News

2026.10.17
I haven't written anything seriously in a long time but I am starting to feel the "itch" with this extraordinary autumn weather around me. It doesn't make sense to publish anything in print anymore, at least for now, but I have an idea for a review section on this site that exclusively trashes new popular metal releases and bands that trendies salivate over online. I'm still pondering over a title. The fact of the matter is that creating music or art as a response to alienation and hatred of the modern world is largely obsolete today. It doesn't seem to apply anymore as it once did except for very thin circles, or we wouldn't have 9 out of every 10 bands sounding the same. I have a feeling the lack of isolation today and homogenization of culture with tech is in some degree to blame. That hatred again is bubbling up in me.... which is a very good thing.

By the way, as a huge fan of the early Friday the 13th movies, I am thrilled to say that the Crystal Lake series (so far, I've just watched three episodes) is surprisingly fucking great. It doesn't look or feel much like the 70s but Linda Cardellini's performance is superb, I am really growing to love this woman! Never heard of her before since I barely watch anything anymore. I adore that both Jason and Pamela Voorhees are completely sympathetic characters in this series crushing assholes and scumbags with over the top gore. It brings a tear of joy to my eye, it really does.

2026.10.10
Updated the sales list.

2026.09.28
I'm working in a place now where people regularly share cutesy pictorial and video memes with each other and talk like this: "like I have a problem like with my like computer like omg idk like what do I do like" and these are supposedly educated people in their fields. To be fair, not everyone talks in this way, not the older workers, but I am thinking to myself, "if this is Gen Z and the future of communication from now on, and these people will one day grow old and talk to their children this way, count me out." I've used memes before but only with a certain amount of self-disgust, and acronyms I am consciously avoiding at every possibility, spelling everything out when it's not necessary to write like an imbecile. With lazy AI art and videos now leaking into underground music, we have truly entered a new low. I'm just glad there is enough art in the past to occupy oneself once there is no one left, like archaeologists we will look into the past for signs of a mysterious world of unfathomable effort and attention.

2026.09.19
Happy autumn to everyone visiting the site from the northern hemisphere! The most despicable season of the year has finally run its putrid course and slithered back into its maggot-infested caverns, or at least for the time being. Between a new job and health issues, I haven't had so much chance to update this site. I do want to mention today that I just got an awesome package from Darker Than Black's final sale, Adolf Hitler would be very pleased, including the new Aryan Art triple-compilation which I'm excited to open, and I discovered some great bands on the War Against Yourself label, with special mention of Svart Grav's debut EP which is my favorite black metal released this year. Check it out by clicking the image below. This is really something special in my view for those who really value the ancient sound.

2026.08.31
Going through my promos from 2022 and discovered this positively excellent band from Nordrhein Westfalia called Decaptacon. I'm not sure how I missed it. They have been around for over 10 years but have recorded only two albums thus far. I haven't heard the first one yet but "For Those Who Died" is top-notch Swedish style melodic death metal, almost perfect stuff, really! I was literally transported back to 1995 when I was a teenager and most releases generated excitement. Highly recommended and criminally underrated/unknown probably because they have no label backing. I am trying to get in touch with the band now to get some physical copies. If you click on the image it will take you to bandcamp page.

2026.08.31
I'm wondering when exactly metal turned into an insufferable fashion show like it is now, and whether it was unavoidable once the internet became popular. Can you imagine classic bands from the past, in their prime, releasing music today? First of all, I don't think it would be even possible with the vast army of morons online trashing everything they see, or the sheep who celebrate names (not music) blindly.. Just look back at metal's best years in the 80s and 90s, and I've said this before - the animating impulse was a drive to weed out trendiness and to stand out from others. There was metal and then there were darker metal genres, maybe nascent death metal which still had a rough outline and no set definition. Rules were rules to be broken. It's in that environment that the best bands developed and evolved, and people used what was at their disposal. It was substance over style since "style" wasn't even of any high interest, no one knew what style really was except that it was something dark and opposing norms. This new underground actually celebrates the norm with insanely conservative plastic template bands! It's a parody of what metal once was... and these idiots online doing their poses to impress other fashionistas like themselves should be annihilated, but it's too late. Fortunately we have so many bands now that it's possible that by accident 1%, which is about the percentage of my promo retention, have something of value to communicate to the world - the real individuals, weirdos, misfits, in the sea of normies and conformists posing as nonconformists. We are in the "normie", conformist and trendy phase of metal and other genres like goth, industrial, ambient, and so on. The most over-saturated and most boring epoch for music.

