DOOM 94 by Janis Jonevs

Author:Janis Jonevs
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-9934-8728-4-6
Publisher: PublishDrive
Published: 2018-04-08T16:00:00+00:00

10

What was better — the Junkyard, or being by myself at home, in front of my stereo? Wasn’t the Junkyard only fun because you could take what had happened there and think about it by yourself back at home, in front of your stereo? And wasn’t the number one fantasy when sitting in front of your stereo, sometimes even standing, along with the thundering lightning and flashing thunder, being at the Junkyard?

What was the right way to listen to a song? Are you supposed to imagine yourself as the song’s protagonist, or try to relate the song to your own life? Is the song about me or am I about the song?

I had less time for maths and family drama. These trivial things were being pushed out by metal. My tape collection was so big that I couldn’t gather them all up in my arms at once. I could do the kind of structuring and classification that young minds most loved to do. I had a lot of doom, a solid amount of death, a smattering of thrash and also that other genre that many of us were into now, maybe even obsessed. I can explain exactly why I got into it.

It didn’t start at the Junkyard or at home. One day during physical education, or maybe in ethics, I was rewinding a tape. Normally you’d do this with a pen-cap or scissors, but I was too lazy for some reason. The Walkman was whining and thumping like a chainsaw cutting through a nail-riddled board. Kārlis turned around and asked:

— What’s that black you’re listening to?

I hadn’t heard of this genre yet, but I was immediately interested in music that would sound like that. Black metal is considered the most extreme expression of metal music. But for our giddy brains it was one more bucket of dynamite on an open flame. It was the ultimate — totally black, it had to be the end of the line, we’d reached our goal. Until recently I’d thought that doom metal was the be-all end-all, but now Death and I were sitting in front of the stereo, and he said:

— The best doom is black.

I automatically repeated the sentence in pure Latvian:

— The best fate is black.

Do you remember Immortal’s Pure Holocaust? Of course you do.

And Mayhem? Stupid question, I know. And yes, yes, I mean the old-school Mayhem, not the surviving members. But I can’t help it, I have to explain what you all already know.

Mayhem was founded in 1984 by a Norwegian guy named Øystein Aarseth. He played the guitar and went by the name Euronymous. We never understood how to pronounce it, namely, on which syllable to place the emphasis.

Euronymous believed that his mission in life was absolute evil. When the band became famous a journalist asked, ahem, I’ve heard that you, the artist, have a good relationship with your parents. That you’re a good son. How does that fit in with absolute evil? Euronymous self-critically referenced human nature:

— Not even Christians can be good all the time.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.