Brighter Death Now / Lille Roger / Bomb The Daynursery / Roger Karmanik

[cr]

There are some threads with CMI topic and it's rise and fall, and rising again, but not one about Mr. Karmaniks' musical works itself (at least I couldn't find one)
Got the Bomb the Daynursery box and watched  BDN live two weeks ago. Great, really fucking good! Thanks to Roger and Lina  B. Doll for still doing this!
So let's discuss BDN and CMI and everything related!
Cheers!

[theworldisawarfilm]

Huge fan of the 'Great Death' releases, which were my initial exposure to BDN. Fond of a lot of their material but those remain my favourites by a long shot and I've been revisiting them over the past two weeks--sounding better than ever!

[FreakAnimalFinland]

Bomb The Daynursery LP box, damn that is great! I had never heard these tapes, and had no expectation what type of sound there could be. Maybe Lille Roger type? Maybe Brighter Death Now? Of course, there is little of both. Like Karmanik said in interview, that he was always curious of people starting projects and changing style with intent. Like having project that plays X style, then project that plays Y, and so on. He said that he can only create what he creates. It is not decision what he aims to do, but result of doing art and it always becomes this way.

Bomb The Daynursery is the most crude, most primitive, and perhaps even technically most simplistic, but at the same time there is variation. It is not so uniform as Pain In Progress or Innerwar or Great Death or other masterpieces that have this monochrome singleminded vision. Early tapes might have just tapedeck+pause button type of experiments, broken records on turntable, all sorts of no-tech industrial noise, and that makes it so good for me. I was told this LP box can be found even from Spotify, so those using streaming services can listen there. I'd say vinyl box is well worth money if you are drawn towards ultra primitivist industrial noise.

[Phenol]

I have been a BDN fanboy for many many years. I like the "ambient" approach the most, and find little fault with anything from Pain In Progress to and including Necrose Evangelicum. I can't really pick a favourite between those, it changes with the days. Innerwar and May All be Dead are great too, but not quite as good, I think. After that, I don't really listen to any of it. I have bought all the releases, listened to them a couple of times, then just archived them. That is often the case with old bands. You listen to their new album, think "not too bad, but no new classic" and that's it. Same with Death In June and Current 93 for me. Bands I used to eagerly collect but their records are now just sitting on the shelf apart from the classics which get the occasional spin. I am happy that Roger is still touring though, and for that reason alone it is good that he still makes new music. It is a bit lame when bands tour without any new output. The Primitive Perversions box was a hard listen for me, so amateurish, but interesting to see some of the seeds of what would become great over time. I doubt if I will ever put any of the LPs on a gain though. The Lille Roger box was way better and has a lot of classic material, but also material that i had never heard except for old mp3 rips. The sound quality is way better than on the old Lille Roger CD on CMI.

The CMI label was hugely influential on me as a teenager, so I can't really be objective here. Pretty much everything they released from the beginning until c. 2000 was pure gold, even the more synth cheesy stuff like the various Mortiis and Raison D'etre side-projects. Only band from that period I have never become friends with is Sanctum. After 2000 CMI coulnd't really keep up, but some good things such as IRM was still released. CMI was a particular era for me, and remain close to my heart.

[post-morten]

Back in 93-94 I started to go to the town of Linköping on a regular basis for my job. I had discovered CMI a year before or so, and on one of my trips I mobilized the courage to seek out the address given on the album covers, which turned out do be an apartment building. I found the door to the Karmanik residence and rang the bell. One of the kids opened and I asked for his dad. Roger came out and I sheepishly asked if he had any records to sell. I can only imagine his perplexity, but he was super nice and explained he didn't have any at home but I could join him to his office/warehouse. So we went down to the nearby basement space he rented back then. I remember buying ISN "Enter Now the World", Memorandum "Aux Morts", and the BDN "Great Death" 2CD box set that had just come out at that point. All remain huge favorites from the label's roster.

