#Chapter 6: Rock Jimmy and Monty

[panticwritten]

Breaking Furnace - Solitary Chapter 6

Chapter 6: Whose Side Are You On?

Table of contents!

All of my writing!

Sawyer struggles to cope with a strange voice in their head and Connor comes clean about a few things.

(I’ve had to change quite a bit of formatting to post this on tumblr. If you want to read this chapter with its original formatting, you can do so HERE.)

Remember that this is a daydream taking place in the Escape From Furnace universe, so keep that in mind if you haven’t read EFF.

Word count: 3503

Content warnings for this chapter:

Physical violence

Feel free to message me if I’m missing any.

The next chapter will be up on September 7th at 7pm PST.

~-○-~

Cross is far too fast for me. Even for him, this is more savage than I would expect from a spar. A practice match shouldn’t be life or death between the only people capable of running this place. Even with the voice giving warnings and innocent suggestions, I can’t get out of the defensive.

Lights pop in my vision when my head cracks against the tunnel’s wall. I struggle to breathe, but I still manage to duck to the side fast enough for Cross’s fist to knock a crater into the wall instead of my head.

Jesus Christ.

I don’t know how long we’ve been in here. Long enough that the static of the voice has restarted the pulsing headache behind my eyes. Long enough that, even with the nectar, my limbs have begun to grow heavy.

“There.”

I catch him square in the face this time, the crack of both his bones and mine too loud in the dark tunnel. He staggers back, hand over his nose while I shake my hand out. If he hasn’t retaliated yet, I assume we’re finished.

“Hm.”

That’s probably not a good sign.

I look up in time to see Cross hurtling toward me. In time to just barely lift a hand.

He stops stock still inches away with his head cocked.

The siren screeches in the distance.

He steps away. The motion tugs me forward as the blade still encasing my left hand slides out of his midsection. I glance at the spreading black stain on his shirt, but he doesn’t say a word before stalking down the hall.

I let the blade liquify and withdraw through my pores. He’ll heal. I catch up with him at a jog to find him growling at his com.

“How many?”

“Too many,” the tinny voice of a soldier reports. “I called reinforcements, but—”

“We’re closer, yes.” Cross increases his pace. “We’re on our way.”

“Which entrance?” I ask when we finally reach the lit halls of the compound. I trail a few steps behind him.

“The North Door.”

“Oh, dear.”

And the voice laughs! It laughs in a spine-chilling echo, too many layers of the sound. A rat attack could take down our numbers. If they get in and find our stores of nectar, we may have to return to rationing it for the first time since I’ve been back. I wouldn’t exactly call it a laughing matter.

It laughs again, and I have to grit my teeth to keep from responding.

“We both know // you don’t have // to talk.”

The static cutting its words into pieces makes the headache worse. I scratch at an itch on my arm to distract myself from it. I don’t want to talk to it. I just want it to leave.

So, I guess I can just—

Go away.

“Very well.”

A chill sweeps down my spine. A physical weight rises from my shoulders and I’m left cold and tired.

I glance at Cross ahead of me, but the purpose in his stride hasn’t faltered. If he noticed anything wrong, he certainly isn’t saying anything about it. That’s just as well. We have another fight ahead of us.

♥️♥️♥️C♥️♥️♥️

“Maybe this’ll actually be the last time,” Alex says.

Simon points the flashlight up the Steeple. It’s just a raised bit of the cliff wall, really, and we still don’t know if it would be possible to get to the surface that way. Even if we can’t, we need to check whether there are rats up there.

Tubes wrap around both Alex and Simon, MacGyvered climbing gear. I don’t know how well that would hold up in the real world. After eight times of pushing through it in this one, though, I’m confident it can get them up there.

“You really wanna jinx that?” Simon laughs and starts up the wall before either of them can stall further.

I watch until the flashlight tied to Simon’s uniform gives neither their distance nor their speed away. None of us left behind can see in the dark like Simon can. The first surgery the warden does on new specimens is to give them new eyes. The gift of night vision is little consolation for everything he takes away.

I know that I’m one of the few who enter Furnace still unafraid of the dark.

I raise a hand and four small orbs of light grow in my palm. They end up about the size of tangerines, light as a feather. I hand one each to Zee, Kevin, and Donovan.

“Oh, sweet.” Zee raises his up to inspect. I hope he doesn’t blind himself or something. “Thanks.”

I shrug and settle on the ground facing the drop off while they retreat closer to the tunnel with low murmurs. Our outcropping of rock is big enough to give us plenty of room to hang out in, but I need time. I need time to actually process. I don’t think any of it has really hit me yet.

