at a mere thirty-four minutes, this eight-track beauty never reaches beyond its means, ensuring the songs are straight and tight, allowing Jem’s powerful vocals to direct the varying moods. While the band resides in the lush and beautiful landscapes of New Zealand,6 if a sound could represent the harsh desert lands of my home, this would be it.
#4. Aborted // Vault of Horrors – As many know, death metal is not my cup o’ tea. Once upon a time, death metal was my life, but that ship sailed when my favorites grew old and repetitive, and what you all call death metal these days bores me to tears. But the one band that continues to make me salivate is Aborted.7 And, boy, did this year’s Vault of Horrors deliver. With tracks like “Dreadbringer,” “The Golgothan,” and “Malevolent Haze,” this new release offers some incredible depth and relentless brutality. Aborted has always delivered good-to-great albums but after nearly thirty years, how can these lads continue to improve and produce such quality releases? Vault of Horrors is a great record and arguably one of the band’s best. It’s been several months since this beauty was released, so if it passed by you, rectify your posersivity.
#3. The Vision Bleak // Weird Tales – I don’t know what it is about The Vision Bleak but they fucking hit me and hit me hard. On the surface, their style is quite simple, but it’s the layers, stories, mood, and damning vocal performances that draw me in like I’m viewing a Vincent Price horror marathon. Combining their Type O Negative vocal characteristics with atmospheric moods that can be depressive at one point and ethereal at another, The Vision Bleak took a massive leap by releasing Weird Tales as (technically) a one-song album. Eight years since their incredible The Unknown, Weird Tales doesn’t skip a beat, maintaining the duo’s title as one of the greatest bands in gothic metal. With magnificent builds, eerie transitions, mind-bending fluidity, and heart-wrenching passages, the haunting nature of Weird Tales leaves you contemplating your existence in a world controlled by the fate instilled in it by the late, great H.P. Lovecraft.
#2. Kingcrow // Hopium – For fucking months, our progressive cunt, Dolphin Whisper, tried desperately to steal Kingcrow’s Hopium from me—somehow thinking he’s better than me when it comes to describing the lushness of Kingcrow. The fuck. Even though Kingcrow hasn’t released an album in six years, there’s no way some flipper fucker would take this from me. Sure, I’m not a huge fan of progressive metal, but at least I know what’s good progressive metal instead of lazily making love to everything with the tag of “prog.” Anyway, Hopium continues to deliver gorgeous tapestries painted with soothing vocals, synthy atmospheres, and impressive performances for all involved. Though I consider Eidos their best, Hopium is not far behind. While tapping into common influences like Dream Theater and Spock’s Beard, this Italian outfit is very much on a level all its own. If you like prog, you’ll find Hopium—with such wildly varying tracks like “Vicous Circle,” “Parallel Lines,” and “White Rabit’s Hole”—to be the most diverse prog record of the year.
#1. Borknagar // Fall – Goddammit, I love Borknagar. Few bands have such high album scores for a career that spans thirty years and a dozen albums—especially with a constant rotation of players and vocalists. Though, how can you be pissed off about having any of the great vocalists Borknagar has employed throughout the years? Since the beginning, the band has continuously introduced more melody and keys in their music, but Fall is special compared to the output in the last twenty years. Though this new album hasn’t hung up that hat by any means, Øystein G. Brun, Lars A. Nedland, and crew dug through the ashes of the past to bring some of those old-school black metal moments back into the mix. From the blackened assault of “Summits” and the Dimmu Borgir-esque vibes of “Northward,” the band continues to shock and surprise, avoiding a repetition from a previous album. So, dive into the best album o’ the year in all its glory.8
Honorable Mentions
- Portrait // The Host – While I didn’t like the production of Portrait’s The Host, I’m still a slut for King Diamond and Meryful Fate-adjacent metal. Especially when it comes to Portrait, who continues to be less like a copycat and more like a pioneer of the style.
- Attic // Return of the Witchfinder – More King Diamond-core! Easily one of the best examples of the sound, Attic continues to keep me coming back with each release. As their predecessor, Return of the Witchfinder brings a new story, more twists, and those pleasing falsettos that trigger my “O” face.
- Sarke // Endo Feight – Sarke (the artist) and crew have had one hell of a busy couple of years. This year, in particular, sees not only a new Sarke release but also a new Khold record (see below). Endo Feight is a wonderful addition to the band’s catalog and, by god, it’s wonderful to see the man himself back behind the kit.
- Khold // Du dømmes til død – See? I told you it would be here. While 2022’s Svartsyn was better record than Du dømmes til død (and a fantastic comeback), Du dømmes til død still has those elements that make the band so unique and fun to listen to.
- Blood Red Throne // Nonagon – Three years ago, Blood Red Throne released not only one of their best albums but 2021’s best death metal record. Unsurprisingly, it’s difficult to follow something like Imperial Congregation without some hiccups. That said, Nonagon is still a brutal piece of work worthy of mentioning.
Disappointments o’ the Year
- Darkthrone // It Beckons Us All……. – Like Sarke, Nocturno Culto has also been busy this year. If that’s part of the reason for the utter bore that’s It Beckons Us All……., I don’t know. But, this new record feels like Darkthrone is going through the motions. While I respect that they don’t care what the fuck any of us think, this is one of their worst albums.
- Exhorder // Defectum Omnium – After Exhorder’s incredible comeback album, Mourn the Southern Skies, I was more than a little excited for this new one. Unfortunately, like Darkthrone’s newest, Defectum Omnium is a dreadfully boring record that lacks all the passion of Exhorder’s comeback, leaving me confused and pissed the fuck off.
Songs o’ the Year
- Kingcrow – “White Rabbit’s Hole” – With an album full of great songs, there’s just something about the energy of this track that makes me so happy.
- Sidewinder – “Guardians” – This song represents some of the best stoner metal of 2024, and I can’t stop listening to it.
- Bombus – “Take You Down” – This song is just badass. I couldn’t care less what you think. Die.
#2024 #Aborted #Attic #BlogPosts #BloodRedThrone #Bombus #Borknagar #CelticFrost #CrystalViper #Darkthrone #DimmuBorgir #Dio #DrANGrierSTopTenIshOf2024 #DreamTheater #DustBolt #Exhorder #IAmTheIntimidator #IronMaiden #Khold #KingDiamond #Kingcrow #Lists #MercyfulFate #Metallica #Midnight #Ministry #Motörhead #NickCave #Portrait #Sarke #Sidewinder #SpockSBeard #TheVisionBleak #TheWhiteStripes #TypeONegative #Vader #VanessaFunke #Venom
-
Dr. A.N. Grier’s Top Ten(ish) of 2024
By Dr. A.N. Grier
If I were to rate the year of our Lord 2024, I’d give it a solid 4.5/5.0. No, I joke. FUCK 2024. Good riddance, fuck off, goodfuckingbye. This year, the layoffs continued (even affected some of our writers here), the prices skyrocketed, the World Series was bullshit, and landfills across the States are twice their capacity thanks to useless election fliers. This year has resulted in practically zero time to work on AMG efforts, write reviews, or listen to music as I continue to try to keep my job. Yay. Cheers to you, 2024—you sack of horse shit. Let’s go, 2025, you sassy bitch who suggests great things to come but probably won’t deliver. If only you could promise me more time doing the things I love—listening to metal, writing about it, and pretending to edit the other writers’ reviews while completely hammered. If so, I’d kiss you as the ball drops, take you to the back alley during the after-party, and promise not to poison your coffee the next morning.
But we aren’t there yet. We are still stuck in the past, looking over a mediocre year of metal, regurgitating the same shit we already wrote for each album on our lists. That way, you all can praise, argue, and whine about each choice and its placement. Thankfully, my lists rarely overlap with anyone else’s and no one actually gives a fuck, so my sleep patterns remain the same. Having passed the ten-year mark at this amazing madland, my tastes remain the same, and no one will be surprised that most of the selections here are the items I alone reviewed. That changes occasionally but with no time to think about music this year, you’ll be treated to odd takes and albums that only scored a 3.0. Oh no!1
Thank you to the AMG staff for their lackluster productivity and overrating tendencies. To Dolph, Kenny, and Sharky for introducing new segments and keeping legacy ones alive. And to Cuervo and GardensTale for the additional year-end contributions they deliver. I also have to give a huge shoutout to the top bosses—AMG and Steel Daddy—for all they do2. I guess I should also thank all of you for your continued support. I guess. May this list find you well as we are thrust into 2025 and the potential nightmares that it’ll bring. Cheers.
#ish. I Am the Intimidator // I Am the Intimidator – What? You fucking knew this was coming. When Steel told me to review an album about NASCAR and Dale Earnhardt, I couldn’t not do it. I mean, this one-off, self-titled record from a one-off band was a perfect opportunity to unleash my rage. And then… wait, what the fuck? It’s actually kinda good? In a weird year where I reviewed two racing-related albums, I Am the Intimidator sports3 six wild tracks that combine Dio and Iron Maiden with Ministry. What the fuck? And, somehow, the lyrics would be fucking hilarious if they weren’t so passionate. OK, the lyrics of the surprisingly delicious and crushing “Gasoline” are fucking hilarious, and a regular, all-caps attack in the AMG channels. After all the chaos and wild influences that make up this tight, six-track album, the passion for “The Intimidator” is true, even if it’s weird. But, I can’t stop listening to this album any more than I can stop drinking beer.
#10. Dust Bolt // Sound & Fury – Like so many other Grier lists, there’s always an album that becomes the most frequented in my shit-filled ears. Yup, I know, you all fucking hate it, and I couldn’t care less. For the band (and style), Sound & Fury is a brave effort that I find addictive, fun, and hilarious trolling material when Steel talks shit. Is it thrash? No, but that didn’t stop me from proclaiming Load as Metallica’s best album. Shifting away from the overused thrash concept and mediocre record releases, Dust Bolt chose the unconventional route of cleaner vocals, smoother production, and catchier choruses to remove themselves from their past outings (and, some would argue, from thrash and metal in general). For you naysayers, there are plenty of headbangable moments on Sound & Fury, so you don’t have to feel like a poser singing these new songs in your mom’s shower.
#9. Midnight // Hellish Expectations – Perhaps one of the most prolific metal bands out there, what can I say about Midnight that I haven’t said already? Oh yeah, they’re badass and if you don’t like them, you’re shit. Also, fuck you. Like previous releases, Midnight continues to speed through riffs that bring to mind classic outfits like Darkthrone, Motörhead, Venom, and Celtic Frost at a relentless speed. While other Midnight records are better, Hellish Expectations joins its compatriots in a discog that can do no wrong. Unless, of course, you don’t like this band’s style. In that case, read above regarding that “fuck you” thing. What makes Hellish Expectations great in this frustrating year is that it caps at twenty-five wonderful minutes—which is the same amount of time it takes to shit out your morning coffee. So, this is a chance to correct your poserness. If you like this band, you already know Hellish Expectations is a fun ride that’ll keep your spikes sharp and your leather pants shit free.
#8. Bombus // Your Blood – Like another band on my list, this Swedish heavy metal, hard rock band has seen a lot of ups and downs in their career. And, for some reason, their co-founding vocalist and guitarist walked. But that didn’t stop Bombus. Not only did they find someone to fill those two slots, but they also added another guitarist to round it out to three. With these new additions, the skill displayed on Your Blood is superior to anything the band has ever done. There’re solos, harmonizing leads, and riffs up the fucking wazoo. I’m uncertain if it’s due to this new skillset or an increase in motivation with five years between albums, but Bombus held nothing back for Your Blood. While there are plenty of the bangers you would expect from a band of this caliber, like the addictive “Take You Down,” there are also other interesting inclusions that I should hate, yet love. For example, the weird, Spaghetti Western qualities of “Your Blood,” the Nick Cave-meets-The White Stripes musings of “The One,” and the bizarreness that is “Carmina.” With Your Blood, the band has found their groove and passion again, delivering their best album yet.
#7. Vanessa Funke // Void – This year brought a surprising new addition to my favorite bands of all time. In this case, it was the newest release from the multi-instrumentalist, Vanessa Funke. With a small but stellar catalog, Ms. Funke continuously dabbles in new influences and song approaches with each album and Void is no different. Coming off last year’s acoustic masterpiece Vanessa Funke rewinds to her debut record, Solitude, alternating between rasps and cleans, acoustic and distorted guitars, and her perfectly molded combination of folk, melodeath, and atmospheric black metal. The textures created by the vocals, guitars, keys, and piano take Void down into some incredible depths, engulfing its listeners in blankets that can be both soft and stabby. Albums like this are rare for me these days, so when they do completely submerse me to the point that I can’t think of anything else, there’s no doubt it’ll make it on my year-end list.
#6. Crystal Viper // The Silver Key – Maybe not everyone’s favorite Polish act,4 Crystal Viper’s founding vocalist and guitarist, Marta Gabriel, has been knocking around her blend of heavy and power metal for nearly two decades. But, it’s been a rocky road of great, mediocre, and rage-inducing records. Where Crimen Expecta shines like a bright star in the sky, Tales of Fire and Ice is a dumpster fire that topped my most disappointing album of 2019. When I approached this year’s The Silver Key, I was expecting another mid album (or worse) but was immediately engrossed—maybe even more than Crimen Expecta. Though many of you dislike the vocals, Gabriel is in top form. But, her vocal performance is only one aspect of the Crystal Viper sound. Her guitar work is some of the best of her career, lending new ideas to the song structures and album flow. While plenty of bands are—and are not better—than Crystal Viper, The Silver Key is undeniably one of the best albums of their career.
#5. Sidewinder // Talons – Most likely one of the only overlaps I’ll have with the cunts that work here,5 Sidewinder’s newest release, Talons, threw me for a loop. Not expecting anything from a band I’ve never heard about, Talons immediately got my noggin’ bobbin’ in the most pleasing way. I can’t pinpoint exactly why I like this style of heavy, bounding stoner metal, but every time I hear it, it clicks. And nothing is better than diving right into a record where one of the band’s best pieces is the opener. “Guardians” is a quintessential Sidewinder piece that personifies the band and everything they stand for. But that’s only the beginning, as the guitars cruise down the road and the bass rumbles through the gravel. Clocking in at a mere thirty-four minutes, this eight-track beauty never reaches beyond its means, ensuring the songs are straight and tight, allowing Jem’s powerful vocals to direct the varying moods. While the band resides in the lush and beautiful landscapes of New Zealand,6 if a sound could represent the harsh desert lands of my home, this would be it.
#4. Aborted // Vault of Horrors – As many know, death metal is not my cup o’ tea. Once upon a time, death metal was my life, but that ship sailed when my favorites grew old and repetitive, and what you all call death metal these days bores me to tears. But the one band that continues to make me salivate is Aborted.7 And, boy, did this year’s Vault of Horrors deliver. With tracks like “Dreadbringer,” “The Golgothan,” and “Malevolent Haze,” this new release offers some incredible depth and relentless brutality. Aborted has always delivered good-to-great albums but after nearly thirty years, how can these lads continue to improve and produce such quality releases? Vault of Horrors is a great record and arguably one of the band’s best. It’s been several months since this beauty was released, so if it passed by you, rectify your posersivity.
#3. The Vision Bleak // Weird Tales – I don’t know what it is about The Vision Bleak but they fucking hit me and hit me hard. On the surface, their style is quite simple, but it’s the layers, stories, mood, and damning vocal performances that draw me in like I’m viewing a Vincent Price horror marathon. Combining their Type O Negative vocal characteristics with atmospheric moods that can be depressive at one point and ethereal at another, The Vision Bleak took a massive leap by releasing Weird Tales as (technically) a one-song album. Eight years since their incredible The Unknown, Weird Tales doesn’t skip a beat, maintaining the duo’s title as one of the greatest bands in gothic metal. With magnificent builds, eerie transitions, mind-bending fluidity, and heart-wrenching passages, the haunting nature of Weird Tales leaves you contemplating your existence in a world controlled by the fate instilled in it by the late, great H.P. Lovecraft.
#2. Kingcrow // Hopium – For fucking months, our progressive cunt, Dolphin Whisper, tried desperately to steal Kingcrow’s Hopium from me—somehow thinking he’s better than me when it comes to describing the lushness of Kingcrow. The fuck. Even though Kingcrow hasn’t released an album in six years, there’s no way some flipper fucker would take this from me. Sure, I’m not a huge fan of progressive metal, but at least I know what’s good progressive metal instead of lazily making love to everything with the tag of “prog.” Anyway, Hopium continues to deliver gorgeous tapestries painted with soothing vocals, synthy atmospheres, and impressive performances for all involved. Though I consider Eidos their best, Hopium is not far behind. While tapping into common influences like Dream Theater and Spock’s Beard, this Italian outfit is very much on a level all its own. If you like prog, you’ll find Hopium—with such wildly varying tracks like “Vicous Circle,” “Parallel Lines,” and “White Rabit’s Hole”—to be the most diverse prog record of the year.
#1. Borknagar // Fall – Goddammit, I love Borknagar. Few bands have such high album scores for a career that spans thirty years and a dozen albums—especially with a constant rotation of players and vocalists. Though, how can you be pissed off about having any of the great vocalists Borknagar has employed throughout the years? Since the beginning, the band has continuously introduced more melody and keys in their music, but Fall is special compared to the output in the last twenty years. Though this new album hasn’t hung up that hat by any means, Øystein G. Brun, Lars A. Nedland, and crew dug through the ashes of the past to bring some of those old-school black metal moments back into the mix. From the blackened assault of “Summits” and the Dimmu Borgir-esque vibes of “Northward,” the band continues to shock and surprise, avoiding a repetition from a previous album. So, dive into the best album o’ the year in all its glory.8
Honorable Mentions
- Portrait // The Host – While I didn’t like the production of Portrait’s The Host, I’m still a slut for King Diamond and Meryful Fate-adjacent metal. Especially when it comes to Portrait, who continues to be less like a copycat and more like a pioneer of the style.
- Attic // Return of the Witchfinder – More King Diamond-core! Easily one of the best examples of the sound, Attic continues to keep me coming back with each release. As their predecessor, Return of the Witchfinder brings a new story, more twists, and those pleasing falsettos that trigger my “O” face.
- Sarke // Endo Feight – Sarke (the artist) and crew have had one hell of a busy couple of years. This year, in particular, sees not only a new Sarke release but also a new Khold record (see below). Endo Feight is a wonderful addition to the band’s catalog and, by god, it’s wonderful to see the man himself back behind the kit.
- Khold // Du dømmes til død – See? I told you it would be here. While 2022’s Svartsyn was better record than Du dømmes til død (and a fantastic comeback), Du dømmes til død still has those elements that make the band so unique and fun to listen to.
- Blood Red Throne // Nonagon – Three years ago, Blood Red Throne released not only one of their best albums but 2021’s best death metal record. Unsurprisingly, it’s difficult to follow something like Imperial Congregation without some hiccups. That said, Nonagon is still a brutal piece of work worthy of mentioning.
Disappointments o’ the Year
- Darkthrone // It Beckons Us All……. – Like Sarke, Nocturno Culto has also been busy this year. If that’s part of the reason for the utter bore that’s It Beckons Us All……., I don’t know. But, this new record feels like Darkthrone is going through the motions. While I respect that they don’t care what the fuck any of us think, this is one of their worst albums.
- Exhorder // Defectum Omnium – After Exhorder’s incredible comeback album, Mourn the Southern Skies, I was more than a little excited for this new one. Unfortunately, like Darkthrone’s newest, Defectum Omnium is a dreadfully boring record that lacks all the passion of Exhorder’s comeback, leaving me confused and pissed the fuck off.
Songs o’ the Year
- Kingcrow – “White Rabbit’s Hole” – With an album full of great songs, there’s just something about the energy of this track that makes me so happy.
- Sidewinder – “Guardians” – This song represents some of the best stoner metal of 2024, and I can’t stop listening to it.
- Bombus – “Take You Down” – This song is just badass. I couldn’t care less what you think. Die.
#2024 #Aborted #Attic #BlogPosts #BloodRedThrone #Bombus #Borknagar #CelticFrost #CrystalViper #Darkthrone #DimmuBorgir #Dio #DrANGrierSTopTenIshOf2024 #DreamTheater #DustBolt #Exhorder #IAmTheIntimidator #IronMaiden #Khold #KingDiamond #Kingcrow #Lists #MercyfulFate #Metallica #Midnight #Ministry #Motörhead #NickCave #Portrait #Sarke #Sidewinder #SpockSBeard #TheVisionBleak #TheWhiteStripes #TypeONegative #Vader #VanessaFunke #Venom
-
Dr. A.N. Grier’s Top Ten(ish) of 2024
By Dr. A.N. Grier
If I were to rate the year of our Lord 2024, I’d give it a solid 4.5/5.0. No, I joke. FUCK 2024. Good riddance, fuck off, goodfuckingbye. This year, the layoffs continued (even affected some of our writers here), the prices skyrocketed, the World Series was bullshit, and landfills across the States are twice their capacity thanks to useless election fliers. This year has resulted in practically zero time to work on AMG efforts, write reviews, or listen to music as I continue to try to keep my job. Yay. Cheers to you, 2024—you sack of horse shit. Let’s go, 2025, you sassy bitch who suggests great things to come but probably won’t deliver. If only you could promise me more time doing the things I love—listening to metal, writing about it, and pretending to edit the other writers’ reviews while completely hammered. If so, I’d kiss you as the ball drops, take you to the back alley during the after-party, and promise not to poison your coffee the next morning.
But we aren’t there yet. We are still stuck in the past, looking over a mediocre year of metal, regurgitating the same shit we already wrote for each album on our lists. That way, you all can praise, argue, and whine about each choice and its placement. Thankfully, my lists rarely overlap with anyone else’s and no one actually gives a fuck, so my sleep patterns remain the same. Having passed the ten-year mark at this amazing madland, my tastes remain the same, and no one will be surprised that most of the selections here are the items I alone reviewed. That changes occasionally but with no time to think about music this year, you’ll be treated to odd takes and albums that only scored a 3.0. Oh no!1
Thank you to the AMG staff for their lackluster productivity and overrating tendencies. To Dolph, Kenny, and Sharky for introducing new segments and keeping legacy ones alive. And to Cuervo and GardensTale for the additional year-end contributions they deliver. I also have to give a huge shoutout to the top bosses—AMG and Steel Daddy—for all they do2. I guess I should also thank all of you for your continued support. I guess. May this list find you well as we are thrust into 2025 and the potential nightmares that it’ll bring. Cheers.
#ish. I Am the Intimidator // I Am the Intimidator – What? You fucking knew this was coming. When Steel told me to review an album about NASCAR and Dale Earnhardt, I couldn’t not do it. I mean, this one-off, self-titled record from a one-off band was a perfect opportunity to unleash my rage. And then… wait, what the fuck? It’s actually kinda good? In a weird year where I reviewed two racing-related albums, I Am the Intimidator sports3 six wild tracks that combine Dio and Iron Maiden with Ministry. What the fuck? And, somehow, the lyrics would be fucking hilarious if they weren’t so passionate. OK, the lyrics of the surprisingly delicious and crushing “Gasoline” are fucking hilarious, and a regular, all-caps attack in the AMG channels. After all the chaos and wild influences that make up this tight, six-track album, the passion for “The Intimidator” is true, even if it’s weird. But, I can’t stop listening to this album any more than I can stop drinking beer.
#10. Dust Bolt // Sound & Fury – Like so many other Grier lists, there’s always an album that becomes the most frequented in my shit-filled ears. Yup, I know, you all fucking hate it, and I couldn’t care less. For the band (and style), Sound & Fury is a brave effort that I find addictive, fun, and hilarious trolling material when Steel talks shit. Is it thrash? No, but that didn’t stop me from proclaiming Load as Metallica’s best album. Shifting away from the overused thrash concept and mediocre record releases, Dust Bolt chose the unconventional route of cleaner vocals, smoother production, and catchier choruses to remove themselves from their past outings (and, some would argue, from thrash and metal in general). For you naysayers, there are plenty of headbangable moments on Sound & Fury, so you don’t have to feel like a poser singing these new songs in your mom’s shower.
#9. Midnight // Hellish Expectations – Perhaps one of the most prolific metal bands out there, what can I say about Midnight that I haven’t said already? Oh yeah, they’re badass and if you don’t like them, you’re shit. Also, fuck you. Like previous releases, Midnight continues to speed through riffs that bring to mind classic outfits like Darkthrone, Motörhead, Venom, and Celtic Frost at a relentless speed. While other Midnight records are better, Hellish Expectations joins its compatriots in a discog that can do no wrong. Unless, of course, you don’t like this band’s style. In that case, read above regarding that “fuck you” thing. What makes Hellish Expectations great in this frustrating year is that it caps at twenty-five wonderful minutes—which is the same amount of time it takes to shit out your morning coffee. So, this is a chance to correct your poserness. If you like this band, you already know Hellish Expectations is a fun ride that’ll keep your spikes sharp and your leather pants shit free.
#8. Bombus // Your Blood – Like another band on my list, this Swedish heavy metal, hard rock band has seen a lot of ups and downs in their career. And, for some reason, their co-founding vocalist and guitarist walked. But that didn’t stop Bombus. Not only did they find someone to fill those two slots, but they also added another guitarist to round it out to three. With these new additions, the skill displayed on Your Blood is superior to anything the band has ever done. There’re solos, harmonizing leads, and riffs up the fucking wazoo. I’m uncertain if it’s due to this new skillset or an increase in motivation with five years between albums, but Bombus held nothing back for Your Blood. While there are plenty of the bangers you would expect from a band of this caliber, like the addictive “Take You Down,” there are also other interesting inclusions that I should hate, yet love. For example, the weird, Spaghetti Western qualities of “Your Blood,” the Nick Cave-meets-The White Stripes musings of “The One,” and the bizarreness that is “Carmina.” With Your Blood, the band has found their groove and passion again, delivering their best album yet.
#7. Vanessa Funke // Void – This year brought a surprising new addition to my favorite bands of all time. In this case, it was the newest release from the multi-instrumentalist, Vanessa Funke. With a small but stellar catalog, Ms. Funke continuously dabbles in new influences and song approaches with each album and Void is no different. Coming off last year’s acoustic masterpiece Vanessa Funke rewinds to her debut record, Solitude, alternating between rasps and cleans, acoustic and distorted guitars, and her perfectly molded combination of folk, melodeath, and atmospheric black metal. The textures created by the vocals, guitars, keys, and piano take Void down into some incredible depths, engulfing its listeners in blankets that can be both soft and stabby. Albums like this are rare for me these days, so when they do completely submerse me to the point that I can’t think of anything else, there’s no doubt it’ll make it on my year-end list.
#6. Crystal Viper // The Silver Key – Maybe not everyone’s favorite Polish act,4 Crystal Viper’s founding vocalist and guitarist, Marta Gabriel, has been knocking around her blend of heavy and power metal for nearly two decades. But, it’s been a rocky road of great, mediocre, and rage-inducing records. Where Crimen Expecta shines like a bright star in the sky, Tales of Fire and Ice is a dumpster fire that topped my most disappointing album of 2019. When I approached this year’s The Silver Key, I was expecting another mid album (or worse) but was immediately engrossed—maybe even more than Crimen Expecta. Though many of you dislike the vocals, Gabriel is in top form. But, her vocal performance is only one aspect of the Crystal Viper sound. Her guitar work is some of the best of her career, lending new ideas to the song structures and album flow. While plenty of bands are—and are not better—than Crystal Viper, The Silver Key is undeniably one of the best albums of their career.
#5. Sidewinder // Talons – Most likely one of the only overlaps I’ll have with the cunts that work here,5 Sidewinder’s newest release, Talons, threw me for a loop. Not expecting anything from a band I’ve never heard about, Talons immediately got my noggin’ bobbin’ in the most pleasing way. I can’t pinpoint exactly why I like this style of heavy, bounding stoner metal, but every time I hear it, it clicks. And nothing is better than diving right into a record where one of the band’s best pieces is the opener. “Guardians” is a quintessential Sidewinder piece that personifies the band and everything they stand for. But that’s only the beginning, as the guitars cruise down the road and the bass rumbles through the gravel. Clocking in at a mere thirty-four minutes, this eight-track beauty never reaches beyond its means, ensuring the songs are straight and tight, allowing Jem’s powerful vocals to direct the varying moods. While the band resides in the lush and beautiful landscapes of New Zealand,6 if a sound could represent the harsh desert lands of my home, this would be it.
#4. Aborted // Vault of Horrors – As many know, death metal is not my cup o’ tea. Once upon a time, death metal was my life, but that ship sailed when my favorites grew old and repetitive, and what you all call death metal these days bores me to tears. But the one band that continues to make me salivate is Aborted.7 And, boy, did this year’s Vault of Horrors deliver. With tracks like “Dreadbringer,” “The Golgothan,” and “Malevolent Haze,” this new release offers some incredible depth and relentless brutality. Aborted has always delivered good-to-great albums but after nearly thirty years, how can these lads continue to improve and produce such quality releases? Vault of Horrors is a great record and arguably one of the band’s best. It’s been several months since this beauty was released, so if it passed by you, rectify your posersivity.
#3. The Vision Bleak // Weird Tales – I don’t know what it is about The Vision Bleak but they fucking hit me and hit me hard. On the surface, their style is quite simple, but it’s the layers, stories, mood, and damning vocal performances that draw me in like I’m viewing a Vincent Price horror marathon. Combining their Type O Negative vocal characteristics with atmospheric moods that can be depressive at one point and ethereal at another, The Vision Bleak took a massive leap by releasing Weird Tales as (technically) a one-song album. Eight years since their incredible The Unknown, Weird Tales doesn’t skip a beat, maintaining the duo’s title as one of the greatest bands in gothic metal. With magnificent builds, eerie transitions, mind-bending fluidity, and heart-wrenching passages, the haunting nature of Weird Tales leaves you contemplating your existence in a world controlled by the fate instilled in it by the late, great H.P. Lovecraft.
#2. Kingcrow // Hopium – For fucking months, our progressive cunt, Dolphin Whisper, tried desperately to steal Kingcrow’s Hopium from me—somehow thinking he’s better than me when it comes to describing the lushness of Kingcrow. The fuck. Even though Kingcrow hasn’t released an album in six years, there’s no way some flipper fucker would take this from me. Sure, I’m not a huge fan of progressive metal, but at least I know what’s good progressive metal instead of lazily making love to everything with the tag of “prog.” Anyway, Hopium continues to deliver gorgeous tapestries painted with soothing vocals, synthy atmospheres, and impressive performances for all involved. Though I consider Eidos their best, Hopium is not far behind. While tapping into common influences like Dream Theater and Spock’s Beard, this Italian outfit is very much on a level all its own. If you like prog, you’ll find Hopium—with such wildly varying tracks like “Vicous Circle,” “Parallel Lines,” and “White Rabit’s Hole”—to be the most diverse prog record of the year.
