50 minutes, 25 seconds

Painbastard
Skin on Fire

It's funny--Painbastard seemed like such an upstart band a few years ago, and before you knew it, they'd put out four releases. Weird. I guess I can remember feeling that way about :Wumpscut: and Velvet Acid Christ too. By the time you'd absorbed their debuts, they'd already produced another two CDs. Prolific? Or is this music just easier to make than, say, your typical indie rock?

I've asked this question before here; it's something I often wonder about. But it might be the wrong question. It's equating "difficult to make" with "quality," and that's ridiculous. By that criterion, a Turner landscape would be considered "better" than a Pollock drip painting. And I don't think any serious person in the visual arts looks at those works that way.

By the same token, I'm loath to begin comparing the process by which, say, Steve Roach creates his ambient albums with the one Sting (yuck, by the way) uses to schlep out the music he wants to release. It's irrelevant to the art. (Or the schlock, in Sting's case.)

Wow, a lot of Sting hostility this morning. I think it must be because a bunch of my coworkers--almost all of them, I think--at the World's Most Boring Software Company® went to see the Police reunion show the other night. If I somehow ever get mixed up in international terrorism and the CIA puts me in Gitmo, all they have to do is play Sting or the Police, and I'll tell them whatever they want to know. Just stop the music, for the love of God.

Also today:

50:24 Rajna, Ishati
50:20 :Wumpscut:, Embryodead
50:19 Stahlfrequenz, Erstschlag
50:18 Autour de Lucie, Faux Mouvement
50:17 Dargaard, Rise and Fall
50:15 Desiderii Marginis, Deadbeat
New arrival! 67:12 Prometheus Burning, Influenza
50:12 Tyske Ludder, Sojus
50:12 Xmal Deutschland, Viva