Mudvayne reviewed

"The End of All Things to Come"
Mudvayne
Sony/Epic
2002

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By one formula, pop stars make money singing songs of easy-going love. Another formula that corporations allow is men singing serious and heavy songs about psychology and destruction. "The End of All Things to Come" is the perfect nihilist heavy metal. Mudvayne and much heavy metal is the answer to the youthful discovery of lies and hypocrisy. The album's title song starts out "All over with/Fuck all the flags, the greed, the world leaders/ Run for the fence/We're coming, we're killing." The CD jacket art is a drawing of alien species arising from the dead. It might be a good image to see a superior species tracking us to our ends: "until the whole damn world is dead." Other songs such as "Solve et Corgula" are about fire burning the whole planet. "Destroy to recreate/ Disassemble to assemble something pure" are the most optimistic lyrics on the album which is mostly about emptiness. Like most artists who make it big, Mudvayne is defending "free speech" in "Silenced." Other than that, Mudvayne takes up the philosophy of destruction we call "nihilism." Nihilists are our temporary allies in MIM and when capitalism dies, the nihilists will turn against us. The music on this album is hard, turgid heavy metal with that typical screaming alpha-male voice that typifies much of heavy metal and hard-core punk. Many Mudvayne fans will be profoundly anti-social, but we find more hope in them than the many stupid enjoying the typical pop love song.

MIM has explained that one might even "like" this music while knowing rationally that there is something wrong with it, maybe even profoundly wrong and evil. Being a Maoist means being a revolutionary scientist and that means having the ability to question everything that we like.

Who are you to decide?

See also our MIM Theory on gender issues

Read Mao on politics in all literature and art