We have now found ourselves at a low ebb, a trough if you will, of giveashitology., That is to say, I specifically. Not sure about everyone else.
I sit on my ass in a quiet shop that’s going nowhere in a city that’s going nowhere observing profound events happening elsewhere in the world and many opinionators opining on them, and there’s absolutely sweet fuck all I can do about it nor is there really any way that it practically affects my day-to-day life. The exception maybe being Tusks Eurofaggot coup attempt in Poland affecting the wellbeing of my ancestral land and my family there.
Be nice to the ladies at the supermarket checkout as well as anyone who represents my landlord, workplace, or assistants in means of transportation, is about the main rules of existence.
If there’s one serious gripe I wish to highlight about the world today it’s the screen zombies. Everytime you decide to be a screen zombie out in public you are destroying life on this planet. It’s as simple as that.
For those that are sick of the blaring bright screens around them and wish to mitigate the problem on their own devices I recommend;
-night-mode to be switch on permanently in settings. set it to being on 24/7 and turn up the warm/yellow light to maximum.
-turn down screen brightness. But become familiar with how to turn it up again as you basically won’t be able to see your screen if outside.
-Use the Brave app for web browsing on your phone and turn on night mode in it’s settings. This inverts website colour schemes to be light text on a dark background, reducing the mount of artificial white light beaming into your eyeballs and ruining your sight.
-stare out the window as much as possible into long horizons.
-for laptop and desktop devices download dark reader (it costs $15AUD as a one-time prchase for each device you wish to use it on). This also inverts the colours, reducing the bright light (Brave does not have an inbuilt dark-mode in its laptop/desktop version). Once installed, you can go into settings and have a dark-reader icon pinned next to your search bar (ask Brave Ai how if you can’t figure it out). You’ll find it easier to have the icon visible as sometimes you will have to toggle it off to see some click buttons and chat-boxes in certain websites.
-Look scornfully and condescendingly at all scren zombies you see in public. Look sympathetically at fellow travellers who are just trying to stare at reality or outside the window. Look admirbly upon people who are reading paper books and other hard-printed artifacts.
Speak ill of all screen zombies at evry opportunity, admonish them if you know them personally, and report them if they are doing anything superstupid like screen-gazing while driving on the road.
Hopefully this advice makes the world a better place somehow.
Musical Component: Halloween Special (even though I tend toward the spooky themes anyway).
The band I wish to discuss today is an Australian one. They have spent a career spanning nearly 40 years now (off and on) in the fine genre of Thrash Metal.
They are called Mortal Sin. And on this Halloweeny of weeks (Happy Birthday to me aswell on the 22nd), they seem as good a topic as any to discuss. And sometimes I wonder if I’m not patriotic and white-pilling enough of tis fair parched land that I was born (but not conceived) in. And somehow I never paid attention to this group, but they are actually quite good. I wouldn’t waste my time writing about someone who’s creative work I didn’t like.
I do like this.
I’m trawling through the back catalogue now. Fans are divided on their best work. The safe option seems to be their frst album Mayhemic Destruction as it is straight-up thrash in the Testament/Anthrax/Exodus vein. (And the cartoon I did above is a tribute to the cover art which featured some cartoon devil glaring evilly over sin-city’s iconic Harbour Bridge and Opera House.)
But I have to say my favourite so far is the second album: Face Of Despair, released in 1988, and recorded in Sydney, NSW, here in Oz. The lineup for this one was:
Mat Maurer - vocals
Paul Carwana - guitar
Mick Burke - guitar
Andy Eftichiou - bass
Wayne Campbell - drums
It’s a fairly disturbing and unseemly cover, and I hope it didn’t inspire any bad acts of a truly criminal nature. But they probably motivated some minor truancy, as was the way of the listeners of this genre back then.
The band might’ve had a hand in their own wikipedia page, so I dont know how that influences the telling of events. But one critic who liked their debut album Mayhemic Destruction didnt think much of Face Of despair, though other critics seem to think its great and their career pinnacle.
There’s been a revolving door of members with a regularity and insensitivity that seems borderline comical.
AThere is also a bit of tragedy in there tale. The founding drummer and one of the key creative forces of the group and its surrounding scene for the first 20 years, Wayne Campbell, has apparently been a missing person since August of 2022. The NSW coroner ruled in 2025 that he was considered deceased. He just basically vanished one night while out of the house, after earlier having what seemed to be a psychotic episode according to his home CCTV, and there was no further trace of him. He left behind two kids, who both seem of adult age whom he had some kind of estranged relationship from after his long-term relationship with their mum broke down. And he seemed to live a fairly misfortunate and hapless life outside of the band, which stands out glaringly as a major creative triumph, though he was involved with another metal band or two and the local scene in general.
I’d say overall though , Wayne and his bandmates (Mat Maurer and Andy Eftichiou have been the other mostly-permanent members) have left behind an artistic legacy that any self-respecting group would take great pride in. Because we Australians these days really suck at singing our own praises or praising one anothers good work, I fear it’s in danger of being forgotten when it doesn’t really deserve to be.
Also featured in the band briefly was another Australian metal pioneer and eventual comedian, Steve Hughes. His work runs around themes of political correctness and OHS, and this 7:30min set from 2009 seems now a bit quaint and a portend of things to come.
At their height Mortal Sin opened for Metallica during their first tour of Australia in 1989 (The Damaged Justice Tour). That’s a fairly solid feather in the cap. On this album too, which was released in 1988, there’s a track in the middle which begins with a court trial verdict being read out (Track 6: Innocent Torture). It’s pretty similar to what Megadeth did on Countdown To Extinction in 1992 with a song, which has a pretty similar name, called Captive Honour, even though it came out 4 years earlier. Coincidence? Or was it something that passed by Dave Mustaine’s ears at some point? Also coincidentally, they opened for Megadeth on their February 1991 OZ leg of the worldwide Rust In Peace tour.
Anyway. You be the judge. They were Sydney-based initially but seem to have had a home turf that extends out to Newcastle?
They also appeared in a couple of documentaries on the Australian metal scene. They toured Europe in 1990 with Testament, with Faith No More in the UK that same year, in the 2000s with Overkill and the also played the Wacken Open Air Festival where they appeared with Metal Church, Michael Schenker Group and fellow Australians Rose Tattoo (RIP Angry, we’ve lost a lot of talent in the past year and there doesn’t seem time and space to cover them all) and a band called Tourette’s Syndrome). They’ve split and regrouped a couple of times over the years to put out new material. Thinking of doing it again according to their wikipedia page.
If I have to pick another standout album of theirs, I’d go with 2007’s An Absence Of Faith which really seems to expand their songwritign diversity and complexity.
RIP CRONOS
I should also give a RIP to Cronos from Venom while I’m on the topic of metal. A great and very interesting man. And I spent a fair bit of time listening to Venom during my first forays into metal.
His last in-depth interview is a great retrospective of his life. And apart from the wokeism at the start, this interview (it was made in 2020) is good too.
Venom made their music pretty dark and anti-social, and you have to probably have a bit of a sense of humour to really appreciate it. But a good place to start for those interested would be their 1981 single: In League With Satan, which has a bit of a jovial bounce to it. It was all just a bit of fun everyone, chill. I ain’t a satanist and Cronos wasn’t really one either, he was a shock/horror performer and entertainer. Just an ordinary bloke doing extraordinary things.
Happy Halloween Everyone.