Recording on the next Fireaxe CD, "Food for the Gods" is moving along steadily. The digital studio is working out very well and the sound quality is another major step up from that previously attained in "Lovecraftian Nightmares". The twelfth preview track is now available as an mp3 for free.

The name of the twelfth preview track is "I Live in Silence" and it is about the isolation and despair that one experiences when they can no longer cope with a hostile world and retreats into a private realm to find relief. The cut is part of a truly epic twenty-two minute work titled "Black Knight" which describes in painful detail the slow descent of an outcast into a state of mind where a catastrophic act of murder-suicide appears to be the only way out. The theme describes the second path to insanity foreshadowed in the song "River of Madness" referring to what happens when you try to be who you want to be. The first path to insanity, trying to be who others want, is depicted in "The Soul Doctors". Note how these three songs tie together. Cool isn’t it?

"Black Knight" tells the tale of a social misfit. It begins with the track "I Live in Silence" which is a heart wrenching and beautiful portrayal of the protagonist’s life as he hides from a painful reality. The music flows back and forth between quiet hopefulness and pounding despair. And although escaping from reality lends him peace in a world of silence and darkness, the isolation brings with it feelings of loneliness and purposelessness. The protagonist can find no safe haven inside himself and is agonizingly pulled back into the real world.

The music is simple and compelling. In the first part the lyrics are sung in a whisper and backed by a piano or left to stand alone. When the line "I live in silence" is delivered you can hear it echoing around in what feels like a dark, empty void, perfectly complimenting the mood of the song. Between sections I mix light drumming and a solo guitar in with the piano and it sounds absolutely wonderful. I do not regret for a moment buying a keyboard and using it for many of the tracks in "Food for the Gods". It adds so much to the sound and feel. In contrast the two choruses feature the injection of distorted rhythm guitars which punctuate the feelings of despair. The protagonist cries, "I can’t go on!" and after the second chorus a solo guitar wails an angst ridden reply. If your favorite Fireaxe tracks are "Nathicana" and "Another Dream", this is going to be another one for you. Despite the fire and thrashing that most of the rough cuts contain, "Food for the Gods" has a number of softer sections which contribute greatly to the overall texture of the work.

But "I Live in Silence" is only the beginning of "Black Knight". The music flows into the next track where the protagonist describes the suffering that he must endure at the hands of his tormenters. It brings to mind the hazing rituals so many students must endure at their schools that turn their weekdays into nightmares. Indeed I had the many school shooting perpetrators in mind when I wrote the song but there are many parallels between those incidents and the many other murder-suicides that happen in the world today. The suffering the protagonist is subjected to leads him to make his declaration of defiance (the quote at the top), after which the suffering and hardship that gets heaped upon him for his act of rebellion is more severe than he can stand. He is pushed beyond his limit and he cracks. His life turns black.

It is then when he watches his beloved guardian angel fall from grace and become a demon goddess who whispers evil thoughts in his ears. If you listen to this track wearing headphones it will feel like a demon goddess is whispering evil thoughts in your ears. Do not be alarmed. It’s just me. And I strongly advise you not to follow any advice that you hear. The protagonist then stands on the edge of a fateful decision between lingering on in a pain filled life and seeking revenge by murdering his enemies. The song isn’t perfectly clear on this, but the protagonist only fantasizes about going on a killing spree and what he would go through in the aftermath. The events in his fantasy are described in the song’s climax which is both powerful and disturbing. As he lived, in agony, isolation, and hated by others, so does he die. He is made the scapegoat while the others wash their hands of all responsibility for what has happened. The final refrain, which comes after the protagonist has been sentenced to death, delivers the central theme of the song:

"I am not a killer, but if you take away my life
I will surely take you with me."

The protagonist pleads self defense, and who can deny him? While people are almost never at risk of life and limb when they are being harassed and abused by their peers and the authorities, it is their selves, their very identities that are often permanently scarred, broken and destroyed. We need to ask the question, is a life of pain, misery, and incompleteness worse than no life at all? Many people answer yes when they commit suicide. Is murdering a person’s self the equivalent of murdering their body? These are uncomfortable questions that no one seems inclined to pose or answer. Instead whenever the topic of murder- suicide comes up, all attention is paid towards trying to identify the potential killers and dealing with them punitively rather than addressing the issues of what leads up to the killing acts in the first place. In almost every case, the ones guilty of abusing others get a free ride, which only encourages them to be more abusive.

Murder-suicides are quickly becoming a major problem facing the world. In terms of the number of people who die each year from such acts they are still nowhere near the top ten, but when you see how Columbine changed how schools treat their students and how the September 11 terrorist attacks changed how the United States treats the entire world you can see how far reaching their effects are. In both cases draconian measures were instituted to try to prevent future incidents with all of the blame being placed squarely on the perpetrators. High school students now face metal detectors, property searches, psychological profiling, and a variety of other invasive measures in an attempt to find out whether they might be planning a killing spree in their school. Similarly, the U.S. Government has violated many of the protections in the Bill of Rights in order to institute similar invasive measures in an attempt to find out who might be plotting an attack against the United States. On the surface these sound like regrettable but necessary provisions, and although if they were only a simple trade between freedom and security it would still be exactly the acquiescence to tyranny that the founding fathers warned us about, but a deeper understanding of the forces involved reveals that we are becoming both less free and less secure.

