Surviving But Not Thriving While Writing Abstractly About Weirdo Metal, September 2026 I think

Before I wax poetically – There's a new compilation out now, all proceeds go to World Central Kitchen and it is pretty awesome (Pyrrhon, Yhtill, Cave Sermon, Zeresh, etc). Check it out. My unending thanks to the good people at No Clean Singing and, well, Ian's Wolf's Week for shouting it out. This was supposed to be my "easy clicks" kind of post, envisioned in the twilight of 2019 as a counter to what I had conceived as being my obsession with bottom-heavy, abstract writing and way-too long interviews that no one would read because they're not podcasts. There are many desires in the human frame, some of them have to do with doing what's right in the right way but others have to do with validation and what the people call "eyeballs" or an audience. And so writing about the music I liked each week was to serve as a counter against my more base wishes to wallow in words and perchance disappear. It might be that it still is that, relatively speaking. You click, you CTRL-F for your…