Onnik James, Author at Onnik James Krikorian - Journalist, Photojournalist, Consultant

Post-Soviet Suicidal Black Metal album review

by Onnik James | Jul 2, 2020 | #TbilisiUnderground, Georgia, Music

Psychonaut 4, Tbilisi, Georgia © Onnik James Krikorian 2020

I’ll be quite honest. Five years ago, in 2015, when I was told that Psychonaut 4 would be performing in Tbilisi, I really wasn’t interested in going to see them live. I hadn’t heard of the band until then and I really had no idea where they were coming from musically.

They were the biggest metal act in the South Caucasus, friends in the three countries that make up the region told me. They were not to be missed, it was said, and those friends from neighbouring countries even planned to travel to Georgia especially for the gig that was due to be held at a Tbilisi nightclub.

But then disaster struck, with the tragic Tbilisi Flood resulting in the concert being cancelled. Having missed them then, and despite being an avid concert-goer at many a Georgian punk and metal gig in the years in-between, fast forward to the end of 2018 when I would once again hear of Psychonaut 4.

This time, however, it was from other local bands who offered them up as an example of how Georgian metal could be succesful on the international stage. Indeed, and somewhat paradoxically, you’re more likely to catch a Psychonaut 4 show in Europe than you are in their native Georgia. Unfortunately, the local market remains underdeveloped and suitable venues remain a problem.

I see tears are choking you,
Tell me how can I help, I beg you,
I see thoughts make you drunk,
Tell me what are you crying for, why do you suffer?
I see the pain is breaking you, to what have you been addicted to so much that you can’t get over it?
I see that death is following you, come home today, and let’s remember how to smile.

[…]

I will find the way,
I’ll escape from it, I,
I’ll find the way,
I’ll deal with it, I,
I’ll find the way,
I’ll sail over the sea too, I,
I’ll find the way,
I won’t kill myself.

Tbilisian Tragedy,
Translation from Georgian to English via Talheim Records.

Psychonaut 4 recording BeautyFall, Tbilisi, Georgia © Onnik James Krikorian 2020

In the midst of a global pandemic, and I as I edit Tbilisi Underground, a documentary film on the metal and punk scene in Georgia, it’s now become something of a regular habit to follow the resilience and perseverance of Psychonaut 4 given one postponed European tour, a canceled performance at the Under The Black Sun festival in Germany, and a delayed new album release because of COVID-19.

Fortunately for me, however, a few days ago I received a link to the soon to be released Beautyfall and I haven’t listened to anything else since.

Typical of Psychonaut 4, melodic interludes punctuate heavy audio barrages of raw energy and sound. Whatever you might be doing at the time, at some point you realise that you‘ve suddenly become immersed in the music instead.

There are moments of sadness and despair before an unexpected but uplifting riff follows immediately afterwards. Two nights ago, for example, I couldn’t remain seated when the opening melody of “#ToStoreAndToUse” followed “Sana Sana Sana — Cura Cura Cura,” a sad tale of wasted childhood and anger at being misled by unrealistic promises. Who would have thought you could dance to Depressive and Suicidal Black Metal (DSBM)?

The loyal fans of Psychonaut 4 worldwide, and anyone who has seen the band live, will know that you can. Facebook and Youtube comments often remark on how vocalist Graf von Baphomet, real name David Lomidze, dances on stage. It’s not what I was expecting from DSBM, or as the band likes to call it, Post-Soviet Suicidal Black Metal, I will admit. Yes, there’s even a sense of humour too. A dark one, of course, but humour nonetheless.

Last year’s European tour, for example, was entitled “From Tbilisi With Hate,” a play on the Georgian capital’s one time slogan of “The City That Loves You.”

Beautyfall is a great album. That might sound like an understatement, but while writing this I can’t find a superlative that can do it justice. Melancholic rather than depressive, there is a sad beauty that resonates in-between the frustration so despairingly embodied by von Baphomet’s anguished screams. I sometimes have to wonder how he has any throat lining left.

