This is an openly political entry which will have, at best, a glancing musical reference in it somewhere, just for the sake of form. Forewarned is forearmed! (Durga, on the other hand, is eight- and sometimes even ten-armed, and is therefore considerably better.)

The American right wing - the right-leaning public, I mean, not the politicians - is pretty upset about the President's proposed treatement of what he, and much of the public, sees as "the immigration problem." All well and good. The only way forward is dialogue; this is always true; democracy is founded on this very notion. When somebody disagrees with us, we should thank God instead of digging in our heels. Civilized dialogue is one of language's greatest gifts to humanity, right after love songs and 419 scam emails.

The art of American politics, however - a cynical and base art even in the best of times - has, in this era of mass communications, sought to frame dialogue as something perhaps to be hoped for but always impossible under the present circumstances. The sooner a politician can allege that compromise with his opponent is impossible, the better, according to presently-governing rhetorical standards. During elections, we'd expect to see lots of this, but at present it is always the preferred method of advancing one's cause. Demonize the other side; exaggerate all terms by which one characterizes the opponent's position until only caricatures are left; then flog the caricature ceaselessly and declare victory over what was, at best, a misrepresentation.

We have seen such misrepresentation day in and day out since the dawn of the current administration, and as soon as the country was taken to war, we have seen it at fever pitch. Talk radio, blogs, television commentators, newspaper commentators, any right-leaning source of information resorts first last and always to questioning the patriotism of anyone who disagrees with "the mission" (itself a pretty loaded phrase, given that the mission does seem to change at the whim of those who initiated it). People who oppose the war in Iraq are said, ridiculously, to be "on the side of the enemy," as if there were only one way to skin a cat. (There are many.) People who disagree with the administration's policies are described as "hating America." That this is utterly absurd should be obvious even to a child. I disagree strongly with my wife about whether one ought to leave the oven door open after baking something. She grew up where it's cold; I just can't stand doors left open. Does this mean that I hate my wife? Or our house? Or the stove? If I refuse to agree on this subject with her, or she with me, are either of us "undermining" our marriage?

No, of course not. The target-NPR-demographic bumper sticker says "dissent is patriotic," and it's true. It will be true when a Democrat is in office and Republicans disagree with him or her. Dissent is always patriotic in a democracy. And so, when Peggy Noonan, a longtime supporter of the Bush administration, writes in today's Wall Street journal to complain about the President's (and his allies') rough treatment of conservative opponents to his immigration plan, the irony is almost too rich to bear. Most notably, she writes:

"Why would they speak so insultingly, with such hostility, of opponents who are concerned citizens?"

From this question, she ventures rather far afield, deciding that the answer is "we must take back the party." This is practically a standardized routine from op-ed writers for any party. All parties everywhere have been getting "taken back" since Athenian days. However, I believe I can more honestly answer Ms. Noonan's question. Why would the people who now hold positions with which you disagree speak so mean-spiritedly about you, standing on the other side of the question? They would do so because the very targets of their present hostility have taken much delight in setting a rhetorical stage on which such insulting, hostile terms are the only ones used. Concerned citizens worry that climate change will harm the planet, endanger wildlife, hasten the spread of disease; these concerned citizens are dismissed as tree-huggers, or hippies, or chicken littles. Concerned citizens worry that America will lose something of its soul that it can't get back if it should resort to torture in trying to protect itself from attack; these concerned citizens are said to hate America or even to favor the rule of Islamic law. Concerned citizens can't see why their gay friends shouldn't get married; they're accused of hastening the collapse of our culture. Nor are left-leaning editorialists any better, in their rush to congratulate themselves for having come up with new schoolyard terms with which to ridicule and belittle the very people with whom they ought to be speaking, even arguing passionately - but honestly - in order to make progress.

No-one who has helped in degrading the content of our political speech has any right to complain when their own preferred style comes back to haunt them. If you throw rocks at your enemy, you can't cry "no fair!" when a rock hits you in the forehead. Ms. Noonan and anyone else who has profited by the coarsening of political dialogue has no right to complain now that such coarsening has become the default position. She has made her bed; it is now unfortunately time to lie in it. Even more unfortunately, our own beds aren't going to be much better, because it isn't just Those Bad People I Disagree With who've made their beds. The whole thing's been a collective effort of monumental short-sightedness, and more stupid than I can really say. Wherefore I am going to listen to some grind metal and mosh around the living room until I feel better, or until I get tired.

