02/09/09:

Wave Goodbye, the final goodbye of an Industrial Metal Zenith
Of Words and Music:


Lights flash upwards in a spiral of blinding white. As suddenly it begins, it ends. Smoke begins to pour from dry ice machines and the twilight sky of the day's end is blocked out in an artificial cloud of opaque white, the Roman coliseum surrounding me disappearing in a blank void of chocking smoke.

As the smoke begins to recede, just a little, notes of distorted guitar hit my ears in an ebbing flow of notes, and as the lights begin to warm up once more, a short an solitary figure looms out of the void's gloom. But this figure was not just anyone, it was a man who goes by the name of Trent Reznor, the powerhouse singer, music writer and lyricist of the Industrial Metal genre spearheads, Nine Inch Nails.

The opening notes of “Home” hit the crowd like a tidal wave, bodies pressing forward in a gentle sea to the centre-point of the attention all 16,000 pairs of eyes are keenly focused upon. Lyrics echoe hauntingly through the perfect acoustics of the ancient Roman coliseum (some 2,000 years old).
And somehow, it seemed poignant for this band, now in its 21st year of life to perform its final show on French soil here, where death had for a large part been a part of the entertainment, both metaphorically and literally since its original opening. For this, the band that brought the unlikely hybrid of metal and early electronic music into the mainstream where ready to stop touring.

As two more songs passed by, taken from “The Slip” the most recent album, released in a manner to meet the challenge of a contemporary music market, the energy of the arena suddenly exploded, as though it had always been seething under the surface as the ancient synths and drum-loops of “Sin” kicked in. Guitars screamed over an ocean of sweating bodies, screams and shocked-raw vocal cords.
But it was the band who where set on stealing the show, and as the thousands of fans that lay before them as every inch of Reznor seemed already to be drowning in sweat, with a heave of effort, he launched the synth he had only just finished using directly into the crowd, met by a cheer of anger that echoed and reverberated from the song’s angst-ridden energy.

However, it was not this which made the show what it was, it was the spell the singer seemed to cast over his audience as the band belted out song after songs of aggression. This culminated in the searing aggression of “March of the Pigs” and “Burn”, it was a sentiment I have only ever found within the world of RPing, a detachment from the self, almost meditative, as though we are in tune with another as much as ourselves. This much was evident from the aggressive and energetic reaction of the crowd who hung on every note. Not a single person could claim to have been cheated of their money that night, as the emotions of each song seemed to ripple across the faces of the mass of the writhing crowd like ripples on a sea-surface.

As the closing notes of “hurt” shuddered through the crowd, synths, drums, distorted heavy guitars swapped for simple acoustics, I saw a strange sight unfold before me. A man, next to me rather than in front of me, as I had the fortune to be at the front of the crowd, turned to a total stranger next to him and embraced him, and to my amazement, the stranger returned the embrace, his eyes seemingly in some place far distant.

It was this simple gesture of human solidarity that reminded me just what made this band, this man, the artist they were. The ability, in world dominated by soulless pop and rap, created solely for the purpose of generating revenue, to create an emotional link between artist and audience, in spite of hiding words that carried more darkness than a heart was ever truly meant to behind a wall of cold mechanical samples, and sneering guitars.
It was like a Mark Rothko painting, something seemingly normal, perhaps even simple, could hold the weight of a heart laid down by disillusionment in faith, abuse of drugs and nihilism of a cold world wrapped in plastic and sold to make a quick buck.


Perhaps, whatever our music tastes, we can all draw something from such artists. As writers, we strive, like the vocalist, to express something as deep and complex as human emotion through words, yet we have no voice with which to do so, just simple letters. Maybe, we need to embrace all sides of what it is that makes the humanity, namely the darkness that is just as if not more prevalent than the good of humanity. For it is only if we show both this yin and yang which composes us that we will ever be able to make a truly morally accurate character, for, un-like humans, characters are “allowed” absolute morals, and it is this, by default which renders them un-realistic.

All I will wrap up with is a simple term: Thanks you.

Thank you to Nine Inch Nails for giving me the inspiration to approach darkness within the world of RPing and compose characters which portray accurate humanity and avoid the easy way of lovely people with simple and predictable issues and personalities.
But more importantly, thanks to a band, now on the brink of its [Live] end, which has done so much to bring emotion to music which would otherwise sound mechanical and cold, and in an industry, more rotten to its core than any disease could ever make it, for having the balls to treat fans as people and abandon a record company which tries to exploit artist admirers.

Respect is such a rare word and virtue in the artist / industry side of the music world these days.


S.

A Long absence it has been indeed.

The life of higher education, life itself and unforeseeable circumstances have kept me back in the 20th century and away from the internet as of the last few months.

However, at last I'm back and very keen to begin RPing once more.

Expect a proper blog here very soon.