Every Record I Own - Day 810: Ossuarium Living Tomb
I’ve had this record in my draft box since 2019. I must’ve taken a picture of it before some trip with the intention of writing about it from the road. I see it every time I open my drafts, and as a result, it’s stayed fresh in my mind for over four years.
Ossuarium were a sludgy, vicious doom-tinged death metal band from Portland, OR, and their sole LP was on the front end of 20 Buck Spin’s gradual shift from focusing on stoner / doom stuff to the old school death metal revival.
It’s now January 2024 and I still don’t have a lot to say about Living Tomb despite the fact that I've listened to it quite a bit over the years. It’s well-recorded but still a little rough around the edges performance-wise. There’s a fine line between “this sounds like a real band… warts and all!” versus “was this really the best take they could get?,” and for me the band still resides in the former. If you can hang with Cerebral Rot and Cryptworm, you can certainly get down with Ossuarium.
I feel a little bad talking about Ossuarium today because, admittedly, they’re a springboard for talking about other things on my mind. But such is one of the inevitable truths about music writing—it often comes with a writer’s agenda. Perhaps that’s an obvious statement on par with “all criticism is just one person’s opinion and rooted in that person’s biases and current frame of mind.” But perhaps they also both warrant repeating.
So let’s clear the air: this post is largely motivated by my desire to talk about the recent news of Pitchfork’s merger with GQ. That’s my agenda. Let’s also clear the air on who is writing this: I’m a 46-year-old musician who has also dabbled in writing about music in various professional capacities. Having a foot in both the creator and the critic roles meant that I generally avoided writing about anything I didn’t like. When it comes to death metal, my journey started with childhood friends who got really into the classic Floridian, New York, and Scandinavian death metal bands around 1990. But truth be told, I didn’t really click with any straight-up death metal until Morbid Angel’s Domination came out in 1995.
My relationship with Pitchfork? I didn’t have internet at home until 2005, and consequently I didn’t spend any time looking at music websites until roughly 2006. In 2007, I began freelancing for the music department of Seattle's local alternative weekly newspaper, The Stranger. Part of my job involved gathering news from various music websites and doing a daily highlights post for their blog, so I started visiting Pitchfork every day. And that habit continued for roughly ten years.
That whole time I had a love / hate relationship with the site. I loved that they were committed to broadening their coverage to encompass a greater variety of genres and styles. I hated how that included devoting more and more coverage to giant pop stars. I loved their in-depth album reviews. I hated how those reviews could sometimes feel like personal vendettas against specific artists and how the rating system often felt out of alignment with the writing due to the score being based on a group vote. I loved that they operated at an intersection of my various musical interests. I hated that their criteria for coverage was never really clear: if they were only covering the cream of the crop across diverse genres, why were they dishing out bad reviews? Or if they were only covering artists already deemed important outside of their orbit, why were they considered one of, if not THE the top cultural tastemaker when it came to music?
Pitchfork was bought by Condé Nast in 2015. More and more of their news pieces revolved around pop stars. They started adding articles that seemed more fit for a lifestyle magazine than a music blog. It no longer turned me on to new things, and at some point I realized that looking at Pitchfork always involved some combination of frustration and disappointment. I’ll sometimes check in to see what they’ve said about a record I like, and I almost always regret it.
"But the writing was stronger than ever," I saw a few P4K contributors say on social media in the wake of the news that the site would be absorbed by GQ, as if anyone went to a music blog first and foremost for the WRITING, as opposed to... say... i dunno... the SUBJECT MATTER. "People don't realize that a 7.0 is actually a really good score," others would say in defense of the site's apparent inability to be excited about the very artists they chose to cover, as if a 7.0 doesn't read as a C- to any reader with a public school education, and consequently come across as "just passable" and not only not worth listening to, but also not even worth reading past the score. "We never stopped covering fringe music," others said, which is absolutely true. But when paired with an avalanche of Taylor Swift and Kanye coverage, those forays into freakier territories felt, perhaps unfairly, like the work of dilettantes and dabblers. A jack of all trades, master of none. Founder Ryan Schreiber finally left the site in 2019, but it already felt like Pitchfork had lost its initial vision years prior. I can’t imagine Pitchfork 3.0 will see an improvement in that capacity.