2026.08.29
When a person dies and tributes are made to them in public, these tributes are made exclusively to impress other people who are alive and to reap benefits for the person making them. Genuine tributes, in so far as they exist, don't have to be broadcast out in public, they can be kept in small circles. When I write my tributes to people who I have interviewed, I write them with the full knowledge that few people care and in fact, I'm doing what I am doing for myself most of all, just as I create my zines with an audience of one. I was creating a magazine that I wanted to read. If someone enjoys what I have done, then it is fantastic, a wonderful side-effect, but that is not what animates me. What this means is that I am banking on my instinct. Where am I going with all of this? Ultimately everything boils down to the drive for survival and reaping personal benefit. Consequently, what I find distasteful is the pretense that a tribute is sourced for anything but personal drives. Deceased people do not watch from the heavens, their light may still be trapped in static block time visible to hypothetical aliens, but they no longer exist as conscious entities. The ones watching, if anyone is watching, are those who are still alive and watching for their own egotistic purposes.

What that said: I just added my tribute to Loren Nerell in my R.I.P. article, who died just last month. A great loss for the ambient/new age community, certainly one of my favorites in those realms.

2026.08.18
New Uralv (Dodheimsgard, The Deathtrap) is crap... I question why I ever liked Dodheimsgard years ago after hearing it. Vicotnik and Fenriz's input was likely the reason why, they are vastly more creative. That old connection makes me confuse Aldrahn with Vicotnik and his (vastly superior) band Ved Buens Ende. It's a relief that Aldrahn is not involved in the latter. Meanwhile, latest Behemoth is garbage- why is this band popular? It's literally unlistenable. Another older band that has released something new is Sigh from Japan and it's high above these two, even if I don't count myself a fan of Sigh. Miraj knows how to write unique and memorable, I will at least give him that! I also just got the latest Arthur Brown and Fen on Prophecy which are worthless, the both of them. If not for Brown's earlier hits he would not be on Prophecy. His jazz/rock music doesn't even remotely fit the roster. Who are they trying to impress? And so it goes... I've been deleting all of my death metal promos, have no interest. Death metal is dead. Black metal I am hearing far less of, which is positive. I've had enough of it and will be happy if I never hear another new Finnish black metal band. So far, maybe 5 albums I liked this year, top! Since so little good music is coming out anymore I'm going into my stash of unlistened promos... I am in 2022 right now and moving forward! Close to 600 records I haven't listened to yet. Probably a few will be good...

2026.08.08
Woke up early in the evening from intense sore throat pain and barely slept all night. Nearly everyone in my family has had a cold this summer, so now it's apparently my turn! To say that it's shitty is an understatement, but I can imagine 1000 worse ways to suffer.

I want to mention in this update the band Defeated Sanity and their latest album, "Chronicles of Lunacy" from 2024. I know I just railed about how bad death metal is now, but this band is really something else. If death metal were an Olympic contest, Defeated Sanity would be a top 5% elite athlete. I don't normally care much about technical death metal, but the way these guys incorporate technicality while at the same time keeping things highly memorable reminds me of better times for this music. In other words, this is top notch shit without question. Highly recommended!