Being as I live in a cave underneath the ocean floor this may actually have been the most popular band on the entire internet for the past couple of months, I don't know. I'd never heard of them, anyway. They have awesome afrobeat-style guitar and an singer with a pretty sweet voice and, on the evidence of the songs on their Myspace, a natural gift for melody the likes of which you don't hear very often. Of course, I say "natural gift" when it could be that they spent long hours toiling in the glare of a hurricane lamp developing their melodic sense because they don't actually have it naturally. Who, really, can say? Nobody can say. The band might, if you asked them in an interview, but whether they affirmed or denied their alleged natural gifts, how would you know to trust them? You don't know these guys. You just decided to interview them. They could be having you on a little. See how hard it is just to be alive? Anyhow, Vampire Weekend, everybody. I found about them by following a link from Dalston Oxfam Shop, so nuff respeck to the Dalston Oxfam Shop. Vampire Weekend seems like maybe the third indication this year that there are some very healthy developments going on in what I'd describe as the inside game if I had time for a very elaborate sports metaphor, but I don't. So I won't describe it that way. I'll just call it that outright and then get outta Dodge. Goodbye, Dodge City! We had some good times.

Been listening a week now. Don't even know what to say. In addition to boasting some of the year's best song titles ("Deathtripper," "Thought Crime Spree," and above all "Girl in the Slayer Jacket"), Pig Destroyer's Phantom Limb has the distinction of being the freshest metal album I have heard in ages. Not just this year. Like, in the last several years. It's very different from Terrifyer, which was an expansive, huge-canvas grind record; Phantom Limb's songs bear down harder, dig their teeth in deeper, flat-out sound better. The whole situation is much tighter. But I don't know what else to tell you. I don't feel like whippin' out a whole bunch of superlatives or trying to paint a picture of how Pig Destroyer relates to metal & to American music & to all the many subcultural strains & all that jazz. The album is so fucking good that all that shit feels pointless. Masterpiece, masterpiece, masterpiece. That's all there really is to say about it. In Vaisnava discussion, when a dude says something particularly insightful, sometimes other people who're in the room listening will mumble or shout "Sadhu! Sadhu!" which means "wise man" or "sage" - the idea being that when somebody says something so completely on-point that you can't add anything, it's natural and fitting to just recognize out loud. Such is the case with Phantom Limb. You have to just stand back in wonder and maybe whoop a little. Or maybe a lot.

I can't decide whether the new Ozzy album is "surprisingly good" or just "good," because I'm pretty skeptical about what the operator "surprisingly" might be doing there. Is it really surprising for Ozzy to make a good record? Why? Because The Osbournes sucked? So what? Because he's kinda lame live now? Wait, when was Ozzy anything more than erratic-at-best live? Do people ever speak favorably about new Ozzy material? I mean, sure, Ozzy fans do, but music-geek types like you and me: when was the last time one of us said "the new Ozzy is fucking rad"? Blizzard? Fuck off with that, music-geek types hated that stuff when it was new. Ozzy's kind of the ultimate revealer of poseurs in this regard - people only dig what he's doing in retrospect, when they can put a little historical/ironical sheen on their appreciation. Metalheads meanwhile are quick to dismiss his stuff because A) he's soft as the Pillsbury Doughboy, and B) that completely shameful retracking-of-the-rhythm-section fiasco. Which, yes for sure no doubt, is like the most bullshit thing ever done in the history of music.

So, OK: he's either an ass or being managed by one. And he's not "relevant," and the absence of this quality strips the music of the menace it once wielded: several dozen boogeymen have come and gone since Ozzy last had the power to shock or offend. He's mainstream. But Zakk Wylde is still a monster whether you dig him personally or not, and this dude Blasko writes some of the most elegant basslines you're likely to hear this year, and thematically Ozzy's right where he's always been: the world's a mess, it's all burning down, we really ought to love each other. The vocals are triple-tracked and overprocessed - just like they have been for twenty years or so, or really since 1978's Never Say Die, if you wanna get technical about it.

It's all good, right? But who'm I kidding: you'll hate this until it becomes back catalogue. Such has always been Ozzy's unique fate. Ozzy is for the children; grown-ups only get him when they start wishing they were children again. When the distance between Ozzy-as-we-now-understand-him and Black Rain arrives at an acceptable level, anyhow, do make a point of listening to "11 Silver," which sounds like a fascist rally, and "Lay Your World On Me," which is your standard cheese-gobbling slow-n-introspective Ozzy ballad, which happens to be exactly what the world needs more than anything right now, artificial echoes and all. And stick your fingers in your ears and hum during the verses of "The Almighty Dollar," because they're exactly the sort of bad-idea-Oz stuff that's shown up once or twice per album throughout Osbourne's solo career.