Cross killed Monty and Jimmy right in front of me.

Sawyer’s on the wrong side.

Virtuoso cut me off.

Dominic’s dead.

I close my eyes against the immediate wrench in my gut. Now might not be the best time to think about that, actually.

Sawyer always used to say that these universes were fine because they aren’t real. This isn’t Sword Art Online, we all get to go home when we die. We’re stuck here until then, but it’s fine, right, because it’s all make believe?

I have a feeling they aren’t going to be saying that anymore. This is so different than any of the other games we’ve played. There’s nothing fun about it, and I have a feeling they knew that before we even came in here.

Maybe I do blame them, a little, for all of this. If Cross wasn’t here, wasn’t such an evil person, none of this would even be happening, though. They’ll have to make it up to everyone a million times over, anyway.

Then there’s me.

I convinced everyone to come. The suits likely would have decided to come eventually, but I got them contractually obliged to be here. I was lucky to have found Zee, Donovan, and Simon together, they practically convinced each other to come to make sure no one did anything stupid.

They did such a great job, right?

Nick agreed at first, then changed his mind because he was convinced that Sawyer hates him. I couldn’t exactly argue, because I didn’t know if they did back then. I had to swear to get everyone to stop giving him the cold shoulder upon our return if he came.

And Alex, well…

This is going to suck when I can’t avoid it anymore.

“She gave me the injection herself!”

I twist around to find Kevin standing stiff as a board. He glares at the other two, they watch him warily.

“Kevin—” Zee starts.

“I didn’t wanna believe it either!” he stomps a foot and gestures at nothing. “But Jess ain’t here. S’far as I’m concerned, she’s as bad as Cross.”

“They aren’t,” I blurt.

So much for not telling them.

“What do you mean?” Zee asks.

“Sawyer wanted to trick Cross, but it didn’t work.” I shrug and turn back to the empty air of the drop. “They didn’t want anyone to know.”

“That’s what they told you, yeah?”

I freeze. I don’t know if Donovan is actually implying the same as my hallucination of Jay, but damn.

“Not just them, but yeah,” I say eventually. “Not like it matters now what their intentions were.”

“‘Not just them?’” Zee cuts in. God damn it, why couldn’t he have climbed the damn cliff?

I roll my ball of light from one hand to another. How am I supposed to explain Virtuoso? Whatever the hell was going on with the In-Between? The third version of Sawyer hanging around?

After a tense silence, I pull my arm back and hurl my light into the darkness. It disappears too quickly. I wait, but I never hear it hit the ground. I’m not sure if it fell too far to hear or if it evaporated from existence when I set it loose.

“I have a source,” is what I end up with. Well, I had a source for about a day. “They told me it wasn’t supposed to happen.”

“This isn’t, like, a hallucination thing is it?” Zee asks.

I turn back and join them at the mouth of the tunnel. I don’t want to be that close to the ledge without being able to see.

“Nah. They’re real enough.” As real as the rest of us, at least. “It’s Cube stuff.”

At that, all three of them nod. They get it. Well, they don’t, but they get that they aren’t supposed to get it. The Cube is weird enough for those of us created there, so it’s a catch-all excuse.

“Alright, so—”

The four of us clustered around the tunnel flinch deeper in at Alex’s voice. Neither of him nor Simon actually look at us, but it only takes a glance to know what their news is.

“—the rats are definitely there.”

Alright. We’re going with plan B, then. Plan B that’s technically also just the next step in plan A. Which also sort of started as a plan B?

Plan A was the escape through the river, plan B the Steeple. That makes climbing the furnace plan C. I could probably get a good joke about the plan that actually gets us all out of here being plan D, but I should save it for later.

“I guess it’s the furnace, then,” Zee says, as good a way to snap me out of my head as any. “We shouldn’t have even bothered.”

He’s probably right. Now we just need to pick our bait for the rats.

“Paper, Scissors, Rock.”

Simon and Alex are already at it. I turn to Donovan, leaving Zee to shoot against Kevin. Donovan has a hand poised to play, but I can’t help a frown.

“I know I say this every time—”

“Here we go,” Simon snorts.

“—but ‘Paper, Scissors, Rock?’”

I give in to shoot against Donovan, who practically breaks my scissored fingers under his rock. I sulk over to Zee, who also lost his hand. Alex waits to the side to take on whoever loses this one.

Hey, Zee’s American.

“Please tell me you hate it, too,” I say when I lift my hand.