2026.07.30
I'm just deleting most promos now, especially anything old school death metal. Of all genres that I like, I think this one is the worst of all... even worse than black metal, which is mostly generic crap these days, especially everything from Scandinavia and the USA... but at least black metal still has some incentive toward evoking emotions or producing an atmosphere. Death metal today is so fucking bad it's unbelievable. Late 80s/early 90s bands were proud of not sounding like other bands - that was the point! You read it in old interviews... a lot of them weren't even interested in fitting into any genre. They wanted to write memorable, "Non-trendy" music. Today? It's a damn badge of honor to sound completely identical to your favorite bands! There's more effort put into cover art and logos than music, like 500 to 1. It's fucking garbage, the most of it. Doom metal is boring as hell these days too but there's less of it than the others, so there's the illusion that it's not so superfluous and over-saturated. Thrash, power and heavy metal might even be more palatable and interesting today, though I'm not a big fan of any of these genres. Thrash has always struck me as dumb outside of a few bands, the dumbest metalheads on earth typically are typically attracted to it, second to war metal. Okay, maybe war metal is worse. Gothic metal can be interesting and good, as well as classically-influenced underground metal bands (not Stratovarius), but they barely exist these days.... stuff like Angizia, Veneficium, the second Obtained Enslavement with the double-harmonies and counterpoint, even old Emperor, you barely ever hear that now... probably because it requires brain power and an attention span to write such music.

2026.07.29
I don't envy people growing up today under this garbage wasteland of late capitalism and AI, digital "slop" and not only for the obvious reasons. I quit social media many, many years ago in the first few years of Facebook. I did like MySpace quite a lot, before corporations infested every little piece of the internet like the cockroaches that they are. People were still behaving with (real or simulated) empathy then as algorithms maximizing neuroses for sales were still not in popular usage. It was popular to have normal conversations more or less. When mercantile algorithms and social media corporations started to bring out the very worst in people I quit immediately but I still occasionally monitor what is happening, like in Instagram where Ethere has a page. Everyone who has read anything I've written knows my politics but I have to admit that the way ultra-militant "wokists" (or however they are called, trust me, I hate this term immensely and even more the people who frequently use it) behave makes me want to be a fucking right wing lunatic myself just to bash them into oblivion. Any mention of race or gender seems to immediately be a cause for attack and pretty much having any point of view outside of some narrow window is cause for explosive lectures and hatred for stepping out of the bounds of conformity. Actually, both sides are completely ensconced in conformity. I grew up in the 80s where there was little to no thought attached to transgression. It was what it was, while today it is like an ugly weed that needs to be pulled out of the ground the moment it's spotted. Given the lack of consequence that the anonymity of the internet provides, this could have been predicted. It seems like we are living in two realities violently clashing against each other and certainly influencing each other in the worst ways. I have no answers, I'm just pointing out the sad predicament.

2026.07.16
Random Thoughts On Nationalism in light of the recent tragedy of several U.S. soldiers getting killed in Iran (while the U.S. ruling administration slaughters thousands of Iranians and the U.S. moralistic media and moralistic politicians completely ignore them).

2026.07.13
I received an excellent new promo package today from ColdWoods Productions in Hunan Province, China! Big thank you to Jim for still believing in physical promos! In this package are Under Grey Skies's "Growth Rings of the Earth" which is quite an interesting symphonic and dark metal mix, I am still trying to shape my opinion of it, Tyranny's "Journey to the West Part I" which I mentioned earlier this year, same as the demo but professionally produced and in a beautiful digipak that opens into a large circular shape with lyrics, Dense Fog's Self-Titled album, a kind of depressive gothic black metal with a bit of a Summoning-esque feel, and Krithnazgul's "Outcast Spree", a live album documenting the bands existence over the years. Very interesting music! More listens to come!

2026.07.09
AI is misnamed since it is highly sophisticated pattern recognition software with randomization, not an intelligence by any stretch of the word. Why do people continue to believe it can think or reason? There is no reasoning involved. Creativity is based on existing content and pseudo-random number generation. Ask an AI to be creative and see what it comes up with: it will be almost all garbage. AGI is even more of an impossibility from my point of view, as a software engineer with 30 years of experience. This is not to say it isn't highly impressive or it isn't useful.

