The extent to which you’ll want to subject yourself to that set of sentiments may operate in relation to your desire to experience negative affect this potent. It’s very, very potent, an exemplar for an excoriating, muscular iteration of USBM that sharply contrasts with the atmospheric Cascadian mode that has dominated the West Coast and issued in black metal that’s safe for NPR. That Cascadian set of aesthetic and subcultural properties feels increasingly tapped out; see the simultaneously bloated and attenuated bag of schtick that Wolves in the Throne Room has devolved into. Just down the coast, in San Jose, Black Fucking Cancer points to the north, toward the Scandinavian sounds of the Second Wave, and also due south, towards Hell.

That likely sounds hyperbolic, and also artistically and ethically worrisome. Any artistic concerns are easily dealt with: just play the record. Procreate Inverse is grounded in kvlt tradition, but the band doesn’t settle for stylistic mimicry or mindless worship. The dissonance and force of these songs is particular to Black Fucking Cancer’s sensibility; it’s chaotic but not overly knotty, relentless but not repetitive. Two songs on the record are quite long (“Obscene Lusting Dagger” exceeds twelve minutes, and the title track is just short of sixteen minutes) but neither loses momentum nor collapses into tedium. The band locates a highly productive tension between aggressivity, with all its attendant volatility, and more channeled expressions of wrath. And then they exacerbate and irritate that tension, working it to the point of combustion.

The ethos of music like this? Not to be glib, but: the band is called Black Fucking Cancer. Including “Fucking” in a band name isn’t so shocking anymore, and likely the term is meant to amplify the wickedness of the next word. That’s sick, deploying the name of a painful, severe and often fatal disease in a metal band’s name. It’s malignant. It’s also metaphorical. The band regards human civilization — or more properly, our claims of civility and order — as the cancer, and there’s all too much evidence for the metaphor’s accuracy: despoliation of the earth, cruel systems of exploitation and subjection, cynical displays of virtue and right that are in fact dependent on reducing the other to abjection (for a recent example, see what the Putin regime attempted to pass off as a “humanitarian corridor”). Hence the pessimistic invitation to “procreate inverse.” Reduce the birthrate to zero, and then keep going. 

Even in the context of so-called “extreme music” (a hugely idiotic phrase—as if the music should provide the soundtrack to the X Games, or the reactionary festivals of the UFC circuit), that’s an extreme position: Don’t bang your head, decapitate yourself. If there were a whiff of irony, however sardonic or nastily intended, on Procreate Inverse, the gesture would collapse into repugnant, loathsome aggrandizement. But all 56 minutes of the record pass without any such whiff, and in our present conjuncture, 56 irony-free minutes of any sort of utterance is rather impressive. Truth be told, even in the absence of ironies, Black Fucking Cancer’s music is still decidedly loathsome. Likely the band wouldn’t have it any other way.