C17H19N03

Terra Damnata (Fifth Column)
by Angela Dauthi

It’s the chemical compound for morphine, OK? Sounds like junkie music, too. Not music made by junkies (though I don’t know for sure), but music that expresses the trip, the euphoria, the sedateness, the innate misery, the total debasement of self. C17H19NO3 is John Bergin from Trust Obey, and his album Terra Damnata expresses his deep need for a good blowjob. Or his imminent suicide. Or both. He has the ability to bum out the suicidally depressed with songs like “Razor Raped Pain” and “Scarifice” committing to digital memory the agony of solitary existence. All joking aside, Terra Damnata can only be dealt with on a level of extreme suffering and misery. This is the music at the end of the spiral down, songs for the rusting of torturous implements, melodies of the living dammed. Bergin cries, “The gloom will suffocate you/Bound inside your mortal flesh/Free me from mortality/ The sounds of knives, sharp as steel/ The shape of scars enrage the monster.” These are songs to be buried alive to.