2026.07.07
My candidate for best release of the year so far is L'Avenir's "Secrets". Ever since I watched Jason Sloan perform live at The Gatherings I knew this was my man. I know I talk a lot about metal on this site but emotional, creative, atmospheric post-punk/cold wave/industrial is one of my favorite music genres and Sloan does it so well... superior to most others. A great compliment to the classic Skinny Puppy "Bites" album, too, which I've been digging a lot in 2026.

2026.07.03
Listening to Ogień Astralny - Forgotten Hymns of Erdőelve, released in 2025, and quite like what I hear so far... like Vordven or Vintersemestre! I almost never hear this sound anymore. A much needed blast of cold symphonic black metal when the temperature outside is 40 C where I live. What's more remarkable, the band comes from the United States.... fortunately you can't tell. Different!

2026.06.28
Ethere #1 is now officially sold out from my shop! This message comes after two and a half years.... a funeral pace for sales, to say the least! Not happy about it, but nothing to be done. I do appreciate everyone who ordered and was excited for the project while it lasted. If sales were better, I would have jumped on a second issue, but as it stands, zine sales at rock bottom all around the world, and with shipping rates from the USA sky high, making global sales no longer affordable, there are no plans to continue with a #2. Copies do still exist in Bleeding Heart Nihilist Productions (Germany), Ardua Music (Spain), Centennial Conflict (New Zealand), Paragon Records (USA), Hells Headbangers (USA) and other places. Support the underground!

2026.06.22
🇮🇷 🇮🇷 🇮🇷 I have never been so close to the edge of giving up on all new metal bands. I think it is reasonable to say it is close to over, what has said has been said and even the recycling truck is running out of gas. I listen to these new promos and bands every... single... day... maybe 1 out of 100 promos now has reason to exist. The rest, if they are not rehashes of rehashes of the past, have no songwriting skill whatsoever. The proverbial lipstick on a pig or piles of shit taken with the most expensive cameras provided by Century Media, Napalm, the hipster death metal labels like Profound Lore or whatever. It's no longer worth it... I will follow my old bands but in the age of social media, metal has dried up and is pretty much dead despite more content than ever before. Maybe paradoxically on account of the latter. It was good timing to quit the zine when I did. 🇮🇷 🇮🇷 🇮🇷

2026.06.20
🇮🇷 🇮🇷 🇮🇷 Updated the home page, links, about and sale list page. 🇮🇷 🇮🇷 🇮🇷

2026.06.19
Read the Convivial Hermit "In Memoriam" article here, paying respects to people I've interviewed over the last 25 years who have passed away.

2026.06.12
Half of the Convivial Hermit "In Memoriam" article is written and is in progress. I'm enjoying slowly going through my archives and old issues to put it together. Look forward to that sometime this month.

I want to mention today that an album I put a lot of work into and even partially financed has finally been reissued: the 30th anniversary edition of Deteriorate's The Senectuous Entrance! In my opinion, this album always had a bad rap and was totally under-looked over the years (and most definitely underrated). It's a bit of an oddball, consisting of two different sessions: one a death metal EP continuing in the style of the classic Rotting In Hell, and the other a straight-up black metal album completely different from anything they've done prior. In my humble view, the black metal on this record kills and is arguably even original... coming from my city, Philadelphia, not even comparable to anything else, and certainly not comparable to any of the plastic overproduced shit being released nowadays (the drum performance from Dark Woods is fantastic). The album is being distributed by Paragon Records, Dark Horizon and myself (write to me in the contact if interested in copies) in all popular formats, CD, LP and cassette, with the reissue remastered by Necromorbus Studio (Mayhem, Funeral Mist, Watain, etc). All hail the old scene!

