A Deeper Look at Party City Vampirism: Faustian Pact and Curseworship reviews and Gio rants on LARPing

What’s up Party City Vampires,

For those of you who don’t get the PCV term, it comes from an interview that Glen Benton from Deicide did recently with J-Dawg of Hell’s Headbangers where he recalls the time he met Euronymous from Mayhem, who had been criticizing Deicide and really Death Metal in general for being “false” metal. I really just find the term Party City Vampire hilarious and wanted to use it in a title for a metal article.

So today, I’m going to be reviewing the Finnish Black Metal band Faustian Pact’s 2020 debut Outojen tornien varjoissa and the 2014 demo of American Sludge Metallers Curseworship. And I’m going to rant on LARPing in art vs politics.

But before we get into that, The Mostro Space Jazz Quartet is on Soundcloud now. I’m a little more selective about what I put on there than I am with what I put on the youtube channel. It’s basically going to be for remixes and second takes. The youtube channel is more like demo’s, the Soundcloud is things that are closer to being “done.” Basically when I get them as good as I know how to get them they go on youtube. But usually a few months later when I listen back, I know how to fix a lot of the problems or flaws in the first take, so I go back and make it better. Sometimes I leave the first take on youtube some times I take it down. But yeah, you can listen to a more polished Mostro Space Jazz Quartet on Soundcloud now.

But we’re not here to talk about Cosmic Space Jazz this month, we’re talking Metal, so on to the reviews.

Faustian Pact - Outojen tornien varjoissa (Werewolf Records, 2020)

Faustian Pact were formed in Finland in 2007, and released three demo’s from 2008-2010. Then the band went quiet for a decade. I’m not really sure what they were up to over those years, but there is a huge gap between those early demos and their debut Outojen tornien varjoissa. I’m glad they got back together and put this out because this album is pretty fucking awesome.

As you can see from the band photo’s in the thumbnail to this article and on the back cover, this band is pretty big on the theatrical side of Black Metal, the corpse paint, the costumes, brandishing swords and spears and stuff. I do tend to poke fun at this sort of thing frequently, but I do so in jest. Ultimately if the tunes are good enough to back up the theatrics then I don’t have a problem with theatrics. So long as the theatrics enhance the experience and aren’t meant to compensate for bad music. This album definitely falls into the former category and not the latter.

The image of the band is accompanied by a fast paced Melodic Black Metal sound. The music here is epic without becoming pretentious or boring. Aside from the standard guitar, bass, drums, vocals instrumentation that is standard in Black Metal, the album features sweeping strings/synths, lutes n flutes when they’re going full medieval on your ass, dramatic goth broad vocals, really the full nine. This borders on pagan or folk black metal, but I would be hesitant to label them as such, as when I think about those subgenres, I tend to think about sombre, introspective acoustic passages and songs that are like 12 minutes long. Like Summoning or Agalloch. But this album moves along at a pretty fast pace, with the tempo always remaining upbeat and the songs being kept fairly short never outstaying their welcome. The longest song on the album is only 5:05 and the albums total runtime is 40 minutes. So you don’t really have time to get bored or tire of listening to it. The album is really well paced.

Also well produced, which in Black Metal, I have been critical of in the past, and really like Punk, I think it usually does take away from the rawness of it which is essential for these kinds of music, but I don’t really mind it here. There are a lot of elements going in the music with synths, symphonic elements, multiple vocal parts. You do kind of need to have someone on the mixing board who can bring all of these elements to life so they aren’t just piled on top of each other and blurred together. I guess I’m more lenient now because I have a better idea of what goes into the production, mixing and mastering side, and that it isn’t easy to achieve a good sound while retaining enough of the rawness to make it work for BM. It was recorded by Lee Anvel from the NWOBHM inspired band Outlaw btw, so kudos to him. He did a good job.

All in all a very solid melodic black metal. Fans of Summoning, Emperor, Borknagar, Satyricon etc. shouldn’t have a hard time getting into this at all. It’s not groundbreaking or reinventing the wheel or anything, but it does an established style very well, which is all one can really expect these days. It’s not the most extreme thing I’ve ever heard either. Honestly, by BM standards I would even describe this as accessible. But the songs are catchy and it’s a fun listen.