So, yeah. We're kind of approaching the last bridge from here to the unknown regions. Girded and ready to enter the realms of eternal shadow. We used to get hated on for liking Amorphis, because they weren't extreme like Darkthrone nor over-the-top like Manowar. Still, we dug the folkish lost total-immersion vibe. Along with so many of our outer-indie-inner-hesher peers (there ought to be a personality-type engine for this stuff, and there probably is, and it's probably been linked on a billion Livejournals), we've gone down various roads. My far reaches are goregrind, which, to be honest, is most of what I've listened to so far this summer. But this morning I put on the Aghora record.

Clean vocals? Oh yeah. They got a woman singing now, big gothy low-vibrato soaring stuff. Complex melodic song structures? Yes sir. Long-ass songs with extended drop-outs. Two-handed bass solos? Umm, yes. Fans of Umphrey's McGee and Dream Theater alike will find something to like on the Aghora record, though it's not as gee-whiz as the latter nor as postive-vibration as the former. Evil? Extremity? Token "out" qualities in the production, guitar tone, singing, image? No, no, no, no, no, and no. But dreamy instrumental segments that suggest a very stoned Al DiMiola in a progressive metal band? Yes.

Well, there, I've said the word. "Progressive," I mean. After a brief Genesis engagement in freshman year of high school, I, like every right-thinking young Lou Reed fan then on the planet, learned to shun anything that strayed beyond verse-chorus-verse. I clung to this longer than most, and didn't jibe with all the blunted instrumental explorations of the mid-nineties. While my indie peers were reaching for bongs and the vinyl edition of Millions Now Living, I remained a big ol' hater.

One grows out of all one's hater tendencies eventually - people who haven't gotten there yet should take my word for it: the day's coming when all that vibe will wash off you like dead skin. And although I still can't get behind long-Can-influenced-jams, yet I wondered while enjoying Aghora a lot on this early summer afternoon, floating along on its drifting-slow-leads crisp digital production*: why is it that the indie-gone-metal crowd isn't very interested in prog-metal?

I think it's the vocals, to be honest. All the prog-indie stuff of the late nineties wisely didn't go so far as to bring in proggy vocals and lyrics; when they did (Faust), they met with very limited success. Indie dudes do not want much to do with the proggy vocal style. Its artifice is extremely uncomfortable, since it's neither the of-course-it's-fake-you-big-dummy directness of pop nor the of-course-I'm-winking immersion of most indie-approved doom. Instead, it's kinda Lilith Fair After Midnight: engaged with its own tropes at too deep a level to allow anybody in who isn't willing to check their cool at the door.

It's an interesting subject, and I'm not trying to throw stones, just lift a couple of rocks and see what kinda bugs are crawling around underneath. Why doesn't technically accomplished, remarkably moody, gorgeously realized stuff like Aghora capture the interest of outsiders the way Mastodon's 'core-gone-prog leanings have, or the way arty black metal does? Is it something as simple as "I'd rather not have to look this stuff directly in the face"? Where are people drawing the line when it comes to their interest in metal, and why are they drawing the line there? Are people still keeping some skeletons in their closet: are there indie dudes who're waiting to confess that they dig Evanescence? Are people who love big spacey death metal guitar solos willing to branch out into even better solos when they occur within a fairy-princess-of-the-mountains sorta narrative framework?

I wonder, is all I'm saying. The new Aghora album is kinda great; certainly the guitar work is no-modifiers-needed great. I, too, am uncomfortable with the vocals, with this not-extreme/not-edgy/not-clever vibe. That may be part of what attracts me to it. At the end of the day - at the literal end of the day - I'm still going to be rocking some goregrind and feeling no pain. But I wonder why I'm probably the only indie guy listening to Aghora on a June afternoon. I wonder a little.

*by "crisp" do I mean "lifeless"? I don't know. Maybe a little. At the same time, music like this is well-suited to the sort of stark-relief presentation that I associate with recording and all-analog-instruments band on a digital rig. Room sounds are factored out, pure tone-for-its-own-sake is pushed through.

I'm not gonna write a whole big thing on it but you guys do realize that every song on the new Dizzee Rascal album is great, right?

Like, every damn song on it?

Just thought I'd mention it.