As racist, woman-hating fantasy writer Vox Day (aka Theodore Beale) likes to remind people, he was kind of a big deal in the industrial dance music scene back in the day, with three Billboard Club Hits to his name.
Well, sort of. Beale — he wasn’t known as Vox back then — was briefly a member of a largely forgotten industrial dance group called Psykosonik in the early nineties.
Now, I was listening to a lot of industrial dance music back in those days, and was particularly enamored of the label (Wax Trax!) that Psykosonik was on. Yet somehow I never noticed them.
Listening to their first album today — the one that Beale was involved in — I can see why. Musically, they’re a peppy, if highly derivative, mix of industrial and rave, at times sounding a bit like the Shamen or Pop Will Eat Itself or even, unbelievably, EMF.
The trouble comes when the group’s vocalist opens his mouth to sing or, even worse, to rap some of the most cringeworthy lyrics I’ve encountered since I listened to this. The bassy “rapping” in their song “Acid Hammer” is on a par with the rapping in Aqua’s “Barbie Girl,” except that Aqua was in on the joke, and Psykosonik clearly wasn’t.
And that’s where Mr. Beale comes in, because a lot of these very very serious, very very terrible lyrics are his. Psykosonik seems to have been built largely around two guys — Paul Sebastien (vocals, lyrics, music) and Daniel Lenz (music). Beale, a member for only two years, is credited by Wikipedia as being responsible for “composition, lyrics.”
So let’s take a look at some of them, shall we? The lyrics below, which I found on Lyrics Wikia, are excerpted from songs he’s credited with co-writing; click on the titles to see more.
Fractals fusing, brain abusing
Drink your smart drug, find illusion
Ride the air on an angel’s dare
Mandlebrots fly everywhere
Illusion the solution
You will find your absolution
Within silicon, in silicon, in me
Mondo rave, magnetic wave
Cyberbaby, my love slave
Computational attractivity
New world networked connectivity
Down to the ground, down to the ground
Social entropy is reigning today
Burn it down, burn it down, burn it down, down to the ground
A generation’s coming your way
Feel your heart explode with lust
Vacationers, this one’s a must
If you choose to take this drug
You will feel your libido erupt ….If you choose to lick my brain
Use your tongue to taste the same
Feel the acid reign
Servitude is in the mind, a death in life
Don’t be confused by the terms of Left and Right
Statism is statism, by any name the same
Apathy is suicide and we will bear the blame …Huge berserk rebel warthog error
Zeroboys unleash domestic terror
Jack it in and burn the data
Violence a religion they can relate to
Now, it’s not completely clear from the scanty info I’ve found if Beale wrote all of these lyrics by himself — Wikipedia also lists Sebastien as being responsible for lyrics — but quite a few of them have the stink of Beale about them. I mean, “social entropy,” “statism is statism?”
Oh, and that bizarre bit about the “huge berserk rebel warthog?” That may be Beale’s only bit of cleverness. After puzzling over it a bit, and listening to that part of the song over and over to make sure that was really what was being said, I put the phrase into Google and discovered that it’s an anagram for George Herbert Walker Bush.
If you want to listen to any of these songs — and really, they’re not bad, if you can manage to ignore the awful lyrics — you can find the whole album here.
And here’s the video for their single “Welcome to My Mind,” which features Mr. Beale’s rotating head.
“unbelievably, EMF”
Nice one!
“Mandlebrots fly everywhere?”
Sounds like a windy day at the bakery.
Oh dear.
What the everloving fuck is a “mandlebrot”?
Welcome to My Mind is not bad, but not good. It’s kinda like the music you’d find in TV shows and cartoons that they made explicitly for the show so they wouldn’t have to pay royalties, but with slightly better lyrics.
Probably the visualization of the Mandelbrot set, given the reference to fractals.
@Paradoxical Intention
I was curious too, but it turned out Mandlebrot is some sort of math stuff.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandelbrot_set
Hahaha, that’s hilarious.
And the singer seems to say ‘Man bros fly everywhere’.
(@Paradoxical – a Mandlebrot is a type of fractal: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandelbrot_set)
The Rap(?) style vocals owe a lot to Meat Beat Manifesto. Hell Psykosonic owe a lot to MBM. You are better off listening to Satyricon or 99% than any of this.
This may be the most 90’s thing I ever watched.
Dammit, now I want to changing my name to Flying Mandelbrot. Curse you, Beale et al.! *shakes fist*
Besides being the name of a mathematician and his signature fractal set, a mandelbrot is also a very tasty looking cookie. I’m delighted by all the above meanings.
@Flying Mouse
Whoa, I’d never heard of the Mandlebrot cookie! Martha Stewart says it comes from the German words for “almond” (mandel) and “bread” (brot).
Maybe Vox was imagining a big pack of cookies flying everywhere.
In the early 90s raver types were obsessed with fractals. Though evidently Mr. Sebastien wasn’t obsessed enough to learn how to pronounce Mandlebrot’s name correctly. (The t isn’t silent.)
You see what happens when straights try to make dance music? Oh, and “Down On The Ground” samples Depeche Mode.
“…really, they’re not bad, if you can manage to ignore the awful lyrics.”
LIES. That band shit up like half of all industrial compilations issued during their run (SOURCE: DEFINITELY not me, I was way too cool and normal to be into that shit). I know and remember them well enough to hate their fucking guts (still!). Now that I know Vox Day is partially responsible for them, I can merge the entries, and maintain a shorter list of people to loathe.
Obligatory, and I hope no one beats me to this, but:
(Fun factoid: I used to mishear the chorus as “You’re ugly, boy”. Misandry!)
@MaudeLL – It’s too bad that the group didn’t stay together. When they toured they could have had a whole “Rocky Horror Picture Show” thing going on. Fans could throw cookies (up in the air, not at the stage, safety first!) during “Welcome to My Mind.”
Mandelbrot is the most stereotypical of fractals. It’s the fractal other fractals think of when they think of fractals.
Why couldn’t he have chosen a less obvious one? Like the Sierpenski carpet. Built in joke about flying carpets, dude, and you missed it.
Or the Boundary of the Tame Twindragon! Or just the Twindragon Curve’s boundary! Or there’s a Dragon Curve boundary that’s fractally amazing. Or the Golden Dragon which is so pretty.
THERE ARE SO MANY FRACTALS, DUDE! Including ones that have a legit reason to fly.
But no, let’s have some flying mandelbrot.
“Why couldn’t he have chosen a less obvious one?”
Maybe they’re *set* in their ways!
*Ba-dum-tish*
Thank you. I’m in town all week. Try the veal.
Nope and NOPE.
If “statism” is so bad, move to Somalia. See how long you last.
I spent a good amount of my misspent College years listening to Wax Trax artists, but Vox’s band doesn’t ring a bell. If they’re on a Wax Trax compilation I would have heard them at some point. I was a bigger Touch & Go fan so, despite my music geek past, I’m ok with not recalling the race realist’s Techno past.
Obviously Al Jougensen was involved with thr most memorable Wax Trax releases but I danced to this Front 242 song a ridiculous amount of times.
http://youtu.be/m1cRGVaJF7Y
Thanks for the definitions everyone! Though, the “almond bread” is far more interesting to me than the fractals. (Sorry math junkies, i’m not cut out to be one of you.)
Including the Koch snowflake.
Fractal visualizations are pretty cool, though.
Koch snowflake