Dragged Into Sunlight
“Terminal Agressor II” (2020)

Being a Christian was a contributing factor for the worst times of my life. I grew up homophobic without knowing why, other than that it was in the old King James Bible my mother toted everywhere she went. I was elbowed into evangelizing at friends, who quickly ceased being friends after learning I wasn’t as real as they thought I was. When I discovered my identity as not only bisexual, but having grown up with gender dysphoria, I realized that searching for answers was the sickening root to my mental health. I read a lot of Sam Harris, Albert Camus, and other literature that reinforced the truth that Christianity was the cause for the majority of the world’s suffering.

Suffering is apparent in the harsh noise record, “Terminal Aggressor II,” by blackened sludge metal band Dragged Into Sunlight. A single 28-minute song comprised of three movements, the album shifts from slow guitar effect noise to doom metal, and descending into a death metal frenzy by its finale. After having dealt with the absolutely poor management of Prosthetic Records, Dragged Into Sunlight ritualized an album that encompasses all of their previous ventures, something Krallice floundered on their 2019 EP “Wolf.”

The stigma of metal music being full of hatred isn’t exactly new; in fact, I can’t necessarily disagree with the notion. However, what’s important to consider behind all the distortion and visceral sound is that such distortion is in protest of not only the genre’s musical predecessors, but the societal enforcement of religious suffering, as well. Eminent in the spastic black metal crescendo of its ending, “Terminal Aggressor II” suggests that evil is a common domicile. Or, perhaps, that “evil,” is not the Christian connotation of the word, but rather a perversion of our actions. I am as evil as I am non-binary. I am as good as I am queer. Evil, despite the attempts of Christianity, is as inevitable, normal, and as equal to goodness as blankets are to a bed. Depending on your definition, it’s just a word. Depending on your utilization of hatred, it’s more than that. It’s hard for me not to hear hate in “Terminal Aggressor II,” but what Dragged Into Sunlight are implying could be that hatred is useless, that we have better things to do, that Christians have better things to do than hate.