Tuesday, February 27, 2024

 


HIGH NOON KAHUNA This Place Is Haunted CD / CS / DL  (vinyl LP tba)

OUT MAY 17, 2024

 

Crucial Blast is stoked to announce that we are joining forces with longtime friends HIGH NOON KAHUNA on the release of their second album, This Place Is Haunted. Harder, darker, but also brimming with haunting melody, the Maryland band features former members of Internal Void, Vox Populi and Admiral Browning, executing an incredibly infectious mix of classic noise rock and psychedelic crunch. 

The twelve songs on Haunted are on a whole new level from the band; this rumbling riff-beast brilliantly evokes everything from pummeling Am Rep abrasion, soaring Hawkwindian space rock, haunting post-punk, Dick Dale-on-acid licks, doses of massive doom-laden crush, and even wisps of classic Morricone moodiness and some hammering QOTSA-esque groove. 

Easily one of the most unique bands ever to emerge from the DC/MD area, KAHUNA is weirder, heavier, and catchier than ever before, and C-BLAST is incredibly excited to bring this banger to your ears.

 

This Place Is Haunted will be released May 17th, 2024. 

 

Stay tuned for the first single from the album, coming in early March!

 

crucialblast.net

crucialblastshop.net

 

Monday, January 15, 2024

 


SOON FROM CRUCIAL BLAST:

CULTIC "SEDUCER (EXPANDED EDITION)” CASSETTE + "WHIP SEDUCTION" SHIRT

Release Date:   February 9th, 2024.

The 2023 "Seducer" EP from synth-drenched, battle-ready death metal barbarians CULTIC is reissued on cassette by Crucial Blast, pairing the original three-song EP (self-released in mid-2023) with bonus demo tracks and rare live recordings of the band in all their filthy, bulldozing glory.

 This PA trio features the husband-and-wife team of Brian and Rebecca Magar (the latter an acclaimed visual artist and force behind the Wailing Wizard design house) on vocals / guitar and drums respectively, joined by new bassist Andrew Harris (ALMS).

Together, the band delivers maximal tripped-out deathcrush, blending atavistic doom-death a la Hellhammer / early Frost with dungeon synth and martial industrial elements, fueled by their wildly imaginative dark fantasy narratives. Nearly forty-minutes of deadly DUNGEON METAL.

This release is accompanied by the exclusive "Whip Seducer" shirt design, illustrated by Rebecca Magar. GET SEDUCED.

Available individually or as tape/shirt bundles from Crucial Blast.

All orders will begin shipping early in the week of 2/9.

Pre-order now at:

www.crucialblast.net

www.crucialblastshop.net

crucialblast.bandcamp.com/album/seducer-expanded-edition

Saturday, January 13, 2024

CULTIC JOIN FORCES WITH CRUCIAL BLAST FOR AN INVOCATION OF DUNGEON METAL

 

CRUCIAL BLAST is honored to join forces with longtime friends Cultic for the new expanded "Seducer" release, and forthcoming new full-length.
This PA trio bring the atomic hammer with their brilliant, bulldozing blend of doom-laden, Celtic Frost-ian death metal, regal Dungeon Synth electronics, and imposing Martial Industrial influences, all woven together into a blast of high-grade SKULLCRUSH.
 
DUNGEON METAL FOR LIFE.
 
Stay tuned for all the details on the expanded "Seducer" EP and more, coming later today from Crucial Blast Communications.
 

Thursday, January 11, 2024

NEW FROM CRUCIAL BLAST: CRUCIAL BLAST "PSYCHOTRONIC CATASTROPHISM" LIMITED EDITION SHIRT

 

NOTE: THE CRUCIAL BLAST PSYCHOTRONIC CATASTROPHISM LIMITED EDITION SHIRT WILL BEGIN SHIPPING AFTER 02/01. ANY ORDERS THAT INCLUDE THIS ITEM WILL SHIP ON OR AFTER THAT DATE.

Printed by FOREST PASSAGE PRINTING


For the twenty-fifth anniversary of CRUCIAL BLAST, we are stoked to present the first in a series of Crucial Blast shirts featuring brand-new commissioned art from our favorite visual artists. This design features the gnarly collage art of Cody Drasser, guitarist for the acclaimed New York prog-death outfit AFTERBIRTH and grave ambient project CAULBEARER, as well as a highly skilled visual artist in his own right; we've been longtime fans of Drasser and his music/art, with several releases from him in the C-Blast catalog..

