Mere Phantoms: Famine for a Slow Death (Undesirable)
Purchased at Jerry's Records
Well. For the several people who have read this blog regularly, I've been absent for a couple of weeks. Part of it has been being busy; part of it has been, why exactly am I doing this again? I've written at some length in the past about my rationale and even my questioning of it, so no need to continue to go on about such things. I guess it seemed to me that there wasn't much point to writing things almost nobody would read. That hasn't stopped me from playing music that almost nobody will hear, but at least that's my primary artistic venture.
But there's not point in abandoning this either, if I feel like it.
Obviously I've have more on the stereo than just this album, but it's something of a curiosity and therefore worth mentioning. I don't always want to be a sucker for unusual packaging, but here's something that turned up at Jerry's. Single sided LP with a screen print on the B side, clear-with-smoke colored vinyl, edition #31/40. And an insert using the cover image of Sonic Youth's Daydream Nation as a cover image with new text. Then I looked up that the band came from Pittsburgh. Okay, goodbye $7.
They describe their sound as "grime". I suppose that's appropriate. The metal scene, something I am thoroughly not involved in, has splintered into so many sub-genres and sub-sub-sub-genres, who knows if I'm using the appropriate lexicon?
With my limited capacity at comparisons (and comparisons are rarely fair), at times they sounded like Zao, a touch of Big Black here and there, and vaguely like Black Metal. That's based on my own limited listening experience, but I think it's also all true. Lots of feedback between songs, grinding riffs. There's a bit of what sounds like shortwave sounds (morse code, HAM operators) blended into the mix. I like that attempt at experimentation and think music such as this could use more similar attempts.
I've looked up their Facebook page. There hasn't been a posting in three years. They did some attempts at touring I suppose, listing gigs in Gainesville and Virginia. Locally, there are listings for gigs at Mr. Roboto and The Shop. Makes sense.
It's hard to keep bands going. It's work and there's rarely fair money to be made. Back in my Water Shed 5tet days, for some years none of us took any money from the band take, and it largely paid for our first CD, entirely our second, and took us to San Francisco/Oakland/Berkeley to perform. After that, fees came more and more out of my pocket.
Who were these guys? Are they still active in other bands? They must have believed in themselves enough to not only released vinyl (more expensive than CD) but with labor-intensive packaging. Only the vocalist (rather typical shout-screaming) has a back catalog according to Discogs, and even then this is the most recent listing.
Have they all given up? Nobody said this would be easy. Personally I'm in far, far too deep to give up.
By the way, there's a French duo named Mere Phantoms too, who do interactive papercut shadow shows. I don't know who came first.
