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Ramblings of an Incoherent Mind

November 24th 2012

Howdy, all.

I just thought I'd take a moment to semi-drunkenly ramble about censorship. You should probably do yourself a favor and stop reading right.... now. Actually, though I'll shortly touch on censorship, this has more to do with the way music is interpreted than censorship. It should probably be filed away under pop psychology.

Here in the USA, a lot of retailers sell censored versions of albums. Please note that this doesn't apply to me, as sensible retailers wouldn't touch my trash with a borrowed ten foot pole. Rest assured, I entertain no delusions of grandeur. What I do entertain, however, is a dull sense of outrage. Actually, "outrage" is much too strong of a word. Let's use "annoyance" instead. Anyway, the same retailers that insist on only selling censored albums (i.e. albums that don't contain any expletives) have no qualms about selling movies and video games with rampant violence, sex and "vulgarity".

Now let me stop for the fourth or fifth time here and clearly state that I'm a big fan of rampant violence, sex and vulgarity. That being said, I'm left wondering why music is treated with different standards than other, sometimes more interactive, media. And yes, I realize that this diatribe was probably much more topical in 1997, but here I am ranting and here you are reading (God knows why), so we'll rely on the old trope of "suspension of disbelief" here and I'll continue.

Growing up in the clutches of the "Satanic Panic" of the 1980's, I'm aware that music is how the Devil gets inside your head and corrupts you and makes you eat babies and paint your apartment with blood. Obviously, right? Beyond that, though, people seem to view music as being particularly autobiographical. Every song, as far as a lot of people are concerned, is at heart a page ripped from the singer's diary. It can be directly interpreted as "here's a bunch of garbage that happened to me and here's the overly dramatic way in which I internalized and am expressing it." In other words, it's pure horseshit.

I should take a moment to confess that I've never been possessed by the Algonquin spirit known as the Wendigo and subsequently murdered and devoured my traveling party. Back in 1693, I didn't actually lose my loved ones to the Kraken. Hell, as long as we're being totally honest, I've almost never taken a rifle from down off its shelf, as banal as that sounds. Who keeps their rifle on a shelf?

I've always been more interested in telling stories than dishing up personal history and how it made me feel. Everyone's gone through bad stuff. Who cares. Please note the distinct lack of a question mark in the last sentence. It's my clever way of indicating a rhetorical question wherein no one, in fact, cares. Is that to say that I write with insincerity? No, of course not. Just because I wrap concepts in narrative story format doesn't mean that I don't absolutely obsess over them. Of course I do. If I didn't, I guarantee that I'd be able to churn out albums with a higher frequency than once every three and a half years.

Well, this exercise in excess has obviously gotten out of hand, so I'm forcing myself to sign off. If you want to hear a yarn, I'm madly spinning one for "Trinity". I'm up to my elbows in the blood of its inhabitants. I've measured its cosmology and leer at its happenings with godlike malevolence. I plan on inverting its sickly universe in its entirety. Who would want to censor that?


Fog-mindedly,
Zeb

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Bornshorts Film Festival

September 13th 2012

Ahoy holy maggots!

I've just been informed that the video for " Psalm of Withering " has been accepted into this year's Bornshorts Film Festival The Backwater Gospel ", which has now received well over a million views online, as well as winning numerous awards at various international film festivals.

Your conscience,
Zebulon Whatley

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Free Streaming of Both Albums

June 12th 2012

Hey there, folks.

You can listen to "The Kingdom is on Fire" and "Psalms for the Spiritually Dead" in their entirety for free on SoundCloud. If you like them, consider buying them. You can deprive iTunes of your cash by buying them directly from me. I'll use your money to build my doomsday bunker in the middle of the woods.

The Kingdom is on Fire
Psalms for the Spiritually Dead

If you click the little right arrow to the right of each song, you can read the lyrics. Then again, you can just read them right here:

The Kingdom is on Fire
Psalms for the Spiritually Dead


Truthfully doomed,
Zebulon Whatley

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Just to Clear the Air

May 11th 2012

I've had a few questions over the years about the album "Long Walk with the Devil." Contrary to what some believe, I don't have anything to do with this release. It was put out by an unrelated band, called "The Sons of Perdition," back in February of 2008. For those of you keeping score at home, our first album was released the year before. And we don't have a "the" in our name.

The reason the vocals sound different on that album is because they aren't sung by me, but by the guy from the band Sponge. The music sounds different because it was written and performed by some other people. I wasn't involved at any level with the album.

I have nothing disparaging to say about the band. "Sons of Perdition" isn't a unique phrase (it's biblical in origin), so it isn't like they're stepping on my intellectual property or anything. It's just a bit confusing for folks.

So to clarify, I'll post a full discography soon. It will cover Sons of Perdition and random other garbage I've dug around in. You'll hate it. Warn your neighbors.


Yup,
Zeb

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