From then and on I made a point of always dropping by the CMI HQ to pick up the latest releases when in town. A few years down the road Roger also had a proper store for a while, with "Lina Baby Doll" often manning the counter. I avidly collected their output and I think I have pretty much every release up until CMI.150 or so. Back then it wasn't too difficult to fill the gaps from the label's first years, and I managed to track down the early tapes, 7"s, and even the Debauch VHS for relatively modest sums. Internet (long before www) became a vital source with Usenet newsgroups like rec.music.industrial and the coldmeat-l mailing list that had recently started. In cyberspace I befriended likeminded CMI aficionados such as Jason of Malignant, Mason Jones over at Charnel House, and Ares that ran the Eskhatos zine. Those were very exciting years.

As for BDN, even though I'm very partial to the Great Death series, for me the pinnacle is May All Be Dead. Roger's Crass influence came out just perfect in that release.

[accidental]

Back in 93-94 I started to go to the town of Linköping on a regular basis for my job. I had discovered CMI a year before or so, and on one of my trips I mobilized the courage to seek out the address given on the album covers, which turned out do be an apartment building. I found the door to the Karmanik residence and rang the bell. One of the kids opened and I asked for his dad. Roger came out and I sheepishly asked if he had any records to sell. I can only imagine his perplexity, but he was super nice and explained he didn't have any at home but I could join him to his office/warehouse.

That's a nice story! And to put your visit and the shop in it's proper context one should read this article:
http://www.bardomethodology.com/articles/2021/09/01/cold-meat-industry-roger-karmanik-brighter-death-now-interview/

Never listened to BDN or much CMI. But recently i picked up Great Death and Pain in Progress LP to see what the praise was about. I listened to them in reverse chronological order. i think the LP re-release of Pain In Progress, when having listened to Great Death prior, is not very exciting. Partly due to the bonus tracks and using some of the same material as on Great Death.

How different is May All Be Dead from Great Death?

[FreakAnimalFinland]

How different is May All Be Dead from Great Death?

While BDN is always dark in a way, May All Be Dead is less of that? Perhaps the Crass style package itself makes one to associate it with wilder approach?

[post-morten]

How different is May All Be Dead from Great Death?

Quite a bit I'd say. From my point of view, BDN is basically about pain, paranoia, anger - Roger fighting his inner demons through the music. Album titles such as "Pain In Progress" and "Innerwar" are really clues to what it's all about.

"May All Be Dead" is different beast. Instead of internalizing his battle, Roger turned outwards. The pain and anger are substituted for hatred and aggression. Instead of the trademarked dark, brooding, punishing atmospheres there's more of a punkish in-your-face attitude that goes beyond the cover design and permeats the tracks. That's how I see and hear it at least.

[Phenol]

As others have said "May All Be Dead" is more punky and in your face than previous albums, not unlike more recent albums (but better). The power electronics influence is also pretty strong on it and on Innerwar, and it has more rythmic elements than earlier releases. Not bad at all, by any means, I just enjoy the bleaker less rythmic output of BDN slightly more. I think the new one is actually the best in years, and certainly the best since BDN "returned". I think people should pay more attention to Slaughterhouse than they generally do, by the way, it hardly ever gets mentioned despite being a bleak and minimalist death industrial masterpiece.

[Zeno Marx]

Necrose Evangelicum is my go-to album, and really, the only one I ever think to play.  I don't go to BDN for my death industrial fix.  Some of the new stuff is good, like "Love Hard" from Everything is gonna be Alright (2022).  I'm not as well acquainted with the newer releases, but I might prefer them over most of the old. May All be Dead (1998) and "All Too Bad - Bad To All" (2021) kept my attention.

[Strömkarlen]

Back in 93-94 I started to go to the town of Linköping on a regular basis for my job. I had discovered CMI a year before or so, and on one of my trips I mobilized the courage to seek out the address given on the album covers, which turned out do be an apartment building. I found the door to the Karmanik residence and rang the bell. One of the kids opened and I asked for his dad. Roger came out and I sheepishly asked if he had any records to sell. I can only imagine his perplexity, but he was super nice and explained he didn't have any at home but I could join him to his office/warehouse.