He shrugs.

“When in Rome.”

“This might not be the place to test that mindset out,” I point out. “When in Rome: become a literal monster.”

I lose, but then I beat Alex in the final Rock, Paper, Scissor’s game. He doesn’t look all that surprised, but then neither am I. He always loses this. There hasn’t been a single iteration of this universe that he hasn’t lured the rats down from their perch.

As always, better him than me.

~-○-~

Rats, too many of them for such a small group of soldiers, swarm the cavern beyond the North Door to the compound. We held fine against them for a while. Then another horde swept in from the tunnels, leaving us outnumbered.

Our own reinforcements haven’t arrived. I have only hazy memories of the last time I used a shotgun, but the concept is simple. Point and shoot.

I can’t bite back a shriek when teeth sink into my shoulder.

The rat tears at my back. It throws off my aim, sending shot to the roof of the cavern rather than into one of its brethren. I drop the gun in my haste to knock the rat off.

The rat falls limp, and I turn back to find Cross covered in black blood with the rat’s throat crushed in his hand. He throws it to the ground and points back into the compound.

“Return to your post.”

The idea of insisting to stay doesn’t occur to me until I’ve already passed the group of maybe twenty soldiers on my way into the compound. I hesitate, turn back, but Cross already has his hands full barking orders at the reinforcements. Making demands in the face of that, I’d end up carried out on a stretcher.

So, I swivel around and strike out into the compound. I can’t believe he’s banishing me back to the lab like I did something wrong.

“Focus on the inmates in solitary,” that voice reminds me under churning static. “Isn’t that // your post?”

I shake my head. That’s not how it works.

“It’s one of my jobs,” I mutter. “There’s no point in checking them so soon.”

It hums a laugh. “Are you sure?”

I stop at a junction in the hall. The path to my right is the fastest way to the lab. I have tests to do, find a way to lower our chances of getting rats in the conversion process. I have a job to do.

To the left, the solitary cells are just a few minutes walk from here. There’s no logical reason I should check them. What, a voice in my head told me to? That’ll go over real well if Cross catches me out of the lab.

“Scared?”

I turn left.

It’s just a detour. Whether it’s the voice planting doubts in me or something real, a poisonous unease infects my gut. I’ll prove there’s nothing to worry about, then I’ll return to the lab.

There’s nothing to worry about.

“If you really // think so.”

I walk a little faster.

“Are you real, or what?” I ask, hesitant. Is encouraging this really a good idea?

“Real enough,” it says briskly. “In this universe, at least.”

“That’s exactly what I’d expect a voice in my head to say.” I shake my head. “I assume you aren’t just going to fade away, though.”

“I’m not.”

It doesn’t defend itself or elaborate. In the relative silence, a soft buzz teases my ears. It’s coming from the same place as the voice, just behind me to the left. It’s looking more and more like I have to get used to a permanent headache.

I scratch my arm through my jacket as a distraction. I can’t quite get the itch to go away, and the pounding in my head hardly helps.

I finally round the corner to the corridor holding the solitary cells, and something feels wrong. I can’t put my finger on it, but—

“What do you remember from your time away?”

A spike of pain wedges itself in my frontal lobe. I hiss a breath, but I can’t stop moving. There’s something wrong about the cells.

“Why do you //  hate // Connor Sawyer?”

“It’s none of your business!” It comes out as a growl, and I finally have to stop with a hand against the wall to quell the red wall of anger threatening to blot out my vision. “I told you to go away, didn’t I?”

“You did.”

The buzz doesn’t go anywhere, though, nor the feeling of someone standing over my shoulder. I don’t even know what I’m mad at anymore. The voice? The inmates?

“Cross?”

I spin around, but the presence stays firmly attached to the space behind me. What can I do to it, if it isn’t even really here? I can tell it to leave, even if it won’t, or I can argue with it over and over until I get like this?

I’ll take the third and easiest option. Ignore it.

I take a breath. It’s a problem I can’t worry about right now.

I turn and walk the remaining few yards to the solitary cells. I know what was so wrong about it all. The levers are all the wrong way, all unlocked. I open one of them, though I don’t need to to guess what’s happened.

All three of the escaped inmates have disappeared on my watch.

