Be Nice to Your Fans
Striborg: the hardest-working band in Tasmanian Black Metal Showbiz
Went to pick up some new records at the mall a couple of days ago. Something about weekday mall trips always alarms me: the people who walk around the mall at noon on a Monday all look like mutants to me. I don't know where they come from, and I don't ever see them outside in the world, but they're in the mall. Couples with lip piercings and Jnco jeans and pictures of their kids on their t-shirts - and I know this is sounding very elitist and mean, but it makes me uneasy. Three guys were looking at comic books joking about The Simpsons and one of them farted. It made me very shaky and I couldn't bring myself to buy the M.I.A. disc or the Interpol disc that just came out. But this is how they would be reviewed, despite my having not listened to them:
1. M.I.A. disproves her skeptics, avoids the "sophomore slump," and improves upon her unique hybrid of Timbaland-beats and bluntly-stated political radicalism.
2. Interpol is starting to mail it in with their third album.
Instead, I went somewhere else and bought Spiritual Catharsis, a re-release by Tasmanian misanthrope Sin Nanna, who records as Striborg. Unlike the troglodytes at the mall, Sin Nanna hides from civilization in recording studios and, guessing by his records, forests. And goddamn he puts out a lot of records (5 full-lengths since 2005.) The thing I love about the Striborg records is what Sin Nanna does with his vocals in the studio. Sometimes they're overdriven to the point of sounding like feedback, and at others he accents them with a rimshot effect that comes across as some percussive nod to Jamaican dub records. Except that they are not "one love." They are Satanic/Tolkein-esque/Heathenist spiritual dirges set to assaulting drums with titles like "Beneath the Fields of Rapacious Blood." And I think that's all you need to know in order to make a decision about that purchase.
(If you are reading this from the computer screen at the Apple store in the mall: Striborg records are in fact available at Newbury Comics. Sun exposure needn't come into play.)