The guitar work of S.D. Ramirez, real name Shota Darakhvelidze, and Glixxx can even be sublime at times, while Nepo Neparidze’s drums resonate particularly well on headphones, especially when the double kick goes into overdrive. At times, Alex Menabde’s baselines even reminded me of Stanley Clarke’s on Dance of Fire, an album by Azerbaijani jazz artist Aziza Mustafa Zadeh. Seriously.

The use of saxophone in “Dust, The Enemy” has shades of Nik Turner from British space-rock pioneers, Hawkwind too. If you thought black metal was just about noise then you’re very much mistaken.

Beautyfall, for me anyway, is very much a headphones experience and perfect for late night walks through a deserted urban landscape made all the more emptier by the pandemic. I find myself relishing the solitude. I enjoy the isolation. I don’t regret the decision in choosing either.

This is no tired formula regurgitated as can happen with some bands. Beautyfall departs from the usual format of a Psychonaut 4 album even if the themes — depression and substance abuse — do not.

There is no melodic introduction of several minutes as their previous releases had. Instead, the band smashes the unsuspecting listener in the face with a baseball bat on the opening track, One Man’s War. What also sets it apart from their back catalogue is that much of it is in Georgian, finally putting to bed the notion that metal can only be sung in English. Melodically, the track “Tbilisian Tragedy” even sounds Georgian.

Non-Georgian speakers shouldn’t be put off by this, however. It’s really about meaning expressed through sound, though to understand what von Baphomet is anguished about would of course add yet another important layer to the experience. Indeed, he doesn’t consider himself a vocalist. His voice is an instrument. He screams. From the inner depths of his soul, leaving the more melodic vocal lines to S.D. Ramirez while Drifter adds an addition growl.

Beautyfall is an instinctively psychological and emotional experience as much as it is one of intellectual contemplation. Yes, the themes are dark, but it’s also important to realise that the band doesn’t promote them, instead offering the listener a solution in the form of a release.

Comments from fans on YouTube, who have experienced everything from occasional depression to some very real contemplation of suicide, are all testimony to that. And it’s that release we all probably need during a pandemic that is still far from over.
Highly recommended.

Beautyfall by Psychonaut 4 will be available from Austrian Black Metal music label Talheim Records in September 2020. The band is on Bandcamp here.

Gaming and Extremism – Why Pop Culture needs to be embraced by the P/CVE and conflict resolution community

by Onnik James | Oct 28, 2019 | PCVE, Technology

Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, a Triple-A game tackling mental health

As Trump and others blame computer games for the gun violence in society, while ignoring their own contribution to the hatred and xenophobia in play, it’s worth remembering that this narrative has been used by successive governments and conservative groups against gamers for decades and has been persistently debunked.

Moreover, games can arguably be a useful tool in preventing and countering violent extremism and other sensitive issues. Discussing mental health issues, for example, was encouraged by the recent independent AAA game, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, which consulted mental health professionals at all stages of its development.

Paul Fletcher, a professor of health neuroscience from Cambridge University, was a consultant on Ninja Theory’s game and he described its impact in a video that was shown at The International Game Summit on Mental Health, a first-time event held recently in Toronto.

[…]

[…] the game creates empathy for those with psychosis. Senua was a person, and “not a two-dimensional shell of mental illness,” Fletcher said. The game won a lot of awards, but as we learned from Fletcher, it also changed a lot of lives, as players with mental illness who played the game or knew people with mental illness contacted the company by the hundreds to tell the company what it meant to experience such a realistic portrayal of the illness.

Fletcher said that when the game was shown to some of the patients who helped create it, the patients felt like their experience had been validated. The team even changed the ending because the patients felt like it was lacking. The game won an award from the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

True, Far-Right and Islamist Extremists use first person shooters for combat training (something, incidentally, that the US military pioneered in 2002 with the free release of “America’s Army,” developed with the Quake engine in order to recruit and propagandise and which is still updated and available on Steam today) and multiplayer chat – sometimes encrypted – to communicate and coordinate.

However, last year I was involved in the training of community leaders in Preventing / Countering Violent Extremism (P/CVE) and had long chats with one of the participants, a Swedish priest involved in countering Neo-Nazi radicalisation and who was also a gamer. We considered that approaching the games companies to urge the inclusion of alternative narratives in storylines and cutscenes could be valuable.

