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From weirdoshrine
Quote:Motorpsycho- Kingdom Of Oblivion (2021 Stickman Records)The cover of the new Motorpsycho record depicts mankind dead, covered in mushrooms, ready to be absorbed by nature and forgotten. We had our chance, we fucked up, we created this kingdom and will now slowly decay into oblivion. A harsh image, perhaps harsher then you might expect from these Norwegian progressive rock travellers, but then again, the planet is warming up, there is a pandemic going on, and it’s not like they haven’t warned us before…
Keep my sky blue//I know I need to//keep my hopes alive…
And yet there is hope. Motorpsycho have once again summoned all their powers to tell us we can still change. They have spent the last four years completing their amazing trilogy The Tower, The Crucible, and The All Is One, and still they have found the creative energy to create another sonic warning sign. Personally I was a bit sceptic at first, because with a band this prolific surely there would be a moment when they have said everything they needed to say and they would start repeating themselves, but no.
Make your choices, choose wise choose well…
Kingdom Of Oblivion sounds very like the modern Motorpsycho you have come to know these past five/six years, and yet it doesn’t repeat anything. The songwriting is more on point than the looser jams of the trilogy, more riff based too. There are some really heavy 70s fueled guitar bangers like the title track and the USA critical The United Debased and perhaps the biggest and heaviest track they ever wrote both in title and in length: The Transmutation Of Cosmoctopus Lurker. As we know Motorpsycho, the influences are all over the place, ranging from early King Crimson tentacular prog to heavy Black Sabbath stomping, to subtler indie songwriting, and a lot in between. Perhaps the biggest reason why it is such a treat to listen to everything they do is the sheer joy they put in it, the craftsmanship on display, and yet the effortlessness of the performance. Taking all into account it is quite unbelievable Motorpsycho is able to produce so much quality music in so little time, but they do.
Give me my liberty or give me dead//give me my coke and my crystal meth//along with my booze until my last breath…
Halfway through the album there’s a Floydian The Wall-like intermezzo with a creepy voice contemplating and warning: this is the end now, this is the end now, this is the end now…the album goes on though, and while song titles like Dreamkiller and At Empire’s End echo this prophecy of doom, you can’t help thinking Motorpsycho still see some light at the end of the tunnel. They found the fuel to warn us once more, more formidable and powerful than ever, so maybe now we’ll listen. If we don’t, then mankind will definitely have its Kingdom Of Oblivion.
The point of no return has finally passed, pushed over the edge…
Motorpsycho at least spoke out, had their say. It might not be too late for us. But if it is, and some future civilization will dig out this record they will hear a perfect echo of what this age of man was about: what great powers of creation we possess, and what great powers of destruction at the same time. Kingdom Of Oblivion feels like a band building a legacy, and I can’t find a more urgent and incredible album to listen to at this moment in time.
A rating of 8 from Musiczine.
Translation into English from Dutch:
Quote:Traditions are there to be honored, not a year goes by without at least one new Motorpsycho album. The fans already know what to expect with the umpteenth new disc of these stubborn Norwegians. The band has been working undisturbed for a few decades now with the brewing of their well-known prog-rock sound that invariably translates into yet another marathon album. In vinyl terms, this is almost always about a double album with guaranteed to be a bunch of over-the-top songs that often hit the ten-minute limit.The new 'King Of Oblivion' is another date. Nothing new under the sun, but that does not have to be bad news, on the contrary. After all, Motorpsycho just does what they are good at. That is why "King Of Oblivion" is not a surprising album, but a pleasant addition to their now impressive discography.
They are already the longest songs that will win the beauty prizes. For example, opener “The Waning Pt 1 & 2†sounds very familiar to the ears with a rutting riff followed by a series of wonderful guitar solos. Also “The United Debased†and “At Empire’s End†are pearls of the purest format, Motorpsycho at its best. An absolute hit is “The Transmutation Of Cosmoctopus Lurkerâ€, an extensive psychedelic stoner trip that explores the farthest ends of the universe.
Motorpsycho sometimes flirts with bombast, but they never get over it, check “Dreamkiller†that changes into an orchestral apotheosis via an acoustic intro but never sounds bloated.
"Kingdom Of Oblivion" breathes the well-known Motorpsycho sound from all possible pores, we wouldn't want it any other way.