Sometimes when no one’s around, I put this on and close my eyes and imagine myself as a post-apocalyptic Futurist Warlord with one of them viking helmets with the horns in it. Face, corpsepainted with the blood of my enemies. And I’m running around burning and pillaging Arktos villages, salting their wheat fields and having massive blood orgies with their women. It’s a pretty good time, I’d recommend it. Which leads me to the next item on the agenda.

In the arts a good LARP is often par for the course. Especially in Metal, and even more so in Black Metal, there has always been a theatrical component to the music, and image and presentation are just as important as the music itself. This was true of the first wave of black metal, bands like Mercyful Fate and Venom, the second wave went even further, particularly with a band like Immortal, whose image is objectively more famous than the music itself. I mean, metal fans know the tunes, but even normies recognize the look as being black metal. In some cases putting the emphasis on image is a gimmick, a means of compensating for lacklustre tunes, but a lot of the time it is actually an important component to the music and becomes an integral element in the overall experience of listening to the band.

One of the main gripes with Death Metal that the Second Wave Black Metal bands had, aside from the music itself, was that the image was too colourful and the dress code too casual. So preserving the theatrics of Metal was one of the major motivators for the genre from the 90’s onward, and establishing a dark/grim aesthetic that took the from of black and white photography, corpse paint, satanic imagery etc. was central to that.

While being more common in Metal than other genres, dudes like Sun Ra, Screamin Jay Hawkins, MF Doom and many others also embraced the LARP and it was a central component in their creative expression.

The term LARP comes from Role Playing games, like Dungeons and Dragons, so to me it implies wearing costumes, playing a character, playing make believe, that sort of thing.

There isn’t anything wrong with LARPing in and of itself. In the arts it can actually add quite a bit to a performance and can be a great time. But then the term enters the political realm and gets thrown around by people who don’t really understand what it is or what it’s for, and as a result it earns a bad rep. It becomes a slur against the “unserious”, that gets tossed around by people who are in actual fact the biggest fucking larpers imaginable.

Now when I was doing the FF podcast, I got called a LARPer a lot. But the central message of my podcast was that the past is dead and gone but the future is what we make it. Not exactly a very larpy message at all, and it’s not like I would dress up as Marinetti and pretend to be him or anything, so why did I get called a LARPer so much? Because my message was critical of their LARP. You see, much as modern Fascism is fueled almost entirely by repressed closeted homosexuality, it is also fueled by delusional LARPers who actually believe in their LARP. They don’t know that they’re LARPing but they are, way harder than I ever fucking have.

Really, the fact that so many of you confuse podcasters/bloggers/youtubers etc. for organizers or leadership speaks volumes as to why your movements are the way they are and why none of you have accomplished anything of note in decades. Sorry to break it to some of you, but those are commentators not organizers or leaders. An organizer or leader might also do commentary to propagate themselves, but their “resume” should mostly be experience with organizing and or leading political movements, not commentating. It’s a different role and the expectation that one should be doing the other is still baffling to me.

Telling me you’re a “real” Fascist/Communist/Monarchist/Principled Conservative/Esoteric Hitlerist/whatever is the same thing as telling me you’re a Jedi Knight or a Viking Warrior. You see, I believe that there is an element of LARP in all radical politics. The impulse to act on some sort of ideal or revolutionary idea requires a bit of LARP. People used to call me a LARPer because they felt I was all talk and no action (I was running a talk show not a political party or activist group after all) but that isn’t actually what LARPing is. They miss the LIVE ACTION part of Live Action Role Playing. Just fantasizing about a better world, or discussing ideas that might get us there is not actually larping. The larpers are the people who ACT on these ideas. Armchair radical would probably be a more appropriate label for what I was doing with FF tbh.

