Da Zeuhl Wortz Mekanik

Reflecting on the review I wrote last week for Zoo's Triologi Peradaban, I came to the realization that I owe it to myself to listen to more Zeuhl.

As I mentioned in the review, Zeuhl is a genre that got its start in France in the 1970s. At the time, Zeuhl was a bastard hybrid of prog rock, jazz, opera, early heavy metal and chamber music, expressed through fat basslines, driving drum rhythms, horns, strings and vocal acrobatics, usually from at least two different vocalists. The sound was pioneered by Magma, whose album Kobaia debuted an unmistakeable sound, fueled by an almost cult-like devotion to a sound that was bombastic and militaristic, but at the same time primitive and organic.

Magma's output is also notable for how tied they were to the idea of conceptual mythology being intrinsically tied to their music. Roughly 90% of Magma's output between the 1970s and now (their most recent album, Ëmëhntëhtt-Ré came out just last year) focuses on a complex mythology of humans, having fled Earth in the midst of the oncoming apocalypse and arriving on the populated planet Kobaia, where the humans and Kobaians engage in various conflicts over cultural and religious assimilation. Naturally, this epic saga, spread across dozens of songs and releases, are sung in a language created by Magma's key visionary and drummer, Christian Vander. The language (Kobaian), for which a dictionary existed, bears a strong resemblance to German and has been analyzed for years by legions of fans to learn the fate of Earth, Kobaia and the human colonists. Magma still plays live fairly regularly, and several blogs have been set up to share bootlegs of the band throughout their career.

Zeuhl, however, did not simply stay with Magma. Several offshoot bands and projects were founded in Europe in the 1970s and 1980s, including the Magma side projects Univeria Zekt and Weidorje, soundalike bands Eider Stellaire and Dun, and the chamber-music sounds of projects like Univers Zero, Shub Niggurath and Art Zoyd. As of right now, the British band Guapo (especially their albums Black Oni and Five Suns) are the Europe's freshest take on the genre.

Zeuhl managed to catch on outside of Europe as well. Artists from Japan picked up on the style quickly in the 1990s, resulting in several bands such as Happy Family, Koenjihyakkei and perhaps most notably, Ruins. Most often a two-man project helmed by virtuoso drummer and vocalist Yoshida Tatsuya, Ruins brought a fast grindcore element to the Zeuhl sound, which made them popular among the avant-garde metal community. Ruins has released several albums and has collaborated with artists such as jazz guitarist Derek Bailey. Zoo, a relative newcomer to the scene, shows a great deal of promise as a rising Asian Zeuhl band. Hopefully they stick around long enough to see more success and exposure.

Zeuhl never particularly made it in the U.S., which is a shame. Perhaps its militaristic sound was too much initially for the arena-rock tinged U.S. prog scene of the 1970s. The success of bands like The Boredoms and other Japanese noise rockers brought Ruins to U.S. fans fairly painlessly, and the advent of the internet has enabled American fanatics to catch up with Europe and Asia's zeuhl scenes. Perhaps the closest thing we have is the scene of no-wave-meets-prog-meets-hardcore bands such as Hella, The Flying Luttenbachers and a few notable others. It's high time for a US Zeuhl movement to start, however. There's hundreds of us wearing bootleg Magma and Ruins t-shirts that we made with iron-on transfers and our mothers' iron, keeping our ears to the ground for the howling march from beyond.

St. Elsewhere or: Dirty Dogs and Dirty Dudes

The shinding metropolis of Columbus set the stage for a weekend of good food, fun tunes and crucial hangouts. My girlfriend and I drove up from Athens to meet up with some Columbus friends, grab some hot dogs and then go catch St. Vincent at Columbus's number one goth club, Outland on Liberty.

We arrived in Columbus around 5 p.m. and met up with friends at Dirty Frank's Hot Dog Palace on South 4th Street. It's a hole-in-the wall hot dog shop with a full service bar and a constantly crowded seating area. The menu offers an insane variety of hot dogs and sausages topped with anything you could imagine. I ended up getting the T-Dog, which is topped with roasted red peppers and bacon, and the Sonoran dog, which was topped with diced onions, refried beans and verde salsa. These dogs were accompanied by some impressively salty fresh-cut fries and an order of fried leeks, which tasted like super-light onion rings. Other dogs at our table featured the old standards (chili, chese, onion, etc.), but a few were topped with beef brisket, cole slaw and the mind-blowing Sriracha mustard.Following dinner, we made our way from the Short North over to the Brewery District to the venue, Outland, where the show was to take place. Outland is known for its industrial (rock), EBM, darkwave and dubstep DJ nights, which make up about 3 or 4 nights of the week. I'd go on to talk about the venue's décor and ambience, but we didn't go in. As we were parking, it was announced that the show would be canceled because, according to St. Vincent's twitter, “The promoter failed to provide us with a working PA.” Strangely, the girls working the door didn't seem to know, as they were still carding people and letting them in. Given the lack of grammar, spelling or design on Outland's MySpace, it doesn't seem to far from the truth that the venue would be so disorganized. A number of hipster kids, apparently angered by the last-minute cancellation, fought back, hurling snowballs at the venue and hitting random goths standing around on the outdoor patio.