2026.06.08
So as I understand it, the stock market works like this: the more war, the more global and energy instability, the more chaos and disruption - the higher will stock markets climb upward. It's like a black hole energizing a demon with negative energy. Am I on the mark? Stocks skyrocketed during the Covid epidemic 5-6 years back when there were mass layoffs and bankruptcies and commerce almost hit a halt completely. It never did better during those years. Now stocks are presently skyrocketing during a global energy crisis on the level of the 70s oil embargo. I'm starting to think maybe nuclear war will be positive for it? Maybe really get the bulls running for maximum investor optimism? People treat it like it's some fine science, like it's some kind of master chess game, but I'm sure most people don't know what is going on either. What's clear to me from following it for the last 10 or so years is that catastrophe is good, unemployment, disease and war is good. In fact, the more of all of the above, the higher it goes. We are far past the cliche of the stock market not equating to the economy, of Wall Street vs Main Street. No, this is more accurately: Wall Street versus Planet, Wall Street versus Human Race. I always theorized people are dumbest when they think in groups... Probably it's not out of the question that the global apocalypse and end of all life on earth will see the Dow go to 100,000? Maybe even a million, for the handful of mutated radioactive billlionaire ghouls left counting?

2026.06.06
Today is the date of the beast, look at that:... three sixes. Lucky day indeed.

Both issues of Salvage Pilgrimage have now been added to the Zurz Zinez distro. Pick up this very unique zine and show your support to the underground.

I've been thinking lately about the many interviews I have done and the people I've talked to who have passed away. I spent some time today going through my archives and noted down 8 individuals. As a tribute I will be putting together an article online in the coming days. If I ever decide to create another zine, which is presently highly unlikely, I will use it as well as some other internet-only data I've posted online since the final Convivial Hermit issue.

2026.05.31
Just in time to make the worst season, dreaded summer, a bit more tolerable comes the second issue of Savage Pilgrimage, done by a longtime reader of Convivial Hermit! I cannot recommend both issues enough, this is a truly anachronistic creation relative to the troubled times we live in! I will be stocking both issues in Zurz Zinez very soon if anyone would like to order direct from me. You can also reach the editor directly on his instagram page.

2026.05.26
Since I skipped the Maryland Deathfest this year (too few bands of interest, scattered through too many days), I've found myself watching more concerts online than usual, including clips from the MDF (great work to That Goat Metal Show, btw!). Yesterday I found an Obituary show from Dynamo Open Air on Youtube and it was fucking awesome to say the least. Tardy is one of the most unique vocalists and frontman in death metal, the drumming is awesome, the guitarists are superb. I have a special relationship with Obituary since the first death metal album I ever bought was The End Complete from 1992 (still one of my favorites). That night I had dreams that the band visited me and stayed overnight at my parents' house and I had the mission of getting food for the band. Tardy wanted Indian food, so I was desperately going around town (in some weird car with a narrow front window) trying to find a place nearby and as I was searching, it was getting dark and I somehow lost track of what I was even doing. In addition, like in many of my dreams, suddenly my phone did not work and no clocks around me were in sync, all showed different times, so I had no idea if I was late. After sitting in some restaurant for what seemed like hours, I stepped outside at one point into a blurry black mess of dusk my eyes could not adjust to the darkness. When I finally got back I found out that Tardy was eating my mother's soup and I couldn't believe it. I failed in my mission. Then I woke up... some 9+ hours later. What a dream...

2026.05.25
Damn, over a month of no updates! Unusual for me... but there has truly been little to talk about. Just a few albums of any worth coming out these days... for death metal, the latest Fleshcrawl and Funebrarum are recommended, for black metal I was surprisingly impressed with the new A Forest of Stars, very original and evocative... and of doom I am not aware of anything except maybe Lone Wanderer and In Ruins both of which I'm yet to hear in full. As usual, there is more going on in the past, like the recent discovery I made of Sanguine Myst's "Upon Sylvan Thrones", an excellent release for everyone who loves black metal the classic way. I also was able to complete my collection of Whispering Gallery by lucking on a copy of the rare Lost As One on discogs, a fantastic album like all of their rest! Truly one of the best melodic doom/death bands from Europe.

