Why I Don’t Think Claiming “Malays are Pendatang Too” is a Good Argument

by Terence A Anthony

The Malay World | Source: UTM

Recently I had a conversation about affirmative action and quotas with a friend. Unfortunately because one of my blog posts about affirmative action and UiTM went viral a few years back, my circle of friends think I’m the go-to person for such conversations.

Pre-Ramble:

To give a bit of context to this conversation, there is a bit of twitter buzz going around about a man who was disappointed with quotas for bumiputeras in university and other higher learning institutions. I have my sympathies for the man, mainly because he had excellent results for SPM.

In response to his tweet, quite a number of people started claiming that his position has nothing to do with race. That whatever he faced was the luck of the draw. There were other Malay people who also brought up anecdotal stories on how they were declined placement in their preferred subjects or university.

In response to that response (yes, this is getting quite messy), many were arguing that the race based policies in this country are unfair. And they also argued that the Malays don’t deserve all these special preferences because they’re not really natives to Malaysia. In short, they were arguing the Malays are “pendatang” too.

Just to be clear, I understand the resentment of non-bumis who claim this. But the argument that “Malays are pendatang too” is problematic and could cause a lot more problems down the line.

Here are several reasons why:

The Other Pendatang: Colonizers

British Map of What Became Malaysia | Source: UTM

The borders of Malaysia are a social construct. Of course, just because I call it a construct does not mean the impact is any less real. Just like how race is a construct it does not mean the impact of race is any less real.

Prior to 1963, Malaysia didn’t exist and prior to 1957, Malaya wasn't a unified nation-state. These were inherited constructs from our colonizers. I would even further argue that while the idea of Malaysia had a utility for us, it was also the result of our colonizer’s intentions. Indonesia wasn’t an idea prior to the Dutch. The only reason why Indonesia exists today was because all the territories that’s under Indonesia today were Dutch colonies. Sure, there were polities that had some level of control over several islands, there was no political apparatus that glued them together as Indonesia.

Prior to all of this, the people of Sumatra, Java, and Sulawesi viewed Malaya and Borneo island as extensions of their world. They were not outsiders, but they were travelling from one patch of land to another, and they had no concept of borders as how British, Dutch, Portuguese colonizers did.

The ancestors of people who are considered Malays today, travelled back and forth these lands as part of the “Malay World”, another construct. But that construct held less of an importance in comparison to the inherited borders we have today. One example would be how Kedahan Malay is also spoken in pockets of communities in what are now Southern Myanmar, Sumatra in Indonesia, and parts of Southern Thailand. The same case when it comes to Kelantanese Malay being spoken in parts of Southern Thailand. As part of this unique history of the region, Malaysian and Thai citizens who were born in these neighboring states are allowed to travel back and forth without a passport. Presumably to reduce chances of possible border conflict, just like how not having a border between Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland reduced chances of conflict. 

The opposite is also true, with the Cham people who travelled back and forth between what is now Vietnam, Myanmar, and parts of Hainan island also ended up on the shores of Pengkalan Chepa in Kelantan. The Javanese, the Bugis also travelled to our borders, thinking that they’re just an extension of their world.

So are the Malays pendatang then if I acknowledge that they had a diverse range of input from the surrounding regions? No, they did not see borders. They faced no opposition from any governing authority. The nationalist rhetoric surrounding borders of today is a modern creation.

If we continue to label who is a pendatang or not a pendatang will only empower them. It will only make them figure out a more puritan version of who exactly is a Malay person.

There are a thousand and one ways to combat discrimination in this country. But using the same rhetoric is obscuring history. It also allows people who actually had roots in the country to ask back why non-bumis are worried about who’s the pendatang or not when the lines are blurred, especially when it comes to visible minorities, the line isn’t as blurred. It also allows them to argue why aren’t the rest of you “assimilating”. While the lines are blurred for the recent input from the rest of the Malay archipelago, it’s easy for them to at least argue that there is some level of cultural similarity that doesn’t exist between them. Instead of destroying the concept of pendatang, it only creates tiers of who exactly is pendatang. It is such a gambit that further puts non-bumis as even more of an outsider.

I’m sure there are many of you then ready to rebut this asking what about the Orang Asli? Aren’t there stories of the Termiar people calling Malays pendatang? Aren’t Malay people encroaching the lands of Orang Asli too? Yeah, that’s true. But it does not mean the Malays did not see these lands as an extension of the Malay world and the Malay identity. It is sad that many Malays moved into the interior and displaced the Orang Asli, but both communities did live off the land or the surrounding lands. This is a conflict that needs to be resolved but at the same time both the Malays and the Orang Asli (who at the same time are very diverse), lived off the land and for generations saw the land as part of their world.

To double down on this pendatang rhetoric obscures that we are the result of European colonization. It empowers the idea that nation states are the one and only construct to determine who should get welfare or special privileges.

The Source of Power

British Map of What Became Malaysia | Source: CBC.CA

The other main issue with determining who should and should not get special preferences through their “native” status is that it obscures the source of power.

Let’s say that the Malaysian Malay world has learned to determine who’s bloodline was here longer. Let’s say they’ve created some kind of racial sciences that would make Adolf Hitler blush, will it empower Malaysian students who would like to get into university without any form of discrimination? You would still have native Malays exploiting their status. Even worse, you would still have non-natives still having power over the poor students who couldn’t catch a break.

Why is that the case?

It’s because true power lies in economic attainment. UMNO and their ilk understand it. If Malay privileges were to be gone tomorrow, the compounding power from their capitalist prowess will still be their insurance. Within the Malay world, income inequality is still huge. These are the same people who won’t need affirmative action in the long run but they could afford tutors, exposure to careers or live in a world where their family’s business is second nature. We’ll fall for the fact that they were meritocratic. But in reality their parents had seriously invested in their lives to get ahead.

The non-bumis will then have less of an ammo against them because the Malay elite will be able to say they’ve not benefited from government assistance. 

The poor Malay in our world, have a very legitimate fear about being left behind. It is a bitter truth many non-bumis have to swallow. The urban rural divide is real. The Malay world is also very diverse. Culturally and economically. The socio-economic conditions of the Kelantanese Malay is very different from what Johoreans have to offer to the world. They’ve developed at different pace with different demands.

The culture of the intellectual elite of Malaysia unfortunately isn’t also Malay. I hate saying this, but there is a real reason why I’m writing this in English than Malay. The “intellectual class” aren’t very Malay. That is of course compounded by the fact that the Malay world does not have the economic prowess to shape it, and when they do the Western world is often seen as the outlet. Just look at how many on Malaysian Twitter associate the T20 Malay world with London. Middle class Malays either look at the land of our colonizers or if they take the spiritual path, the Middle East, the source of their religion and the second half of “proper” Malay identity. The perception of credibility isn’t internal but external.

