As racist, woman-hating fantasy writer Vox Day (aka Theodore Beale) likes to remind people, he was kind of a big deal in the industrial dance music scene back in the day, with three Billboard Club Hits to his name.
Well, sort of. Beale — he wasn’t known as Vox back then — was briefly a member of a largely forgotten industrial dance group called Psykosonik in the early nineties.
Now, I was listening to a lot of industrial dance music back in those days, and was particularly enamored of the label (Wax Trax!) that Psykosonik was on. Yet somehow I never noticed them.
Listening to their first album today — the one that Beale was involved in — I can see why. Musically, they’re a peppy, if highly derivative, mix of industrial and rave, at times sounding a bit like the Shamen or Pop Will Eat Itself or even, unbelievably, EMF.
The trouble comes when the group’s vocalist opens his mouth to sing or, even worse, to rap some of the most cringeworthy lyrics I’ve encountered since I listened to this. The bassy “rapping” in their song “Acid Hammer” is on a par with the rapping in Aqua’s “Barbie Girl,” except that Aqua was in on the joke, and Psykosonik clearly wasn’t.
And that’s where Mr. Beale comes in, because a lot of these very very serious, very very terrible lyrics are his. Psykosonik seems to have been built largely around two guys — Paul Sebastien (vocals, lyrics, music) and Daniel Lenz (music). Beale, a member for only two years, is credited by Wikipedia as being responsible for “composition, lyrics.”
So let’s take a look at some of them, shall we? The lyrics below, which I found on Lyrics Wikia, are excerpted from songs he’s credited with co-writing; click on the titles to see more.
Fractals fusing, brain abusing
Drink your smart drug, find illusion
Ride the air on an angel’s dare
Mandlebrots fly everywhere
Illusion the solution
You will find your absolution
Within silicon, in silicon, in me
Mondo rave, magnetic wave
Cyberbaby, my love slave
Computational attractivity
New world networked connectivity
Down to the ground, down to the ground
Social entropy is reigning today
Burn it down, burn it down, burn it down, down to the ground
A generation’s coming your way
Feel your heart explode with lust
Vacationers, this one’s a must
If you choose to take this drug
You will feel your libido erupt ….If you choose to lick my brain
Use your tongue to taste the same
Feel the acid reign
Servitude is in the mind, a death in life
Don’t be confused by the terms of Left and Right
Statism is statism, by any name the same
Apathy is suicide and we will bear the blame …Huge berserk rebel warthog error
Zeroboys unleash domestic terror
Jack it in and burn the data
Violence a religion they can relate to
Now, it’s not completely clear from the scanty info I’ve found if Beale wrote all of these lyrics by himself — Wikipedia also lists Sebastien as being responsible for lyrics — but quite a few of them have the stink of Beale about them. I mean, “social entropy,” “statism is statism?”
Oh, and that bizarre bit about the “huge berserk rebel warthog?” That may be Beale’s only bit of cleverness. After puzzling over it a bit, and listening to that part of the song over and over to make sure that was really what was being said, I put the phrase into Google and discovered that it’s an anagram for George Herbert Walker Bush.
If you want to listen to any of these songs — and really, they’re not bad, if you can manage to ignore the awful lyrics — you can find the whole album here.
And here’s the video for their single “Welcome to My Mind,” which features Mr. Beale’s rotating head.
Also never heard of Shitgolem’s band, though they sound like they would have been a tad too dancey for me at the time, as I was sooooooo dark and edgy and angsty in the early 90’s.
@brooked I see your Front 242, and raise you KMFDM:
“Mandelbrots fly everywhere” is a perfect description of one of his fractally stupid arguments.
Thank God he didn’t try to work “Koch” into the lyrics.
I actually remember Psykosonik — they were kind of a wannabe mashup of Praga Khan and Information Society. I never paid any attention to the lyrics, but they basically sound like what a teenager would write after reading Mondo 2000.
Strange trajectory from presumably drug-addled rave pop guy to Christian conservative white supremacist. Or maybe it isn’t.
@tracy
Nice choice, I have fond memories of KMFDM. I haven’t listened to them in years, in fact I looked up Wax Trax’s roster and it’s full of bands I haven’t listened to in well over a decade.
I saw Ministry live several times back in the day because I’m old.
http://youtu.be/XYYGKCanqfA
I was a Wax Trax, Industrial music fan back on the nineties too and I do vaguely remember listening to Psykosonik. I think they had a song in a movie I watched, or something, but for the life of me, I can’t remember the movie, the song or even that their songs had lyrics. This is how much I’ve forgotten about them, I guess.
I fondly remember Front 242, KMFDM,which I had a special liking for, as I bought a lot of their albums, and Minsitry.
I love fractals. Don’t let the creeps have them!
Gold…reminds me of couple of the nihilists from The Big Lebowski with some sort of hideous New Wave past.
God, I never thought I’d say this but someone call Insane Clown Posse. Fucking lyrics, how do they work?
Vox should be bragging less about his involvement with Psykosonik if he wants to keep his alpha male image intact: WaxTrax was founded and owned by two gay men.