Doing activism just proves to me that you’re more committed to your LARP than those who don’t, but you’re still LARPing. It only seizes to be a LARP when the LARP is so genuine and authentic, that reality shudders to interfere with the performance. D’Annunzio and Mishima got pretty close to that but ultimately failed. Mussolini, Lenin, Hitler (I guess) succeeded. Once reality has submitted to the LARP it seizes to be a LARP, but this only happens on rare occasion and it requires people actually believing in your LARP. Having institutional power and authoritarian means at your disposal helps, but as you can see with the trannies, that only goes so far. You can’t make a LARP become reality by forcing it top-down. If people don’t really believe in it then it remains a LARP, albeit one that the masses are temporarily obligated to play along with.

“But if all radical politics is just a LARP why should anyone engage with radical politics.”

Right now, they probably shouldn’t. All they will find is grifters, the gay teenagers that they exploit and the rare Don Quixote true believer type who genuinely believes in the LARP, but who has long since abandoned any touch with reality or the self awareness that they are in fact LARPing. If they weren’t in denial of their status as LARPers they would probably be less insufferable than they are but instead they take themselves and their LARP extremely seriously and are angered when you don’t.

“Is it even possible to do radical politics without LARPing.”

Yes. By being a Futurist. The real kind, not an Arktos poof. Futurism represents the cold hard reality that the past is dead and gone, and it is incumbent upon us today to build a better future. Traditionalism on the other hand is based almost entirely on escapist fantasy. People who are obsessed with long dead historical movements from centuries ago will never really “get” Futurism. I can’t prevent these types from using labels they don’t understand online, but be wary of anyone calling for returns or revivals or restoring the greatness of _____ or anything along those lines. Futurism is about doing away with traditions (yes even radical ones) and being innovative and new. It’s about thinking outside of the box and for yourself. And not being an unimaginative, unoriginal biter.

The Last Futurist, basically the only other genuine Futurist blog on this app that I know about, wrote a good article covering similar idea’s a few months back, some of you might want to check it out. He’s a better writer than me. I mostly just talk shit.

Masturbation and Alternate History

Alright, rant over. On to Curseworship.

Curseworship - s/t (Crucial Blast Records)

This is a 3 song demo from Curseworship from Salt Lake City, Utah. This came out in 2014 and they released a second demo in 2016. They’ve been quiet since then so I assume they’re over now. This isn’t new exactly but it’s new to me so I’m writing about it now.

I picked this up in the same haul as the Chaos Echoes tape I reviewed a few months back. I was looking for sludge with synthy drone elements, and stumbled on this. At the time I was much more impressed by Chaos Echoes so I wrote about that one, and just kind of set this one aside at the time. I still think Chaos Echoes were the more interesting band, but this grew on me over the past few months.

This is 3 tracks long. The first two are slow and sludgy with faster Death Metal inspired parts and synth noise layered over top. Side B is a lengthy ambient noise track featuring guitar feedback, synth noise and screamed vocals.

For a 3 song demo, I’m not really expecting a masterpiece or anything. This shows promise and contains many elements that are of interest to me. It’s not that there’s anything really wrong with it or offensive to my sensibilities. I like it when I put it on, but it is also very reminiscent of many other bands that have combined similar elements in similar ways, and this band lacks a certain ingredient that would really make them stand out from the crowd. Not really sure what it is, but while decent, it does feel kind of flat. Worth checking out if you like this sort of thing. I for one am big on this sort of sound in general. Slow, lumbering sludge riffs and synth noise makes me happy, so pretty much anything that fits that description is worth checking out for me. If that sounds appealing to you this one might be to your liking. If it doesn’t it won’t.

If you’re not sure if you would like it or not, I wouldn’t really recommend starting here. Check out Ufomammut from Italy and keep digging from there. Not that Ufomammut invented this sound but they’re probably my favourite band that’s currently active that does it. Start there.

Anyways, I’m gonna sign out. In two weeks I’ll drop a mixtape featuring Faustian Pact, Curseworship and more! And since I hit 2000 subs that one’s gonna be free. And remember “it’s better to be a Party City Vampire than a political LARPer.” - Gio the Dark Lord of the TRVE Futurist Underground