But what can you do? We live under the impossible capitalist model of infinite growth and yet we’re still somehow shocked when something gets too big to sustain itself. I doubt Schreiber had ambitions any loftier than sharing his music opinions with strangers when he started Pitchfork in 1996. At some point he began getting ad revenue. Other writers started getting paid. It became a career path. More people got hired. They needed more clicks, so they wrote about things that pulled in a new audience. Writing about pop stars meant more traffic from Google. Meanwhile, their initial readership stopped checking in. The reader who got hipped to Sleater-Kinney back at the turn of the century probably isn't all that interested in what Miley Cyrus is up to in 2024.
I was certainly one of those people. But my declining interest in Pitchfork also coincided with my growing disenchantment with the freelance hustle. It was tough to figure out what editors wanted and even harder to muster up the enthusiasm to write about the "hot" new pop artists that were already getting coverage. I started getting more work on the PR side of music world, which not only paid better, but allowed me to bond with like-minded artists and help share the excitement behind their vision. I started noticing how often my press releases were just slightly re-worded in album reviews. I can't say I blame writers--I would've had to write a Pitchfork album review every single work day of the month just to cover my rent in Brooklyn.
It's important to state that I didn't become cynical to music writing as a whole. I loved writers like Dave Segal and Mark Richardson (both Pitchfork contributors, I might add). I loved the enthusiasm, the disregard for what was popular at the time, the new perspectives, the depth of knowledge they held, and the fact that they focused on music that wasn't necessarily up my alley but succeeded in helping me appreciate stuff outside of my comfort zone. I wanted to write like that... without having to grade someone's work or weigh in on every trend. Beyond that, I wanted to do the thing that editors hate... I wanted to insert myself into the piece. Not out of ego, but because understanding the appeal of music that isn't instantly gratifying is often aided by having that specific personal angle. "This album got me through a break-up" or "this album permanently altered my brain chemistry when I heard it on mushrooms during the golden hour of a camping trip" will ultimately tell me more about how to approach a record than a bunch of adjectives and hyperbole. So in June 2017 I started writing these album posts in part because I wanted to do what Ryan Scheiber did back in 1996--I wanted to share my passion for other people's music--but I didn't hold any ambitions beyond cataloging my records and sharing my stories about them.
Strangely enough, my excitement for new music actually grew once I weaned myself off of music sites like Pitchfork. I found, among other things, a weird little pocket of heavy metal that hit my sweet spot and I've had a blast exploring it. I've finally found the bands that are more interested in being grimy than glossy. Bands that aren't afraid of a little slop. Bands that aren't trying to cross-pollinate with some divergent style of music. Bands like Ossuarium: meaty, oozing with dread, and just a teeny bit clunky.
Is there much to write about beyond that? Probably not. And that's okay. I don't think Ossuarium had ambitions beyond hanging out, drinking beer together in the practice space, and adding to an existing musical tradition they all loved. And 20 Buck Spin probably had a good handle on how big the band was gonna be. They printed up a conservative amount of LPs and sold 'em at a price that would guarantee they wouldn't sit on warehouse shelves for very long but would cover their costs and maybe allow them to send out a royalties check or two.
Living Tomb didn't need to be any bigger than that. Ossuarium weren't trying to break out and gain fans outside of their own tiny little community. They weren't trying to capitalize on the zeitgeist. They weren't claiming that appreciating their music would make you a better and more well-rounded person. They didn't take on more commercial attributes under the guise of inclusivity. And it didn't need to be overanalyzed and it didn't really warrant an in-depth long-form review from someone like Pitchfork (although I just looked it up and whaddaya know... it got a 7.6).
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Super excited to rec one of the most brilliant fics I have read in any fandom! It does the impossible by combining book and show canon to deliver character studies with consistent characterizations and subtle recurring themes that build up into masterful storytelling on a bigger scale.