Amazingly, this is actually the first time ever that we've issued a CRUCIAL BLAST design. After 25 years, the time is now!

The "Psychotronic Catastrophism" design is an accurate glimpse into the neurologic strategies behind the art, music, film, and literature that we release here at Crucial Blast. Issued in a limited printing, on black Gildan 100% cotton short sleeve t-shirt, two-color print, with the Crucial Blast sigil on the back of the shirt.

ORDER HERE:

CRUCIAL BLAST

CRUCIAL BLAST SHOP:

CRUCIAL BLAST  Psychotronic Catastrophism (SMALL)  SHIRT  

 CRUCIAL BLAST  Psychotronic Catastrophism (MEDIUM)  SHIRT

 CRUCIAL BLAST  Psychotronic Catastrophism (LARGE)  SHIRT

CRUCIAL BLAST  Psychotronic Catastrophism (EXTRA LARGE)  SHIRT 

CRUCIAL BLAST  Psychotronic Catastrophism (XXL)  SHIRT



NEW FROM CRUCIAL BLAST: GRAVE GNOSIS "PESTILENCE CROWNED" CASSETTE / BOOKLET / POSTER SET

 



CRUCIAL BLAST is ultra-stoked to collaborate with GRAVE GNOSIS on a limited-edition cassette release of their latest album Pestilence Crowned

This searing psychedelic blast of Southern USBM is issued in a hand-numbered edition of 100 copies, and is packaged with an 11" x 17" poster of the Pestilence Crowned artwork and a twenty-four page supplemental booklet of liner notes, ritual system, and artwork, previously only available as a .PDF download with the album's late 2023 digital release.

This acid-soaked outrage will begin shipping on or around 01/17/24.

AVAILABLE AT:

CRUCIAL BLAST

CRUCIAL BLAST SHOP

CRUCIAL BLAST BANDCAMP

Here's my sprawling review of the album:

 

The swirling, sweat-soaked psychedelic black metal of Grave Gnosis first infected me when I discovered the band's 2021 album Lux Nigredo and 2022 EP Towards the Nameless Darkness a while back. Both of 'em are terrific and terrifying blasts of incredibly chaotic and mind-bending black metal that likewise caught the attention of many that follow the USBM underground, despite only being available as digital downloads and super-limited cassettes. Slick with swamp slime, the band's music is a smoldering torch in the darkness, mutating the raw matter of black metal into nightmarish and exuberant ritual. There's a distinctly marshy Southern stench that permeates their blend of raging black / death metal, psych, and neo-classical, wafting off the triumphant galloping riffs, harsh and blazing blackened blast, and miasmic trippiness that completely enshrouds their music. But on their latest, Pestilence Crowned , all hell fully and truly breaks loose as the band ascends to a new level of Satanic savagery and twisted, psychotronic violence. This shit is wild . Possessed with a powerful shamanic presence, the nine songs on Pestilence are thoroughly tangled with specific formulae of ceremonial magic and violent adoration, a direct continuation of the themes running through Nigredo related to the band's system of Vedantic Nihilism. Each song becomes a paved stone on the honeysuckle and kudzu-covered footpath to a particular transcendental state; no mere soundtrack to patchwork blasphemies, this album directly interacts with the nervous system and the third eye.

From the ghoulish ambience of opener "Amidst the Rotten Coils of a Great Centipede" with its ghostly cello, tribal percussion and eerie experimental electronics, and the subsequent blast of feverish churning chaos that is "Carnivorous Darkness", this stuff undulates in some seriously crazed ways. Moving through passages of solemn funereal chamber strings and traces of rustic folk music tradition in the gorgeous acoustic strum that appears on tracks like "Ragziel", this album strikes a balance between inchoate madness and progressive intricacy that doesn't really sound like anything else going on in the US black metal field. It all explodes in kaleidoscopic forms, heavily layered with rabid howls echoing into oblivion, strange almost sitar -like ragas spinning in blackness, Moog-like spaced-out synthesizers snaking around the darkly majestic melodies and fractured riffs; you've got moments here that echo the weirder symphonic bombast found in later Emperor and Aspera Hiems Symfonia-era Arcturus , others that hint at classic death metal influences, but Grave Gnosis is so much more chaotic and convoluted, beautiful and monstrous. They've delivered one of the best American occult black metal albums I've heard so far this decade. Drown in the fires of its spiritual intensity.