Because of this insecurity, greater opposition to bumi privileges via challenging their native status would further push them into figuring out who to prove their “native-ness”. This will be a neverending exercise. The poor Malay will forever see the Malay elite as a beacon to create this new identity independent of the West. They want to be part of something that could pull them out of their economic woes. They see the Malay elite as the result of bumi privileges and think they could get there too. They technically could if they got in the right circles but it’s small. And on their path there, the very legitimate fear of being overtaken by rich or middle class non-bumi families is there. If they continue to see their bosses as non-bumi pendatangs forever, they will either demand the Malay elite to have greater control over the country’s businesses or see non-bumis as the source of their misery. The reality is that the rich non-bumis will forever cater to the Malay elite to gain favorable contracts or business leeway, over their own brethren. It’s patronage behind the gates, dog eat dog outside the gates.

So what’s the cure to this?

I know it’s easy for me to say this, but the easier way is to view things through the lens of class. The poor non-bumi should find a way to make poor Malay feel they have something in common with the discriminated non-bumi.

We cannot see bumiputera privileges just like how one sees white supremacy. The Malay world does not have a competing civilizational stake. They have a rich history of course, but it only empowers them in a small corner of the humanities. The poor Malay are after all a colonized people. They were once called the lazy native. A dangerous myth that even non-bumis piled on, making them fear the non-bumis further.

The better thing to do is to demand that non-bumis are treated fairer because of their economic positions. It is unfortunate that many non-bumis of this country are also hypercapitalistic thinking that they are in the tradition of the Robert Kuoks of this world. They view it as a way out and on their way out they step on the poor Malays thinking they’re leechers. This further empowers people like Mahathir by seeing that attitude as proof. And at the same time, feeds into affirmative action culture. The hypercapitalist T20 Malay elite are more than happy with this, securing their power sending their kids to the west as the rest of us beg for scraps.

If they were honest about using quotas as affirmative action, they’d invest more in the roots, the urban rural divide, making sure poor Malay kids also get the right standardized testing prep rather than hoping quotas will save the day.

Conclusion: Affirmative Action, Negative Approach

Here's a Graduating Cat To Defuse the Political Tension | Source: Dreamstime.com

Affirmative action is such a complicated topic in this country. I do think it’s useful. I am after all a benefactor of affirmative action. But at the same time opposition to it runs the risk of promoting hypercapitalist mentalities that don't improve the lives of anyone, pitting people in neverending competition. The idea that the Malays don’t deserve affirmative action because they’re pendatang obscures the complex realities of the Malay world, in favor of a simplified construct from our colonizers. It makes the Malay world more hostile, pushing the other “pendatang” out.

Also, has anyone pointed out that this conversation is so semenanjung centric? Am I a pendatang too then?

The Definition of Creativity (From A Man Who Struggles With It)

by Terence A Anthony

John Coltrane

Now and then I hear people describing creativity like the force from Star Wars; it’s for a select few, it’s a superpower, and it can’t be nurtured. But I digress. It is only seen as distant because it is often described as distant. Before I get bombarded, I would like to qualify all this by saying that I struggle coming up with ideas too. I do get creative blocks too. But I like to think that I understand that creativity is a process rather than just some innate talent. It can be nurtured and parts of the process are disciplines that can be taught.

I asked several friends recently how would they define creativity. Most of the responses I received were mainly "originality and it must be from the creator."

Let's break it down starting from originality. The problem with this description is that nothing is original. Everything builds off something. When cavemen conceived the idea of art they didn't come up with impressionist paintings on the walls of the Niah Caves. They started with the basics and all art after that are mangled versions of what the artist saw before. Sure, there are artists that came up with revolutionary techniques but they were never developed in isolation. The advancement of technology led to new colour palettes, of likes never seen before. Even if the artist were to create something that is such a departure from all conventions of art, they themselves need to learn how to draw or paint. Those skills were developed by someone else. Hence, no art is technically original.

Let's assume somehow originality really does mean something new. What about art forms that don't obscure the fact they're based on something else? Are the creators considered creative? Musical remixes take a finished product and present something new out of it. Is that not creative? Quentin Tarantino creates films that pay homage to older movie traditions like the Western, old school Kung Fu flicks, and even old racing films. Are his ways of creating these beautiful pastiches not creative? Are movie adaptations not creative? How about cultures with a consistent architecture aesthetic that emulates or remixes arches, roofs, motifs of buildings that came before them? Are these Balinese architects not creative? These art forms do not obscure the fact that they were derived from older art forms. Don't let me start on sample-based art forms like hip-hop, trip-hop, or even industrial. I would even argue the creation and the recontextualization of memes are creative endeavours.

The second description given by my friends was that art must be from the creator? Well, of course, every single invention or art form comes from a creator. But both descriptions of creativity have a common thread; it is to create something that the audience feels that there is a novelty to it. Or if it isn’t novel, it is something that is repurposed into a novel context.

So this leads back to the question; 

What is creativity?

Stephen King famously said if you managed to pay the bills with your writing, then you're "talented"

Creativity to me is the ability to imagine an idea, to plan out how to come close to the idea, and to execute the smaller tasks leading to the conception of the idea. Yes, that is right. Creativity is nothing more than planning and execution.

To demonstrate this, let's look at what scares creative wannabes the most: improvisation. To make things scarier, let’s deconstruct jazz improvisation. To the popular imagination, improvisation is creating things on the fly. It seems scary to people who don't know the art and they might be thinking that John Coltrane pulled music out of thin air. But every single jam session requires meticulous planning.

First of all, he and his band have to pick a base layer. This part is like building the foundations of a building. This is probably the key to his music. His improvisation worked around the chords. The scales and modal interchange he used were all preplanned. He then asked himself "where do I need to go from those specific notes?" The notes were not picked at random. Of course, there are accidental discoveries from time to time but they happened because it was meant to be explored within specific directions. The result is beautiful melodies created along an imagined path. They're not concrete but it's there.

The same when it comes to painting, just because ideas were "made on the fly" it does not mean Michelangelo wiggled a brush and out came Western civilization. One may start with a single tree with no idea where it's going but when adding things to the painting, one must imagine additions and how they fit.

Again, all of that is basically planning.

But Why Am I Not Creative?

Deafheaven. I don't actually have a reason to put them here except for the fact that I've been listening to their albums back to back recently. 

Again, let me restate, I am not as creative as I wish I am. That's probably because people like me (or you, if you’re reading this to grasp creativity) are bad planners or are impatient. Some of us want to reach our imagination so quickly that when it doesn't come out perfect we fall back and blame the lack of talent. The worst part of all, the arts tend to attract people who think that they’re talented, thus they should expect brilliance out of themselves. Many stop trying to figure out and breakdown the steps to the perfect art form in their head. We don't think about how to reach something. If you have an idea for a melody in your head and you can't seem to reach it with your guitar, figure out how to write that melody first. The people who know how to play music by ear are people who know what melody corresponds to what in their hands and frets. They've preplanned the steps. Now it's just a matter of assembling the parts like an IKEA cabinet.

But if you're stuck at the ideation phase, then consume more media. Again, nothing comes out of thin air. All the imaginative and creative people you've heard before are all people who are privileged enough to be exposed to all sorts of muses, lucky enough to have time to perfect their craft, and diligent enough to figure the context needed to assemble the art. The process of ideation is also an extension of planning. You plan out what you want to achieve and figure out what influences you want to pull from. Do it enough times, then you'll look like you were doing it on the fly too.

