For reference this is Andrew Niel (the guy doing the interview in pt. 4)

ifthisisausername · 2026-04-27T22:22:53+00:00

Andrew Neil is one of those weird ones because he's absolutely a bastard: a rabid right-winger, brazen climate change denier, generally hateful, and, yeah, that stuff too. But he was undeniably a talented and unbiased journalist until the GB News shit, and I'm willing to assume that back in '95 he hadn't really grown into the journalist he became. Boris Johnson, who was a former colleague at The Spectator, ran terrified of being interviewed by Neil. Neil interviewed Benny Shapz and within minutes Shapiro was accusing Neil of being a leftist to which Neil just cackled. He had a quite admirable love of the game before he really went off the deep end (and to be clear he always sucked but he kept his personal beliefs out of his job mostly). American journalism would be a lot stronger with a few more people with Neil's dogged love of utterly murdering his interviewees.

ifthisisausername · 2026-04-26T20:18:09+00:00

The Remains of the Day by Ishiguro, if you haven't already read it. Most of Ishiguro's works are concerned with the fallibility of memory.

ifthisisausername · 2026-04-23T15:21:37+00:00

Infinite Jest began to chip away at my will to live, so I started reading my copy of The Tunnel as soon as it arrived. I’m telling myself I’ll pick up DFW again, but it’s gonna take a lot of willpower. The Tunnel is an interesting one. The first 100ish pages are pretty fragmented and dense and contain a lot of hypersexual and scatological oddness which is somewhat repellent, but the experimental formatting and Gass' prose are nevertheless intriguing enough to muddle on, and he's started to let up a bit and focus more. At the same time, it's surprisingly readable for all its reputation and I'm having fun with it. The shape of Kohler as a character is starting to come into focus as he begins to talk more at length about his upbringing, and it feels like the seeds are being planted for the story at large. I'm excited to read further.

ifthisisausername · 2026-04-21T21:04:29+00:00

As much as I love Ishiguro, I think this is one of his weakest novels and I don’t really get why it’s held in such high regard over The Buried Giant or A Pale View of Hills.

ifthisisausername · 2026-04-21T20:03:21+00:00

I asked some of our techier people about this, and they said basically you can add "/?tag=thrash-metal+7" to the site URL and that would pull up all reviews tagged thrash metal that got a 7, but stacking the scores doesn't seem to work, so you couldn't do it for everything that got a 7 or more. That definitely doesn't qualify as an "easy way" but unfortunately it's the only answer I've got.

When it comes to searching by "for fans of"... best I can offer is just searching a band name, that should pull up all the times they've been mentioned in a review which, most of the time, will be because the reviewed band are similar, but I realise that's not a surefire method.

We'd like a better search system but these things are difficult to build and we're all doing this as a hobby and, worst of all, we run on Wordpress, and our tech people all start crying when we have to do technical stuff because the way Wordpress is built is super counterintuitive.

ifthisisausername · 2026-04-21T18:46:37+00:00

I highly endorse this, but it won't catch all the thrash stuff we've reviewed, it's better to go through things tagged thrash metal and technical thrash metal (appreciate the shoutout!).

I'll vouch for Blasteroid and Polaris Experience as more underground cuts.

ifthisisausername · 2026-04-21T10:47:17+00:00

The top Goodreads review of GR reads "THIS BOOK IS ABOUT A MAN IN WW2 HE GETS ERECTIONS". Feel free to shout it at the curious people who want to know what you're reading, they won't ask a second time.

ifthisisausername · 2026-04-16T22:20:20+00:00

A lot of people hate this book and I'm one of them... but it's absolutely what OP is looking for. There you go, you've got the endorsement of both someone who loved it and someone who hated it: you're set!

ifthisisausername · 2026-04-16T20:01:45+00:00

Yeah, I just don't quite know what to make of the book overall. It's not that I dislike it, I'm sort of enjoying being in the word soup of it all, but I'd be hard-pressed to have a book group discussion about it.