[chevd-blog]

My Top 100 Favorite Albums of All Time (Part 6: 10 - 6)

10. Anno Domini High Definition – Riverside (2009)

              In 2010, as I was preparing to leave Emily Carr University with a degree in fine art, I was faced with questions about the direction I wanted my painting practice to take. What did I want my artwork to say? I began by reevaluating my niche as an artist, trying to take stock of whatever attributes I had which set me apart from my peers. The largest, as far as I was concerned, was my training in computer animation. All of my colleagues were traditional painters, and that was a skillset which I could see that I possessed and others didn't. With that in mind, I decided to focus my work thematically on technology; I wanted to be able to incorporate my training with 3D computer modeling software and Photoshop into my painting, and I also felt very strongly that technology would be one of the most vital themes that could be explored by a 21st Century artist.

              Around the same time, I discovered Lunatic Soul and Riverside. At first, I was just happy to have something new to listen to in the studio while I painted. But when I obtained their most recent album at the time, Anno Domini High Definition… it truly spoke to me. It was perfectly in line with the theme of my own artwork— an album which explores the effects our advancing tech is having on us. Is it really connecting us, or is it driving us apart? Is it really enlightening us, or is it turning us all into zombies with goldfish attention spans? It's all there in the title of the album, a phrase which alludes to the fact that we live in the age of wi-fi and high resolution, but also serves as a clever backronym for ADHD. This was the thesis statement for my artistic practice, in musical form.

              The album begins with "Hyperactive", which emerges from a simple piano melody, and picks up steam until transitioning into a heavy metal day-in-the-life chronicle of a person whose entire perception of reality has been altered by his electronic existence. It is also the shortest song on the album, with each of the four subsequent songs being progressively longer. Clocking in at nearly 9 minutes, third track "Egoist Hedonist" meanders through three movements, including a jazzy brass section interlude, while dealing topically with the crushing pressure of conformity to society's expectations. The beautiful slower-paced "Left Out" picks up where the preceding song leaves off, detailing the emotional consequences of being overlooked in such an oppressively homogenous society. But the album's full power is conserved until the final track, "Hybrid Times", an almost 12-minute epic that embodies the perils of 21st Century life in its most virulent form: technology addiction. It starts with a frantic piano, and gives rise to squealing organs and guitars and Mariusz Duda's screams about obsession, before sinking into a seductive sea of digital ambience. In summary, from an aesthetic perspective, this is one of the albums which I feel best encapsulates my relationship with the ever-advancing world around me.

Prime cuts: "Hybrid Times", "Egoist Hedonist", "Hyperactive"

9. In Absentia – Porcupine Tree (2002)

              With as much of Porcupine Tree and Steven Wilson's solo work as ended up on my list, I'm sure it's not going to come as a colossal surprise to anyone that In Absentia ranks this high. This is, after all, the most critically and commercially successful album in the band's two-decade discography, and the one that many fans will point to as their best. When you mention Porcupine Tree to someone, chances are, this is the album they're going to think about first. It's a fantastic album for initiating someone who hasn't heard of them. I should know. It was the first one I heard, too.

              I came across Porcupine Tree around 2006, while I was still at Ringling College in Florida. I had recently heard of this cool new website called Pandora Radio, which could recommend music based on a listener's selections. I decided to test it out by asking it to find me music in the same modern progressive rock vein as the Mars Volta. One of the songs that popped up was "Radioactive Toy", an early Porcupine Tree song that was featured on their 1992 debut album On the Sunday of Life. It wasn't as similar to the Mars Volta as I had expected, but it was interesting enough to me that I remembered it and moved on. Later, when I got around to doing more research into Porcupine Tree, and which album was best to properly introduce me to their sound, In Absentia was the one upon which everyone seemed to agree. So I tracked down "Blackest Eyes" and "Trains" on YouTube, and gave them a listen. Just from listening to those two songs, I was an instant convert. And it was a rather momentous timing as well, as I was reaching the end of my time in Florida, and preparing to start a new chapter of my life in Canada. Looking back on it, I now realize I've unconsciously drawn a pretty big line in my head: my last two years in Florida were my Mars Volta years, and my six in B.C. were my Porcupine Tree years. It's a funny thing, how the mind works sometimes.