In short, to be creative, one must learn how to plan. If you’re a bad planner, then you probably going to be creatively bankrupt. Ever heard of the kind of people who say they have ideas but they need people to carry things out for them? While it’s true that you could delegate tasks to people, you still need to plan who does what. So if you have friends who think that they’re a person of “ideas” you need to grab their shoulders, shake them, and wake them up by asking them what’s the plan?

Dr Sim, Opposition To The Smoking Ban Makes Sense. Now Take The Next Step

by Terence A. Anthony

Source: Borneo Post | If we don't allow smokers in coffee shops where can we get our smoke ribs?!? 

I'm not a smoker. Ok, I do admit I'm a social smoker and I don't buy my own ciggs. Alright once every few months I'll buy a pack as my ultimate vice. French fries has more power over me.

But it does not mean that I agree in total with the Federal Government's plan to ban smoking in smoking eateries. In an ideal world, we wouldn't need cigarettes, sugar, or alcohol to calm ourselves.

In world of automatons and Sims, complying with the Federal Government, one Sim dared to defy them all; Dr Sim, the Minister of Local Authority & Housing for Sarawak. 

Despite him being a doctor, his opposition to the ban isn't based on some crackpot pseudoscience that smoking doesn't harm you. Instead it comes from a principle standpoint on autonomy.

Eateries are considered to be coffeeshops and they are governed under local ordinances. For the federal wide ban to be implemented, it needs to be adopted by Sarawak first.

To me, this argument makes sense as an exercise of autonomy. You can't have some federal government across the ocean determine the lives of small business owners that doesn't really impact people on a large scale. The issue isn't smoking but is to what extent can the government control our lives, especially one that is alienated one or two levels above us. It feels like an impersonal act that only exudes control rather one that is following what the people want. It disregards local nuances on how they approach various topics.

But before you say that I sound like a pro small business American Republican here, here me out. 

Autonomy-Schmotonomy

The irony here is that despite me agreeing with Dr Sim flexing his autonomy muscles, I can't help thinking of him being suspicious. I have no idea if the man really does believe in autonomy and with him being in the party that enabled one of the biggest kleptocracy in recent years, I am right to feel suspicious. 

When Dr Mahathir said that he was against the idea of local elections, at least it doesn't run as antithesis to his already authoritarian slant. But Dr Sim as the Minister of Local Government and Housing who keeps spouting autonomy he needs to assure as that he is keeping true to his word. Where was he when Mahathir was against local elections. If he cares so much about autonomy, why didn't he speak about direct democracy and let people choose their mayors. 

I've always found it weird that Kuching and Miri had DAP leaning voters yet their mayors are ideological opposites and servants to another party. Now of course these appointments are meant to be apolitical but you know where their allegiance lie. 

So my question to Dr Sim here as I agree with his Braveheart like opposition to the waves of Health Officers awaiting command from the Federal Government is; is your opposition an exercise of freedom or an exercise to be free from being dominated by a party you ran in opposition to? 

Where was this talk of autonomy when we had a kleptocrat in government? Do you dare to give up your power and let us have direct democracy, local elections, and let us run our city councils?

Are you doing this because of the person helming Putrajaya now is from a different party? And if they were to share the same values as you, would you still speak up for autonomy? Or are you going to be another Sim, living in your Sim-City controlled by a sadistic player who is happy to send in storms and kaijus to destroy everything after their tired of playing the game. (Yes. I'm abusing the Sim-City reference here.) 

Let's talk about it at a coffee shop about our autonomy here will you? Heck, we can even have a smoke, else your legacy will go up in smoke.

If Reading More Books Is Your New Year's Resolution, Ask Yourself Why?

by Terence A Anthony

What better way to start a post about reading for adults with a younger me reading a children's book

Wishing to read more books sits at the same cultural level as wishing to go to the gym. It's both about flexing muscles (the brain is a muscle), it ends up in everyone's New Year resolutions lists, and people most people give up halfway through (including me) as have to walk in shame for the remainder of the year. 

Like going to the gym, everything is done for a purpose. For some it's to lose weight, for others it's all about the lifestyle. But deep down I'm sure for many it's to show off. We're social creatures and we want to infiltrate groups we want to be a part of. When you said reading books, I'm sure it's so that you can be part of smarter conversations. If you can't reference them, it's as if there's a council that has predetermined that you should be shamed. It's books like Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari you're talking about. And honestly, I had to Google to get the spelling right. 

But here's the thing, if you feel intimidated reading heavy material and buying them off year end, new year or whatever excuse people use for discounts, then you are right to feel so. 

As an avid book reader myself, I consider it as an elitist act expecting social circles to catch up reading bestsellers all the time. 

Intimidation, Remix Culture & Gateway Material

If Umberto Eco is too intimating, read graphic guides with cute cartoons (well, nazis are never cute, but you get my point) 

Most of your friends who are reading those THICC books are probably lifelong readers. They read Peter and Jane when they were kids and devoured the neoliberal Bible, Harry Potter in their tweens. Soon as they finished, they picked up non-fiction books and stood at elevated platforms to look at you staring back up to them from beneath their shadows.

These are the same kids who churn out factoids and aced their exams. Now that you're older and feel like catching up to do, you're afraid of people mocking Peter and Jane, and too afraid of neoliberalism. So you want to jump straight into the heavyweights, and so you can quickly understand inside jokes about neoliberalism. 

But we live in the age of remix culture. Mashups aren't just a thing on YouTube and that cousin of yours on sound loud. We live in an age where the heavy books exist as source material and there are a thousand books out there that have distilled the core knowledge of prior. Get into How To books or Graphic Guides of specific topics. You don't have to read Leviathan and it's overly complex language to understand it. Read the supplementary texts first.

Don't be afraid to have things explained like you're five. (If you've read it you'll get it. :p) The smart kids had the privilege to have people explain things to them at a young age when they're stupid as a bag of bricks.

Besides, if the authors cared more about spreading knowledge in the first place, they wouldn't have written it with jargon. Not everyone is Carl Sagan so it's up to you to find your interest's equivalent of Carl Sagan.

But let me take this to the next level here:

Honestly, Reading Books Today is Overrated

Plomo o Plato? Whatever man, I don't even speak Greek

I'm not saying we should go out and burn books. No. I say there is a time and place to it. I'm not even saying the alternative is ebooks because of some green argument.

I'm saying that seeing book reading as the pinnacle of intellectualism is a farce.

Books are nothing more than just a medium to transmit information. Plato once argued that writing is bad because it harms memory. First of all the argument is stupid and fuck Plato. But secondly, Plato has a point about the transmission of knowledge, it’s in the mind and it's amorphous. He is wrong about the power of writing but he is correct about how knowledge exists independent of the medium. 

Again, in a world of remixes, there are countless mediums out there that transmit knowledge. For eons, making has used oral storytelling to pass down information. 

Today, we have podcasts, services like Audible (Please sponsor me, I'm broke after moving into a new apartment, k) and video essays on YouTube by idealistic idiots who believe in free education. (Can you believe that?) 