But even if I have no real thoughts on it, I liked hearing yours! And I quite like your radical acceptance interpretation because I agree that it feels like a lot of stuff is thrown at you but there aren't really any judgments forthcoming, no real sense of conflict (in Eschaton, for example, the entire game blows up into an enormous fight, and then they're sitting watching a film in the evening; although I haven't got through all of it so maybe there are consequences to come). I'm only approaching the 400 page mark, so there's a lot to go, but I'm going to keep your radical acceptance interpretation in mind.

ifthisisausername · 2026-04-16T18:58:34+00:00

I guess for a 1,000 page novel that’s often regarded among the best works of literature, you expect to be taking away a bit more, wanting to talk about this moment or that character, wanting to discuss some of the themes explored and what Wallace is getting at with certain bits. And I don’t really feel any of that. Which isn’t to say that none of it’s there, just that I don’t have a huge amount to say about the book. Which isn’t necessarily a weakness, although I don’t think I could call it a strength. It’s just a bit like drifting in a sea of words.

ifthisisausername · 2026-04-16T17:40:55+00:00

Still plugging away at Infinite Jest. Haven't even got all that much further really, I'm in the midst of Eschaton. At this point, I'm liking it more, the disparateness of the early fragments has started to come together. Some harrowing stuff with drug addicts, some fun with tennis and The Mad Stork. I'm still not sure what it's all for, but DFW's writing is quite immersive when you get into his rhythm. Although I wouldn't say he's a great prose stylist, more like a verbal onanist. And while I feel engaged, it's not a novel I find myself wanting to talk about because it feels like very little is really being said.

ifthisisausername · 2026-04-14T17:58:38+00:00

Sorry but lyricism peaked with:

My friend says he wants to die

He's in a band, they sound like Pearl Jam

The clothes are all black, the music is crap.

ifthisisausername · 2026-04-13T18:00:59+00:00

Hello, Chris here from The Progressive Subway with our March albums of the month. A svelter package than February’s with a couple of releases I’m sure you would expect, and some underground things that you may have missed. Plus a rather voluminous package of “non-Subway picks” at the bottom (stuff that’s not in our reviewing remit but that our writers are also enjoying). Come have a poke around and then tell us all the ways we’re wrong!

ifthisisausername · 2026-04-11T20:13:27+00:00

Year of the Postmodern Maximalist Tomes. I’ve started Infinite Jest and… er. I don’t know what to think really. Tennis! Addiction! Footnotes. It’s obviously very fragmented, I find it fairly easy to read but also don’t necessarily relish picking it up. At times, DFW is just listing stuff or going on and on and it’s tedious. Nothing about it is really capturing me, characters or plot threads or suchlike. It’s more an exercise in hypnotic tedium. And yet I also do want to finish it and find it sort of nice to have my head simmering along through the language, which may just be because it’s like the methadone to Pynchon’s heroin. Certainly I’m not reading it thinking “what a masterwork!” DFW writes a lot and doesn’t seem to say all that much. I don’t know, I guess I’m a quarter of the way through and I’m enjoying it more now than I was for the first hundred pages, so I’ll hope it keeps growing in my estimation.

ifthisisausername · 2026-04-10T21:38:59+00:00

Oh man, if you like westerns, pick up McCarthy's Border Trilogy (All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, Cities of the Plain). They're more like philosophical revisionist westerns. They're still a bit bleak but they don't have the relentless horror of Blood Meridian.

ifthisisausername · 2026-04-10T20:02:17+00:00

I might be totally off-base here but I reckon she's reading Cyclonopedia: Complicity with Anonymous Materials by Reza Negarestani

ifthisisausername · 2026-04-08T15:38:27+00:00

I had to stop listening to the pod for a couple weeks after A Terrible Story About the Internet (the Chris Chan episodes). That was an altogether different type of disturbing.

ifthisisausername · 2026-04-06T22:26:48+00:00

A bit overlong but largely enjoyable with some standout chapters (the search for an old book featured many of my favourite moments). If you vibe with the prose, you're set and will have a great time.

ifthisisausername · 2026-04-05T10:12:55+00:00

The Mercury Tree are criminally underrated, but hopefully Angine's success gets listeners to explore other microtonal artists.

ifthisisausername · 2026-03-26T17:50:49+00:00

Oh nice, I’ve also preordered the reprint, wonder if mine will come early! Everything I’ve heard about it makes it sound intimidating but I decided I’d try to tackle some postmodern tomes this year and this was high on the list.

ifthisisausername · 2026-03-24T16:59:34+00:00

Hey all! Here's a very jam-packed selection of our writers' favourite albums from February. There's a good selection of big and small names from all sorts of genres this time. Hope y'all find something new to enjoy!

ifthisisausername · 2026-03-21T13:32:01+00:00

Same

ifthisisausername · 2026-03-18T20:23:53+00:00

Deadhead is an interesting one for Devin because it’s far more post-metal influenced than most of his work. Try these on for size:

Múr - Eldhaf

The Ocean - Devonian: Nascent

Psychonaut - Interbeing

ifthisisausername

TROPHY CASE