Structure - The series is based on Liszt's Symphonic Poems. Like the music which inspired it, the fic uses one-shots with interwoven themes and character motifs to build a bigger, overarching theme. Think about it like a Dr. Who series written by Moffat. Lots of complex and recurring themes but each episode in the series is a standalone you can read on its own. The POVs are unreliable but we get multiple POVs from characters and the full story really comes together without confusion.
Rec note - Recs are based on my reading. They are subjective based on what I like.
Fic details
Ossuarium on AO3 by eldritcher (2022)
Length - 65000 words.
Rating - G to M
Summary - Soon.
Warnings - I didn't see any Major Archive Warnings or triggers in the fics. But the fics can feel heavy because of the canon angst. The writing has an insidious, lingering buildup which can make the emotions hit harder after reading.
Description
The series is around 65000 words. It switches between multiple POVs of the Targaryen family characters. The one-shots are essentially character studies. The plot happens in the interwoven themes. It's a really unique series construction.
Talk about perfect summaries - The Soon in the summary is literal and allegorical. The sense of danger and suspense buildup as the events start getting out of control for the characters is really, really vivid.
Pairings
Het, Slash, Femslash.
The main pairing is Daemon/Rhaenyra, but it is in context of the dysfunctional family relationships Daemon, Viserys and Rhaenyra have with each other. The relationship between the brothers is really, really messed up in classic Targ style. Similarly the Rhaenyra/Alicent relationship is also super messed up.
Characterizations
I haven't read better characterizations for Daemon, Viserys or Rhaenyra anywhere else. The themes and the motifs build them into living, breathing characters with their own character journeys and regressions.
The side characters like Alicent, Laena, Rhaenys, Corlys and other family are also super fleshed out and come alive.
The standout characterizations are for the dragons. Caraxes and Vhagar are going to make you cry. I am not joking.
Going Deeper
The prose is lyrical and musical. If you are reading with a screen-reader you are in for a treat because of the pacing/word choices making everything sound like a Leonard Cohen album.
Eldritcher’s writing is deeply emotional without being melodramatic. It is really brilliant how the symbolism and metaphors connect the generational trauma to the story and to the main characters.
The character voices have different styles of prose but there is a common writing style that creates the vibe of the series. Literally almost every other line is a quote you can frame on your wall.
Soon the virgin
Relationship - Rhaenyra/Daemon
POV - Rhaenyra.
Blurb - The first fic of the series. A Rhaenyra character study that establishes the characterizations for Rhaenyra and Daemon and sets the context for their relationship dynamics. Although there is no Viserys appearance in this fic, we also get to see how much he has influenced their lives.
Why I love it - I am really picky about power dynamics in relationships where there are seriously messed up conflicts of interest and relative power differences. Rhaenyra calls the shots here. She is in control. The inverted power dynamics works brilliantly.
She will have to do everything herself. She does not mind. She knows what to do. She raps a finger on his mouth. He opens for her, with a smile and a sigh. She dips her finger into his throat, and withdraws with a scratchy caress of the roof of his mouth. He laughs with his eyes when she punishes his restraint by dealing a sharp pinch to his tongue.
Soon the burning youth
Relationship - Viserys/Daemon
POV - Viserys
Blurb - Viserys and Daemon in a nutshell. Really messed up. Really Targaryen. Really brilliant at maximum self-sabotage. We get to see how complementary they really are but of course their egos and self-sabotage are out of control. The canon war has a lot of causes. But this is definitely one of the biggest problems which leads to the war.
Why I love it - This is Viserys. He is absolutely a Targaryen. His internal voice is extra Targaryen as if compensating for his external personality presentation. But he is really indecisive and all about that sweet self-sabotage. A really complicated personality with big grudges and deep love.
You wished that you could hit him. You wished that you could kick him in the guts once more. You wished that you could loom over him and watch his misery. His misery was as much of his making as it was of yours. You beheld it and wept for his unhappiness. You beheld it and delighted in his loneliness.