#1. Borknagar // Fall – Goddammit, I love Borknagar. Few bands have such high album scores for a career that spans thirty years and a dozen albums—especially with a constant rotation of players and vocalists. Though, how can you be pissed off about having any of the great vocalists Borknagar has employed throughout the years? Since the beginning, the band has continuously introduced more melody and keys in their music, but Fall is special compared to the output in the last twenty years. Though this new album hasn’t hung up that hat by any means, Øystein G. Brun, Lars A. Nedland, and crew dug through the ashes of the past to bring some of those old-school black metal moments back into the mix. From the blackened assault of “Summits” and the Dimmu Borgir-esque vibes of “Northward,” the band continues to shock and surprise, avoiding a repetition from a previous album. So, dive into the best album o’ the year in all its glory.8
Honorable Mentions
- Portrait // The Host – While I didn’t like the production of Portrait’s The Host, I’m still a slut for King Diamond and Meryful Fate-adjacent metal. Especially when it comes to Portrait, who continues to be less like a copycat and more like a pioneer of the style.
- Attic // Return of the Witchfinder – More King Diamond-core! Easily one of the best examples of the sound, Attic continues to keep me coming back with each release. As their predecessor, Return of the Witchfinder brings a new story, more twists, and those pleasing falsettos that trigger my “O” face.
- Sarke // Endo Feight – Sarke (the artist) and crew have had one hell of a busy couple of years. This year, in particular, sees not only a new Sarke release but also a new Khold record (see below). Endo Feight is a wonderful addition to the band’s catalog and, by god, it’s wonderful to see the man himself back behind the kit.
- Khold // Du dømmes til død – See? I told you it would be here. While 2022’s Svartsyn was better record than Du dømmes til død (and a fantastic comeback), Du dømmes til død still has those elements that make the band so unique and fun to listen to.
- Blood Red Throne // Nonagon – Three years ago, Blood Red Throne released not only one of their best albums but 2021’s best death metal record. Unsurprisingly, it’s difficult to follow something like Imperial Congregation without some hiccups. That said, Nonagon is still a brutal piece of work worthy of mentioning.
Disappointments o’ the Year
- Darkthrone // It Beckons Us All……. – Like Sarke, Nocturno Culto has also been busy this year. If that’s part of the reason for the utter bore that’s It Beckons Us All……., I don’t know. But, this new record feels like Darkthrone is going through the motions. While I respect that they don’t care what the fuck any of us think, this is one of their worst albums.
- Exhorder // Defectum Omnium – After Exhorder’s incredible comeback album, Mourn the Southern Skies, I was more than a little excited for this new one. Unfortunately, like Darkthrone’s newest, Defectum Omnium is a dreadfully boring record that lacks all the passion of Exhorder’s comeback, leaving me confused and pissed the fuck off.
Songs o’ the Year
- Kingcrow – “White Rabbit’s Hole” – With an album full of great songs, there’s just something about the energy of this track that makes me so happy.
- Sidewinder – “Guardians” – This song represents some of the best stoner metal of 2024, and I can’t stop listening to it.
- Bombus – “Take You Down” – This song is just badass. I couldn’t care less what you think. Die.
#2024 #Aborted #Attic #BlogPosts #BloodRedThrone #Bombus #Borknagar #CelticFrost #CrystalViper #Darkthrone #DimmuBorgir #Dio #DrANGrierSTopTenIshOf2024 #DreamTheater #DustBolt #Exhorder #IAmTheIntimidator #IronMaiden #Khold #KingDiamond #Kingcrow #Lists #MercyfulFate #Metallica #Midnight #Ministry #Motörhead #NickCave #Portrait #Sarke #Sidewinder #SpockSBeard #TheVisionBleak #TheWhiteStripes #TypeONegative #Vader #VanessaFunke #Venom
-
Dr. A.N. Grier’s Top Ten(ish) of 2024
By Dr. A.N. Grier
If I were to rate the year of our Lord 2024, I’d give it a solid 4.5/5.0. No, I joke. FUCK 2024. Good riddance, fuck off, goodfuckingbye. This year, the layoffs continued (even affected some of our writers here), the prices skyrocketed, the World Series was bullshit, and landfills across the States are twice their capacity thanks to useless election fliers. This year has resulted in practically zero time to work on AMG efforts, write reviews, or listen to music as I continue to try to keep my job. Yay. Cheers to you, 2024—you sack of horse shit. Let’s go, 2025, you sassy bitch who suggests great things to come but probably won’t deliver. If only you could promise me more time doing the things I love—listening to metal, writing about it, and pretending to edit the other writers’ reviews while completely hammered. If so, I’d kiss you as the ball drops, take you to the back alley during the after-party, and promise not to poison your coffee the next morning.
But we aren’t there yet. We are still stuck in the past, looking over a mediocre year of metal, regurgitating the same shit we already wrote for each album on our lists. That way, you all can praise, argue, and whine about each choice and its placement. Thankfully, my lists rarely overlap with anyone else’s and no one actually gives a fuck, so my sleep patterns remain the same. Having passed the ten-year mark at this amazing madland, my tastes remain the same, and no one will be surprised that most of the selections here are the items I alone reviewed. That changes occasionally but with no time to think about music this year, you’ll be treated to odd takes and albums that only scored a 3.0. Oh no!1
Thank you to the AMG staff for their lackluster productivity and overrating tendencies. To Dolph, Kenny, and Sharky for introducing new segments and keeping legacy ones alive. And to Cuervo and GardensTale for the additional year-end contributions they deliver. I also have to give a huge shoutout to the top bosses—AMG and Steel Daddy—for all they do2. I guess I should also thank all of you for your continued support. I guess. May this list find you well as we are thrust into 2025 and the potential nightmares that it’ll bring. Cheers.
#ish. I Am the Intimidator // I Am the Intimidator – What? You fucking knew this was coming. When Steel told me to review an album about NASCAR and Dale Earnhardt, I couldn’t not do it. I mean, this one-off, self-titled record from a one-off band was a perfect opportunity to unleash my rage. And then… wait, what the fuck? It’s actually kinda good? In a weird year where I reviewed two racing-related albums, I Am the Intimidator sports3 six wild tracks that combine Dio and Iron Maiden with Ministry. What the fuck? And, somehow, the lyrics would be fucking hilarious if they weren’t so passionate. OK, the lyrics of the surprisingly delicious and crushing “Gasoline” are fucking hilarious, and a regular, all-caps attack in the AMG channels. After all the chaos and wild influences that make up this tight, six-track album, the passion for “The Intimidator” is true, even if it’s weird. But, I can’t stop listening to this album any more than I can stop drinking beer.
#10. Dust Bolt // Sound & Fury – Like so many other Grier lists, there’s always an album that becomes the most frequented in my shit-filled ears. Yup, I know, you all fucking hate it, and I couldn’t care less. For the band (and style), Sound & Fury is a brave effort that I find addictive, fun, and hilarious trolling material when Steel talks shit. Is it thrash? No, but that didn’t stop me from proclaiming Load as Metallica’s best album. Shifting away from the overused thrash concept and mediocre record releases, Dust Bolt chose the unconventional route of cleaner vocals, smoother production, and catchier choruses to remove themselves from their past outings (and, some would argue, from thrash and metal in general). For you naysayers, there are plenty of headbangable moments on Sound & Fury, so you don’t have to feel like a poser singing these new songs in your mom’s shower.
#9. Midnight // Hellish Expectations – Perhaps one of the most prolific metal bands out there, what can I say about Midnight that I haven’t said already? Oh yeah, they’re badass and if you don’t like them, you’re shit. Also, fuck you. Like previous releases, Midnight continues to speed through riffs that bring to mind classic outfits like Darkthrone, Motörhead, Venom, and Celtic Frost at a relentless speed. While other Midnight records are better, Hellish Expectations joins its compatriots in a discog that can do no wrong. Unless, of course, you don’t like this band’s style. In that case, read above regarding that “fuck you” thing. What makes Hellish Expectations great in this frustrating year is that it caps at twenty-five wonderful minutes—which is the same amount of time it takes to shit out your morning coffee. So, this is a chance to correct your poserness. If you like this band, you already know Hellish Expectations is a fun ride that’ll keep your spikes sharp and your leather pants shit free.
#8. Bombus // Your Blood – Like another band on my list, this Swedish heavy metal, hard rock band has seen a lot of ups and downs in their career. And, for some reason, their co-founding vocalist and guitarist walked. But that didn’t stop Bombus. Not only did they find someone to fill those two slots, but they also added another guitarist to round it out to three. With these new additions, the skill displayed on Your Blood is superior to anything the band has ever done. There’re solos, harmonizing leads, and riffs up the fucking wazoo. I’m uncertain if it’s due to this new skillset or an increase in motivation with five years between albums, but Bombus held nothing back for Your Blood. While there are plenty of the bangers you would expect from a band of this caliber, like the addictive “Take You Down,” there are also other interesting inclusions that I should hate, yet love. For example, the weird, Spaghetti Western qualities of “Your Blood,” the Nick Cave-meets-The White Stripes musings of “The One,” and the bizarreness that is “Carmina.” With Your Blood, the band has found their groove and passion again, delivering their best album yet.
#7. Vanessa Funke // Void – This year brought a surprising new addition to my favorite bands of all time. In this case, it was the newest release from the multi-instrumentalist, Vanessa Funke. With a small but stellar catalog, Ms. Funke continuously dabbles in new influences and song approaches with each album and Void is no different. Coming off last year’s acoustic masterpiece Vanessa Funke rewinds to her debut record, Solitude, alternating between rasps and cleans, acoustic and distorted guitars, and her perfectly molded combination of folk, melodeath, and atmospheric black metal. The textures created by the vocals, guitars, keys, and piano take Void down into some incredible depths, engulfing its listeners in blankets that can be both soft and stabby. Albums like this are rare for me these days, so when they do completely submerse me to the point that I can’t think of anything else, there’s no doubt it’ll make it on my year-end list.
#6. Crystal Viper // The Silver Key – Maybe not everyone’s favorite Polish act,4 Crystal Viper’s founding vocalist and guitarist, Marta Gabriel, has been knocking around her blend of heavy and power metal for nearly two decades. But, it’s been a rocky road of great, mediocre, and rage-inducing records. Where Crimen Expecta shines like a bright star in the sky, Tales of Fire and Ice is a dumpster fire that topped my most disappointing album of 2019. When I approached this year’s The Silver Key, I was expecting another mid album (or worse) but was immediately engrossed—maybe even more than Crimen Expecta. Though many of you dislike the vocals, Gabriel is in top form. But, her vocal performance is only one aspect of the Crystal Viper sound. Her guitar work is some of the best of her career, lending new ideas to the song structures and album flow. While plenty of bands are—and are not better—than Crystal Viper, The Silver Key is undeniably one of the best albums of their career.
#5. Sidewinder // Talons – Most likely one of the only overlaps I’ll have with the cunts that work here,5 Sidewinder’s newest release, Talons, threw me for a loop. Not expecting anything from a band I’ve never heard about, Talons immediately got my noggin’ bobbin’ in the most pleasing way. I can’t pinpoint exactly why I like this style of heavy, bounding stoner metal, but every time I hear it, it clicks. And nothing is better than diving right into a record where one of the band’s best pieces is the opener. “Guardians” is a quintessential Sidewinder piece that personifies the band and everything they stand for. But that’s only the beginning, as the guitars cruise down the road and the bass rumbles through the gravel. Clocking in at a mere thirty-four minutes, this eight-track beauty never reaches beyond its means, ensuring the songs are straight and tight, allowing Jem’s powerful vocals to direct the varying moods. While the band resides in the lush and beautiful landscapes of New Zealand,6 if a sound could represent the harsh desert lands of my home, this would be it.
#4. Aborted // Vault of Horrors – As many know, death metal is not my cup o’ tea. Once upon a time, death metal was my life, but that ship sailed when my favorites grew old and repetitive, and what you all call death metal these days bores me to tears. But the one band that continues to make me salivate is Aborted.7 And, boy, did this year’s Vault of Horrors deliver. With tracks like “Dreadbringer,” “The Golgothan,” and “Malevolent Haze,” this new release offers some incredible depth and relentless brutality. Aborted has always delivered good-to-great albums but after nearly thirty years, how can these lads continue to improve and produce such quality releases? Vault of Horrors is a great record and arguably one of the band’s best. It’s been several months since this beauty was released, so if it passed by you, rectify your posersivity.
#3. The Vision Bleak // Weird Tales – I don’t know what it is about The Vision Bleak but they fucking hit me and hit me hard. On the surface, their style is quite simple, but it’s the layers, stories, mood, and damning vocal performances that draw me in like I’m viewing a Vincent Price horror marathon. Combining their Type O Negative vocal characteristics with atmospheric moods that can be depressive at one point and ethereal at another, The Vision Bleak took a massive leap by releasing Weird Tales as (technically) a one-song album. Eight years since their incredible The Unknown, Weird Tales doesn’t skip a beat, maintaining the duo’s title as one of the greatest bands in gothic metal. With magnificent builds, eerie transitions, mind-bending fluidity, and heart-wrenching passages, the haunting nature of Weird Tales leaves you contemplating your existence in a world controlled by the fate instilled in it by the late, great H.P. Lovecraft.
#2. Kingcrow // Hopium – For fucking months, our progressive cunt, Dolphin Whisper, tried desperately to steal Kingcrow’s Hopium from me—somehow thinking he’s better than me when it comes to describing the lushness of Kingcrow. The fuck. Even though Kingcrow hasn’t released an album in six years, there’s no way some flipper fucker would take this from me. Sure, I’m not a huge fan of progressive metal, but at least I know what’s good progressive metal instead of lazily making love to everything with the tag of “prog.” Anyway, Hopium continues to deliver gorgeous tapestries painted with soothing vocals, synthy atmospheres, and impressive performances for all involved. Though I consider Eidos their best, Hopium is not far behind. While tapping into common influences like Dream Theater and Spock’s Beard, this Italian outfit is very much on a level all its own. If you like prog, you’ll find Hopium—with such wildly varying tracks like “Vicous Circle,” “Parallel Lines,” and “White Rabit’s Hole”—to be the most diverse prog record of the year.
#1. Borknagar // Fall – Goddammit, I love Borknagar. Few bands have such high album scores for a career that spans thirty years and a dozen albums—especially with a constant rotation of players and vocalists. Though, how can you be pissed off about having any of the great vocalists Borknagar has employed throughout the years? Since the beginning, the band has continuously introduced more melody and keys in their music, but Fall is special compared to the output in the last twenty years. Though this new album hasn’t hung up that hat by any means, Øystein G. Brun, Lars A. Nedland, and crew dug through the ashes of the past to bring some of those old-school black metal moments back into the mix. From the blackened assault of “Summits” and the Dimmu Borgir-esque vibes of “Northward,” the band continues to shock and surprise, avoiding a repetition from a previous album. So, dive into the best album o’ the year in all its glory.8
Honorable Mentions
- Portrait // The Host – While I didn’t like the production of Portrait’s The Host, I’m still a slut for King Diamond and Meryful Fate-adjacent metal. Especially when it comes to Portrait, who continues to be less like a copycat and more like a pioneer of the style.
- Attic // Return of the Witchfinder – More King Diamond-core! Easily one of the best examples of the sound, Attic continues to keep me coming back with each release. As their predecessor, Return of the Witchfinder brings a new story, more twists, and those pleasing falsettos that trigger my “O” face.
- Sarke // Endo Feight – Sarke (the artist) and crew have had one hell of a busy couple of years. This year, in particular, sees not only a new Sarke release but also a new Khold record (see below). Endo Feight is a wonderful addition to the band’s catalog and, by god, it’s wonderful to see the man himself back behind the kit.
- Khold // Du dømmes til død – See? I told you it would be here. While 2022’s Svartsyn was better record than Du dømmes til død (and a fantastic comeback), Du dømmes til død still has those elements that make the band so unique and fun to listen to.
- Blood Red Throne // Nonagon – Three years ago, Blood Red Throne released not only one of their best albums but 2021’s best death metal record. Unsurprisingly, it’s difficult to follow something like Imperial Congregation without some hiccups. That said, Nonagon is still a brutal piece of work worthy of mentioning.
Disappointments o’ the Year
- Darkthrone // It Beckons Us All……. – Like Sarke, Nocturno Culto has also been busy this year. If that’s part of the reason for the utter bore that’s It Beckons Us All……., I don’t know. But, this new record feels like Darkthrone is going through the motions. While I respect that they don’t care what the fuck any of us think, this is one of their worst albums.
- Exhorder // Defectum Omnium – After Exhorder’s incredible comeback album, Mourn the Southern Skies, I was more than a little excited for this new one. Unfortunately, like Darkthrone’s newest, Defectum Omnium is a dreadfully boring record that lacks all the passion of Exhorder’s comeback, leaving me confused and pissed the fuck off.
Songs o’ the Year
- Kingcrow – “White Rabbit’s Hole” – With an album full of great songs, there’s just something about the energy of this track that makes me so happy.
- Sidewinder – “Guardians” – This song represents some of the best stoner metal of 2024, and I can’t stop listening to it.
- Bombus – “Take You Down” – This song is just badass. I couldn’t care less what you think. Die.
Show 8 footnotes
- Fuck off, this happens every year. ↩
- Don’t call me Steel Daddy ever again! – Steel Daddy ↩
- See what I did there? ↩
- They can’t all be Vaders, ya fucks! ↩
- Love you, GardensTale. ↩
- Well, that’s what the Lord of the Rings movies tell me. ↩
- Yeah, yeah, bitch all you want about including this band into my collective bubble of “death metal.” ↩
- Also, stop listening to “Nordic Anthem” by itself. Fucking idiots. ↩
#2024 #Aborted #Attic #BlogPosts #BloodRedThrone #Bombus #Borknagar #CelticFrost #CrystalViper #Darkthrone #DimmuBorgir #Dio #DrANGrierSTopTenIshOf2024 #DreamTheater #DustBolt #Exhorder #IAmTheIntimidator #IronMaiden #Khold #KingDiamond #Kingcrow #Lists #MercyfulFate #Metallica #Midnight #Ministry #Motörhead #NickCave #Portrait #Sarke #Sidewinder #SpockSBeard #TheVisionBleak #TheWhiteStripes #TypeONegative #Vader #VanessaFunke #Venom
-
“The concentration of violent power in the hands of the few can occur unopposed if it is done quietly, if unnecessary provocation, which can set a process of solidarity in motion, is avoided—that is something that was learned as a result of the student movement and the Paris May.”
— The Urban Guerilla Concept, The Red Army Faction 1971
On 30 April 2024 — the 56th anniversary of the 1968 Columbia University mass arrests — the New York Pig Department besieged Harlem, locked down the entirety of Columbia’s campus, swept the Gaza solidarity encampment, and raided Hind’s Hall. This raid marked the end of the spring of the Student Intifada. Those of us who were at the barricades are still reeling from the experience. There are few moments in our lives where history opens its doors to us. Taking the leap through is disorienting, but the responsibility to make sense of this conjuncture falls squarely on those who take the leap.
Journalists and pundits have chimed in endlessly on the Student Intifada with a particular focus on Columbia University. Many of these pundits were nowhere near the action nor the partisans who made the action happen, thus they often get the basic facts of the action wrong. As one rebel once advised, “No investigation, no right to speak.” Additionally, the political orientation of the commentariat necessitated the silencing and erasure of the most radical flank of the movement. This flank played a vital role in not only the uprising at Columbia, but in the direction of the movement nationally. This essay is an attempt to both correct the record and offer up some political perspectives from a segment of this radical flank.
The next sequence of the Student Intifada remains elusive but it is important that interventions are made to push the movement in the correct direction. A minority with the correct revolutionary line is not a minority.
ARE WE REALLY PEACEFUL? WHO’S AFRAID OF OUTSIDE AGITATORS?
In the 13 days of protest on Butler Lawn, there was a pernicious narrative peddled by both sympathetic media and liberal student leadership: the narrative of the “peaceful protestors”. While this characterization was pushed by a portion of the encampment, it is not the whole story, and it is certainly not true of the minority group inside the camp who were essential to the initiation of the Student Intifada, and maintained influence over the politics and praxis of the protest until the sweep and raid.
Nonetheless, every official statement coming out of the encampment was padded with language about how peaceful, well-behaved, and non-threatening the action was. Those on the outside could have been tricked into thinking that we were all just a bunch of hippies braiding friendship bracelets in the grass.
There was a near-constant gesturing towards our right to peaceful assembly as citizens of the United States, paired with an incessant fear-mongering around the minority faction’s uncompromising support for armed resistance. This resulted in a de facto pacifist position that attempted to smother out the reality of what brought us to the lawn in the first place — a third world people’s war for national liberation — while also placing a ceiling on acceptable forms of action. To erase the armed resistance of Palestinians, which is supported by the entire Axis of Resistance, is to remove their world-making agency and reduce them to objects of pity. All this does is grease the wheels of the status quo and allow our rulers to continue the military and political targeting of the Axis without any internal dissent.
Any recourse to legality or peace was meant to win over moderates who belly ache over the sanctity of our “democracy” — the same “democracy” beheading infants in the tent camps of Rafah. These moderates are not our friends and many of them have gone back to their regularly scheduled programming after the installment of Kopmala as the Democratic presidential nominee. It is true that a portion of them have been won over to our side, and more will come as contradictions sharpen, but we do not tail the moderate line or play by their rules. This holds especially true when the moderate line throws militant factions under the bus, isolating us from the rest of the movement and exposing us to more repression from the genocidal state that everyone claims to be in opposition to.
There is a belief that these liberalizing rhetorical and strategic compromises, compromises that are fundamentally divisive and neutralizing, keep everyone safe.
Maybe we will protect ourselves if we speak the language of law-abiding pacifism and hide the radical faction from sight.
In practice, these compromises offered us no safety. The armed agents of the state viewed everyone on Butler Lawn as enemies in a war against their genocidal authority. In many ways, they were correct to view us as such. The collective demand for divestment from zionism undermines US hegemony and its military apparatus. There is nothing peaceful about this demand — regardless of how hard we try to contort ourselves in the name of respectability, or what tactics individuals choose to participate in. It is of no benefit to anyone to lie about the terrain on which we are fighting by papering over the stakes with flowery language. The enemy has a clear understanding of what they would lose if we were to win, so what’s our excuse? None of this is intended to promote recklessness, but our analysis must be unflinching in order to meet this moment. To be as radical as reality itself requires both discipline and fearlessness.
It should go without saying that many of the details and the planning of our work require an element of secrecy because of the nature of surveillance under the bourgeois-settler dictatorship. Not all work is done in the light of day, but we should never be dishonest about the content of our politics and what it would take to really win — both with the masses and ourselves. The reality of the matter is that we are engaged in class struggle against the most powerful empire in human history. The radical partisans in the encampment understood fully that our aims can only be attained through force and that these aims are righteous. This understanding is not shameful or reckless. It is a matter of fact.
The emphasis placed on how allegedly docile the protest was played right into the hands of the outside agitator trope that was pushed by racist commentators. Anyone perceived as “non-peaceful” was classified as a foreign threat to the pristine Ivy League finishing school. The more uncompromising edge within the encampment — comprised of students, alumni, faculty and non-students alike — were framed as unhinged “terrorists” who invaded the protest and brainwashed the otherwise “peaceful and good” student activists.
This division, that carries with it racial and class dimensions, is proving itself to be an essential component of the opposition’s strategy for crushing the movement. It became central to the criminal cases of the Hind’s Hall defendants. Students and affiliates had their cases immediately dropped and non-students were dragged through a months-long court and ACD process which included a state mandated “rapid reset program” led by a zionist organization, during which we were subjected to hours of racist drivel about the israeli right to unlimited genocide and the Palestinian right to die quietly.
This line of demarcation was also trotted out by none other than the premier raging war hawk, Hillary Clinton, who went as far as claiming that the “nefarious outsiders” were funded by foreign entities. On 22 September she went live with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria to speak about the Student Intifada and said, “There were already existing groups within our country and particularly on certain campuses, like Columbia, who had talking points. They had a plan for protest and disruption, and I watched it morph into something that was not student-led…There was something else going on here that was very troubling. We now have evidence of, obviously foreign money, foreign influence, the algorithms on TikTok which were anti-Israel right off the bat.”
Here, Clinton lays out a piece of the opposition’s long-term strategy for repression and counterinsurgency — manufacturing conspiracies alleging direct ties to state-designated foreign “terrorist” organizations (FTOs). These conspiratorial fictions can serve a multitude of functions, and fully unpacking them all is outside the scope of this piece, but for our purposes, two of these functions are immediately important: they lay the groundwork for lawfare in the form of material support for terrorism (MST) lawsuits and they manufacture consent for lethal violence against the movement in the core. In the case of the former, most of these lawsuits won’t stick, but this isn’t necessarily the point — the point is to demobilize the sector of the movement that poses the most danger to the status quo, and to make pariahs out of the factions within it who insist on the necessity of militant resistance against empire, both in the core and the periphery. The aim here is to criminalize solidarity with the resistance forces at the vanguard of anti-colonial class struggle, and to instill fear in the movement to deter necessary support for these resistance forces, while isolating the radical edge that is eager to escalate.
In the case of the latter, the US government and the zionist entity have spent the past year committing countless massacres against an entire people under the pretense of their ties to these resistance organizations that are designated by the west as “terrorists.” The US-zionist genocide of Gaza is a mass counter-insurgency campaign that seeks to destroy the popular cradle of resistance, the terrorist designation creates the state of exception that makes this mass slaughter acceptable. Our enemy is champing at the bit to apply this state of exception to dissidents in the core, and they are building dozens of cop cities across the country to make good on cracking down on domestic “terror”. As our struggle here intensifies and internationalist solidarity grows, they will not hesitate to put a bullet in any one of us, and they are laying the groundwork to do this with as much support from the backward Amerikan public as possible.
None of this should lead to compromises or demobilization, as it is but a fraction of what Palestinians in Gaza are enduring, but it is also perfectly natural to feel fear in the face of these realities. That said, fear cannot take the wheel. We have a historical duty to continue to throw our bodies on the gears of the imperial machinery. Those who are not able to do so themselves cannot waver in their solidarity with those who continue to do what must be done.
In the face of the opposition’s attempts to divide our movement between the good ones and the bad ones, between the peaceful insiders and the nefarious outside agitators, it is imperative that we are steadfast in rejecting these distinctions wholesale — no matter what level of activity an individual or organization participates in. This necessarily entails rejecting the colonizer’s language of peace and replacing it with the language of liberation. Fascism is here, alive and well, growing stronger by the minute. That said, this cannot be a peace movement, and if we are to fight and survive, it is high time we reckon with that.
A NEW FRONT, THE ARROW AND THE BULLSEYE
“I envy you. You North Americans are very lucky. You are fighting the most important fight of all. You live in the belly of the beast.”
— Che Guevara
Based off the 0.66% of Columbia’s investments that are publicly available, we know that it grew its 13.6-billion-dollar endowment in part through investing in corporations like Raytheon, Alphabet, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Caterpillar, General Dynamics and Airbnb, all of which deal in the business of colonial genocide and land theft. If this is what less than 1% of their investment portfolio looks like, we could safely assume that the other 99.34% would reveal just how economically and culturally bound up the university is in not only the apocalyptic zionist war on Gaza, but the plunder of the entire global south. There is a reason why the university is hellbent on refusing the demand to disclose all their portfolio, and it is not because they have nothing to hide.
The demand for Columbia to divest from zionism is, when understood in its totality, a call for the university to divest from imperialism altogether, which is why the police siege on Hind’s Hall was so violent and militarized. They ordered a standing army to attack us not because they are simply mean or irrational, but because this demand, and our willingness to exert force on them to obtain it, undermines the foundation of the institution itself. Divestment is a feasible reform and display of symbolic solidarity at a handful of small liberal arts colleges with less of a monetary and ideological investment in the US empire, but divestment from zionism at Columbia or any of the major universities would necessitate the total restructuring of these institutions and the entire university system.
Calling on Columbia University, a war-profiteering Ivy League, to divest from the zionist project forces them into a position that reveals the institution’s deeply embedded relationship with the global imperialist order and throws it into crisis. There is a revolutionary orientation here couched in a seemingly reformist demand. To pursue this political objective, one that is worthy of every ounce of our effort and tenacity, we would need to expand our political horizon from one of mere institutional reform to one of revolutionary upheaval.
Columbia University is an elite socio-cultural appendage of the US and its war machine. There is no reason to believe that the university has the ethical capacity to bend towards “justice” on the issue of genocidal zionism, even if only to save face. As an apparatus of the empire, the university answers to only two things: capital and organized force from below, most of which is classified as violent and illegal by settler-colonial legality. This was on full display when the Amerikan soft power media complex went into propaganda overdrive to condemn the seizure of Hamilton Hall as an act of violent escalation, even though no humans were injured during the action. What was violent for them was the window bashing and property destruction. For the enemy, property is sacrosanct — to destroy it or to violate their property relations is tantamount to committing acts of violence on the settler class.
When understood in its proper context within the US, legal action has limitations that we cannot respect without condemning ourselves to defeat. Above board action that appeals to the state’s morality is incapable of stopping a 13.6-billion-dollar war profiteering endowment in its tracks. This is to say nothing of the fact that the state will continue to ruthlessly criminalize and repress the movement, and, as this happens, more and more forms of action that were once considered above board will now be pushed into realms of extra-legality. I am not suggesting that everyone must participate in all levels of activity at this time, but the fetishization of legality is a direct impediment to victory and, indeed, being effective in any capacity.
If the radical flank of the Student Intifada is to advance to the level of struggle that is necessary to win, there will need to be a profound shift in our cultural values and how those values relate to our strategy and tactics. In other words, a cultural revolution is in order, and the changes that are required of us will throw a wrench in the gears of our own subjectivity. If our demand is that the universities divest from the US empire, then we must also divest from the lies that they sell us.
Too much of the work being done in the NGO-ified Left is predicated on the hyper-visibility and commodification of the individual: activist as influencer as brand. Of all the masters of this form, AOC is the most famous and repugnant by a long shot, but this problem permeates even the most radical spaces. It is intimately connected to the petit-bourgeois class position of most US leftists, who are bred into a striver ideology where everyone is an entrepreneur of the self, and every personality quirk is a small business opportunity. More than anything, all of this individualism is a serious liability and should be left behind. It exposes us to heightened surveillance, risk of doxxing, network mapping, and repression from the extremely powerful police state that we are trying to dismantle.
This isn’t to say that we shouldn’t have public-facing leaders — our movement needs leaders with charisma who can present radical ideas to the masses and agitate them into organization. But this leadership and public-facing work must be cultivated and disciplined through revolutionary organization — not through the knee-jerk individualism that is a direct impediment to collective action. The task for many of us is to become comfortable with being one of the many — swimming amongst the people like fish in the sea. Not to burrow under, not yet, but to blend — to hide in plain sight. This task runs contrary to every habit instilled and beaten into us, to every financial incentive associated with the liberal left. It problematizes our use of social media — where unfortunately much of the left idles along and runs their mouths — and the impulse to share obsessively. The cult of online hyper-visibility is a powerful tool in the hands of the repressive forces of the state, who use these platforms as sites of extraction and surveillance. Imagine every tweet is talking directly into the recording device of your enemy — is it really worth it? Will how much you’re revealing to your enemy jeopardize the real work and your ability to carry it out?
