RCRD LBL’s Young Elz points me to a mitzvah performed by the Fader’s Matthew Schnipper: the posting of a Man Is The Bastard mp3. And it’s "Tyke"! "Tyke" is the inspirational story of an elephant who escaped from the zoo, and in pursuit of her freedom, engaged in an orgy of destruction against her captors before being martyred. I would urge you as well to check out MITB’s epic arrangement of the Allen Ginsberg poem "Moloch."

Perhaps you’re unfamiliar with this magical group. Man Is The Bastard are the ne plus ultra of power violence. In the late 1990s they achieved an odd status of total control over hardcore. It was alchemic, possessing a formula: the more obscure your tastes ran; and the more you valued the obliteration of melody; the more fervent your veneration of Man Is The Bastard. If they came through your state, you either saw them or you lied and said you did. The greatest of all powerviolence fanzines, Monkeybite, put them on the cover for the inaugural issue. Kids named Dan or Manny suddenly possessed the nickname of their dreams. In college, I almost titled an essay on Thomas Mann… you get the idea. Anyway, it’s good to have Man Is The Bastard on the internet.