Soon the wedding hymn
Relationships - Rhaenyra/Daemon, Viserys/Daemon
POV - Viserys
Blurb - Viserys obsessing about Rhaenyra and Daemon. Because he is that obsessed with his brother and really committed to self-sabotage. This is one of the most intense fics of the series.
Why I love it - Viserys and Daemon have a lot of common traits. But right before Viserys dies, we get to see how their character journeys took them in different directions. Daemon's character change is incredible. Viserys, on the other hand, is stuck in the past. Daemon was more about living in the moment compared to Viserys and it really shows in this fic.
He would not beg you again, you feared. He had Rhaenyra. He might thrive with her.
If he were your sister—
Soon the maiden's thirds
Relationships - Alicent/Rhaenyra, Daemon/Rhaenyra
POV - Alicent
Blurb - Alicent characterization is incredible in this fic. She has a ton of contradictions in her personality and how she presents herself to different people. Who is Alicent actually?
Why I love it - It's heartbreaking and brilliant how the series characterizes gender role and presentation. Alicent maybe is the most affected because of the "box" of gender roles she's got to deal with. You get to see sort of a mindbreak because instead of performing a role her personality gradually changes to become that. It's really heartbreaking. The psychology in this series is incredible.
It should be Alicent at her side. It should be Alicent's hands about her.
Soon the light on Olympus
Relationship - Daemon/Rhaenyra, Daemon/Viserys
POV - Daemon
Blurb - This is the most fascinating fic in the series. Daemon POV! We get to see inside his head! His characterization is a standout in this series and we get to see that from his own POV here.
Why I love it - The love he has for his family plus his pretty whacky ideas about how they are superior makes this a winner. He's definitely not the type you want to hire for a 9 to 5 desk job in Customer Support.
Viserys pleased everyone else. He wanted his brother to please him. And Daemon, Daemon did not have it in him to please anyone at all.
Soon the untended wedlock
POV - Rhea
Blurb - Rhea Royce is written with a really good characterization. You feel pity and sympathy for her situation. But at the same time you also feel sad about Daemon. Jeyne Arryn is Rhea's BFF and she is the type of BFF everybody needs in their life. She calls it like she sees it.
Why I love it - The Rhea characterization is perfection.
It needn't have come to this. Viserys could have annulled their marriage when he became King. He could have wedded his daughter to his brother. Rhea could then have married another.
Soon the vestal bride
Relationship - Alicent/Rhaenyra, Daemon/Rhaenyra
POV - Alicent
Blurb - Alicent feels really betrayed after she understands that Rhaenyra lied to her.
Why I love it - The relationship between Alicent and Rhaenyra is amazing. We get to see the death of the relationship they used to have as friends with some romance going on. But Alicent hasn't totally given up her love yet. Alicent's characterization and motivation is incredible here. Is it just performative? Does she actually believe in what she is doing?
Alicent cannot be Rhaenyra's lover. So she will be Rhaenyra's mother.
Soon the feasting troth
Relationships - Daemon/Rhaenyra, Daemon/Viserys
POV - Viserys
Blurb - Viserys at the Royal Wedding being jealous of everybody and everything.
Why I love it - Because Viserys! He is so hyperaware about Daemon and Rhaenyra. Daemon is amazing in this fic. The good and the bad parts of the relationship between the siblings really shine here.
The food was sliced neatly into chunks that a man with only one good hand could eat. No tender morsel that was served at the royal feast. Sheep. The meat was charred by open flame. And when you took a bite, it warmed you as only dragon-warmth could. Brother feasted on brother's troth.
Soon the espoused sea
Relationships - Corlys/Rhaenys, Viserys/Rhaenys
POV - Rhaenys
Blurb - BAMF Rhaenys is the real deal. We get to see a snapshot of her life before she is removed from the succession.
Why I love it - Queen Rhaenys was probably a better choice. Jaeherys the Misogynist didn't get that. But we get to see that her own cousins including Viserys are on her side here. Yay! Fic giving us the soul food we need!
"What you have seen and done... I have lived so little, Lord Corlys. I am afraid you will tire of me."