              Musically, In Absentia is an infectious blend of the band's progressive roots with a distinctly post-90s alternative rock influence, as well as some heavy metal edge and a little extra ambience tossed in for good measure. Though not a concept album in the purest sense, many of the album's tracks, including "Blackest Eyes" and "Strip the Soul", are thematically linked to serial killers, and an exploration of the impetuses behind their twisted mental states. Like the other two albums directly before it, In Absentia also has one of Steven Wilson's trademark critiques of the music industry, this time in the form of "The Sound of Muzak", which laments the apathy with which the degradation of popular music is regarded. Wilson's vocals may perhaps not be the flashiest, but there's something in the conservative, simplistic nature of his singing that has always struck me as charming— particularly in songs like "Trains", where he layers the vocals to produce a wholesome choral effect. And while we're on the subject of "Trains"… yes, I know it's so cliché of me to say, given how it's the single most popular song in the band's repertoire, but it's damn near flawless. Listen to "Trains" and tell me you don't feel something special, I dare you. And the same challenge can also be extended to the devastating "Heart Attack in a Layby", or the melancholic "Prodigal", or the album's beautifully graceful piano finale, "Collapse the Light into Earth". There's just so much stellar musicianship here, that I have a difficult time fitting it all into a terse few paragraphs.

Prime cuts: "Trains", "The Sound of Muzak", "Strip the Soul"

 8. Ænima – Tool (1996)

              One of the most indispensable albums of my high school years, I received my copy of Ænima sometime around 2001 or 2002. Upon my first listen, it became an instant favorite, and cemented Tool as one of the most profoundly important bands I had ever heard. I can't overstate this. When I was 17, Tool was the axis around which all my other musical tastes rotated. They were the foundation of my love of progressive rock and metal. In an era when boy bands were only just beginning to peter out, Tool— and Ænima specifically— helped me keep my sanity, and showed me that musical appeal and intelligence were not mutually exclusive. That was incredibly important to me at that age, because I sure didn't see many other signs around me that my intellect was something of which I could be proud.

              Ænima is, in many ways, a transitional album— after the band's first full-length release, Undertow, they parted ways with their original bassist Paul D'Amour and replaced him with Justin Chancellor, which shifted their sound away from the blunt, primal heaviness of their early work, toward something much more nuanced and thought-provoking. Ænima was the sound of Tool evolving. The name itself is meant to be symbolic of change— a mixture of "anima" and "enema", representing the purging of the psyche. And of course, I would be remiss if I failed to mention one of the other major catalysts for this metamorphosis: the band's experiences with the now-legendary comedian Bill Hicks, who passed away in 1994 from pancreatic cancer, and to whom Ænima was meant as something of a posthumous tribute. Hicks was first and foremost an evangelist for free and critical thought, and while opening shows for Tool, his influence rubbed off on the band. It was Hicks' routine entitled 'Goodbye You Lizard Scum', a tongue-in-cheek rant about the destruction of Los Angeles as retribution for its vapid banality, that inspired the album's apocalyptic title track (albeit, spelled "Ænema" instead).

              While it may not quite be their most advanced work, Ænima is sonically one of their most interesting albums, and was the one that was responsible for laying much of the groundwork and setting many of the precedents for the path the band was to follow in their post-Undertow years. It is the album that introduced the band's use of experimental segue tracks to pad between the actual music and showcase their quirky sense of humor—here, there are several, including "Message to Harry Manback", a violent answering machine message from an irate Italian which the band reframed as a love poem; "Useful Idiot", which is comprised of the sound of a record skipping, and which was included in order to mess with listeners of the vinyl edition; "Intermission", which is a Monty Python-esque organ intro for the song "jimmy"; and "Die Eier Von Satan", an industrial-sounding German screed intended to fool the unsavvy listener into mistaking a cookie recipe for a Nazi rally. Thematically, the songs themselves are largely tied to the subject of personal evolution: "Stinkfist" vocalizes a disenchantment with desensitization, "Forty-Six & 2" explores the idea of growth through terms of Jungian psychology, and the album's 13-minute finale "Third Eye" begins with samples of Hicks's stand-up act and takes the listener on a journey of deep, psychedelic-fueled introspection. From start to finish, Ænima is about shedding one's old skin and attaining a new consciousness— it's what the band themselves did in the course of making the album, and musically, it's what I did in discovering it.

Prime cuts: "Pushit", "Stinkfist", "Third Eye"

 7. Kid A – Radiohead (2000)

              Let me set the scene for you: It's Spring Break 2007. The beginning of April in Florida, and I'm 21 years old. I'm staying in a hotel room in Orlando over the weekend, after driving up from my parents' house in Bradenton. My mission is to gain entrance to the Canada Pavilion at EPCOT, so I can do some artistic research on totem poles for my senior thesis presentation at Ringling. It's been a few months since my first trip to actually visit Vancouver, when things didn't go as well as I had hoped. On Saturday night, I am heartbroken, despondent, and completely at a loss for what to do next in my life. Sitting alone in the dark of my hotel room, I listen to "How to Disappear Completely", and totally collapse into despair. Kid A was an album that I discovered from my time spent in Canada, from friends who were fans of Radiohead. In that moment, though, the music perfectly mirrored my isolation and melancholia—I actually felt like disappearing completely.

