People From New York State

"Well, people don't understand that the album cover that we did, it was done with Photoshop and with some A.I., but it's a more modern version. It's like Legion — when I did the Legion album cover, computers were still fucking new. Nobody knew anything about three-dimensional artwork or any shit like that. And I was the first person to even fucking fuck with that when I designed the Legion album cover. Now I've been in the computers and all that shit since they all came about. So I may be ahead of a lot of people when it comes to computers. I have two iMacs and MacBook Pro and iPad Pro. So I'm a little versed with the whole computer age and in Photoshop and all that stuff and that. [...] I like to do something different and provocative. And I know the whole A.I. thing, everybody's [up in arms about it]… But it was meant to stir. People don't understand. It's a modernization of… It's a sign of the time that we're in. People just can't — their first [reaction] is, like, 'Oh, he's trying to put all of us artists out of work. And I'll be stuck drawing penises in men's bathrooms for the rest of my life.' So everybody's up in arms and thinking that this is the end of the fucking world. And it's really ridiculous, man. It's just a form of art and expression. So I think people should just really stop being ridiculous and accept it for what it is, man. It's a sign of the times. [...] But here's the thing, how hypocritical it is, because my art was being stolen [illegally downloaded] and stepped all over in the '90s. Metallica had seen it come and they tried to stop it. But all these wannabe mercenaries for artists and all these idiots out there, they were the same people right there stealing my art back then. So where were all you guys at to defend my art being stolen and taken advantage of? [...] So, all I did was just did an album cover, really, that just focused on the whole modernization of the modern time and, really, it's just a reflection of the age that we're in right now. I can't spend my days trying to explain this. I have a saying: I don't try to convince stupid is dumb and I don't try to convince dumb is stupid. So I just let it do its thing and piss people off. I have a great time with it. It's hilarious. Yeah, it is what it is, man. It's meant to stir the shit paddle, and that's what I do."

"Neil Peart, I’ve seen an interview with him, and he felt uncomfortable in those situations, and I just feel the same way, man. I just don’t like being put in those positions where I’m sitting at a table and people are gawking at me like I’m in the Jim Rose Circus or something. I guess I’m just too real and too deep for that kind of shit. To me, I think it’s — pardon the expression — I think it’s a poser kind of thing. That’s for posers. And Steve’s like, ‘I feel the same way. I feel like I wanna climb out of my skin when I’m in those situations.’ And like I say, I’m just not into that kind of thing. ‘Cause I’m up there, if I’m wrangled into these things, I’m thinking to myself as I’m up there and everybody’s saying all the compliments and everything, and I think to myself, ‘Man, if they can only see me when I’m outside mowing my grass, washing the car and cleaning the bathroom. If they could only see me now.’ So that’s kind of how it makes me feel uncomfortable, ’cause I don’t think of myself like a rock star or anything like that. I just don’t put myself in that [frame of mind]. I can’t. I really don’t. I can’t relate. [...] I was having this conversation with the guys in the band the other day, ’cause we were talking about meet-and-greets and doing that kind of stuff. And I’m just not a fan of the whole charging fans for a signature. I give a fan a signature out of kindness of my heart, not because I wanna make money off of them. The fact that they’re a fan and they listen to our material… I know things are different — most people get [music] for free now — but I still can’t come to terms with that, to charge somebody for my signature, especially a fan… And it makes me feel kind of weird."

"When I was eight years old and forced against my will to participate in the Christmas play at the church my mother was a Sunday school teacher at, I was singing at the front of the church thinking, ‘How did I get myself into this shit?’"

"Religion is a three-legged dog, and it’s on its way out. I think people know how to treat each other, and don’t need a book full of bullshit to tell them how to do it."

"Schuldiner broadened death metal’s horizons, dragging it out of the fetid gore and unworked thrash into something more sophisticated, programming intelligence into its necro physiology, and in the process recruiting some of the most technically gifted musicians the scene has had."