Roughly once a week a suicide bomber blows himself and many Israelis to pieces. At about the same rate a man in the U.S. kills his family or co-workers or strangers, and then himself. This phenomenon is relatively new in history, having truly emerged only in the last twenty years, and shows every sign of proliferating whether as part of an organized resistance or as a violent form of suicide. The disturbing part about trying to prevent such acts is that the common deterrent, the great likelihood of being caught and imprisoned for life, no longer works. If a person no longer cares about his life, killing a large number of people can be easily accomplished by doing something as simple as driving their car into a crowd of people. Preventing all such acts is a logistical impossibility, so most attention is paid to the more deadly forms of murder-suicide, especially those that target the rich and powerful. The process of prevention automatically takes power away from the citizenry and puts more power in the hands of central authority. It is naive to believe that such power will not be abused, to believe that such power will eventually be returned, and to believe that more power will not be seized simply because those in power are able to do so. History shows us that more oppression bring more dissension, which brings more oppression. By surrendering in the first place was lose the ability to reclaim what was lost. Of course there will likely be a reduction in the amount of terrorism do to the increase in vigilance, but one might ask whether living in a police state is preferable to being killed by a suicide bomber. It would seem that you cannot be safe from both.

So how did we descend into such a state where we can never enjoy the freedoms of the past ever again without the threat of someone trying to kill us? The answer is that the dynamics of our society demand that everyone be either aggressive, or at least vigilant, on every front in order maintain what we have. We are each infused with a self image that overlaps with what others define as their self image. Disputes over these overlaps draw us into conflicts in the name of self defense. We fight over prestigious positions, attractive lovers, money, power, etc., with all of us feeling entitled to more than we have. And we fight for good reason. If we are not aggressive in our defense of self, we will surely lose ground, and since attacking others is often the only way of defending yourself our noble intentions often disappear in the heat of battle. In other words, if your competition fights dirty, you must fight dirty in response or lose out, and we all get dragged down to the same level. But even as we all gravitate to using the same base tactics to maintain our place, we cannot be assured that those tactics will be effective in the future. There are always drives towards new methods and technologies which threaten all who do not have them. Thus, we are always searching for new ways to fortify our boundaries and to extend our interests. Complacency invariably has disastrous consequences.

This is true for all levels of social interaction whether it be between nations, corporations, religions, political parties, sports teams, or individuals. We are all simultaneously victims and victimizers, claiming self defense as we engage in an endless battle against our aggressive foes. There are no winners, since any ground gained always comes under attack, but there are certainly losers. When our sense of self is eroded beyond a certain point we will all conclude that life is not worth living. For each of us that point is different, and our reactions are different as well, but there will always be those of us who, when they reach that point, conclude that strapping on a bomb or going on a killing spree is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Trying to prevent such acts has the collateral effect of making them, or others of a more severe nature, occur more often.

This is reflected throughout the world. The tactics on either side grow more and more aggressive, punitive, and severe. Atrocities grow more atrocious, abuse is more humiliating, and the numbers involved grow larger and larger. Millions of deaths and rapes now seem commonplace, million dollar scandals have now become billions dollar scandals, and hazing in public schools has turned from verbal abuse and roughhousing to sexual assault and forcing student’s heads into toilets filled with excrement. One wonders when anal rape will become the new standard of abuse for asserting one’s dominance over one’s peers. With every year the collective pressure placed upon us all increases with no end in sight. Each solution seems to create two new problems, and each victory seems to be followed by two defeats. Every day a few more people reach their breaking point and respond in unpredictable and increasingly more destructive ways. Whenever one person, group, or nation raises the level of pressure, the repercussions are felt across the world, and result in more cases of instability, suffering, and blowback. Becoming bigger simply makes one a bigger target. And thus, in our quest to attain security and to restore our freedom, we invariably erode both.

The greatest tragedy lies in that there seems to be no way to reverse this trend. Punishing an individual of group of people and forcing them to retract will only lead to others expanding into the vacated ground with the battle lines drawn anew. Likewise, assisting an individual or group only helps them to take or take back from others who will fight to regain that ground. Since we are all pushing against each other’s boundaries there can be no peaceful state of existence, and the only time we find satisfaction is between the time when we achieve a victory and the time it takes for others to regroup and launch a counterattack. For the losers there is only the hope that we will one day win. Until then we suffer in silence.

You can download and listen to the new tracks at the Fireaxe IUMA site

***Disclaimer***

Fireaxe would like to express that no course of action of any kind is being advocated or indicated by any of the discourse running through this newsletter or its music lest someone accuse it of being something other than what it is, which is nihilistic. Fireaxe recognizes that the sense of self is inherently defined as extending beyond its natural boundaries and thus exists in a state of continuous conflict with its surroundings. Thus the goal of reaching a peaceful state of mind is impossible. In simpler terms, we are all unhappy, and in trying to be happy we spread the seeds of unhappiness.