"You crawled up the volcano's heart to claim a dragon." Boldly, despite Grandmother's vigil, he bent to kiss my brow. "I have waited for a woman like you for decades. Do you truly think that I would make a mistake now?"
Soon the hymen-song
Relationships - Daemon/Rhaenyra
POV - Rhaenyra
Blurb - We love a man who isn't scared about giving up some control some of the time. We love a girl working through her body image issues and accepting herself. So this fic is like total wish fulfillment for us.
Why I love it - The fic uses intimacy for psychological character study. What's not to love? Really really beautiful and healing fic.
He kissed her for her boldness, and she knew once more what it was to delight.
Soon a more cruel fire
Relationship - Corlys/Rhaenys/Daemon
POV - Corlys
Blurb - Crackship? Think again. This fic makes it work and makes you root for these three.
Why I love it - The trust these three have is off the charts.
Rhaenys wanted her uncle once. She wanted Baelon Targaryen. Baelon died heartbroken after his wife's death in the birthing bed. He left behind two children. One became King. The other stands at the threshold of your chambers, gauging the lay of the land.
Soon the juvenal
Relationship - Laena/Daemon
POV - Laena
Blurb - The softest and also the most sensual fic in the series. Laena is a BAMF character but her characterization and story is more compliant with book canon. Wholesome and sweet.
Why I love it - Justice for Laena! The context and the payoff is really good here. The prose is like honey.
She left her perch by the window and joined him at the threshold, so that she might grab the ends of her skirt and mop the sweat from his brow. He looked at her as the men in the bazaar below looked at the painted girls. Want was a warm and homely thing, in wedlock's embrace. She took him by the hand and led him to the fat table where was arrayed their supper of amber wine and spelt bread and sheep's cheese.
Soon the god's hoar
POV - Vhagar
Blurb - The angstiest fic in the series. Vhagar has seen a lot and is really tired. She wants a rider who won't ask her to participate in any wars.
Why I love it - Because we get to see how much the Targaryen dragons suffered because of their riders. It's horrible. I cried.
Three she had wedded. One to war. The other to grief. The last to hearth. One more. The hearth was not made for loneliness. Even a god feared loneliness, when her dominion was the hearth.
Soon the close-clinging daughter
Relationship - Rhaenyra/Daemon (background)
POV - Rhaena
Blurb - All the feels! Rhaena and Daemon bonding with some great father-daughter moments including dragons.
Why I love it - Daemon connecting with his daughter. Because he is trying to be a good father. This is a really brilliant contrast because of Viserys doing a bad job of connecting with Rhaenyra after Aemma's death. We get to see the difference between the brothers here.
A close-clinging daughter sought mother's comfort once. A close-clinging daughter shielded her father as he wept.
Soon the fortunate hour
POV - Otto Hightower
Blurb - Most of the fics in this fandom are pro-Blacks. This fic is pro-Green because it is written from Otto's POV. It adds a lot of complexity and nuance about his motivations.
Why I love it - Because Otto is intense. His POV is a really close third person and it has this suffocating feeling. Like things are about to get out of control really soon.
Otto hopes that Daemon gets the wretched girl with child. The closer Daemon binds Rhaenyra to him, the farther the lords of the realm will want her from the throne and the quicker they will be to support Aegon. Even Viserys would have to set them aside then.
Soon the vine to elm
POV - Caraxes
Blurb - If you read only one fic from this fandom, it needs to be this.
Why I love it - Because this is the best fic in the series in my subjective opinion. It is brilliant, poignant and encompasses everything about the symbiotic dynamics of the Targaryen family and their dragons.
Theirs is a warped and malformed bond, where ou steers instead of being steered. Daemon trusts ou to steer.
Ossuarium
Relationship - Viserys/Daenerys
POV - Viserys
Blurb - It's really fitting how the last fics of the series are written in two sibling POVs from Viserys and Dany because they mirror the Viserys and Daemon sibling relationship which we got to see in the earlier fics.