A shift away from this individualism, which is ultimately linked to professional aspiration, will change how we approach organizing altogether. The fact of the matter is that we do not yet have the organizational capacity to sustain long-term militancy, and the default liberal self-centeredness instilled in us as youth in the core is a massive impediment to building out that capacity. If we want to escalate, we must advance on the level of organization, which will require us to rewire the way we have been choreographed to approach this work. If we want our engagement with high-risk activity to shift away from spectacular one-off actions and into sustained, protracted resistance, then we need clandestine cadre formations, infrastructure to sustain them, discipline and commitment. This will require us to give up the trappings of “the good life” and release any ideas of this work being a career option.
The Gaza solidarity encampment opened up the space and time needed to experiment with this cultural transformation, and it led us to the discipline required to seize Hamilton Hall with only 46 people.
THE ENCAMPMENT AND THE SEIZURE OF HAMILTON HALL
The campus was on strict lockdown with 24/7 NYPD presence surrounding the campus and 24/7 public safety presence inside of the gates. Anyone without a CUID couldn’t enter or exit. There were no sex, drugs, or alcohol allowed in the camp, and no taking photos without each other’s consent. We were encouraged to cover our faces. During the daytime, comrades on the outside would print out and smuggle in boxes of radical literature from different encampments and movements across the world — students who had never heard of the Cal Poly Humboldt occupation or Stop Cop City or Basel Al-Araj from Al-Walaja were suddenly saturated in their politics. The radical partisans took control of political education. Teach-ins about the revolutionary struggle of the Korean people, the PFLP and Leila Khaled, the global uprisings of ‘68, and how to build barricades took place in between calls to prayer.
Day in and day out, the administration dragged representatives from the camp into hours-long negotiating meetings where they would give them the runaround and offer breadcrumb concessions to pacify the unruly mass festering on their lawn. The representatives would then go back to a very small, unelected, group of students in the camp to relay the news and strategize. This ad hoc group attempted to dictate the will of the entire encampment with very little accountability to anyone outside of their circle.
It became clear that Columbia was trying to tire us out and buy us off. Escalation was the word on everyone’s minds, and this was met with fear-mongering from the negotiating group. They were scared that if we rubbed university authorities the wrong way, it would cause them to give us a bad deal in negotiations — as if Shafik and Co. were ever coming to the table in good faith anyway. Out of either naïveté or opportunism, they seemed to believe that a demand as audacious as full divestment from zionism could be won through conversations with power and peaceful means alone.
The encampment was not threatening enough on its own to force divestment from the administration, but after the first round of mass arrests and subsequent backlash from the broader public, the university wasn’t ready to come in with a second raid. We were at a stalemate. The radical partisans began to meet in secrecy across the campus. In hidden corners and blindspots, away from the view of cameras and cops. The plan: seize Hamilton Hall. Just like ’68, except this time, our operation would be surgical and planned down to the minute. We would not be spontaneous; we would be disciplined cadre.
Negotiations continued to go nowhere but some members of the negotiating group thought otherwise. Regardless, this process was massively politicizing for less experienced students who still had faith in the ethical integrity of Columbia. It sharpened the contradictions between the more advanced cadre and liberals in the camp, and it bought us time to agitate, educate, and train.
Columbia attempted to fake us out with a loose threat to call in the National Guard. Choppers swarmed overhead but we didn’t move an inch that night. On multiple occasions, false alarms about imminent police raids spread through the camp. The experienced rads advised that everyone remain calm. Nobody flinched.
At the nightly camp-wide meetings, young students demanded transparency and accountability about the negotiation process. We were dissatisfied with what we all understood as attempts at containment from the administration and the clique negotiating on everyone’s behalf behind closed doors. The radical partisans continued to plan. We smuggled in barricading supplies under the noses of the pigs guarding the campus entrances. Crow bars, chains, angle grinders, bolt cutters, hammers, bike locks, ratchet straps, duct tape, epoxy, zip ties. We smuggled in 50 extra tents in under an hour. As time wore on, the entire encampment’s culture shifted away from one of compromise and negotiation to one of resolve and militancy. Groups of inexperienced protestors got curious about the possibility of taking a building. We started gathering our numbers inside the camp. When a Barnard grad announced that we needed to break open the gates and let all of Harlem inside, she was promptly recruited.
The partisans decided we would all wear head-to-toe Columbia merchandise and ski masks as our black bloc. The CU merch was a big “fuck you” from the outside agitators. In the days leading up to the action, we did multiple undercover passes of Hamilton Hall’s inside and the tunnel system that runs beneath it. Every camera was accounted for, every door drawn out, every floor of the building mapped with an inventory of exact numbers of useable furniture items for barricades. My comrade smuggled me a copy of the selected writings of Black Mask and Up Against the Wall Motherfucker by Ben Morea. They were the outsider rads from the Lower East Side SDS chapter who took Columbia’s mathematics building in ‘68. Their occupation was notoriously the most militant.
We continued to put pressure on the ad hoc negotiating group to get the green light to move forward with our escalation. They rejected and rejected and rejected. They too were trying to tire us out. In a situation like this, never back down, no matter who they are. We struggled against the de-escalators relentlessly, but also fought hard for unity, because it was important to us that our militancy was not articulated as just undisciplined people “doing whatever they want.” In our minds, the only legitimate escalation was one that moved the way the resistance moved.
On April 29, we woke up to a threat of a sweep from the administration. We decided we would go through with the plan that night, no matter what. Our numbers were small — only 46 as opposed to the spontaneous ’68 occupation when hundreds flooded Hamilton. But we had been training and we were tightly organized. Better fewer, but better.
We had one comrade hide in a janitor’s closet for hours and after midnight, when the Hall was already closed, they ran down to let the rest of us into the building. At the same time, on the other side of the campus, a smaller crew staged a feint to distract and confuse public safety. While public safety was thinned out, the Hind’s Hall 46 invaded the building and the camera team immediately took care of all the security cameras.
After 9pm on 30 April, the NYPD besieged Harlem, locked down the entirety of Columbia’s campus, swept the Gaza solidarity encampment, and raided Hind’s Hall. A military-grade Bearcat was used during the raid — pigs entered the building’s second story with guns drawn, and a shot was fired. The pigs threw stun grenades at those of us defending the barricades, we were badly beaten with fists and sticks. Bones were broken, protestors were thrown down flights of stairs, and journalists were locked inside the Pulitzer building so nobody could see what the pigs did to us.
MOTHER COUNTRY RADICALS
“Have you grasped the significance of the backlash? It has stung the fascist. The people are in foment, all of them, of all persuasion. They don’t dig midnight or dawn raiding parties, bullets with steel jackets, cowardly pigs perched upon their roofs, the same gases manufactured for use against the Vietnamese Liberators blowing back into their faces: Repression. Do you see the effect it has on the uncommitted? Comrade, repression exposes. By drawing violence from the beast, the vanguard party is demonstrating for the world to examine just exactly what terms their rule is predicated on — their power to organize violence, our acquiescence.”
— Blood in My Eye, Jonathan Jackson in a letter to George Jackson
Following the raid of Hind’s Hall, the NYPD swept all the other NYC campuses in less than a week. Many liberals blamed us for the police violence, negating the fact that violence is the only language the pigs know. There was much debate and naysaying around the militancy of Hind’s Hall. A common refrain was: “Oh, all Hind’s Hall did was get people hurt and get everyone swept! And it didn’t even win divestment!”
I will settle the score now and say that a substantial portion of the partisans who took Hind’s Hall knew for a fact that the seizure of a building would not exert enough pressure to win divestment, and neither would continuing to camp on the lawn. With the threat of a sweep looming over our heads, we knew what we had to do regardless of whether it would end in an immediate win. The demand of divestment was not the sole motivating force of the action — our vision and strategy were more expansive than this. Hind’s Hall was an attempt to move outside the bounds of listing demands and into a terrain of direct confrontation with the state committing a holocaust — one of many in Amerika’s sordid history. The radical faction wanted to raise the ceiling of militancy in the movement as a whole and reveal to the world that the question of Palestinian national liberation had brought the reality of anti-imperialist class war to the heart of the metropole.
Our enemy — whose front line is the NYPD — perceives this as a violent struggle to protect their status quo at all costs, and they will use any means at their disposal to do it. And so, when enough force was exerted onto the institution, they were forced to reveal the iron fist inside their velvet glove. The tanks came rolling down Amsterdam Avenue, and the militarized pigs were deployed on the Amerikan Ivy League youth, the very people who are supposed to be training to keep this machine running.
The morning after 30 April, Rebecca Weiner — the head of NYPD counterterrorism and their “Tel Aviv” office, also a Columbia professor — spoke at a press conference about how she was responsible for orchestrating the militarized raid. Her involvement laid bare the lethal web that connects Columbia, the NYPD, and the zionist entity. It proved that Columbia is not just economically invested in imperialism — its complicity runs much deeper than mere economic transaction. Columbia also serves as its own factory of racist state violence and is home to one of its chief stewards in post-9/11 NYC.
Comrade, repression exposes.
It is the duty of the radical to sharpen contradictions, to make it impossible to deny the contours of our situation, to expose the violent machinations of the imperial state in all of its brutal intensity, and to do it here, in the guts of Babylon. The struggle being waged by the resistance in the periphery is existential. It is a war for the future of humanity itself. Our resistance here in the core is an extension of that struggle, no matter how small or relatively underdeveloped it is. And it is to the Palestinian resistance that we owe our ability to mobilize here in a way unseen since the anti-imperialist movement of the late 1960s.
Hind’s Hall and the contradictions it exposed were registered by the masses in Yemen, who have shown us all what solidarity looks like through their unwavering, militant fidelity to the people of Gaza. At a weekly million-person popular demonstration in Sanaa, they held massive banners with images of the liberation of Hind’s Hall and the NYPD tanks on Amsterdam Avenue. Written on one of these Yemeni banners was a quote from Che Guevara: “If you tremble with indignation at every injustice, then you are a comrade of mine.”
Source: Unity of Fields
#alAqsaFlood #Columbia #counterinsurgency #Encampements #hindsHall #northAmerica #nyc #NYPD #palestineSolidarity #students
-
“The concentration of violent power in the hands of the few can occur unopposed if it is done quietly, if unnecessary provocation, which can set a process of solidarity in motion, is avoided—that is something that was learned as a result of the student movement and the Paris May.”
— The Urban Guerilla Concept, The Red Army Faction 1971
On 30 April 2024 — the 56th anniversary of the 1968 Columbia University mass arrests — the New York Pig Department besieged Harlem, locked down the entirety of Columbia’s campus, swept the Gaza solidarity encampment, and raided Hind’s Hall. This raid marked the end of the spring of the Student Intifada. Those of us who were at the barricades are still reeling from the experience. There are few moments in our lives where history opens its doors to us. Taking the leap through is disorienting, but the responsibility to make sense of this conjuncture falls squarely on those who take the leap.
Journalists and pundits have chimed in endlessly on the Student Intifada with a particular focus on Columbia University. Many of these pundits were nowhere near the action nor the partisans who made the action happen, thus they often get the basic facts of the action wrong. As one rebel once advised, “No investigation, no right to speak.” Additionally, the political orientation of the commentariat necessitated the silencing and erasure of the most radical flank of the movement. This flank played a vital role in not only the uprising at Columbia, but in the direction of the movement nationally. This essay is an attempt to both correct the record and offer up some political perspectives from a segment of this radical flank.
The next sequence of the Student Intifada remains elusive but it is important that interventions are made to push the movement in the correct direction. A minority with the correct revolutionary line is not a minority.
ARE WE REALLY PEACEFUL? WHO’S AFRAID OF OUTSIDE AGITATORS?
In the 13 days of protest on Butler Lawn, there was a pernicious narrative peddled by both sympathetic media and liberal student leadership: the narrative of the “peaceful protestors”. While this characterization was pushed by a portion of the encampment, it is not the whole story, and it is certainly not true of the minority group inside the camp who were essential to the initiation of the Student Intifada, and maintained influence over the politics and praxis of the protest until the sweep and raid.
Nonetheless, every official statement coming out of the encampment was padded with language about how peaceful, well-behaved, and non-threatening the action was. Those on the outside could have been tricked into thinking that we were all just a bunch of hippies braiding friendship bracelets in the grass.
There was a near-constant gesturing towards our right to peaceful assembly as citizens of the United States, paired with an incessant fear-mongering around the minority faction’s uncompromising support for armed resistance. This resulted in a de facto pacifist position that attempted to smother out the reality of what brought us to the lawn in the first place — a third world people’s war for national liberation — while also placing a ceiling on acceptable forms of action. To erase the armed resistance of Palestinians, which is supported by the entire Axis of Resistance, is to remove their world-making agency and reduce them to objects of pity. All this does is grease the wheels of the status quo and allow our rulers to continue the military and political targeting of the Axis without any internal dissent.
Any recourse to legality or peace was meant to win over moderates who belly ache over the sanctity of our “democracy” — the same “democracy” beheading infants in the tent camps of Rafah. These moderates are not our friends and many of them have gone back to their regularly scheduled programming after the installment of Kopmala as the Democratic presidential nominee. It is true that a portion of them have been won over to our side, and more will come as contradictions sharpen, but we do not tail the moderate line or play by their rules. This holds especially true when the moderate line throws militant factions under the bus, isolating us from the rest of the movement and exposing us to more repression from the genocidal state that everyone claims to be in opposition to.
There is a belief that these liberalizing rhetorical and strategic compromises, compromises that are fundamentally divisive and neutralizing, keep everyone safe.
Maybe we will protect ourselves if we speak the language of law-abiding pacifism and hide the radical faction from sight.
In practice, these compromises offered us no safety. The armed agents of the state viewed everyone on Butler Lawn as enemies in a war against their genocidal authority. In many ways, they were correct to view us as such. The collective demand for divestment from zionism undermines US hegemony and its military apparatus. There is nothing peaceful about this demand — regardless of how hard we try to contort ourselves in the name of respectability, or what tactics individuals choose to participate in. It is of no benefit to anyone to lie about the terrain on which we are fighting by papering over the stakes with flowery language. The enemy has a clear understanding of what they would lose if we were to win, so what’s our excuse? None of this is intended to promote recklessness, but our analysis must be unflinching in order to meet this moment. To be as radical as reality itself requires both discipline and fearlessness.
It should go without saying that many of the details and the planning of our work require an element of secrecy because of the nature of surveillance under the bourgeois-settler dictatorship. Not all work is done in the light of day, but we should never be dishonest about the content of our politics and what it would take to really win — both with the masses and ourselves. The reality of the matter is that we are engaged in class struggle against the most powerful empire in human history. The radical partisans in the encampment understood fully that our aims can only be attained through force and that these aims are righteous. This understanding is not shameful or reckless. It is a matter of fact.
The emphasis placed on how allegedly docile the protest was played right into the hands of the outside agitator trope that was pushed by racist commentators. Anyone perceived as “non-peaceful” was classified as a foreign threat to the pristine Ivy League finishing school. The more uncompromising edge within the encampment — comprised of students, alumni, faculty and non-students alike — were framed as unhinged “terrorists” who invaded the protest and brainwashed the otherwise “peaceful and good” student activists.
This division, that carries with it racial and class dimensions, is proving itself to be an essential component of the opposition’s strategy for crushing the movement. It became central to the criminal cases of the Hind’s Hall defendants. Students and affiliates had their cases immediately dropped and non-students were dragged through a months-long court and ACD process which included a state mandated “rapid reset program” led by a zionist organization, during which we were subjected to hours of racist drivel about the israeli right to unlimited genocide and the Palestinian right to die quietly.
This line of demarcation was also trotted out by none other than the premier raging war hawk, Hillary Clinton, who went as far as claiming that the “nefarious outsiders” were funded by foreign entities. On 22 September she went live with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria to speak about the Student Intifada and said, “There were already existing groups within our country and particularly on certain campuses, like Columbia, who had talking points. They had a plan for protest and disruption, and I watched it morph into something that was not student-led…There was something else going on here that was very troubling. We now have evidence of, obviously foreign money, foreign influence, the algorithms on TikTok which were anti-Israel right off the bat.”
Here, Clinton lays out a piece of the opposition’s long-term strategy for repression and counterinsurgency — manufacturing conspiracies alleging direct ties to state-designated foreign “terrorist” organizations (FTOs). These conspiratorial fictions can serve a multitude of functions, and fully unpacking them all is outside the scope of this piece, but for our purposes, two of these functions are immediately important: they lay the groundwork for lawfare in the form of material support for terrorism (MST) lawsuits and they manufacture consent for lethal violence against the movement in the core. In the case of the former, most of these lawsuits won’t stick, but this isn’t necessarily the point — the point is to demobilize the sector of the movement that poses the most danger to the status quo, and to make pariahs out of the factions within it who insist on the necessity of militant resistance against empire, both in the core and the periphery. The aim here is to criminalize solidarity with the resistance forces at the vanguard of anti-colonial class struggle, and to instill fear in the movement to deter necessary support for these resistance forces, while isolating the radical edge that is eager to escalate.
In the case of the latter, the US government and the zionist entity have spent the past year committing countless massacres against an entire people under the pretense of their ties to these resistance organizations that are designated by the west as “terrorists.” The US-zionist genocide of Gaza is a mass counter-insurgency campaign that seeks to destroy the popular cradle of resistance, the terrorist designation creates the state of exception that makes this mass slaughter acceptable. Our enemy is champing at the bit to apply this state of exception to dissidents in the core, and they are building dozens of cop cities across the country to make good on cracking down on domestic “terror”. As our struggle here intensifies and internationalist solidarity grows, they will not hesitate to put a bullet in any one of us, and they are laying the groundwork to do this with as much support from the backward Amerikan public as possible.
None of this should lead to compromises or demobilization, as it is but a fraction of what Palestinians in Gaza are enduring, but it is also perfectly natural to feel fear in the face of these realities. That said, fear cannot take the wheel. We have a historical duty to continue to throw our bodies on the gears of the imperial machinery. Those who are not able to do so themselves cannot waver in their solidarity with those who continue to do what must be done.
In the face of the opposition’s attempts to divide our movement between the good ones and the bad ones, between the peaceful insiders and the nefarious outside agitators, it is imperative that we are steadfast in rejecting these distinctions wholesale — no matter what level of activity an individual or organization participates in. This necessarily entails rejecting the colonizer’s language of peace and replacing it with the language of liberation. Fascism is here, alive and well, growing stronger by the minute. That said, this cannot be a peace movement, and if we are to fight and survive, it is high time we reckon with that.
A NEW FRONT, THE ARROW AND THE BULLSEYE
“I envy you. You North Americans are very lucky. You are fighting the most important fight of all. You live in the belly of the beast.”
— Che Guevara
Based off the 0.66% of Columbia’s investments that are publicly available, we know that it grew its 13.6-billion-dollar endowment in part through investing in corporations like Raytheon, Alphabet, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Caterpillar, General Dynamics and Airbnb, all of which deal in the business of colonial genocide and land theft. If this is what less than 1% of their investment portfolio looks like, we could safely assume that the other 99.34% would reveal just how economically and culturally bound up the university is in not only the apocalyptic zionist war on Gaza, but the plunder of the entire global south. There is a reason why the university is hellbent on refusing the demand to disclose all their portfolio, and it is not because they have nothing to hide.
The demand for Columbia to divest from zionism is, when understood in its totality, a call for the university to divest from imperialism altogether, which is why the police siege on Hind’s Hall was so violent and militarized. They ordered a standing army to attack us not because they are simply mean or irrational, but because this demand, and our willingness to exert force on them to obtain it, undermines the foundation of the institution itself. Divestment is a feasible reform and display of symbolic solidarity at a handful of small liberal arts colleges with less of a monetary and ideological investment in the US empire, but divestment from zionism at Columbia or any of the major universities would necessitate the total restructuring of these institutions and the entire university system.
Calling on Columbia University, a war-profiteering Ivy League, to divest from the zionist project forces them into a position that reveals the institution’s deeply embedded relationship with the global imperialist order and throws it into crisis. There is a revolutionary orientation here couched in a seemingly reformist demand. To pursue this political objective, one that is worthy of every ounce of our effort and tenacity, we would need to expand our political horizon from one of mere institutional reform to one of revolutionary upheaval.
Columbia University is an elite socio-cultural appendage of the US and its war machine. There is no reason to believe that the university has the ethical capacity to bend towards “justice” on the issue of genocidal zionism, even if only to save face. As an apparatus of the empire, the university answers to only two things: capital and organized force from below, most of which is classified as violent and illegal by settler-colonial legality. This was on full display when the Amerikan soft power media complex went into propaganda overdrive to condemn the seizure of Hamilton Hall as an act of violent escalation, even though no humans were injured during the action. What was violent for them was the window bashing and property destruction. For the enemy, property is sacrosanct — to destroy it or to violate their property relations is tantamount to committing acts of violence on the settler class.
When understood in its proper context within the US, legal action has limitations that we cannot respect without condemning ourselves to defeat. Above board action that appeals to the state’s morality is incapable of stopping a 13.6-billion-dollar war profiteering endowment in its tracks. This is to say nothing of the fact that the state will continue to ruthlessly criminalize and repress the movement, and, as this happens, more and more forms of action that were once considered above board will now be pushed into realms of extra-legality. I am not suggesting that everyone must participate in all levels of activity at this time, but the fetishization of legality is a direct impediment to victory and, indeed, being effective in any capacity.
If the radical flank of the Student Intifada is to advance to the level of struggle that is necessary to win, there will need to be a profound shift in our cultural values and how those values relate to our strategy and tactics. In other words, a cultural revolution is in order, and the changes that are required of us will throw a wrench in the gears of our own subjectivity. If our demand is that the universities divest from the US empire, then we must also divest from the lies that they sell us.
Too much of the work being done in the NGO-ified Left is predicated on the hyper-visibility and commodification of the individual: activist as influencer as brand. Of all the masters of this form, AOC is the most famous and repugnant by a long shot, but this problem permeates even the most radical spaces. It is intimately connected to the petit-bourgeois class position of most US leftists, who are bred into a striver ideology where everyone is an entrepreneur of the self, and every personality quirk is a small business opportunity. More than anything, all of this individualism is a serious liability and should be left behind. It exposes us to heightened surveillance, risk of doxxing, network mapping, and repression from the extremely powerful police state that we are trying to dismantle.
This isn’t to say that we shouldn’t have public-facing leaders — our movement needs leaders with charisma who can present radical ideas to the masses and agitate them into organization. But this leadership and public-facing work must be cultivated and disciplined through revolutionary organization — not through the knee-jerk individualism that is a direct impediment to collective action. The task for many of us is to become comfortable with being one of the many — swimming amongst the people like fish in the sea. Not to burrow under, not yet, but to blend — to hide in plain sight. This task runs contrary to every habit instilled and beaten into us, to every financial incentive associated with the liberal left. It problematizes our use of social media — where unfortunately much of the left idles along and runs their mouths — and the impulse to share obsessively. The cult of online hyper-visibility is a powerful tool in the hands of the repressive forces of the state, who use these platforms as sites of extraction and surveillance. Imagine every tweet is talking directly into the recording device of your enemy — is it really worth it? Will how much you’re revealing to your enemy jeopardize the real work and your ability to carry it out?
A shift away from this individualism, which is ultimately linked to professional aspiration, will change how we approach organizing altogether. The fact of the matter is that we do not yet have the organizational capacity to sustain long-term militancy, and the default liberal self-centeredness instilled in us as youth in the core is a massive impediment to building out that capacity. If we want to escalate, we must advance on the level of organization, which will require us to rewire the way we have been choreographed to approach this work. If we want our engagement with high-risk activity to shift away from spectacular one-off actions and into sustained, protracted resistance, then we need clandestine cadre formations, infrastructure to sustain them, discipline and commitment. This will require us to give up the trappings of “the good life” and release any ideas of this work being a career option.
The Gaza solidarity encampment opened up the space and time needed to experiment with this cultural transformation, and it led us to the discipline required to seize Hamilton Hall with only 46 people.
THE ENCAMPMENT AND THE SEIZURE OF HAMILTON HALL
The campus was on strict lockdown with 24/7 NYPD presence surrounding the campus and 24/7 public safety presence inside of the gates. Anyone without a CUID couldn’t enter or exit. There were no sex, drugs, or alcohol allowed in the camp, and no taking photos without each other’s consent. We were encouraged to cover our faces. During the daytime, comrades on the outside would print out and smuggle in boxes of radical literature from different encampments and movements across the world — students who had never heard of the Cal Poly Humboldt occupation or Stop Cop City or Basel Al-Araj from Al-Walaja were suddenly saturated in their politics. The radical partisans took control of political education. Teach-ins about the revolutionary struggle of the Korean people, the PFLP and Leila Khaled, the global uprisings of ‘68, and how to build barricades took place in between calls to prayer.
Day in and day out, the administration dragged representatives from the camp into hours-long negotiating meetings where they would give them the runaround and offer breadcrumb concessions to pacify the unruly mass festering on their lawn. The representatives would then go back to a very small, unelected, group of students in the camp to relay the news and strategize. This ad hoc group attempted to dictate the will of the entire encampment with very little accountability to anyone outside of their circle.
It became clear that Columbia was trying to tire us out and buy us off. Escalation was the word on everyone’s minds, and this was met with fear-mongering from the negotiating group. They were scared that if we rubbed university authorities the wrong way, it would cause them to give us a bad deal in negotiations — as if Shafik and Co. were ever coming to the table in good faith anyway. Out of either naïveté or opportunism, they seemed to believe that a demand as audacious as full divestment from zionism could be won through conversations with power and peaceful means alone.
The encampment was not threatening enough on its own to force divestment from the administration, but after the first round of mass arrests and subsequent backlash from the broader public, the university wasn’t ready to come in with a second raid. We were at a stalemate. The radical partisans began to meet in secrecy across the campus. In hidden corners and blindspots, away from the view of cameras and cops. The plan: seize Hamilton Hall. Just like ’68, except this time, our operation would be surgical and planned down to the minute. We would not be spontaneous; we would be disciplined cadre.
Negotiations continued to go nowhere but some members of the negotiating group thought otherwise. Regardless, this process was massively politicizing for less experienced students who still had faith in the ethical integrity of Columbia. It sharpened the contradictions between the more advanced cadre and liberals in the camp, and it bought us time to agitate, educate, and train.
Columbia attempted to fake us out with a loose threat to call in the National Guard. Choppers swarmed overhead but we didn’t move an inch that night. On multiple occasions, false alarms about imminent police raids spread through the camp. The experienced rads advised that everyone remain calm. Nobody flinched.
At the nightly camp-wide meetings, young students demanded transparency and accountability about the negotiation process. We were dissatisfied with what we all understood as attempts at containment from the administration and the clique negotiating on everyone’s behalf behind closed doors. The radical partisans continued to plan. We smuggled in barricading supplies under the noses of the pigs guarding the campus entrances. Crow bars, chains, angle grinders, bolt cutters, hammers, bike locks, ratchet straps, duct tape, epoxy, zip ties. We smuggled in 50 extra tents in under an hour. As time wore on, the entire encampment’s culture shifted away from one of compromise and negotiation to one of resolve and militancy. Groups of inexperienced protestors got curious about the possibility of taking a building. We started gathering our numbers inside the camp. When a Barnard grad announced that we needed to break open the gates and let all of Harlem inside, she was promptly recruited.
The partisans decided we would all wear head-to-toe Columbia merchandise and ski masks as our black bloc. The CU merch was a big “fuck you” from the outside agitators. In the days leading up to the action, we did multiple undercover passes of Hamilton Hall’s inside and the tunnel system that runs beneath it. Every camera was accounted for, every door drawn out, every floor of the building mapped with an inventory of exact numbers of useable furniture items for barricades. My comrade smuggled me a copy of the selected writings of Black Mask and Up Against the Wall Motherfucker by Ben Morea. They were the outsider rads from the Lower East Side SDS chapter who took Columbia’s mathematics building in ‘68. Their occupation was notoriously the most militant.
We continued to put pressure on the ad hoc negotiating group to get the green light to move forward with our escalation. They rejected and rejected and rejected. They too were trying to tire us out. In a situation like this, never back down, no matter who they are. We struggled against the de-escalators relentlessly, but also fought hard for unity, because it was important to us that our militancy was not articulated as just undisciplined people “doing whatever they want.” In our minds, the only legitimate escalation was one that moved the way the resistance moved.
On April 29, we woke up to a threat of a sweep from the administration. We decided we would go through with the plan that night, no matter what. Our numbers were small — only 46 as opposed to the spontaneous ’68 occupation when hundreds flooded Hamilton. But we had been training and we were tightly organized. Better fewer, but better.
We had one comrade hide in a janitor’s closet for hours and after midnight, when the Hall was already closed, they ran down to let the rest of us into the building. At the same time, on the other side of the campus, a smaller crew staged a feint to distract and confuse public safety. While public safety was thinned out, the Hind’s Hall 46 invaded the building and the camera team immediately took care of all the security cameras.
After 9pm on 30 April, the NYPD besieged Harlem, locked down the entirety of Columbia’s campus, swept the Gaza solidarity encampment, and raided Hind’s Hall. A military-grade Bearcat was used during the raid — pigs entered the building’s second story with guns drawn, and a shot was fired. The pigs threw stun grenades at those of us defending the barricades, we were badly beaten with fists and sticks. Bones were broken, protestors were thrown down flights of stairs, and journalists were locked inside the Pulitzer building so nobody could see what the pigs did to us.
MOTHER COUNTRY RADICALS
“Have you grasped the significance of the backlash? It has stung the fascist. The people are in foment, all of them, of all persuasion. They don’t dig midnight or dawn raiding parties, bullets with steel jackets, cowardly pigs perched upon their roofs, the same gases manufactured for use against the Vietnamese Liberators blowing back into their faces: Repression. Do you see the effect it has on the uncommitted? Comrade, repression exposes. By drawing violence from the beast, the vanguard party is demonstrating for the world to examine just exactly what terms their rule is predicated on — their power to organize violence, our acquiescence.”
— Blood in My Eye, Jonathan Jackson in a letter to George Jackson
Following the raid of Hind’s Hall, the NYPD swept all the other NYC campuses in less than a week. Many liberals blamed us for the police violence, negating the fact that violence is the only language the pigs know. There was much debate and naysaying around the militancy of Hind’s Hall. A common refrain was: “Oh, all Hind’s Hall did was get people hurt and get everyone swept! And it didn’t even win divestment!”
