Hey Drudion,

I’ve been keeping my head down this month, one eye on the deadline for my new book and the other on getting the JEHOVAHKILL double-CD reissue together for early October. Man, those memories have taken me to some unfunny places. The weather has been tumultuous lately and we’re already had two separate apple and blackberry strudels picked from our garden. Now that ain’t right, surely? Blackberries always used to be late September… not anymore it would seem. Thunderstorms followed by fabulous Blakean skies have been the August weather’s cyclical game. On August 17th, I was right in the middle of listening to ‘Merry Go Round’, an epic 15-minute AGARTHA-style atonal funkathon from Japanese trumpeter Teramasa Hino’s 1981 LP DOUBLE RAINBOW, when out of the window I saw, rather fucking righteously, a double rainbow! One major piece of fallout from the Israeli attacks on Hezbollah was an excruciating racist attack on the Jews themselves by Jostein Gaarder, the jumped-up Norwegian author of SOPHIE’S WORLD. In as pretentious a style as any I’ve ever read, this geographically cosy millionaire ignoramus lambasted the entire Jewish people for the military misdeeds of Israel’s leadership. Without even understanding the unique (and uniquely tragic) relationship between Jehovah and the Jews, Gaarder calls the notion of their being God’s chosen people ‘this people’s fancies’, as though he were unaware that the entire lexicon of Jewish humour is based around the irony of Jehovah having chosen the Jews, rather than the other way around. He writes:

“We do not believe in the notion of God's chosen people. We laugh at this people's fancies and weep over its misdeeds. To act as God's chosen people is not only stupid and arrogant, but a crime against humanity. We call it racism… There are limits to our patience, and there are limits to our tolerance… We have left the Middle Ages behind.”

‘We do’ this and ‘we do’ that, you prissy millionaire. ‘Limits to OUR patience’, safe boy? The Palestinians have been forced to be patient for over 50 years during which time their women and children are dying by the thousands. The Jews have had to be patient for over 2000 years and with 6 million lost in one six-year period during our own parents’ lifetime. When pious Christian morons such as yourself write such errant tosh as ‘There are limits to our patience’, it’s because you’re safe up there in Norway with your krone millions. Stick your pathetic ‘we’ up your arse along with Thatcher’s similarly ridiculous ‘we’-isms. Having written a bestseller appears to have given this ignoramus an unassailable platform in the Norwegian newspaper AFTENPOSTEN, despite his inability to check basic facts about how Jehovah foisted himself on The Jews. Like many pious Christians, Gaarder assumes the Jews are as smug as he is in their desperate no-win situation. Check out this quasi-Biblical fool for yourself at sirocco.blogsome.com/2006/08/05/israel-a-dire-prophecy/ and tell me he ain’t the sorriest Mel Gibson Of The Month.

Anyway, let’s forget about Christians and get on to some honest heathen topics. Firstly, check out my guide to the new underground in The Guardian a coupla weeks back at arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/0,,1852426,00.html. Yeah, they took all my stuff out about Vibracathedral Orchestra, Sunroof, Solar Fire Trio, Marzuraan, etc., but even so it still managed to read pretty good. Next, check out the pastoral beauty of the new Head Heritage Album Of The Month THIEVES AMONG THORNS by Nick Grey and let your soul bask in its total timelessness.

In the meantime, I reckon the most essential rock’n’roll this month is the bloody red vinyl split LP from Withered Hand Records, which features two massive Thorean blasts from Blood Island Raiders and Among The Missing. The former is an 11-minute epic entitled ‘Night Of The Frost’, which comes across like the first Dust LP as played by a twin lead guitarist driven Nirvana propelled by early Electric Wizard drumming. Fucking Watt! Among The Missing’s 16-minute ‘Horses For Corpses’ treads an equally dissonant metal territory built around a recurring riff somewhere in the deep sonic valley between Sleep and the drum-heavy massed battalions of Waldteufel – truly necessary for all those intent on the long term destruction of organised religion. For a cheap way into the organic heathen drone scene that Vibracathedral Orchestra and Valley Of Ashes do so well, check out The Telescopes’ excellent 7” NIGHT TERRORS, which contains two epic funereal dirges full of bowed guitars, wah’d organs, shaking percussions, Theremins, mallets and delay pedals. I’d also recommend the magnificent COMA WAERING by The Angelic Process, an unearthly hybrid of pounding drumming, ghostly underworld goblin vocal sounds and tumultuous guitars that evoke late My Bloody Valentine playing The New York Dolls’ ‘Frankenstein’ at 25 mph. The mind destruction of the title track is sheer unadulterated beauty, as is the multi-layered packaging. It’s available at www.paradigms-recordings.com. There’s also a remarkable new proto-metal band doing the rounds that goes by the wonderful name Sir Admiral Cloudesley Shovell. Brutal and highly entertaining, this lot take their name from the unfortunate sailor of the same name, whose ship was washed up on the southern shores of St. Mary, in the Isles Of Scilly. I visited his grave whilst researching THE MODERN ANTIQUARIAN because the poor sucker was killed by wreckers after his load of gold. Check the band out, they’re a riot. Finally, search out the brand new album TO THE NIGHT SKY by Austria’s Cadaverous Condition. I’ve mentioned them a lot in reviews because their acoustic side really gets to me. This new album is not all to my taste, but much of it invokes a feeling of being already dead and looking back on one’s life. Singer Wolfgang is a traveller and heathen who has visited many similar places to myself. His song about the 16-year-old suicide Betty Corrigal, cast out of her community’s graveyard by a compassionless pastor, is something special. Find it at www.oakknollmetal.com.

All that remains for me to say is that I hope you get a chance to get to the Brain Donor show in Bristol on October 6th. I’m telling you now to give you time to make plans, because the new Donor LP DRAIN’D BONER is the best example of non-linear cuntedness that I’ve heard in a long time. Look out for the gatefold-sleeved vinyl LP in 12” cyan blue picture disc. Nice.

Okay, I’m out of here, brothers’n’sister,

Much love on ya!

JULIAN (Lord Yatesbury)