@marc – As this is part one of two, my hope is that the fade out was only applied to the single version and that the album version will somehow transition from this to part two without fading out, but with more of the crazy guitar licks we hear in the fade out.
@radicus – but new shit has come to light, man.
@fco – Yes is just an example. They were the first band I really fell in love with in a big way (back in the 70s), and although they reinvented themselves a few times (not always in ways that I liked
), they are for me a perfect contrast to Motorpsycho. I've never been a fan of Tool.PS. The Waning (Pt.1) is growing on me more and more. And with there being a full moon right now, it's fair to say, "the waning has begun".
Some established bands stagnate because they just can't find a way forward, their creative juices have run dry, they have (song)writer's block, they no longer feel relevant, or they always think their next album is going to be compared to their greatest album and therefore is hardly worth the effort. Instead the members look for other projects, resign to being mediocre as long as the bills get paid, live on heritage-style tour money, or give up altogether. Hugely rare is the thirty-year-old band that says fuck-off to all that and just gets on with writing new music, playing new music, changing things up, and continuing to challenge themselves … and do interesting other projects on the side.
In the last five years Motorpsycho have given their fans music for a play (Begynnelser) that sounds nothing like anything they had done before (as well as performing in that play), The Tower, The Crucible and The All Is One — that's four discs of music, which, although sonically sound somewhat similar, were as a whole a definite move in the prog direction from what had gone before; and a fifth (NOX) that could stand on its own as an adventure in a different direction somewhat akin to In The Fishtank compared to LTEC/Phanero/IALC — and now another double album (Kingdom of Oblivion), that by accounts so far is related to the "Gulvag trilogy" in that a bunch of the songs came from the TAIO sessions, but may be more like Barracuda in that the songs had a heavy characater of their own that didn't fit with TAIO (and also includes some acoustic/folk material because, "hey, this is what we've been doing this week"). That's eight albums-worth of highly varied and in some cases very challenging music (even for this band's fans) in a time period that for most bands would elicit one album, maybe two if you're lucky (unless you're a fan of King Gizzard
). One may not enjoy the proggy stuff so much, or one may feel enough time has been spent on it, but I challenge fans of any other band to listen to Begynnelser, Intrepid Explorer, A Pacific Sonata, Ship of Fools, The Light Fantastic (the track), Delusion, NOX (and most likely at least one or two tracks from KOO) and still walk away thinking this band is stagnating or has run out of steam or ideas. Moreover, the quality! The quality of this music is outstanding. One or two tracks per album may come across as a bit meh, but I find it hard to be disheartened given the quantity and high quality we are unbelieveably lucky to experience as Motorpsycho fans. And I didn't even mention they're the best live band going, who don't even allow the songs they've laid down on vinyl to stagnate because they work and play on them every night they're on stage. The Cuckoo (for example) was, for me, a fairly dreary song until they started to explore it live, whence it became a gorgeous tapestry of threads unwound and reassenbled during the final jam.So while Yes's fans are continually going batshit because the band hasn't made another Close To The Edge, and the band themselves are unable to make another album becuase they know it'll always be compared negatively to thier great 70s albums, Motorpsycho just don't give a fuck about that – never have and as far as I can see, never will. So in the years since Yes made their last album, Motorpsycho have made around 15 (or more?) albums-worth of fucking amazing and highly varied music. 15 albums in ten years – that's more amazing music than some bands make in a lifetime. I may have found Same Old Rock and now The Waning (Pt. 1) a little unadventurous, but I really can't complain. I am super stoked about Kingdom of Oblivion, in particular because once again it sounds like it'll be an album of variety and becuase I'm hedging a bet that The Transmutation of Cosmoctopus Lurker will be as intriguing and captivating as the name itself.
I am still utterly blown away that a band like Motorpsycho even exists. Bring on the Kingdom of Oblivion!