              I know it's a strange incident to cite as a reason for liking this album, but it isn't just this one incident that has indelibly stamped Kid A into my consciousness. I have so many memories tied to that album: camping near Harrison Hot Springs, in the forests of British Columbia; late-night singalongs in the car with friends while driving somewhere; the ending of my time in Florida. Despite the fact that Kid A alienated a lot of Radiohead fans who were expecting something more along the lines of OK Computer, Part 2, it's actually my favorite Radiohead album specifically because it's such a hard-left turn away from everything the band had ever done up to that point (well, that, and the memories). There's an eerie feeling permeating the entire recording— steeped in paradox, simultaneously calm and frenetic. I once told my friend Laurie about the Orlando incident, and that I interpreted "How to Disappear Completely" as six minutes of sheer melancholy. She replied that the impression the song gave her was much more positive and uplifting. And here's the thing: after that conversation, both of us could understand the reasoning behind the other's perspective. The song is both of those things at the same time.

              The biggest change, of course, was Radiohead's risky decision to ditch their trademark 90's alt-rock sound for an avant-garde art rock blend with a sound palette of strange digital textures and electronic drum beats— "Everything in Its Right Place" and "Idioteque" being textbook cases. In other instances, like "The National Anthem", the band experiments with jazz instrumentation that, only three years earlier, would have been unthinkable on a Radiohead album. The only song on the album that even remotely resembles the old Radiohead's rock roots is "Optimistic", although even that song is much more ambient than their usual early fare. And through it all, Thom Yorke's distinct voice, despite being frequently unintelligible, lends the music another dimension of emotion with a collage of strangely oblique lyrics. It's an album that has served very well as an expression of my own adventures into the unknown.

Prime cuts: "Idioteque", "Everything in Its Right Place", "How to Disappear Completely"

6. The Fragile – Nine Inch Nails (1999)

              As a teenager, I was slow to develop an affinity for Nine Inch Nails (as well as associated act Marilyn Manson). It wasn't for lack of interest; I'd seen NIN and Marilyn Manson music videos, and I knew for sure that I was interested. It was mostly because I lived in the Bible Belt, and because I was also wary of what my parents' reaction might be if they knew I owned anything by them. Don't get me wrong—they weren't really religious themselves, and they were usually pretty laissez-faire about my musical tastes… but I can recall an occasion where my father once told me in no uncertain terms that he saw no artistic merit whatsoever in Marilyn Manson; it was one of the very few times growing up when I really felt like my parents and I clashed on the sort of music to which I could listen. But The Fragile changed that. In 2003, in the summer between my junior and senior years in high school, I spent a month at a pre-college program at Ringling, which was intended to give prospective students an idea what on-campus life would be like. During one of my periods of free time, I was browsing a nearby store which sold used vinyl records and CDs, and came across a copy of The Fragile. It was my chance! No parents to worry about for weeks, no conservative Georgia atmosphere to tell me no— I was totally in the clear to buy it and add it to my collection, and no one could do a goddamn thing about it. Over the next few weeks of the program, as I became familiar with the album, I finally had a chance to properly fall in love with NIN.

              So what do you do after you create a groundbreaking album like The Downward Spiral? How the fuck do you top it? That question has already been partially answered by my review of Kid A (another album that was created under similar circumstances). But in Trent Reznor's case, I suppose another part of the answer was quantity, because The Fragile is a double album, separated into a "Left" disc and a "Right" disc. That doesn't necessarily mean he sacrificed quality, though. I sort of feel conflicted saying this, because I know that Reznor was personally going through a particularly difficult and painful time in his life during the recording of this album… but it's my favorite NIN recording, specifically because it's so much more nuanced than anything else he'd done up to that point. I can't say it's heavier, because Broken takes that distinction; I can't say it's truly darker, because of The Downward Spiral. But The Fragile is very hard and very dark, in a less readily apparent way. It doesn't bludgeon you like its predecessor does. There are still furious outliers like "Somewhat Damaged" and "No, You Don't", but the rage of The Downward Spiral has been transmuted into resignation, self-loathing, and even some quieter moments of introspection here.