So much of writing is coded in classist language that has excluded knowledge from those who needed it most. Having someone explaining ideas to you without the cons of saliva flying into your face is an extension of an age-old tradition. Conversational tones can make things less intimidating and accessible. It's time for you to utilize it. 

So maybe rather than having just books in your resolution, make it a point to watch more video essays from Philosophy Tube, Contrapoints, oh god forbid, Nerdwriter.

Heck. I coach debates and I know college-aged students as lazy to read. I'm convinced a huge chunk of their knowledge came from me berating them and fact-checking them in adjudication feedback. I'm sure they went on to look up things in Wikipedia right after I explained ideas to them over dinner right after debate training. 

Memes, The Alt Right, and Hardcore Punk Lyricism

Richard Spencer or the guy from Deafheaven? Like idk man. 

Now politically, I am definitely far from the alt right. But I've always been jealous with how well people like Richard Spencer knows the nature of information. From how it flows to how it spreads. 

Spencer's thoughts on race and politics do nothing for me but his opinion on knowledge is interesting. He argued that we are entering an era of "post-literacy." The general masses get information outside of books and academia but absorb it from their surroundings.

This I suppose is why he quickly embraced Memes on 4chan and saw it as a political force. Outside of Spencer, but not in total opposition of the alt-right, Trump of all people understood the political power of Twitter. To many, to spend so much time on a platform where teenagers and young adults post death threats to their favorite outlet stores, is unpresidential. But Trump understood pop culture and knows how to use it to his advantage. His shirt, punchy tweets are a perfect vehicle of demagoguery and sloganeering. Even before the era of meme magick, punk bands used their sloganeering skills to promote their brand of left-wing ideas, anarchism, and anti-authoritarian thought. When I was 15, I didn't know who the hell was Bakunin or Kropotkin. But I knew who the line “No Gods, No Masters” because I saw the line on some smelly crust punk's vest. I knew nothing about the Vietnam war as a teen but I knew it sucked because of Napalm Death lyrics. 

Slowly, other parts of the meme economy are using this as a method to get information across. The content of books is turned inside out and turned into memes with its arguments turned into digestible jokes. Honestly, I've learned so much about political compasses and political philosophy through memes that it drove me to read more books as supplementary material to gain a deeper understanding of the jokes. And also so I can join in on the shitposting. 

Happy New Year, Happy New Outlook

Guys, I'm scared. Is this Deafheaven or Richard Spencer? 

All this can be misconstrued as anti-intellectualism. But it's not. It's intellectualism with a different skin.

Also this isn't a call to action to stop reading. Nor am I shaming those who chose to read. Instead, we need to reevaluate why do we put books on such a high pedestal. 

In this new year, I hope we stop seeing books as a marker of the educated when it could as well be a marker of social class. I hope we see shitposters in a different light and people who go on YouTube as the same kind of people who were browsing library books.

After all, if some racist bastard whose claim to fame is being punched in the face by an anarchist protestor, with a name that is shortened to Dick by Western civilization can understand this shift on how information is spread, then I'm sure you can.

Terence's Top 25 Albums for 2018 - Daughters, At The Gates, Sectioned and More

For 2018 I made it a point to explore music that I already wasn't well versed in. The upside would be a bigger, diverse pool, and rejuvenating my love for writing about music again. The soundscapes I explored were leaning towards sounds I would not imagine myself listen to when I was 15. I'll take that as a win for character change. Consider my mind slightly open now.

The downside is that this means I needed to explore older albums to have a better frame of reference. This meant I had to go through so much reading just to get to classics or what the interwebz call nowadays "patrician" records. This also meant I had a lot of catch up to do when it comes to contemporary versions of such music. This also includes being late on newer music too, especially from genres I already like. You'll notice that there's isn't enough death metal on this list despite it being one of my favorite genres when I was 15.

But anyway, here are the albums I enjoyed the most (that was released in 2018).

25. Chthonic - Battlefields of Asura

Name: Chthonic

Album Title: Battlefields of Asura

Genre(s): Symphonic Black Metal, Chinese Folk, Taiwanese Folk

First of all, I'll admit this is cheating. There are several albums that could've been in the 25th spot but I decided to go with Chthonic because of nostalgia and how much this Taiwanese band meant to me as a teenager. This is a logical continuation of their previous folk tinged symphonic black metal. I would've preferred a better mix for their bass, but I guess the rawer sound works for them too. It took me a few listens before I stopped asking about the low end.

Symphonic black metal seems to be a relic of the 2000s and this is sort of a throwback, but with East Asian folk elements instead.

24. Black Matter Device - Modern Frenetics

Name: Black Matter Device

Album Title: Modern Frenetics

Genre(s): Mathcore, Metallic Hardcore, Metalcore

This relatively unknown band jumped straight to my list after Trevor Barker of Void Dweller fame kept pushing it in everyone's faces and everybody's facebook group. I guess he makes a good promoter. This scratches the itch I had for the Dillinger Escape Plan since the band is dead now. It's less jazzy than DEP and you can hear the band's metalcore roots in their mathcore.

Fun fact: I didn't know they used a drum machine until frontman Michael Toney told me that in a conversation about writing drum parts with a drum machine.

23. Death Grips - Year of The Snitch

Name: Death Grips

Album Title: Year of The Snitch

Genre(s): Rap, Industrial, Experimental, Avant-Garde

This is probably the weirdest and most polarizing record they ever put out. If you can get past their kitschy, playful vibe, and their prog rock overtones, this is probably their catchiest album to that. From Black Paint, to Streaky to even the bordeline meme-y track Death Grips is Online, everything sounds like a bad accident with Fruity Loops on first listen, but upon further inspection, it's a well crafted album. It's meant to be weird, and I assume the band wants to perceived as another violent noisy rap group. 

22. Street Sects - The Kicking Mule

Name: Street Sects

Album Title: The Kicking Mule

Genre(s): Post-Punk, Industrial, Noise, Experimental

If their last album sounded like industrial's answer to mathcore and hardcore punk, this time around they went for the brooding route. This is Killing Joke meets Nine Inch Nails with modern noisy production. Their post-punk side is really showing in this one.

21. JPEGMAFIA - VETERAN

Name: Jpegmafia

Album Title: Veteran

Genre(s): Trap, Industrial, Hip-Hop, Rap, Experimental

Unfortunately for Death Grips, I believe in 20 years time when people think of experimental noisy rap music, more people will point to Jpegmafia aka Peggy. His work is inconsistent but this album sounds like a great gateway for listeners who started from Brockhampton or Injury Reserve and want to get into something harsher. Death Grips is way weirder and noisier but because of that, Peggy will be the first step. This album has some of the more creative trap beats I've heard in such a long time.

20. Khôrada - Salt

Name: Khôrada 

Album Title: Salt

Genre(s): Post-Metal. Atmospheric Sludge, Doom Metal

I miss Agalloch but this will do for now. Expect clean vocals rather than the Agallochian snarl. Maybe this is cheating too because I enjoyed this album, not independently but because it feels like a good follow up to something I've enjoyed in the past. I loved Agalloch's folky vibe but this one feels closer to ISIS or Cult of Luna but with Agalloch ringing in the back.