8 points from streetclip.de
English translation from German by Google:
Quote:Since their inception, MOTORPSYCHO have always been good for surprises. Standing still is the death of the artist. Accordingly, they are one of the most ardent and active rock groups: “It is important for us not to become an oldie band wallowing in nostalgia, and the only way to avoid this is to look ahead and try Making music that lives up to who we are. If you show us your appreciation by also buying the new albums and not just screaming for the old oldies, then everything has been worth it for us. That's all we can ask for. Thank you very much! â€And we say thank you, for all these years and for the last great deeds, the GullvÃ¥g trilogy: 'The Tower' (2017), 'The Crucible' (2018) and 'The All Is One' (2020).Now it is time again for MOTORPSYCHO to explore new territory, to combine material that didn’t fit in with the albums in the end, with new ideas, in order to be able to spoil the following in spring 2021 with ´Kingdom Of Oblivion´. The fact that MOTORPSYCHO take on the MOTÖRHEAD song ´The Watcher´ on their brand new release and mix it with their own song ideas under the title ´The Crimson Eye´ raises the hope for an announced riff and hard rock heavy work. The fact that they dedicate the fine instrumental ´Cormorant´ to Peter Green, Danny Kirwan and Martin Birch opens the horizon for FLEETWOOD MAC from afar; and that they also dedicate the instrumental ´Atet´ to singer and guitarist Bert Jansch from PENTANGLE, lets the clouds of Folk-Prog-Rock come up.
Of course, in old age, maturity and the insight that the unusualness and brilliance of a composition are decisive comes before the youthful zeal, as fast and heavy as possible. In 2020, MOTORPSYCHO did not, of course, mutate into an old man's combo, with mushrooms growing on its head from boredom. If ´Kingdom Of Oblivion´ is using leftovers from the past years, the mushroom creations were stored quite well. Because the entire work is a cloudy dream. Airy and velvet enveloped tones sprout like from another world and show no desire to wake up from it again.
In this way, but of course in typical MOTORPSYCHO manner, the tense ´The Waning (Pt.1 & 2) ´ rocks for seven and a half minutes at the opening (“The waning has begun, no choice for anyone.â€) And ends with a clatter and a squeaky sound. Subsequently, ´Kingdom Of Oblivion´ searches for seconds for the ´Houses Of The Holy´, but prefers to find the door to Psych Rock ("Kingdom of oblivion – I'm your subject, I'm your man. Kingdom of oblivion – I will stay here." if I can. ").
´Lady May´ descends very playfully with acoustic guitar and Mellotron into the levels of 70s songwriting. MOTORPSYCHO try their hand at an LED ZEP riff in ´The United Debased´ for nine minutes, jam-rock and finally indulge in bright bright colors on top of that. ´Dreamkiller´ glides over gentle waves before the song explodes raw and wild. The nine-minute ´At Empire's End´ move monumentally (“Let it bleed, let it burn, let it be, let me yearn, and turn your lovelight on for me so I can see, where to go, how to be free and who to be. Turn your lovelight on for me! ") as well as the ten-minute ´The Transmutation Of Cosmoctopus Lurker´.
(8 points)
Well it's not doing much for me on the first few listens, but I'm excited to see where it leads. Bring on April 16.
EDIT: A couple more listens and it's growing on me – even a nice little earworm taking hold! But there's a key/chord change in the middle of each verse that feels a little jarring. The main riff is quickly growing on me though, and I see why some think of ZZ Top, although the resemblance wasn't initially obvious to me. I guess I get a bit of a COTF / Gulvag trilogy vibe.
From The Obelisk
Quote:The heavy prog Kings in the North — Trondheim isn’t Tromsø, but it’s far enough up — Motorpsycho return on the relative quick after wrapping up a trilogy between 2017’s The Tower (review here), 2019’s The Crucible (review here) and 2020’s Spellmannprisen-nominated The All is One (review here) with the new 70-minute 2LP Kingdom of Oblivion, a record that seems to speak to current times without necessarily being of them stylistically. Also without not. Trust me, it makes sense.Now, to be sure, Motorpsycho are beyond review. I could say anything here and it doesn’t matter. To new listeners, their massive, decades-spanning discography might seem insurmountable, and indeed it might very well be a lifetime project of listening. Even their post-Heavy Metal Fruit (2010 and on) catalog is a mountain to climb, and perhaps an intimidating prospect.
More than that, though, Motorpsycho know what they’re doing and they have for some time. Kingdom of Oblivion enacts this massive span of work, but also makes it genuinely digestible with each side functioning as a piece of the whole. But with Motorpsycho, there’s just about no way founding members Bent Sæther (bass, lead vocals) and Hand Magnus “Snah†Ryan (guitar/vocals) as well as Swedish import drummer Tomas Järmyr, with the band since 2017, aren’t going to deliver the album they wanted to make.
