Maybe Gandr just needs a hug.

Perhaps, perhaps he does, but only from a white person would such a display of physical comfort be accepted, I fear. More of my thoughts on the topic of NSBM here. And for an informational overview of the black-metal subgenre that, somewhat frustratingly, combines Pagan idealism and black-metal energy with neo-fascist messages and separatist "values," see this Wikipedia entry. Here's hoping Gandr gets that hug, from a person of color, and likes it, though it's not bloody likely. For the record, he's not officially listed as an NSBM artist, and equal-opportunity haters are alright by me. It's when one starts to blame individual races for the world's many problems, parsing out responsibility by cultural i.d., that I have to scoff at the ignorance so nakedly on display.

Enough of THAT. Tree-trimmers from my city woke me up promptly at 8 a.m. today, unnecessarily cruel, as that mini-auto saw they use sounds like a giant insect being slowly strangled, and fills every vacant sonic parcel of my home. If all they'd needed to do was slice up an unfortunate co-ed, their work would be done by now, and I'd be cat-napping instead of writing. Anything, though, to push down the page that shot of me speaking no evil, like a silenced monkey saying "oops!"

I wanted to like Pieces (from which was taken the above still), and I kind of did, if only for its clearly Giallo-inspired inserts into the heartwarmingly standard 80s American-slasher-film template—bad dubbing, Goblin-esque music, and a marginally comprehensible plot, that abuses that reliable equation of childhood trauma + sexual perversion = grandiose serial killer. Genre fans will surely get a kick out of Pieces, revived on DVD (and in public screenings) by those three, lovable trash-cinéaste millionaires, Eli Roth, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin T.

On to this week's horrorcast™, there was a lot to be thankful for, all these weeks after the Thanksgiving holiday, and though I've moved away from live performances for the moment, not to worry. In 2012, My Castle of Quiet's live schedule will return with a vengeance. For the meantime, newer listeners and devoted Castleheads seem pleased with music-heavy, talk-light programming, and I'm only too happy to deliver, as there is simply so much good new stuff out there.

Endless thanks to C. Lavender for tipping me off to Cult of Daath, who combine thrash and black with some great songwriting; we heard this week from their most-recent release, a powerful cassette issue called Doomed by the Witch. Welfare State & White Noise's "Silence Is Requested..." is always a crowd-pleaser, a hard-driving, psych-collage terror piece that I pull out once every two years or so. Castle favorites Villains, Nuit Noire (new full-length!) and Demonologists continue to enthrall the minions, and deservedly so. (Look for a Demonologists one-sided LP on the Prison Tatt label in the near future; it's some of their best material yet!)

And "The sound of rodents eating my face, while a helicopter circles overhead!" - I can't help but think that that description applies to the track we heard by NRIII, so perfectly rendered to that piece it is, called "Suffering," from the new Solus Patoir CD, a shoo-in for my end-of-year favorites list. And, as always, a track by Hex Breaker Quartet closed out the program with haunting beauty, as music from that camp of performers has and always will, define and encompass the My Castle of Quiet sound and aesthetic to some major degree.

Thanks for listening in, week after week; you may click on that mess of a girl up top to reach the playlist and audio archive for this week's show.