The Books They Carry: Volume 1
Published: February 16, 2012
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akarim anniversaries artwork australia avant-garde metal black metal canada cboland cespanola clee crowella death metal dmoore doom features finland fpessaro france germany guests guitar hardcore punk industry interviews jblumensheid jmnorton jschafer kkettering live metallica: the first four albums mixtapes netherlands norway poland post-metal reviews rock rstreetjammer scasserole self-released sludge stoner sweden uk usa
- Mrachek on Album Stream: Sivyj Yar – ‘The dawns were drifting as before’
- Eugene on Album Stream: Sivyj Yar – ‘The dawns were drifting as before’
- The Path Less Traveled Records on Philip Anselmo to tour with…. Author & Punisher?
- Brad Sanders on Blind Guardian at 25
- Mike on Philip Anselmo to tour with…. Author & Punisher?
- Kvelertak Live In New York! | Planet 6 String on Photos: Kvelertak, Cancer Bats, Black Tusk
- Turnkey on Photos: Kvelertak, Cancer Bats, Black Tusk
- THE OCEAN: Special ‘Pelagial’ Clip Video Hosted By Invisible Oranges | Antimony 51 Heavy MetalAntimony 51 Heavy Metal on The Ocean release teaser video for ‘Pelagial’
- Fuck the Facts release new track, Greber release new video
21 May 2013 3:45 PM | No Comments - Album Stream: Sivyj Yar – ‘The dawns were drifting as before’
21 May 2013 3:12 PM | 2 Comments - Kayo Dot releases teaser, readies pre-order to finish new LP
21 May 2013 2:37 PM | No Comments - Stream: Deafheaven – “Sunbather”
21 May 2013 1:34 PM | No Comments - Philip Anselmo to tour with…. Author & Punisher?
21 May 2013 12:26 PM | 2 Comments
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I’ve been waiting for this for years, a metal site that can recommend good books to read, I’m really thankful.
Last book read – Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account
This is exactly what I need.
No Lovecraft yet ?
Great article! Thanks.
More about books would be nice, or comics!
Nice article. Waiting for Nietzsche’s Zaratustra to come up…
Impossibly cool post; I live for this stuff. Great stuff, Justin!
Whenever anyone asks me about my favorite books I usually hand them Dhalgren by Samuel R Delany or Little, Big by John Crowley. Both shifted my consciousness in very different ways.
Glad you like it Wash — there’s more to come.
Jaci is the reason this looks so good.
What are you currently reading, Justin?
At this moment…”The Blues: A Very Short Introduction,” by Elijah Wald.
I have “On Boxing,” by Joyce Carol Oates next in line.
I’m also crazy about the English noir writer Ray Banks.
Some serious breadth, nice!
I’m finally reading Dune after having it on my shelf for about 10 years. Also thumbing through a book of poetry my friend just got published, (I Was There For Your Somniloquy, by Kelli Anne Noftle) — it’s all strange and sexual, with an emphasis on aquatic sea life and sea slugs and weird amorphous creatures.
Aaaaand I’m reading How to Brew, the quintessential homebrew primer, in preparation for some upcoming brewing adventures. Life is good.
Is Rob Miller really a sword smith?
Yeah, he is, a pretty fantastic one too actually. This is his website:http://www.castlekeep.co.uk/
THIS IS FUCKING AWESOME! I have so much more respect for this guy now…I think I have a half boner going on.
To Shanetera and anyone else who might have missed it, I cannot recommend highly enough Justin’s 2011 interview with Rob Miller, in which they talk at great length about his sword-smithing.
http://www.invisibleoranges.com/2011/11/interview-amebix-rob-miller/
The epic quality of Amebix’s songs really come full circle with Rob’s sword-smithing work.
“they talk at great length about his sword-smithing” is a great exaggeration.
Sorry, my intention was not to mislead you. They talk at SOME length about his sword-smithing; I stand by my enthusiastic recommendation of the interview!
lol it’s all good. It’s just interesting to know he’s heavily involved to two totally different hobbies.
THANK YOU! This has certainly been one of my favorite articles of recent history. I really hope you continue it often enough. I know I’ll certainly pick up The Baron and Aesop’s recommendations.
As for myself, last book I finished was Philip K Dick’s “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” I enjoyed it, but I actually far prefer the plot in Blade Runner. Currently in the middle of reading Douglas Adams’ “The Ultimate Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy”, Philip Jose Farmer’s “Image of the Beast” (not for the weak of heart or prudish) and the full collection of Clive Barker’s “Books of Blood” (just finished Jacqueline Ess: Her Will and Testament).
My first job in LA was working for Clive Barker; Books of Blood is by far my favorite thing he’s ever done. In the Hills, The Cities is one of my favorite short stories ever.