Somewhat related to this thread and my posts, recently I finished reading the mathematician Leonard Mlodinow's "The Drunkards Walk", a book on randomness and probability theory, and the last eponymous chapter really spoke to me, illustrating actually what I've been thinking for the last 30 or so years. In the last chapter he dives into an analysis of how expectation colors perception and how randomness and not any kind of determinism rules common threads of thought among popular systems or products. There is a good analogy in an experiment done with some 15,000 people listening to music with visible data on download popularity (or, since the book was written in the 00s, you can say streaming today). A separate insulated group evaluated the music without these data as "the instrinsic quality" marker, while the other groups were evaluating the music conscious of the stats. If there was any deterministic element to the music evaluation, Mlodinow says, the outcomes would have converged, but what happened is that the popularity of the songs varied widely. There was no set principle of one song achieving universal status as previous conceptions directly influenced present conceptions - in other words, a confirmation of the sheep effect, which in my opinion is now more relevant and worthy of consideration than ever before under social media. There was another point also made interestingly about success and preconception, also as an illustration of randomness over linearity or determinism. Stephen King at one period published a series of books under a pseudonym, Richard Bachman. When publishing under that name, his sales plunged, although obviously the quality of his works was identical. Only when it became clear that Bachman was King, did sales increase. We all know this, but the point is: are we truly honest about this when evaluating what we read or hear or watch, and how much are even the most independent-minded of us unaffected by these factors?

2026.04.25
Everyone interested in technical, sci-fi themed death metal needs to check out Starseed from Germany, great stuff! The Cosmic Conspiracy EP was released back in 1997 and has some parallels to Nocturnus and Timeghoul, a forgotten treasure for sure.

2026.04.16
I've finished adding all my zines for sale at Zurz Zinez. I may add a few of my music-related books to it but for now the shop is officially open! I'll print up some ads next to make more people aware of it. Spread the news, thanks!

2026.04.10
A long-needed update to the sale list was published today, check it out here!

2026.04.07
Iran is an ancient and beautiful civilization whose people deserve peace and prosperity more than most others given the horrors they have been dealing with for some 75 years of Western empires pouncing on their resources and imposing sanctions on them, not to mention their own theocratic conservative government brutalizing people that dissent or disagree with their dogmas. I am with them in spirit as they fight this blatant terrorism from two megalomaniac lunatic regimes attacking them. It's the ordinary people that will, as always, pay the most for the power fantasies of deranged world leaders and their shit-faced sycophants.

2026.04.04
Only 261 days, 8 hours and 54 minutes before start of winter in the northern hemisphere! Track it each day at this site: days.to/until/winter, brothers and sisters.

I've been slowly piling on products for Zurz Zinez and so far I have 15 zines up for sale. Please check out what is presently being offered here. I'll make a more formal announcement about it later.

In the last few weeks I've made some excellent new music discoveries thanks in large part to trades with Paragon Records (as usual). The treasures of the past seem to be almost as numerous as the disappointments of the present! Okay, that is clearly exaggerating, but I'll post more about these bands in the future... the past is alive.

2026.03.23
If the American-Israeli terror war on Iran should teach people anything, it's that it's long time to abandon "traditional" gas and oil technology. It's 2026 and we are still using 19th century inventions to run most of our heavy equipment. Not only is it causing proven, objective irreversible environmental damage, disruptions in its output instigated through these imbecilic wars are causing global destruction and instability. Few things should as important now as eliminating oil and gas completely from global supply chains as fast as possible.

2026.03.11
Only an utter moron would compare the health of stock markets to the health of economies. No surprise that Trump supporters, then, would do this. Back when Covid was at its peak and 20% of people in America suddenly became unemployed (near 40% in the service sector) the stock market was at a historic high - it was never doing better! Right now Iran is appropriately targeting oil as a response to the Israeli-American terrorism, trying to make it hurt where it is most seen, outside of the stock market (though stocks are also sinking, probably not for long). Unfortunately, as time has shown, the only thing that will budge and catalyze Americans into any action and force them to vote differently is if they feel damage to their wallets. Nothing else. Also notice, by the way, that the people that claim they are the most religious servants of "God" have initiated this violence and aggression, as they always do.

How is it if we are the most intelligent species on earth, we always vote for the least qualified leaders? What's going on here?

