Mortal Prophets – The American Junkie Show (Lux Astralis Music)
October 7, 2024
America, perhaps more than most other countries, is very good at celebrating ourselves through music. Stepping into more conservative sonic territory, you’ll find cowboy crooners singing about how wonderful their hometown is, or rolling their eyes and waxing lyrical about how their country has a lot to teach them. You can’t throw an apple pie at an indie boy without getting a hit. Those areas that aren’t blessed with being America…if you can find them on a map.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with loving your country, but blind faith only tells a small part of the story. That’s why we need people like John Beckman and his mortal prophets to discuss the more difficult issues of our time.
Timing is everything, of course, and this new release couldn’t be more perfect, coming a month after President Trump is sworn in again or the country’s first female president takes office. History, or acting, is in progress.
This sonic ménage à trois plays with some great musical and lyrical metaphors. The opening title track is the sound of Ketamine’s “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and its distorted, vapid sound turns this anthem into an explosive soundtrack. It slides from a familiar refrain to a declaration… “I’m an American junkie on my knees.” This long, evolving piece unfolds the landscape as John Beckman sees it. A place of rampant profiteering, opium abuse, and big brotherly surveillance…the dark underworld of Manifest Destiny, where the American Dream turned into a global nightmare.
The remaining two songs, “American Junkie” and “An American Scene,” are two constituent parts of the opening track, and both have a lot to say on their own, but when played in their entirety, their sonic It becomes more than the sum of its parts. shape.
It’s a dark vision, but perhaps a flag saluting, one nation under God, a world police, bombing for peace, weakening democracy, force is right, and being pushed to others through Fox News and foreign policy. It may be more honest than the image that it seems. of the world.
Beckman’s words, while difficult for many to accept, may prove to be strangely prophetic. Prophets are said to be unrecognized in their own countries…but profit isn’t everything, right? (The joke is more effective when you say it out loud.)
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