I will settle the score now and say that a substantial portion of the partisans who took Hind’s Hall knew for a fact that the seizure of a building would not exert enough pressure to win divestment, and neither would continuing to camp on the lawn. With the threat of a sweep looming over our heads, we knew what we had to do regardless of whether it would end in an immediate win. The demand of divestment was not the sole motivating force of the action — our vision and strategy were more expansive than this. Hind’s Hall was an attempt to move outside the bounds of listing demands and into a terrain of direct confrontation with the state committing a holocaust — one of many in Amerika’s sordid history. The radical faction wanted to raise the ceiling of militancy in the movement as a whole and reveal to the world that the question of Palestinian national liberation had brought the reality of anti-imperialist class war to the heart of the metropole.
Our enemy — whose front line is the NYPD — perceives this as a violent struggle to protect their status quo at all costs, and they will use any means at their disposal to do it. And so, when enough force was exerted onto the institution, they were forced to reveal the iron fist inside their velvet glove. The tanks came rolling down Amsterdam Avenue, and the militarized pigs were deployed on the Amerikan Ivy League youth, the very people who are supposed to be training to keep this machine running.
The morning after 30 April, Rebecca Weiner — the head of NYPD counterterrorism and their “Tel Aviv” office, also a Columbia professor — spoke at a press conference about how she was responsible for orchestrating the militarized raid. Her involvement laid bare the lethal web that connects Columbia, the NYPD, and the zionist entity. It proved that Columbia is not just economically invested in imperialism — its complicity runs much deeper than mere economic transaction. Columbia also serves as its own factory of racist state violence and is home to one of its chief stewards in post-9/11 NYC.
Comrade, repression exposes.
It is the duty of the radical to sharpen contradictions, to make it impossible to deny the contours of our situation, to expose the violent machinations of the imperial state in all of its brutal intensity, and to do it here, in the guts of Babylon. The struggle being waged by the resistance in the periphery is existential. It is a war for the future of humanity itself. Our resistance here in the core is an extension of that struggle, no matter how small or relatively underdeveloped it is. And it is to the Palestinian resistance that we owe our ability to mobilize here in a way unseen since the anti-imperialist movement of the late 1960s.
Hind’s Hall and the contradictions it exposed were registered by the masses in Yemen, who have shown us all what solidarity looks like through their unwavering, militant fidelity to the people of Gaza. At a weekly million-person popular demonstration in Sanaa, they held massive banners with images of the liberation of Hind’s Hall and the NYPD tanks on Amsterdam Avenue. Written on one of these Yemeni banners was a quote from Che Guevara: “If you tremble with indignation at every injustice, then you are a comrade of mine.”
Source: Unity of Fields
#alAqsaFlood #Columbia #counterinsurgency #Encampements #hindsHall #northAmerica #nyc #NYPD #palestineSolidarity #students
-
Monolith – Lord of the Insect Order Review
By Dear Hollow
Monolith is the herald of Earth’s new overlords: the insect swarm. Insects outnumber humans an estimated 1.8 billion to 1, so it was only a matter of time Once united by a hive mind, the planet doesn’t stand a chance. The twist though is that the master race, the Lord of the Insect Order, so to speak, is giant space caterpillars. While Monolith’s first 2024 release Hornets Nest focused on the general depravity of the human condition, Lord of the Insect Order brings the B-movies and pulp. It’s War of the Worlds but with bugs, and you should be afraid, very afraid. In a tidy thirty-two minutes, Monolith takes us on a journey into humanity’s insignificance at the hands of insectoid overlords.
Their 2020 sophomore effort No Saints No Solace was received poorly by the illustrious Saunders but things have changed: Monolith’s got range.1 2024’s Hornets Nest was a foray into untouched territory, as the typically deathcore quartet dove headlong into crusty blackened hardcore that felt like Black Breath, This Gift is a Curse, and Nails got together for a brunch of tar and rusty wrenches—in perhaps one of the most surprisingly solid forays into unfamiliar territory. Lord of the Insect Order is back to its deathcore roots, but experimentation is still a heavy emphasis for this English quartet (from Devon and Cornwall). The first half creates more doom-oriented menace, a bit of The Acacia Strain sans hardcore scrappiness, while the second dives back into the Boris the Blade and Aversions Crown breakdowns-and-blastbeats bread-and-butter you expect from deathcore. Ultimately, thanks to tasteful length, emphasis on relentless beatdown, and never taking itself too seriously, Monolith towers with its cosmic caterpillars.
Truthfully, I’m not sure why more deathcore doesn’t dive into death/doom, because as The Acacia Strain’s Failure Will Follow taught us, the knuckle-dragging crunch fits like a glove into slow-motion pummeling. As such, the first act’s offerings like “Swarm’s Offering” and “Progeny Feast” slow things down to a menacing crawl that doesn’t necessarily forsake its breakdowns and down-tuned noodling, but weaponizes them alongside absolutely vicious vocals and haunting synths. Atmosphere shines most prominently in this half, with the yearning instrumental title track and lamenting “Planetary Hardening” offering synth-infected dirges that reflect upon the ruined landscape and eradicated race. The second act, ripped into creation with “Eclosion; Rise of the Imago Predator,” attacks with relentless brutality that recalls tempo-abusing interpretations like Aversions Crown or Osiah. The common thread of the yearning atmosphere infects “Parasitic Accession” and “Lonomia Pestilence” like a last tragic gasp before being wholly consumed – by a cosmic caterpillar. Neatly, these two sounds do not contradict, as Monolith’s viciousness is only highlighted by its ambiance. It concludes with the most bombastic track, “Unfurling of the Cosmic Caterpillar,” which borrows slightly from the doom palette for a song as epic as it is punishing—a suitable ending to an insane album.
While the differences between the two acts lend themselves to inconsistency, Monolith’s seamlessness between them and the natural resulting crescendo works like the plotline of an engaging story benefited by the influence of B-movie schlock. That being said, for thirty-two minutes, there are a few filler moments. Album intro “IRAS; Larval Comet” and “Holometabolism” do a solid job adhering to the album’s killer cosmic caterpillar theme and establishing the atmosphere in ways that reflect Aegaeon or early Kardashev. However, with such a short runtime Monolith would do well to trim the excess; the first half in particular could do with some more fleshing and breadth, as the three 3-5 minute doom tracks leave me wanting more. The second half, in particular, will not sway deathcore naysayers, as its emphasis on excess and constant breakdowns is never subtle. While Monolith’s theme is lighthearted, recalling the antics of A Breath Before Surfacing, their skill and brutality are certainly forces to be reckoned with.
Monolith’s second 2024 full-length benefits from its frivolous B-movie influence and willingness to experiment. While I’d like to see more of the deathcore-gone-doom vibe, the second half is tight and uncompromising, the first is epic and formidable, and the atmosphere is a breath of fresh air amid the swarming instruments. Monolith’s range cannot be overstated, because Hornets Nest feels like a completely different beast but was equally formidable. Lord of the Insect Order flies by, will get your toe tapping and resurrect your fears of giant cosmic caterpillars overthrowing life as we know it.
Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Self-Released
Website: facebook.com/monolithuk | bandmonolith.bandcamp.com
Releases Worldwide: August 23rd, 2024#2024 #30 #ABreathBeforeSurfacing #Aegaeon #AtmosphericDeathMetal #Aug24 #AversionsCrown #BlackBreath #BorisTheBlade #DeathMetal #DeathDoomMetal #Deathcore #DoomMetal #EnglishMetal #Kardashev #LordOfTheInsectOrder #Monolith #Nails #Osiah #Review #Reviews #SelfRelease #TheAcaciaStrain #ThisGiftIsACurse
-
Monolith – Lord of the Insect Order Review
By Dear Hollow
Monolith is the herald of Earth’s new overlords: the insect swarm. Insects outnumber humans an estimated 1.8 billion to 1, so it was only a matter of time Once united by a hive mind, the planet doesn’t stand a chance. The twist though is that the master race, the Lord of the Insect Order, so to speak, is giant space caterpillars. While Monolith’s first 2024 release Hornets Nest focused on the general depravity of the human condition, Lord of the Insect Order brings the B-movies and pulp. It’s War of the Worlds but with bugs, and you should be afraid, very afraid. In a tidy thirty-two minutes, Monolith takes us on a journey into humanity’s insignificance at the hands of insectoid overlords.
Their 2020 sophomore effort No Saints No Solace was received poorly by the illustrious Saunders but things have changed: Monolith’s got range.1 2024’s Hornets Nest was a foray into untouched territory, as the typically deathcore quartet dove headlong into crusty blackened hardcore that felt like Black Breath, This Gift is a Curse, and Nails got together for a brunch of tar and rusty wrenches—in perhaps one of the most surprisingly solid forays into unfamiliar territory. Lord of the Insect Order is back to its deathcore roots, but experimentation is still a heavy emphasis for this English quartet (from Devon and Cornwall). The first half creates more doom-oriented menace, a bit of The Acacia Strain sans hardcore scrappiness, while the second dives back into the Boris the Blade and Aversions Crown breakdowns-and-blastbeats bread-and-butter you expect from deathcore. Ultimately, thanks to tasteful length, emphasis on relentless beatdown, and never taking itself too seriously, Monolith towers with its cosmic caterpillars.
Truthfully, I’m not sure why more deathcore doesn’t dive into death/doom, because as The Acacia Strain’s Failure Will Follow taught us, the knuckle-dragging crunch fits like a glove into slow-motion pummeling. As such, the first act’s offerings like “Swarm’s Offering” and “Progeny Feast” slow things down to a menacing crawl that doesn’t necessarily forsake its breakdowns and down-tuned noodling, but weaponizes them alongside absolutely vicious vocals and haunting synths. Atmosphere shines most prominently in this half, with the yearning instrumental title track and lamenting “Planetary Hardening” offering synth-infected dirges that reflect upon the ruined landscape and eradicated race. The second act, ripped into creation with “Eclosion; Rise of the Imago Predator,” attacks with relentless brutality that recalls tempo-abusing interpretations like Aversions Crown or Osiah. The common thread of the yearning atmosphere infects “Parasitic Accession” and “Lonomia Pestilence” like a last tragic gasp before being wholly consumed – by a cosmic caterpillar. Neatly, these two sounds do not contradict, as Monolith’s viciousness is only highlighted by its ambiance. It concludes with the most bombastic track, “Unfurling of the Cosmic Caterpillar,” which borrows slightly from the doom palette for a song as epic as it is punishing—a suitable ending to an insane album.
While the differences between the two acts lend themselves to inconsistency, Monolith’s seamlessness between them and the natural resulting crescendo works like the plotline of an engaging story benefited by the influence of B-movie schlock. That being said, for thirty-two minutes, there are a few filler moments. Album intro “IRAS; Larval Comet” and “Holometabolism” do a solid job adhering to the album’s killer cosmic caterpillar theme and establishing the atmosphere in ways that reflect Aegaeon or early Kardashev. However, with such a short runtime Monolith would do well to trim the excess; the first half in particular could do with some more fleshing and breadth, as the three 3-5 minute doom tracks leave me wanting more. The second half, in particular, will not sway deathcore naysayers, as its emphasis on excess and constant breakdowns is never subtle. While Monolith’s theme is lighthearted, recalling the antics of A Breath Before Surfacing, their skill and brutality are certainly forces to be reckoned with.
Monolith’s second 2024 full-length benefits from its frivolous B-movie influence and willingness to experiment. While I’d like to see more of the deathcore-gone-doom vibe, the second half is tight and uncompromising, the first is epic and formidable, and the atmosphere is a breath of fresh air amid the swarming instruments. Monolith’s range cannot be overstated, because Hornets Nest feels like a completely different beast but was equally formidable. Lord of the Insect Order flies by, will get your toe tapping and resurrect your fears of giant cosmic caterpillars overthrowing life as we know it.
Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Self-Released
Website: facebook.com/monolithuk | bandmonolith.bandcamp.com
Releases Worldwide: August 23rd, 2024#2024 #30 #ABreathBeforeSurfacing #Aegaeon #AtmosphericDeathMetal #Aug24 #AversionsCrown #BlackBreath #BorisTheBlade #DeathMetal #DeathDoomMetal #Deathcore #DoomMetal #EnglishMetal #Kardashev #LordOfTheInsectOrder #Monolith #Nails #Osiah #Review #Reviews #SelfRelease #TheAcaciaStrain #ThisGiftIsACurse
-
Monolith – Lord of the Insect Order Review
By Dear Hollow
Monolith is the herald of Earth’s new overlords: the insect swarm. Insects outnumber humans an estimated 1.8 billion to 1, so it was only a matter of time Once united by a hive mind, the planet doesn’t stand a chance. The twist though is that the master race, the Lord of the Insect Order, so to speak, is giant space caterpillars. While Monolith’s first 2024 release Hornets Nest focused on the general depravity of the human condition, Lord of the Insect Order brings the B-movies and pulp. It’s War of the Worlds but with bugs, and you should be afraid, very afraid. In a tidy thirty-two minutes, Monolith takes us on a journey into humanity’s insignificance at the hands of insectoid overlords.
Their 2020 sophomore effort No Saints No Solace was received poorly by the illustrious Saunders but things have changed: Monolith’s got range.1 2024’s Hornets Nest was a foray into untouched territory, as the typically deathcore quartet dove headlong into crusty blackened hardcore that felt like Black Breath, This Gift is a Curse, and Nails got together for a brunch of tar and rusty wrenches—in perhaps one of the most surprisingly solid forays into unfamiliar territory. Lord of the Insect Order is back to its deathcore roots, but experimentation is still a heavy emphasis for this English quartet (from Devon and Cornwall). The first half creates more doom-oriented menace, a bit of The Acacia Strain sans hardcore scrappiness, while the second dives back into the Boris the Blade and Aversions Crown breakdowns-and-blastbeats bread-and-butter you expect from deathcore. Ultimately, thanks to tasteful length, emphasis on relentless beatdown, and never taking itself too seriously, Monolith towers with its cosmic caterpillars.
Truthfully, I’m not sure why more deathcore doesn’t dive into death/doom, because as The Acacia Strain’s Failure Will Follow taught us, the knuckle-dragging crunch fits like a glove into slow-motion pummeling. As such, the first act’s offerings like “Swarm’s Offering” and “Progeny Feast” slow things down to a menacing crawl that doesn’t necessarily forsake its breakdowns and down-tuned noodling, but weaponizes them alongside absolutely vicious vocals and haunting synths. Atmosphere shines most prominently in this half, with the yearning instrumental title track and lamenting “Planetary Hardening” offering synth-infected dirges that reflect upon the ruined landscape and eradicated race. The second act, ripped into creation with “Eclosion; Rise of the Imago Predator,” attacks with relentless brutality that recalls tempo-abusing interpretations like Aversions Crown or Osiah. The common thread of the yearning atmosphere infects “Parasitic Accession” and “Lonomia Pestilence” like a last tragic gasp before being wholly consumed – by a cosmic caterpillar. Neatly, these two sounds do not contradict, as Monolith’s viciousness is only highlighted by its ambiance. It concludes with the most bombastic track, “Unfurling of the Cosmic Caterpillar,” which borrows slightly from the doom palette for a song as epic as it is punishing—a suitable ending to an insane album.
While the differences between the two acts lend themselves to inconsistency, Monolith’s seamlessness between them and the natural resulting crescendo works like the plotline of an engaging story benefited by the influence of B-movie schlock. That being said, for thirty-two minutes, there are a few filler moments. Album intro “IRAS; Larval Comet” and “Holometabolism” do a solid job adhering to the album’s killer cosmic caterpillar theme and establishing the atmosphere in ways that reflect Aegaeon or early Kardashev. However, with such a short runtime Monolith would do well to trim the excess; the first half in particular could do with some more fleshing and breadth, as the three 3-5 minute doom tracks leave me wanting more. The second half, in particular, will not sway deathcore naysayers, as its emphasis on excess and constant breakdowns is never subtle. While Monolith’s theme is lighthearted, recalling the antics of A Breath Before Surfacing, their skill and brutality are certainly forces to be reckoned with.
Monolith’s second 2024 full-length benefits from its frivolous B-movie influence and willingness to experiment. While I’d like to see more of the deathcore-gone-doom vibe, the second half is tight and uncompromising, the first is epic and formidable, and the atmosphere is a breath of fresh air amid the swarming instruments. Monolith’s range cannot be overstated, because Hornets Nest feels like a completely different beast but was equally formidable. Lord of the Insect Order flies by, will get your toe tapping and resurrect your fears of giant cosmic caterpillars overthrowing life as we know it.
Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Self-Released
Website: facebook.com/monolithuk | bandmonolith.bandcamp.com
Releases Worldwide: August 23rd, 2024#2024 #30 #ABreathBeforeSurfacing #Aegaeon #AtmosphericDeathMetal #Aug24 #AversionsCrown #BlackBreath #BorisTheBlade #DeathMetal #DeathDoomMetal #Deathcore #DoomMetal #EnglishMetal #Kardashev #LordOfTheInsectOrder #Monolith #Nails #Osiah #Review #Reviews #SelfRelease #TheAcaciaStrain #ThisGiftIsACurse
-
The Edinburgh & Leith Atmospheric War: the thread about the fight to build an improbable and impossible railway
An initial version of this thread was written in December 2020.
In 1844, Britain was in the grip of a stock market bubble called the “railway mania”. Rival companies vied to build lines here, there and everywhere, and attracted ever increasing financial speculation. In Edinburgh, three principal schemes were converging at a central locus that would later become known as Waverley Station; the Edinburgh & Glasgow – running between those two cities – the Edinburgh, Leith & Granton – running north to a ferry terminal at Granton through the Scotland Street tunnel, with a branch to Leith – and the North British Railway – entering the city from the east and Berwick-upon-Tweed.
Railway mania reaches Edinburgh; the E&G in green, the EL&G in Yellow and the NBR in brown. Overlaid on an OS 6-inch map of the period.These railways favoured orthodox steam locomotives to provide their motive power, with occasional assistance by rope haulage for steep gradients,e.g. the Scotland Street Tunnel. However there was an exciting new technology which promised cleaner, faster and more economical railways that would be cheaper to build; the “Atmospheric Railway”.
This name does not come from them having a particularly romantic ambience, it is because they are propelled – in theory – by atmospheric pressure. In principal the scheme was simple; a slotted tube was laid between the railway tracks and every few miles there was a pumping house which exhausted the air from the pipe, creating a vacuum. A piston in the pipe was pushed along by the atmospheric pressure behind it; if you attached a train to that then you could propel it too. The trick to get it working was how to connect the train and the piston without breaking the vacuum. This required a longitudinal valve (in practice, long leather flaps) to seal the tube; a trick that nobody ever managed to pull off reliably.
The atmospheric railway system was patented in 1839 by Samuel Clegg and the Samuda brothers. They set up a demonstration of the system at Wormwood Scrubs in West London. This impressed the directors of the Dublin & Kingstown Railway in Ireland who felt it would be suitable for an extension of their line from Kingstown to Dalkey. This was a 1 3/4 mile branch and began operation on 19th August 1843. It persisted for a full 9 years until a small locomotive was brought in to do the same work. The Dalkey scheme attracted the attention of the London & Croydon Railway, who in 1844 built a short 1 1/4 mile atmospheric expansion of their mainline from London Bridge station to Bricklayers Arms. This was to try and reduce congestion on a steep section of the line with a number of stops and starts. The whole thing though was a “sad fiasco” which consumed a huge amount of capital and was terminated in 1847.
Contemporary illustration of the Saint-Germain atmospheric railway in France. Note the vacuum tube between the rails and the slot in its top, sealed (in theory) by the leather flap valves“Croydon Atmospheric Road”, from the Illustrated London News, October 11th 1845These were small schemes and most sensible railway engineers steered well clear of the obvious complexities of the system for larger scale application, but the great Isambard Kingdom Brunel was an exception. He was captivated by the promise of this modern and unconventional technology and proposed it for the 51 mile South Devon Railway, to help overcome the steep curves and gradients. The father of modern British railways, George Stephenson, denounced the idea as “a great humbug” before it even got going. Brunel’s own locomotive engineer, the eminently sensible Daniel Gooch, said he “could not understand how Mr. Brunel could be so misled. He had so much faith in his being able to improve it that he shut his eyes to the consequences of failure.” Brunel however remained convinced and the force of his reputation carried the scheme through; the South Devon opened its first atmospheric section in September 1847, at least a year later than planned. By September 1848 it was abandoned, having “rapidly disintegrated throughout its entire length“.
A surviving section of track and 15 inch vacuum tube of the South Devon atmospheric railway. CC-BY-SA 2.5 ChowellsDespite these hiccups, for a brief period from 1845-1846, the “railway mania” investment bubble was briefly joined by “atmospheric fever.” And once again, Edinburgh and Leith were in on it, with not just one but two atmospheric schemes were proposed. And not just two schemes; two in direct competition, running from the same start and end points, less than 100m apart, each backed by a considerable array of the councillors, merchants and notable figures of both the City and its port. And so commenced the brief but petulant Edinburgh and Leith Atmospheric Railway War of 1845.
The rival Edinburgh & Leith atmospheric schemes were both formed at some point in June 1845; each claimed to be the original and genuine scheme and that the other was a pretender. In one corner was the Edinburgh & Leith Atmospheric Railway (which we shall call the Atmospheric Route) and in the other was the Edinburgh & Leith Atmospheric Direct Railway (which we shall call the Direct Route.) The engineer to the former was John Miller, who designed the Almond Valley Viaduct for the Edinburgh & Glasgow Railway and also Granton Harbour. The latter had George Gunn, also a railway engineer, but one who had hitherto acted in support of another, including Miller himself.
The Atmospheric Route proposed to run a railway from a terminus in the Low Calton – with a connection to the “Waverley” stations – through the Greenside Valley, under London Road and then through the market gardens parallel to Leith Walk. It then continued around the west of Leith Links to a principal terminus near the Assembly Rooms at Constitution Street. From here, branches ran to the docks, with one possibly a small passenger terminus for the Forth ferries and the other going over (or under) the river to the wet docks. A service every ten minutes was promised.
The Direct Route originated at a station near West Register Street, with an onward connection to one or more of the “Waverley” stations. It ran underground down Leith Street, possibly with an intermediate station in the vicinity of York Place, and continued underground in a “cut and cover” tunnel a few feet below the surface to Elm Row. Here it re-surfaced to run in a semi-recessed trench down the entirety of Leith Walk, the proposal being to provide regular bridges across this road.
A drawing in the “Lighthouse” Stevenson collection showing the “Direct route” at Union Place. CC-BY NLSA drawing in the “Lighthouse” Stevenson collection showing the “Direct route” at Antigua Place. The tunnel roof was to be just 2.5 feet below the surface. CC-BY NLSWhile this proposal might seem absurd today – Leith Walk is almost end-to-end 4 storey tenements and is Scotland’s most densely populated neighbourhood by quite some margin – bear in mind that the street is all “made up ground”; it’s a former defensive feature, so easy to dig out, and that in the 1850s it was nothing like as built up as it is today. It was very lightly developed with few large or important buildings, and almost pastoral in character. It was intended to use an “inclined plane” (i.e. gravity) to provide downhill locomotion to Leith and the atmospheric principle to get back up the hill to Edinburgh. There would be two tracks but only the uphill would be powered, this would cut costs but greatly reduce operational flexibility; they did however hedge their bets and publicly did not preclude themselves from using normal steam locomotives “should they prove expedient.”
What the Leith Walk atmospheric railway of the “Direct route” might have looked like. London Illustrated News illustration of the Dalkey atmospheric railway in January 1844There two atmospheric schemes not only had each other to contend with, additional pressure placed on both by the conventional railway of the Edinburgh, Leith & Granton, – already building a line from Scotland Street to North Leith via Bonnington (yellow line on the route map below) – but were now also lodging a bill with Parliament to build an extension from Bonnington across the Water of Leith to South Leith (the pale yellow line). In November the North British Railway joined in and announced their intention to tunnel through the eastern end of the Calton Hill to get from their existing mainline at Croft-an-Righ to the top of Easter Road, down which they would run a horse-drawn tramway to a terminus in the vicinity of Queen Street (pale brown line).
Atmospheric Fever in Edinburgh; the “Atmospheric Route” in red and the “Direct Route” in cyan. The pale lines are the proposals to reach Leith by the EL&G and the NBR. Note the darker blue line of the Edinburgh & Dalkeith railway approaching Leith via Niddrie from the east. Overlaid on an OS 6-inch map of the period.The Atmospheric route got their preliminary announcement published first on October 7th 1845, a day before the Direct route. They were seeking a capitalisation of £100,000. The following day the Direct route announced they were seeking £200,000 and accused the Atmospheric route of financial impropriety by issuing considerably more shares to the public than they were actually available. The Direct route stated that they were proposing their scheme lest “the independence, usefulness and commerce of [Edinburgh & Leith] are gone forever”.
Initial invitations to purchase shares were made by both schemes in the Caledonian Mercury and Evening Courant in June 1845, but there was almost instantly a problem arose. One of the merchants listed as backing the Atmospheric Route denied any connection with it and that his name had been put against it without his knowledge. As did the stock exchange said to be dealing in the sale. As was the stock broker claimed to be acting for the railway! All three immediately took out their own personal adverts in the next days Scotsman to this effect. This pattern of disinformation and using the columns of the newspapers to fight a proxy war was one that was to continue.
Scotsman, 18th June 1845By October, both schemes were ready to issue their shares. Adverts to this effect were placed in the Edinburgh papers and also in Glasgow too (each city having its own stock exchange at this time). The Direct route was careful to point out in their advert that all other railway schemes proposed to Leith were “inutile and insufficient“. Despite the improbability of two such rival schemes, with the railway investment boom being what it was the shares of both concerns were oversubscribed. Adverts were placed in newspapers seeking to buy and surplus share and each company seemed to spread gossip that their opponent had not allocated their shares in an equitable manner. As a result, the companies had to place further adverts in the newspapers to reassure investors of the fair nature of their allocation.
A blank share certificate of the Edinburgh & Leith Atmospheric Direct RailwayAnd then the “phoney war”, hitherto conducted through the newspaper columns alone, suddenly got a lot more real. In the early hours of October 19th 1845, Sunday, a representative of the Atmospheric route pinned copies of its parliamentary notices in public on the church doors of Edinburgh & Leith (this was actually a legal requirement as a way to circulate official notices around the public – it was not until the 20th century that churches would have dedicated public notice boards for this purpose). However, when the faithful came to worship on the Sabbath later that morning, it was found that the Direct route had also been out and had replaced all the notices with their own.
Martin Luther also fixed his controversial notice to a church doorThe Atmospheric route was outraged, offering a reward of £50 if the perpetrator could be apprehended. The Direct route denied all complicity and reiterated that they were the original scheme and the opposition were “plagiarists”, out to serve not the public but only their own interests.
Reward notice offered by the Atmospheric routeThe next task for both schemes was to collect the deposit money for their shares, complete their surveys, plans and engineering proposals and prepare their bills to go before parliament for approval. While this took place, after the outrage on the Sabbath, the skirmishing returned to tit-for-tat adverts placed in the newspapers by the solicitors of each scheme. The details of this are tiresome and childish, each consistently blamed the other for forcing its hand and making it respond. On October 29th, both companies took out extensive, self-important adverts in the Scotsman in side-by-side columns in which they each reiterated the authenticity of their own schemes and attacked that of their opponent. Both besmirched each other as not acting in the interests of the travelling public and merely being moneymaking schemes for their backers. Each also claimed to be the original railway proposal and that the other was a mere copycat.
The Direct route consistently positioned itself as the “bona fide” and original scheme, thereby having the right of putting forward their bill to Parliament. It said that its rival “thereby created in the public mind a just and general dissatisfaction” and that that the criticism of their scheme had been “inveterate and persevering“. However, they were repeatedly vague about the specific details of their proposed route – beyond it just being more “direct” than the competition. The reality differed; their route was less than 50m to the west and the distance saving marginal. By choosing the route down the middle of Leith Walk – rather than the sensible parallel one of its rival through undeveloped ground – they gave themselves a far more expensive and complex construction proposition.
Neither company was prepared to back down, and both published notices proclaiming their intent to lodge a bill with Parliament. When the notices of intent were made to Parliament, the Treasurer’s Committee of the Edinburgh Town Council made it known that they would act in dissent, “inasmuch as it was proposed by these companies to take possession of the whole of the public markets beneath the North Bridge.” On November 20th, the Direct route “[had] the pleasure to inform the Shareholders” that their engineer had assured them their plans and surveys were nearing completion in order that they could be lodged with Parliament.
The sparring continued over the festive season as both companies tried to get the other to withdraw their bills. And then on January 29th 1846, in a surprise notice in the Caledonian Mercury, the Direct route threw in the towel and indicated that they agreed to give the Atmospheric route their “cordial cooperation and support”. After seven months, the war was over. Two days later it was announced that the Atmospheric route had lodged their bill with Parliament.
The surrender notice, in the Caledonian MercuryBut when the bill came to be read, the railway took the unusual action of immediately asking for more time. This was reluctantly given despite their opponents trying to use this as an excuse to have it thrown out; the Trustees of Heriot Hospital, who owned much of the land over which the railway was to run, and the competing Edinburgh, Leith & Granton having objected. The road ahead for the Atmospheric route was now clear, and with their focus back on the project and not fighting the competition, they evidently finessed their route, as the plans prepared for the bill are different from those described initially. A station has been inserted at Blenheim Place and at Duke Street, and the terminus is now at the harbour. The freight branches to the wet docks were still there, with an awkward approach over (or under) the lower drawbridge
The final route of the Edinburgh & leith Atmospheric, from Scotland’s Railway Atlas by David Spaven, from a map in the collection of the NLS.The company pressed on, but despite its triumph in the “Atmospheric war”, all was not well. Over Christmas, the Bank of England had increased interest rates. It was becoming obvious to many that the railway bubble was exeactly that, and that the investments might not be a sure fire winner, and began to get cold feet. Indeed this may have been what caused the Direct route to withdraw; was it a strategic withdrawal rather than a tactical surrender? The Atmospheric route‘s investors were evidently getting unsettled, and on April 6th, at a Meeting in the Waterloo Hotel in Edinburgh, a general meeting was called at the demand of key backers.
An 1845 newspaper cartoon warning over the dangers of “Railway Mania” financial speculationAsked to account for its progress, the committee stated that they had spent £670 in Edinburgh and £2,000 in Leith on ground for the termini, and a further £250 towards the Town Council for rights to run through the ground in their ownership. Construction costs were estimated at £160,000 and £1,000 had been set aside to cover the costs to date of the Direct route in a conciliatory gesture for their co-operation. It was noted that a deputation from the committee had been on a fact-finding visit to the Croydon Railway’s atmospheric operation and found its principal to be “most admirably adapted for the projected line.” This is interesting considering the persistent difficulties of that undertaking. The committee estimated that running costs would be 4d per mile, which was challenged by a key shareholder who countered that in Parliament the respected railway engineer Joseph Locke had stated that ordinary locomotives were costing 10d per mile and that the Croydon atmospheric was running up the incredible amount of 2/10d per mile.
