No Gods, No Masters after the Nuclear Winter: A Look at Amebix's early years and New York Death-Doom pioneers Winter's classic 'Into Darkness'
What’s up degenerates,
Today we’re going to be looking at the early years of British Crust Punk legends Amebix as well as the classic album “Into Darkness” by New York Death-Doom pioneers Winter, but before we get started, I have a few items/announcements on the agenda I want to get out of the way.
Firstly, I’m dropping the “Gio-Vibes” series idea. Honestly, I think the name is lame and that type of article/format is probably just going to become the norm here. I’ll occasionally write art/music history type articles like I used to, but those require more research and I don’t want to rush them. Generally the records I pick up are going to be the starting point for the things I write about on this blog.
Things have been going well for the blog lately. Really since I wrote the Future of Futurism article a couple months back, I got a huge boost and lot’s of new subscribers. Which is great. It took me the better part of 2 years to get to 200 subs and I’m just below 1800 now, so the blog kind of blew up over the past couple months. As a result I would say that what the blog is has evolved a little bit. A lot of the things I was complaining about in the Future of Futurism article are no longer relevant to me. I basically do have a new following now, and I don’t think they’re too interested in the “Arktos Futurists” or the dumb shit they get up to, so I’m not going to be reacting to those clowns anymore. At this point, they are pretty easy for me to ignore as there is very little actual overlap between what I do and what they do.
Anyways, since the blog has been doing well lately and I actually have a few paid subscribers now, I’m going to start offering additional perks for the paid subs. In addition to access to the back catalog (almost four years of writings on Futurism and related subjects) I will be doing personally curated mixtapes to accompany each article I write. A lot of the bands I mention in passing in my articles will be featured in those, rather than dropping like a dozen youtube links in each article so people can hear the bands I’m writing about. So the first one will be inspired by Amebix and Winter. The mixtape will be released two weeks after I publish the article, not at the same time. Just because I want to give the article a couple weeks at the top of the page.
This idea was inspired by the Canadian Metal Magazine BW&BK which back in the day (I don’t believe they are still in print) every issue would come with a free CD/Comp that featured the bands that were covered in that issue. It always made me hype when I saw a new issue out on the racks, and I always thought it was a cool gesture.
I also think that in this era of AI curated content, and passive media consumption, the art of the mixtape is falling by the wayside, and since I’m the #1 American Traditionalist on Substack I have a responsibility to keep the old ways alive. So yeah, in two weeks I’ll drop the first mixtape inspired by Amebix and Winter.
I picked up these comps of Amebix’s earlier material. They feature the 1979 demo, the Right to Rise demo, some live tracks, The No Sanctuary 12”, the Winter 7” and the Who’s the Enemy 7”. Basically everything they did before they released Arise on Alternative Tentacles records. These are not official releases. They are bootlegs released by Corteza Discos from Colombia. For bootlegs they sound pretty good, perhaps someday I’ll upgrade but till then I am happy with these bootlegs. I picked these up from Nuclear War Now!
Now I’m not going to write a complete history of Crust here. Felix von Havoc has a good article like that that I would recommend if you are new to this stuff. How I would describe the Amebix sound is OG Hippie Metal meets Peace Punk and they form a death rock band together. The songs are doomy and gloomy, bordering on Goth Rock, but Amebix weren’t faggy goth kids in fishnets and eyeliner. They were Crusty squatter punks. They were always puking from cider and glue. And if you fucked with them they would probably slice you in half with a sword before riding off into the sunset on their motorcycles.
Sidenote: After Amebix broke up in 1987, Rob Miller became a swordsmith. Heres a cool interview about it. And heres where you can see/purchase his work.
When people think about Metal/Punk crossover, they often overlook Crust and Amebix, but they were pretty important in bridging the gap between the two scenes. In all honesty a lot of people seem confused as to what Crust even is, with all kinds of street punk, grindcore or black metal bands being described as such. How I described Amebix up top, that’s basically what Crust is. It’s not super fast like Grindcore, tending to be mid paced or even slow. It’s basically the classic Metal of Motorhead or Sabbath filtered through the Anarcho-Punk of Crass, Rudimentary Peni, Zounds etc. While Amebix do cite Killing Joke as a major influence on their sound, the truth is a lot of Anarcho-Punk bands leaned more heavily towards Post-Punk than Hardcore, so that dark gothy vibe was already present in a lot of Anarcho-Punk. Crust basically just adds a trad metal element into the mix, arriving at a much more metallic and less punky end result. Musically it’s pretty close to Thrash, particularly the way Hellhammer/Celtic Frost approached the genre. Lyrics tend to focus on depictions of post-apocalyptic wastelands devastated by war ala Discharge.
