Snippet #2497640

There's something to be said for a lyricist who manages to write lyrics that could be called both intensely personal and standard gore fare at once-- probably nothing very nice, but something nonetheless.

Granted, most of Psychosis' setlist for this particular tour wasn't of the particularly personal variant. Worm-Infested Cadaver, the go-to opening song for the tour, was a grotesquely meticulous, Carcass-inspired romp through the putrefaction of a corpse as it undergoes the processes of decay and infestation by maggots; Gilles de Rais was, of course, the legendary tale of the eponymous Breton nobleman who, ten years after serving alongside Joan of Arc throughout her campaigns, was convicted of murdering between eighty and two hundred children-- the exact number was never known-- and condemned to hang. Hanging In Agony pertained to a form of torture employed from the sixteenth century up to modern days, wherein the victim's hands were tied behind their back and suspended in the air by ropes attached to wrists; slow and arduous dislocation of the arms was common, and weights were often added to the body to exacerbate the suffering of the victim.

Drowning was, Izzie liked to think, pretty straightforward.

Needless to say, the point was made: Izzie'd had a fondness for gore lyrics ever since her days with Vivum Excoriari, when much of her reading had been concerned with the impressively diverse methods of torture and execution employed throughout antiquity, and therefore to this day a good portion of her lyrics described the agonies of, say, the Judas cradle (this most succinctly described in the aptly named 'Rectally Split'), or the brodequin (whose effects and manner of employment were explored in the pleasantly titled 'Bone-Shattering Nightmare'). And yes, she couldn't deny there was a certain element of taking pride in her ability to approach gore lyrics from a historically enlightened (dare one say intelligent?) perspective rather than the usual 'I HIT YOU IN THE FACE WITH A HAMMER AND YOUR BRAIN TOTALLY EXPLODES' shit.

Not that anybody in the crowd was getting absolutely any of that. As far as they were concerned, the lyrics to all those songs went something like 'UUUUUUURGUHGUHIHGGUIRG AARAARGAHHRGHARGHH'.

Nevertheless, Izzie had little reason to be unhappy as the set drew to a close with that final song; the stand-in bassist had managed not to terribly fuck up any of the (admittedly none too simplistic) bass tracks, nobody's amplifier had spontaneously combusted, and it seemed the crowd had even rather gotten into it. It was so good, in fact, that when it was all over, and the crowd gave one last cheer for the departing opening band, and Psychosis began to pack their shit up to make way for the next band, Izzie turned to face her bandmates, and grunted, "Fuck, I think we might have just made a new fan or two out of some of those shitheads. Goddammit."







For a moment, Alex clean forgot there were other people staffing the merch table along with her-- namely, her bandmates-- as she sat with her daughter and conversed with her over the cacophony of the music. "Who's this playing now?" Helen all but bellowed at the top of her little lungs. "They don't sound very much like the music you show me!"

"This band's called Psychosis," Alex answered with a smile, speaking directly into Helen's ear so she could hear better. "They don't sound much like the metal I've shown you because I'm not the biggest fan of their kind of death metal."

"Their kind of death metal?"

"You know, very complex, very heavy, not so very melodious."

An immediate furrow appeared at Helen's brow. "Death metal can be not heavy?" she queried sceptically, provoking a laugh from her mother. "Spoken like somebody who's never heard any In Flames-- and never will if I have any say in it!" Glancing up from Helen's dubious expression, however, Alex remembered that there were, in fact, two other people currently sitting at the merch table with them-- two people who very clearly had a question or two about the situation that had just unfolded before them. Well, they'd have to suffer in ignorance for a second here; Alex waited until Psychosis finished their next song (turned out to be their last-- oh well, all the more suitable) before explaining. "Hey, guys..." She placed her hands on Helen's shoulders and turned her to face her two present bandmates. "This is my child Helen. Helen, there are my bandmates. The one with the nice hair is Liam, our singer, and the one who looks like a Neanderthal just about to evolve into a modern human is Chris."

"Mom, that doesn't make any sense," Helen pointed out.

"Oh-- er, sorry, sweetie. Sometimes I forget you're eight years old. Uh, see, Neanderthals were..."

"No, no, I know what Neanderthals were," Helen insisted. "They didn't evolve into people, mom. They were around at the same time, but people hunted them to es-thing-shtun."

"Extinction, sweetie. Yeah, see, this is what I get to put up with," Alex remarked with a weary smile to her two bandmates. "A kid who can correct me on my historical inaccuracies. Anyway, she appears to be absent at the moment, but of course, you already know..."

"Lestari!" Helen leapt up to her feet as the band was joined by their grinning drummer, toting along several bottles of water which she wasted no time in distributing out to each of her respective bandmates. It's about time our number one fan came out to see us live! Alex dictated Lestari's note to Helen, who concurred enthusiastically with this assessment. "I can't wait to see you guys play! Mom always tells me that music sounds different when it's played alive."

"Live, Helen, played live."

"Yeah, that."

Well, she's got a point, Alex again dictated Lestari's words as the drummer handed her the notebook that was her primary means of communication. Trust me, you don't know just what Legion is until you've seen Liam go wild on stage. Heck, sometimes if he's feeling real rowdy he'll even do something really crazy, like move his head a bit, or walk around a little. Alex glanced up at Lestari, a hint of amusement on her lips. "Nice one. I didn't even have to set you up for that one."

The guitarist and the drummer fell into their usual dynamic of jokes and charades, and Helen took the time to lean toward Chris and Liam almost conspiratorially and whisper, "So, do you guys also like... death metal?"