Thirteen Dreams' Profile

Think on this for a moment.

At this very moment, you are merely one person out of another seven billion, nine hundred and ninety-nine million, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine other people. Whatever you find yourself doing with your life – whether you finish school top of your class, whether you make it through college, whether you settle down with a partner and kid – there’s an overwhelming probability it’s all been done before. Unless you cure cancer, or take the first step on Mars, you are unlikely to be remembered in by future generations – even those once close to you will eventually forget about you, provided death doesn’t claim them first.

Really puts things in perspective, don’t it?

Call me Chris. I’m an average bloke, although I seem to find myself the exotic one everywhere I go online – there are so few Australians in this kind of scene.

I live a wonderfully mundane life. I work night shift at a bar during the week, and night shift at a service station on weekends. It’s good, honest work that pays the bills, so I’m happy. During my free time I write poetry and short stories, and violently graphic fanfiction (what can I say, I’m obsessed with Final Fantasy Eight). I also sing in death metal bands, and I’m considering starting a solo Dark Electronica project (despite my near complete illiteracy when it comes to both computers and sound engineering).

I have no real religion, but I do have strong empathy for the Gaian way of looking at life (the idea of a living Earth, where everything is part of a constantly spinning wheel). If you’re after religious or political debates, you’ve come to the wrong bloke; I have no tolerance for either.

Musical tastes

Music I Love

Melodic Death Metal

My personal favourite style. I love bands who play harsh, brutal metal, yet interlace it with beautiful melodies and deep, poetic lyrics. Some standouts are Be’lakor, In Flames (their old stuff – pretty much everything after Whoracle was of such pathetic quality that they can barely call themselves metal anymore), Dark Tranquillity, Illdisposed (even if their lyrics suck), Amon Amarth, and Wintersun.

Death Metal

Death Metal, to me, is not so much a listening experience as it is a therapeutic one. Death Metal targets the primal aspects of the human condition, exposing the underlying sadist within every person alive. Many despise Death Metal on the face of such things as the lyrical matter, the music itself, the epileptic nature of the drums – but to me, it’s something more. Of course, there are good and bad bands, same as any other genre of music. Some good ones are: Behemoth, Morbid Angel, Cannibal Corpse (the old stuff only – Chris Barnes’ lyrics were comedy gold), Hate Eternal, Decapitated, Death, Nile, Akercocke, Arsis, Cryptopsy (anything before their last album, which was a metalcore monstrosity), and Dethklok (come on, who doesn’t like Metalocalypse?).

Symphonic Black Metal

I’m not a fan of ‘traditional’ black metal, for two reasons: one, the production of such bands is almost always utter crap, and two, the lyrical matter offends me. I hear people rave about Burzum and Mayhem, but the members of both bands were neo-nazi scum who deserved what they got.

Melodic Black Metal is something else. A great many of these bands boast remarkably poetic lyrical matter, the vocalists are talented as hell, the music is fast and chaotic and over the entire thing, the melodies soar. Standout bands include Graveworm, Cradle of Filth (most of their material up until Dusk … and Her Embrace was fantastic, but the quality of their music began to decline rapidly after that album. Damnation and a Day, possibly one of the worst albums ever released, sealed the deal), Abigail Williams, Tvangeste, and Vesperian Sorrow.

Doom Metal

I’m putting a lot of different subgenres under one flag here, but I love all of them so much it’s hard to separate them. Candlemass are the standout, of course, seeing as they solidified the whole movement. Other standout bands include Doom:VS, My Dying Bride, Swallow the Sun, Runemagick, Evoken, Solitude Aeturnus, Katatonia (earlier albums), Celtic Frost, Tristania (early albums), Draconian, Virgin Black, Novembre, and Slumber.

Dark Electro/Aggrotech

I’m relatively new to electro in general, but I love the pounding drums, the rhythmic basslines, the harsh keyboards, the epic synths, the evil vocals and the grating, mechanical atmosphere that Dark Electro and Aggrotech artists are renowned for. Standout artists include Suicide Commando, PreEmptive Strike 0.1, Grendel, FGFC820, Vicious Alliance, X-Fusion and Panic Lift.

Blues, Blues and Roots, Country

I grew up listening to two extremes of music – blues and country on my mum’s side, and hard rock and metal on my dad’s side. To this day I retain a love of bands and artists such as Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Keb’ Mo’. Jeff Lang, J.J. Cale, Kieran Kane, and Johnny Cash.

Rock and Roll

Metal, Electro, Blues and country music may be all well and good, but who doesn’t pull out the white album every now and then? Or sing along like a madman whenever Satisfaction or Light My Fire comes on the radio?

Music I Hate

Prog

What's the point? I've never seen prog as much more than an exercise in pretention - technical riffs for the sake of technical riffs, abstract lyrical matter without any underlying meaning (and a lot of it's shite anyway), and songs that go on for way longer than they ought to. And yet, for some bizarre reason, there are legions of people out there (and not all of them are wankers) who foam at the mouths in defence of their favourite prog bands. Dream Theater are one of the worst offenders, and were The Mars Volta to die in a fiery plane crash tomorrow, I would demand photographic evidence for future entertainment.

Nu Metal

There are a few good Nu Metal bands - Mudvayne and Slipknot I still listen to upon occasion (though only their first one or two albums), and I'm still known to drag out KoRn's debut effort every now and then. Overall, however, the idea of gangsta rap and pseudo angsty hard rock makes me physically nauseous.

Emo

Kinda hard to classify these days, seeing as there's so much goddamned angst going around (it sells albums, for some fucking reason). The proper definition is 'Emotional Hardcore', but there's nothing very hardcore about middle class idiots playing at self-mutilation because they either a) want attention, or b) think it's cool.

Metalcore

The vocals ... man, a goose with its voice box torn from its neck would sound better on the old eardrums. The nasal, whinging quality of the cleans makes me want to puke.

The crap mainstream radio stations play

Working in retail establishments, one tends to listen to the radio a lot - it's being piped out over the PA, so there ain't a lot of choice in the matter. And it's only a matter of time before the influx of Shakira, Matchbox Twenty, Lady GaGa, and whoever the hell else plays those plastic, empty chart toppers sends me completely bugfuck.

Films

I love arthouse films – my dad gave me a stack of old, unlabelled arthouse movies on VHS a few years back, and for the life of me I have no friggin idea what most of them are – but they’re some of the best films I’ve ever watched. Blown was one, as was Basquiat, but the others are mysteries. Aside from that, I life older horror films – the original Dracula was a marvel of its time, as was Frankenstein.

I live for anime, and have almost fifteen series on DVD. Elfen Lied is my favorite – it’s a very, very short series, but the story is incredible – everything from suspense and action to love and comfort, all coming to a head in an orgy of horror, grief, violence, and blood. Fucking oceans of it.

Literature

Stephen King’s style of integrating horror and violence with humour and warmth is unique, as are some of the stories he has to tell. Speaking of contemporary works, Tokein cannot be omitted, nor can Alison Croggon or Kim Wilkins – both are modern masters of the fantasy genre, though both write very, very different stories.

HP Lovecraft and Edgar Allen Poe are regarded as giants in the horror world, with damn good reason. Dracula is possibly the most impressive novel ever written, though it shows it’s age now – many of the practices and morals within it would not be stood now (blood transfusions without prior knowledge of blood types, blatant misogyny, etcetera).