For whatever reason, Crust never seemed to make it to Gen Z, with the kids who should have been Crusties opting to be genre confused, baffled Red and Anarchist Black Metalists instead. I would advise these kids to familiarize themselves with Crust, politically it’s more in keeping with what they are about and musically it’s not too dissimilar. Sadly, Crust proper seems to be extremely rare these days and it’s become a very neglected genre. I’m looking at the Rate Your Music chart for top Crust Albums of the past 10 years, and it takes 15 slots before something remotely Crust, by my definition comes up. Still, it’s influence has been vast and you hear echoes of it across the heavy/extreme music landscape. Anyways, onto the material on these two releases.
1979 Demo - This is Amebix in an early form. They haven’t really become what they are going to be yet. It’s worth listening to if you’re already an Amebix fan, but to be honest I would not recommend it as your introduction to the band, as their sound would evolve quite a bit by the Winter 7” and No Sanctuary 12”. Here they sound kind of like a sloppier, less well produced version of the Sex Pistols. Fairly standard British punk fare here. It’s cool hearing how Amebix started but honestly, I don’t see myself revisiting this side of the record too often. For the most part it really isn’t all that good. The standout track for me is University Challenged (which appeared on the Crass Records Bullshit Detector comp) mostly for the lyrics:
We are not fascists
We are not nihilists
We are anarchists
Hello, your black, your alright you are. I go to college, this is my friend John, say hello John, he's got an R.A.R. badge, we got them from that shop over there, we got digs so if you ever stuck for somewhere to sleep, you know if your being oppressed by the Police or the N.F. just come along, but you'd better leave early so the landlady doesn't see you
F*CK OFF!
I am Anti-Racist
I am Anti-Socialist
I am Anti-Communist
I am Anti-Sexist
I am Anti-Establishment
I am Anti-Government
I am Anti-Killing seals
I am Anti-Unions
I am Anti-Anarchist
I am Anti-Capitalist
Er, wot else am I anti John?
Nihilist
Yeah that's right I'm Anti-Nihilist
All our lovely Renault 4's
Stripey scarfs, college bores
I feel so sorry, for you, you can't get a job
It must be a hard life being a wog
WOOPS! Sorry, I'm not supposed to say that
The lyrics remind me of White Punks on Hope by Crass. People often neglect to remember this but Crass and the Anarcho-Punk scene at large were prone to punching left. For those who don’t get it, Amebix is poking fun at these types in this song. While being an objectively “left-leaning” movement the anarchism espoused by Crass was of a very individualistic nature, with the central message being “the only authority is yourself.” Anarcho-Punk is political music, but it never feels like propaganda music, or like they’re trying to sell you on some specific ideology or cause or way of life. They mostly just want you to think for yourself, make up your own mind about things and not be a sheep. In the 90’s things got more codified, with lines being drawn between what the correct opinions to have were and what the wrong ones were, and those who believed in the wrong things mostly got pushed out, so punk seized to be about individualism or thinking for yourself, but that was not the case then. I’m not going to go on a long rant about this just yet, but this will be relevant when I get into Rob Miller’s recent troubles in a little bit.
The standout of this release is definitely the Right to Rise demo on side B. The opening track Right to Ride is great, it sounds a lot like Motorhead, so Lemmy fan’s should definitely like this tune, and it’s about driving around on fast motorcycles. What’s not to like? Trve Futurist anthem tbpfh. But the real standout is Beyond the Sun. It’s such a powerful, beautiful and sad song, about a friend of theirs who died in a motorcycle crash. It opening sounds a lot like Planet Caravan by Sabbath ngl. This was the last demo they released before breaking up in 1987, so it’s a bittersweet glimpse into what would have been had they stayed together longer. They did end up getting back together in 2008 and released some new music, but for 20 years they were gone.
No Sanctuary 12” - Next up, the debut Amebix LP, No Sanctuary, originally released in 1983. Simply put, this one is a classic and is basically required listening for Punk and Metal fans alike. At this point Amebix has a fully formed sound, identity and even a slogan “No Gods, No Masters”. I’m not going to do a track by track run through really all the songs are good.
This batch of songs offer a bleak and dystopian view of the world. Central themes being abuse of power, tech as a tool for control, corruption and spiritual bankruptcy in the church, substance abuse and addiction. Not a whole lot of brightness is allowed to shine on this album. The general atmosphere of the album does bring to mind Black Metal, and I would consider this to be a key proto-black metal album. I’m not claiming it as first wave black metal, as the lyrical themes aren’t particularly relevant to Black Metal, but more so the general sound and atmosphere. Particularly early Bathory, I believe took a lot of influence from Amebix and Crust Punk. In addition to the punk and metal influences I’ve already highlighted, this album has a pummeling almost tribal feel to it that reminds me somewhat of early Swans or Killing Joke, and later on you hear in bands like Godflesh and Neurosis.