Why I love it - Viserys is intense and really, really psychologically damaged. You won't like him because he isn't likable. But you are going to feel sorry for him just like you felt sorry for King Viserys in the first fics in this series. The mirroring is fantastic. Phenomenal characterization work for Viserys and Dany.
The third Viserys taught his sister-daughter-wife and fed her their mother's crown. She stands beside her war-husband and ushers in the ossuarium of her house.
Soon the—
Rec note - THIS! THIS IS WHERE WE GET TO SEE THE PAYOFF! The titles build up the suspense and the danger until we get to see the final payoff in this fic. It's tragic. Of course it's tragic. The Targaryens are a really tragic family. But it's also incredible to see how low they fall because of their self-sabotage and generational trauma.
Sovngarde
Relationship - Drogon/Daenerys
POV - Drogon
Blurb - I know the pairing is insane af. But you won't regret giving the fic a chance. It's really beautiful.
Why I love it - We get to see a codependent relationship explored in more of the classic Star Trek scifi style without fetishization. This definitely is NOT what you are expecting. SFW. A beautiful concluding fic where we get to see the Targaryens and the dragons finally accepting the blood magic that got them connected in the first place. It's also a great GOT S8 fixit for people who care about that. You can see all her Targ ancestors showing up in Dany's characterization. Especially love how we get to see Daemon's personality in her characterization. Similarly Drogon also has a lot of similar characterization with the other dragons in the series like Caraxes and Vhagar. The Targaryen family completes their full circle here.
Ou took her home, to the new circle of fourteen that rose out of the Great Grass Sea. The horse-people had taken to leaving fat goats at mountains' root, to appease the dragons that lived within.
Subjective Stuff
Like any media/content there are going to be things that don't work for some readers/consumers.
A lot of fans are Daemyra only OTP fans. They are probably not going to vibe with the series because of its multi shipping angle though the biggest relationship is definitely Daemyra.
A lot of fans don't read gen/slash/femslash. They probably won't vibe with the series because it contains literally everything.
Spoilers for the books. If you are a show only fan who doesn't want spoilers reading the series is probably a bad idea.
The prose. It is some of the best prose I have read in published media/fanfic. Eldritcher has an unreal level of control and precision when it comes to prose. But that surgical precision can definitely weird out some readers.
Final thoughts
10/10. The series is also holding up awesome on rereads. There is a ton of lore and psychology here which means you are going to discover something new each time you reread. This is a difficult series to write a good rec about. Because there are a lot of brilliant and unique features about the characterizations, dynamics and prose it's hard to just pick One Good Thing. If that isn't an indicator of a great fic I don't know what else is.
I was just going to rec selected fics from this series. But it was impossible to choose. I ended up reccing everything because it's one of the rare series without a single dud.
So!
This series is now solidly in my Fandom top-5. Incredible, fantastic, brilliant one of a kind work.
ALBUMS OF THE WEEK! Here are the albums that got the most plays out of me. The clear winner was Minenwerfer’s Alpenpässe, which is a frequent flyer on my lists. This album is nearly perfect. There are moments when the sound is lush and beautiful, but then the ugliness and aggression take over. Such a rich tapestry of sounds and emotions. Next, Inferi’s new release, Vile Genesis, get my speakers working overtime. It’s solid on the first play, and gets even better on each subsequent listen because there is just so much going on to discover. Additionally, you guys convinced me to explore Judas Priest after my initial dabble in Painkiller, so I went with Defenders of the Faith. I can see why that one has so much love. Those guitars just sound … right. Finally, I rounded out the week with some Alice In Chains, Death (rolling those tapes!), and a few others from lists past. Great week!
☠️
1. Minenwerfer - Alpenpässe
2. Inferi - Vile Genesis (2021)
3. Alice In Chains - The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here
4. Death - “Scream Bloody Gore”
5. Judas Priest - Painkiller
6. Spectral Voice - Necrotic Demos
7. Steel Bearing Hand - Slay In Hell (2021)
8. Judas Priest - Defenders of the Faith
9. Ossuarium - Living Tomb
☠️
What was on your playlist this week?
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