              One of the biggest differences between The Fragile and its forerunners is the increased presence of piano—not a synth, not a keyboard, not digital textures, but a real, honest-to-goodness traditional piano. It was something that really hadn't been seen very much from Reznor at the time. Aside from the raging intro (the aforementioned "Somewhat Damaged"), the Left disc is full of songs where the piano has a conspicuous presence: "The Frail", "The Wretched", "We're in This Together", "Just Like You Imagined" (also known as the instrumental from the trailers for 300), and the oddly gentle "La Mer". The end of the Left disc is capped by the eerily beautiful "The Great Below", which has, over the years, earned the dubious distinction of being one of my top picks for listening during my depressive bouts; it is about as close as I've ever truly been to staring into the abyss. On any other recording, I would consider it the climax of the whole work, but in this case, considering its subject matter, I wonder if it's not more fitting for me to call it the nadir instead. The Right disc, on the other hand, sees Reznor more in his usual element, with the hard-edged guitars, precision drums, and rasping, glitching electronics of songs like "Where Is Everybody?" and "Please". When it comes down to it, The Fragile's real strength lies in being the best demonstration of NIN's full musical range— and through it all, Reznor's mix of self-deprecation, cynicism and flirtations with nihilism hold the diverse assemblage of songs together as a binding element.

Prime cuts: "We're in This Together", "The Great Below", "Into the Void"

And at last, all that is left is the top 5! Check back here tomorrow for the final part of the list!

[thwompstompblog-blog]

Every movie I’ve ever seen, except probably not

I tried to list every movie I’ve ever seen, as well as order them from favorite to least favorite. I’ve definitely seen more and there are definitely errors, but whatever. Here’s the list:

Princess Bride

Amadeus

Little Miss Sunshine

ParaNorman

Hot Fuzz

Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure

The Silence of the Lambs

Coraline

Mad Max Fury Road

Aladdin

School of Rock

The Grand Budapest Hotel

The Elephant Man

Hunt For The Wilderpeople

Spirited Away

Se7en

Stand By Me

Ghostbusters

The Spongebob Squarepants Movie

Young Frankenstein

How to Train your Dragon 2

Tale of Princess Kaguya

Hairspray

Up

Jurassic Park

Scott Pilgrim vs The World*

Rocky Horror Picture Show

Jaws

The Incredibles

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Mrs. Doubtfire

The Lego Movie

Monsters Inc.

My Neighbor Totoro

Treasure Planet

No Country For Old Men

The Help

Sean Of The Dead

Step Brothers

The Princess And The Frog

The Producers

Room

The Hateful Eight

Insidious Chapter 2

Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

Hercules

Big Fish

Finding Nemo

The Goonies

Argo

Hunchback of Notre Dame

Rear Window

Inglorious Bastards

The Station Agent

Captain Phillips*

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

Tangled

The Conjuring

The Babadook*

Kung Fu Panda 2

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off*

Sister Act

Harry Potter & The Chamber of Secrets

Ratatouille

Scream

The Wizard of Oz*

Emperor’s New Groove

The Big Lebowski

Fantastic Mr. Fox

Oliver!

Enchanted

Kiki’s Delivery Service

Akeelah and the Bee

The Shawshank Redemption

Brave

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

Snowpiercer

Mulan

The Truman Show

Nightmare Before Christmas

Trainspotting

La La Land

Fight Club

Kubo & the Two Strings

101 Dalmations (Cartoon)

Bridesmaids

50/50

10 Cloverfield Lane

The Parent Trap

Donald Glover: Weirdo

Beauty and the Beast*

The Conjuring

The Sixth Sense

Big Trouble In Little China*

Nightcrawler

Captain America: Winter Soldier

Alice In Wonderland (Cartoon)

Misery

So I Married An Axe Murderer

Shallow Hal

Kill Bill

Uncle Buck

It’s A Wonderful Life

Fargo

The Fox and the Hound

The Theory of Everything

The Great Mouse Detective

How To Train Your Dragon

Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark*

Forrest Gump*

Wall-E*

An American Werewolf in London

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

The Social Network*

The Muppets

The Green Mile

Dallas Buyers Club*

Secretariot

Donnie Darko

Inside Out

Evil Dead 2*

Indisious

Lilo And Stitch

American Beauty

There Will Be Blood

The Lion King*

ET

The Other Guys

Paprika

Django Unchained*

Into the Woods

Tucker & Dale Vs. Evil

Super 8*

The Little Mermaid

The Shining

The Mask

The Martian

The Pixar Story

Life of Pi*

The Adams Family

Hocus Pocus

Dr. Strangelove

Moonrise Kingdom

Aristocats

Wet Hot American Summer

Zootopia

Guardians Of The Galaxy

Resivoir Dogs

To Kill A Mockingbird*

Lady & The Tramp

The Little Vampire

Road to El Dorado

Florence Foster Jenkins

Kingsmen: The Secret Service

Peter Pan (Cartoon)