I do want to point out that typically when people think about Punk Metal crossover they immediately think of the fast stuff like D.R.I., Suicidal Tendencies or Grind like Napalm Death or they think about Metallic Hardcore or Metalcore, like Integrity, Ringworm, All Out War, Earth Crisis. I feel the Amebix approach to mixing these disparate elements is a lot more interesting and sadly less talked about and acknowledged than those other ones. I’m focusing on Amebix in this article, but their contemporaries like Deviated Instinct, Sacrilege, Antisect, Hellbastard and many others are also worth checking out.
Anyways, standout track on No Sanctuary is Sunshine Ward. An all time favorite.
Alright, the Winter 7”. The title track Winter is a fucking classic. It’s a pummeling, claustrophobic and intense jam, that brings to mind early Swans and Killing Joke. This song has always reminded me of Through Silver in Blood era Neurosis. The lyrics go so fucking hard too.
“The cold outside lays waste to life. Suspends the process of decay. Alone without a friend, suffer as night becomes the death of day. WINTER!!!”
Fuck yeah.
Winter is followed by Beginning of the End, covering similar territory. Post-Apocalyptic deathscapes
“The machine has grown to crush the world, the walls are getting higher. The youth will be the first to throw themselves upon the pyre. The reason for living seems so fruitless in the aftermath when we’ve finally walked to the end of the path.”
This sense of impending doom and fear of nuclear winter was fairly common place in the Anarcho-Peace Punk scene of the 70’s and 80’s, but this is quite a bit heavier than those bands ever got. It’s basically slowed down atmospheric thrash metal without any of the escapist fantasy that characterizes the metal genre. The horrors of everyday life have always gone much harder, and the pessimistic view of the future presented by Amebix on this 7” is very plausible and real, and it’s fucking terrifying. Much scarier than any dungeons and dragons nonsense.
Finally, the “Who’s the Enemy 7” released in 1982. This is when Amebix starts to sound like Amebix. This is Amebix in a much less Metal form, sounding a lot like Discharge. Not much to say really, these songs go hard. They only hint at what would be on No Sanctuary and the Winter 7, and those are the real standouts of this bootleg comp for me.
I guess I have to address the elephant in the room, I wanted to talk about the tunes before the drama surrounding them, and somehow I was oblivious about this at the time, but in 2019 Rob Miller got the big time cancelled when he thanked holocaust denier Gerard Menuhin, citing his work as a major influence on the lyrics of the then upcoming Tau Cross album, Messengers of Deception (supergroup that Miller had formed after Amebix disbanded for the second time.) People were pretty pissed off about this. Relapse dropped Tau Cross and discontinued all three albums that they had released by them. The Voivod dudes quit the band, and distanced themselves from Miller. All kind of articles and threads were written condemning Miller, and announcing that punks weren’t allowed to listen to Amebix anymore. Full 9 cancelled basically. Rob Miller issued this response.
So he doubled down, no apology for reading into this stuff, confirms to many that Miller is a nazi now. I wouldn’t draw those conclusions personally, but he’s been reading into this stuff a lot lately.
Honestly, anything as forbidden as holocaust revisionism, is automatically interesting, I don’t make the rules. I went down that rabbit hole myself, briefly like a decade ago. In the end I concluded that there was sufficient evidence for Hitler intending to cleanse Europe of it’s “undesirables” and I moved on, but let’s be real, the suppression of this kind of content is what gives it legitimacy to some. Maybe I’m just desensitized, as I have spent a lot of time around fringe politics weirdos on both the left and right over the years, but there are people who deny the Armenian Genocide, the Holodomar, Mao and Pol Pot have their fan bois and defenders online. None of them get thrown under the bus in the same way as Holocaust revisionists do. Why is that? I think we all know the reason why. Serbians (just kidding).
To be clear, I kind of don’t really give a shit about the holocaust either which way, and I don’t get why people obsess over it the way they do. There have been numerous genocides throughout human history. There’s nothing particularly special about that one. And I’m not much interested in hashing out what the most realistic body count would have been. Or which methods were employed (It was obviously masturbation machines). Most of this stuff makes for extremely boring reading and I wouldn’t recommend it for that reason alone. To quote Stalin (who I also don’t like) “the death of one man is a tragedy, the death of a million is a statistic.”
