Unsolicited Recommendations 4
After an undeserved yet still taken break, I have got some more unsolicited recommendations for all of you good boys and girls. If Santa gave you coal, you're hereby invited to stop reading. Santa is the great moral arbiter of our time. The Greeks had Themis, the Romans had Justitia, the Egyptians had Maat and Anubis, the Hindus have Durga, and we, we have Santa. Anyway, rambling aside, here come the recommendations.
Crone- Gotta Light?
Being informed Secrets of the Moon would stop existing after Party-San, I was both saddened and somewhat unsurprised. The change from Black-Extreme Metal to Gothic Rock with some Black Metal leanings was so drastic that their 2015 and onwards crowd and their 1995 crowd were almost completely unrelated. I personally adore both sides of the equation, but I think the name represented an entity that has functionally stopped existing a couple of years ago already.
That being said, I made sure not to take my eyes off sG (Philipp Jonas) and his other band-turned-main band, Crone. Their 2022 album, eventually entitled "Gotta Light?", would be, for better or worse, massively influential on the band's future. Oh well, good thing that it's an awesome and deeply confrontational album then.
Good thing indeed. While Crone existed since 2011 and have undoubtedly already found their footing, "Gotta Light?" is their best album so far. It might have the word light in the title, but don't let that fool you- it's more fucking depressing than getting shot on your birthday. In the rain. By Jonas Renske of Katatonia. sG's mournful, almost lost, vocals and the band's drift from cleaner guitar and piano sections to darker, more distorted pathways make this album feel like a journey. The light, for all its brightness, feels like dawn after a flood.
2. HBO's Rome
Before Game of Thrones, how could you get that sweet "violence in movies and sex on TV" all in one place? That's right by putting a movie screen and a TV screen and doing some scandalous shit in the room. But barring that, you had one of HBO's best shows, Rome.
While I'm not disputing the quality of HBO's recent releases, I think Rome's age and relatively short run has people sleeping on it and that's a shame. A more lively and vivid depiction of the Julius- Augustus period would be hard to come by. The cast has that LOTR quality that while you probably haven't heard of them, (I sure didn't,) you cannot easily mentally dissociate them from their roles here. Ciarán Hinds, Irish actor and man I was genuinely surprised to find out isn't Alfred Molina, is still, after 15 years, the face of Julius Caeser in my mind
The dynamic of moving between the legendary figures and the populous lets the show tell interesting stories on both the macro and the micro levels. An episode or two in, the stories of Titus Pullo (Ray Stevenson) and Lucius Vorenus (Kevin McKidd) become just as interesting as the bigger historical events on display.
The only drawback is that the show was discontinued after two seasons because it was super expensive to make, but while it lasted it was glorious.
The Apology of Caligula
Blood is blood whether it’s shameful or proud
And you best be sure it is parceled and met out
Lest I grow upset
My name is Gaius Augustus Germanicus, Caligula for short
The horned devil who steals for pleasure and murders for sport
It’s your honor to be in my behest
But you should know better
2,000 years and you haven’t learned a thing
It’s about he who dies in poverty and powerless
That poets beatify and sing
Yes I wanted power, every minute and every hour
The only meat never to sour,
But for that you would poke your finger at me?
They say I planned to make a consul of Incitatus
Believe me, I was surrounded by so many murderous bastards
I should have done so more expediently
And I, emperor
You, a mere student, laugh in giddy joy
But I had an empire of millions, all I could’ve wanted
Prey tell, who of us is the man and who’s the boy?
And you compare these paupers to me
Who fly between groups of plebeians so diligently
Not even to me but to this cartoonish effigy
My horse commended far more respect than you or your scrutiny