56 minutes, 46 seconds

Velvet Acid Christ
Hex Angel: (Utopia-Dystopia)

To date, I havent seen any news articles that indicate what type of music Virginia Tech mass murderer Cho Seung-Hui listened to. But something tells me there's a decent chance it ends up being goth or industrial music and we see a rehash of the whole Columbine subplot. In other words, did the music (and the violent Korean horror movies) make him do it?

It's a facile way to explain why someone picks up a gun and starts killing people, of course, and it's absurd. Not to mention the implication that you have to be mentally disturbed even to listen to this kind of music. (Although maybe if you listen to it in descending order of total time... I digress.)

The central question is, Do violent music, movies, video games, television, etc., have a role to play in mentally ill people's actions? The answer is yes, probably. They might not have the proper detachment to process this kind of content the way the rest of us do. It's akin to alcoholics or obese people--they don't have the same relationship to food and drink the rest of us have.

But alcoholics and overweight people aren't homicidal--they're killing only themselves. So what makes it easy for mentally ill people like Cho Seung-Hui to wipe out 32 people? Easy access to guns. But that's not what Middle America likes to hear. So much easier to blame it on the music or the movies or the video games.

Also today:

56:43 Desiderii Marginis, Songs Over Ruins
56:39 Flëur, Prikosnovénie
56:37 Dominion, Only the Strong Survive
56:36 Cyclone B, Demolished
56:34 Anthesteria, Nebesnaya
56:33 Klinik, Klinik (CD 2 of 2)
56:32 Data-Bank-A, The Citadel (CD 2 of 2)