So I had no idea what a fractal was, let alone a mandlebrot, and tried looking it up on Wikipedia but it’s full of maths and I can’t deal with maths.
http://footballgarbagetime.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Cat-Hiding-Under-Newspaper.jpg
Think I’ll also choose the almond cookie definition.
Sunnysombrera, you can also just do google image searches! Fractals are pretty pretty things that look just as pretty zoomed in as zoomed out because they look the same in both!
Although… kitty hiding under a paper is also pretty pretty, and fuzzy.
I may be a math geek, but my pretty pretty fractals cannot compete with fuzzy wuzzy kitty.
“Psykosonik” huh? I’ve never trusted the use of gratuitous K’s.
As opposed to the Mandelbrat, which is a fractal wiener that goes great with spicy mustard.
There’s literally no reason for straight white guys to hate or even mildly dislike these kinds of folks. I’ve often wondered why David even has this blog. Is it just to look super clever? To rack up faux feminist points for some unfathomable reason? Like, no man ever has a real reason to be against these fucks.
Do you just like triggering people? You know the worst kinds of shit that upsets us lowly feeeemales who have *deserved* the abuse we’ve suffered at the hands of those superior menfolks. Right? The stuff that makes us cringe and rage and cry and hate the most, isn’t that true? So you blog it and you have this safe manly life where they don’t hurt *you*, outside of making it harder for you to hit on the ladies, since we’re wary ’cause of their creepy shit. You don’t know what it’s fucking like to have this crap in your face all the time, you have no reason to hate these guys, outside of their possible cockblocking… so why the fuck do you have this blog?
Oh, but it must be so nice… you get to mock them, and you don’t have to worry about the kind of shit a woman would have to deal with if she were to do the same thing. You’ve seen what happens to women who oppose these shitbags… but it’s all just shits and giggles for you, isn’t it? You haven’t been driven from your home or swatted for the stuff you say. Oh, waahh, sometimes they say you’re fat? ohhh the tragedy and horror you face!!
How lovely for you, to have it so easy. I honestly hate you. You get to say whatever you want, and any threat you get is nothing compared to what a woman would get if she said the exact thing you do. And, you get listened to. Because penis. Lucky you. Must be nice to have everything you say get taken seriously by millions of people. Your voice should be background noise; women’s voices should matter. But they don’t. You have a dick, so your voice matters. I hate you for that. Fuck you.
Fuck you and fuck this blog. Fuck your white knight crap. I don’t believe you’re an actual feminist or ally for one moment. You don’t give a fuck about what women actually have to live through, day by day… you just want to look like a clever snarkmaster, putting a bunch of low-hanging no-hopers in their place with your oh-so-masterful manly wit. Fuck off.
Hush dear, grownups are talking.
Fuck off back to Reddit with your bullshit, Nequam.
Sooo, being a reasonable, rational, empathetic human being who lives in the world and would like to consider the other human beings with which they interact all fully human and deserving of the whole range of the rights inherent in that designation is “literally no reason”?
Hm.
Personally, I’m grateful this blog is run by a guy. We need male allies. And it’s important for decent men, along with women, to call out these assholes.
VD and his related groups of misogynists* are everyone’s problem.
“There’s literally no reason for straight white guys to hate or even mildly dislike these kinds of folks.”
Because all straight white men don’t have loved ones who are targeted by assholes like VD? Because all straight white men don’t have basic empathy and compassion for their fellow human beings?
That’s a poisonous way of thinking that helps no one.
I’m grateful for every ally we can get.
As for the rest: If you can’t see the value of relatively “untouchable” (by those being mocked/called out) allies, it’s not something I feel up to explaining to you before coffee.
On an unrelated note, “Catistry”, a puzzle game of some sort featuring cats, is Amazon’s free Android app of the day on the US site.
http://amzn.to/1i1PVZ7
ugh… this place is “not all men!!!11!1!!” headquarters. Gross. I don’t know what kind of wonderful paradise y’all live in where only 1 in a thousand dudes is horrible, but I’ve sure as hell never been there. You can all keep kissing ass and making sure all the nice guys feel comfy and non-threatened with your sweet and approachable brand of But Really Most Guys Are Wooonderful! We Mean It!! feminism… but honestly, it’s not going to help anyone who has any real issues. I feel kind of sick having bought into this shit for as long as I have.
You’re all just kind of… Stepford Wifey and I don’t want to come back here. Many better blogs out there deserve attention and this one is incredibly White Upper Class Feministy. I can do better, and I will. Thank you for the few genuine laughs this place provided before I became nauseous with guilt and shame.
Bye NPS. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
If we are talking about Fractals in music can I recommend Mandelbrot Set by Jonathon Coulton (slightly NSFW in the standard version but a PG version is also available)
You can stream it for free from the offical site
http://www.jonathancoulton.com/store/downloads/
So I’m not allowed to hate the shitheads I write about on this blog? How does that even work?
It’s called planet Earth, I suggest visiting, it’s mostly harmless.
Seriously, I’m feminist, like – VERY feminist, and I don’t have a problem with most men most of the time.