39 minutes, 15 seconds

:Wumpscut:
Dried Blood of Gomorrha

I woke up listening to this disc today. And, let me tell you, nothing gets your eyes open and your ass out of bed quite like the opener, "Black Death." As I got dressed, I was trying to recall whether these were the first recordings I'd ever heard from Rudy Ratzinger. Of course, these songs were originally released as two EPs, Dried Blood and Gomorra. (Not sure where the "h" came from when they were reissued in the U.S. as one disc.) But they were preceded by the Music for a Slaughtering Tribe album, which I might have bought first. Like I said, can't remember.

Regardless, what I do remember is my reaction when I first heard the music, and it wasn't unlike my reaction to first hearing Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" in a record store in New York when I was home from college on winter or spring break or whenever it was (1991?). Nirvana was rock and roll, but they just did it better than other bands. And you could hear it immediately--they took the music several levels above what other bands were doing at the time. The lyrics were personal and vulnerable, but the music was hard. You could identify with Kurt Cobain's alienation, even if, like me, you weren't necessarily a grunge-music fan.

:Wumpscut: was similar: Who was this weird, mysterious guy singing about his mother? And yet there was nothing "emo" or wimpy about it; the music was unimpeachably aggressive and propulsive. "In the Night," a song about drugs, moves at a breakneck pace, but Ratzinger sings with so much raw feeling that you can't help being pulled in. It sticks in your head, despite having no real melody to speak of. "Crucified Division," another :Wumpscut: classic, accomplishes the same thing: Ratzinger uses his vocal phrasing and power to draw you in, just as Cobain did. And in some ways, as Current 93's David Tibet does, albeit in the service of a very different style of music.

So is Rudy Ratzinger the Kurt Cobain of industrial music? More people would probably argue that Skinny Puppy's Nivek Ogre is the Kurt Cobain of industrial music, but even at the height of Puppy's creative and commercial success, Ogre never sang with quite as much force as Ratzinger. Sure, Ogre and Cobain shared drug addictions, but there was often a layer of detached irony to Ogre's vocals. I didn't sense that from Cobain, and I don't sense it from Ratzinger. With Rudy, what you hear is what you get.

Also today:

39:14 Slave's Mask, Faustian Electronics & Bruise Poetry
39:12 Cephalgy, Moment der Stille
39:05 Harold Budd, La Bella Vista
39:05 Data-Bank-A, Spiritus Sanctus
39:02 This Morn' Omina, Les Passages Jumeaux: Le 33ième Degré
39:01 Grendel, Harsh Generation
New arrival! 54:34 Sigma Octantis, Invocations
39:01 Of the Wand and the Moon, Lucifer
39:00 Vomito Negro, Wake Up
38:59 Desiderii Marginis, The Ever Green Tree