rhys fulber – JimmyBramlett Dot Com

October 11 2025

School Night Shows

jimmy Blog brood faye, claus larsen, concert, leaether strip, ratio strain, rhys fulber 0

A show in an upstairs bar on a Wednesday night at my age? I knew I was flirting with disaster when I bought the ticket last month, but I really did want to see Leaether Strip and Rhys Fulber. Also, I had bought Ratio Strain’s album earlier in the summer and made it a part of my listening rotation that’s included Tori Amos, Nine Inch Nails and Unwound. So I told my boss I would be working from home on Thursday to save myself a little bit of pain.

It was nice to be at a show in a small bar with about 50 of my best friends rather than in a theater. There was an intimacy that allowed me to be right up front. It was also nice to see a dude in a wheelchair be able to not only enjoy the show but be allowed to make his way to the front get an unobstructed view. I walked in midway through Brood Faye’s set which was a lot of fun, a lot like EBM punk. I love how this new generation of dark music creators honors the past without being strictly nostalgia acts. Like, we have Claus Larsen and Rhys Fulber here. What does the 2020s anxiety-riddled darkness sound like? Ratio Strain kept that going knocking my socks off armed with her Roland SP-404 MKII sampler. It was all out aggression with so much rhythm you couldn’t help but move your ass.

Rhys Fulber brought his hypnotic soundscapes which he’s been exploring this decade in his solo work. You can hear all of the 80s influences from Cabaret Voltaire to even Skinny Puppy, but with his modern production he brings the introspection in. So there I was standing there swaying like an idiot. But what else could I do?

Then Claus came up, and it was full on Leaether Strip nostalgia. “Hate Me”, “Strap Me Down”, “Black Gold”, “Antius”, “Fit for Flogging”, “Japanese Bodies.” We knew these songs. We were singing along to the choruses. We were dancing. The highlight came when he did his cover of Soft Cell’s “Sex Dwarf.” Fuck me. That was fun to lure disco dollies to a life of vice.

Claus mentioned how he never toured the US during his prime in the 90s, and in all honesty I probably wouldn’t have caught him even if he did. That’s why I’m glad that people like him and Front Line Assembly and Ministry and KMFDM and Front 242 (well, not anymore) have been doing the nostalgia circuit giving me a chance to see them. And it’s also great that in some cases like this night, there were newer voices also being heard keeping this darkness that we love alive.

Leaving the bar, the half mile walk back home was very quiet which I guess you could expect for 1 am on an early Thursday morning. Who in their right minds would be out late on a Wednesday night, right? Just me and the homeless folks as the ghosts of the songs I just listened kept ringing in my ear as I avoided the urine streaks on the sidewalk that crept from the walls of the building and into the streets. The eau de Los Angeles scents of stale urine, pot and crack that mixes with the occasional street taco and whatever greasy mess the street trucks are concocting for the late-night degenerates.

Once I got home, the need to get out of my boots and pants finally was fulfilled. Back in the safety of my apartment with my cats and the songs still ringing in my ears — that would go on through Friday — I drank a lot of water, watched some YouTube videos to decompress, took a shower and got to bed by 2. I woke up at 8, had a surprisingly productive day at work before passing out for a nap at 5 pm.

I know I moan about age a lot when I write about going to shows, but I can’t help it. I feel every bit of my 46 years when I’m standing amongst the crowd my feet shouting and me and my lower back stiffening up with each hour I’m standing. I actually did think about taking a Lyft home, but my dignity still overcomes the pain. It’s a fucking 11-minute walk for fuck’s sake. Going to shows is usually a young-person’s activity, and I guess I’m one of those Gen X-ers who still live in a state of arrested adolescence.

But I don’t care too much when I remember that nights like this makes the whole mental torture of thinking about leaving the house worth it.

December 26 2022

Listening in 2022

jimmy Blog chat pile, courtney love, diamanda galás, music, nine inch nails, petrol girls, rhys fulber 0

A lot of old farts around my age (and even some younger than me!) keep bitching about how shitty music is, how Gen Z is ruining music. If the only music you listen to is pop music, then yes. It’s crap. But pop music has always been mostly crap. Pop music is design to be loved by the masses, so of course there will be nothing revolutionary or profound about it.

But there has been some good music to come out this year. Here are some of the things that I’ve kept in rotation that came out this year:

Petrol Girls – Baby. If there is anything as exhilarating as “Baby, I Had an Abortion”, I don’t know what is. Angry feminist post-hardcore from the UK and Austria, this is a perfect soundtrack to the post-Roe dystopia we find ourselves in. Long live the riot grrl!

Chat Pile – God’s Country. Sludgy guitars and heavy lyrics from Oklahoma City. To quote their Bandcamp page: There’s a sick irony to how a country that extols rhetoric of individual freedom, in the same gasp, has no problem commodifying human life as if it were meat to feed the insatiable hunger of capitalism. If this is American nihilism taken to its absolute zenith, then God’s Country… is the aural embodiment of such a concept.

Diamanda Galás – Broken Gargoyles. Fuck. Just fuck. Here Diamanda features words from German poet Georg Heym who wrote about the horrific state of people institutionalized with yellow fever. Their delirium, the treatment they suffered and the isolation in early 20th century Germany just feels appropriate after the last couple of years, huh? This is just two tracks, each clocking around 20 minutes, and they are pure horror.

Rhys Fulber – Collapsing Empires. Is this industrial? Ambient? Trance? Whatever it is is quite mesmerizing, soundscapes that you lose yourself in. It’s definitely not as harsh as everything listed above, and it’s certainly not Front Line Assembly. It is good in its own right and shows how amazing Rhys’s ear is.

As for older things, I’ve been listening to a lot of Nine Inch Nails, particularly The Downward Spiral and The Fragile. But one thing that I couldn’t get enough while I was in Europe a few weeks ago was Hole’s compilation My Body, The Hand Grenade. Not only does it have early songs like “Turpentine”, “Retard Girl” and “Dicknail”, but it also has “Old Age” which always fucking brings me to tears:

Maybe because I’m not sure if Courtney wrote this or Kurt did since Nirvana also has a version of this song. But I prefer Hole’s version.

Also on the comp are several songs from their MTV Unplugged session including their cover of “He Hit Me (It Felt like a Kiss)” written for the Crystals by Carole King. There is something about Courtney’s voice, command and dramatics that make these early Hole songs so captivating still all these years later.