Even as they’ve consistently explored varying textures and sides of alternative rock, indie, classic heavy riffs and vibes — dig that solo three minutes into “The United Debased†— and keyboard-laced progressive serenity, among others, they’ve carved out an identity that is wholly their own and is maintained on Kingdom of Oblivion. Motorpsycho said they wanted to make a heavier record. So guess what? They did.
Of course it’s not that simple even on its face, but with any new Motorpsycho release, the assumption going into it is that the listener is being placed in the hands of masters, and that’s basically how it works out across Kingdom of Oblivion‘s span. These players are not fools and they do not make foolish decisions in terms of craft. They cast purpose across the punchier beginning the record gets in “The Waning Pt. 1 & 2†and “Kingdom of Oblivion†and the folkish harmonies of the subsequent “Lady May 1,†the experimental atmospherics of “The Watcher (Including the Crimson Eye)†and “Dreamkiller†after “The United Debased†(which, yeah, fair), as they make ready to dig into the post-jazz “Atet†and revive the more rocking progressions on “At Empire’s End,†offsetting with acoustic stretches as they careen between styles and motivations.
Kingdom of Oblivion, which on headphones functions with a smoothness that’s outright beautiful in how it uses bass to emphasize melody as well as rhythm alongside the guitar and drums, is patient in its execution and refuses to go anywhere it doesn’t want to go, but that doesn’t at all mean Motorpsycho are doing only one thing throughout, because they’re simply not. Even in the earliest going — which is unquestionably where the harder hitting material lies and is the first impression the band wanted to make as a lead-in for all that follows — the songs aren’t entirely singular in their purpose as the second part of “The Waning†picks up motorik in the second half of that 7:30 track and the title-track meets its early fuzz with later wash of keys ahead of the guitar solo that borders on orchestral.
None of these moves are particularly unexpected for Motorpsycho, but that doesn’t make the journey less thrilling, and their embrace of a heavier push early gives the subsequent semi-extended pieces like “The United Debased†(9:04), “At Empire’s End†(8:36) and “The Transmutation of Cosmoctopus Lurker†(10:56) — each one featuring on its own side like the showcase work it is — all the more of a dynamic range to work from. Same goes for the acoustic work throughout and other more classically progressive moments.
“Lady May 1†feels like a nature-worshiping take on Simon & Garfunkel (that’s a compliment) and though “Dreamkiller†surges from its minimal beginning to striking heft, it flows easily to the wandering guitar of the two-minute “Atet†ahead of the grooving volume trades and engrossing payoff that “At Emipre’s End†provides, backed by “The Hunt,†a folkier jaunt that teases Tull-ish storytelling without going all-in with the flute and leg kick. Fair enough.
The softest and quietest Motorpsycho get on Kingdom of Oblivion is on side D, where the subdued “After the Fair†and the closer “Cormorant†surround on either side of “The Transmutation of Cosmoctopus Lurker.†As for the quizzically named longest cut on the record itself, it is duly dizzying in its riffs and solo work and melodically grand, vocals hitting an apex in the midsection leading to a guitar-and-keys chase that is, yes, head-spinning in King Crimsony tradition. They bring it down, threaten to build it up again, then leave it to quietest bass and ambience to cap, with silence as prelude to “Cormorantâ€â€˜s avant, far-off marching finish. An epilogue well earned, and they know it.
Here’s the thing. Yes, Motorpsycho put out a lot of records. Can’t be denied. I won’t pretend to have heard all of them. Yes, they have a history that goes back to 1989. Yes, it’s a lot. What matters more than quantity of the work they’ve done/do, however, is of course the quality of that work, and with Kingdom of Oblivion, Motorpsycho emphasize that the most essential moment is not the past but the present.
Motorpsycho are creating pivotal heavy progressive and psychedelic rock right now. Not in 1989. Not in 2015. Now. Before you feel overwhelmed by the prospect of taking on listening to them, not knowing where to start and so on, stop for a second and take it one thing at a time. Kingdom of Oblivion, oddly enough since some of it was recorded at the same time, works as an entry point even better than the prior trilogy because while one can hardly call it restrained across its run, it nonetheless brings to light so much of what makes Motorpsycho the crucial and influential band they are. I’m not saying ignore history and context altogether, but Kingdom of Oblivion stands on its own and is worth experiencing in that light.
