Your whites shine, black velvet. I ain't seen you in a while.
You're slick, a slick and polished mess. I ain't see you in a while.
Let's just face the facts. And get back to the basic form.
^^
The lyrics above belong to a song that's like SEVEN minutes long.
I don't know if I'm going to be making a point here. I'm just once again revisiting an album that I enjoy and endear to my adolescence.
Norma Jean is now a very recognizable metal band. But from back when Christian metal was a thing, this album probably set an impossibly high bar. Everyone can limbo but nobody can jump higher. Except for The Chariot but that's a blog for another day.
A Solid State pandora's box of slam-dancing, incoherent and illiterate guitar screeches, cacophonous crashing drums, with a dash of "God" here, "Jesus" - there. "Christ" speckled over the oblivion of screams, absence of overdub, guitar-flavored distortion, and the lyrics of a poet.
Have I talked about the lyrics?
Do you get it now?
By way of disclaimer, this album was done back before Josh Scogin split to raise up the screaming adulation of METALCORE fans with his third labeled band, The Chariot; a comparison with who would not be fair. Neither do I believe it fair to make Cory Brandan's headship face:face with Scogin's brand of incoherence. All this to say, I have two favorite Norma Jean albums, and this is one of them. The other one (NJ's latest which I've already talked about here) is a standup album by its own right. It has its own merits and it would be obtuse to compare this album from 2002 with a different headman to their recent releases.
But back when, I was a child, see? And I spoke in hyperbole because metaphor was too similar. I said "This is the best Norma Jean album". And I was right, see? Because I had all the ideas figured out. Bless The Martyr... is the most crunchiest, distorted, absolutist, atonal, progressive,
--[Yes they are still a good band, and Disambiguation was the best they ever released]
--wasn't really RESONATING with my teenage tumult into romances and long nights wasting away with thoughts of holding hands and breathing shared air with a nameless ideal, I turned my face toward Norma Jean's Bless the Martyr and Kiss the Child.
Resonance? DISSONANCE.
Meter? AMBIMETER.
Singing? SCREAMING.
Pose? POISE.
Dishes? MUSIC
Catharsis? SURFING ON LAVA
Guitars? Experimental music? WHATEVER MAN IT'S JUST NOISE
I don't know what I'm saying. I'm just saying that the ~16 minute Pretty Soon, I Don't Know What, But Something is Going to Happen is 16 minutes long, man, and it's gonna blow your mind. It's so long, they actually have a longer official name for it which Wikipedia used to reference but no longer does. Why? Because everyone who edits Wikipedia was my age when they were my age, and now they are older and they don't have time to remember obscure 16 minute song titles from an obscure album from their obscure teenhood. I don't either. I'm too busy listening to math rock to listen to mathcore anymore.
Did I tell you about the lyrics?
Norma Jean, the fathers of anthemic illiterate breakdowns. Here's a line. Repeat it. Repeat it. Repeat it. Repeat it. Repeat it. Listen to the guitar do a thing. The drums are nuclear weapons exuding from the hamfisted percussionist. Just listen to it. Do you feel the ART?
NO! You feel DEATH. You feel like you're watching something dying. And it's not just dissonant. It's not just crashing noises and weeping and the gnashing of teeth. It's beautiful. Why? Because the music and unintelligible screaming require you read the lyrics and then you've realized: This is poetry. Poetry. Poetry read aloud in the middle of child-warfare battlefields and Orwellian martyrdom. "It's all worth while".
It was so worthwhile that I got my Zune 80 engraved with an abridged version of one of their lyrics on the back of it. I didn't need to exude creativity. My ears needed to absorb it. I owe all my teenage poetry to bands like Norma Jean and The Chariot and Converge and Botch. I was a sweaty mess. I was quitting basketball and picking up drums FOR REAL. 2006 was an interesting time for me. I now know that I'm mostly an uninteresting person (much less interesting now than I was back then and back then I was already boring) and that I can enjoy my music in my headspace and not have to share it with everyone. I don't have to say "This album is good and here's why" because now I've got nostalgia on my side and the only thing that defeats nostalgia is death. And when I'm dead, nobody has won the argument because, really, there wasn't an argument in the first place.
I digress. Why is this album one of my favorites ever? I blame my adolescence. I finally found some music that my entire family hated and that I loved. And they hated it for good reasons based on their decadent sensibilities, and I loved it because what produced such aural hatred in others produced sonic affection in me (the bitter taste of discordance has never gone away and I hope it is here to stay). I was on top of the world when nominal Christianity was starting to fade from my heart and meaning was found more than in the scribes of dictionaries.
Bless the Martyr is like a 180-proof shot of whiskey. It burns. It goes down hard. It lowers your blood temperature. You're not sure you could take another one. But the distilled product is the THING. It's so much the THING all other things are suddenly really small things.
I will leave you to ponder my motivation with the recommendations to listen to:
Memphis Will Be Laid To Waste
Sometimes It's Our Mistakes That Make For The Greatest Discoveries
Organized Beyond Recognition
Congratulations.
This is my escape.
A pen and a book
And if the world can see what I got
Then let's all have a good look.
A fortunate one.
Peace.
SDG
Nick
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