19. Ihsahn - Ámr

Name: Ihsahn 

Album Title: Ámr

Genre(s): Progressive Metal/Rock, Black Metal, Electronica

Ihsahn is a man of consistency. No matter what genre he tries to blend into his post-Emperor prog rock work, he still has a core sound. You know it's him. Arktis, the album prior to this felt like a Bond soundtrack written with a black metal soundtrack. This is sort of an extension of it but with greater emphasis on Ihashn's love for electronic music and synths. Ihsahn claimed that he was listening to R&B and trap music with deep 808s with Childish Gambino thrown in. On paper it sounds weird and odd, but when you hear it blended with his proggy, borderline black metal riffs it sort of makes sense.

18. møl - Jord

Name: møl 

Album Title: Jord

Genre(s): Blackgaze, Post-Rock, Black Metal, Post Black Metal

There is nothing unique or special about this brand of blackgaze. But some bands eschew originality for quality. Just because its novel doesn't mean it's good. møl does exactly that. It's riffier than Sunbather, but it's still at it's core, a blackgaze album first and foremost.

17. Deafheaven - Ordinary Corrupt Human Love

Name: Deafheaven 

Album Title: Ordinary Corrupt Human Love

Genre(s): Blackgaze, Post-Rock, Post-Black Metal, Alternative Rock

Deafheaven is the poster child for blackgaze, but this album isn't really gazey when you think of it. There is no messy wall of sound. Instead, this feels warm. It feels like Dave Grohl was there in the studio. Take away the gazey parts you've heard from older Deafheaven records but replace it with the brightness of a Britpop record and Dinosaur Jr's sense of melody. Too bad people will just dismiss it as another blackgaze record before giving it a try.

This is blackened alternative rock. Very different ingredients from the regular blackgaze fusion. Even to call it blackgaze sounds like a misnomer.

16. Bloody Tyrant - Hagakure (葉隱)

Name: Bloody Tyrant

Album Title: 葉隱

Genre(s): Atmospheric Black Metal, Post Rock, Chinese Folk, Taiwanese Folk

Remember when I said I miss Agalloch. Well, this is Taiwanese Agalloch with East Asian folk instruments. It's calming, I still imagine autumn and winter when I close my eyes listening to this but I see Buddhist temples in the forest instead of the Cascadian winter.

15. At the Gates - To Drink from the Night Itself

Name: At The Gates

Album Title: To Drink from the Night Itself

Genre(s): Melodic Death Metal

The Gothenburg masters are back and they're delivering their usual. But just like their previous reunion album, At War With Reality, ATG no longer adores speed and thrashy beats anymore. There are still some elements but most are mid-paced, almost sludge like qualities. I suppose they want to distant themselves from the fast-paced metalcore clones they helped accidentally created in the 2000s.

14. Nothing - Dance On The Blacktop

Name: Nothing

Album Title: Dance On The Blacktop

Genre(s): Shoegaze

Can I really call this shoegaze? Some people call it shoegaze. Whatever it is, it's calm, yet full with heavy, noisy distortion, with indie rock melancholy. It has the ingredients to create a shoegaze record, but to some, this sounds like shoegaze if that person found shoegaze elements through bands like Deftones or the dreamy tracks of The Smashing Pumpkins. Whatever you want to call it, I feel like in a dream listening to these tunes.

13. Svalbard - It's Hard To Have Hope

Name: Svalbard

Album Title: It's Hard To Have Hope

Genre(s): Post-Hardcore, Black Metal

I miss Oathbreaker and this band sounds like a more compact Oathbreaker during their blackened post-hardcore days. This is short, concise, and has post-hardcore in mind first before black metal. But the ferocity of their black metal influence in the back their mind keeps this blackened.

12. Sectioned - Annihilated

Name: Sectioned

Album Title: Annihilated

Genre(s): Metallic Hardcore, Mathcore

Another confession, this band's twin djentier brother Frontierer could've made it to the 25th spot. But after listening to a couple more times, it felt to samey. This album is more straightforward and memorable. It's more grounded in the trappings of metallic hardcore and basically feels like an extension of mid-era Converge. Dirty, catchy, and easy replay value when you already into metallic hardcore.

11. Daughters - You Won't Get What You Want

Name: Daughters

Album Title: You Won't Get What You Want

Genre(s): Noise Rock, Industrial, Spoken Word Poetry

This noise rock album sounds clunky and spooky. It sounds like the equivalent of having a mentally ill homeless man shaking a barbwire fence rambling away. Now imagine that homeless man as Danzig. The riffs sound so clunky and angular that they start sounding like someone dragging chains on asphalt. Yet you can hear riffier almost doomier moments showing their metal backgrounds.

If you aren't wild on the music, the poetry here, and I use the word poetry loosely here sounds like the ramblings of a man who would be too ashamed to go home for Christmas because he's losing everything.

10. Skeletonwitch - Devouring Radiant Light

Name: Skeletonwitch

Album Title: Devouring Radiant Light

Genre(s): Blackened Thrash Metal, Post Black Metal, Melodic Black Metal

This is no longer your beer gargling blackened thrashers that made soundtracks to your dungeon raids and table flipping sessions. This is way more introspective and has an emphasis on atmosphere. The thrashy riffs are still there, but they want you to earn it by walking through the thick folk of melodic black metal.

9. Idles - Joy as an Act of Resistance

Name: Idles

Album Title: Joy as an Act of Resistance

Genre(s): Post-Punk. Hardcore Punk

Take 80s post punk and sprinkle the attitude of American hardcore punk onto it. Now tell them Brexit just happened and see them loose their minds. That is exactly how this album sounds like.

8. Birds in Row - We Already Lost The World

Name: Birds in Row

Album Title: We Already Lost The World

Genre(s): Post-Hardcore

Torches, their previous output had a blackened tinge but this one leaned closer to 2000s post-hardcore, but kept the ferocity of their blackened past. You still have blasting and snares galore but expect more post-punk build ups with clean vocals.

7. Moodie Black - Lucas Acid

Name: Moodie Black
Album Title: Lucas Acid
Genre(s): Noise Rap, Industrial, Shoegaze

In case anyone asks again, Moodie Black has been around longer than Death Grips. But unfortunately, due to Death Grips being baby's first industrial rap group, the easiest way to describe this is to reference them. This is basically an introspective No Love Deep Web. Stripped down instrumentals and synth-heavy. But now imagine the wall of sound from shoegaze and dreamy melodies. Put that into a trap-ish, 808s heavy context then you get this band. If NLDW is angry towards the outside world, this is about getting angry about who you are and defending that identity from the outside world.

6. Great Grief - Love, Lust, and Greed

Name: Great Grief

Album Title: Love, Lust, and Greed

Genre(s): Post-Hardcore, Metallic Hardcore, Blackened Post-Hardcore

For most of the albums here, I've been listening to them for at least for a few weeks. But this new release from Great Grief? I only heard on boxing day. So it might just be the novelty, but at this point, it's so fucking good.

