21st Century Man: An Interview With David Thrussell Of SNOG

We crunch the Red Pill® with David Thrussell of SNOG.

Hi David, how are you doing?

I am a speck of dust tumbling through the vast eons of space and the endless river of time, trapped on a prison planet, yearning to be free. The great golden goal just out of my reach, the whisper of freedom a faint scent in my nostrils, the hard ice of my breath tickling the back of my desperate hands. Aware of the infinite, yet tethered to the mundane. The phoenix that dreams of flight.

We haven’t heard a new album from SNOG in five years, although you have been busy with other projects, how has the space between albums changed your approach to SNOG?

My therapist, Dr. Ian White, remarked one day that my records were largely snide and cynical, a jaded howl of desperate cajoling rarely interrupted by respites of surrender and broken peace. He was, of course, right. I don’t disown my previous work at all though. Our world is corrupt and fallen, and the leviathan deserves all our scorn and all my sickly syrup of derision. But the good doctor suggested, as a tonic for my wounded soul, I conceive the next record as a gospel album – a celebration of the universal and the infinite, the irresistible and unavoidable – a redemption song-cycle of our place in the endless cosmic ballet. The end result is, of course, only half that.

“The other inmates scold you harshly for your attempted breakout…”

A fractured gospel album no doubt, struggling with mortality and fragility but also a medicated meditation on the machine, our near future as biological slaves in a technocratic and technology state, harvested by oligarchs and herded by the ‘enabling classes’ through manufactured crises into digital pens and ideological dead-ends. As befits our monastic aim, the songs were envisioned as simple chants, backed by minimal machine pulses with plenty of space for my weary voice to creak its way out through the cracks. A deliberately primitive concoction, work songs for the unknowing, socially mediated indentured servants of the 21st century.

The press release for Lullabies… states that you a had troubled time after Compliance(tm). Was this a socio-political thing or just plain old burnout?

On a moonless night, one catches a faint glimpse of the infinite – its ghostly form brushing one’s cheek like the ice breath of death. Shackled in the chain-gang, one tries to break ranks and chase the specter, only to be rudely snapped back into the trudging march as the chains tighten and whip you back into line. The other inmates scold you harshly for your attempted breakout, threatening their survival and shortening their privileges. They spit cruel taunts and land crushing blows. You fall to the ground, the foreman beating you savagely as the chain-gang marches on and your twisted body spends its last moments crumpled in a ditch, a dirty rain washing the curdled blood from your eyes as they long to catch the fleeting apparition one last time.

“…the contemporary citizen utilises Lithium to function smoothly…”

With new album Lullabies For The Lithium Age recharging our senses, what is the Lithium Age exactly?

Lithium is a mysterious element mined through electrolysis from deep mineral pools in Africa, Australia and the Americas. Indispensable for the technological prison and the social panopticon, modern digital technologies of distraction, entertainment, communication, control, surveillance and manipulation rely exclusively upon Lithium for their operation. Likewise the contemporary citizen utilises Lithium to function smoothly and obediently within the confines of the Man-Machine. You may not know it. But we are living in the Lithium Age.

What’s your take on the global pandemic and how are you dealing with it (also any tips on getting through lockdown?)

The modern State relies on mass marketing tools to regulate its citizenry. Within the architecture of fear, one can see every product launched with a marketing campaign or advertising blitz. With The War On Terror the events of 9/11 were the product launch or advertising campaign, the product was endless wars, humanitarian interventions and omniscient surveillance. Likewise, with COVID-1984, the Product is a totalitarian state, the virus is the product launch or omniscient and largely unchallenged advertising campaign.

Do you have plans for SNOG post-pandemic?

There will be no post-pandemic. Totalitarianism allows no respite, just the push-pull of social engineering and Pavlovian responses.