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You Suffer

You Suffer

English philosophers, scholars, and musicians Napalm Death have continuously pushed forward the discourse surrounding the atrophy of the mind living in service of multinational corporations. Their debut album Scum harbors intense dissections of amoral corruption, guilt via complacency, mass media control, and the exchange and origin of power. I want to focus in on one song in particular though, the voluminous epic You Suffer.

Make sure you carve out a healthy amount of time for this one

Clocking in at 1.316 seconds, the song is pregnant with existential quandary. Let’s break the song apart into its different dimensions by starting with the lyrics:

You suffer, but why?

The first half of the song sets the stage and forcefully reminds the listener that they suffer. The key to interpreting this part is of course knowing of suffering. Napalm Death cleverly removes the glut of having to explain the concept by assuming the listener has indeed suffered and continues to suffer. This assumption condenses what would otherwise weigh down an already lengthy song into abstract layers that maximize the use of its time. The words have been carefully chosen to make their thesis clear. The listener is forced to either reject or accept the hypothesis that they suffer. If accepted then they will have fallen into the trap made clear in the second half of the song. If rejected then the listener has been at least forced to self-reflect on why they think they don’t suffer. The emphasis is because inevitably one comes to the conclusion that even if they are not currently in the throes of pain and hardship, they have known it in some form or the other. Again, because of the carefully chosen language, tense is irrelevant. In a general sense humans suffer, and being directly addressed by the song brings forth memories of personal suffering whether it be physical, mental, or existential.

The second half of the song presents the listener with the central dramatic question, “but why?“. The guerrilla transition from exposition to challenge only serves to increase the impact of the lyrics. The listener is indeed in the middle of recounting the times they have suffered, or accepting that they are currently suffering when they are sonically assaulted by the tour de force second half of the song. Napalm Death makes the listener reconcile their personal pain with causes of it. On the surface it’s a simple question but the effect is that it shifts the thoughts from external evaluation of the self into the inner evaluation of the self. The band knowingly posits the question that will lead the listener on a bread crumb trail to self realization. Whether the addressee wants to or not they will come out on the other side of this experience having gained knowledge of themselves positive or negative. Rather than providing an answer, the band provides fertile ground for self examination, especially via the instrumentation which I will cover next.

Through a clever grindcore vocal technique of combining words, Napalm Death manages to condense the exaggerated 5 syllables of the lyrics into a more respectable 4 syllables. In doing so they allow the rest of the band members ample time to explore the sonic dimensions of suffering. The drummer, bassist, and guitarist first choose to use their respective instruments to imbue the words of the vocalist with weight and gravity by timing their notes to the cadence of the lyrics. This extra punctuation disarms the listener having a counterintutive effect of narrowing their focus on the words by removing any nondiegetic noise. Finally near the end of the song as the final words have been spoken the guitarist performs a virtuoso solo that dovetails into a final sustained note. This note provides the listener with a sort of mutable vessel on which they can fill with the answer to the question asked by the song. This liminal space between the lyrics and the song’s conclusion is inhabited fully by the catharsis of the listener.

Like the philosophers of old Napalm Death have tricked their listeners into interrogating the nature of not only suffering but their own suffering. Furthermore by providing no answer but instead a space for a response they make sure the addressee takes ownership of it, there can be no deflection. So what is your answer? I think at the root of the matter there is but one: “because I choose to”. Yet reading or hearing these words is not enough for understanding, they must come from within, from your being. Then and only then will the journey to apotheosis start.

Why A Meshuggah pit is the most dangerous pit: as told by a survivor

Why A Meshuggah pit is the most dangerous pit: as told by a survivor

I know what you’re thinking: “NO fucking way Jairo, a Slayer pit is the most BRUTAL.” That wasn’t what you were thinking? okay uh… is it “Cannibal Corpse pit bro, I lost a hand in one.” Still not it? Okay you must be thinking “Metal?! PSH you’ll get fatal diseases from just standing near a punk pit

Alright man I’m not a damn mind reader what do you want from me? Oh right, this post.

I saw Meshuggah recently (hours ago actually at the time of this writing) and I know there’s this ongoing joke within the community “lol you can’t headbang or mosh to a Meshuggah song, it’s too weird”. There is a whole world of videos trying to mash Meshuggah’s songs to different dances. Just to give you a timely taste:

But it’s not true, these pits are so fucking dangerous. You have people trying to mosh without rhythm….like they’re trying to avoid giant sandworms. I had the “fortune” of having the pit open up right on top of me while at the concert. I got pushed to the back wall, and I didn’t want to move because I had a good view damnit. I’m used to standing next to pit, and just shoving along anyone who gets too close. But this time I was getting hurt all over the place and found myself flinching like a little mitch almost the entire show. Before I lose whatever small pittance of cred I’ve developed though let me explain the shit I was seeing. In a regular ass circle pit, all you have to worry about is moving in a circle, it can get varying degrees of rough but no one is gonna surprise with a punch to the gut or a foot in your ribs. but here..man…here I was seeing people get weird with it. Every time Fredrik and co. shifted grooves people reacted by violently launching their limbs in separate directions. It was like the band was playing QWOP and the dancers in the pit were the character on the screen:


like this but faster, and more violent

So  that in of itself is kind of a weird way to mosh but it’s definitely not the worst. You can safeguard yourself by keeping track of the shifting bodies, making sure you catch the moshers and send them along. But where this enters nightmare territory is with the strobe lights. Meshuggah have an AWESOME stage show, and it involves tons of lasers and lights. They particularly love to use the strobe. Have you ever danced in a strobe light? it’s like you’re seeing little freeze frames of people moving around. Now imagine those people are moshing, coming at you unpredictably  while you’re temporarily blinded. It’s like in call of duty where the military force throws a flash grenade, breaches a room and instead of shooting everyone in the head proceeds to mosh with the blinded enemy. Now imagine me getting blinded by the strobe lights while I try to daredevil the crap out of the darkened bodies and limbs rocketing around me. I got slammed into, stepped on, and hit so many times. I had to assume the emergency protection position: one hand firmly cupped over my genitals and the other arm raised against whatever may ram into me from the front.


Cup your hand and cover up. NWH say, grab. your. stuff.

The Coup De Grace to the whole thing is the bane of any indoor mosh pit: The spilt beer. Oh yeah, all these poor guys trying to get the other side of the pit only to have Meshuggah start the strobing, blinding death dance in the middle of their jouney means that the beer they so desperately were trying to save was spilled all over the floor of the pit. This only exacerbated the problem. All the dancers were now slip and sliding into my shins while I sat there trying to Mr. Magoo my way through the song.  At this point I probably should have just left the pit for safe zone but I was in too deep, I could show no signs of weakness! War is hell man, but damn…it was a good show.