You weren't the only one... I used to drop by from -88 and forward. Fondly remembering dropping by the basement office and seeing 10 or more Zyklon B boxes in the window. Think he might have had some trouble if that had been today.

[Phenol]

I like your Roger/CMI anecdotes and would like to keep this thread going a little more - so this "bump" is kind of an attempt at that. I got to see BDN 3 times this spring and all of them were great. The material really comes alive with Roger's stage persona.

Now, some observations about the metal heads who often go to these kinds of shows and have no fucking clue about what they're in for. At two of the gigs, which were in Denmark together with Of The Wand And The Moon, the audience simply left when they found out what BDN was all about. People in metal shirts who couldn't take the heat, fucking hilarious! It is kind of funny since CMI had a lot of crossover with the metal scene back in the day, mostly because of Mortiis, Aghast and MZ 412 probably, while Roger always hated all things metal. Anyway, I find it funny that the metal heads, looking much meaner than most of the industrial/noiseheads, couldn't take BDN even though they have a rather structured and rythmical approach that should talk to the more rock-oriented segment. Some reviews really revealed that these people were clueless about industrial music, saying stuff like "in some of the songs they were ajusting their pedals, they probably felt like that was needed" (quoted from memory). Ignorant shit like that makes me wish for fucking genre-segregation (kidding, kind of...but come on, speak about being ignorant about industrial)! It kind of maybe merits its own thread, but should metal people just get the fuck out of the industrial scene? I can mention less than 5 artists or so with a metal background who are able to make good industrial and vice versa...there might be more, but I'm sure you get what I'm getting at...

Lastly, the best show so far for me this year was BDN at the OEC fest in Pordenone, actually, all gigs were good that night, but BDN stole the show! That just shows that Roger and co. are still a force to be reckoned with in the industrial scene. I am also very much looking forward to the CMI festival in November where a few bands will be crossed off my must see-list. Nothing new happening, really, no upcoming bands or anything that pushes anything forward, I know, but I'm kind of psyched to finally see some of these old bands that I adored as a teenager live on a stage.

Sorry for ranting, must be the heat.

[Goat93]

Actualy CMI were one of the Biggest Labels, who SELLS the Stuff into the Metal Scene. There were a lot of Noise/industrial Connections in the (Black Metal) Scene from the 90ties.

I was in Oberhausen on that OFWATM / BDN Tour and most People left after OTWATM, cause they had to work next Day. Its fucking Folk Music and not Metal at all. Besides the Singer comes also from a Metal Background, its not linked much more to Metal than BDN.

[Phenol]

Actualy CMI were one of the Biggest Labels, who SELLS the Stuff into the Metal Scene. There were a lot of Noise/industrial Connections in the (Black Metal) Scene from the 90ties.

I was in Oberhausen on that OFWATM / BDN Tour and most People left after OTWATM, cause they had to work next Day. Its fucking Folk Music and not Metal at all. Besides the Singer comes also from a Metal Background, its not linked much more to Metal than BDN.

That's hardly news to anyone. What's slightly amusing is the idea that once you're metal you never get out - endless support for OTWATM in metal circles, same for Ulver f.ex. although they haven't made metal in more than 20 years. CMI did indeed sell a lot of industrial to the metal people, although I doubt most of them bought the more hard hitting stuff. Anyway, I started a new topic for that and related discussions as it might be relevant to talk about on it's own without a direct link to Roger and CMI.

[Goat93]

Actualy i don't get your idea about Separate Scenes and excluding them. OFWATM don't get Metal Support cause of his involvement in a Band. He got support, cause the People like his Music (i know its still not believable). Metal is one of the biggest Trends in the last Years, so no wonder People running around in Shirts.


But for an idea:

Nuclear War Now

just saying.....