We decided, instead of driving back, to hit up Skylab Gallery, which was hosting an epic lineup of noise rock, hardcore and no-wave bands. Skylab, the art-gallery penthouse of the Columbus DIY scene, is adorned with murals featuring tribal psychedelic artwork and strange art pieces hanging from pipes and rafters. The four bands on the bill were set up at various points around the room, starting at the front of the venue and working their way back.

First up was Ginger Fetus, in one of it's many incarnations. This version featured John Also Bennett on guitar and vocals, Nicholas Murer on drums, Eva Ball on keyboards and vocals, Dan Olsen on bass and Toby Waggoner on guitar. Ginger Fetus has been different every time I've seen them, ranging from weird, crackly shit-fi noise to old-school no-wave. Last night fell into the latter category, with the band locking into three extended Krautrock grooves that swelled with layers upon layers of noisy guitar and keyboard skronk.

Up next were Cleveland noise rock supergroup Dead Peasant Insurance, the four-piece ensemble made up of Wyatt “Skin Graft” Howland on guitar and electronics, Ryan “Dr. Quinn” Keuhn on electronics, Amanda Howland-Davidson on guitar and vocals and J. Guy Laughlin (of the Puffy Areolas) on drums. It was an ear-splitting blend of feedback, shrieking, free-jazz drumming and lacerating guitar feedback that started off strong and kept getting more and more furious.

After them was Vile Gash, the Columbus hardcore band known for their bummer attitude and anthems such as “Fuck Your Positive Attitude.” They played an extremely aggressive set of songs, each punctuated by a generous dose of guitar feedback between songs. Meanwhile, a huge mosh pit opened up in the tiny room they were playing in, which lead to several shattered bottles as the set became increasingly more violent.

Finally, we were treated to a set by the night's headliner, the legendary Hair Police. The trio of Mike Connelly (also of Wolf Eyes), Trevor Tremaine and Robert Beatty were on top of their game, playing a hellishly atmospheric set that reeked of black metal influence punctuated by bursts of heavy electronics and frantic guitar-and-drum thrashing. The noisy dirges that Hair Police played seemed to release the pent-up aggression and frustrations with the recent cancellation of a huge two-week tour with darkwavers Cold Cave. However, much like my friends and I hitting up this show after a cancellation, the Hair Police guys turned their setback into a positive as well, by recording and mixing a new album in the time they had off.

The night, which at one point looked grim in the wake of a huge change of plans, was a blast, and redeemed my faith in the power of friendship and scene solidarity. Skylab was so welcoming to the throngs of people packed into their house, and all the bands were readily approachable and there to appreciate each other's art. There were no riders or mix-ups or last-minute cancellations. There were no greenrooms or lines out the door or monetary hunger. It was just dirty dudes having fun and coming together in their love of music and art. Isn't that what music is really all about?

The new Burzum album is probably going to fucking rule.

The new Burzum album is probably going to fucking rule. It's very important that it does. The black metal underground has been waiting for Varg Vikernes' next Burzum album for the last 11 years, even longer if you don't take into account the two dark ambient albums that the incarcerated black metaller released from prison.

Vikernes' infamy is almost a cliché topic among the underground, as is his imprisonment for murder, church arson and the social faux pas (to put it lightly) of being a white supremacist. These scraps of tabloid fodder have managed to keep Burzum from languishing in obscurity over the course of his imprisonment and have led many to speculate when, if ever, Varg would make his return.

Vikernes was released from prison with little fanfare in the Spring of 2009 and, a year later, is ready for the March 8 release of his newest effort, entitled Belus. The album marks his long-awaited return to black metal, which he employs to tell the tale of Belus, a god from Norse mythology. The album was announced in late fall in a statement by Vikernes, who was using the working title The White God, a title which he changed after racist and homophobic sentiments in the interview turned many off from the title. Granted, he was kind of asking for it when the announcement of an album called The White God also contained a rant about how modern black metal suffers from “homosexual” and “Negro” influences.

For the last few weeks, samples of the album have been available to stream on Amazon.com, which have given many fans hope for the newest Burzum album not being a snooze like Vikernes' dark ambient albums. It appears that the album will cost around $30 for an imported audio CD. There's also a $40 2xLP on 180-gram white (duh) vinyl. Amazon is also offering an mp3 download of the album on the release date for $9, which is probably a good move for metal fans who can't commit to a $30 Burzum CD.