The shareholders went on the record to say they were unhappy that the recent changes in the financial markets had made the scheme far less attractive and that huge additional costs (these were not specified, but one assumes they were for engineering) had made themselves known. The complainants made a motion to circulate the full details of the undertaking’s most recent reports amongst the shareholders and return at a further General Meeting on April 16th once there had been a chance to read these. The shareholders were clearly having second thoughts, time was pressing as they were due in Parliament to have their bill read as soon as May 4th, and one wonders if they were just looking for an excuse to call the whole thing off.
The General Meeting meeting was duly held, with the engineer Mr Miller and the patentee of the atmospheric principal, Mr Samuda, in attendance. on the 16th. By a majority of 462 votes to 309, it was decided to proceed with the bill – but to have one more vote to confirm this before going in front of Parliament. The naysayers, led by a Mr Berry – probably George Berry esq., chairman of the Leith Chamber of Commerce – retired to the Cafe Royal to plot their next move, and took out an advert in the Caledonian Mercury asking their sympathisers to join them. Two days later they published a letter in the Scotsman challenging the vote, on the grounds that shareholders accounting for 2/3 of the stock had not been present at the General Meeting and it was not therefore quorate. The solicitor acting for this group invited those seeking to wind the company up to sign a petition to parliament, copies of which were held in various locations around Edinburgh, Leith and Glasgow. Within 24 hours, the holders of 2,000 shares, or 40% of all the stock, had signed. The race was on to end the Atmospheric route.
A final General Meeting was due for the 18th May, just 2 weeks before they were due in Parliament, for the shareholders to finally decide the fate of the scheme.
By order of the Committee of Management. Edinburgh, April 27, 1846The meeting would never take place. On Saturday the 16th May, the “Committee of Management regre to announce to the Shareholders that the Select Committee of the House of Commons to whom the Bill for this Company referred, has found the preamble not proven“. Parliament would not read the bill. The Edinburgh & Leith Atmospheric Railway was dead. The shareholders now set about attempting to recover their investments, the management gave them 8 days to lodge their requests and set about winding up the company and liquidating their assets – the land at the Low Calton and behind the Leith Assembly Rooms that had been purchased for stations. The ground purchased for stations was quickly sold by public roup (the Scottish version of an auction).
On September 1st 1846, at a General Meeting held at the Waterloo Hotel, the company formally voted itself out of existence and agreed to return its remaining balances to the shareholders. Of the £20,000 raised by the Atmospheric route, £11,000 had been spent and little had been achieved apart from the acquisition of a few parcels of land and the creation of much bad blood amongst the merchant and political classes of Edinburgh and Leith. The subscribers at least got back 18s in the pound, or 90% of their investment. For all too many in the railway speculation boom, a failed scheme meant financial ruin. The engineer, John Miller, attempted to take legal action against the company in December 1846 for loss of dividends. I am unclear if he succeeded.
Although they promised so much, atmospheric railways were riddled with insurmountable technical and operational challenges. The problems included, but were not limited to:
- The leather flaps that were required to seal the vacuum wore out and froze as hard as wood in the winter
- The vacuum tube was constantly fouled by dirt and water, needing constant cleaning
- The pumping engines frequently failed; they were just not reliable enough to keep up the constant work required to provide the vacuum. If a steam locomotive failed, it could be uncoupled and replaced, if a large pumping engine suffered the same fate, every train on that section of line would fail
- Construction costs were far higher than promised
- Operating costs were far higher than promised, as a result of the fuel consumption of the stationary engines and the constant maintenance and replacement needs of the vacuum tube
Footnote. Little more was heard of either scheme ever again, although in 1868 when the engineer to the Atmospheric route – John Miller – was standing for parliament, he was charged in a letter to the Edinburgh Evening Courant by one James Aytoun of having acted with impropriety with regards the scheme and fundamentally having lined his own pockets at the expense of the investors. James Aytoun, esq. was an advocate who had at one time been a prominent supporter of the scheme, but who had become a dissenting voice within it and ended up losing money by his account. It was Aytoun who had seconded the formal motion winding up the company in September 1846.
Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.
If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends and like-minded people, sites like this thrive on being shared.Explore Threadinburgh by map:
Travelers' Map is loading...
If you see this after your page is loaded completely, leafletJS files are missing.These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.
NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.
#Lochend #Logan #Restalrig #StMargaret -
Happy Caturday!!
I recently learned that cats were used by both sides during the battle for women’s suffrage. They were used on posters and postcards to supposedly dehumanize women fighting for the right to vote, but were also used in support of women’s suffrage.
From John’s Hopkins exibits: The Suffrage Cat
The women’s suffrage movement was an exceptionally controversial topic in both the United States and England. Postcard manufacturers hired artists to create visually appealing postcards about women’s suffrage. A popular subject was the suffrage cat, which was used for both pro- and anti-suffrage messaging. In Victorian culture, the cat was often associated with the female sphere; the indoor cat represented the passive, ideal homemaker, and the outdoor cat was brazen, feral and fallen. Defining how the cat was intended to be viewed as a symbol in women’s suffrage postcards can be a challenge, as seen in some of the selections below.
At that link, you can see descriptive text about some of the images I’ve posted here.
From The National Park Service: Women’s Suffrage and the Cat
In the 1800s and early 1900s, many women and men supported women’s suffrage (the right to vote). There were, however, people that opposed the idea. One of the prevailing beliefs was that voting power would diminish a woman’s role as caretaker of the family. Some women and men felt so strongly about this that they founded anti-suffragist organizations. Cartoonists also created advertisements and postcards supporting anti-suffragists. These ads often featured animals to make a point.
In popular mainstream culture at the time, women were associated with animals perceived as passive, like cats. Social norms dictated that middle class, white women should stay in the home. Men, however, were expected to occupy public spaces and partake in physical exercise. As a result, men were often associated with physically active animals like dogs. Anti-suffrage artists used these animals symbolically in their cartoons.
Cats were more often used in British anti-suffragist ads. Anti-suffrage organizations in Britain used cats to try to make the point that women were simple and delicate. The cartoons implied that women’s suffrage was just as absurd as cat suffrage because women (and cats) were incapable of voting.
Cats were also used symbolically in some American anti-suffrage ads. A number of American cartoons showed men at home with a cat, taking care of the children. The cat symbolized a loss of the man’s masculinity. Some people believed that if women participated in politics, men would be left at home to raise the children.
Suffragists took back the meaning of the cat in 1916. That April, suffragists Nell Richardson and Alice Burke started a cross-country road trip in a two-seater car they called “The Golden Flier.” Members of the press at the send-off ceremony in New York City reported that the car looked like “a little yellow ant scuttling off through the crowds of limousines and autotrucks which lined the streets” (New York Tribune, April 07, 1916).
Over the next several months, the women stopped in New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, Ohio, Texas, California, Washington and other states across the country to talk about the importance of women’s suffrage. During their trip, the women adopted a cat that became their unofficial mascot. They named him Saxon, after the manufacturer of the Golden Flier.
Over the next several months, the women spent long hours standing on street corners and in public parks making speeches about suffrage. Alice Burke commented that they were in the sun so often that they let their “noses blister and burn” and their “hair sizzle.” Burke and Richardson were not the only ones enduring the hot weather. Burke wrote in her diary:
The little black kitten is suffering as much as we are from the heat, but he keeps under a cover, and all we can see around the corner of it is a pink nose and a youthful whisker.” (New York Tribune, May 29, 1916)
Now for some news. The mainstream media and some Democrats are still trying to get President Biden to end his campaign for a second term; but last night he gave a speech to an enthusiastic audience in Detroit that should begin to quiet the naysayers. I hope you were able to watch it, because it was impressive. Biden spoke extemporaneously for 35 minutes–no teleprompter and no notes. And the audience loved it. They chanted “Don’t you quit” and “We’ve got your back.” These people are the base of the Democratic Party, and they still love Joe Biden. Biden is also up 2 points on Trump in the latest polls, despite the massive efforts to bring him down.
Here’s the speech:
It’s difficult to find honest reporting on the speech, because most in the press are still hoping to end Biden’s campaign. I really think some of these “journalists” really want Trump back in the White House because they think it will further their careers. Here’s just one example from Politico: Inside Biden’s sputtering campaign to restore Dems’ confidence.
Three of Joe Biden’s senior aides entered a Senate Democratic lunch on Thursday armed with internal and external polls showing the presidential race still within the margin of error, hoping to keep this last bastion of support from abandoning his embattled campaign.
During a difficult and at times tearful meeting with Mike Donilon, Steve Ricchetti and Jen O’Malley Dillon, senators aired concerns about the president’s ability to serve for another four years, his path to defeat former President Donald Trump and the effect Biden’s poor polling might have on Democrats running down the ballot, according to five people familiar with the meeting who were granted anonymity to describe private discussions.
But by the end of the lunch, Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania had enough.
“You have legacies, too,” Fetterman said, according to the people, asking what those legacies would become “if you fuck over a great president over a bad debate.”
Then, the first-term senator called the question: Who was with him — committed to sticking with Biden as the party’s nominee?
No more than four people signaled that they were, according to four of the people familiar with the meeting. While not every Senate Democrat was in attendance and some had trickled out of the lunch already, Fetterman, Sens. Chris Coons of Delaware and Tammy Duckworth of Illinois thought Biden should continue.
The paltry show of support for Biden behind closed doors revealed that for all the indecision about whether and how to confront Biden, elected Democrats’ confidence in the president had plunged to a ruinous low. While Senate Democrats have largely kept quiet publicly, Biden may have to plow ahead despite an overwhelming lack of confidence from his former Senate colleagues. The majority of the Democratic caucus left Thursday’s meeting just as, if not more, concerned about the path the party is on with Biden atop the ticket.
Of course, the naysayers are always anonymous. Fuck them! Use you name or STFU.
Here’s another take from Sahil Kapur at NBC News: Biden blasts Project 2025 in Michigan and ties it to Trump in effort to regain footing.
DETROIT — President Joe Biden tore into the “right-wing Project 2025” and made it a central theme of his speech at a rally Friday in battleground Michigan as he seeks to put a lid on Democratic calls that he withdraw from the presidential race.
“Folks, Project 2025 is the biggest attack on our system of government and on our personal freedom that’s ever been proposed in the history of this country,” Biden told the crowd, adding that the initiative “is run and paid for by Trump people” and is “a blueprint for a second Trump.”
Biden, rousing the crowd with a more energetic performance than usual, said it would unleash a “nightmare” on the country if his Republican rival is elected and implements it. “Another four years of Donald Trump is deadly serious. Project 2025 is deadly serious,” Biden said, describing it as a threat to American values
When he took the stage, Biden was greeted to chants of “Don’t you quit!” and “We got your back!” The president told them there’s “a lot of speculation lately” about whether he’ll stay in the race.
“I am running, and we’re going to win!” he said….
Biden is zeroing in on Project 2025 as a mechanism to unify the Democratic Party as it splinters over his future in the race, following a shocking debate performance that some in the party see as politically fatal to his re-election prospects. Numerous voters at the rally stood by him and voiced displeasure with the Democrats calling on him to step aside. And it was clear the right-wing document has caught on across within the Democratic Party as a rallying cry for those eager to keep Trump out of the White House.
A Biden aide said the president’s campaign plans to continue focusing on Project 2025 at next week’s GOP convention.
Kapur asked voters about Project 2025:
Before Biden’s remarks at the Detroit rally, the first seven Michigan voters NBC News spoke to were all aware of Project 2025 — and had strong opinions on it.
“It’s horrific. It would totally dismantle our democracy, fill the whole government with loyalists to Trump,” said Deanna Zapico, of Royal Oak. “It would be like Hitler in 1933. There wouldn’t be an election in a long time. That’s my fear.”
“I’m sharing it with everybody,” Zapico said.
Deborah Fuertes, of Brighton, summed it up in one word: “Scary.”
“This is an existential threat,” she said.Trump’s “name’s all over that thing,” said Angela Heard, a sales manager based in Grosse Pointe Woods. “If we don’t get our s— together we’re gonna be like ‘The Handmaid’s Tale.’”
Here’s an indication that Project 2025 could be getting the attention people who don’t generally follow politics closely–People magazine published an in-depth article on the Trump plan. Kyler Alvord writes: What Is Project 2025? Inside the Far-Right Plan Threatening Everything from the Word ‘Gender’ to Public Education.
A sweeping proposal for how Donald Trump should handle a second term in office has sparked concern for its implications on the role of federal government and its calls to eliminate a number of basic human rights.
The 2025 Presidential Transition Project, more commonly known as Project 2025, released a 900-page manifesto last year titled “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise.” The policy guidebook — compiled by the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation in partnership with more than 100 other conservative organizations — lays out a far-right, Christian nationalist vision for America that would corrode the separation of church and state, replace nonpartisan government employees with Trump loyalists and bolster the president’s authority over independent agencies.
Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts, a rumored candidate for Trump’s chief of staff in a second term, promoted his group’s extreme positions during a July interview, saying, “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
Down with the tomcats
Shortly after Roberts’ controversial interview, Trump attempted to distance himself from Project 2025, saying on Truth Social that he knows “nothing” about it and has “no idea who is behind it,” before adding that he disagrees with some of its propositions.
While Project 2025 is not formally a part of Trump’s campaign platform, it has been led and supported by several influential people in his orbit. The project’s top leaders all worked in Trump’s White House and a number of the manifesto’s contributors also served in the Trump administration, including but not limited to former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson and imprisoned former trade adviser Peter Navarro.
Equally damaging to Trump’s claim that he is unfamiliar with Project 2025 is that he worked closely with the Heritage Foundation when he was first elected president. He was provided a similar “Mandate for Leadership” back in 2016, and enacted nearly two-thirds of the group’s proposals within his first year in office.
The Heritage Foundation also reportedly played a behind-the-scenes role on Trump’s presidential transition team and had a significant hand in staffing the administration.
Alvord also addressed Project 2025’s goal of eliminating the wall between church and state.
Project 2025 establishes a framework for guiding the federal government through a biblical lens. Across nearly 1,000 pages, the mandate pushes an unpopular interpretation of the Christian agenda that would target reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ people and people of color by effectively erasing mention of all related terms, protections and troublesome historical accounts.
Though the mandate accuses the “woke” left of infringing on people’s religious freedoms, its policies are rooted in a singular, extremist view of how society should function based on its authors’ own Christian nationalist values. It repeatedly calls for the punishment, even imprisonment, of people who do not conform to the think tank’s platform.
The proposed policies in Project 2025’s mandate stem from four stated goals. In its words: restoring the family as the centerpiece of American life, dismantling the administrative state, defending the nation’s sovereignty and securing God-given individual rights.
Through a holistic approach to restructuring the government, it would seek to give Trump heightened authority to enact his backers’ platform in every city and state — often encouraging the president to creatively subvert congressional approval.
Read the rest at People Magazine. It’s very detailed.
Speaking of Christian nationalism, ProPublica has an investigative article on a shadowy organization of rich people working to influence the 2024 election. Andy Kroll and Nick Surgey: Inside Ziklag, the Secret Organization of Wealthy Christians Trying to Sway the Election and Change the Country. The subhead reads: “The little-known charity is backed by famous conservative donors, including the families behind Hobby Lobby and Uline. It’s spending millions to make a big political push for this election — but it may be violating the law.”
A network of ultrawealthy Christian donors is spending nearly $12 million to mobilize Republican-leaning voters and purge more than a million people from the rolls in key swing states, aiming to tilt the 2024 election in favor of former President Donald Trump.
These previously unreported plans are the work of a group named Ziklag, a little-known charity whose donors have included some of the wealthiest conservative Christian families in the nation, including the billionaire Uihlein family, who made a fortune in office supplies, the Greens, who run Hobby Lobby, and the Wallers, who own the Jockey apparel corporation. Recipients of Ziklag’s largesse include Alliance Defending Freedom, which is the Christian legal group that led the overturning of Roe v. Wade, plus the national pro-Trump group Turning Point USA and a constellation of right-of-center advocacy groups.
1908
ProPublica and Documented obtained thousands of Ziklag’s members-only email newsletters, internal videos, strategy documents and fundraising pitches, none of which has been previously made public. They reveal the group’s 2024 plans and its long-term goal to underpin every major sphere of influence in American society with Christianity. In the Bible, the city of Ziklag was where David and his soldiers found refuge during their war with King Saul.
“We are in a spiritual battle and locked in a terrible conflict with the powers of darkness,” says a strategy document that lays out Ziklag’s 30-year vision to “redirect the trajectory of American culture toward Christ by bringing back Biblical structure, order and truth to our Nation.”
Ziklag’s 2024 agenda reads like the work of a political organization. It plans to pour money into mobilizing voters in Arizona who are “sympathetic to Republicans” in order to secure “10,640 additional unique votes” — almost the exact margin of President Joe Biden’s win there in 2020. The group also intends to use controversial AI software to enable mass challenges to the eligibility of hundreds of thousands of voters in competitive states.
In a recording of a 2023 internal strategy discussion, a Ziklag official stressed that the objective was the same in other swing states. “The goal is to win,” the official said. “If 75,000 people wins the White House, then how do we get 150,000 people so we make sure we win?”
According to the Ziklag files, the group has divided its 2024 activities into three different operations targeting voters in battleground states: Checkmate, focused on funding so-called election integrity groups; Steeplechase, concentrated on using churches and pastors to get out the vote; and Watchtower, aimed at galvanizing voters around the issues of “parental rights” and opposition to transgender rights and policies supporting health care for trans people.
In a member briefing video, one of Ziklag’s spiritual advisers outlined a plan to “deliver swing states” by using an anti-transgender message to motivate conservative voters who are exhausted with Trump.
But Ziklag is not a political organization: It is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt charity, the same legal designation as the United Way or Boys and Girls Club. Such organizations do not have to publicly disclose their funders, and donations are tax deductible. In exchange, they are “absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office,” according to the IRS.
Read the whole thing at ProPublica.
In other news, you probably heard that Mark Zuckerberg has bowed down to Trump. Raw Story: ‘So the despotic threats worked?’: Outrage as Facebook lifts limits on Trump’s accounts.
Critics shredded Meta’s decision to ease restrictions placed on former President Donald Trump’s Instagram and Facebook accounts.
Axios reported Friday the social media titan planned to soon roll back limits it placed on Trump’s accounts as it aimed to allow for more parity leading up to the Nov. 5 election. The tech giant said a minor violation could lead to his accounts being suspended up to two years or restricted.
The move comes more than a year after he was reinstated to the platforms but with limits such as suspensions and advertising restrictions for violating company rules.
Stunned social media critics blasted the decision.
“So the despotic threats worked?” asked @JenBaty, pointing to Trump’s threat on Truth Social that the “ZUCKERBUCKS (sic),” a reference to Facebook cofounder Mark Zuckerberg, “will be sent to prison for long periods of time.”
Trump has previously said Zuckerberg “cheated” in the 2020 election.
“Why isn’t he being prosecuted?” he wrote last year. “The Democrats only know how to cheat. America isn’t going to take it much longer!”
A few stories on the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee next week:
AP: Deeply Democratic Milwaukee wrestles with hosting Trump and the Republican National Convention.
Milwaukee loves its Miller Beer, Brewers baseball and “ Bronze Fonz ” statue.
The deepest blue city in swing state Wisconsin, Milwaukee also loves Democrats.
So it can be hard for some to swallow that Milwaukee is playing host to former President Donald Trump and the Republican National Convention this coming week while rival Chicago, the larger city just 90 miles to the south, welcomes President Joe Biden and Democrats in August.
It didn’t help smooth things over with wary Democrats after Trump used the word “horrible” when talking about Milwaukee just a month before the convention that begins Monday.
Adding to the angst, Milwaukee was supposed to host the Democratic National Convention in 2020, but it didn’t happen due to COVID. Owners of local restaurants, bars and venues say the number of reservations that were promised during the RNC aren’t materializing. And protesters complained the city was trying to keep them too far away from the convention site to have an impact.
“I wish I was out of town for it,” Jake Schneider, 29, said as he passed by the city’s statue of Fonzie, the character played by Henry Winkler in the 1970s sitcom “Happy Days” that was set in Milwaukee. “I’m not super happy that it’s the Republican Party coming to town.” [….]
Ryan Clancy, a self-described democratic socialist who is a state representative and serves on the Milwaukee County Board, puts it more bluntly: “It is shameful that we rolled out the red carpet for the RNC.”
Former President Donald Trump will be officially renominated next week to be the Republican Party’s standard-bearer for the third presidential election in a row as he seeks to return to the Oval Office.
GOP delegates from around the country will gather in Milwaukee for the Republican National Convention, with much of the country following along through the primetime speeches each night.
These speeches have historically allowed presidential candidates to unify discord from aggressive primary campaigns, and the conventions offer a high-profile platform to sway undecided voters.
While an official list of speakers hasn’t yet been announced, here are some of the people who’ve reportedly been tapped to demonstrate their support for Trump on stage next week.
The list includes Donald Trump, Jr., Ron DeSantis, Sean O’Brien (Teamsters president), David Sacks (Elon Musk’s pal), Kari Lake, Elise Stefanik, and more. She’s not listed, but I heard that Margery Taylor Green will also speak.
Politico: The unusual legal risk Trump will have to navigate at the RNC.
Donald Trump will be rubbing elbows in Milwaukee with a crowd that may include dozens of witnesses and alleged co-conspirators in his criminal cases — people he has sworn not to communicate with about details of the charges against him.
Avoiding them may not be possible for the former president during the four-day convention, creating an unusual dynamic, and a potential legal liability for Trump, against the backdrop of a national nominating convention.
1911
“If I were a Trump attorney, my biggest fear might be that Trump finds himself in close quarters with a defendant and starts running his mouth off,” said Anthony Kreis, a law professor at Georgia State University.
Several false electors for Trump in 2020 who were charged with crimes in Arizona, Nevada and Georgia are expected to be at the Republican National Convention. In addition, many of Trump’s former White House aides who testified to grand juries in Washington and Florida are likely to be on hand. Though the roster of speakers hasn’t been publicly shared, there’s a high likelihood that others embroiled in Trump’s alleged crimes — a long list of GOP officials and activists — will also be there.
The situation is, like many things associated with Trump, unprecedented, and it’s hard to gauge the likelihood that an interaction in a crowded convention hall could become legally perilous for the former president. But it’s not zero, according to legal experts.
“I imagine the tight scripted nature of the convention will help isolate Trump from that danger,” Kreis said. “But you also never know.”
General attacks on the prosecutions he’s facing in Washington, Florida and Georgia — familiar themes in Trump rallies and speeches — or superficial encounters with people involved in his cases are unlikely to raise prosecutors’ eyebrows. But legal experts say there are lines Trump could cross if he mentions codefendants or witnesses by name or has more substantive interactions with them. And even general remarks, whether scripted or extemporaneous, could present risks if they could be interpreted as pressure on witnesses against cooperation or an attempt to influence their future testimony.
Those are my recommended reads for today. I hope you find something that interests you.
https://skydancingblog.com/2024/07/13/lazy-caturday-reads-170/
#BidenSpeechInDetroit #ChristianNationalism #HeritageFoundation #mainstreamMedia #MarkZukerberg #Meta #Milwaukee #Project2025 #RepublicanNationalConvention2024 #suffragettesAndCats #womenSSuffrage #Ziklag
-
Happy Caturday!!
I recently learned that cats were used by both sides during the battle for women’s suffrage. They were used on posters and postcards to supposedly dehumanize women fighting for the right to vote, but were also used in support of women’s suffrage.
From John’s Hopkins exibits: The Suffrage Cat
The women’s suffrage movement was an exceptionally controversial topic in both the United States and England. Postcard manufacturers hired artists to create visually appealing postcards about women’s suffrage. A popular subject was the suffrage cat, which was used for both pro- and anti-suffrage messaging. In Victorian culture, the cat was often associated with the female sphere; the indoor cat represented the passive, ideal homemaker, and the outdoor cat was brazen, feral and fallen. Defining how the cat was intended to be viewed as a symbol in women’s suffrage postcards can be a challenge, as seen in some of the selections below.
At that link, you can see descriptive text about some of the images I’ve posted here.
From The National Park Service: Women’s Suffrage and the Cat
In the 1800s and early 1900s, many women and men supported women’s suffrage (the right to vote). There were, however, people that opposed the idea. One of the prevailing beliefs was that voting power would diminish a woman’s role as caretaker of the family. Some women and men felt so strongly about this that they founded anti-suffragist organizations. Cartoonists also created advertisements and postcards supporting anti-suffragists. These ads often featured animals to make a point.
In popular mainstream culture at the time, women were associated with animals perceived as passive, like cats. Social norms dictated that middle class, white women should stay in the home. Men, however, were expected to occupy public spaces and partake in physical exercise. As a result, men were often associated with physically active animals like dogs. Anti-suffrage artists used these animals symbolically in their cartoons.
Cats were more often used in British anti-suffragist ads. Anti-suffrage organizations in Britain used cats to try to make the point that women were simple and delicate. The cartoons implied that women’s suffrage was just as absurd as cat suffrage because women (and cats) were incapable of voting.
Cats were also used symbolically in some American anti-suffrage ads. A number of American cartoons showed men at home with a cat, taking care of the children. The cat symbolized a loss of the man’s masculinity. Some people believed that if women participated in politics, men would be left at home to raise the children.
Suffragists took back the meaning of the cat in 1916. That April, suffragists Nell Richardson and Alice Burke started a cross-country road trip in a two-seater car they called “The Golden Flier.” Members of the press at the send-off ceremony in New York City reported that the car looked like “a little yellow ant scuttling off through the crowds of limousines and autotrucks which lined the streets” (New York Tribune, April 07, 1916).
Over the next several months, the women stopped in New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, Ohio, Texas, California, Washington and other states across the country to talk about the importance of women’s suffrage. During their trip, the women adopted a cat that became their unofficial mascot. They named him Saxon, after the manufacturer of the Golden Flier.
Over the next several months, the women spent long hours standing on street corners and in public parks making speeches about suffrage. Alice Burke commented that they were in the sun so often that they let their “noses blister and burn” and their “hair sizzle.” Burke and Richardson were not the only ones enduring the hot weather. Burke wrote in her diary:
The little black kitten is suffering as much as we are from the heat, but he keeps under a cover, and all we can see around the corner of it is a pink nose and a youthful whisker.” (New York Tribune, May 29, 1916)
Now for some news. The mainstream media and some Democrats are still trying to get President Biden to end his campaign for a second term; but last night he gave a speech to an enthusiastic audience in Detroit that should begin to quiet the naysayers. I hope you were able to watch it, because it was impressive. Biden spoke extemporaneously for 35 minutes–no teleprompter and no notes. And the audience loved it. They chanted “Don’t you quit” and “We’ve got your back.” These people are the base of the Democratic Party, and they still love Joe Biden. Biden is also up 2 points on Trump in the latest polls, despite the massive efforts to bring him down.
Here’s the speech:
It’s difficult to find honest reporting on the speech, because most in the press are still hoping to end Biden’s campaign. I really think some of these “journalists” really want Trump back in the White House because they think it will further their careers. Here’s just one example from Politico: Inside Biden’s sputtering campaign to restore Dems’ confidence.
Three of Joe Biden’s senior aides entered a Senate Democratic lunch on Thursday armed with internal and external polls showing the presidential race still within the margin of error, hoping to keep this last bastion of support from abandoning his embattled campaign.
During a difficult and at times tearful meeting with Mike Donilon, Steve Ricchetti and Jen O’Malley Dillon, senators aired concerns about the president’s ability to serve for another four years, his path to defeat former President Donald Trump and the effect Biden’s poor polling might have on Democrats running down the ballot, according to five people familiar with the meeting who were granted anonymity to describe private discussions.
But by the end of the lunch, Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania had enough.
“You have legacies, too,” Fetterman said, according to the people, asking what those legacies would become “if you fuck over a great president over a bad debate.”
Then, the first-term senator called the question: Who was with him — committed to sticking with Biden as the party’s nominee?
No more than four people signaled that they were, according to four of the people familiar with the meeting. While not every Senate Democrat was in attendance and some had trickled out of the lunch already, Fetterman, Sens. Chris Coons of Delaware and Tammy Duckworth of Illinois thought Biden should continue.
The paltry show of support for Biden behind closed doors revealed that for all the indecision about whether and how to confront Biden, elected Democrats’ confidence in the president had plunged to a ruinous low. While Senate Democrats have largely kept quiet publicly, Biden may have to plow ahead despite an overwhelming lack of confidence from his former Senate colleagues. The majority of the Democratic caucus left Thursday’s meeting just as, if not more, concerned about the path the party is on with Biden atop the ticket.
Of course, the naysayers are always anonymous. Fuck them! Use you name or STFU.
Here’s another take from Sahil Kapur at NBC News: Biden blasts Project 2025 in Michigan and ties it to Trump in effort to regain footing.
DETROIT — President Joe Biden tore into the “right-wing Project 2025” and made it a central theme of his speech at a rally Friday in battleground Michigan as he seeks to put a lid on Democratic calls that he withdraw from the presidential race.
“Folks, Project 2025 is the biggest attack on our system of government and on our personal freedom that’s ever been proposed in the history of this country,” Biden told the crowd, adding that the initiative “is run and paid for by Trump people” and is “a blueprint for a second Trump.”
Biden, rousing the crowd with a more energetic performance than usual, said it would unleash a “nightmare” on the country if his Republican rival is elected and implements it. “Another four years of Donald Trump is deadly serious. Project 2025 is deadly serious,” Biden said, describing it as a threat to American values
When he took the stage, Biden was greeted to chants of “Don’t you quit!” and “We got your back!” The president told them there’s “a lot of speculation lately” about whether he’ll stay in the race.
“I am running, and we’re going to win!” he said….
Biden is zeroing in on Project 2025 as a mechanism to unify the Democratic Party as it splinters over his future in the race, following a shocking debate performance that some in the party see as politically fatal to his re-election prospects. Numerous voters at the rally stood by him and voiced displeasure with the Democrats calling on him to step aside. And it was clear the right-wing document has caught on across within the Democratic Party as a rallying cry for those eager to keep Trump out of the White House.
A Biden aide said the president’s campaign plans to continue focusing on Project 2025 at next week’s GOP convention.
Kapur asked voters about Project 2025:
Before Biden’s remarks at the Detroit rally, the first seven Michigan voters NBC News spoke to were all aware of Project 2025 — and had strong opinions on it.
“It’s horrific. It would totally dismantle our democracy, fill the whole government with loyalists to Trump,” said Deanna Zapico, of Royal Oak. “It would be like Hitler in 1933. There wouldn’t be an election in a long time. That’s my fear.”
“I’m sharing it with everybody,” Zapico said.
Deborah Fuertes, of Brighton, summed it up in one word: “Scary.”
“This is an existential threat,” she said.Trump’s “name’s all over that thing,” said Angela Heard, a sales manager based in Grosse Pointe Woods. “If we don’t get our s— together we’re gonna be like ‘The Handmaid’s Tale.’”
Here’s an indication that Project 2025 could be getting the attention people who don’t generally follow politics closely–People magazine published an in-depth article on the Trump plan. Kyler Alvord writes: What Is Project 2025? Inside the Far-Right Plan Threatening Everything from the Word ‘Gender’ to Public Education.