Take all the fast parts from your post-hardcore albums, use black metal like drumming and use structures akin to crusty black metal and you'll get this melancholic blackened post-hardcore. It gets you angry and sad at the same time.

5. Denzel Curry - TA13OO

Name: Denzel Curry

Album Title: TA13OO

Genre(s): Trap Rap, Hip-Hop, Experimental, Noise Rap

There are many other rap albums could've made this list but none of them are as diverse as Mr. Curry here. The album is divided into several parts. One part paying tribute to old-school rap with A Tribe Called Quest kind of vibe. While then another part flirts with modern emo rap. Then another jumps into industrial, noisy kind of beats but with a melodic touch. It sounds so Peggy that Jpegmafia and Zillakami jumped in for verses. This is like a snapshot of where rap is right now. Zel isn't afraid to blend the poppier side of things and the harsher side of the game.

4. Zeal & Ardor - Stranger Fruit

Name: Zeal & Ardor

Album Title: Stranger Fruit

Genre(s): Black Metal, Blues, Spirituals, Folk

If African American slaves rejected their slaver's religion and started worshiping the devil then you'll get this image. Take all the darker gospels from the plantation and interspersed it with black metal here and there, you'll get close to this. At its core, the band wants to play a darker take on blues and gospels where the black metal does not dominate the sound but only aids where it's going. Don't expect all second wave black metal from Norway, this sounds like an angry shriek from the plantations first.

3. The Black Queen - Infinite Games

Name: The Black Queen

Album Title: Infinite Games

Genre(s): Synthpop

If I were to evaluate this album independently, I would've scored this lower because the album can be inconsistent. It felt like two albums squashed into one. One part ambient and one part synthpop. But when I listened to it in context, it's actually one of the catchiest synthpop albums I've heard in such a long time. I could easily imagine Greg Puciato with an 80s hairdo, all on VHS. Spatial Boundaries got me dancing, making me feel like a heartbroken kid in a John Hughes movie. Thrown Into The Dark reminded me of karaoke sessions and stormy nights as curtains phase in and out of the balcony. I feel a longing for a past I didn't experience and looking forward to dancing away memories of previous heartbreaks. 

2. Sons of Kemet - Your Queen Is a Reptile

Name: Sons of Kemet

Album Title: Your Queen Is A Reptile

Genre(s): Jazz, Afrobeat


This is angry, protest jazz. It's meant for you to chant slogans to. You get into angry dance-offs with intense staring like spaghetti western, dialed to 11. I don't know much about jazz, but this sounds like jazz written for people with a background in angry aggressive music in mind.

1. Jesus Piece - Only Self

Name: Jesus Piece

Album Title: Only Self

Genre(s): Metallic Hardcore, Death Metal, Sludge Metal

Travel through time and meet a bunch of old school death metal fans with the intensity of angry neanderthals. Let them play their riffs but describe to them how does metallic hardcore sound like. With that limited knowledge of what hardcore from the future sounds like, tell them to assemble a hardcore song. You will get the most riff intense beatdown hardcore ever.

It's like if Jamey Jasta didn't spend time listening to Sepultura, but focused on Obituary.

But what I love most about this album is that this reminds of the conditions that lead to grindcore. Multiple extreme styles merging to create a new format. This is what Jesus Piece represents. The line between metal and hardcore is so blurry that it is the mess that this is now. But fortunately for the rest of us, it is the better side of both metal and hardcore that merged. We had a similar condition before too in the late 2000s and early 2010s. That time we had deathcore and created the most half-hearted breakdown focussed music ever.

This time we have Jesus Piece gluing the best parts and used intense sludge to give a demented version of a Hatebreed breakdown.

I can imagine Aaron Heard, the frontman of Jesus Piece walking into a room of musicians and stoically proclaim "All of you had your chance. This is how deathcore should've sounded like." And nonchalantly start the most brutal pit both the metal and hardcore scene has ever seen.

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Thank you for reading until the end of this list. This isn't actually reflective of what I listened to the most throughout the year, but an evaluation of new material I've heard throughout the year. 2018 has been an explorative year so maybe I'll create a list of new experiences I've had from old albums. (But honestly, it will include a lot of Miles Davis, Depeche Mode clones and older Death Grips records.)

Terence's Top 10 Albums: Dillinger Escape Plan, Death Grips, Napalm Death and More

Several friends of mine have been tagging me in posts asking for my Top 10. It took me a while to figure this out since I'm so indecisive. Even then this list feels incomplete. So came up with a list of criteria and see which albums fit the metrics. The albums must be:

1) Albums that I listened constantly when I first discovered them 

2) Albums that informed my taste in music and informed me culturally 

3) Albums that changed the way I view or appreciate music, especially the ones that expanded from what is possible of the genre 

4) Albums that I still go back to every few months 

5) Albums that still surprises me every time I listen to it 

6) Albums that I can sustain long conversations about

So now, in no particular order:

Name: The Dillinger Escape Plan

Album Title: Miss Machine

Genre(s): Mathcore, Hardcore, Jazz 

Year of Release: 2004

I first heard this album on a bus ride back from school. It felt so real because I felt like going through a religious experience while everyone else around me was oblivious to what’s going through my headphones.

Imagine a jazz band. Put in the ferociousness of a hardcore punk band, the madness and quirkiness of Mike Patton, and the forward thinking-ness of Nine Inch Nails’s approach to instrumentation, the proggy extreme metal tendencies of later-era Death and pop sensibilities. Blend all of that and you get Miss Machine. Even the cover screams jazz, which incidentally how I described the music (scream jazz) before I knew what “mathcore” was. 

Take the track Sunshine the Werewolf, the whole thing sounds like Dave Brubeck through a wood chipper. Unretrofied sounds like something you’ll get out of Trent Reznor if you only described jazz to him but never heard of it. I was also interested in poetry back then. So Greg Pucciato’s weird lyrics and word play informed my post-modern ish writing. “Does the cat has disease or does the disease has cat?” on Unretrofied is probably one of the funniest things I’ve read for such a long time yet it made me sit down and think about how I described things.

I knew jack shit about music theory, time signatures, anything related to jazz or people like Miles Davis back then. But this album made me add more colors to my pallette. It made me realize that metal, hardcore, and punk weren’t only about aggression but it can also be artful. The inverse was equally important.

Name: Death

Album Title: Symbolic

Genre(s): Death Metal, Progressive Rock, Experimental

Year of Release: 1995

It was either this or Sound of Perseverance or Human. But I had to go to this since it made me fall in love with progressive death metal.

Death basically created death metal but I think several records in they realized they can't do the same gore and violence schtick. There are two types of metalheads. The ones that are in it purely for the aggression or heaviness and there are the ones that see heaviness as a tool to push the boundaries of art or at least inform art. I think Death was tired of more people seeing their aggression as the end, not the means to an end.

Name: Death Grips

Album Title: Ex-Military

Genre(s): Hip-Hop, Noise Rap, Digital Hardcore, Experimental

Year of Release: 2011

I know I want Death Grips on this list but choosing which album was hard. It all boiled down to Money Store, No Love Deep Web, Steroids and this.

But if I had to say which impacted me the most it would Ex Military.