@Bartok – some years back I purchased a Cowon J3 mp3 player (I don't suppose Cowon make them any more, but it is a fantastic player with superb and fairly detailed sound adjustment – way, way better than an iPod or any phone as far as I've heard). And with a decent pair of over ear headphones I use that to listen to music when I'm out and about. So I buy the CDs (I'm not a vinyl collector)and burn to my laptop and then transfer to the J3. The hard drive on the J3 is limited (pretty much full with just Motorpsycho albums!), but it also has a slot for a micro storage card, so I routinely add to or subtract from one of those (and I have a few more if I want to switch them about). Without a CD drive on the laptop, I'm not sure what I'd do – you have my sympathies.
My main concern with Spotify et al., as much as I find them handy for checking out an album before I buy it or decide not to, is the fact that evey time I use it, I give it more value and more credence, which makes it more powerful in the industry and as far as I'm concerned that's not a good thing. If everyone could just boycott streaming services like this, maybe they'd start to pay the artists more.
As for MP, I would like to see them increase their presence on Bandcamp to make those hard to get albums (like COTF) available to buy, rather than make them available to stream on Spotify etc.
Dear Motorpsycho,
It's been over four weeks since the announcement of the new album, and it's now less than four weeks until its release. Where's that bloody digital single!
Yours sincerely,
Impatient of London :lol:
Apologies in advance for what might turn out to be a long post.
To start with, let me just get one thing off my chest: we’re fucked. I strongly believe that the human race as it currently stands is fucked. Not only are we dealing with what will likely be the first of many more pandemics as we wilfully brush the natural world further and further aside in our desire to consume and grow, but in the background climate change continues apace as does a significant drop in fertility rates. We’re fucked. You can take any wild figures you like, and pick holes in any arguments if you wish, but my personal feeling is that the human global population will likely have been cut by about 80% within the next 200 years. But who knows, maybe we’ll scrape through relatively unharmed.
So when it comes to talking about vaccine passports and the like, I struggle somewhat to see the world in terms that deal with what, in the bigger scheme of things, could be considered micro issues (for want of a better, less dismissive, descriptive). I constantly flick from the micro to the macro, finding it difficult to keep grasp of one without being overwhelmed by the other.
As I stated in relation to vaccination passports, I see no problem with them at present if they are used temporarily. But I do agree that there are very serious issues in terms of their potential wider, permanent use. When the pandemic was just starting to gain traction in Europe one of my best friends said he saw an opportunity for something better to grow out of the situation – for people to take value in a simpler life, for a greener recovery, etc. My response was that I see an opportunity for greater authoritarianism and control by those who hold power. While both are still possible, and in some countries the former seems to have the advantage, most countries, including the UK, where I live, is heading for greater authoritarianism. No surprise given the current government, and totally predictable given the way the Tory government and in particular the people who are currently running it acted leading up to and since the Brexit vote.
Suntripper – you said, ‘I know you believe it is just a temporary thing …’. You misunderstood me – I do not believe it is a temporary thing – I believe that IF they are introduced as a temporary thing to facilitate the opening of clubs and the like, THEN I think they’ll be OK.
As for ID cards in general, I have to say I find it hugely ironic that (1) the general population is fine with numerous forms of ID (passports and driver’s licenses and whatever else banks, mortgage lenders, credit checkers, landlords, mobile phone companies, etc. demand before they’ll do business with you), but balk at one more, when all those others are all already or increasingly connected (2) people are worried about the data that governments and corporations will have access to when all that data is already available on your phones, and through all those other contracts you signed and forms you filled out for all the other things you wanted or needed. And if you’re worried about not being able to get a job or food without one of these ID cards, spend some time with homeless people who are already in that situation because they can’t provide evidence of an address, a bank account, and all those other things I already listed that are demanded of each of us. At this stage ID cards will not create anything that isn’t already here and that the vast majority of the population willingly already sign up to. As for erosion of privacy? Forget about it, that ship sailed with all that other stuff – a lot of it on the back of 9/11 and the ‘War on Terror’, though it started well before that – just look at censuses, especially censuses conducted by European countries in their imperial conquests.
So your fear, Suntripper, that this ‘plan might have been long in the making’, well, I believe that in one way you’d be correct, but that it’s not a new plan that reads, ‘let’s have an pandemic so we can control everyone’ (what I believe the conspiracy theorists are calling a ‘plandemic’), it’s the planning of powerful people who, like most thieves, know an opportunity when they see one and THEN make their plans.