Muppets Most Wanted

The Little Prince*

Megamind

Due Date

Back To The Future

Shutter Island

Bernie*

Camp Jesus

Army of Darkness

Love, Actually

Hook

Yellow Submarine*

Toy Story 2

Die Hard

Space Jam

Fantastic Beasts & Where to Find Them

Harmontown

Rocky*

Captain America Civil War

Tropic Thunder

Harry Potter & The Goblet of Fire

Bridge to Terabithia

Boxtrolls

Elf

Freaks

Rango

A Grand Night In

Saving Mr. Banks*

The Adams Family Values

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest

James & the Giant Peach

Pirates of the Caribbean, Curse of the Black Pearl

The Adventures of Tintin

Blues Brothers

Bambi*

Weiner

Journey to the West

Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs

Clerks

Kicking & Screaming

Edward Scissorhands*

Shrek

Fargo

Star Wars: A New Hope

Goosebumps

9*

The Thing

Pinocchio

Gravity

Juno

Corpse Bride

Hotel Transylvania

Talladega Nights

Cars

Spiderman 2

Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius

101 Dalmatians (Live Action)*

The Hunger Games

Hotel Transylvania 2

The Jungle Book (Cartoon)

The Simpson’s Movie

Poltergeist

Kung Fu Panda

Sponge Out of Water

Alien*

Muppet Treasure Island

Pocahontas

Rise of the Planet of the Apes*

Anchorman

Madagascar 3

Toy Story 3

Ant-Man

Face/Off

The Rescuers

The Spiderwick Chronicles

Shrek 2

Insidious Chapter 2

Smart House

Bend It Like Beckham

It

The Sound of Music

Toy Story

Harry Potter & The Prisoner of Azkaban*

Planet of the Apes*

The Avengers

Hotel Transylvania 2

Big Hero 6

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

Spiderman (2002)*

The Secret of Kells

Mary & Max

Airplane

Dumbo

Sherlock Holmes

Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows (1&2)

Jumanji

St. Vincent

Full Metal Jacket

The Big Short

Because of Winn Dixie

The Naked Gun

The Imitation Game*

Teacher’s Pet*

Pulp Fiction*

Secret of NIMH

Frankenweenie

Be King Remind*

Birdman: Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance

The Song of the Sea

Bolt*

I Love You, Man

Kung Fu Panda 3

Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*

The Omen

Madagascar

Sin City

Mary Poppins*

Tarzan

Elmo In Grouchland

Harry Potter & The Order of the Phoenix*

Madagascar 2: Escape to Africa

Anchorman 2

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Singing In The Rain*

Bee Movie

Charlie & The Chocolate Factory

Grown Ups

Chef*

Return to Neverland

Avatar

Toy Story

Labyrinth*

Wreck It Ralph

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

Blades of Glory

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Good Will Hunting*

Looney Toons Back In Action

Big Eyes

Trumbo

Halloweentown

Frozen

The Dark Knight

Mamma Mia

Jump In!

They Live

The Game Plan

O Brother, Where Art Thou?*

X Men Origins: Wolverine

Meet the Robinsons*

Monty Python Holy Grail*

Prisoners

Nightmare on Elm Street

The Visit

Transformers

Sweeny Todd

Start Trek: Into Darkness

Batman (1966)

Bedtime Stories

George of the Jungle

Get Hard

An Extremely Goofy Movie

Age of Ultron

The Terminator

The Brave Little Toaster*

Monsters University

Ica Age

Evil Dead

Batman Begins

Jurassic World

The Neverending Story

Chicken Little

A Town Called Panic

Trolls 2

The Good Dinosaur

The Dark Knight Rises

Barnyard

Idiocracy

A Monster In Paris

Finding Dory

Shrek Forever After

The Hundred Foot Journey

Brother Bear*

Speed Racer

Hoodwinked

Shark Tale

The Lost Boys*

The Revenant

A Bug’s Life*

Rogue One

The Girl On The Train

Freaky Friday

Cars 2

Shrek the Third

Heavyweights

Sharkboy & Lavagirl

Underdog

Wes Craven’s New Nightmare

Alice In Wonderland (Tim Burton)

Nestor the Donkey

The Lorax

Twilight

Kill Bill 2

Avatar: The Last Airbender