2026.03.10
Jarboe is so overrated and overhyped it's not funny. If she had no connection to Swans, would her Sightings album, the promo of which I received today, really get any reception at all? It's endlessly fascinating how name recognition takes one so far. You can record complete garbage and yet sell albums and receive accolades only because of your name or association to earlier recordings, or even other musicians/names. I never let any band I listen to off the hook in this way. An album is an album is an album... of course it's disappointing but past works don't disappear. With her, though, and Swans broadly, I don't get any of the hype to begin with. Certainly 80s and early 90s Swans albums were heavy and intense for their time, but not nearly as heavy or brutal as their fans think they are.

I will give Michael Gira credit, though: his book, The Consumer, was awesome...I still think there's nothing like it. I don't know how I'd feel about reading it now in my 40s, but back when I was teenager, it hit the spot with my societal disgust and alienation like little else. I still have vivid images from it in my mind to this day.

2026.03.01
For those interested in my worthless views on the US-Israel-Iran war, read here.

Last month when I mentioned Septic Flesh in one of my posts I was inspired to check out the one album from their early years that I decided to quickly disown: Revolution DNA. I was pretty disgusted with it back when it came out in 1999. Now, 26 years later, I had a compulsion to check it again after listening to a track online and, I must say, it is not as bad as I thought! There are a few stinkers on it to be sure, like Dictatorship of the Mediocre and Android, but there are tracks that really hark back to classic Septic Flesh, like Revolution and Last Stop to Nowhere - really great tracks! I think if anyone was quick to give up on this album they should check it out again. The Thief of Innocence is also a fantastic song that was mysteriously omitted from the album in the end. Septic Flesh are just a great band even if Titan and their recordings from 2017 upwards lost me. Maybe I will return to them some day and think otherwise. Also in context of how bad most metal is now even the worst stuff from Septic Flesh feels good, that could be a contributing factor in my revised opinion.

2026.02.28
New interview with Spencer Hazard by Ray Clardy is now up here. This closes the circle on the last Full of Hell interview posted around the same time last year. Check it out.

2026.02.17
I just received another promo from a band whose promotion links them to 90s death metal like Septic Flesh and Disembowelment. Let me say here that this shit has to stop. We all know the vast majority of new metal bands are mediocre and cannot write a unique riff or come up with an original idea to save their lives and that's why older bands are constantly used for promotion. I'm not going to even mention names. Also, if I see any band photo with an 18 year old guy with a mustache and clean chin, I'm immediately deleting the promo.

2026.02.15
I've successfully registered today on bandcamp to create my planned new Zine distro, which will be called Zurz Zinez. I'll next work on the graphics and all of the uploads (I have about 20+ zines to enter), and then I will start an ad campaign to get it better known. I may set up a wordpress page ultimately in the style of Schattennmanns Publishings, or add a section to this page. The idea is to create a medium sized zine distribution to recuperate costs spent on zines to ultimately buy and create new ones, and keep the format alive, more or less, in these idiotic times. Keep posted here for more news!

2026.02.12

Tyranny from China has just set up a bandcamp page, navigate to it here! This is brand new material from the band, raw and quite fresh I would say, the new album set for release on ColdWoods Productions this month, the first record released in 2026 I have any interest in so far. This is also a reminder that Convivial Hermit Issue 9 with an exclusive interview with Tyranny is still available, order it on BigCartel now!

2026.02.07
Just added BigCartel buttons to the Latest Issues page!

A few days back I was in a bookstore and picked up a copy of Philosophy Now which I used to regularly read and found a mention of John Searle recently passing away at the age of 93. The Mystery of Consciousness and The Construction of Social Reality were extraordinary books I read in my 20s and every interview I've seen with him has been inspiring. This year I actually also understood, finally, I think for the first time, his "Chinese Room Argument" when it was introduced in the context of AI, which is more relevant today than ever. I think he was absolutely right in his conclusions, too. All the more disappointing to find out that he apparently was a lecherous man in his old age, doing things that I never imagined and completely incongruous with the writer I knew. It makes me wonder how frequently this happens. But I also have a sense, and I know this does not excuse him, that if this is true, which I see no reason why it would not be, that his behavior was some kind of mental deterioration. Very disappointing either way.

