How can we stay relevant? Assuming our absolute irrelevancy appears to be a fairly good stepping stone for what lies ahead – not just for the sake of nihilism, which never fails to be quite charming even after you’ve read all the Ciorans and Ligottis of this world, but also when taking into account what self-respect really means in this day and age. I remember writing a rather straightforward piece for my ol’ friend Agra’s great Tumblr, one year ago. I wouldn’t change a damn word right now. I stand by everything I said; this whole deal of music journalism, bottom line, is a copycat joke. Everyone is doing the same news, the same Q&A interviews, the same so-called political op-ed Trump-bashing articles; to the point where it gets nauseating. Like David Foster Wallace had predicted: counterculture becomes culture, irony becomes boredom. The tides have shifted and what we have been fighting against since day one is now the acceptable standard. Alternative outlets are now the new mainstream, plunged into a mindless quarrel for likes, shares, comments, engagement, visibility and what-the-fuck-not [insert whatever your online marketing jargon is]. Solely in Portugal we have at least 20/30 online music zines doing the same fucking thing, talking about the same fucking bands, going to the same fucking shows, licking the same fucking boots.

And nobody gives a shit anymore. It’s just another article on your Facebook feed, regurgitating a poorly written press release done by someone who juxtaposed a bunch of words in order to draw the attention of the website’s editor. Who needs a fucking website that works like a thick brick wall between Facebook and YouTube/Soundcloud/Bandcamp? No one. It’s like having to open your beer bottle twice. The game is rigged. Webzines following that model are pretty much dead inside already, regardless of what their engagement is and how much money they are getting from their AdSense box.

Dead. And so are we. And, like any corpse, irrelevant. But, god damn, we’re running this website into the ground with style. Rotting has never been so exhilarating. This is Cotard’s Syndrome all over. And the realm of those consciously dead is fairly interesting: with it comes the violence, the blood, the entrails, the mindless (self) abuse, the open graves, the stenching miasma of a 19th-century illegal burial lot. We’ll give you that in the form of music and imagery and we expect nothing in return. We’ll invite some fucks to give a hand (some of them old known faces), we’ll opt for the uncomfortable, for the viciously dreadful, until this rag is finally burned to ashes.

This is for the sick.