Canon in Miniature #192

Dystopia Human = Garbage

1994; Life Is Abuse

Nothing is beautiful and everything hurts. There’s nothing here that is enjoyable in the slightest. The music is an unholy combination of crust punk at its harshest and sludge metal at its most unpleasantly atmospheric. The lyrics are a constant barrage of disturbing images and ideals, and on top of that the band chose to augment the songs with samples from murder confessions and readings of suicide notes. This is not an album that is built to be enjoyed, it is meant to be endured. You suffer through the endless stream of audio displeasure and you emerge out the other side a different person.

So why is it so fascinating?

Human = Garbage is unpleasant in conception but in practice the displeasure and the ceaselessness of its attack in that direction becomes strangely praiseworthy. I mean, I can’t say that I genuinely enjoy listening to it all that much, but the impression that it leaves isn’t just that of a group of people trying to make the ugliest, most misanthropic piece of recorded music in history, but that of a group of people who see that there needs to be some kind of artistry at the base of even the most reprehensible sounding music. The songs that Dystopia constructs here, ignoring the vocals and samples for a second, are extremely well-considered and composed, much better than they need to be to get their general point – that everything in the world is awful especially people – across. I definitely appreciate the craft behind most of Human = Garbage even if the end product is something that I, in all honesty, never want to hear ever again after it’s over. So I wind up feeling remarkably positive towards it even though it’s hard to think of the words ‘positive’ and ‘this album’ in the same sentence without a thesaurus full of negative modifiers thrown in there.

That’s the conflict I face here, I can’t help but respect the hell out of what has to be the least enjoyable album I’ve come across. Human = Garbage is unpleasant as all get out, but that unpleasantness is conveyed with such a well-defined aesthetic that I respect it for its artistry. The ceaseless negativity is a bit much to truly recommend it though, never quite crossing over into self-parody but coming just close enough that I find it hard to take seriously. The bottom line is that I’m glad I heard this, because Dystopia are a fascinating as hell band in a genre I generally can’t find much to praise within and Human = Garbage is a fascinating document of unbridled misanthropy.

Now please never get me to listen to it ever again. [7.3]