The samples reveal that Burzum has fully re-embraced the Norwegian black metal sounds that he and his contemporaries laid down almost 20 years ago. From what I can gather from 30 seconds of each song, the songs on Belus follow the shrill, hypnotic riffing laid down on other Burzum works such as Filosofem, where spidery reverb-drenched guitar chords build into enveloping walls of sound.

There's also a more fast-paced traditional element, drawing in the old-school black metal sound of blastbeats, manic shrieking and wind-lashed guitar work heard on Burzum's self-titled effort and other early releases. There's even a slight nod to the incarceration-era dark ambient albums, which are polarizing among fans for their abandonment of the black metal sound. Here, that sound is recaptured on two intro and outro tracks. Based off the samples, it appears that Belus will show influence from all eras of Burzum's career, but it's impossible to tell how the entire album will play out until it's official release date.

Naturally, this album is going to get torrented and uploaded like a motherfucker. I'm willing to bet that every blog that hosts it will also get a shitty comment along the lines of “thanks for posting it. I wasn't going to fund any of Varg's politics.” Whoever writes these comments: go fuck yourself. Varg is a pretty awful human being. Yes, he's a great musician, but he's also a murderer (which, lets face it, is a bit more to be concerned about than someone being a Nazi), a domestic terrorist and a “heathen” who longs for the days of Aryan supremacy to reign over Europe, free of Judeo-Christian and African influence. You know exactly who he is.

If you're still interested in downloading it and not buying, it's not because you're not into “funding racism,” it's because you're a cheap douchebag who needs to justify downloading underground music to yourself. If you were really concerned about giving his racist views a platform, you wouldn't even download the thing. Varg (and other National Socialist or racist metal, punk and noise, for that matter) isn't like the Christian church, which grows more powerful with the more money that gets put into it. The album is probably going to make some profit, but it's not like he's going to be funneling millions in profits into something like anti-gay marriage legislation or paying lobbyists to oppose changes to institutionalize racism. You downloading his album is actually furthering the spread of his views, or at least putting them out there. Just admit that you're a closet Burzum fan but don't have the cash. At least it's honest.

While I'm at it, here's a disclaimer: I don't support any racist, nationalist or “white power” views. That's stone-age bullshit that shifts blame towards oppressed minorities rather than addressing the actual problem, which is that the world is ruled, largely, by rich, white, aristocratic men who seek ways to cement their power and influence. However, I'm not so delusional as to think that me not buying the Burzum album is going to strike a blow at the heart of institutionalized racism and oppression, or that it's going to stop the rich, white world powers from exploiting third world countries and populations for profit.

Let me be honest: I don't have 30 bucks to drop on a new Burzum album that I'm just going to rip to my computer anyway. Hell, I don't even want to pay Amazon eight dollars for their mp3s, as I would rather buy something else (like a tape or CD-r) and get a whole release than pay money for some mp3s without any packaging.

I want to walk around in the snow with it blasting over my iPod headphones, like I do with the other Burzum albums that I've downloaded. I'm going to download it and probably talk about how great of an album it is. It's not because I love Varg's politics, or murder, or arson, or any other bullshit that disconnects his views from mine. It's because Burzum fucking rules and because a new Burzum album is probably going to fucking rule, too.

Passin' The Axe at Ohio Hatchet Wrestling: Rebirth

To the mainstream public, professional wrestling has been long represented by the glitz, glamour and choreography of corporations such as the WWE, lifting unknown actors/athletes to the status of cultural icon with the help of an enormous budget spent allocated to marketing, merchandising and advertising. However, much like the music scene, there exists a scene in which diehards struggle for notoriety and respect among those who revel in the lo-fi glory of the underground or “backyard” scene. Many cities and regions have their own scene and style of presentation that ranges from school gymnasiums to Masonic lodges to backyard trials of pain and strength. In Central and Southeast Ohio, the Columbus-based Ohio Hatchet Wrestling reigns supreme.As the name suggests, Ohio Hatchet Wrestling has its roots as a spinoff of The Insane Clown Posse’s Juggalo Championshit Wrestling league, which brought a grisly, gritty realism that countered the glitz and glamour of the WWF / WCW of the time. Ohio Hatchet Wrestling sponsors several events each year, usually taking place in community centers, open retail spaces and, in the case of Saturday night’s event “Ohio Hatchet: Rebirth,” school gymnasiums.