This cassette edition of Pestilence Crowned is complete with the band's supplemental material: while the tape comes in a traditional case, it is presented in a re-sealable sleeve that also contains an 11" by 17" foldout poster of the scorching, lysergic cover art, and the band's twenty-three page Pestilence Crowned booklet. The latter is an essential piece of the experience, not just a collection of expansive liner notes pertinent to the album, but a new grimoire written by Grave Gnosis frontman Caine Del Sol ( aka Ø ), with explanations both "mundane" and "esoteric" for each song. The liner notes go into intimate detail about the creation and recording of the album, but pairs that with dense occult text, ritual practice, and extensive sigil art that is all as feral, impenetrable, and liberating as the music of Pestilence Crowned itself.

The cassette / booklet / poster edition from Crucial Blast is limited to one hundred copies, hand-numbered.

 

CRUCIALBLAST.NET

CRUCIALBLASTSHOP.NET

 

CRUCIAL BLAST: 25 YEARS ON THE EDGE OF THE ABYSS

 


As 2024 begins, it marks the 25th Year Anniversary of CRUCIAL BLAST. Thank you to all of the bands, artists, labels, distributors, promoters, publicists that have worked with me and who have supported my efforts over the past two and a half decades to present the music and art that I love. And an extra nuclear-strength thank you to all of the customers and fellow weird music fans that have supported Crucial Blast. After a period of great personal difficulty that I'd posted about last year, I am awed and honored by the positive support and encouragement that I have received from so many. I am as inspired now as I was in 1999 when the label and shop began to support the bands and artists I love and share them with the world. 

Thank you. Here's to another 25...

- Adam Wright / CRUCIAL BLAST

crucialblast.net

crucialblastshop.net

Friday, June 9, 2023

JUNE 2023: CRUCIAL BLAST - AN UPDATE, AND THANKS

 

            Until very recently, there’s been a considerable length of time since any kind of official update or news announcement came from Crucial Blast, which is obvious to anyone who has followed the label, store, and my other associated projects in the past. Up to this point, I have not publicly discussed the situation that caused this "radio silence", and the only people that are fully aware of it are those in my immediate circles. But I feel that I owe everyone an explanation, as for all intents and purposes, it appeared that I had fallen off the face of the earth in 2017 and taken C-Blast with me.

 

            I don't expect anyone to concern themselves with this information. I don’t expect anyone to read this. But some individuals have asked me what happened, so here it is.

 

            What occurred was this: I had been trying to coordinate care for my elderly father for years, as he lived alone in a city eight hours away from me, and operated a business there. At the time, he was my only surviving parent, and was nearing 90 years old. I was already dealing with various challenges in regards to this, trying to oversee his safety and well-being remotely while also operating Crucial Blast as a label and store with its own various obligations and challenges; it should be no surprise that like most small independent labels, C-Blast is a one-man operation.

 

In 2017, my father’s health began to decline further and certain troubling issues regarding his safety required my attention. Then he suffered another heart attack, this one more severe than ever before, and my wife and I flew down to his location to see him and assess the situation. It became immediately apparent that my father required a level of care and specialized follow-up that he would not receive if he remained in his current location; my wife and I made the difficult decision to have him fly back with us to our home, and proceed from there.

 

            In a short period of time, the situation declined to the point where I had to take on full-time, 24-7 care of my father, who by this point was suffering from assorted complications relating to congestive heart failure and vascular dementia, along with a host of other age-related health issues and additional disorders. I also had to become his POA.  For reasons that are unimportant to this explanation, I was the sole family member engaging in his care and oversight. This, as you might imagine, made a difficult situation that much more complex and problematic. As I did my best to manage his declining physical health and all of the demands of living and caring for a parent with dementia in my home, there was the additional quandary of his still-operating business. This obviously needed to be resolved in some way, with the intention of shutting it down, but the process and details of that particular element of our situation developed into an extremely acrimonious problem, a rabbithole of issues and conflicts that I was entirely unprepared for, and which consumed as much of my time and effort as everything else going on. The accumulation of these problems and challenges took a gargantuan toll on me, in all regards: mentally, physically, emotionally, and financially.

