I sit here at my computer desk listening to Downset at 2:30 am on October 3rd and I’m struck once again with some serious stuff. The opening track on “do we speak a dead language?” album is called “Intro” and it starts of with wind whistling and howling through what seems like a canyon, then you hear some wind chimes and a woman softly singing in the back ground; then comes these words with an unforgettable voice: “We must come to see that the end we seek, is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience, that will be a day, not of the white man, not of the black man. That will be the day of man as man.” Then crushing heavy guitars come in with thundering emotional vocals screaming; “EMPOWER! EMPOWER!” ….and the goose bumps and a shot of adrenaline kicks in. As I listen to this guy (Rey) scream his guts and heart out I’m blown away again as I was in 1996 when this album first dropped.
As I listen again renewed, evolved, removed and plugged into my faith I see Downset’s messages so much clearer than before and I get inspired, with lyrics like this; “I will love God of “Zion” with all my heart and you will hate me for it, intentions will be so helpless and you will hate me for it, I will love through resurrecting eyes and you will hate me for it, Self exultation is the opiate of the masses. Your world is against the spirits.” From the song called: Against the Spirits.
Many more songs on this album will and have influenced many people, myself included. It reminds me of what I’ve been lacking in my life, a positive motivational word from my heart. I mean, I write from my heart and the lord’s hand, but I have missed my place in writing from my heart for my social responsibilities. As a Christian everything is the same for me but with a new lens. The bands like Downset and Rage Against the Machine were the ones that catapulted me into writing about the injustices in societies, democracies, corporations and anything else that made me “angsty.”
I fed off the racism that was and still is prevalent in my generation and the bands that sang against it. They sang from a different place then your top 40 radio show. That’s why most hardcore and punk music has heart and passion. These bands are not singing about the chicks they are hooking up with or the money they are making or commercials they are in or some cool slang word they came up with. That stuff is easy to write and easy to follow when you’re a slave to the media fed industry. I’m a little grrr about it actually. So much talent and heart wasted away by media repression. No one wants a good powerful story against the corporations that pay them to tell us what we want.
I digress; I have a desire once again to write in other ways, more positive, more aggression through progression. I’ve been a little worried about what I write lately and too worried who I might offend. I realize now, that I needed to hold back for a little bit and let God dictate what I was to write and I feel that God has opened that old door he once shut. I feel that I can handle that old door with my new perspective that is always evolving. So the gloves are off people, the bare bone white knuckles are back and there will be some intriguing blogs, quotes, and statements coming. Not like JT bringing sexy back, but like TR, “Bringing angsty back…”
“We are guilty of judgment, seeing what we only want to see, these false idols fall from their pedestals in self-moral supremacy, blame the inside of another to falsify your true identity, ignite the fire that burns desire we have become what we have feared, indifferent, intolerant.” T.R.
Vermont Scale RC 