While I do listen to rap, I wouldn't have put it in the category of extreme music. This album (or mixtape) changed everything for me. It's an amazing blend of rap (especially boom hap), industrial, hardcore punk, noise, synth, computer virus whatever.

The track Guillotine is a slow spiral down to madness. It starts off with a haunting distorted bass bouncing back forth. MC Ride's demented vocals engulfed the track like a deranged poet struggling to breathe. The overwhelming static then devolves into a thousand synth charging at each other like the extreme pressure of the Mariana trench. Takyon sounds like if Public Enemy made a pact with the devil and it involved Ride and Lucifer sharing a pact of cocaine. The energy of the percussion sounds like an army banging on drums made from the bones of their fallen enemies.

If the images above aren't enough to describe the album then imagine the ferociousness of Public Enemy, the borderline nihilistic static and distortion treatment of Godflesh, the energy of old hardcore punk records, the abbrasiveness of Napalm Death, and think Slayer if they listened to rap.

It reminded me the time I first discovered extreme metal and started a new chapter on my discovery of extreme music. Today, experimental noise rap and industrial rap are a steady part of my musical diet. It's been awhile since I've stan-ed a band like Death Grips.

Death Grips went on to experiment with different sounds (some even super melodic) but still maintained this album's strangeness and weirdness.

Name: Chthonic

Album Title: Takasago Army

Genre(s): Black Metal, Folk

Year of Release: 2011

Black Metal today is mainly shaped by Western European and Scandinavian mythology. So while I do enjoy those bands there is a huge disconnect beyond the cool factor of Vikings and this boy from South East Asia.

Chthonic, despite being Taiwanese resonated a lot for me. They were the first few Asian metal bands to be successful without sacrificing their Asian-ness.

But what resonated me most is their lyrical content. Their exploration of indigenous issues in their music made me feel represented in a world where Dayak issues normally get sidelined. There so many cultural similarities between their Pagan culture and Dayak culture and as a young boy it made me want to read more about the pre Christian pagan traditions. Best part of all, it was wrapped up in the aggressive music I've been listening in my teenage years.

Sorry for being political on a music related post but arguments for native rights and representation in Malaysia has been co-opted and appropriated by UMNO, who are led by the faces of feudalism-light. So talking about native rights and representation unfortunately leads you to the same vocabulary of the establishment. The identity has been subsumed by a Nationalist agenda that forces to see all bumiputeras as the same despite the lopsided access to power structures.

Listening to Chthonic, despite them not from a Dayak background, at the very least let me felt represented, not have my identity erased.

While their album Seediq Bale was my first exposure to the band, I feel Takasago Army had a greater impact to the way think about music, poetry and history.

Takasago Army described the journey of a Taiwanese tribesman forced to join the Japanese Imperial Army and forced to take part in atrocities in Singapore/Malaysia. All he wants instead is to be free and return to Taiwan but he doubts if he can rid of the evil things he has done. The blend of aggressive music and melancholic chord progressions was the only way to portray this.

Name: Depeche Mode

Album Title: Violator

Genre(s): Synthpop, New Wave, Electronic

Year of Release: 1990

It was either this, something from New Order or The Cure. The problem from the other two was that their outputs can be quite inconsistent despite Bizzare Love Triangle being one of my most favorite track ever. This choice is also probably the most accessible material on this list.

This Depeche Mode album however, front to back is perfect. It's like the Sweetest Perfection. (Hehe)

I first heard these songs as remixes and covers. But delving into their discography made me appreciate how forward thinking this album was.

While people were complaining how synths were popular and it took away from the sounds of guitars, Depeche Mode just put the complains aside and wrote what was essentially post punk with synth pop/synthwave instruments. This is Vangelis if he were to write a pop record. What pop would sound like if it can from a dystopian negativity dominated, overpopulated future.

I got a new found appreciation listening to what in my head was soundtrack accompanying the more downbeat moments of cyberpunk movies and literature.

They managed to be dirty without being explicit. David Gahan even said they wanted to write the most metal sounding album without sounding metal. Maybe that's why the melody lines fit so well into so many Gothenburg melodic death metal bands like At the Gates or In Flames.

This was a gateway band to more synthpop and synthwave. If it wasn't for Depeche Mode, I wouldn't end up listening to Drab Majesty, Crystal Castles, Black Queen or Sally Dige. They aren't strictly synthpop but they share the same dark, electronic aesthetics.

Name: Converge

Album Title: Jane Doe

Genre(s): Hardcore, Metalcore, Experimental

Year of Release: 2001

There were 3 albums by Converge that were competing for the same spot: Jane Doe, Axe to Fall, All the Love We Left Behind. Fuck it, I’m going to put The Dusk in Us in contention too. But the latter has not been around long enough for me to consider it a personal classic.

But the main reason I put Jane Doe as my choice is basically my love for the tracks Concubine and Fault and Fracture. If Converge’s discography was taught as a class, Concubine is basically the class summary. It is the manifesto of sounds to come.

The few seconds with the dissonant higher strings acting like a warning alarm and it just explodes into a barrage of the most aggressive hardcore I’ve ever heard. It was like Slayer dragging my mind forward in time as they move down the fret and dragging my brain back to its original spot and beating it to submission. The high shrieks of Jacob Bannon sounds like black metal from a bankruptcy ridden dilapidated neighbourhood. Only instead of imitating a banshee from mythology of old days, he is imitating a battered domestic abuse victim fighting back while holding tears. He sounds like he got his revenge but the despicable acts he has done turned him into the creature lurking in back alleys. It then drags into halts and burst of what could easily come from an Eyehategod record. The sludgy hatred sounds like the equivalent of someone dragging a body that they’re convinced they killed out of self-defence but feel like no one would believe them. So they stop and start, doubting themselves as they wail.

It perfectly encapsulates what Converge is meant to sound. Surely enough their future eras were extrapolations of what Concubine was. There were parts that move up and down the fret board that treats your conscience like a physical object to be trampled that could fit All We Love Left Behind. Then there’s the sludgy monstrosity that appeared in The Dusk in Us’s Reptilian. Though their years of touring with Neurosis gave them a deeper more contemplative edge that sounds like post-metal for people with anxiety and isn’t sure they want to play in sludge band or a grindcore band.

If anyone tells you metallic hardcore can’t work, play this album.

Name: Vektor

Album Title: Outer Isolation

Genre(s): Technical Thrash Metal

Year of Release: 2011

I’m too young have ever experience anything from the big four of thrash metal first hand. When St Anger came out, I was too young to understand it or understood why it was so hated. So I never bothered with the checking out any of their tracks. All I remembered was this Christian kid in school who thought I was super Christian too showing me Creeping Death and saying how it’s about biblical Egypt. When Death Magnetic came out, I thought it was lame. I did finally gave thrash the chance later in life but a huge chunk of it sounded goofy and sounded so out of my time. Out of the four, I preferred Slayer and Anthrax the most. Slayer was my choice mainly because it felt like a step up in extreme music and Anthrax because I was into hardcore punk and shit.

