Rich Hoak's Top 13 Signs of the Impending Apocalypse

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First, I should explain the difference between the slow-motion apocalypse and the instant apocalypse I once promoted. I was a kid in the 1980s, and we thought Ronald Reagan was going to go to war with Russia and everything would blow up. We thought of the instant apocalypse.

As I’ve grown older, I’ve embraced the notion of a slow-motion apocalypse. Things are getting crazier. It’s Babylon 24-7 on all channels, wavelengths, and frequencies. There could be a giant explosion that could wipe out five or 10 percent of the population on Earth. But that’s a drop in the bucket compared to the apocalypse in progress.

This is something that is going to take a long time. Rome didn’t fall in a day. China has been around for 5,000 or more years. People are going to continue living, even if it’s in holes in the ground. But it’s a futile struggle against entropy. The end is with us, always.

Artistically, I do what I do because I have to. In terms of the future, I’m actually excited. We might be living on Mars, or everything might just explode. The instant apocalypse is still a possibility. Regardless of how scary it is, I’m interested to see what happens. I’m just a drummer, though; maybe everything is going to work out perfectly. I could be barking up the wrong tree. If so, that’s great. If so, then we’ve still made great music and partied with a lot of people. And people would look silly saying: “Hey Rich, the world didn’t explode”.

These are the signs, vibrations, and intuitive concepts that I get living daily life. I try to express my discontent with what’s going on through my art, which is grindcore and very fast partying. A mosh pit is a classic temporary autonomous zone where people can get together and celebrate and communicate, and it’s no-holds-barred. At a TFD show, there are no preconceived notions of what you should get from the show or the message. We are bringing very strange messages and comments on reality. The coolest thing is people can enter that autonomous zone and get the message.

This is TFD’s list of metaphysical and physical signs of the impending apocalypse.

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13. Babylon's obvious and daily celebration of the slow-motion apocalypse.
12. The emptiness and various contradictions of modernity.
11. Worldwide, information overload-induced panic.
10. The ecstasy of uncertainty.
9. The statistic and fact that one child every five seconds is made a soldier.
8. General, crazy, fucked-up daily life in the modern-day military entertainment complex.
7. The end of human dignity.
6. The artificial construct of various corporate underground music scenes and machines.
5. The poetry of Armageddon, born of God's heavenly wrath.
4. Multitudes of starving children.
3. Jazz, a lady whom I love.
2. The standardization of consumption.
1. A deathlike silence.

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Rich Hoak plays drums for Brutal Truth and Total Fucking Destruction.

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