A sweeping proposal for how Donald Trump should handle a second term in office has sparked concern for its implications on the role of federal government and its calls to eliminate a number of basic human rights.
The 2025 Presidential Transition Project, more commonly known as Project 2025, released a 900-page manifesto last year titled “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise.” The policy guidebook — compiled by the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation in partnership with more than 100 other conservative organizations — lays out a far-right, Christian nationalist vision for America that would corrode the separation of church and state, replace nonpartisan government employees with Trump loyalists and bolster the president’s authority over independent agencies.
Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts, a rumored candidate for Trump’s chief of staff in a second term, promoted his group’s extreme positions during a July interview, saying, “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
Down with the tomcats
Shortly after Roberts’ controversial interview, Trump attempted to distance himself from Project 2025, saying on Truth Social that he knows “nothing” about it and has “no idea who is behind it,” before adding that he disagrees with some of its propositions.
While Project 2025 is not formally a part of Trump’s campaign platform, it has been led and supported by several influential people in his orbit. The project’s top leaders all worked in Trump’s White House and a number of the manifesto’s contributors also served in the Trump administration, including but not limited to former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson and imprisoned former trade adviser Peter Navarro.
Equally damaging to Trump’s claim that he is unfamiliar with Project 2025 is that he worked closely with the Heritage Foundation when he was first elected president. He was provided a similar “Mandate for Leadership” back in 2016, and enacted nearly two-thirds of the group’s proposals within his first year in office.
The Heritage Foundation also reportedly played a behind-the-scenes role on Trump’s presidential transition team and had a significant hand in staffing the administration.
Alvord also addressed Project 2025’s goal of eliminating the wall between church and state.
Project 2025 establishes a framework for guiding the federal government through a biblical lens. Across nearly 1,000 pages, the mandate pushes an unpopular interpretation of the Christian agenda that would target reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ people and people of color by effectively erasing mention of all related terms, protections and troublesome historical accounts.
Though the mandate accuses the “woke” left of infringing on people’s religious freedoms, its policies are rooted in a singular, extremist view of how society should function based on its authors’ own Christian nationalist values. It repeatedly calls for the punishment, even imprisonment, of people who do not conform to the think tank’s platform.
The proposed policies in Project 2025’s mandate stem from four stated goals. In its words: restoring the family as the centerpiece of American life, dismantling the administrative state, defending the nation’s sovereignty and securing God-given individual rights.
Through a holistic approach to restructuring the government, it would seek to give Trump heightened authority to enact his backers’ platform in every city and state — often encouraging the president to creatively subvert congressional approval.
Read the rest at People Magazine. It’s very detailed.
Speaking of Christian nationalism, ProPublica has an investigative article on a shadowy organization of rich people working to influence the 2024 election. Andy Kroll and Nick Surgey: Inside Ziklag, the Secret Organization of Wealthy Christians Trying to Sway the Election and Change the Country. The subhead reads: “The little-known charity is backed by famous conservative donors, including the families behind Hobby Lobby and Uline. It’s spending millions to make a big political push for this election — but it may be violating the law.”
A network of ultrawealthy Christian donors is spending nearly $12 million to mobilize Republican-leaning voters and purge more than a million people from the rolls in key swing states, aiming to tilt the 2024 election in favor of former President Donald Trump.
These previously unreported plans are the work of a group named Ziklag, a little-known charity whose donors have included some of the wealthiest conservative Christian families in the nation, including the billionaire Uihlein family, who made a fortune in office supplies, the Greens, who run Hobby Lobby, and the Wallers, who own the Jockey apparel corporation. Recipients of Ziklag’s largesse include Alliance Defending Freedom, which is the Christian legal group that led the overturning of Roe v. Wade, plus the national pro-Trump group Turning Point USA and a constellation of right-of-center advocacy groups.
1908
ProPublica and Documented obtained thousands of Ziklag’s members-only email newsletters, internal videos, strategy documents and fundraising pitches, none of which has been previously made public. They reveal the group’s 2024 plans and its long-term goal to underpin every major sphere of influence in American society with Christianity. In the Bible, the city of Ziklag was where David and his soldiers found refuge during their war with King Saul.
“We are in a spiritual battle and locked in a terrible conflict with the powers of darkness,” says a strategy document that lays out Ziklag’s 30-year vision to “redirect the trajectory of American culture toward Christ by bringing back Biblical structure, order and truth to our Nation.”
Ziklag’s 2024 agenda reads like the work of a political organization. It plans to pour money into mobilizing voters in Arizona who are “sympathetic to Republicans” in order to secure “10,640 additional unique votes” — almost the exact margin of President Joe Biden’s win there in 2020. The group also intends to use controversial AI software to enable mass challenges to the eligibility of hundreds of thousands of voters in competitive states.
In a recording of a 2023 internal strategy discussion, a Ziklag official stressed that the objective was the same in other swing states. “The goal is to win,” the official said. “If 75,000 people wins the White House, then how do we get 150,000 people so we make sure we win?”
According to the Ziklag files, the group has divided its 2024 activities into three different operations targeting voters in battleground states: Checkmate, focused on funding so-called election integrity groups; Steeplechase, concentrated on using churches and pastors to get out the vote; and Watchtower, aimed at galvanizing voters around the issues of “parental rights” and opposition to transgender rights and policies supporting health care for trans people.
In a member briefing video, one of Ziklag’s spiritual advisers outlined a plan to “deliver swing states” by using an anti-transgender message to motivate conservative voters who are exhausted with Trump.
But Ziklag is not a political organization: It is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt charity, the same legal designation as the United Way or Boys and Girls Club. Such organizations do not have to publicly disclose their funders, and donations are tax deductible. In exchange, they are “absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office,” according to the IRS.
Read the whole thing at ProPublica.
In other news, you probably heard that Mark Zuckerberg has bowed down to Trump. Raw Story: ‘So the despotic threats worked?’: Outrage as Facebook lifts limits on Trump’s accounts.
Critics shredded Meta’s decision to ease restrictions placed on former President Donald Trump’s Instagram and Facebook accounts.
Axios reported Friday the social media titan planned to soon roll back limits it placed on Trump’s accounts as it aimed to allow for more parity leading up to the Nov. 5 election. The tech giant said a minor violation could lead to his accounts being suspended up to two years or restricted.
The move comes more than a year after he was reinstated to the platforms but with limits such as suspensions and advertising restrictions for violating company rules.
Stunned social media critics blasted the decision.
“So the despotic threats worked?” asked @JenBaty, pointing to Trump’s threat on Truth Social that the “ZUCKERBUCKS (sic),” a reference to Facebook cofounder Mark Zuckerberg, “will be sent to prison for long periods of time.”
Trump has previously said Zuckerberg “cheated” in the 2020 election.
“Why isn’t he being prosecuted?” he wrote last year. “The Democrats only know how to cheat. America isn’t going to take it much longer!”
A few stories on the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee next week:
AP: Deeply Democratic Milwaukee wrestles with hosting Trump and the Republican National Convention.
Milwaukee loves its Miller Beer, Brewers baseball and “ Bronze Fonz ” statue.
The deepest blue city in swing state Wisconsin, Milwaukee also loves Democrats.
So it can be hard for some to swallow that Milwaukee is playing host to former President Donald Trump and the Republican National Convention this coming week while rival Chicago, the larger city just 90 miles to the south, welcomes President Joe Biden and Democrats in August.
It didn’t help smooth things over with wary Democrats after Trump used the word “horrible” when talking about Milwaukee just a month before the convention that begins Monday.
Adding to the angst, Milwaukee was supposed to host the Democratic National Convention in 2020, but it didn’t happen due to COVID. Owners of local restaurants, bars and venues say the number of reservations that were promised during the RNC aren’t materializing. And protesters complained the city was trying to keep them too far away from the convention site to have an impact.
“I wish I was out of town for it,” Jake Schneider, 29, said as he passed by the city’s statue of Fonzie, the character played by Henry Winkler in the 1970s sitcom “Happy Days” that was set in Milwaukee. “I’m not super happy that it’s the Republican Party coming to town.” [….]
Ryan Clancy, a self-described democratic socialist who is a state representative and serves on the Milwaukee County Board, puts it more bluntly: “It is shameful that we rolled out the red carpet for the RNC.”
Former President Donald Trump will be officially renominated next week to be the Republican Party’s standard-bearer for the third presidential election in a row as he seeks to return to the Oval Office.
GOP delegates from around the country will gather in Milwaukee for the Republican National Convention, with much of the country following along through the primetime speeches each night.
These speeches have historically allowed presidential candidates to unify discord from aggressive primary campaigns, and the conventions offer a high-profile platform to sway undecided voters.
While an official list of speakers hasn’t yet been announced, here are some of the people who’ve reportedly been tapped to demonstrate their support for Trump on stage next week.
The list includes Donald Trump, Jr., Ron DeSantis, Sean O’Brien (Teamsters president), David Sacks (Elon Musk’s pal), Kari Lake, Elise Stefanik, and more. She’s not listed, but I heard that Margery Taylor Green will also speak.
Politico: The unusual legal risk Trump will have to navigate at the RNC.
Donald Trump will be rubbing elbows in Milwaukee with a crowd that may include dozens of witnesses and alleged co-conspirators in his criminal cases — people he has sworn not to communicate with about details of the charges against him.
Avoiding them may not be possible for the former president during the four-day convention, creating an unusual dynamic, and a potential legal liability for Trump, against the backdrop of a national nominating convention.
1911
“If I were a Trump attorney, my biggest fear might be that Trump finds himself in close quarters with a defendant and starts running his mouth off,” said Anthony Kreis, a law professor at Georgia State University.
Several false electors for Trump in 2020 who were charged with crimes in Arizona, Nevada and Georgia are expected to be at the Republican National Convention. In addition, many of Trump’s former White House aides who testified to grand juries in Washington and Florida are likely to be on hand. Though the roster of speakers hasn’t been publicly shared, there’s a high likelihood that others embroiled in Trump’s alleged crimes — a long list of GOP officials and activists — will also be there.
The situation is, like many things associated with Trump, unprecedented, and it’s hard to gauge the likelihood that an interaction in a crowded convention hall could become legally perilous for the former president. But it’s not zero, according to legal experts.
“I imagine the tight scripted nature of the convention will help isolate Trump from that danger,” Kreis said. “But you also never know.”
General attacks on the prosecutions he’s facing in Washington, Florida and Georgia — familiar themes in Trump rallies and speeches — or superficial encounters with people involved in his cases are unlikely to raise prosecutors’ eyebrows. But legal experts say there are lines Trump could cross if he mentions codefendants or witnesses by name or has more substantive interactions with them. And even general remarks, whether scripted or extemporaneous, could present risks if they could be interpreted as pressure on witnesses against cooperation or an attempt to influence their future testimony.
Those are my recommended reads for today. I hope you find something that interests you.
https://skydancingblog.com/2024/07/13/lazy-caturday-reads-170/
#BidenSpeechInDetroit #ChristianNationalism #HeritageFoundation #mainstreamMedia #MarkZukerberg #Meta #Milwaukee #Project2025 #RepublicanNationalConvention2024 #suffragettesAndCats #womenSSuffrage #Ziklag
-
【这里仅作备份，请优先选择打开原文】
原文链接：variety.com/2024/tv/features/doctor-who-disney-plus-cast-ncuti-gatwa-first-black-doctor-diversity-1235979436/
‘Doctor Who’ Regenerates: How Ncuti Gatwa’s Historic Casting, Russell T Davies’ Return and a Disney+ Deal Revolutionized the Franchise
《神秘博士》重生：舒提历史性的选角、RTD的回归以及与迪士尼+的订单如何彻底改变了该剧When Ncuti Gatwa makes his first appearance as the 15th Doctor in the science-fiction series “Doctor Who,” he isn’t wearing any pants.
当Ncuti Gatwa在科幻剧《神秘博士》中首次以第 15 任博士身份亮相时，他没有穿裤子。In a 60th-anniversary special released in December, the previous Doctor — played by series icon David Tennant — subverts the show’s long-standing practice of regeneration: Instead of simply transforming into the next Doctor, he literally splits in half, bringing Gatwa’s Doctor into the world alongside him. In the process, the two divide the clothes of Tennant’s Doctor between them, leaving Gatwa in nothing but a dress shirt and a pair of tighty-whities.
在 12 月发布的 60 周年特辑中，前任博士（由大卫·田纳特饰演）颠覆了该剧长期以来的重生实践：他没有简单地转变为下一位博士，而是分裂成两半，将舒提的博士与自己一起带入世界。在此过程中，两人各自拥有了一半原本第14任博士的衣服，舒提只穿了一件正装衬衫和紧身裤。“Oh, my God, that first costume fitting!” Gatwa says, bursting into an infectious fit of laughter. It’s a frequent occurrence as he speaks with Variety on a chilly March day over lemon ginger tea at the Langham hotel in London. “I was like, ‘Are you joking?!’ They showed me a pair of [underwear] and they were like” — he claps his hands as if to say “Voilà!”
“哦，天啊，试穿第一套服装的时候！”舒提说道，他爆发出富有感染力的笑声，这种情况经常发生。在寒冷的三月天，他在伦敦朗廷酒店喝着柠檬姜茶接受 Variety 采访时。 “我当时想，‘你在开玩笑吗？！’他们给我展示了一条[内裤]，他们就像”——他拍了拍手演示道，好像在说“瞧啊！”In addition to the whole no-pants thing, Gatwa was just a little bit star-struck: Tennant, who played the part from 2005 to 2010, was the Doctor he’d grown up with, inspiring him to become an actor in the first place.
除了整个“不穿裤子”的事情之外，舒提身上还有些明星效应：DT在 2005 年至 2010 年期间扮演了这个角色，舒提是看着DT的博士长大的，这激励了他成为一名演员。“To play this role beside him, who played this role which made me want to do this role, and him also being there — it was so many layers of full circle,” Gatwa says. “And on top of it, you’re wearing no pants! There was so much going on that day.”
“在他身边扮演这个角色，他扮演的这个角色让我想要扮演这个角色，而且他也在场——这是一个完整的循环，”舒提说。 “而且最重要的是，我没穿裤子！那天发生了很多事情。”It was an apt entrance for Gatwa, whose bubbly, fearless personality shone through in his breakout performance as the effervescent Eric on Netflix’s “Sex Education” and as “artist Ken” in Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie.” It also marks a new era for the beloved “Doctor Who,” with series stalwart Russell T Davies returning as showrunner, writer and executive producer.
这对于舒提来说是一个恰当的入口，他在 Netflix的《性教育》中饰演了热情洋溢的Eric以及在格蕾塔·葛韦格的电影《芭比》中饰演了“艺术家肯”，在他的突破性表演中展现了他活泼、无所畏惧的个性。这也标志着深受喜爱的《神秘博士》进入了一个新时代，该剧的坚定支持者RTD将回归担任剧集主管、编剧和执行制片人。Since premiering in 1963, the seminal show has become part of the fabric of British culture, reaching across generations and prompting many a dinner-table argument about which Doctor is the best. The original series went off the air in 1989 after seven actors played the role, with an eighth appearing in a 1996 TV movie that failed to reignite excitement in the franchise. Then Davies ushered “Doctor Who” into the modern age in 2005, extending its episode lengths, giving it a sleek new look and crafting story arcs that extended throughout each season. Taking the reins was a dream for Davies, who says the show is “not only my first memory of television, but my first memory of life.”
自 1963 年首播以来，这部影响深远的剧已成为英国文化的一部分，影响了几代人，并引发了许多餐桌上关于“哪任博士最棒”的争论。旧版剧集由七位演员扮演该角色，后于 1989 年停播，第八位演员出现在 1996 年的一部电视电影中，但未能重新点燃该剧。随后，RTD在 2005 年将《神秘博士》带入现代，延长了剧集长度，赋予其时尚的新外观，并精心设计了贯穿每一季的故事情节。接掌神秘博士是RTD的梦想，他说这部剧“不仅是我对电视的第一个记忆，也是我人生的第一个记忆”。With Christopher Eccleston as the ninth Doctor, followed by Tennant as the 10th, Davies took the series out of its cult-y niche as a British curiosity. With his relaunch, “Doctor Who” transformed into an international hit (with multiple spinoffs), as well as a star-making machine. In addition to Eccleston and Tennant, who have become two of the U.K.’s greatest acting exports, “Doctor Who” has helped launch the careers of Billie Piper, Matt Smith, Karen Gillan and even Carey Mulligan, who had a small role in the now-classic 2007 episode “Blink.” After Davies’ departure in 2010 — Tennant was also leaving and Davies says he “had muscles to flex” in the adult drama space — the show continued to build on his foundation, with the most recent lead (prior to Tennant’s anniversary-special return) being Jodie Whittaker, the first woman to play the Doctor.
Ncuti Gatwa 饰演博士，图片由迪士尼+提供
Christopher Eccleston饰演第九任博士，Tennant担任第十任博士，RTD将该剧带出了它作为英国奇趣之物的小众领域。随着他的重新推出，《神秘博士》变成了一部国际热门影片（有多个衍生剧），同时也是一台造星机器。除了CE和DT成为英国最伟大的两位演技派外，《神秘博士》还帮助开启了比莉·派佩、马特·史密斯、凯伦·吉兰甚至凯瑞·穆里根的职业生涯，后者曾经在《神秘博士》2007 年的经典剧集《Blink》中扮演了一个小角色。2010 年RTD离开后，DT也跟着离开了，RTD说他在成人剧领域“还有肌肉可以发挥”，该剧继续在他的时期的基础上发展，并带来了最近最新的主角（在DT回归周年特辑之前）Jodie Whittaker是第一位扮演博士的女性。Now, with Davies back at the helm, Gatwa is making history as the first openly queer Black actor to take on the role of the core Doctor.
现在，随着RTD重新掌舵，舒提正在创造历史，成为第一位公开扮演核心博士角色的黑人酷儿演员。“Do you know what? It makes perfect sense to me,” Gatwa, who was born in Rwanda and raised in Scotland, says of his casting. “I feel like anyone that has a problem with someone who’s not a straight white man playing this character, you’re not really, truly a fan of the show. You’ve not been watching! Because the show is about regeneration, and the Doctor is an alien — why would they only choose to be this sort of person?”
“你知道吗？这对我来说非常有意义，”在卢旺达出生、在苏格兰长大的舒提说道，他谈到了自己的选角。“我觉得，如果有人对扮演这个角色的演员不是白人直男有意见，那你真的不算是这个节目的粉丝。你根本就没有好好看剧！因为这部剧讲的是重生，博士是个外星人——博士凭什么只选择重生为那么单一的一种人呢？”Davies echoes that logic: “They weren’t exactly the straightest men in the past.” A trailblazer of LGBTQ television, Davies created the original “Queer as Folk” in 1999 and 2021’s “It’s a Sin.” And about how Gatwa’s Doctor is different, he says: “You’re talking about someone who does have a lightness and a joy about him that, to me, chimes with queer energy. It’s very rarely driving the story vehemently, but you will see moments exploring it. We’re not delivering a neutered Doctor.”
RTD也表达了相同的内容：“博士过去也并不完全是传统意义上的直男。”作为 LGBTQ 电视节目的先锋，RTD于 1999 年创作了原创剧《同志亦凡人》，并于 2021 年创作了《这是罪》。谈到舒提的博士与众不同的地方，他说：“你在谈论一个具有轻盈和快乐特质的人，对我来说，这与酷儿能量很契合。这种能量很少会强烈驱动故事，但你会看到探索这一点的时刻。我们不会呈现一个被削弱特质的博士。”While the Doctor’s sexuality has never been labeled, in Gatwa’s first episode as the lead — “The Church on Ruby Road,” which premiered as the traditional “Doctor Who” Christmas special — viewers see him dancing in a kilt and referencing his “long, hot summer with Harry Houdini.” And though Davies insists he didn’t set out to be revolutionary in casting the next Doctor — “We auditioned men, women, Black, white, nonbinary actors and actors whose sexuality was their own private matter” — he says these are “exactly the type of barriers I like to break.”
尽管博士的性取向从未被标签化，但在舒提作为主角的第一集中——《Ruby路上的教堂》，该集作为传统的《神秘博士》圣诞特辑首映——观众看到他穿着苏格兰短裙跳舞，并提到了他“与胡迪尼一起度过漫长而炎热的夏天。”尽管RTD坚称，他在选角下一位博士时并没有打算采取颠覆性的做法——“我们试镜了男性、女性、黑人、白人、酷儿演员以及没有公开性取向的演员”——他说这些“正是我喜欢突破的障碍”。“It’s very hard for anyone to stop me doing these things,” he continues. “You’d have to be a pretty brave executive to say, ‘Don’t go there’ to me. I’m sure there are people thinking that, but I wouldn’t work with them, would I?”
“任何人都很难阻止我做这些事情，”他继续说道。 “你必须是一位非常勇敢的高管，才能对我说‘不要这样做’。我知道肯定有人会这么想，但我不会和他们一起工作，不是吗？”Davies, a self-professed “Doctor Who” super fan, says he never stopped watching the show after he handed it over to Steven Moffat. He even initiated “tweet-alongs” to fan-favorite episodes during the COVID lockdown, enlisting Tennant and Catherine Tate, who had played one of the Doctor’s “companions” — someone always keeps the Doctor company in the Tardis, the show’s time-traveling machine — during Tennant’s tenure. When the two said they’d be open to returning to the show, which coincided with 13th Doctor Whittaker leaving, Davies pitched a 60th-anniversary special featuring Tennant and Tate to the BBC.
RTD说他是《神秘博士》的超级粉丝，他表示，自从把这部剧交给魔法特后，他就从未停止观看该剧。他甚至在新冠疫情封锁期间参加了对粉丝最喜欢的剧集的“来推特一起追剧”活动，邀请了曾扮演博士和“同伴”之一的DT和CT——有人总是在剧中的时间旅行机器TARDIS中陪伴着博士——在DT任职期间。当两人表示愿意重返节目时，在第 13 任博士JW离开之际，RTD向BBC推介了由DT和CT主演的 60 周年特辑。The broadcaster not only said yes, but asked Davies whether he’d want to reinvent the show once again, this time with a worldwide streaming partner. The BBC had found one in Disney+, where the new season will release worldwide on May 10 at 7 p.m. ET — excluding the U.K., where it will launch May 11 at midnight GMT on BBC iPlayer and air that night on BBC One. (A choice that’s maddened some British Whovians, who — if they don’t want to stay up past their bedtimes — will have to wait until the next morning to stream new episodes as they dodge spoilers.)
BBC负责人不仅答应了，还询问RTD是否愿意再次改造该剧，这次，是与全球流媒体合作伙伴合作。 BBC找到了Disney+，新一季将于 5 月 10 日东部时间晚上 7 点在全球上映。 但不包括英国，该剧在英国将于格林尼治标准时间 5 月 11 日午夜在 BBC iPlayer 上推出，并于当晚在 BBC One 上播出。 （这个选择让一些英国胡粉抓狂，如果他们不想熬夜超过就寝时间，就必须等到第二天早上观看新剧集，以免剧透。）The new iteration was given a two-season order, and Davies says it feels like such a fresh start that he has “the urge to call it Season 1,” despite the series’ 60-plus-year history. “It’s a new show,” he says.
新版签下了两季的订单，RTD表示，这感觉像是一个全新的开始，以至于他“有一种冲动将其称为第一季”，尽管该剧已有 60 多年的历史。 “这是一个全新的展现，”他说。Davies had admired franchises like “Star Trek” and “Star Wars” making the leap to streaming, and jumped at the chance to bring “Doctor Who” to a global audience — and with that transition, to give the show a higher production value. Integral to that was Bad Wolf, the production company founded by industry veterans Julie Gardner and Jane Tranter, with whom he had worked on his first iteration of “Doctor Who.” In 2017, Bad Wolf opened Wolf Studios Wales in Cardiff, which boasts 140,000 square feet of space across seven soundstages.
《神秘博士》剧集主管拉塞尔·T·戴维斯，由迪士尼摄影师雷伯米斯顿拍摄
RTD很欣赏《星际迷航》和《星球大战》等系列电影向流媒体领域的飞跃，并抓住了将《神秘博士》带给全球观众的机会，并通过这一转变赋予该剧更高的制作价值。其中不可或缺的是恶狼公司，这家制作公司由行业资深人士Julie Gardner和Jane Tranter创立，她们曾和RTD一起制作了《神秘博士》的新版第一季。 2017 年，恶狼公司在卡迪夫开设了威尔士恶狼工作室，占地 140,000 平方英尺，拥有七个摄影棚。“I want every person in the world to watch ‘Doctor Who,’” Gardner says of the power of Disney+. “We can just get bigger and get better reach, and it feels like exactly where ‘Doctor Who’ should be.”
“我希望世界上每个人都能观看《神秘博士》，”Gardner谈到迪士尼+的力量时说道。 “我们可以做得更大，覆盖范围更广，感觉《神秘博士》就应该如此。”And of course, with the Disney+ partnership came an elevated budget. Neither Davies nor the streamer will reveal exactly how much it is, though Davies has denied previous £10-million-per-episode rumors.
当然，与迪士尼+的合作带来了更高的预算。RTD和这家流媒体公司都不会透露确切的预算金额，不过RTD否认了之前每集 1000 万英镑的传言。“It’s not going to be a ‘Star Wars’ budget, and do you know what? Neither should it be,” he says. “Because I do think, with no offense to anyone, if money disappeared tomorrow, we’d [still] make the best episode of ‘Doctor Who’ ever.”
“不会有《星球大战》那样的预算，你知道吗？也不应该有，”他说。 “因为我确实认为，无意冒犯任何人，如果明天这笔钱消失了，我们仍然能够制作出《神秘博士》有史以来最好的一集。”With production locked in, only one task remained: finding the perfect Doctor to usher in the show’s new chapter.
制作锁定后，只剩下一个任务：寻找完美的博士来开启该剧的新篇章。Gatwa was the last person to audition for the role back in January 2022. After the production had seen around 20 actors — and believed it had found its new lead — casting director Andy Pryor called Gatwa’s agent.
舒提是最后一位试镜该角色的人选，时间是2022年1月。剧组在看了大约 20 名演员的试镜后，相信已经找到了新的主角，选角导演Andy Pryor给舒提的经纪人打了电话。“We think we’ve got them, but, like, rogue choice, we just want to see Ncuti,” Gatwa says, reenacting the phone conversation. “Do you think he’d be up for it?”
“我们认为我们已经找到了演员，但是，就像狂野选择一样，我们只是想看看舒提，”舒提说道，他重演了一下当时的电话交谈。 “你认为舒提能接受吗？”Indeed, he would: Just the week before, Gatwa had texted his agent that he’d love to play “a character like Doctor Who or Willy Wonka.”
事实上，舒提愿意：就在那之前的一周，舒提就给他的经纪人发了短信说他很想扮演神秘博士或威利·旺卡这样的角色”。“I was like, this is manifestation, man,” Gatwa says, still looking astonished. To prepare, he rewatched all of Davies’ episodes. “In that week, I became a die-hard fan.”
“我当时想，这就是美梦成真，伙计，”舒提说道，看上去仍然很惊讶。为了做好准备，他重新观看了RTD时期的所有剧集。 “那周我是超级铁杆粉丝。”During the audition, Davies, who read with each potential Doctor, was blown away. “I actually wanted to put down the script and say, ‘You’ve got the part,’” he says. “I literally knew then.”
在试镜过程中，与每位潜在博士演员一起通读剧本的RTD都被震撼了。 “我实际上想放下剧本并说，‘你得到了这个角色，’”他说。 “我当时就知道了。”Davies wasn’t alone in that opinion. “I have never seen an audition tape, and I suspect I probably never will, which had more conviction, more star quality, more talent in it than Ncuti’s,” producer Tranter says. “For me, it was the audition of a lifetime.”
RTD并不是唯一一个持这种观点的人。 “我从来没有看过别的试镜带能够比舒提的更有说服力，更有明星品质，更有才华，而且我怀疑这件事也后无来者，”制片人Tranter说。 “对我来说，这是一生难忘的试镜。”And every Doctor needs a companion. No. 15’s is Ruby Sunday, played by former “Coronation Street” star Millie Gibson. In the series, the spunky Mancunian teen’s search for her birth parents helps to bolster her friendship with the orphan Doctor. Today at the Langham, Gibson is dressed, fittingly, in a ruby red Comme des Garçons cardigan and matching Mary Janes as she recalls her audition with Gatwa.
每个博士都需要一个同伴。第15任博士的同伴是Ruby Sunday，由前《加冕街》明星演员米莉·吉布森饰演。在该剧中，这位勇敢的曼彻斯特青少年寻找她的亲生父母的过程有助于加强她与孤儿博士的友谊。今天在朗廷酒店，吉布森回忆起自己在舒提的试镜时，身着红宝石色 Comme des Garçons 开衫，搭配玛丽珍鞋。“It was surreal, because I remember watching you get announced at the BAFTAs in my bedroom, being like, ‘Oh, that’s a lovely choice,’” Gibson tells Gatwa as he lets out a belt of laughter — which then conjures another memory in Gibson. “I’ll always remember being in the waiting room for my audition and just hearing your laugh and being like, ‘Mm, there it is! There we go.’”
“这太超现实了，因为我记得自己曾经在卧室里看过你在BAFTA奖上被宣布获奖，我就想，‘哦，这是一个可爱的选择，’”吉布森一边笑一边告诉舒提——这让我想起了另一个记忆吉布森。 “我永远记得在等待室试镜时听到你的笑声，然后说，‘嗯，就在那里！我们就这样吧。’”Gibson calls their chemistry read “magic,” though she recalls thinking, “Is he just like that with everyone because he’s really charismatic?”
吉布森称他们的化学反应是“神奇的”，尽管她回忆道，“他对每个人都这样，是因为他真的很有魅力吗？”No, the feeling was mutual.
不，这种感觉是相互的。“I knew where I wanted to take the character of the Doctor as soon as you walked in the room,” Gatwa says. “I was like, ‘Now the characterization is complete. This was the missing piece.’”
“当你走进房间时，我就知道我想把博士这个角色带到哪里，”舒提说。 “我当时想，‘现在人物描述已经完成了。这就是缺失的部分。’”Gatwa’s guiding word for his Doctor became “compassion” — a choice that aligned with Davies’ vision of the character being more emotionally free than in the past. “A Doctor of old is someone who traditionally would be more closed, a little bit more aloof,” Davies says. “Then completely by chance I cast the man who couldn’t hide an emotion if he tried.”
舒提对他的博士的指导词变成了“同情心”——这一选择符合RTD的愿景，即该角色比过去在情感上更加自由。 “过去，传统的博士情感会更加封闭，更加淡漠，”戴维斯说。 “然后完全出于偶然，我选选择了这个即使努力也无法隐藏情感的人。”Indeed, viewers saw Gatwa’s Doctor shed tears in the Christmas special — something Davies hopes will connect with the show’s younger audience.