2026.02.02
New bigcartel page is up starting today here: convivialhermit.bigcartel.com! If anyone has any problems with it contact me here via the contact menu option - or the contact on bigcartel! This is still in an experimental phase but it appears to be all set up now and ready. Hopefully this will resolve all ordering headaches. I'll add it to the ordering pages later.

2026.02.01
I only now completed my Top 2025 list here. It took a while to straighten things out. It was also necessary to include Von Waeldten which I only learned about in the last few weeks, but what an excellent album and musician. I highly recommended listening to Pascal Becker's work on his bandcamp page, you will not regret it.

2026.01.23
The most recent thing this reminds me of is Jim Inhofe bringing a snowball to Congress and claiming that it disproves global warming. Trump is literally, without exaggeration, the dumbest human being on the planet today. A bag of dogshit is more qualified to be a leader than he is. I am tempted to tear up my US Passport and throw it into the garbage but that would prevent me from leaving this country which is now at Ground Zero Idiocracy.

George Galloway, a socialist, recently thought out loud that perhaps Trump is one of us? An amusing thought even if it imputes more than is possible. He is bringing the entire world together around China like no other American politician before him, perhaps the biggest gift to Xi Jinping that ever happened.

2026.01.21
Trade list has been updated today. I may finally put up a bigcartel for the existing zines, while I still figure out my zine distro (separate idea). I know people have had difficulties with the Paypal buttons.

By the way, I've been growing more interested in perzines thanks to the Asymmetrical Anti-Media newsletter and in connection found this very interesting distro: Antiquated Future. I feel like Convivial Hermit in particular has always been somewhere between a perzine and a more traditional metal zine. I've never been truly comfortable in the general zine mold and always wanted to push it someplace new. It feels both good and a bit befuddling to know that others are still doing print zines in 2026 and feel the same way.

2026.01.13

I don't like going into sweeping generalizations about an entire age group, but in general, listening to several of these very young bands each day, I have come to the conclusion that Gen Z are completely incapable of writing good music. I don't know whether it's this shit culture they grew up in with social media and Youtube/TikTok/Instagram videos and now AI eroding their brains and short circuiting their attention spans... but it's just sad, what is happening. There are always exceptions, sure, bro... but almost all their bands are mid, bro. Do you sus what I'm saying, bro? Gen Z slays at sucking, and have the rizz of fecal matter. This is no tea. Do you know what I mean, bruh bruh?

2026.01.03
So now that Maduro is gone (good riddance) can we get rid of Trump the same way? Seems it's perfectly okay to invade other countries and kidnap or kill their leaders, after all, you don't even need congressional approval to do it, and both Trump and Maduro are terrorizing their own citizens, so why not? The USA, of course, does not have the greatest proven oil reserves like Venezuela, but it does produce the most oil today, so you have the bonus prize of expediting the death of the vast majority of mammals on the planet if you so choose.

2026.01.01
Happy New Year to all! 2025 was a rough year in many ways, from internal problems in the Hermit Kingdom like people I know or close to me dying and my own health issues, to problems in general worldwide like the rising popularity of fascism and AI's continued rampage making society dumber and lazier than ever. On the plus side, it was the best work year I probably have ever had, some great music is still coming out (check out my Top 2025) and in the words of Claudio Dondo from Runes Order: "We are still here".

For 2026 I am gathering thoughts of putting a bandcamp page together for a small distro, featuring mostly magazines. Keep posted in this section for updates.

Back issues of Convivial Hermit #10 and #9 are still available, as well as my final personal copies of Ethere #1 (just a few left!). Write to my email address if any questions or click the button below to order. You can also order all available zines via external distributions like Hells Headbangers in the United States and Bleeding Heart Nihilist Productions for international orders. Thanks!

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