"His music is timeless. It still sounds as fresh as it did when it came out. Plus, Chuck’s style on guitar is unmatched: it’s the perfect mix of melody, technicality and brutality. I’m extremely lucky to have been not just part of the band but also a close friend of Chuck’s. He inspired me, and he continues to inspire me, every day."

"It's difficult trying to articulate what it is about this instrumental Death song off Human — essentially arranged and written in the studio — that speaks to me. It doesn't have Chuck's voice in the literal sense, but it contains all the vital harmonic, melodic and rhythmic components that branded Death's sound. But it also has something else. It's reaching for truth, and it holds a majestic beauty that gave Death's songs their greatest potency. What I'm remembering is the beginner mind approach in which this song took shape in the studio. It was driven by instinct and spontaneous creative freedom. Our collective energies united and we swam into the 'Cosmic Sea,' trusting we wouldn't need a life raft. Chuck's story was liberated without words. 'Cosmic Sea' is a journey straight into the heart of Death and, for me, an auditory memory of what an old friend felt like at his best."

"Frank and Chuck were very close. That closeness is surely why the devastation Chuck felt at the tragic death of his brother, and the consequences following it, were so great that he never really came to terms with it. He always missed Frank. The death of Frank brought this family very close together and that closeness has continued always. There is always fear involved when a child dies and I watched diligently, afraid it could happen again. Chuck’s father worked and had tennis and other hobbies, so I was more involved with Chuck and his interests, as I was with my other children. As Chuck grew older he would go with me antiquing and he would frequently call me to just go out for a cup of coffee, or to lunch, or the doorbell would ring and there he would be for a visit. He never forgot my birthday or any other special occasion. He was a wonderful son and friend and we were close, as were his sister and nephew. He took us to the beach on weekends when he was home and met his nephew at the bus stop after school to take him to the mall or to play basketball. His sister fought for his life for three years and he acknowledged that in an interview, saying that his sister was a warrior. They were really close friends as well as brother and sister. Is it any wonder that we infinitely love and miss him in so many ways?"

"After losing Frank, he worried so about what it would do to the three of us - Beth, Christopher and myself - to lose him. I promised him we would do the best we could if he were to lose that fight and that is what we are trying to do, keep that promise. Chuck was the one who never gave up, who instilled hope and love in those all around him and he never cursed fate. Chuck’s steadfast hope for the future and his family, friends, and the many fans who wrote to him sustained him."

"Schuldiner’s guitar playing and ability as a song writer grew immensely since the band formed in the early 1980s in Florida. His stamina and precision in guitar playing was impeccable. But by the late ’80s/early ’90s the primitive, zombie, blood and gore obsessed death metal had evolved to a more progressive style with lyrics delving into the dark side of human nature and suffering. [...] Schuldiner is often included in lists of the best metal guitarists for his innovative and passionate approach to playing death metal music."

"Chuck Shuldiner was a once-in-a-generation type of musician. He filtered his genius through his band, Death, which was, and in many ways, still is the standard bearer for Technical Death Metal. Unlike their peers, Cannibal Corpse, Morbid Angel, Deicide, and Obituary, Death wasn’t defined by their brutality. There was an elegant regard for precision and sinewy melody that lived in harmonic minor bliss. His playing was so clean and impressive, yet he never came off as a showboat. Without Chuck Shuldiner, there wouldn’t be bands like The Faceless, Obscura, Arsis, or Necrophagist. The metal world would is much worse place without his presence. RIP."

"Chuck came to the studio knowing exactly what he wanted to do. His "vision" was fully formed and complete, as he intended to recreate the sound he had in mind for Death. The recording process required no experimenting or trying things out; Chuck's plan was to just get this sound he created on tape. Chuck was an eager and dedicated teenager of 19. Throughpout the project there was just Chuck and his drummer Chris in the studio. The two of them worked hard and were very well-prepared and efficient. My engineer Casey and I watched Chuck and Chris realize their vision. What I find incredible is that what Chuck and Chris accomplished with [Scream Bloody Gore] became the prototype for much of what followed in extreme metal for the next three decades."