Not because there is a risk of radicalisation from the games – although there has been the emergence of Far-Right titles – but because it reaches an appropriate audience where some vulnerable to radicalisation will be present. It also touches upon another issue of concern with the P/CVE community in general. Many simply don’t have experience of, let alone familiarity with, the spaces where those at risk congregate, online and off.

It’s why the effectiveness of alternative and counter narratives really should be questioned IMHO. Your Facebook or Youtube video is unlikely to reach the intended audience without utilising approaches such as Moonshot CVE’s Redirect Method or disseminating them within the online bubble that those at risk of radicalisation are sitting. Some might argue that very few of them are on Facebook these days anyway.

In recent years we’ve seen the promising approach of a few – Suleiman Bakhit’s comic books, for example, or the Pakistani cartoon, Burkha Avenger – but these are few and far between. Moreover, when it comes to the Far-Right, what about computer games and music? Bands like the Idles who tackle toxic masculinity and have even set up a closed Facebook group for those who need a safe space and support community around them.

And it isn’t just in the area of P/CVE where computer games, music, and other forms of pop culture can play a role. In traditional conflict resolution settings they could also play a role. In Georgia, for example, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and European Union worked together to create a game specifically to break down barriers between youth in Georgia and its breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

“Peace Park” was developed by Georgian videogame developers, in close consultation with local and international experts in conflict resolution and online gaming, UNDP in Georgia wrote.

It intended to teach children from all over Georgia – whose land is 20 percent occupied – that working together can lead to win-win situations.

The game was tested among 60 children in six Georgian cities: capital Tbilisi in eastern Georgia, Kutaisi and Zugdidi in the country’s west, Abkhazian capital Sukhumi and other Abkhazian towns Gali and Ochamchire.

Now the initiators intend to further promote the new game and help children all over the country get along.

Of particular note is This War of Mine, a computer game that uses immersive and interactive storytelling that bestows upon players a feeling of empathy for the characters and the situation they find themselves in.

This War of Mine is a game defined by its cultural roots—it is a Slavic game, created by people from Central Europe who grew up hearing stories of Nazi occupation from their grandparents. It lacks most of the hallmarks of more stereotypically “Western” stories—there isn’t a happy ending or even a particularly neat resolution. It is not a game designed to give you a quick dopamine hit of joy or to tell a complex tale of good and evil. Instead, it is a game designed to make you feel something—to evoke emotions and then to force the player to confront and contemplate those emotions.

It would likely have been somewhat successful purely as a War Sims resource management-type game, but by tangling up the player’s feelings and expectations, it becomes so much more. Kauch puts it best: “Our message in This War of Mine is that war is not something that happens in a faraway land, in some fantasy kingdoms. That it’s something real and something that affects the people’s lives and makes people do things that they [normally] wouldn’t even think of.”

As an aside, and of particular importance given the emergence of Incel, where was Trump and others when Gamergate hit the headlines?

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Anti-Government, Anti-Russia Protests Rage On in Tbilisi, Georgia

by Onnik James | Jul 12, 2019 | Georgia, Russia

A woman wears an eye patch to protest the dispersal of a previous demonstration. A protester stands at the entrance to Ivanishvili’s residence and business center blowing a whistle. Her patch not only represents the 20 percent of Georgian territory considered occupied by Russia; it also marks the date (June 20) of the police dispersal.

Analysts believe the protests are about more than just about Gavrilov’s appearance in the Georgian Parliament. They also represent disillusionment with the ruling Georgian Dream party and the societal divide between a younger generation looking to the West and Georgia’s older, more conservative and traditional institutions © Onnik James Krikorian 2019

Protesters in Tbilisi have entered their fourth week of demonstrations in response to an official visit by Russian legislator Sergei Gavrilov to the country on June 20. During an inter-parliamentary meeting on Orthodoxy, Gavrilov angered many Georgians when he addressed the Georgian Parliament in Russian from the parliamentary speaker’s chair.

