Never Enough Eerily Appropriate Music Department

An ill wind / To bring naught but decay / and the stench of your slaughtered kin....
-- Primordial, "Gods to The Godless"

To say I've been horrified and outraged at the disaster and subsequent catastrophe which has been Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath--that would be a gross understatement. Gross, as in revolting. It's been hard keeping my composure. I feel such burning shame at how we've let poverty seep so deeply into our country, only to watch poverty conspire with calamity to produce thousands of deaths and the ruin of a once-vibrant city. And I feel intense outrage that the Bush Administration knew this might happen, then slashed funding for levee repair and allowed environmental ravaging of the Gulf Coast, and then remained apathetic and impotent for days before finally acting--a week late, and several billion short.

I've tried immersing myself in blog articles about the political fallout. (Incidentally, has anyone informed Bush that the "blame game" is not a game? Or that "blame" is a shabby synonym for "accountability"?) Grim satisfaction at watching this administration implode does nothing to staunch the revulsion. Watching "The Daily Show" for a few desperate laughs is only a temporary reprieve, and as Tuesday night's show proved, there were moments that were so wrong that not even John Stewart could manage a bon mot.

So I've turned to music. Has it helped? No--not one damned bit. If anything, the horror lurks there as well, as the snippet from the Primordial song above illustrates. The whole song sounds like a nightmarish vision of the GOP agenda. The music is gorgeous--melodic in ways not dissimilar to Opeth, but educated by their Irish Celtic roots. The lyrics, on the other hand, are savage. Just like the Great Wurlitzer.

At least I'm not listening to "When The Levee Breaks." I guess.