With that skill that was hers alone,
She drove her clutches into me.
I was dumbfounded.
She was hungry.
She required me entirely.
Beginning in the early 1980s, a group of Belgians known as Front 242 laid the foundation for a second wave of industrial music, though they called what they were doing Electronic Body Music. Their songs were hostile to religion and tradition in the customarily ironic European way. Ah, angry youth.
All that’s left is here to remain.
It’s a dull and cruel pain,
That passes the ages unaltered.
Her stamp is in my heart.
As a teenager, I rocked out (with nothing out) to Front 242. A friend and I once used one of their tracks as the incidental music to a church talent show act that caused substantial damage to a theater. We thought they were the shit.
But I found the words to my absolute and totally favorite song, “Tragedy for You”, bizarre to the point of comedy. These masters of hard-hitting, block-rocking beats used their platform to whine about a woman? A life-ruining, emasculating woman? Come on, you Walloons, grow back a pair.
I still feel disemboweled.
I clearly retain
A blank
The void,
The sore in my soul,
The mark in my heart,
Her acid reign
“Tragedy for You” is the almost-eponymous single from their 1991 album, Tyranny for You. I lost the jewel case to that album years ago, and the CD has been floating around since. Tonight I found it and popped it in the car stereo on the way to buy some booze. On a hunch, I skipped straight to “Tragedy for You”. And then I rocked out (still without anything else out). I’ve taken control of my marriage to a great extent, thanks to what I learned from this community, and I’m happier than I’ve been since high school. But I feel it still, the mark in my heart, the sore in my soul. Her acid reign.
And that voice that was hers alone
Still resounds in me.
She left me dislocated,
Disemboweled,
And twitching.
Her rhythm is in my heart.
She inspired in me,
An acute sense of treachery
I had a dim memory of the video Front 242 had made for this song, something about a fat woman and a shopping cart, so I looked it up when I got home. It exceeded my expectations, by a long, long shot. See it here. Genius. Between the song and the video, they completely nailed the modern feral female. Fat, self-absorbed princesses who permit us to worship them with offerings of cash. It’s a pity that we all didn’t learn not to nail the modern feral female.
My musical heroes tried to warn me about women, but I refused to listen to their misogyny. The more fool I.
