something about the Jars album, ДЖРС III

Jars moves you with a mix of dangerous grooves and hardcore punk on its latest album, ДЖРС III. The first song, “Заебало” (“Sick”), hammers out snaking riffs with a mallet. The guitars cut a dissonant, high-end whine, and the anxiety is eased only by the yelling vocals (“Oh!”) and driving drums and bass guitar. The tension grows over the song—and over and again on these nine tracks of ear-filling discontent.

Jars is a Moscow-based noise rock trio. It has existed in some form or another since 2011. The band has a handful of albums and EPs, and in December 2020, released ДЖРС III (a Russian translation of the band's name plus III).

Find the dialed-in inebriation of “Черное прикосновение” (“Curse Curse Curse!”), the five-minute musical equivalent of bashing in car windows in a convenience store parking lot. The song features a bass-driven groove below guitar notes that crunch and jangle while the vocal yells behind the din.

Jars want you to recall the 1990s and record label Amphetamine Reptile. I hear Shellac and Drive Like Jehu. And on “Спидкоп” (“Speedcop”), I hear even a little Converge. This compact, powerhouse of a song opens with a moment of feedback, then explodes into hardcore. Everything sounds good: the screaming vocal, the way the guitar strings ring out rather than shoosh a wall of distortion, and the penetrating bass and crisp drums. Nicely done.

The album ends with “Москва слезам не верит” (“Moscow does not believe in tears”), a half-marathon in a pocket groove. Nasty guitar streaks color and vocals shout out—but all succumb to the flexing rhythm of the bass and drums. The song retools after five minutes, escalates, slows—the sound of a band sharing consciousness—and drives on, passing 10 minutes, with gobs of mud thrown off with each turn of the wheel. The album’s song lengths vary, but the volume stays the same.

 

something about the film, “Joker”

In the movie "Joker," Arthur Fleck ekes out a miserable living as a party clown in Gotham City, 1981. Crime is up, unemployment is up, and poverty is up. Violent events lead Arthur to become a folk hero in a rapidly intensifying class struggle. The movie is an unofficial imagining of the origin story for the Batman villain, the Joker.

The New Yorker published a piece titled “'Joker' Is a Viewing Experience of Rare, Numbing Emptiness,” which says the following:

“Joker” is an intensely racialized movie, a drama awash in racial iconography that is so prevalent in the film, so provocative, and so unexamined as to be bewildering. What it seems to be saying is utterly incoherent, beyond the suggestion that Arthur, who is mentally ill, becomes violent after being assaulted by a group of people of color—and he suffers callous behavior from one black woman, and believes that he’s being ignored by another, and reacts with jubilation at the idea of being a glamorous white star amid a supporting cast of cheerful black laborers. But, unlike the public discourse around the Central Park Five, and unlike the case of Bernhard Goetz, and unlike the world, the discourse in “Joker” and the thought processes of Arthur Fleck are utterly devoid of any racial or social specificity.

I do not know what this means or how the film would be different if the racial iconography were more examined or if the movie had more racial or social specificity. I agree that “Joker” does not reinforce a politically left-leaning perspective on race, but I do not see how that makes the movie bad. I think the movie is good.

“Joker” is a sick person’s fantasy about meeting real-world conditions that allow the fantasy to become reality. Arthur thought he was a victim.

I used to think that my life was a tragedy, but now I realize, it's a fucking comedy.

He was nice to people, but they responded with indifference or cruelty. He discovered the power of revenge and began leading a class war.

What do you get when you cross a mentally ill loner with a society that abandons him and treats him like trash? You get what you fuckin' deserve!

Arthur's story and dialog gradually allude to a populist and class-oriented politics, which can be manipulated by demagogues and made dangerous. But this movie dwells in the origins of the discontent that allows a populace to accept demagoguery and then turn dangerous and to fascism. Arthur, during a serendipitous turn as a guest on a late-night talk show, asks his celebrity host, Murray:

Have you seen what it's like out there, Murray? Do you ever actually leave the studio? Everybody just yells and screams at each other. Nobody's civil anymore. Nobody thinks what it's like to be the other guy. You think men like Thomas Wayne ever think what it's like to be someone like me? To be somebody but themselves? They don't. They think that we'll just sit there and take it, like good little boys! That we won't werewolf and go wild!

Notes:

• "Joker" was released in 2019, was directed and produced by Todd Phillips, who co-wrote the screenplay with Scott Silver. The film stars Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker.
• I do not know if the concept started out as such, but I drew lines to Trump’s political rise leading into the 2016 election.
• The New Yorker also published a formal review of “Joker,” which was also critical. That review is fine.
• "All I Have Are Negative Thoughts."

something about another metal album

Progressive death and thrash band Cathartic Demise burn like a welding torch on the calculating new album, In Absence. But the band’s sound is not especially violent. Cathartic Demise are builders, not warriors.

The album sounds more like death metal than thrash—and more like death metal than prog, even though many songs top seven minutes. Like “Pale Imitations,” which goes almost eight. It opens with a poured-syrup guitar riff. That riff gets double-guitared for the harmony. The band uses dual-guitar harmonies throughout to find center, and these moments root the album in a metal tradition. At one minute into “Pale Imitations,” the drums and bass guitar join in, sound-tracking a death march. Then a counterpoint guitar line threatens the pace, so the tempo picks up until the band is at full blast. Rich, atmospheric, melodic sections with layers of guitars pile into the song’s latter moments. The last two minutes sound almost buoyant, and the song finally passes in the blurred reflection of melody.

Cathartic Demise put out its first release in April 2019, a self-titled EP. Today, this Ontario band releases In Absence independently. I listen to it now and hear all these wonderful metal influences. The musicianship is superior and the production is very good—a compliment to proficiency. And how could you not accept a sound so proficient?

 

something about "Bully: A True Story of High School Revenge," a nonfiction book by Jim Schutze

Bully: A True Story of High School Revenge, by Jim Schutze, was a best-selling true crime book in 1998. It was adapted into the 2001 film "Bully," directed by Larry Clark. The crime involves the brutal murder of Bobby Kent, a vicious kid in a comfortable, middle-class Ft. Lauderdale beach community. Kent's best friend and a group of peers lured Kent to his death. 

 

This is the story of a damaged and depraved community. Schutze, a local Dallas journalist, is pitiless and closes his book with a swipe at the adults loitering at the edges of the kids' lives. Reading this dissolves a little more faith in humanity. It's great.

something about another song and video

French synthwave musician Perturbator released a new video and single, “Death of the Soul,” from his forthcoming album, Lustful Sacraments.

The album, currently set for a late May release, explores people’s self-destructive tendencies, according to James Kent, the person behind Perturbator. You sort of get that idea, too, from the video for “Death of the Soul.” Animation depicting games are followed by noirish city night scenes lit by neon signs that flash words like “Heroin,” “Alcohol,” and “Lust”—about as subtle as a train wreck.

Kent has said, “The track takes inspiration from old school EBM a la DAF or Front 242. Valnoir has managed to perfectly pair visuals that reflect the nihilistic tone of it.” Kent wrote, performed, produced, and mixed Lustful Sacraments. The sound of “Death of the Soul” suggests the album will be consistent with the Perturbator oeuvre—dark, anxious, and cinematic, synthesized tones.

This music does little for me. Addicts without drugs feel need. Drugs can make people feel euphoria and, eventually, numb. This is the music of a machine that registers only the need and feels nothing.