 

            While all of this was happening, I was also still attempting to operate Crucial Blast, manage orders, and do what I could, with as much as I could, with the shrinking personal resources left to me. But navigating all of the various issues was incredibly difficult for me. And despite what I thought were my best efforts, I fell out of touch with people, some orders were screwed up, and it became increasingly demanding for me to manage the typical day-to-day challenges and obligations behind running a business.

 

            Circumstances inevitably led me to take over end-of-life care for my father, with new issues and new difficulties arising on a weekly basis. Endless nights spent in emergency rooms. Countless ambulance calls to my house. The duration of this full-time end-of-life care turned out to go on for much longer than we had anticipated. I did my best to provide my father with as much safety, care, and respect as I could, and this is where I finally came face to face with the ruinous nature of both the U.S. health care system and the field of elder care. For various reasons, there were very few resources available to us. I discovered the reality that, unless one is of great wealth and means, the health care system is an abject failure, and that there is no one out there to step in and assist an individual with the immense responsibilities and concerns of being a full-time caregiver and advocate to a parent with dementia and major health and mobility issues. The Medicare / Medicaid system was difficult to deal with, to say the least.  I do not know how we could have managed my father's health issues if he had not been a veteran, and received health care from the VA system. And if it had not been for the Herculean efforts of my wife to assist me in everything, I do not think that I would have been able to get through this process.

 

            At the very end of his life, I was dealing with Hospice, and I had managed to get him a higher level of care than I could provide in my home, through placement in the best Assisted Living facility we could manage. Again, there were numerous problems and logistical issues that I was battling on a daily basis. But I had a small degree of peace of mind knowing that he was in capable hands, that he wouldn't suffer some terrible accident in my home, and that I could visit him regularly.

 

            The final weeks were very tough, very, very tough, but my father ultimately passed away peacefully in bed.

 

            In the wake of this, I completely spiraled out.  I was ruined.  Years of mounting stress, exhaustion, self-loathing, and guilt had reached a terminal point. It was catastrophic. I had a complete and total nervous breakdown. I became completely dysfunctional as an adult, and sunk into a long and bottomless depression. I had constant, almost hourly panic attacks. I was incapable of communicating with anyone outside of my house. What had already been the most difficult period of my life shifted into what I can really only describe as a vast, black hole. With no hope of exit. This situation had devastated me and shattered me on every level. Additional issues arose, such as losing my day job due to the company permanently shutting down due to Covid. The stress of the concurrent lockdowns. An accident that left me with a broken leg and dislocated ankle, followed with six months of physical therapy and a permanent injury. This personal breakdown went on for some period of time, and it was only through the perseverance and persistence of my wife that I finally found my way into the mental health care system. That proved to be a nightmare of its own, but after months, years of effort, I made my way out and back to basic functionality. This in and of itself has been a long, arduous process that is still ongoing. But I found a way out, to a semblance of normalcy. I still currently cope with severe depression, panic disorder and generalized anxiety disorder, but I cope.

 

            This leads to now. I am deeply embarrassed and regretful that I allowed my various commitments with Crucial Blast to deteriorate over that period of time. The totality of this situation had all but destroyed Crucial Blast, an entity that I had been creating since 1999. But now that I am on the other side of this terrible experience, I am energized and enthusiastic to rebuild and correct, to make sure that all of my obligations are fully resolved. Because working with musicians that I admire, and talking and sharing music and art and literature that I am excited about, trying to expose people to art and ideas that strike a nerve in me, it is my favorite thing to engage with in this world, aside from family. In spite of the difficulties, and the problems, and the pitfalls. Over the past year and a half, I have been working hard to fully re-activate Crucial Blast in all of its forms, to respond to anyone and everyone that has contacted me for whatever reason, and to fulfill every promise that I have made over the years. I feel momentum. I feel motivation. And I have ideas spilling out of my head.  

 

            And I thank every single person, be it musicians, artists, customers, labels, distributors, friends, acquaintances, anyone and everyone that has been waiting on a response from me during this period of time for whatever reason, for their incredible patience. I am humbled by your patience. I appreciate it so much more than you can know.

And I'll be talking to you as soon as I possibly can.

 

I am hoping to announce some very exciting projects, reissues, and more from Crucial Blast in the coming months.