事实上，观众在圣诞特辑中看到了小15流下了眼泪——RTD希望这能与该剧的年轻观众产生共鸣。“The one thing I keep seeing now is the fragility of the mental health of young people. It’s like there’s a nervousness about in the air now,” he says. “So that’s the hero I wanted for them. If that younger audience is feeling so much, I wanted the Doctor to feel it on-screen as well.”
“我现在不断看到的一件事是年轻人脆弱的心理健康。现在空气中总是弥漫着紧张的气氛，”他说。 “这就是我想要的英雄。如果年轻观众有如此丰富的感受，我希望屏幕上的博士也能体会到这些情感。”Along with patented “Doctor Who” adventures that Whovians will love and monsters new and old, the new season will feature an homage to the Beatles and an episode Davies describes as “Welsh folk-horror.” But this latest revival hasn’t been without bumps in the road. In January, Gatwa was spotted filming an episode for the upcoming second season with new cast member Varada Sethu, seemingly playing the companion, which led to reports that Gibson would be leaving the show. Turns out — as it was officially announced earlier this month — that Gibson is sticking around, and Sethu is joining the cast as another companion in Season 2. (“This is the unfortunate thing about filming in public,” Davies laments.)
除了《神秘博士》的专利冒险和新旧怪物之外，新一季还将向披头士乐队致敬，并推出RTD之为“威尔士民间恐怖”的一集。但最近的复兴之路并非一帆风顺。一月份，有人发现舒提正在与新演员Varada Sethu一起拍摄即将到来的第二季的一集，似乎扮演同伴，这导致有报道称吉布森将离开该剧。结果——正如本月早些时候官方宣布的那样——吉布森将留下来，而新演员Sethu将作为第二季的另一位搭档加入剧组。（“这是在公共场合拍摄的不幸之处，”RTD感叹道。）“It was a little bit of a misunderstanding,” Gibson says. “But I’m very much in Season 2.”
“那件事有点误解，”吉布森说。 “但我绝对有积极参与第二季的拍摄。”“Doctor’s not letting this one go,” Gatwa says, chiming in. “That’s what the show is, isn’t it? There’s always new actors coming in and doing different things.”
“博士不会放手的，”舒提插话道，“这就是这部剧的意义，不是吗？总是有新演员加入、并带来一些新的事情。”And although Gatwa’s groundbreaking casting was met with much praise, there were, of course, some haters. Gatwa’s message to the naysayers is simple: “Don’t watch. Turn off the TV. Go and touch grass, please, for God’s sake.”
尽管舒提开创性的选角赢得了很多赞誉，但显然还是有一些人跳出来反对。舒提向反对者传达的信息很简单：“别看了。关掉电视。看在老天的份上，出去走走，接触接触大自然吧。”Then there’s the criticism that “Doctor Who” is a show that appeals to children — and that a queer actor playing the Doctor will reach more kids than ever with its new home on Disney+, which is a disturbing idea to homophobes. Davies sees the show’s wider reach as an opportunity to open people’s minds.
还有人批评说《神秘博士》是一部吸引儿童的节目，而扮演博士的酷儿演员将通过迪士尼+这个新平台去吸引比以往更多的孩子，这令恐同者们不安。RTD认为该剧的更广泛影响力是让人们开放思想的机会。“I think if you’re 6 years old, you don’t care — not at all,” he says. “But nonetheless, as the world darkens — and I do think the world is darkening around queer rights — there is a joy and a celebration, and there’s a community. Whether you’re 12 years old and just beginning to work out who you are, 62 years old and you’ve never been who you are, or 61 years old like I am and beginning to worry about where we are in society — there is a hero out there cutting his way through the universe, looking damn good in his suits and doing it with a laugh and a smile.”
“我认为，如果你只有 6 岁，你根本都不会在意这些，”他说。 “但尽管如此，随着世界现状变得愈发黑暗——我确实认为围绕为酷儿争取基本权利的世界正在变得黑暗——然而在酷儿权利问题上，还有着这样积极的团结的氛围存在，人们共同庆祝和支持彼此。无论你是 12 岁，刚刚开始认识自身，还是62 岁，从来都还没能做过自己，还是像我一样 61 岁，开始担心我们自己在社会中的处境 – 都有一位英雄在宇宙中开辟出一条道路，穿着西装、好看极了，并且带着欢笑和微笑地做着自己。”For Gatwa, Tennant has been a “guiding therapist father figure,” advising him about “the things to read, and the things not to read.”
对于舒提来说，DT一直是“父亲般的指导治疗师形象”，为他提供了“哪些内容该读和哪些内容不该读”的建议。As for how long this new era of “Doctor Who” will last? Gatwa says he’s “not going anywhere soon,” and Davies adds that he’s “already making plans” beyond the initial two-season order. No matter where this foray into the Whoniverse goes, Davies is sure of one thing: In Gatwa, a star has been born.
至于《神秘博士》的这个新时代能持续多久？舒提表示，自己“不会很快离开”，RTD补充说，除了最初的两季订单外，他“已经制定了计划”。无论进入神秘博士宇宙的哪个方向，RTD都确信一件事：对于舒提来说，一颗明星已经诞生。“I can sit here utterly certain that in five years’ time he’ll be leading a movie franchise and security will be holding me back as I go, ‘He promised me a ticket!’” Davies says with a chuckle.
“我坐在这里完全可以肯定，五年后他将主演一部电影，而保安会拦住我，我会大喊，‘他答应过给我一张票的！’”RTD笑着说。 -
【这里仅作备份，请优先选择打开原文】
原文链接：variety.com/2024/tv/features/doctor-who-disney-plus-cast-ncuti-gatwa-first-black-doctor-diversity-1235979436/
‘Doctor Who’ Regenerates: How Ncuti Gatwa’s Historic Casting, Russell T Davies’ Return and a Disney+ Deal Revolutionized the Franchise
《神秘博士》重生：舒提历史性的选角、RTD的回归以及与迪士尼+的订单如何彻底改变了该剧When Ncuti Gatwa makes his first appearance as the 15th Doctor in the science-fiction series “Doctor Who,” he isn’t wearing any pants.
当Ncuti Gatwa在科幻剧《神秘博士》中首次以第 15 任博士身份亮相时，他没有穿裤子。In a 60th-anniversary special released in December, the previous Doctor — played by series icon David Tennant — subverts the show’s long-standing practice of regeneration: Instead of simply transforming into the next Doctor, he literally splits in half, bringing Gatwa’s Doctor into the world alongside him. In the process, the two divide the clothes of Tennant’s Doctor between them, leaving Gatwa in nothing but a dress shirt and a pair of tighty-whities.
在 12 月发布的 60 周年特辑中，前任博士（由大卫·田纳特饰演）颠覆了该剧长期以来的重生实践：他没有简单地转变为下一位博士，而是分裂成两半，将舒提的博士与自己一起带入世界。在此过程中，两人各自拥有了一半原本第14任博士的衣服，舒提只穿了一件正装衬衫和紧身裤。“Oh, my God, that first costume fitting!” Gatwa says, bursting into an infectious fit of laughter. It’s a frequent occurrence as he speaks with Variety on a chilly March day over lemon ginger tea at the Langham hotel in London. “I was like, ‘Are you joking?!’ They showed me a pair of [underwear] and they were like” — he claps his hands as if to say “Voilà!”
“哦，天啊，试穿第一套服装的时候！”舒提说道，他爆发出富有感染力的笑声，这种情况经常发生。在寒冷的三月天，他在伦敦朗廷酒店喝着柠檬姜茶接受 Variety 采访时。 “我当时想，‘你在开玩笑吗？！’他们给我展示了一条[内裤]，他们就像”——他拍了拍手演示道，好像在说“瞧啊！”In addition to the whole no-pants thing, Gatwa was just a little bit star-struck: Tennant, who played the part from 2005 to 2010, was the Doctor he’d grown up with, inspiring him to become an actor in the first place.
除了整个“不穿裤子”的事情之外，舒提身上还有些明星效应：DT在 2005 年至 2010 年期间扮演了这个角色，舒提是看着DT的博士长大的，这激励了他成为一名演员。“To play this role beside him, who played this role which made me want to do this role, and him also being there — it was so many layers of full circle,” Gatwa says. “And on top of it, you’re wearing no pants! There was so much going on that day.”
“在他身边扮演这个角色，他扮演的这个角色让我想要扮演这个角色，而且他也在场——这是一个完整的循环，”舒提说。 “而且最重要的是，我没穿裤子！那天发生了很多事情。”It was an apt entrance for Gatwa, whose bubbly, fearless personality shone through in his breakout performance as the effervescent Eric on Netflix’s “Sex Education” and as “artist Ken” in Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie.” It also marks a new era for the beloved “Doctor Who,” with series stalwart Russell T Davies returning as showrunner, writer and executive producer.
这对于舒提来说是一个恰当的入口，他在 Netflix的《性教育》中饰演了热情洋溢的Eric以及在格蕾塔·葛韦格的电影《芭比》中饰演了“艺术家肯”，在他的突破性表演中展现了他活泼、无所畏惧的个性。这也标志着深受喜爱的《神秘博士》进入了一个新时代，该剧的坚定支持者RTD将回归担任剧集主管、编剧和执行制片人。Since premiering in 1963, the seminal show has become part of the fabric of British culture, reaching across generations and prompting many a dinner-table argument about which Doctor is the best. The original series went off the air in 1989 after seven actors played the role, with an eighth appearing in a 1996 TV movie that failed to reignite excitement in the franchise. Then Davies ushered “Doctor Who” into the modern age in 2005, extending its episode lengths, giving it a sleek new look and crafting story arcs that extended throughout each season. Taking the reins was a dream for Davies, who says the show is “not only my first memory of television, but my first memory of life.”
自 1963 年首播以来，这部影响深远的剧已成为英国文化的一部分，影响了几代人，并引发了许多餐桌上关于“哪任博士最棒”的争论。旧版剧集由七位演员扮演该角色，后于 1989 年停播，第八位演员出现在 1996 年的一部电视电影中，但未能重新点燃该剧。随后，RTD在 2005 年将《神秘博士》带入现代，延长了剧集长度，赋予其时尚的新外观，并精心设计了贯穿每一季的故事情节。接掌神秘博士是RTD的梦想，他说这部剧“不仅是我对电视的第一个记忆，也是我人生的第一个记忆”。With Christopher Eccleston as the ninth Doctor, followed by Tennant as the 10th, Davies took the series out of its cult-y niche as a British curiosity. With his relaunch, “Doctor Who” transformed into an international hit (with multiple spinoffs), as well as a star-making machine. In addition to Eccleston and Tennant, who have become two of the U.K.’s greatest acting exports, “Doctor Who” has helped launch the careers of Billie Piper, Matt Smith, Karen Gillan and even Carey Mulligan, who had a small role in the now-classic 2007 episode “Blink.” After Davies’ departure in 2010 — Tennant was also leaving and Davies says he “had muscles to flex” in the adult drama space — the show continued to build on his foundation, with the most recent lead (prior to Tennant’s anniversary-special return) being Jodie Whittaker, the first woman to play the Doctor.
Ncuti Gatwa 饰演博士，图片由迪士尼+提供
Christopher Eccleston饰演第九任博士，Tennant担任第十任博士，RTD将该剧带出了它作为英国奇趣之物的小众领域。随着他的重新推出，《神秘博士》变成了一部国际热门影片（有多个衍生剧），同时也是一台造星机器。除了CE和DT成为英国最伟大的两位演技派外，《神秘博士》还帮助开启了比莉·派佩、马特·史密斯、凯伦·吉兰甚至凯瑞·穆里根的职业生涯，后者曾经在《神秘博士》2007 年的经典剧集《Blink》中扮演了一个小角色。2010 年RTD离开后，DT也跟着离开了，RTD说他在成人剧领域“还有肌肉可以发挥”，该剧继续在他的时期的基础上发展，并带来了最近最新的主角（在DT回归周年特辑之前）Jodie Whittaker是第一位扮演博士的女性。Now, with Davies back at the helm, Gatwa is making history as the first openly queer Black actor to take on the role of the core Doctor.
现在，随着RTD重新掌舵，舒提正在创造历史，成为第一位公开扮演核心博士角色的黑人酷儿演员。“Do you know what? It makes perfect sense to me,” Gatwa, who was born in Rwanda and raised in Scotland, says of his casting. “I feel like anyone that has a problem with someone who’s not a straight white man playing this character, you’re not really, truly a fan of the show. You’ve not been watching! Because the show is about regeneration, and the Doctor is an alien — why would they only choose to be this sort of person?”
“你知道吗？这对我来说非常有意义，”在卢旺达出生、在苏格兰长大的舒提说道，他谈到了自己的选角。“我觉得，如果有人对扮演这个角色的演员不是白人直男有意见，那你真的不算是这个节目的粉丝。你根本就没有好好看剧！因为这部剧讲的是重生，博士是个外星人——博士凭什么只选择重生为那么单一的一种人呢？”Davies echoes that logic: “They weren’t exactly the straightest men in the past.” A trailblazer of LGBTQ television, Davies created the original “Queer as Folk” in 1999 and 2021’s “It’s a Sin.” And about how Gatwa’s Doctor is different, he says: “You’re talking about someone who does have a lightness and a joy about him that, to me, chimes with queer energy. It’s very rarely driving the story vehemently, but you will see moments exploring it. We’re not delivering a neutered Doctor.”
RTD也表达了相同的内容：“博士过去也并不完全是传统意义上的直男。”作为 LGBTQ 电视节目的先锋，RTD于 1999 年创作了原创剧《同志亦凡人》，并于 2021 年创作了《这是罪》。谈到舒提的博士与众不同的地方，他说：“你在谈论一个具有轻盈和快乐特质的人，对我来说，这与酷儿能量很契合。这种能量很少会强烈驱动故事，但你会看到探索这一点的时刻。我们不会呈现一个被削弱特质的博士。”While the Doctor’s sexuality has never been labeled, in Gatwa’s first episode as the lead — “The Church on Ruby Road,” which premiered as the traditional “Doctor Who” Christmas special — viewers see him dancing in a kilt and referencing his “long, hot summer with Harry Houdini.” And though Davies insists he didn’t set out to be revolutionary in casting the next Doctor — “We auditioned men, women, Black, white, nonbinary actors and actors whose sexuality was their own private matter” — he says these are “exactly the type of barriers I like to break.”
尽管博士的性取向从未被标签化，但在舒提作为主角的第一集中——《Ruby路上的教堂》，该集作为传统的《神秘博士》圣诞特辑首映——观众看到他穿着苏格兰短裙跳舞，并提到了他“与胡迪尼一起度过漫长而炎热的夏天。”尽管RTD坚称，他在选角下一位博士时并没有打算采取颠覆性的做法——“我们试镜了男性、女性、黑人、白人、酷儿演员以及没有公开性取向的演员”——他说这些“正是我喜欢突破的障碍”。“It’s very hard for anyone to stop me doing these things,” he continues. “You’d have to be a pretty brave executive to say, ‘Don’t go there’ to me. I’m sure there are people thinking that, but I wouldn’t work with them, would I?”
“任何人都很难阻止我做这些事情，”他继续说道。 “你必须是一位非常勇敢的高管，才能对我说‘不要这样做’。我知道肯定有人会这么想，但我不会和他们一起工作，不是吗？”Davies, a self-professed “Doctor Who” super fan, says he never stopped watching the show after he handed it over to Steven Moffat. He even initiated “tweet-alongs” to fan-favorite episodes during the COVID lockdown, enlisting Tennant and Catherine Tate, who had played one of the Doctor’s “companions” — someone always keeps the Doctor company in the Tardis, the show’s time-traveling machine — during Tennant’s tenure. When the two said they’d be open to returning to the show, which coincided with 13th Doctor Whittaker leaving, Davies pitched a 60th-anniversary special featuring Tennant and Tate to the BBC.
RTD说他是《神秘博士》的超级粉丝，他表示，自从把这部剧交给魔法特后，他就从未停止观看该剧。他甚至在新冠疫情封锁期间参加了对粉丝最喜欢的剧集的“来推特一起追剧”活动，邀请了曾扮演博士和“同伴”之一的DT和CT——有人总是在剧中的时间旅行机器TARDIS中陪伴着博士——在DT任职期间。当两人表示愿意重返节目时，在第 13 任博士JW离开之际，RTD向BBC推介了由DT和CT主演的 60 周年特辑。The broadcaster not only said yes, but asked Davies whether he’d want to reinvent the show once again, this time with a worldwide streaming partner. The BBC had found one in Disney+, where the new season will release worldwide on May 10 at 7 p.m. ET — excluding the U.K., where it will launch May 11 at midnight GMT on BBC iPlayer and air that night on BBC One. (A choice that’s maddened some British Whovians, who — if they don’t want to stay up past their bedtimes — will have to wait until the next morning to stream new episodes as they dodge spoilers.)
BBC负责人不仅答应了，还询问RTD是否愿意再次改造该剧，这次，是与全球流媒体合作伙伴合作。 BBC找到了Disney+，新一季将于 5 月 10 日东部时间晚上 7 点在全球上映。 但不包括英国，该剧在英国将于格林尼治标准时间 5 月 11 日午夜在 BBC iPlayer 上推出，并于当晚在 BBC One 上播出。 （这个选择让一些英国胡粉抓狂，如果他们不想熬夜超过就寝时间，就必须等到第二天早上观看新剧集，以免剧透。）The new iteration was given a two-season order, and Davies says it feels like such a fresh start that he has “the urge to call it Season 1,” despite the series’ 60-plus-year history. “It’s a new show,” he says.
新版签下了两季的订单，RTD表示，这感觉像是一个全新的开始，以至于他“有一种冲动将其称为第一季”，尽管该剧已有 60 多年的历史。 “这是一个全新的展现，”他说。Davies had admired franchises like “Star Trek” and “Star Wars” making the leap to streaming, and jumped at the chance to bring “Doctor Who” to a global audience — and with that transition, to give the show a higher production value. Integral to that was Bad Wolf, the production company founded by industry veterans Julie Gardner and Jane Tranter, with whom he had worked on his first iteration of “Doctor Who.” In 2017, Bad Wolf opened Wolf Studios Wales in Cardiff, which boasts 140,000 square feet of space across seven soundstages.
《神秘博士》剧集主管拉塞尔·T·戴维斯，由迪士尼摄影师雷伯米斯顿拍摄
RTD很欣赏《星际迷航》和《星球大战》等系列电影向流媒体领域的飞跃，并抓住了将《神秘博士》带给全球观众的机会，并通过这一转变赋予该剧更高的制作价值。其中不可或缺的是恶狼公司，这家制作公司由行业资深人士Julie Gardner和Jane Tranter创立，她们曾和RTD一起制作了《神秘博士》的新版第一季。 2017 年，恶狼公司在卡迪夫开设了威尔士恶狼工作室，占地 140,000 平方英尺，拥有七个摄影棚。“I want every person in the world to watch ‘Doctor Who,’” Gardner says of the power of Disney+. “We can just get bigger and get better reach, and it feels like exactly where ‘Doctor Who’ should be.”
“我希望世界上每个人都能观看《神秘博士》，”Gardner谈到迪士尼+的力量时说道。 “我们可以做得更大，覆盖范围更广，感觉《神秘博士》就应该如此。”And of course, with the Disney+ partnership came an elevated budget. Neither Davies nor the streamer will reveal exactly how much it is, though Davies has denied previous £10-million-per-episode rumors.
当然，与迪士尼+的合作带来了更高的预算。RTD和这家流媒体公司都不会透露确切的预算金额，不过RTD否认了之前每集 1000 万英镑的传言。“It’s not going to be a ‘Star Wars’ budget, and do you know what? Neither should it be,” he says. “Because I do think, with no offense to anyone, if money disappeared tomorrow, we’d [still] make the best episode of ‘Doctor Who’ ever.”
“不会有《星球大战》那样的预算，你知道吗？也不应该有，”他说。 “因为我确实认为，无意冒犯任何人，如果明天这笔钱消失了，我们仍然能够制作出《神秘博士》有史以来最好的一集。”With production locked in, only one task remained: finding the perfect Doctor to usher in the show’s new chapter.
制作锁定后，只剩下一个任务：寻找完美的博士来开启该剧的新篇章。Gatwa was the last person to audition for the role back in January 2022. After the production had seen around 20 actors — and believed it had found its new lead — casting director Andy Pryor called Gatwa’s agent.
舒提是最后一位试镜该角色的人选，时间是2022年1月。剧组在看了大约 20 名演员的试镜后，相信已经找到了新的主角，选角导演Andy Pryor给舒提的经纪人打了电话。“We think we’ve got them, but, like, rogue choice, we just want to see Ncuti,” Gatwa says, reenacting the phone conversation. “Do you think he’d be up for it?”
“我们认为我们已经找到了演员，但是，就像狂野选择一样，我们只是想看看舒提，”舒提说道，他重演了一下当时的电话交谈。 “你认为舒提能接受吗？”Indeed, he would: Just the week before, Gatwa had texted his agent that he’d love to play “a character like Doctor Who or Willy Wonka.”
事实上，舒提愿意：就在那之前的一周，舒提就给他的经纪人发了短信说他很想扮演神秘博士或威利·旺卡这样的角色”。“I was like, this is manifestation, man,” Gatwa says, still looking astonished. To prepare, he rewatched all of Davies’ episodes. “In that week, I became a die-hard fan.”
“我当时想，这就是美梦成真，伙计，”舒提说道，看上去仍然很惊讶。为了做好准备，他重新观看了RTD时期的所有剧集。 “那周我是超级铁杆粉丝。”During the audition, Davies, who read with each potential Doctor, was blown away. “I actually wanted to put down the script and say, ‘You’ve got the part,’” he says. “I literally knew then.”
在试镜过程中，与每位潜在博士演员一起通读剧本的RTD都被震撼了。 “我实际上想放下剧本并说，‘你得到了这个角色，’”他说。 “我当时就知道了。”Davies wasn’t alone in that opinion. “I have never seen an audition tape, and I suspect I probably never will, which had more conviction, more star quality, more talent in it than Ncuti’s,” producer Tranter says. “For me, it was the audition of a lifetime.”
RTD并不是唯一一个持这种观点的人。 “我从来没有看过别的试镜带能够比舒提的更有说服力，更有明星品质，更有才华，而且我怀疑这件事也后无来者，”制片人Tranter说。 “对我来说，这是一生难忘的试镜。”And every Doctor needs a companion. No. 15’s is Ruby Sunday, played by former “Coronation Street” star Millie Gibson. In the series, the spunky Mancunian teen’s search for her birth parents helps to bolster her friendship with the orphan Doctor. Today at the Langham, Gibson is dressed, fittingly, in a ruby red Comme des Garçons cardigan and matching Mary Janes as she recalls her audition with Gatwa.
每个博士都需要一个同伴。第15任博士的同伴是Ruby Sunday，由前《加冕街》明星演员米莉·吉布森饰演。在该剧中，这位勇敢的曼彻斯特青少年寻找她的亲生父母的过程有助于加强她与孤儿博士的友谊。今天在朗廷酒店，吉布森回忆起自己在舒提的试镜时，身着红宝石色 Comme des Garçons 开衫，搭配玛丽珍鞋。“It was surreal, because I remember watching you get announced at the BAFTAs in my bedroom, being like, ‘Oh, that’s a lovely choice,’” Gibson tells Gatwa as he lets out a belt of laughter — which then conjures another memory in Gibson. “I’ll always remember being in the waiting room for my audition and just hearing your laugh and being like, ‘Mm, there it is! There we go.’”
“这太超现实了，因为我记得自己曾经在卧室里看过你在BAFTA奖上被宣布获奖，我就想，‘哦，这是一个可爱的选择，’”吉布森一边笑一边告诉舒提——这让我想起了另一个记忆吉布森。 “我永远记得在等待室试镜时听到你的笑声，然后说，‘嗯，就在那里！我们就这样吧。’”Gibson calls their chemistry read “magic,” though she recalls thinking, “Is he just like that with everyone because he’s really charismatic?”
吉布森称他们的化学反应是“神奇的”，尽管她回忆道，“他对每个人都这样，是因为他真的很有魅力吗？”No, the feeling was mutual.
不，这种感觉是相互的。“I knew where I wanted to take the character of the Doctor as soon as you walked in the room,” Gatwa says. “I was like, ‘Now the characterization is complete. This was the missing piece.’”
“当你走进房间时，我就知道我想把博士这个角色带到哪里，”舒提说。 “我当时想，‘现在人物描述已经完成了。这就是缺失的部分。’”Gatwa’s guiding word for his Doctor became “compassion” — a choice that aligned with Davies’ vision of the character being more emotionally free than in the past. “A Doctor of old is someone who traditionally would be more closed, a little bit more aloof,” Davies says. “Then completely by chance I cast the man who couldn’t hide an emotion if he tried.”
舒提对他的博士的指导词变成了“同情心”——这一选择符合RTD的愿景，即该角色比过去在情感上更加自由。 “过去，传统的博士情感会更加封闭，更加淡漠，”戴维斯说。 “然后完全出于偶然，我选选择了这个即使努力也无法隐藏情感的人。”Indeed, viewers saw Gatwa’s Doctor shed tears in the Christmas special — something Davies hopes will connect with the show’s younger audience.
事实上，观众在圣诞特辑中看到了小15流下了眼泪——RTD希望这能与该剧的年轻观众产生共鸣。“The one thing I keep seeing now is the fragility of the mental health of young people. It’s like there’s a nervousness about in the air now,” he says. “So that’s the hero I wanted for them. If that younger audience is feeling so much, I wanted the Doctor to feel it on-screen as well.”
“我现在不断看到的一件事是年轻人脆弱的心理健康。现在空气中总是弥漫着紧张的气氛，”他说。 “这就是我想要的英雄。如果年轻观众有如此丰富的感受，我希望屏幕上的博士也能体会到这些情感。”Along with patented “Doctor Who” adventures that Whovians will love and monsters new and old, the new season will feature an homage to the Beatles and an episode Davies describes as “Welsh folk-horror.” But this latest revival hasn’t been without bumps in the road. In January, Gatwa was spotted filming an episode for the upcoming second season with new cast member Varada Sethu, seemingly playing the companion, which led to reports that Gibson would be leaving the show. Turns out — as it was officially announced earlier this month — that Gibson is sticking around, and Sethu is joining the cast as another companion in Season 2. (“This is the unfortunate thing about filming in public,” Davies laments.)
除了《神秘博士》的专利冒险和新旧怪物之外，新一季还将向披头士乐队致敬，并推出RTD之为“威尔士民间恐怖”的一集。但最近的复兴之路并非一帆风顺。一月份，有人发现舒提正在与新演员Varada Sethu一起拍摄即将到来的第二季的一集，似乎扮演同伴，这导致有报道称吉布森将离开该剧。结果——正如本月早些时候官方宣布的那样——吉布森将留下来，而新演员Sethu将作为第二季的另一位搭档加入剧组。（“这是在公共场合拍摄的不幸之处，”RTD感叹道。）“It was a little bit of a misunderstanding,” Gibson says. “But I’m very much in Season 2.”
“那件事有点误解，”吉布森说。 “但我绝对有积极参与第二季的拍摄。”“Doctor’s not letting this one go,” Gatwa says, chiming in. “That’s what the show is, isn’t it? There’s always new actors coming in and doing different things.”
“博士不会放手的，”舒提插话道，“这就是这部剧的意义，不是吗？总是有新演员加入、并带来一些新的事情。”And although Gatwa’s groundbreaking casting was met with much praise, there were, of course, some haters. Gatwa’s message to the naysayers is simple: “Don’t watch. Turn off the TV. Go and touch grass, please, for God’s sake.”
尽管舒提开创性的选角赢得了很多赞誉，但显然还是有一些人跳出来反对。舒提向反对者传达的信息很简单：“别看了。关掉电视。看在老天的份上，出去走走，接触接触大自然吧。”Then there’s the criticism that “Doctor Who” is a show that appeals to children — and that a queer actor playing the Doctor will reach more kids than ever with its new home on Disney+, which is a disturbing idea to homophobes. Davies sees the show’s wider reach as an opportunity to open people’s minds.
还有人批评说《神秘博士》是一部吸引儿童的节目，而扮演博士的酷儿演员将通过迪士尼+这个新平台去吸引比以往更多的孩子，这令恐同者们不安。RTD认为该剧的更广泛影响力是让人们开放思想的机会。“I think if you’re 6 years old, you don’t care — not at all,” he says. “But nonetheless, as the world darkens — and I do think the world is darkening around queer rights — there is a joy and a celebration, and there’s a community. Whether you’re 12 years old and just beginning to work out who you are, 62 years old and you’ve never been who you are, or 61 years old like I am and beginning to worry about where we are in society — there is a hero out there cutting his way through the universe, looking damn good in his suits and doing it with a laugh and a smile.”
“我认为，如果你只有 6 岁，你根本都不会在意这些，”他说。 “但尽管如此，随着世界现状变得愈发黑暗——我确实认为围绕为酷儿争取基本权利的世界正在变得黑暗——然而在酷儿权利问题上，还有着这样积极的团结的氛围存在，人们共同庆祝和支持彼此。无论你是 12 岁，刚刚开始认识自身，还是62 岁，从来都还没能做过自己，还是像我一样 61 岁，开始担心我们自己在社会中的处境 – 都有一位英雄在宇宙中开辟出一条道路，穿着西装、好看极了，并且带着欢笑和微笑地做着自己。”For Gatwa, Tennant has been a “guiding therapist father figure,” advising him about “the things to read, and the things not to read.”
对于舒提来说，DT一直是“父亲般的指导治疗师形象”，为他提供了“哪些内容该读和哪些内容不该读”的建议。As for how long this new era of “Doctor Who” will last? Gatwa says he’s “not going anywhere soon,” and Davies adds that he’s “already making plans” beyond the initial two-season order. No matter where this foray into the Whoniverse goes, Davies is sure of one thing: In Gatwa, a star has been born.
至于《神秘博士》的这个新时代能持续多久？舒提表示，自己“不会很快离开”，RTD补充说，除了最初的两季订单外，他“已经制定了计划”。无论进入神秘博士宇宙的哪个方向，RTD都确信一件事：对于舒提来说，一颗明星已经诞生。“I can sit here utterly certain that in five years’ time he’ll be leading a movie franchise and security will be holding me back as I go, ‘He promised me a ticket!’” Davies says with a chuckle.
“我坐在这里完全可以肯定，五年后他将主演一部电影，而保安会拦住我，我会大喊，‘他答应过给我一张票的！’”RTD笑着说。 -
By Kenstrosity
At the risk of making light of a serious situation, I’ve been on the struggle bus as of late. My mental health nosedived somewhere in late February, for what reason I still don’t comprehend, and it’s been a trial and a tribulation to claw my way back out. Needless to say, during this difficult time, I haven’t been the best person to be around—lashing out against even the smallest jest, forgetfully neglecting my friends when they message to check on me, and isolating myself from everyone and everything out of shame and embarrassment. You’d think that, in the midst of all of this, I would reach for something uplifting to compensate. Instead, I cling to emotionally dour and violently depressive material, as it brings me a specific and rare kind of catharsis. Serendipity bore a cosmic kindness to me, then, when it delivered international depressive atmoblack project Acathexis’ long-awaited sophomore record, Immerse, into my clutches.
