[Riffs/Music]: A Humble Dedication to MIESZKO TALARCZYK of NASUM (Rest in Power).
From the official Nasum website, where you can read some lovely, heartfelt and sincere eulogies from the rest of the band. Link Here
Throughout the endless reams of typed-verbiage I’ve spewed across the Internet in my tenure here, I feel I’ve been remiss in paying homages to those past. I just did an absolutely busted, wonk cover of Death’s ‘Without Judgement’ on our socials, for the reasons outlined alone but applicable to fellow fallen caring human being, Chuck Schuldiner.
You might think it hyperbole, and quite frankly I don’t care/piss off, when I say this:- there is direct, clear and real lineage through which Mieszko Talarczyk, fallen vocal hero of Nasum, lives on today in me professionally. That’s right. Grindcore and helping professionals, a less dissonant mix than the media would have you believe.
He lives on not just through my incurable grindcore hyperfixation (those following so far know my sign-off), but through the fiercely advocacy-focused, need-the-facts evidence-based practice and more re: my ongoing professional work outside ISC as a registered Social Worker.
Allow me to briefly pontificate on this, but ultimately, share some love.
Mieszko, my dearly departed Svenska dude - I’m not a spiritual man. In fact, I’m as clinically reductionist/existentialist as they come where belief in all things spectral is considered (besides autism, ba-dum-tish). But I’d be doing you and the metal/music community a grave disservice, and that of the rich Scandinavian folkloric tradition, if I didn’t inject my own version of spirituality here.
Brother. May you forever cosmically-spit your fiercely unique brand of gumbo-soup blackened-hardcore-meets-punk-fury verbal barbs from on high and assist us in raining a much-needed fiery, timely death to late-stage capitalism. A death hopefully received through, well, frankly, common fucking sense and not thermonuclear warfare. Die mad about it, bourgeoise, we’ll keep screaming.
I am sharing my gratitude not only from/for me, but as a human services professional in the trenches to this day, and hopefully until retirement in various means. Truly, it is heavy-music heroes such as you whose legacy I carry as a fierce, bring-it-on torch in my ongoing work with consumers. Props.
Boxing Day yearly brings up a pang of remembrance at your untimely demise via the cruel, non-sentient hand of nature’s wrath. I’ll never forget having freshly copped an arse-kicking by way of Shift on compact-disc, procured by my measly $6.36/hr slave money at McDonald’s. Best investment of four hours’ fast-food slave-pay I ever spent at the time, for sure.
You were and are the grindcore/broader heavy music community’s Cobain of mournful, sincere loss.
And yet, as much ‘all that screamo just makes people angry and negative’ according to some whom seemingly (somehow) more lacking in theory-of-mind and tact than this auDHD-grinder?!
No. I reject. I abstain.
I fucking disprove, and I fucking disprove it by virtue of both ISC and personal career choices, damn the torpedoes.
There are many positive consumer outcomes through my working life that were lit aflame in the fires of that grindcore-ethos of collaborative/empowerment spirit. And real, actual, tangible, positive changes have occurred as a result. Client confidentiality exists but, trust me - many people are fed, housed, suffering less, returning to work, sober, reunited with children, sticking a pipe-bomb up the Man’s legislative arse all on their own time (BASED), etc on as much your legacy as my/their dime.
My collaboration was fuelled as much by grindcore and extreme metal as it was anything else. Certainly moreso than the lofty, hand-holdy, sickly guitars-and-Kumbaya rhetoric that locum doctors and state-appointed working-stiffs assume of annoying, persistent bastards like myself. Again, cry harder where that’s concerned. For real. I’ll wait, there’s the tissues.
It’s lyrics, passion and a keen sense for truth-to-power from departed folks like yourself and Chuck Shuldiner et al, that directly influenced me as an a-job’s-a-job-I-guess teen, and sincerely informed my career decisions/passion for said career.
My values weren’t just forged by family, they were formed by culture. And, much as some snob in a suit listening to pilled talkback-radio/podcasters wouldn’t like to hear it? Nasum is part of my culture.
Nasum’s output is as hugely influential for as Human and Individual Thought Patterns ever were for me, in really turning a page from centre-of-universe undiagnosed-neurodivergent teen spite and antipathy. I felt things, started practicing theory-of-mind, considered that empathy is as if not more True Metal than chest-beating and bullet-belts. Always will be, too.
Ironically, against said tropes and despite your own acerbic lyrical ‘guys, this is actually kind of fucked - what are we all doing, and surely we can do much better?’’ viscosity and grindcore-medium - it is bands like this that transitioned me out of miserly nihilistic shrug, and into my own wonky pastiche of existential-humanism.
You do you, but for me there are no gods, no masters, and in a world completely void of meaning aside from that observed and constructed by society, culture, meaning, our top-down/bottom-up processing and cognitive structure? It’s all what we apply. To quote Sarah Connor in Terminator 2 and my own Mum (effectively equals in terms of badassery and forge-your-own-path ethos) - there is no fate, but what we make.
Heavy music injects me with a spirit, a drive, a necessity, to veer away from six-figure salaries and try help out with some of this universal-suffering before I croak it. It helps me make my own meaning, which essentially boils past philosophy to keeping curious, helping others and enjoying life where I can.
“This is what it’s all about”, indeed.
Thanks, by the way for album-title reminder in so many moments of distress: Inhale/Exhale.
Literally, guys. THIS is what Inner-Strength Check is all about. May we at least in some small way, promote/provide some creative works of our own and others that entertains, engages catharsis, thought or in my case, serious nasal-exhales with a side splash of schadenfreude, for you. Our gift, hammered onto the internet and bolstered unspeakably by my team, by the very spirit of metal: humanism, compassion, and truth to god-damned power.
I care not what any normie, my friends, family, powers-that-be etc thinks about the content. Truly, I get it in terms of personal preference/not getting the underlying message, but also their loss. Just know as you’re raining caustic sheets of anti-capitalist death on clueless Reagan-pilled losers from up there - you and many of our fallen metal/heavy/alternative comrades live on through me through work and self-expression, fiercely and unapologetically until I drop, as a result of your passionate delivery and ethos.
From this humble and perpetually burnt-out but doggedly resilient (thanks to you) social worker and podcast/blog host in a sleepy coastal clime in regional Victoria - thank you.
Until then, I will persist in my own small way of facilitating The Engine of Death against the neoliberalocaplypse. Not a savour or a martyr, but an acolyte of human services and the creative arts.
If you’ll excuse me, I’m off to promote artistic merit and help my fellow man and, whilst I’ve many to thank, I’d be severely remiss if I omitted Mieszko’s ongoing ‘stick it to ém’ advocacy that beats in my own heart by proxy, and filters into real-world outcomes for a lot longer, hopefully.
I may collapse into a black void of nothingness when nature claims my turn, but if not?
Brother, there’s a pint of mead with your fucking name on it in Sovngarde, my friend.
Peace, Love and Grindcore Eternal From On High, Brother, xoxo - Brady.
EMBODY TRUE PUNK-ROCK GRINDCORE SPIRIT. SCARE SOME NEO-CONS. STICK IT TO THE MAN.
FACILITATE THE LEGACY ONGOING VIA:
Nasum - Official Artist Website