Fifteen Counts Of Arson

About

The album appears to have been conceived out of extreme suffering whilst undergoing an excruciating passage through the american medical system. It has strong references to mental illness, whether imposed or real. Namely a schizophrenia diagnosis and the associated effect of anti-psychotics/psychiatric medicine, particularly the harmful haldol/haloperidol. Which is a first generation anti-psychotic that has been discontinued/replaced by other assorted poisons in several countries. However, continues to be widely used due to being cheaper and its quick sedative/zombiefying effect that considerably reduces the effort medical workers must invest into helping/treating patients. The inlay of the record contains a mock-like level of "satisfaction" survey for a comfortable stay at the Memphis mental institution, which ostensibly lasted for 11 horrific days. The rest of the album is an inhuman and rageful diatribe attacking the obscenely rich and their full control/rule of the entire world. The lyrics to the opening song call the entire operation around the management of mental health "thought industry" and alludes to a "triple ending" that landed the subject into this void and black hole of unending, unsurmountable mental, physical, emotional, spiritual suffering and social stigma for life from which it is impossible to escape. Based on their other records, the triple ending appears to be 11 months in prison, 11 days at the mental hospital and the loss/abortion of an "unwanted" child. The artwork, painted by their bassist, Carl Auge, a graphic designer, depicts a subversive guerilla-like individual about to blow up a a "Shell" gas station which displays a missing "s", spelling "sell". It is all a coping, wishful thinking fantasy. The record seamlessly merges abrasive, aggressive, plodding sludge metal, gritty, raw intense crust punk and fast, frantic d-beat rhythms with desperate riffing that sounds like a mind slipping away steadily; sealed with the most guttural, throat lacerating, deepest growls for vocals. Possibly the angriest, most incendiary and heaviest record in any genre that brutally clamours for vengeance, violence/uprising against the oppressors and intense arson - each song being a tribunal count of it - that is never going to occur because everyone is conditioned and dead inside. "Suffocate on self-taught hate / There's one way out but our souls' been doused".

via Last.fm

The Clerk says

Start your shelf to read the full take →