Weekly Music Writeup #2: Krallice - Years Past Matter

Due to various recent events (the one you're probably thinking of if you're an American, sure, but also personal ones) I've been thinking a lot about apocalypse, or about the promise of another world breaking through the shell of this one. I'm still fairly new to all this, but one theme I see in a lot of contemporary theory is anti-transcendence: the idea that this is the only world there is, and whatever happens must happen, to use the words of a recent figure, "in the context of all that came before it." "No outside," cry the accelerationists; and along these same lines Antonio Negri (RIP) and Michael Hardt open their really fucking good Commonwealth by saying: "Along with nihilists, we have to recognize that, regardless of how brilliantly and trenchantly we critique it, we are destined to live in this world, not only subject to its powers of domination but also contaminated by its corruptions. Abandon all dreams of political purity and 'higher values' that would allow us to remain outside!"

This seems self-evidently true to me, but at the same time there's something to be said about the seemingly omnipresent sense of yearning for a better world. I'm being sort of academic about all of this, but to be clear this is a powerful feeling, more of a need than a desire. To put things in a personal register, I can't keep being a depressed shut-in forever: eventually, if I don't want to die (and there are worse deaths than the physical) I have to go out and talk to people and make friends and overall just start being a part of society. Yet I'm stuck in such a morass of hopelessness and self-loathing that it's difficult to imagine how I can bring such a thing about.

In any case, the world as we know it isn't really a world at all but a collective hallucination of sorts, an inpenetrable weave of ideology and habit. Ideology tells us that this is all there is and all it can ever be, even though obviously everything is contingent. So, how can we see past all this to the "baroque sunbursts" that Fredric Jameson uses to describe other, possible worlds?

Recently, in car rides where I'm forced into proximity with my conservative family members and their friends, I've started listening to black metal: particularly Krallice. For one, they're loud, and maintain their volume throughout the entire length of their very long songs, and thus their music works really well at blocking out all the transphobic/misogynistic/racist/reactionary talk.¹ But also, listening to them while watching the sun rise over California's mountains, soaking them in blue—in moments like the one four minutes into "IIIIIIIII" where the dueling guitars break into mournful harmony—I feel as though I'm really seeing those baroque sunbursts, like a different world is right there behind the rocks and chaparral trying to yawn into being.

Apocalypse is, of course, a really contentious topic, not least because it usually manifests as a whole lot of people dying. Nor are glimpses of other worlds wholly benign; I mean, just look at Lovecraft for a preview of how such things usually turn out. Krallice's music is loud and terrifying and on first listen can seem as wild and endless and homogenous as a churning ocean, everything mashed into one roiling element. But it's also beautiful. When those guitars achieve liftoff—and Krallice, especially on this album, are extremely good at meting out these moments—I catch a glimpse of what might remain when everything is erased; something horrifying, sure, but also gorgeous and, in its own weird way, human. Yes, there is no outside. But art like Krallice's can allow us a peek at what lies beyond the door.

Also, it rips.

Other recs:

• A grand and horrifying track, like a slightly more down-to-earth Current 93.
• Some melancholic MIDI tracks that sound like they could fit in Elin, a game I've been playing a lot of recently.
• I didn't quite hear the UK garage base of Destiny Child's "Say My Name" until hearing this somewhat similar-sounding dubstep banger.
• Finally listened to Drakeo the Ruler and wow is he good. RIP.
• My most played track this month by several magnitudes. So, so beautiful.

^{1. As a writer I acknowledge that I should probably be paying attention to them, no matter how painful it is, but...well let me just say that I tried, but it proved too difficult. I'm a pretty thin-skinned person already, but entering those vehicles is something else—like stepping into the irradiated chamber at the end of Fallout 3 or something.↩}