 

 

            I know I am not alone in experiencing these intense pressures and predicaments. The entire elder-care system is a labyrinthine nightmare. And no one is sounding the alarm.

 

            I have posted some important links below that helped me navigate my situation and find resources that I desperately needed. I share them here in case there is anyone out there experiencing a similar situation as mine.

 

-          Adam Wright / CRUCIAL BLAST

 

 

 

(USA) SAMHSA CRISIS LIFELINE: www.samhsa.gov/suicide

 (WORLD) IASP CRISIS SUPPORT: www.iasp.info/suicidalthoughts/

 

AGING CARE - CAREGIVER FORUM:  www.agingcare.com/caregiver-forum

U.S. GOVT SITE ON CAREGIVER RESOURCES: www.hhs.gov/aging/long-term-care/index.html

Tuesday, March 21, 2017

SNARES OF SIXES: Act Founded By Jason Walton Of Agalloch To Release Yeast Mother: An Electroacoustic Mass Via Crucial Blast; EP Features Members Of Winds, Lawnmower Deth, Musk Ox, Sculptured






[photo by Cody Keto]

Crucial Blast confirms the early May release of the debut EP by SNARES OF SIXES – a volatile and exploratory new entity created by Jason Walton, founding member of now defunct Agalloch – with Yeast Mother: An Electroacoustic Mass.

Fusing an intense and eclectic range of extreme and experimental approaches into a disjointed and somehow simultaneously seamless hybrid of sounds, Yeast Mother: An Electroacoustic Mass features contributions from members of Lawnmower Deth, Winds, Sculptured, Blekspetl, Hollow Branches, Self Spiller, Barrowlands, Age Of Silence, Dolven, Musk Ox, The Night Watch, Maestus, and more.
While renowned for his work as bassist for Agalloch and Sculptured, Jason Walton has also frequently ventured into other, stranger and more experimental regions over the past two decades, offering a range of baffling and captivatingly weird sounds with bands like Self Spiller, Especially Likely Sloth, and Nothing.

And it’s in that latter territory that we find the debut EP from SNARES OF SIXES, his latest creation. On the band’s debut EP Yeast Mother: An Electroacoustic Mass, Snares Of Sixes makes a bold and confounding introduction, tangling the listener in confusing, highly aggressive avant-prog. The genre-shredding sound taps into a warped confluence of frenzied King Crimson-esque progressive rock, faint traces of frayed, heavily mutated black metal, haunting atmospheric touches, and abrasive electronics, and the result leaves us deliriously disoriented.

Often difficult, frequently nightmarish, SNARES OF SIXES’ output easily ranks as one of Walton’s more challenging and oblique offerings, and for the listeners, one of his most fascinating. Features Marius Sjøli and Robert Hunter (Hollow Branches), Andy Winter (Winds), Pete Lee (Lawnmower Deth), Nathanaël Larochette (Musk Ox), and Don Anderson (Agalloch, Sculptured), among others. Recorded all over the world, the record was mixed at Earth in Sound Studios by Jason Walton, mastered by James Plotkin, and features graphics by Marius Sjoli and artwork by Aesop Dekker.
Crucial Blast will issue Yeast Mother: An Electroacoustic Mass on digital and six-panel digipak CD on May 5th. Stand by for audio previews, preorder info, and more in the weeks ahead. SNARES OF SIXES is currently working on a live lineup in order to start performing live in the months ahead.




Yeast Mother: An Electroacoustic Mass Track Listing:

1. Urine Hive
2. Lions To Leeches
3. The Mother’s Throat
4. Retroperistalsis

Five years ago, in a period of downtime from the band Agalloch, Jason Walton wanted to write a strange and abrasive record; the aim was to record an album that pushed on the paradigms within metal. The result is a cohesive and challenging album that draws from seemingly disparate ideas and styles. Initially slated be a full-length album, Walton realized that he complexity and density of the material encourages listening in small dosage, and SNARES OF SIXES Yeast Mother: An Electroacoustic Mass EP was finalized.