Then few years ago, Vektor came into the page. Now this was years after I got into extreme music. I thought thrash metal had nothing to offer me at all. I was already listening to the most extreme iteration of black/war metal and blackened sludge to offer. I was already knee deep into the complexity and technical virtuoso of mathcore and Converge’s brand of oft kilter metallic hardcore.

Vektor felt like a thrash metal response to all that. It was like Slayer’s aggression merged with the madness of Converge and the creative arrangement of bands I normally associate with progressive or avant garde black metal.

If someone cut up Slayer and got Jackson Pollock to create a collage out of it, you’ll get Outer Isolation. The whole album wasn’t just a random assortment of ideas though. It felt like it was carefully constructed. So you know how post-modern paintings normally look like random brush strokes to the random eye? Well, this band could sound randomly chaotic at first listen. But there’s an underlying sense of art in it. The person who is just randomly dropping paint has a sense of what the colours represent and the direction is headed. 

The song Tetrastructural Minds best encapsulates this feeling. It’s beautifully chaotic but you can hear familiar structures, art directions yet presented in way you’re not used to. The intro alone sets a flurry of notes but it has a structure that could easily come off from a prog record but with an edge that could only come from the most evil parts of thrash, accompanied with a shriek that crosses between Tom Arraya and an alien banshee.

This is so familiar yet so alien.

Name: Run The Jewels

Album Title: Run The Jewels 2

Genre(s): Hip-Hop, Rap

Year of Release: 2014

I initially didn’t want to put that many rap groups/albums in this list because it isn’t really reflective of my past. I only got into rap at a later age. I hated the false representation of rap I heard on the radio. It sounded cheesy, poppy, and it didn’t resonate with me. Also, I thought Eminem was cheesy and too much of a try hard. So I never really had an Eminem phase like many of my age. I liked D12 but mainly it was out of irony from their track “My Band” and his songs like Cleaning Up My Closet. Little did I know that there was a lot more from what I’ve heard.

During my late teenage years, I accidentally rediscovered Outkast, who I thought were the few anomalies. And I got deeper onto rap and through their song The Whole World I discovered Killer Mike. His aggression and lyrical abilities destroyed my expectation of what rap should be. It wasn’t long I found out about Run The Jewels. As a kid I played old Playstation games at a cousin’s place and heard Rage Against The Machine’s Guerilla Radio on Tony Hawk Pro Skater…errr I can’t remember. What’s important was the aggression of Zach De La Rocha.

Now combine that with the East Coast, gritty industrial like production of El P, Killer Mike and Zach De La Rocha’s no nonsense political lectures were the audio equivalent of a protest. The dirty bass and Zach’s hypnotic chant promised me a crazy trip. Close Your Eyes and Count To Fuck was an anarcho-rap master piece. If I got into a fight, and I had to choose a song to hype me up, this would be it.

There was a time where I would be depressed and I just wanted to shake it off, I put this album, but mainly “Close Your Eyes” on repeat. Right after writing this I’m going for a run/long walk and I’m putting this song on repeat.

Name: Godflesh

Album Title: Streetcleaner

Genre(s): Industrial Metal, Sludge Metal

Year of Release: 1989

Clunky. Chunky. Dirty. Apocalyptic. Disturbing.

Godflesh, the grandfather of Industrial Metal embodies every single thing that genre tag brings to mind. The electronic drums being dragged over the sludgy riffs sounded like the warning someone plays in the background as a fascist marching band are fast approaching.

Like the sound of an overworked factory that doesn’t care about what OSHA has to say, the drums sound like pistons that are about to malfunction. It’s the nightmare that Marx warned us about as the workers are only kept working due to their minimal labour instead of being replaced by automation. As Justin Broadrick gnarls “YOU BREEEEED, LIKE RATSSS” I can imagine him as a half mechanical, factory manager that does not give a fuck about who you are as an individual but only you as a number.

The guitars are thick, sludgy and uncompromising. Despite the crazy chaotic nature of most of the music I listen to, Godflesh is the one that stands out. It is repetitive but not in an uncreative way. It’s meant to translate the horrors of an industrial age that sees you nothing as a figure in an excel sheet. You’re just a cog in the wheel. You’re nothing more than someone who keeps the system going. It’s the horror related atmosphere that can only be done with dirty, sludgy guitars, but with the blues of doom and Sabbath removed.

Name: Napalm Death

Album Title: The Code is Red...Long Live The Code

Genre(s): Grindcore, Hardcore Punk, Death Metal

Year of Release: 2005

Finally, the album that cemented the idea of extreme music to me. This might be an odd choice to fans of Napalm Death. There are more iconic albums like Scum, Enemies of The Music Business or even in their modern experimental era, Time Waits for No Slave or Smear Campaign are better choices.

It all boils down to two things. The first is that this is the first few albums I bought with my own money. I think it was my second or third. I remember the first being Sum 41’s Chuck. Yes, I was listening to pop punk. Even my poppier punk choices had metal elements in it. I wanted to listen to more punk and for some odd reason the idea of punks attracted me. But I wanted something more extreme. Something that’s more metal. I googled punk and metal, found grindcore and the first album by Napalm Death I saw at the record store for reason was this.

I was already downloading old records of Agnostic Front, Bad Brains, Dead Kennedys, Suicidal Tendencies and many more as I traced the roots of punk but none of them prepared me for this. The guttural voice just slammed me in the face but the simple punk arrangements just made me want to move slam my body against the wall. If Run the Jewels wanted me to start a riot. Napalm Death is the soundtrack to what’s happening in a riot and everybody tries to get out of the way when the water hose came in. You’re breathing heavily as everyone scrambles. The fear starts to kick in. You know someone’s getting injured. The snare drums going on a blast beat puts images of riot police thirsty for blood flashing before my eyes. Having Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys coming in with his sarcastic voice was like an icing on the cake. This was the bridge of metal and punk I’ve been waiting for.

The second reason was that this album got me on a grindcore binge. Whatever grindcore I listen to in the future, this was the benchmark. I was listening to Lock Up not long after purchasing this and I kept comparing it to this. When I started buying metal shirts, Napalm Death were my first few choices too. To be fair, I got a Dimmu Borgir shirt first. Then I got a bunch of Napalm Death shirts and patches. Even today, I still have their Nazi Punks Fuck Off shirt.

Bite sized aggression. The perfect bridge between metal and punk.

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Honourable mentions: Ulver, Outkast, Faith No More, Mike Patton, Anaal Nathrakh, Rage Against The Machine, Bad Brains, Alcest, Public Enemy, The Misfits, Cattle Decapitation, Gravediggaz, A Tribe Called Quest, Nine Inch Nails, JPEGMAFIA, Agalloch, Wu Tang Clan, Chelsea Wolfe, Eyehategod, Bob Dylan, Suicidal Tendencies, Patti Smith, Johnny Cash, Social Distortion, The Beatles, The Melvins, Crowbar, Slayer, Necrophagist, White Lung, Deftones, Smasing Pumpkins, and more.

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Well, thanks for reading this list. I don't think I will make a chartpost this week seeing how this took a huge chunk of my time that I normally review new music with. If you haven't please check out my chartpost to check out what I listened to recently.