As for the ‘warnings being given by scientists and doctors’, I totally accept that they are out there and I’ve taken time to listen to a few (including Dr Yeadon) because I have long-time friends who have posted them and when I’m interested in gathering information I tend to want to hear what the naysayers are also saying. For example, for a short period I got deeply involved in Extinction Rebellion. But what I quickly realised was that I absolutely had to read up as much as I could on the subject. But that also required that I follow through when confronted by people who have come to be known as climate change deniers, so that I read what they presented and had the information to challenge them if I thought they were wrong. Most prominently, what I discovered was the following kinds of statements: qualified climate experts and scientists say it’s a hoax; they are being silenced; watch this YouTube video – the presenter is a scientist; read this paper – the writer is a climatologist. So I did. And what I discovered was that even though there were thousands of climatologists and scientists claiming climate change is real and presenting countless quantities of data to back up their findings in peer-reviewed journals and the like, the deniers cherry-picked a handful of scientists and papers to put their argument across, completely ignoring (silencing in their own way) the huge wealth of data that disagreed with them. ‘50 scientists have handed a paper to the UN explaining why climate change is a hoax’ – this was one post that did the rounds a lot when I was active. I looked it up. It was a 10 or 12-point opinion piece submitted by ‘The Friends of Science’, and signed by 12-15 signatories, a few of whom were scientists, primarily working in oil and gas. The paper had not one scientific statement, contained no scientific data, and made zero references to any scientific data or papers (oddly out of keeping with the organisation’s name). The Friends of Science, based in Calgary, Canada, are an advocacy group who were found to have gone to great lengths to cover the source of their funding, which, surprise surprise, was mostly oil and gas interests. Once again – another cherry-picked item that deniers were using to spread misinformation and distrust among the general public, most of whom would not have bothered to look any further. This cherry-picking strategy seems to be widely evident among all those I know or have come across who would have us believe, as you, Suntripper stated, that coronavirus is ‘something that has perhaps been like a bad flu’ – a statement I’ll return to at the end of this.
Cytokine storms – I’d never heard of these before last March/April. They are indeed a very real and nightmarish thing. And they are, as I understand it, one of the potential outcomes of contracting COVID-19. They have been in evidence throughout the pandemic and have been the cause of numerous deaths. Generally they are relatively rare, but are unfortunately part of the way the body reacts to the ‘novel’ coronavirus.
Deaths in care homes following vaccination – you gave two examples in the UK, one is Sidmouth, one in Exmouth. That’s two – out of how many care homes in the UK? Over 21,000 at last count. I’ll give you a third so you can increase the percentage of known occurrences (known to those of us on this thread, that is) from maybe 0.01% to 0.014%.
My wife is a domestic housekeeper at a nursing home. She has worked in this role in nursing homes for almost 20 years. Domestic housekeepers are on the frontline of infection control. Their job is not to care for residents, they are not carers, and they are not nurses or admin workers. They’re at the bottom of the ladder and generally treated as such, by management, nurses, carers, the general public, residents and even themselves. Their work is not seen as of particularly great value and consequently a lot of domestics (cleaners, as their commonly known) don’t value their own work either. My wife is perhaps an exception in this regard. She also an exception in that she treats the residents as her bosses, and less so her supervisors or the nursing home management. As far as she’s concerned, the residents pay her wages. No residents = no job.
Back in April her care home was hit by the virus and 8 of the 60 residents died, as did her supervisor. They were all deemed to have contracted COVID-19. The number of deaths was excessive. This was not normal. This was not a bad case of the flu. This was not people dying of the things they were in the care home for. Some of the residents are simply old nuns and priests (the care home is connected to the Catholic Church and a Catholic charity). But there were some, including my wife’s supervisor, who had what we now call underlying conditions that made them susceptible to severe reactions and possibly death if they contracted COVID. We can say that without COVID, most of them would have lived longer.
After that wave, the summer and autumn passed without incident. The nursing home employed a new head housekeeper to replace my wife’s dead supervisor. She had worked as head housekeeper at another nursing home where one of my wife’s friend’s works (as with many fields, it’s a small world and many of the people who work in nursing homes around the area know one another). The death toll at that nursing home during the first wave had been catastrophic – well over 50% of the residents had died.