With tracks like “Urine Hive”, “Lions To Leeches”, “The Mother’s Throat”, Walton and company lurch through an escalating, ever-shifting frenzy of creepy, labyrinthine melody and pummeling percussive chaos, over-modulated riffage and schizophrenic time signatures, where android mutterings give way to hideous blackened shrieks and bouts of bizarre crooning, the sound stitched with veins of crushing metallic heaviness, fragments of fractured electronica, and an overall surreal animated alternate reality vibe as it reaches towards the menacing glitched-out tech-metal hallucination of “Retroperistalsis” that closes the EP.

Yeast Mother: An Electroacoustic Mass Lineup:
Jason Walton – MIDI mangler, Synths, Vocals, Bass, Guitar, Melodica, Oscillators
Marius Sjoli – Vocals, Guitars, Synths
Robert Hunter – Vocals, Guitars
Martti Hill – Vocals
Andy Winter – Guitars
Nick Wusz – Vocals
Nick Loiacano – Vocals
Lawnmower Pete Lee – Vocals
Nathanael Larochette – Guitars
Stephen Parker – Guitars
Don Anderson – Guitars (on “Retroperistalsi”)

https://www.facebook.com/Yeastmother
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https://crucialblast.bandcamp.com

Wednesday, December 7, 2016


GNAW THEIR TONGUES: Entire Hymns For The Broken, Swollen And Silent Streaming At Cvlt Nation As Record Sees Release This Week
 




 
Hymns For The Broken, Swollen And Silent, the brand new album from The Netherlands' most prolific harsh black/experimental noise outfit, GNAW THEIR TONGUES,is now streaming in its entirety at Cvlt Nation just days ahead of its release.
 
Cvlt Nation's write-up accompanying the stream of Hymns For The Broken, Swollen And Silent offers, "While dark ambient and industrial create the basis of the sound, the outbreaks of the record move towards the further extreme sides of black metal and noise. The noise element is able to smear the parts, provide more character and enhance the dominance of the industrial patterns, while the black metal essence sets them ablaze. The changes to black metal modes is truly awe-inspiring, as Mories plunges the knife deeper into the wound, with vehement guitar parts, blastbeats and an overall ferocity. The extreme vocals that accompany most of these moments are brilliant, cutthroat and with ample distortion applied, they make the process that more realistic and palpable."
 
Endure GNAW THEIR TONGUES' latest atrocity RIGHT HERE.
 
GNAW THEIR TONGUES is the work of Maurice "Mories" De Jong, also of Aderlating, Cloak Of Altering, De Magia Veterum, among others. Just over a year since the outfit's Abyss Of Longing Throats full-length was released, and in the wake of the project's collaboration with Dragged Into Sunlight, Hymns For The Broken, Swollen And Silent shows GNAW THEIR TONGUES at the top of its game. The music grabs you by the throat and sucks all the air out of the room. Although it leaves little more than an anaerobe environment, the music itself feels likes it has been breathing and organically growing into this true beast of an album. Fully performed and recorded at the Bejaarde II, Drachten, by Mories who also mixed and mastered the album, Hymns For The Broken, Swollen And Silent also features guest vocals on "Our Mouths Ridden With Worms" by Hekte Zaren.
 
A CD / DIGITAL version will see release December 16th through Crucial Blast, with preorders available HERE.
 
Invisible Oranges reports of Hymns For The Broken, Swollen And Silent, "high-volume cacophony explodes without reason or warning, usually accompanied by mechanical blast beats, flashing on and off in unpredictable intervals. Waves of disorienting sampling come and go, dotted with club-dragging beats and the harrowing integration of a choir's howl. If you wanted to discover the underside of music, here it is, in all of its savage and impenetrable beauty." Toilet Ov Hell's 4/5 review includes, "The record breathes, and as it does so, it sucks you into its lungs. Therein awaits a labyrinth of sounds that should not be; a kaleidoscopic purgatory of shifting textures and slithering frequencies. Cinematic as the tracks may be, this is not background listening. Your ear cannot help but wander around these unhallowed halls; you may become entranced, you may even become lost, but tuning out is impossible." PureGrainAudio's 8/10 review warns, "Humanity, take note. This is the perfect soundtrack, to accompany the very worst of unseeable video news, and documentary reports you've seen so far for 2016; including unearthed war graves and crime victim burial sites. When the helpless feeling of numbing emptiness growing from such exposure seems of comfort, you're ready for this album."
 
https://crucialblast.bandcamp.com/album/hymns-for-the-broken-swollen-and-silent