Gavrilov Night, Tbilisi, Georgia © Onnik James Krikorian 20 June 2019

Georgia severed diplomatic relations with Russia in 2008 following the Russian-Georgian War and Moscow’s recognition of two breakaway regions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, as independent states. Russia supports and has a military presence in both former territories, which explains why most Georgians still consider Moscow to be an occupying force.

In response to the protests over Gavrilov’s visit, which the ruling Georgian Dream party later described as a “protocol error,” Russia announced on July 8 that it would suspend all direct flights to Georgia, advising Russian tourists not to visit the country. The move is predicted to cause huge economic losses for Georgia.

Nevertheless, protesters representing the “For Freedom” movement continue their daily demonstrations outside the Parliament building on Tbilisi’s central Rustaveli Avenue, maintaining that they will not stop until the government addressed all three of their demands. At the time of writing, only one of those demands has been met.

–
First published by Stratfor.

Counterterrorism Operation in Georgia Brings Home an Uncomfortable Truth

by Onnik James | Dec 18, 2017 | Chechnya, Georgia, Radicalisation

Earlier this month Stratfor published another piece on radicalization and violent extremism in Georgia, this time on the recent counter-terrorism operation in Tbilisi, Georgia.

Georgia is no stranger to the specter of international terrorism. But never has the threat struck so close to home as it did toward the end of last month. Panic, fear and anger quickly spread among the population when counterterrorism forces conducted an operation in the capital, Tbilisi, targeting a small group of militants believed to have links to the Islamic State. Drawing from the scant information available about the operation, it’s difficult to figure out precisely what happened. Official accounts report that on the evening of Nov. 21, a large number of heavily equipped special forces units cordoned off an apartment complex in the city’s Isani district. A live broadcast from the scene on Georgian television showed an apparent explosion in one apartment with the sound of intense gunfire in the background. Residents also recorded video of the situation on their cellphones and posted the footage on Facebook before they were evacuated. By late the next afternoon, some 20 hours after it started, the operation was over, leaving one officer and three militants dead.

Overnight, the raid shattered any sense of security in the country, from which dozens of citizens are believed to have joined militant groups in Syria and Iraq. Opposition parties and some media outlets in Georgia criticized the operation’s execution — in no small part because, in the absence of official information and updates, rumors ran rampant. The raid drew international attention, too, over speculation that the Chechen jihadist Akhmed Chatayev, a known terrorist returned from fighting with the Islamic State in Syria, was among the dead.

The full article can be read here. Meanwhile, in other news and after spending much of 2017 working with them on another project, I’ve just started another short-term contract with the OSCE Transnational Threats Department / Action against Terrorism Unit (TNTD / ATU).

The Curious Case of Afgan Mukhtarli

by Onnik James | Nov 19, 2017 | Azerbaijan, Georgia, Human Rights, Media

Stratfor has published my piece on the mysterious disappearance from Tbilisi of Afgan Mukhtarli. Many believe that the dissident Azerbaijani journalist was abducted because of his writing and other activities.

At around 7 p.m. on May 29, Afgan Mukhtarli, an Azerbaijani activist and journalist living in self-imposed exile in Tbilisi, rang his wife, Leyla Mustafayeva. Mukhtarli said he was on his way home after meeting a friend at a cafe in the Georgian capital. He never showed up. The next day, although his passport remained in Tbilisi, updates on social media reported that Mukhtarli was instead in Baku, Azerbaijan, where he faced charges for resisting arrest, illegally crossing the border, and smuggling 10,000 euros ($11,663) into the country.

Alarm bells rang among other Azerbaijani activists and journalists who had come to call Tbilisi home. Earlier the same month in Baku, Eynulla Fatullayev, a former prisoner of conscience now known to critics as a "government attack dog," had published an editorial on the Azerbaijani dissident community living in Georgia, alleging that it was planning to overthrow Azerbaijan's president. The piece mentioned Mukhtarli's name, along with those of a dozen other Azerbaijanis. Tbilisi, Fatullayev claimed, was acting against the interests of Azerbaijan, and he called on the Georgian government to expel “the underground from its own borders.”

That, Mustafayeva believes, is precisely what happened to her husband.

The full piece can be read here.