On Pain of... Pain

Three times did I try to post the video directly here but something went wrong, and finally resorted to embedding. Shut your mouth and don't tell me I'm an idiot;)

I had 90 listens of Pain on last.fm (yes, I know, the name is insanely dumb, still, there are two bands with this name, mine is the industrial metal one), before Ikew showed me the video (tnx). Mordred introduced me to their intriguing cover of The Beatles' Eleanor Rigby (tnx). Their album Nothing Remains the Same caught me at first listen, it is a combination of energetic beat and melodic darkness, with a tinge of humorous undertones.

Since this is a post on music, why don't I mention my latest music discoveries (better late than never) - Meshuggah (tnx last.fm) and Peter Hammill (tnx and turn on this plugin occasionally). A classic example of EICTE - Peter Hammill is a friend of David Wingrove, whose Chung Kuo series I'm reading right now. The fifth book - Beneath the Tree of Heaven, is dedicated to Peter Hammill, in admiration, and has the following motto:

"Senses dimmed in semi-sentience, only wheeling through this plane, only seeing fragmented images, prematurely curtailed by the brain, but breathing, living, knowing in some measure at least the soul which roots the matter of both beauty and the beast".

From Sleepwalker, Van Der Graaf Generator (fronted by Hammill)

After I read all the eight books from the Chung Kuo series (over 3500 pages), I might write a word or two:)

More EICTE: In Book Four of Chung Kuo I found this quote at the beginning of Chapter 12:

Who, if I cried, would hear me among the angelic orders?
And even if one of them suddenly pressed me against his heart,
I should fade in the strength of his stronger existence.
For Beauty's nothing but beginning of Terror
we're still just able to bear,
and why we adore it so is because it serenely disdains to destroy us.
Every angel is terrible. And so I repress myself,
and swallow the call-note of depth-dark sobbing.
Alas, who is there we can make use of? Not angels, not men;
and even the noticing beasts are aware
that we don't feel very securely at home
in this interpreted world.

Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies; First Elegy