Nailbomb - Point Blank

To the best of my knowledge, Brazilian Metal Guitarist Max Cavalera has always been out of bubblegum. Taking names is probably not on his agenda either. I think everyone has at least heard of Sepultura, if not Soulfly, but in 1994 he collaborated with English Industrial musician Alex Newport to make quite possibly the only Industrial Thrash album ever. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's technically just Industrial Metal, but Thrash in particular doesn't play well with other genres. You wouldn't call the Metal component of Ministry or Die Krupps or even Fear Factory "Thrash." Anthrax with movie samples and electronic ambience would sound ridiculous. Rammstein doesn't have a single Thrash-type riff in their entire catalog, but Megadeth came within kicking distance a couple times on Countdown to Extinction (see Captive Honor and Architecture of Aggression for some very nearly Industrial quality Thrash riffage and psuedo sampling). Hardcore is really the bouillabaisse of Industrial Metal, so they're a bit like "you really shouldn't marry your cousin" genres. Maybe the closest thing to a proper compromise is Disturbed, believe it or not. Thankfully they're mostly Nü-Metal, in-breeding goes with the territory. Joking, joking, relax.

We've listened to a lot of infamous albums here on the Bottle Walks The Talk Show, but Point Blank is right up there with Death Grips's Exmilitary, Rotory Connection's Peace, and Acid Bath's When The Kite String Pops. When i say infamous i don't merely mean naked people on the cover, i mean people refusing to even mention it level censorship. That's much different than "no it sucks i won't even justify it by giving it a bad review" type censorship, that's at least honest in its dishonest prejudice, if that makes any sense.

I get it, i mean we're all just people in this messed up world, it's tough to hold up actual images from a war in which you might be the actual bad guy and try to sell it like the entertainment product it is, even ironically, but this album takes its uniqueness to a whole-nother-level. Not only is this Nailbomb's only studio album, they only played 1 live show ever, and they released that as their second and final album. Even i'm impressed.

The other crazy coincidence between Counting Days and Nailbomb is that they are highly critical of organized religion as authority. No shock, i am too. Organize what falls within the confines of your own religion to your heart's content, do not expect me to participate. Just so we're clear, the same applies to Nascar and Rodeo and Sports Team and Pokemon and the My Little Pony fan club. As in the unironic interpretation of the gospel of Paul Simon, i am a rock, i am an island. How i managed to squeeze Rowdy Roddy Piper, Paul Simon, and My Little Pony into a single Nailbomb review is anybody's guess, but here we are at actual listening time. Helmets on, full steam ahead.

Here's the tricky thing about "fascism." Fascism is any social structure led by an authoritatian dictator that supresses disagreement. According to that definition everybody's favorite polar opposites Hitler and Stalin were both "fascist." Trump and Putin are equally fascist. The Democrat and Republican parties are equally fascist. The Constitution of the United States of America is a fascist document. Corporations are fascist social structures. Government in all its multitude of conceptions is an inherently fascist social structure. "The Rule of Law" is a fascist concept. Can you see though, with all that laid out on the table, that Biden, Obama, Clinton, and oddly enough in a few select ways when you squint just right Papa Bush, were way less fascist than their respective counterparts?

I only bring it up because of the cover art and the decidedly Nixon-esque snafu it forces us to confront. It's complicated, but here are the relevant facts that we all need to understand. Vietnam was essentially a French colony up until WWII when Japan wanted to play "invaders keepers." The US, Russia, and China all said "like fuck that's gonna happen" and provided substantial military assistance to Ho Chi Minh. Everything looked like it might be fine until France came back to reclaim its landlordship like nothing had happened, and it all eventually snowballed into a US/Russia proxy war over who they ultimately pay their taxes to. Make no mistake, Kennedy's Cold War foriegn policy was still Truman and Eisenhower's foreign policy, Kennedy and Kruschev were not good pals on any level. Kennedy, for reasons which are understandable but still stupid was convinced that escalating the war in Vietnam was the only way for America to not look like a bunch of beer swilling morons about this whole Communism vs Capitalism thing, but we definitely shouldn't send American military to accomplish it, but South Vietnam couldn't war their way out of an open paper bag. He was warned that it would look a lot like the US was pretending to be France in the colonization department, but it all just kept escalating. I must reiterate, Kennedy wasn't some renegade maverick in the foreign policy department. He was sitting at his desk thinking "what's Marilyn doing tomorrow night? Is Russia's space program better than ours? Screw it, I like Ike, just do whatever he'd do in this situation."

