Donated today because this campaign has actually mobilized people to do material good for those living in the district and provides a model for how politics should work.
Also you get a cool picture of a cat.
Donated today because this campaign has actually mobilized people to do material good for those living in the district and provides a model for how politics should work.
Also you get a cool picture of a cat.
It does give a lot to think about with regard to nationalism and what it means to believe in a country. Is a country's identity forged by thousands of years of history? If so, what does it mean when that identity has to change? (Can it?) Is a country's identity formed through the creation of documents outlining its rules, policies, and procedures? If so, what does it mean when those documents have to change? (Who decides?) Finishing it as I did on the day the US Supreme Court heard a case about the independent state legislature theory, these questions seem quite relevant.
As we are in a moment of institutional upheaval in the U.S. (when has this not been true?), this part of my review seemed resonant this week.
thetallrobreport.blogspot.com/2026/03/thou...
Max Ward sang for SCHOLASTIC DETH, a fastcore band active for a few short years around the turn of the millennium. Today, he’s an associate professor of history at Middlebury.
This week, I posted a pair of articles on this band and on the book he wrote in 2019. Both are from a zine I did in 2023.
ESPN Notification reading as follows: President Donald Trump says Iran is "welcome" to compete but should skip the World Cup "for their own life and safety"
Totally normal ESPN notification once again.
This book chiefly concerns the Japanese government's efforts in the years between the first two World Wars to re-educate members of the Japanese Communist Party into citizens full of national spirit. As I am not conversant with Japanese history in any kind of way, I was mostly out of my depth with this book. It winds down as the beginning of WWII approaches, so Ward describes how the Japanese government was learning how to police members of its society who were out of line. Where did they learn this but through classes taught by U.S. police officers. (The hyperLink is to my review of Stuart Schrader’s Bages without Borders.
What about the book, though?
I was a bit out of my depth, but I still tried to make sense.
thetallrobreport.blogspot.com/2026/03/thou...
A casual survey of music created since they broke up in 2002 makes it clear that a new movement of punk bands that are pro-reading hasn't caught on. Basically, straight edge but for books. No TV, No social media, No venture capitalists. Something like that. They articulated a pro-literacy philosophy as clearly as MINOR THREAT did with a pro-sobriety philosophy, yet they didn't have the lasting impact of straight edge. MINOR THREAT had good marketing going on, you know what I mean? Maybe if SCHOLASTIC DETH could have toured more extensively. In an alternate reality, ward et al. could have flexed 625 to focus on a bookstore core movement that disdained screen time, social media, dot-com boomers, and Silicon Valley in general in favor of printed matter, academic achievement, and coffee. They had songs about the effect of the dot-com bust on their skate habits and work choices... the cusp of a social movement in response to Bush II's bungling, belligerent idiocracy is right there, but something was missing. These guys should have been huge... They even had a member break up the band because he got accepted at Northwestern-just like MINOR THREAT. They have a solid discography CD-just like MINOR THREAT. (They are not as good as MINOR THREAT.) If there are any bands trying to ape their sound and style (mostly the bookish part) in the same way youth crew and OC HC bands did in the late '80s with MINOR THREAT, you need to let me know.
I added a blurb about SCHOLASTIC DETH to the blog post to make it a bit longer and provide some context. The blurb and the book review were on facing pages originally, but in the opposite order on the blog.
Here is part of that SCHOLASTIC DETH blurb.
thetallrobreport.blogspot.com/2026/03/thou...
Without further ado, here’s this week’s post.
Max Ward, vocalist of SCHOLASTIC DETH, became a professor. (The band members weren’t kidding about being nerds.)
In 2019, he wrote “Thought Crime: Ideology and State Power in Interwar Japan.” In 2023, I reviewed it for a zine I was doing. Read it here.
Forgot to include the other punk song from the same-ish era about black metal. Here’s ATOM AND HIS PACKAGE with “Me and My Black Metal Friends.”
“They’re pretty evil and they do not like God /
I don’t care if they burn down churches, but they better not fucking touch a synagogue”
For added fun, compare chain, drain, train, and Jane.
"Hey dude, the music fucking rips"
"I don't listen to music for the politics"
Well I call you out on your fucking shit!
---
The liner notes mention Max's distaste with kids who are wearing "their new $30 nazi black metal shirts" at shows.
Sounds like Bill Peel was on to something with this book:
Here are the lyrics:
What the fuck is going on?
Kids at hardcore shows wearing some fascist shirt
Accepted since it's 'metal'
Why aren't you living up to your own ideals?
Screw all that fucking shit
Punks shouldn't be supporting it
👇
In a preview of the post going up tomorrow on The Tall Rob Report and a connection to this past week's post, please enjoy SCHOLASTIC DETH with "We Think Metal Music Is Awesome But Everything Connected To It Sucks...Including You" which is about punk kids wearing sketchy black metal shirts at shows.
Oh dear! What will this mean for all of those students so eager to achieve “AI fluency”???? Lollllllll
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
FUGAZI Albini Sessions (In on the Killtaker) SHABAKA Of the Earth STATION MODEL VIOLENCE Station Model Violence PONY Clearly Cursed FUCKED UP Grass Can Move Stones, pt 2 (Year of the Monkey) FEMINAZGUL No Dawn for Men MERCYFUL FATE Don’t Break the Oath MERCYFUL FATE Melissa VÉHÉMENCE Ordalies
Happy Bandcamp Friday!