By the late autumn, when case numbers were on the rise again in the UK, the nursing home had the following testing system in place: all staff, tested by half-hour test every day and sent home to self-isolate for two weeks if testing positive. All residents and all staff tested twice a week on the more reliable two-day test. Weeks and weeks went by with nothing more than the occasional staff member testing positive on the less reliable half-hour test – maybe four positive tests over a period of about two months. In early January, on one day all staff and all residents were vaccinated, with the exception of a few (including my wife’s new supervisor) who, for whatever reasons, opted out.
That same week positive tests started showing up, first among a couple residents on one wing of the home and then spreading throughout that wing and into the other three. Within two weeks 10 residents had died. So there you are, a third example you can add to your very short list of care homes in which people died from COVID within days of being vaccinated.
Now look a little closer. The home has four wings, each with 15 residents. In one wing every single resident and staff member tested positive, and 8 residents died. In another, most tested positive and 2 died. In a third, half tested positive and no-one died. In my wife’s wing, 2 residents and no staff tested positive and no-one died. An array of results, yet they all, on the same day, had the same vaccination. Surely, if the vaccine were to blame, we could expect similar results across the whole nursing home, couldn’t we? So why the unusual data. Well one theory, which my wife believes, is the cavalier attitude displayed by her new supervisor. One of the main thrusts in her ‘policy’ changes since coming to the nursing home has been to cut back on certain practices so she can meet her budget. One of these cutbacks has been to instruct her staff to use the same cleaning cloths over and over and over, rather than using disposable ones. Environmentally her choice is the right one, and it helps her meet her budget. But for infection control, especially during a pandemic with a virus that is highly transmissible, it’s a dreadful policy. My wife, being who she is, ignored it. She continued to use disposable cloths, as did everyone on her wing who all decided not to do so could be disastrous. This is one of a few new practices the new supervisor introduced that they chose to ignore. My wife believes that was crucial in halting the spread of the virus in her wing and the consequent saving of lives. She also believes that what aided the spreading of the virus and loss of lives in the other wings, especially the one that lost 8 residents, was the cavalier attitude of her new supervisor who (1) had been in charge of housekeeping at a care home that was decimated during the first wave, (2) had introduced questionable practices vis-à -vis infection control, (3) was the prime domestic housekeeper working on the wing that was hit hardest. There is no indication of the outbreak and deaths being caused by the vaccine – only a coincidence in the arrival of the virus in the home (most likely brought in by one of two contract workers who were needed to cover absentees) during the same week everyone was vaccinated. And I repeat, if the vaccine had been the cause, data would show that it had spread more evenly throughout the home. Moreover, the same results would be seen up and down the country, in large overwhelmingly undeniable numbers and unsilenceable numbers. Based on conversations my wife has had with friends and colleagues working in other care homes in the local area, none have suffered the same coincidence.
‘something that has perhaps been like a bad flu’ – data and evidence and thousands and thousands of scientists, doctors, epidemiologists and virologists overwhelmingly disagree, most of them vehemently. And that’s not cherry-picking a few names. Furthermore, roughly 125,000 excess deaths since the first death attributed to COVID-19 in the UK disagree. (Excess deaths defined as number of deaths higher than the five-year average.)
I don’t need you to believe anything different than what you choose. And I certainly wouldn’t want you to have a vaccine you don’t approve of, or to sign-up for a vaccine passport scheme you disapprove of. And I really wouldn’t want those choices taken away from you. I also wouldn’t expect you to trust the current UK government, or Tony Blair. I don’t trust either of them. But like all things, there’s no black and white in much of this. There are degrees and spectrums. I guess we all find our own spot based on what we read, hear, think, feel.
I don’t think I have much to add to this discussion so please forgive me if I don’t respond further, though I will read whatever is posted here.
Sail on.
@ Johnny_Heartfield
I was expecting you might have some interesting input on this subject
Thanks for sharing those other 'versions', none of which I'd heard before. I can't say I find the earlier Sam Gopal or the later Motörhead tracks you posted links to have enough in common with The Watcher (not least the title) to be fairly considered the same song, though the similarities in parts are clear – much like the similarity between Riding the Tiger and Tristano are clear, though the tracks themselves are hugely different.As for the Clapton-invovled live version … please god, no thanks.