West Elementary School in Athens played a host to a modest gauntlet of merchandise vendors and concession stands in the hallways surrounding the gymnasium, in which vendors hocked reasonably-priced merchandise and wrestling memorabilia, including magazines, t-shirts, action figures and custom-made mouse pads. The gym held the centerpiece of the night, an enormous red wrestling ring, which is truly an impressive sight no matter if it’s in a giant arena such as those that host WWE events or drably-lit school cafegymatoriums. It was surrounded by a great deal of steel railings that separated the audience from ringside and hinted at the illusion of danger and mayhem only yards away in the squared circle.

The first match was a three-way free-for-all between OHW villain Ashton Vuitton (whose flamboyant presentation and twinky good looks makes him a favorite with the ladies), "Violent" Vance Desmond, who hails from Three Mile Island and a local hero Zac Vincent, who hails from Hockhocking.

Vincent entered the gym to an ultra-slick dubstep track, which made him my favorite right off the bat. He took quite the beating for the first half of the match, as the two others ganged up on him, but the promise of a win soon tore the dastardly duo apart, allowing the local hero to subdue both of them in a feat of acrobatic intensity and well-executed throws and holds, earning him his rightful due as the victor. He took his victory stroll around the gym to the strains of wobble bass and drum machines while Vuitton (pictured below) had to be untangled from the ropes.


The rest of the matches followed in the usual fashion. Usually the good guys took a beating but came back in the end, except for a few matches where the villains occasionally came out ahead in the end.

There was an appearance by the tag team The Bastard Sons Of Rock and Roll, which featured a team of guys who wouldn't look out of place at a Madball or Napalm Death show (one was wearing a Bouncing Souls jacket, and the other was named "Freebird" Bryan Cross [pictured below] but looked like he'd be at home in a thrash metal band). The same could be said for most of the crowd.

While there was certainly a contingency of juggalos, they were mostly outnumbered by the number of local metalheads and punks dotting the stands, as if it were a show at The Union, not an underground wrestling event. The rest of the seats were filled by locals who just wanted to seem some wrasslin'.

During a brief intermission, I had the distinct pleasure of meeting the headlining attraction, Mad Man Pondo, who was scheduled to fight fellow OHW superstar Viper in a barbed-wire-boards match.

In person, Pondo (pictured below) looks just as grizzled and off-kilter as he does in his various videotaped appearances. I first encountered Pondo’s well–known visage in high school, when my friends and I watched a DVD of various JCW matches, one of which featured Pondo kicking the living shit out of a fat, jovial lad in a barrel who was appropriately named Fat Fuck Barrel Boy. During this match, Pondo raked a barbed-wire bat across Fat Fuck Barrel Boy’s face and bodyslammed him off the balcony of the venue through a folding table. It ruled, and cemented him in my mind, along with Necrobutcher, as a top-quality hardcore wrestler, willing to mangle and maim himself for the crowd in a way that few athletes are willing to do. I know, the detractors of this article will cry, “Oh, but it’s all staged!” Well, staged it may be, but you can’t fake getting a dollar bill staplegunned to your face or getting thrown into a pit of razorwire, and guys like Pondo revel in that kind of self-destruction.

Other commitments forced me to leave before the barbed-wire-boards match, but not before I indulged my primal instincts and got to see some blood. During a contest between Shawn Day (who spent 10 minutes prior to the match calling everyone in the audience “homos”) and "New Age Punisher" TJ Phillips, Day fell into one of the steel guardrails, which fell into a young child’s face. The child was alright, although his enraged father promptly rushed through the barrier and began trying to fight Day. He needed to be restrained by the promoters and event staff while Day was hurried out of the gym. The enraged father was ejected from the event and went on warpath, flipping tables and throwing chairs down the hall at the small crowd that was hurrying out. The sound man, Bill-Do (pronounced like "dildo") ended up getting pulled into the fray, as well as 8 OHW wrestlers who had come to sort the issue out the way that incredibly muscular, testosterone-fueled professional wrestlers tend to settle matters of conflict.

Despite this minor disturbance, the event went extremely smoothly and brought me to realize how much of a bond that the Midwest DIY music scene shares a common bond with the Midwest DIY wrestling scene. They are truly kindred souls, who aim to put on a good show by the masses and for the masses. They ignore the high-budget trappings and put the focus not on the production or the merchandising, but back where it belongs, on the brutal choreography and acrobatics of professional wrestling. They do this in a completely independent way that puts the emphasis not on glitz and glamour (unless you’re Ashton Vuitton, of course), but on a crowd-pleasing spectacle that caters to the niche groups of diehards that see the necessity to support the underground and those who put their hearts and souls into it.

Congrats to Ohio Hatchet Wrestling’s organizers, staff and wrestlers for setting up a great event. If you can help me identify the unnamed wrestlers in this article, please shoot an e-mail to nyodened@gmail.com. I look forward to future exhibitions, especially the Death In The Valley tournament.

-Aaron Vilk, Promotional Director