After the immensely affecting self-titled debut released at the end of 2018, Acathexis rapidly became one of my more closely watched new acts. A dream team of Mare Cognitum‘s Jacob Buczarski (drums), Déhà (guitars, bass), and Los Males del Mundo’s Dany Tee (vocals, lyrics) comprises the talent, and melancholic black metal rife with weeping melodies and misty atmosphere makes up the content. Long-form epics are the band’s bread and butter, with expansive, tremolo-laden tidal waves crashing down on the listener with devastating impact. If you’re looking for straightforward riffing and pumping rhythms, you won’t find them here. You will, on the other hand, find a trove of soaring leads, smooth blasts and double-bass runs, and a cavalcade of soul-rending wails, heart-wrenching rasps, and subterranean roars.
Over the course of these four songs, spanning across fifty minutes, the wonderfully collaborative nature of Immerse becomes crystal clear. At every turn, a gorgeous, shimmering lead blooms from the record’s core, bearing a conjoined Déhà/Mare Cognitum imprint that lights up the spine (“Dreams of Scorched Mirrors”). Coursing through the record’s veins, an undercurrent of Silver Knife‘s scathing character coalesces with Slow‘s woeful melody that, in tandem with the aforementioned shimmers, forms a lush and deeply immersive soundscape which handily lives up to the album’s title (“Adrift in Endless Tides,” “A Slow, Weary Wind”). Dany’s simply unhinged delivery not only marks him as one of the best vocalists in the style, but also often elevates these songs to a higher tier, particularly when unleashing high-pitched howls that seem to contain the tortured cries of a thousand haunted spirits (“Dreams of Scorched Mirrors,” “The Other”).
Much of my critique for Immerse falls under the same umbrella as that garnered by the majority of atmospheric black metal: overly strict adherence to limited songwriting formulas. Primarily invigorated by Jacob’s brilliant rhythmic pacing and percussive creativity (note the cymbal acrobatics in “Adrift in Endless Tides”), Déhà’s uncanny merger of each player’s respective sounds into deeply affecting melodies and sweeps, and Dany’s haunting voice, a lot of this material unfortunately presents a generic interpretation of the genre. Songwriting frameworks that challenge the genre standards or move the field into new territory just don’t occur over much of Immerse’s runtime. Instead, Acathexis banked on emotional immersion, immaculate detailing, and expressive delivery from each performer to bolster material that otherwise feels homogenous (“The Other”) or sounds repetitive (“A Slow, Weary Wind”). This is a risky move when playing a style maligned for its lack of dynamics or creativity, and while Acathexis just pulled it off this time, I worry that future efforts won’t fare so well without more concerted effort allotted to robust, evolving songwriting approaches.
Despite my misgivings regarding the continued application of a well-worn set of songwriting structures in this genre, there are precious few I trust more to build it well than those in Acathexis. Immerse doesn’t challenge any standards, and certainly won’t convert any naysayers. At the same time, I consider this record a beautiful, harrowing piece of depressive music. Moreover, it came to me at just the right time to strike at the heart. So, even though Immerse isn’t the game-changing record it could’ve been, that tempered bond I formed with it ensures that even after the fog lifts and the sun shines again, I’ll come back to Immerse without reservation.
Rating: Good!
DR: 8 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Labels: Amor Fati Productions (Physical) | Extraconscious Records (Digital)
Websites: facebook.com/acathexisband | acathexis.bandcamp.com
Releases worldwide: March 20th, 2024#2024 #30 #Acathexis #AmericanMetal #AmorFatiProductions #ArgentinianMetal #AtmosphericBlackMetal #BelgianMetal #BlackMetal #Déhà #DepressiveBlackMetal #DSBM #ExtraconsciousRecords #Immerse #InternationalMetal #LosMalesDelMundo #Mar24 #MareCognitum #Review #Reviews #SilverKnife #Slow
-
By Kenstrosity
At the risk of making light of a serious situation, I’ve been on the struggle bus as of late. My mental health nosedived somewhere in late February, for what reason I still don’t comprehend, and it’s been a trial and a tribulation to claw my way back out. Needless to say, during this difficult time, I haven’t been the best person to be around—lashing out against even the smallest jest, forgetfully neglecting my friends when they message to check on me, and isolating myself from everyone and everything out of shame and embarrassment. You’d think that, in the midst of all of this, I would reach for something uplifting to compensate. Instead, I cling to emotionally dour and violently depressive material, as it brings me a specific and rare kind of catharsis. Serendipity bore a cosmic kindness to me, then, when it delivered international depressive atmoblack project Acathexis’ long-awaited sophomore record, Immerse, into my clutches.
After the immensely affecting self-titled debut released at the end of 2018, Acathexis rapidly became one of my more closely watched new acts. A dream team of Mare Cognitum‘s Jacob Buczarski (drums), Déhà (guitars, bass), and Los Males del Mundo’s Dany Tee (vocals, lyrics) comprises the talent, and melancholic black metal rife with weeping melodies and misty atmosphere makes up the content. Long-form epics are the band’s bread and butter, with expansive, tremolo-laden tidal waves crashing down on the listener with devastating impact. If you’re looking for straightforward riffing and pumping rhythms, you won’t find them here. You will, on the other hand, find a trove of soaring leads, smooth blasts and double-bass runs, and a cavalcade of soul-rending wails, heart-wrenching rasps, and subterranean roars.
Over the course of these four songs, spanning across fifty minutes, the wonderfully collaborative nature of Immerse becomes crystal clear. At every turn, a gorgeous, shimmering lead blooms from the record’s core, bearing a conjoined Déhà/Mare Cognitum imprint that lights up the spine (“Dreams of Scorched Mirrors”). Coursing through the record’s veins, an undercurrent of Silver Knife‘s scathing character coalesces with Slow‘s woeful melody that, in tandem with the aforementioned shimmers, forms a lush and deeply immersive soundscape which handily lives up to the album’s title (“Adrift in Endless Tides,” “A Slow, Weary Wind”). Dany’s simply unhinged delivery not only marks him as one of the best vocalists in the style, but also often elevates these songs to a higher tier, particularly when unleashing high-pitched howls that seem to contain the tortured cries of a thousand haunted spirits (“Dreams of Scorched Mirrors,” “The Other”).
Much of my critique for Immerse falls under the same umbrella as that garnered by the majority of atmospheric black metal: overly strict adherence to limited songwriting formulas. Primarily invigorated by Jacob’s brilliant rhythmic pacing and percussive creativity (note the cymbal acrobatics in “Adrift in Endless Tides”), Déhà’s uncanny merger of each player’s respective sounds into deeply affecting melodies and sweeps, and Dany’s haunting voice, a lot of this material unfortunately presents a generic interpretation of the genre. Songwriting frameworks that challenge the genre standards or move the field into new territory just don’t occur over much of Immerse’s runtime. Instead, Acathexis banked on emotional immersion, immaculate detailing, and expressive delivery from each performer to bolster material that otherwise feels homogenous (“The Other”) or sounds repetitive (“A Slow, Weary Wind”). This is a risky move when playing a style maligned for its lack of dynamics or creativity, and while Acathexis just pulled it off this time, I worry that future efforts won’t fare so well without more concerted effort allotted to robust, evolving songwriting approaches.
Despite my misgivings regarding the continued application of a well-worn set of songwriting structures in this genre, there are precious few I trust more to build it well than those in Acathexis. Immerse doesn’t challenge any standards, and certainly won’t convert any naysayers. At the same time, I consider this record a beautiful, harrowing piece of depressive music. Moreover, it came to me at just the right time to strike at the heart. So, even though Immerse isn’t the game-changing record it could’ve been, that tempered bond I formed with it ensures that even after the fog lifts and the sun shines again, I’ll come back to Immerse without reservation.
Rating: Good!
DR: 8 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Labels: Amor Fati Productions (Physical) | Extraconscious Records (Digital)
Websites: facebook.com/acathexisband | acathexis.bandcamp.com
Releases worldwide: March 20th, 2024#2024 #30 #Acathexis #AmericanMetal #AmorFatiProductions #ArgentinianMetal #AtmosphericBlackMetal #BelgianMetal #BlackMetal #Déhà #DepressiveBlackMetal #DSBM #ExtraconsciousRecords #Immerse #InternationalMetal #LosMalesDelMundo #Mar24 #MareCognitum #Review #Reviews #SilverKnife #Slow
-
By Kenstrosity
At the risk of making light of a serious situation, I’ve been on the struggle bus as of late. My mental health nosedived somewhere in late February, for what reason I still don’t comprehend, and it’s been a trial and a tribulation to claw my way back out. Needless to say, during this difficult time, I haven’t been the best person to be around—lashing out against even the smallest jest, forgetfully neglecting my friends when they message to check on me, and isolating myself from everyone and everything out of shame and embarrassment. You’d think that, in the midst of all of this, I would reach for something uplifting to compensate. Instead, I cling to emotionally dour and violently depressive material, as it brings me a specific and rare kind of catharsis. Serendipity bore a cosmic kindness to me, then, when it delivered international depressive atmoblack project Acathexis’ long-awaited sophomore record, Immerse, into my clutches.
After the immensely affecting self-titled debut released at the end of 2018, Acathexis rapidly became one of my more closely watched new acts. A dream team of Mare Cognitum‘s Jacob Buczarski (drums), Déhà (guitars, bass), and Los Males del Mundo’s Dany Tee (vocals, lyrics) comprises the talent, and melancholic black metal rife with weeping melodies and misty atmosphere makes up the content. Long-form epics are the band’s bread and butter, with expansive, tremolo-laden tidal waves crashing down on the listener with devastating impact. If you’re looking for straightforward riffing and pumping rhythms, you won’t find them here. You will, on the other hand, find a trove of soaring leads, smooth blasts and double-bass runs, and a cavalcade of soul-rending wails, heart-wrenching rasps, and subterranean roars.
Over the course of these four songs, spanning across fifty minutes, the wonderfully collaborative nature of Immerse becomes crystal clear. At every turn, a gorgeous, shimmering lead blooms from the record’s core, bearing a conjoined Déhà/Mare Cognitum imprint that lights up the spine (“Dreams of Scorched Mirrors”). Coursing through the record’s veins, an undercurrent of Silver Knife‘s scathing character coalesces with Slow‘s woeful melody that, in tandem with the aforementioned shimmers, forms a lush and deeply immersive soundscape which handily lives up to the album’s title (“Adrift in Endless Tides,” “A Slow, Weary Wind”). Dany’s simply unhinged delivery not only marks him as one of the best vocalists in the style, but also often elevates these songs to a higher tier, particularly when unleashing high-pitched howls that seem to contain the tortured cries of a thousand haunted spirits (“Dreams of Scorched Mirrors,” “The Other”).
Much of my critique for Immerse falls under the same umbrella as that garnered by the majority of atmospheric black metal: overly strict adherence to limited songwriting formulas. Primarily invigorated by Jacob’s brilliant rhythmic pacing and percussive creativity (note the cymbal acrobatics in “Adrift in Endless Tides”), Déhà’s uncanny merger of each player’s respective sounds into deeply affecting melodies and sweeps, and Dany’s haunting voice, a lot of this material unfortunately presents a generic interpretation of the genre. Songwriting frameworks that challenge the genre standards or move the field into new territory just don’t occur over much of Immerse’s runtime. Instead, Acathexis banked on emotional immersion, immaculate detailing, and expressive delivery from each performer to bolster material that otherwise feels homogenous (“The Other”) or sounds repetitive (“A Slow, Weary Wind”). This is a risky move when playing a style maligned for its lack of dynamics or creativity, and while Acathexis just pulled it off this time, I worry that future efforts won’t fare so well without more concerted effort allotted to robust, evolving songwriting approaches.
Despite my misgivings regarding the continued application of a well-worn set of songwriting structures in this genre, there are precious few I trust more to build it well than those in Acathexis. Immerse doesn’t challenge any standards, and certainly won’t convert any naysayers. At the same time, I consider this record a beautiful, harrowing piece of depressive music. Moreover, it came to me at just the right time to strike at the heart. So, even though Immerse isn’t the game-changing record it could’ve been, that tempered bond I formed with it ensures that even after the fog lifts and the sun shines again, I’ll come back to Immerse without reservation.
Rating: Good!
DR: 8 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Labels: Amor Fati Productions (Physical) | Extraconscious Records (Digital)
Websites: facebook.com/acathexisband | acathexis.bandcamp.com
Releases worldwide: March 20th, 2024#2024 #30 #Acathexis #AmericanMetal #AmorFatiProductions #ArgentinianMetal #AtmosphericBlackMetal #BelgianMetal #BlackMetal #Déhà #DepressiveBlackMetal #DSBM #ExtraconsciousRecords #Immerse #InternationalMetal #LosMalesDelMundo #Mar24 #MareCognitum #Review #Reviews #SilverKnife #Slow
-
“I’ve got the real debate covered, so you can watch baseball this debate night. Here it is in one screenshot. You’re welcome.” John Buss, @Repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancing!
The last thing I remember about the debate last night was Donald spewing the usual christofascist lies about abortion. At some point, I refilled my wine glass, turned it all off, and fell asleep looking at real estate in Mexico. I even tried to comment at the start, but it became too shocking for me to continue with that at some point. I didn’t get a live thread up last night. I woke up at 5 a.m., unable to process what I had seen.
I remember why I never watch CNN anymore, and I’m more firmly committed to that decision. Here’s the best they could do this morning. It’s a healthy dose of bothsiderism. “Fact-checking the CNN presidential debate — Both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump made false and misleading claims during CNN’s presidential debate on Thursday – but Trump did so far more than Biden, just like in their debates in 2020. — Trump made more than 30 false claims at the Thursday debate.”
The entire thing was a clusterfuck. I’m going with Rebecca Solnit first today. Here is her headline at the Guardian. “The true losers of this presidential debate were the American people. We didn’t need this show. Each candidate has had time to show us who they are, and one is a felon trying to destroy democracy.”
The American people lost the debate last night, and it was more painful than usual to watch the parade of platitudes and evasions that worked in the debate format run by CNN. The network’s glossy pundit-moderators started by ignoring the elephants in the room – that one of the two men standing at the podiums was a convicted felon, the leader of a coup attempt, an alleged thief of national security documents who was earlier this year found liable in a civil court for rape, and has promised to usher in a vengeful authoritarian regime if he returns to office.
Instead they launched the debate with the dead horse they love to beat in election years, the deficit and taxes. Throughout the excruciating evening, Joe Biden in a hoarse voice said diligent things that were reasonably true and definitely sincere; Donald Trump in a booming voice said lurid things that were flamboyantly untrue. The grim spectacle was a reminder that this is a style over substance game.
Debates are a rite in which not truth but showmanship wins the day, and in which participants get judged as though it was a sporting event – which it pretty much is, in high school and college debate events. Before 2016, presidential debates were relatively decorous events in which the participants slammed each other, but more or less within the parameters of the true and the real with maybe a little distortion and exaggeration.
Then came Trump. You cannot win a debate with a shameless liar, because what you’re supposed to be debating are facts and positions. A lie is a kind of poison; once it’s in the room it makes an impression that is hard to undo, and trying to undo it only amplifies it.
Trump’s positions on anything and everything shift and slide at will, and he lies about his own past with pathological confidence – in this debate he both denied that he had sex with Stormy Daniels and that he praised the white supremacists who stormed Charlottesville in 2017. More substantively he lied – unchallenged, except by Biden – about his role in the January 6 coup attempt, and the CNN pundits did not trouble him further about his crimes. Trump talked about whatever he wanted – asked about the opiates crisis, he reverted to the lurid stories about sex crimes and open borders that obsess him and inflame his followers.
Most outrageous of all, and of course utterly unchecked, was one of the falsehoods Trump has been pushing for years – the claim that abortion continues on into infanticide, that doctors and new mothers are murdering babies at birth. That one candidate has long supported reproductive rights and the other has led the attack on them was not something you would learn from this debate.
I will also share this analysis by Historian Heather Cox Richardson from her substack Letters from an American.
Tonight was the first debate between President Joe Biden and presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, and by far the most striking thing about the debate was the overwhelming focus among pundits immediately afterward about Biden’s appearance and soft, hoarse voice as he rattled off statistics and events. Virtually unmentioned was the fact that Trump lied and rambled incoherently, ignored questions to say whatever he wanted; refused to acknowledge the events of January 6, 2021; and refused to commit to accepting the result of the 2024 presidential election, finally saying he would accept it only if it met his standards for fairness.
Immediately after the debate, there were calls for Biden to drop out of the race, but aside from the fact that the only time a presidential candidate has ever done that—in 1968—it threw the race into utter confusion and the president’s party lost, Biden needed to demonstrate that his mental capacity is strong in order to push back on the Republicans’ insistence that he is incapable of being president. That, he did, thoroughly. Biden began with a weak start but hit his stride as the evening wore on. Indeed, he covered his bases too thoroughly, listing the many accomplishments of his administration in such a hurry that he was sometimes hard to understand.
In contrast, Trump came out strong but faded and became less coherent over time. His entire performance was either lies or rambling non-sequiturs. He lied so incessantly throughout the evening that it took CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale almost three minutes, speaking quickly, to get through the list.
Trump said that some Democratic states allow people to execute babies after they’re born and that every legal scholar wanted Roe v. Wade overturned—both fantastical lies. He said that the deficit is at its highest level ever and that the U.S. trade deficit is at its highest ever: both of those things happened during his administration. He lied that there were no terrorist attacks during his presidency; there were many. He said that Biden wants to quadruple people’s taxes—this is “pure fiction,” according to Dale—and lied that his tax cuts paid for themselves; they have, in fact, added trillions of dollars to the national debt.
Dale went on: Trump lied that the U.S. has provided more aid to Ukraine than Europe has when it’s the other way around, and he was off by close to $100 billion when he named the amount the U.S. has provided to Ukraine. He was off by millions when he talked about how many migrants have crossed the border under Biden, and falsely claimed that some of Biden’s policies—like funding historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and reducing the price of insulin to $35 a month—were his own accomplishments.
I refuse to listen to calls for Joe to quit. Me, the nagging naysayer about Joe’s days in the Senate.
This morning, we woke up to more bad news. This is from the Washington Post. “Supreme Court curbs federal agency power, overturning Chevron precedent. The Chevron precedent was targeted by conservatives who say the government gives too much power to federal bureaucrats.” This is reported by Ann E. Marimow. They are shamelessly turning us over to their Corporate Overlords. I wonder what gratuity Alito and Thomas get for this one?
The Supreme Court on Friday curtailed the power of federal government agencies to regulate vast swaths of American life, overturning a 40-year-old legal precedent long targeted by conservatives who say the government gives unaccountable bureaucrats too much authority.
For decades, the court’s decision in Chevron U.S.A. v. Natural Resources Defense Council directed judges to defer to the reasonable interpretations of federal agency officials in cases that involve how to administer ambiguous federal laws.
Writing for the majority in the 6-3 ruling, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said that framework has proved “unworkable” and allowed federal agencies to change course even without direction from Congress.
The court is finally ending “our 40-year misadventure with Chevron deference,” Roberts said, reading parts of his opinion from the bench.
The court’s three liberal justices — Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson — dissented, with Kagan writing that the majority has turned itself into “the country’s administrative czar,” taking power away from Congress and regulatory agencies.
“A rule of judicial humility gives way to a rule of judicial hubris,” she said, reading part of her dissent from the bench.
The precedent, established in 1984, gave federal agencies flexibility to determine how to implement legislation passed by Congress. The framework has been used extensively by the U.S. government to defend regulations designed to protect the environment, financial markets, consumers and the workplace.
While lower courts have relied on the Chevron in tens of thousands of cases evaluating federal rules and orders, conservatives have balked at the legal precedent, and the approach has fallen out of favor in the last decade as the Supreme Court moved to the right. The high court’s conservative supermajority includes three justices nominated by President Donald Trump, whose administration put a premium on judges skeptical of federal government power and the so-called administrative state.
The second decision announced today was an Appeal from one of the January 6th rioters. This is from the Washington Post. “Supreme Court says prosecutors improperly charged hundreds of Jan. 6 rioters Supreme Court’s decision on obstruction charge will impact trials of hundreds of Jan. 6 rioters and, potentially, former president Donald Trump.” It’s also reported by Ann E. Marimow.
Federal prosecutors improperly charged hundreds of Jan. 6 defendants with obstruction, a divided Supreme Court ruled on Friday, upending many cases against rioters who disrupted the certification of the 2020 presidential election.
After the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, federal prosecutors charged more than 350 participants in the pro-Trump mob with obstructing or impeding an official proceeding. The charge carries a 20-year maximum penalty and is part of a law enacted after the exposure of massive fraud andshredding of documents during the collapse of the energy giant Enron.
Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said the government’s broad reading of the statute would give prosecutors too much discretion to seek a 20-year maximum sentence “for acts Congress saw fit to punish only with far shorter terms of imprisonment.”
One last debate thought from David Frum’s article today for the Atlantic. “Trump Should Never Have Had This Platform. The debate was a travesty—because its whole premise was to treat a failed coup leader as a legitimate candidate for the presidency.”
The first question about January 6 was asked at minute 41.
Donald Trump replied with a barrage of crazy lies, ending by seeming to blame Nancy Pelosi’s documentarian daughter.
Then, just to be fair, CNN moderator Jake Tapper followed up with a question to President Joe Biden. Did he really mean to imply that Trump’s voters were a danger to democracy?
Biden fumbled the answer, as he fumbled so many other answers. The octogenarian president delivered a fiasco of a performance on the Atlanta debate stage. But the fiasco was not his alone.
Everything about the event was designed to blur the choice before Americans. Both candidates—the serving president and the convicted felon—were addressed as “President.” The questions treated an attempted coup d’état as one issue out of many. The candidates were left to police or fail to police the truth of each other’s statements; it was nobody else’s business.
Today, CNN is hinting a producer thinks it was just terrific. But as Frum states, this is not a choice between Colgate and Crest, which is basically how the Nixon-Kennedy debate was presented back in the days of real Don Drapers. David Kurtz of Talking Points Memo has a similar analysis. How can you present a debate highlighting a sociopath with a proven performance of madness as just another presidential choice regardless of the presumed issues with President Biden?
I’m going to the dentist this afternoon. It’s a nice, mundane thing to walk down the street, head into the office, and sit in the waiting room with everyone else. Not my favorite mundane thing, but mundane none the less. I’m going to try escapism again like retired Lt. General Honore. I’m not sure what the form will be, but I enjoyed seeing all those nice little houses in Mexico.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
https://skydancingblog.com/2024/06/28/finally-friday-reads-cnn-shame-shame-shame/
#2024SupremeCourtRulings #Repeat1968 #DonaldLiesMoreThanHeBreathes #JohnBuss #June2024PresidentialDebate
-
CW: 整理备忘录存的乱七八糟的网站，分享+自存
【阅读类】
库问搜索：免费开源文献资源共享平台
http://www.koovin.com/可阅文学（可免费下载eupb格式）
https://kepub.net/搜书网站合集
http://www.9871.org/?continueFlag=93c60781de06524d1bddc86ba6b4cd00爱悦读（电子书下载）
https://www.iyd.wang/漫画
https://m.volmoe.com/
https://www.comicores.com/
https://www.77mh.one/【视频类】
omofun（看番，有弹幕）
https://omofun.tvzzzfun安卓下载地址（同看番，也有电视剧&电影）
https://zzz-1251249846.file.myqcloud.com/index.html低端影视
https://ddys.tv/真·小电视（有实时弹幕）
https://tv.hzfe.org/【音频类】
一起听歌吧
http://music.alang.run/#/维托海洋|海洋和海洋声音噪声发生器
https://virtocean.com/【游戏类】
在线DOS游戏
https://dos.zczc.cz/怀旧游戏机
https://wifi.1022reba.top/d/1.html#pt_1665798456851FF14豆芽
https://ff14.org/【工具类】
deepl翻译
https://www.deepl.com/translator爱幕在线免费字幕编辑器
https://online.aimu-app.com/花瓣网（画手必备）
https://huaban.com/follow红蓝文字动图生成器
http://yurafuca.com/5000choyen/?continueFlag=2e4922633109094c3683784f01638d83罗马音转换器
http://www.romaji.org/口吐芬芳生成器
https://fnmdpnmsl.com/?utm_source=https://shadiao.pro随机生成数字（赛博骰娘）
https://rand2.91maths.com/艺术字生成器
http://www.qt86.com/随机起名
http://xiaosang.net/gushi_namer/?continueFlag=1d0cdb089971abb823e8b2148d4016bf&dt_dapp=1自动上色
https://petalica-paint.pixiv.dev/index_zh.html自制gif表情包
https://aidn.jp/ugomoji/?continueFlag=b488d265445ec7f32a2b750c1be94d8b
https://m.doutub.com/gifEdit/customize【梯子】
云梯
dash.yunti1.com
my.yuntijiasu.com
my.ytjscloud.com
dash.yunti345.com推荐合辑
https://dafublog.com/baijing-evaluation【其他】
推站目录
http://www.tuizhan.com.cn/城通资源分享站
http://ct.vpan123.com/魔法集市
masadora.jp### 【邮箱】
tutanota
https://mail.tutanota.com/
outlook
https://outlook.live.com/### 【导航类】
[Tbox导航 | 只收录优质在线工具的导航网站 ](https://www.tboxn.com/)
[盘多多-百度云搜索](http://www.panduoduo.top/)
[万有导航丨一个互联网全职业的聚合资源网址导航 ](https://wanyouw.com/)
[推站目录 - 网站目录](http://www.tuizhan.com.cn/)
[绿色资源网](http://www.downcc.com/)
[一网一匠极速版 - 一起发现有趣的新产品 ](https://ywyj.cn/)
[蓝瑞特-行业目录创业信息库 ](http://www.lanruite.com/)
[zd423 - 软件分享平台](https://www.zdfans.com/)
[搜索 (sm.cn)](https://quark.sm.cn/)
### 【工具类】
[鼠标指针](https://custom-cursor.com/)
[在线英文缩略词查询 | 国际英文缩写查询工具 ](https://www.abbreviationfinder.org/cn/)
[标註日文罗马拼音 ](https://www.ezlang.net/zh-Hans/tool/romaji)[Convertio — 文件转换器](https://convertio.co/zh/)
[welcome - hack.chat](https://beta.hack.chat/)
[uTools官网 - 新一代效率工具平台](https://u.tools/)
[DeepL翻译：全世界最准确的翻译](https://www.deepl.com/translator)
[obsidian](https://obsidian.md/)
[eMule-Project.net - eMule官方网站 ](https://www.emule-project.com/home/perl/general.cgi?l=42)
[一本日记网页版 ](https://1diary.me/web2/#/list)
[Unfake.png 去掉png图片中的假格子背景](https://unfakepng.com/)
[WeTransfer - 可用临时存盘的网站](https://wetransfer.com/)
### 【绘画参考】
1、BODIES IN MOTION
[https://www.bodiesinmotion.photo/]
2、line of action
[https://line-of-action.com]
3、Color hexa
[http://www.colorhexa.com/]
4、pinterest （梯）
[https://www.pinterest.com/]
5、中国色彩网
[https://color.uisdc.com/]
6、查色（app）
7、Behance （梯）
[https://www.behance.net/]
8、 textures
[http://www.textures.com]
9、Adobe Color CC
[https://color.adobe.com/zh/create]
10、Screenmusings
[https://screenmusings.org/]
11、ColorHunt
[https://colorhunt.co/]
12、Illustrationage
[https://illustrationage.com/]### 【服饰参考】
1、Lolita服装参考
www.lolitawardrobe.com/
2、汉服资料馆
http://120.25.237.190/hanfu/index.html
3、中世纪服装参考
armstreet.com/
中世纪服装参考2
www.vertugadins.com/penderie
4、蒸汽朋克风格服装参考
atomicjaneclothing.com/collections/steampunk
5、蒸汽朋克风格服装参考2
www.myoppa.fr/
6、和服服装参考
www.kimonomachi.co.jp/
7、和服日式服装参考分场合
www.yumeyakata.com/
8、现代时装素材
[http://www.vogue.com.cn/]
9、西装正装燕尾服服装参考
www.withawish.jp/tuxedo/index.cgi#search_box
10、秀场风
[https://door11.com/]
11、电影服装
www.costumersguide.com/about.shtml
12、暗黑哥特风格服装参考
www.fantasmagoria.eu
13、末日废土风格服饰
[https://markcordory.com/salvaged-ware-costumes]
14、长款风衣大衣类服装参考
long-coat.uenoya.jp/
15、婚礼礼服高定礼服裙服装参考
www.loveblushbridal.com/
### 【电子书】
[Z-Library Project - Electronic library. Download books free](https://z-lib.is/)[zlibrary 检索](https://zlib.app/)
[zhelper search 简明教程 - zhelper 帮助文档](https://docs.zhelper.net/search/)
[Library Genesis ](https://libgen.gs/)
[利布里沃克斯 |免费公共领域有声读物 ](https://librivox.org/)
[読んだ本を記録して、新しい本に出会おう - 読書メーター ](https://bookmeter.com/)
[Jiumo Search 鸠摩搜索 - 文档搜索引擎 ](https://www.jiumodiary.com/)
[易书 电子书聚合搜索引擎](https://search.yibook.org/)
[azw3_mobi_epub_kindle电子书免费下载_爱悦读网 ](https://www.iyd.wang/)
[calibre - 电子书管理 ](https://calibre-ebook.com/zh_HK)
[库问搜索 -免费开源文献资源共享平台 ](http://www.koovin.com/)
[微信读书](https://weread.qq.com/)
[52书库_好看的小说推荐_热门全本小说在线阅读 ](https://www.77mh.me/)
[精校电子书 ](https://www.huangdizhijia.com/writer/1594.html)
[PDF电子书下载-谁知我电子书](https://book.chouji.net/)
[256中文](https://www.256zww.com)
[晋江文学城](https://www.jjwxc.net/)
[青花鱼养殖交流论坛](https://allcp.net/)
[海棠文化线上文学城](https://jp.lvhtebook.com/)
[SosadFun - write for joy, write for life ](https://www.xn--pxtr7m5ny.com/)
#### 漫画
[kindle漫画|pdf漫画|分享下载[COMICORES-漫核]](https://www.comicores.com/)
[拷贝漫画](https://www.copymanga.site/)
[新新漫画 ](https://www.77mh.me/)
[Kox.moe-kindle电子书 ](https://kox.moe/)
[立代见 ](https://tachiyomi.org/)
[在线cocomanga.zyz](https://cocomanga.xyz/)
-
-
お品書きを公開:ablobcatlowpoly_spin:
🍝シールをもらいに来ましょう
#COMITIA154