Words by Peter Tanski
Peter Tanski grew up in the small but thriving Wilkes-Barre/Scranton area, fronting several bands and founding the music and literary fanzine, Exmortus. After a brief stint living in Manhattan’s Lower East Side and writing for Legends Magazine, he returned to Pennsylvania where he began to work with web based music site NEPA Rocks. He currently fronts the melodic hardcore/punk band, Heart Out and hosts The Book of Very Very Bad Things PodZine.
“Check in” on your friends. We see the comments on IG all the time. We see it on Tik Tok, read it on Facebook – and we all agree, right? We all say it in solidarity, yet what are we really doing about it? If we do check in, the real issue comes to pass… are the people being checked on being honest when they say “All good, twin. We in there. Living the [wretch] dream!” People with mental health problems often have donned seamless masks of wellness by the time that they have reached puberty, having already endured more then a dozen years of emotional torment and finding that life is shades more survivable when people stop noticing that you haven’t spent more that an hour a day weeping uncontrollably, not sleeping or eating. “Check in, guys!”
Over the course of nearly 49 years on Earth, with 37 of them involved in Hardcore/Punk/Underground music culture, I have honed an infallible bullshit barometer, especially when it comes to pain or sorrow. If you were involved in that music scene in the 1980’s or 90’s, it was a substantially safe bet that you came from trauma. We were ‘reality refugees’ seeking solace in the throes of sonic maelstroms and spasticated, circuitous experiences dancing. We joined or were kicked into tribes of our own choosing, singing along with two fingers in the air to punctuate every sing along, and diving atop our peers to find greater purchase at the front of the stage, per chance the vocalist stick the mic in your face. Even in those spaces, people were dying. Dying from substance abuse, of accidents predicated on reckless behaviors, stepping into traffic as buses careened into them, dropping dead from undiagnosed congenital heart issues, or even swallowing 9 millimeter ordinance.
Are you allowing yourself to be checked in on?
I firmly believe that there is an element of trauma pornography involved in “checking in”, at least in some cases. The guilty are never fully in one’s close circle, yet they are ever present, prying into doors that have yet to be made available emotionally. You know this person, we all do. They appear at the most befuddling times, throwing themselves onto coffins in full-on drama club hammy blam, crying a little louder, lingering a little longer… these are Emotional Ghouls, and they feed upon the carrion of dark emotional states.
The leeches that are the Emotional Ghouls do not feed exclusively on mortal tragedy, they also thrive upon the collapse and collateral damage that ensues when artists are found in a cancellation state. It happens in every subculture, from Blood For Blood, to Brand New, to more recently Zulu and Soft Kill. The bands are torn asunder with the individuals involved still raw and stemming the tide of blood – all while this individual is playing outrage on one side and being quickened by the car crash on the other – never actually considering that there is a very real toll to be paid.
Topics such as these tend to pair well with the bleak pop that this column is indentured to serve, and I’ve not forgone the responsibility.
Bauhaus dark lord and baritone barker Peter Murphy has assembled a new full length album entitled “Silver Shade”(Metropolis Records) and has released the first single (featuring Tool’s Justin Chancellor) “The Artroom Wonder”, a track that harkens back to his blackened Bowie-esque beginnings.
Goth & Blues vocal queen Q Lazzarus (Diane Luckey) finally gets her due with a completists dream, “Goodbye Horses: The Many Lives of Q Lazzarus“. The film is making a festival run now, and the selected discography album is available via the ever spectacular Sacred Bones Records.
The metal deists at Peaceville Records have unleashed the second album of blackened Death Rock from New Skeletal Faces. The seething and surreal “Until The Night” answers the question “What if Rozz Williams and Rikk Agnew of Christian Death joined a band with Fenriz and Nocturno Culto of Darkthrone?” Absolute fucking dark punk majesty.
“Strange As Angels”, the debut long player from Alex Okami, endears itself to early 90’s Bat Cave Gothic Dancewavers. Pulsing synth and bass beats undulating beneath spare, twinkling guitar lines and a tenor leaning to baritone vocal delivery, all wrapped this beautifully written love letter to Gen X wave Goths up into a pale faced package.
4AD have assembled a monstrous box set, Xmal Deutsland: The 4AD Years is dropping next week, and the ghosts of stage white powder past are grinning ear to maudlin ear.
EBM devotees Ceremony Shadows offer their sophomore wax slate “Ascension”, an 8 song melding of Industrial, Gothic Rave, and Roxette. Sex optional, but highly suggested.
French Goth revivalists Blind Delon launch a spooky dirty, croaking dirge into the psychosohere with “Etoile Froide”, their new single on Regarts.
The steady output of mopey, introspective music only adds emotional emphasis to my point that we are all in some phase of traumatic upheaval, and we are either surviving in pain or dying due to it, so I promise to not only “check in”, but allow myself to be checked in on.
Until the light takes us…