Not a huge FUGAZI fan but an Albini Mix of one of their albums (with proceeds to charity) is a no-brainer
FEMINAZGUL is one of the best band names I’ve ever heard
I already have the CD & LP of these MERCYFUL FATE albums, but why not send them some $ for the digital version?
Photo of an abandoned Boston Market. The “t” in Boston is damaged, so it appears to read “Boson Market.”
I don’t know why we have to fund the Large Hadron Collider at CERN when you can get the same subatomic particles for cheap at the
Photo of an abandoned Boston Market. The “t” in Boston is damaged, so it appears to read “Boson Market.”
I don’t know why we have to fund the Large Hadron Collider at CERN when you can get the same subatomic particles for cheap at the
Photo of the front cover of Tonight it’s a World We Bury: Black Metal, Red Politics by Bill Peel Appropriately, there is an illegible logo above the title of the book. Inside is a bookmark from Torn Light Records in Chicago, where I bought the book second-hand.
You don’t need to know much of anything about Communism or black metal to engage with the book. Not sure if the logo says anything…
Shout out to Torn Light Records of Chicago for having this book on their shelves. Great shop!
www.tornlightrecords.com
The coldness of the genre is reflected in the inability to do work or the disinterest in the world at large. Rather that combusting with kinetic energy like thrash metal or speed metal, black metal makes a point of displaying its power, its "puissance," through inaction or stillness or coldness (p. 123). If still waters run deep, then imagine the everflowing stream frozen. There is a lot of power there (as distinct from energy) but it lies still. Black metal band members are "dominating capitalism by freezing its flows. They work by remaining useless, non-productive, insufficiently profitable. We should ask ourselves what has been gained through our supposedly productive activism, and if we shouldn't join black metal instead, by turning towards non-productivity" (p. 123). Allowing ourselves to lay fallow and become useless might lead to new growth in our decay that helps to bring a new world into being.
Closing paragraph of my review of Bill Peel’s ‘Tonight it’s a World We Bury: Black Metal, Red Politics.’
Here, I reflect on the idea of ‘coldness’ Peel explores with regard to black metal and Communism.
thetallrobreport.blogspot.com/2026/03/toni...
The chapter on decay was interesting in that it reframed the usual way that black metal bands look at decay. They see it as a form of death or a long for a return to a "supposedly ancient, traditional moment" (p. 69). In this way, the yearning for decay is a desire for the world as it is to be undone. To accelerate the downfall of society so that we can live more simply once more. You know, RETVRN type shit. That's gross (culturally). What's also gross (well, also, culturally, but in a different sense) is that decaying fungi can be a source of new life, mutation (p. 64). The idea of flourishing. The possibility of life's construction.
Some thoughts on the chapter about ‘decay’ from Bill Peel’s book Tonight it’s a World We Bury: Black Metal, Red Politics.’
thetallrobreport.blogspot.com/2026/03/toni...
Bill Peel wrote a book exploring the affordances black metal (as a genre of music and associated scene) has to teach Communists about certain social practices. Yes, I was confused, too, when I first saw the book. Those practices include distortion, decay, secrecy, coldness, and heresy.
Review here:
Keeping this thread going with songs rattling around in my head each morning…
B.G.K. (Balthasar Gerard’s Kommando) with “Arms Race”
‘This world is ruled by demented old men shaking hands all day long
Stop the arms race /
Not the human race’
There are even books like this one (my review linked below) that bring together theory with a topic (in this case, black metal) that couldn’t seem farther from Marxism on their surface. The book is ‘Tonight It’s a World We Bury: Black Metal, Red Politics’ by Bill Peel. A very interesting book!
Instead, Peel focuses on the elements of black metal as a genre that might provide affordances for socialists to consider including in their worldview. The five chapters cover the ideas of distortion, decay, secrecy, coldness, and heresy. Each includes an explanation of the term as it relates to black metal, certain bands or songs or movements in the genre that exemplify the term, and discussion of ways socialists might interpret these same ideas for their own ends. In a sense, a reader does not need to have any familiarity with the music of the scenes Peel covers. A more engaged stance on this book would leave a reader with ideas of how to rethink their engagement with socialist politics. If you wanted to learn more about RABM bands, you'll be let down; however, you might learn a little more about Deleuze & Guattari, Nietzsche, and Marx as you read.
The book does mention that there are bands in the black metal scene that resist its overtly fascist elements.
Yet, that’s not its focus. Distortion, decay, secrecy, coldness, & heresy are the modes of being that Communists might learn from black metal.
thetallrobreport.blogspot.com/2026/03/toni...
Photo of the front cover of Tonight it’s a World We Bury: Black Metal, Red Politics by Bill Peel Appropriately, there is an illegible logo above the title of the book. Inside is a bookmark from Torn Light Records in Chicago, where I bought the book second-hand.
You don’t need to know much of anything about Communism or black metal to engage with the book. Not sure if the logo says anything…
Shout out to Torn Light Records of Chicago for having this book on their shelves. Great shop!
www.tornlightrecords.com
Bill Peel’s book “Tonight it’s a World We Bury: Black Metal, Red Politics” is a response to a question few have asked: what can Communists learn from the social practices of the black metal scene?
There’s quite a lot!
Read my review of the book in this week’s installment of The Tall Rob Report.
Might as well add “Bombs of Peace” by UPRIGHT CITIZENS:
“I'm fed up with East and West
They always just waste their breath
And we will die in atomic heat
When we don't stop what we don't need
Stop their bombs of peace”
