#but still i whittle and spin. and have been singing a lot.

[milkweedman]

Finally caved and ordered a spoon carving knife. Not really for spoons (altho i may make some)--want to carve some spinning bowls and you really need a round knife for that. Ive got a couple boughs ive found and dragged home that would make awesome bowls lol.

More than anything i cant wait for summer, when its warm enough to just sit outside and whittle things.

[dustedmagazine]

Vastum — Orificial Purge (20 Buck Spin)

Photo by Chris Johnston

Orificial Purge by Vastum

The Bay Area is replete with terrific heavy rock acts of pretty much every stripe, but Vastum is among the region’s most distinctive metal bands. Not so much for musical innovation: Vastum plays a deliberately old school style of death metal, dominated by Daniel Butler’s vocals (which sound like a monstrously scaled slug wedging itself through a narrow cave mouth), Leila Abdul-Rauf’s dizzying guitar solos (she sings, too, and her voice is almost as unpleasant as Butler’s) and Chad Gailey’s double-bass blast beats. It’s a well-executed sound, but what sets Vastum apart from other Frisco-area metal bands is a concentrated thematic interest. Since their 2011 LP Carnal Law, the band has written songs that explore the dark, perverse side of the erotic. Subsequent album titles have been illustrative: Patricidal Lust (2013), Hole Below (2015). Songs like “Reveries in Autophagia” and “His Sapphic Longing” indicate that Orificial Purge (yikes) continues that singular focus.

Given death metal’s casual romanticizing of violence and its frequently knuckle-dragging sexual politics (inasmuch as this could be thought a politics — and click at your own risk), that sounds like a worrisome mix of elements. But there’s nothing simple-minded or misogynist about Vastum’s music. These folks have read Bataille and Jean Laplanche closely and seriously, and the songs attempt to give form to the philosophers’ ideas about abjection and pleasure. Vastum’s songs are not for the faint of heart. “Reveries on Autophagia” includes these memorable lyrics: “Whittling down my flesh / To the most vile of excretions / Dining on my psychesoma / I serve up another limb / A small slice leftover / Defecated desire.” It’s a gross scenario, and for other death metal bands, the gross-out would be the endgame. But Vastum understands that perversions have a politics, and the autophagic provides an occasion for a meditation on the violence of autonomous executive function taken to extremes. One thinks of the rotund perversion currently occupying the Oval Office.  

In any case, a band that can come up with a pararhyme like “Offal offering” deserves a listen. The music may fall squarely in the U.S. tradition inaugurated by Suffocation, but it features a smartly articulated balance of muscular riffing and dexterous rhythms. The musicians know each other well: Butler and bass player Luca Indrio have been playing together since the inception of crust band Acephalix in 2008; Indrio and Gailey provide the bottom end for Necrot; and Gailey and Vastum’s second guitarist Shelby Lermo play in the live backing band for Palace of Worms. Members also play in other active Bay Area bands like Ulthar, Atrament and the excellent Hammers of Misfortune. They make a lot of music—a lot of it ugly—and the force and precision of compositions like “I on the Knife” testify to the band’s experience. Still, it’s the lyrics and the ideas that make Vastum such an interesting project. Come for the riffs, stick around for the rigor. And the rigor mortis.  

Jonathan Shaw