Skullflower
 

ive bought a big 2cd thing of his music today, what do you all think of them?

they fucking rock!

yes im sure it does, but how does it rock?

with a vengeance.

I saw them at colour out of space a couple of years back (I went because of the moore/nace/corsano trio - which was fucking ace). skullflower were heavy as fuck, proper evil avant rock, none of this fannying about trying to be clever, just bucketfuls of swirling evil, evil rock noise. loved 'em.

Matthew Bower is god.
I just bought Carved Into Roses last week. My favourite Skullflower albums that I've heard are IIIrd Gatekeeper, Infinityland and Obsidian Shaking Codex. edit: Form Destroyer is a good one too.

Also check out his other projects. Sunroof! is probably my favourite outside Skullflower (I can recommmend Bliss and Cloudz, both available for cheap from the VHF site).

I've yet to hear his latest band, Voltigeurs.

the latest album, Malediction I just added as one of my favs of 2010...

i saw him spit blue paint on a crucifix in a church.

Gatekeeper is unbeatable

Skullflower’s Patterns Of Predjudice

At the end of last week, Skullflower was dropped from the Raw Power festival. People started noticing over the weekend and a social media meltdown insued.

The article mentions 39 Skullflower albums, I’m familiar with four of them. I discovered Skullflower via compilations......back when there were no blogs or social media and meltdowns didn’t occur.

Skullflower was censored. Of course, this is in England, the dying nation where you go to jail for calling a man "he".

Acid Mothers Temple will provide a safe "avante-gardey" experience that people can put on their snapshit to show they had a weird experience, safely commodified.

As soon as I saw Tesla had posted here I knew it was going to be something entertaining.

England is looking like a dying nation, but not for the reasons you're arguing.

And yeah, censorship is bad and artists can be provocative. But I'm sure (more like hoping) you'll agree that Nazis are bad. And when you have Nazi symbols in your house, name songs after Nazi websites and talk about needing a weeding out, and perform with openly fascist bands, well...

tesla you remain one of the most dull idiots I’ve ever had the pleasure of coming across. keep posting, it’s great for my self esteem.



it’s been alluded to for a really long time that bower is a piece of shit, I think I remember reading an interview with Marcia Bassett where she subtly implied that he was abusive/had a pattern of really problematic behaviour. a shame considering he makes some great music (skullflower always seemed really on the nose but hototogisu/sun roof put out some excellent stuff) but when iconography/ideology become a foundational part of your aesthetic (which in this case is 100% of his music) it really raises some questions as to culpability on the part of the listener.

Is he any worse than Burzum, whose politics are arguably even more extreme than Bowers and whose music gets a lot of love from some posters here.

Indeed.
There does seem to have been a migration over the years, but to my knowledge no arson or murder yet.
Bower's music is not going to be less important to me going forward. It already exists and has been a sonic touchstone way too long.
And, if Burzum is to be a comparison, personalities aside, neither of these are "political" bands as artistic statement goes. Bower's interviews haven't even been that way, which can't be said of Varg.

John Lennon was a spouse abuser.
David Bowie had a known underage relationship.
The list goes on and on.

Banshees, Stooges, pistols all wore swastikas in photos back when....

Burzum wasn't booked to play Raw Power. And what is the point of comparing them anyway?

As far as Raw Power goes, it's a private event and they get to add or remove anyone they want for any reason.

My understanding was that was to piss of the older generation though, not for political reasons. And they all stopped when they realised how dumb it was.

True enough, but there was a giant piece of privilege involved in minority narratives being even less visible at that time because there were certainly more Holocaust survivors alive at that time and it was even fresher. lots of people in early power electronics used that imagery and stopped the practice and disavow it now, which seems sensible. However, other people have made genuine changes and still can't live down activities they were involved with for very short times in their younger years. Tony wakeford seems a prime example of this.
It does seem however that using provocative imagery for the sake of provocation it's just not something that will fly anymore and is best avoided unless you're actually being serious and not provocative, in which case you've made your choice and you need to live with it.

I guess I'm just saying it's a little mystifying who gets a pass and who doesn't, and for what. And who gets to live stuff down and who doesn't, and for how long. This goes for both legitimate and overblown claims alike.

Yeah but nobody talked about that kind priviledge in the 70s. They were dumb kids who wised up pretty fast. I mean if we were teenagers in 1976 who knows what we would have done.... especially you.

True enough. It does seem that some people get to live down their youth and others don't though. I do know that I have ceased a few imagery and fashion things because it definitely makes people misjudge me and I've seen it hurt people that I know enough not to engage in certain trappings just because they are interesting in an occult way or were fascinating for one reason or another. I have never been a right-wing person and I don't really need to invite headaches when I can engage any number of interest and be artistically satisfied. I don't like this era of litmus tests and I do think the art and the artist can be separated if the art is non political in nature, but this is not really a time for expecting nuanced thinking out of people. Given the state of the world, ambiguity and such are not really a great path to take these days.

It seems to work on how much of your fanbase gives a shit, and if there are enough of them for you to carry on regardless, e.g. Morrissey.

Another primo example. There are more than a few. But he's a great one.

That's why I had not be facebook friends with colleagues anymore.

Pity he's gone off the deep end. I remember seeing Neil Campbell from Vibracathedral pointing out Bowers's Brexit rant a few years back. It seems to have been an open secret in that scene that Bowers is probably a fascist sympathizer.

Whst did he say about Brexit?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Bower

On a side note, read to the bottom of the skullflower section. Mutant Ape used to post here, eons ago. I wonder if he's a nazi too.

Boyd Rice, John Zewizz and Douglas P all come to mind. I don’t believe any of the three are very active on social media, which might be the biggest difference?

Boyd rice is actually reasonably active on Instagram, believe it or not.

Yeah and he's clearly a pathetic old man trying to squeeze his fat fascist ass into skinny jeans

Anyone wanna buy my Skullflower CDs? I've got the one that goes ZZZZTTTT SCREEEEEEEEEEEE BZZZZZZTTTTTTTt

Do you follow any other white supremacists on Instagram?

Not to my knowledge, since I'm not into Morrissey's solo career.

I really liked the black metal band benighted leams and i found out that guy is really far out in terms of right wing politics to the point of being actually scary, it's a shame because the guy is also a very talented painter.

I knew Varg was a scum bag but I still bought a couple of Burzum records, which isn't sonething i would do now. Also the guy is a total lunatic (who would have guessed a guy who murdered his friend to prove he was more evil than him was a lunatic?) if his youtube video diaries are anything to go by.

I bizarrely found a Sunroof! album for sale in a local charity shop over the weekend, sandwiched between Travis and Will Young CDs! This was such a weird finding that I just assumed it was donated by someone locally who had second thoughts about owning Bower's music after recent accusations. I was then faced with the dilemma of whether or not I should buy an album made by someone whose views I find deplorable, but ended up buying the album anyway for a whopping £1 which went to the British Heart Foundation.