People should care more about genocides that are going down right now and less about what types of history books the Baron likes to read. Just my two cents. And no, I’m not going to pretend I don’t like Amebix anymore. While I’m not thrilled that his politics developed in this way later in life, it doesn’t really take anything away from Amebix for me. I kind of went through the Anarchist to Far Right pipeline myself, so it would be hypocritical for me to do so. I came out of it and am now basically apolitical, while I hope he does the same, we all have to make our own path in life. His music is great regardless and I hope he continues despite getting thrown under the bus.
“Winter - Into Darkness”
The Amebix portion of this article ended up being a lot lengthier than I thought it was going to be, I didn’t even get into when I saw them in 2008, some other time I guess. Anyways, I’ll try and be efficient with the Winter half.
Winter were a Death Metal band from New York, formed in 1988. They only ever released one full length, 1991’s “Into Darkness”. Though their body of work is limited and they are somewhat underappreciated and obscure this album had a huge influence on the then burgeoning 90’s Doom and Sludge Metal scenes, Fenriz from Darkthrone cites it as an influence, a lot of the NOLA Sludge bands praise it, I could see a lot of 90’s Metallic Hardcore bro’s, like fans of Merauder or Bloodlet digging it, and it really should be seen as a foundational classic of 90’s metal in general. I picked this up from Nuclear War Now! and this reissue was put out by Svart Records. I’m kind of just getting back into record collecting so I’m a little out of the loop. This was my first exposure to Svart Records. They did a great job with this re-issue. It looks and sounds great. The rest of their catalog seems cool too. They seem to specialize in Death, Doom and Crust, so if you like the bands I’m writing about here you should check them out.
How I would describe the Winter sound, is take the Amebix Winter 7” (where I assume the band took their name from) and Celtic Frost’s slower/doomier numbers and filter it through a rougher New York DM/HC exterior, think Carnivore, and you’ll be pretty close to Winter.
Now Winter weren’t the first death metal band to experiment with slower/doomier tempos. Autopsy from Oakland California had begun experimenting with doom on Mental Funeral also released in 1991. Disembowelment from Austrailia also had slower/doomier sound. They didn’t release a full length until 1993 but they had a couple demo’s out by 1991. This turn towards slower tempos in Death Metal, wasn’t really a “movement” given how spread out all these bands were, but quite a few bands started going in this direction in the early 90’s at around the same time, probably due to getting bored with trying to play faster than the next band. It would be easier to stand out from the crowd if you take the opposite extreme, and slow it the fuck down. In 1991 I was 5, so I don’t really know which release came out first or who “invented” it, in all honesty I don’t think it really matters as all the bands mentioned above had very different approaches to incorporating slower tempos with DM.
Autopsy started out as a straight ahead Death Metal band, and largely continued to be so lyrically and thematically. They just started slowing down more than a lot of their peers would at the time. Disembowelment were a lot weirder and more experimental in their approach. I think a lot of more standard issue, meat and potatoes Death Metal guys would just find them incomprehensible, but would find it a lot easier to get into Winter. There are also a lot of other 90’s Death-Doom bands like My Dying Bride, Paradise Lost, Nevermore etc. who lean much more towards Ethereal Wave and Goth Rock especially on later releases, incorporating a lot of strings, keys, female vocals, synths etc. Granted Winter use Synths, and they do spend more time setting the mood and building atmosphere than a normal Death Metal band would, but this is still clearly a Death Metal record. It also doesn’t evoke feelings of melancholy and sadness like those bands do, I would say Winter has more in common with Bolt Thrower, who also had a direct lineage with Crust Punk, in that while death is a central theme of the band, it doesn’t really get into the cartooney gore stuff, instead focusing on war. Like Amebix, this is about the horror of real life, it isn’t interested in fantasy.
One of the cool things about this Svart re-issue is it comes with a pretty hefty booklet containing artwork and old show flyers.
Winter would open for the big Death and Thrash Metal bands like Sepultura or Death when they came through town, but they did just as many gigs with punk bands. Especially Nausea and Born Against. It’s pretty cool that they were able to cross that divide and be authentic in both contexts.
And for 1991, this was pretty original and different from the typical fast crossover stuff, the trad doom of Trouble and Saint Vitus, and the more standard issue Death Metal of Morbid Angel, Deicide, Cannibal Corpse. Slow, heavy, stuff like this is fairly common place now, but not the case then, and Winter were pretty instrumental in establishing that whole style. Required listening as far as I’m concerned.
That about does it. In two weeks I’ll drop the mixtape. It’s gonna be good ‘un. Till then, peace.