I need to read that Philip Jose Farmer book! I’ve heard rumblings of its weirdness for years…
Holy shit, you worked for him? That’s pretty damn interesting.
@Wash – Wow! That’s amazing man, I’d love to hear stories about that. I was fortunate enough to see him (and get some books signed) at Dark Delicacies in Burbank a couple months back. He had something really funny to say about who I reminded him of (something I’m not going to repeat here). From Books of Blood I think my favorites so far have been Pig Blood Blues and Dread.
As for the Farmer book, yea it’s something else. He apparently wrote it for a porn company, but the sex scenes are rather subversive, so that helps it from just being erotica. After you read it, you might never want to have sex again.
Full disclosure was that I was an intern at his film production company, Seraphim Films, but I did some paid work along the way. The best part of the job was getting to drive him around, having long conversations about film, literature, and horror. He had some great Cronenberg stories.
Damn lucky dude. If we ever bump into each other out here I gotta hear all about it.
Going to Vector on Sunday?
Unfortunately probably not. Money’s tight so I can’t do much till that changes.
Holy crap. He’s one of my favorite authors, and the only modern “horror” author I’ve read regularly. (Although I think it’s probably more accurate to call his work “dark fantasy”.)
Hell yeah, so awesome to see MARKSON on this list. Batillus is fucking sweet, too.
Tove Jansson’s A Winter Book is great too, and just digging into The Summer Book. With Aesop’s recommendation as well, I must get on with the Moomins too.
The True Deceiver is my favorite Jansson novel. So dark and exquisite! Glad to see Tove has so many fans!
The latest, most “metal” book I’ve read is “The Worst Hard Time” by Timothy Egan. The Dust Bowl was probably the grimmest, darkest natural event EVER, and this book really demonstrates just how claustrophobic and bleak it truly was. Harsher than anything Shining or Xasthur could come up with.
When I think of a book that fits metal terms like Brutal…. Cormac McCarthy’s The Road comes to mind.
Yeah, that one just sucks the life out of you. The few other books of his that I’ve read have a similar gothic level of darkness, but that one was the most bleak. Blood Meridian is all misery and massacres with a dusty western setting. It’s pretty goddamn evil. Child of God is even darker, though I didn’t enjoy it as much… basically just the exploits of some back-country murdering/raping scumfuck doing what he does in the creepiest way possible.
In a sort of similar way, I’d mention Albert Camus’ “The Plague”. It’s a bit drawn out and not end of the world like, but it’s certainly prime material for a Doom Metal band. The notion of being quartered in a plague ridden city. The child dying in the hospital and the priest’s reaction I’d say is the brutal highlight.
The Road….oh how I love that book.
Two thumbs up to this feature.
I’d heartily recommend ‘The Illuminatus Trilogy’ by Robert Anton Wilson (RIP) and Robert Shea (RIP), particularly to anyone involved with or part of counterculture or non-mainstream culture. Actually fuck it, I’d recommend it to anyone, but ‘normals’ probably wouldn’t be very receptive to it. As RAW himself said, it is meant to help change your perceptions.
FNORD
I think I’m going to have to check out Wittgenstein’s Mistress. This is a really cool article.
do it! he just died like 1.5 years ago, WM and a later book This Is Not A Novel totally blew my mind.
Great post! Iove a peoples history will have to check out these others. Man have you guys ever read swan song by Robert mcammon? It’s about the aftermath of the us getting hit by a nuke, one of the most metal books ever.
Great feature! Bring on the recommendations.
Incredible feature! I love this stuff. Read these:
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. A mind-blowing read.
The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival. An amazing tale of a man-eating tiger in Russia’s Far East.
Thank you for doing this.
This is really good, Justin. A great idea, and Jaci also did great job with it.
I’d love to know what Mark Shelton, Ihsahn, Tomas Lindberg, and Byron Roberts (Bal-Sagoth) have on their shelves.
Great article. I’m a little curious that there was no mention of Tolkien or Lovecraft throughout the whole thing (you’d think that would fit nicely in the intro) but perhaps that’s for another installment.
I have precious little time to read anymore. The last book I finished was Choosing Death, and before that I read Machine of Death (which is completely different, and only a coincidence they have the word “death” in both titles). I also read A Regular by Andrew Bonazelli, but wasn’t really impressed. Currently, I’m in the middle of Dispatches from Wondermark Manor, a series of Victorian parody novels by the steampunk- and beard-obsessed David Malki ! (Yes, he writes his name David Malki !, as odd as that may seem.) Dispatches is surprisingly brutal, given the protagonist’s profound disregard and lack of respect for the lower classes, and total self-absorption, leading him to casually murder people left and right. It’s also quite funny, although for a lot of the humor I think you would have to be familiar with some of the quirks of 19th Century writing (I’ve read a lot of Poe and Moby Dick in the last year).