Remember, we supported Ho Chi Minh, but now we're suddenly plotting to install a South Vietnamese puppet government to oppose him. After Kennedy was murdered, Johnson, who basically hadn't been invited to anything Vietnam related ever, said "we have to destroy those commie bastards at all cost." To be fair, Johnson wholeheartedly believe the "domino theory" for right or wrong, but Nixon defeated him in large part by claiming he had a "secret strategy to end the war." The result is that imaginary fever-dream of a thing you might have heard of, the concept of "the silent majority" who in this particular fever dream somehow desperately wanted way more war in Vietnam. Nixon's actual plan was to say "hey Russia and China, we'll stop fighting this war if you do." With the official publication of The Pentagon Papers we all learned that A) Johnson had been lying about how swell it was going like everyone already thought, B) the Vietcong had pretty much total control of everywhere, and C) Nixon's plan was just "the madman theory" coupled with exactly like i said "hey Russia and China, we'll stop fighting if you do." When that clearly didn't work, Nixon then upped the super secret bombing campaigns and escalated the fighting even more. Then he quickly pulled forces out and left South Vietnam with a bunch of tanks they couldn't afford the gasoline to use, hence the more recently familiar criticism of Biden's withdrawl from Afghanistan. Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam all fell to communist regimes, and we are still paying for a war that even Reagan in 1978 had to acknowledge the vast majority of Americans felt was "fundamentally wrong and immoral."

And that's just the cover art depicting an Amrican soldier holding a Vietcong woman at gunpoint. My bias is of course if we're having a war at all then everyone is some version of wrong, but let's actually get to the songs.

"Carve your rights into your arm so they won't get taken away." Pretty self explanatory, that one.

"... 31 flavors of napalm to try...." i'll let you translate "vai toma no cū" for yourself. Not a song a fascist regime would tolerate.

They hate TV broadcast consumerist propaganda? I hate TV broadcast consumerist propaganda! Good stuff.

Guerillas is basically Anti Flag's Die For Your Government (that's shit).

Never learn, follow the leader, have to fit in, where's your mind? Again, self explanatory.

Sum of Your Achievements is definitely the most Ministry of anything so far.

Cockroaches could legit be a Helmet song. Not even joking, even down to the snare drum sound and the sludgy bass guitar tone, it's straight up Helmet except for the sample from Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer.

I won't run down side b, these songs are very straightforward and every Industrial Metal fan should have this masterpiece in his/her collection. I don't really know what to say, this is just pure joy to my ears. I joked that Metallica's Kill 'Em All was like lullaby music for me, but this is my kind of Easy Listening, it's totally approachable and immediately understandable. Much more obvious KMFDM vibes across side b, especially Religious Cancer, but the whole side is much more beat oriented than guitar oriented like side A, but Sick Life closes out the album with a very clear Biohazard-like Hardcore vibe.

I get that people can absolutely hate this, but i'm really only imagining what it's like to actually hate it. This is my naturally intuitive musical universe, it just makes complete sense at a fundamental level. The album is extremely challenging concept wise, but musically speaking the guy holding an assault rifle to your head is not a good guy by any objective standards. Sure, sometimes you have to do bad and regrettable things in the name of a larger cause, but if you aren't questioning the validity of that larger cause then you might be a conformist zombie on the verge of having no humanity left. At the end of the day, what started as defending a communist country from a fascist imperial invasion turned into a purely political proxy war without consulting or caring what the people who lived there actually wanted. They wanted to be left alone, they didn't want to be murdered and raped and bombed by anybody, but yet there we were with our nerve gas and flaming jello, then blocking their admittance into NATO afterward. In the end, the only good guys seemed to be the ones adamantly refusing to participate in the first place.

Don't worry, the next few albums can't possibly be as complicated as this one, but i sure do appreciate you making it all the way to the end of this one. G'night everybody, you've earned it.

Thursday/Envy