Awesome! More of this please!
Agreed about Tolkien and Lovecraft, but even mentioning them is nearly redundant. I went back and looked and was mildly surprised there were no Tolkien named bands on the homepage of invisible oranges.
It’s certainly a nice perspective on Burzum. (Oh man, that guy’s a horrible fascist nazi and he goes by the elemental name of the nemesis of Frodo the hobbit!)
Lovecraft, I mean where would Metallica, High on Fire, Morbid Angel and practically every occult-y black-y metal band ever be without drawing from Lovecraft for lyrics. Whatever anyone thinks about Mastodon, I can definitely say they are the only metal band that ever inspired me to read Moby Dick, which is actually metal as fuck if you focus particularly on Ahab.
I’d like some historical perspective on the Tolkien and Lovecraft lyrics and naming. Who started it? I know Zep did Misty Mountain Hop on IV, but I think most don’t truly call that metal.
Lovecraft on Ride the Lightning, but I don’t know if that was the first.
http://www.hplovecraft.com/popcult/music.asp
Black Sabbath, Blue Oyster Cult, Caravan and (the band) H.P. Lovecraft seem to be the oldest references in Rock music.
Ayn Rand’s entire bibliography
why on earth why you want to read that?
Agreed with Alex. I’ll skip her and just read Schopenhauer & Nietzsche.
Another soul-killing, bleak-as-fuck book I’d recommend is Dirty Snow by Georges Simenon. It came out around the time of Camus’s The Stranger, and it’s thematically similar, though far, far darker. One of the few books I’ve read that left me feeling destroyed.
When it comes to Simenon + Metal, another novel that comes to mind is ‘The Man Who Watched Trains Go By.’ It’s a pretty interesting portrayal of things from the perspective of a megalomanic, fairly cold-blooded murderer in his descent from a respectable family man to a man on the run (or, well, the stroll) playing a game of cat-and-mouse with the police and trying to have the media treat him like a criminal genius rather than a madman by sending letters to them. Sort of like Timon of Athens with murder, on a basic plot-construction level. It’s something that wouldn’t be too surprising to see as the basis for a metal concept album, especially given how it tends to avoid the usual sentimentalism you would expect from these kinds of novels, and rather focuses on getting the reader absorbed in the character of Kees Poppinga.
I wish they’d interviewed more metalheads than (a) leftists and (b) Oprah reading list types.
Everyone already knows your game. Go cry wolf some more and we’ll continue to ignore you.
Who would you recommend and why? Thanks for reading.
I wish Anus.com was written by metalheads instead of pretentious a.) right-wingers b.) conservatives who claim to be “nihilists”, c.) social darwinists, d.) neo-pagans, e.) racists, and f.) crypto-fascists
Great article.
I’d be interested to see what Anders Bjoerler of At The Gates has to say on this…
Surprised no one’s commented with The Martian Chronicles. Amazing book.
I’ve always been partial to anything by Bulgakov–in particular The Master and Margarita. One of my more recent favorites was We, The Drowned by Carsten Jensen. I love this post.
It would really be a shame if no one mentions The Songs of Maldoror. That’s the most metal book I’ve ever read. That or anything by de Sade, Baudelaire, or Georges Bataille.
There are enough bands that wear their Nietzsche or Lovecraft influences on their sleeves. Not interested in reading about what I already know.
Bataille and Baudelaire: basically brilliant. Beautiful, blood-curdling.
Everyone should also read Le grand voyage by Jorge Semprun. It’s a Holocaust memoir, but not as we know it. It’s a book that will always stay with you. Heart-rending, and his command of language is sublime.
Damn, I hadn’t checked this post in a while and all my favorites get mentioned!
@Cernunnos – Lautreamont is incredible. Good call!
@Jo – Love me some Bataille. Story of the Eye is just so filthy and perfect. I’ve got Blue of Noon buried somewhere in my reading pile, gotta get to that one soon. I love that Vastum are entirely inspired by Bataille’s stuff, too. I’ve only read a little Baudelaire, but I’ve got Flowers of Evil sitting there on my shelf, just staring at me. Might be time to unearth some morbid treasure…
@Wash Jones
Deathspell Omega is also inspired by Bataille. All the lyrics for “Diabolus Absconditus” are taken from the English translation of ‘Madame Edwarda’. Never heard of Vastum before, but thanks for the heads up.
Baudelaire is mandatory reading if you’re already into Lautreamont and Bataille. Flowers of Evil is of course his masterpiece, but also check out Paris Spleen, a collection of prose poems.
Ah, Jansson’s “Moominvalley”! That’s the kind of book all children should read as soon as they are able. Add to this Enid Blyton’s.