"I don’t mean to dwell but I can’t help myself [...] Do you remember when Things seemed so eternal?"

"I’m glad to see that a lot of these metal bands today are incorporating more traditional elements into their music because that’s where it all comes from. I never lost touch with that through the years, but I was very much crucified for it a while back. And I guess it’s good to know that I was doing the right thing."

"Won’t you join me on the perennial quest Reaching into the dark, retrieving light Search for answers on the perennial quest Where dreams are followed, and time is a test"

"Trapped Inside a life which is not yours Spirits within causing terror, fear and darkness."

"I got fed up with writing about crap monsters. What’s horrific about that sort of thing? The real evil in this world goes on in society. I’d just reached a time in my life as a person and as a musician when I felt angry enough to write about it."

"Sharing both pleasure and pain Two hearts, two minds, one soul Seperating mentally An illusion of privacy Together -- they absorb eachother's lies As one -- they will live and they will die A living hell has begun"

"A hook right through your tits [...] Pathetic rancid cunt [...] Trying to escape They torture you by cutting off your cock"

"I celebrate a faggot’s death, human disgrace"

"[Schuldiner] opened the door for many guitarists to rip open their aggression and put it all into this relentless and chaotic form of metal. Perhaps most impressive, Schuldiner essentially taught himself to play guitar."

"Naming your band Death is either tongue-in-cheek insolence or a proclamation of utter sincerity, and Chuck Schuldiner was not given to flippancy where his music was concerned. Next to his family, music was most important to him, and this clarity drove him. To call his band Death was to equate his life’s purpose with the most unimaginable end to which we all will go: it was predestined and non-negotiable. With Death, Chuck affirmed his life."

"Ram an axe into your mound [...] Shit onto your guts [...] A stupid cunt we sacrifice"

"I think he was a perfectionist. He really had a high standard and maybe that made it harder for some people to work with him and meet those demands. And as the band went on, the music just got more complex. It was easy to play that kind of music poorly, but it was very hard to keep up with someone like Chuck."

"Did we set out to do something that was so unusual? No. [...] This was very much my concept, which may have helped. Apart from Chris, it was a one-man show. And when you’re virtually working on your own, it can sharpen the vision."

"Bodies deformed way beyond belief Cast out from their concerned society"

"There were loads of people in the local area up for it, and I could have settled for someone who was OK, but not brilliant. That wasn’t what I wanted. To make Death as good as I believed we could be, I had to have a line-up that kicked ass on all fronts."

"Chuck Schuldiner’s legendary perfectionism elevated the genre from dumb-guy heavy metal to truly progressive and inventive art, and the legacy his all-too-early passing left solidified Death’s status among the absolute greats of the genre."

"Pull the plug -- let me pass away Pull the plug -- don't want to live this way"

"Extreme music, more specifically the death metal sub-genre, would cease to exist without the musical brilliance of Chuck Schuldiner. [...] Within metal, there are few musicians who’ve shown such a profound prowess for technical and melodic guitar playing, all while playing music as extreme as death metal. Chuck Schuldiner was the epitome of this."

"You will not return alive -- left to die Suffering until the end -- left to die"

"It blew my mind how Chuck was so talented a guitar player and also so talented at structuring a song. We had rehearsed the music to The Sound of Perseverance so much without vocals and I had no idea how to structure vocals around music that was so complex. When we did the demos and I finally heard Chuck's lyrics and the way he structured them within the music I was just blown away. It was so genius, so creative, and so catchy. He took words and just blended them perfectly with really complex crazy music. Then before we would go on tour he would have to learn to sing along with playing guitar, which was incredible because those guitar riffs are so crazy. Chuck never wrote riffs thinking 'I gotta make this so I can sing it and play it at the same time.' He would just do the lyrics and sing over the demos, and then later figure out how to do it all together at once. He always did it perfectly, it always belw my mind, it was always just like the record."

"Life will never be the same Death can never be explained It's their time to go beyond Empty feeling when they're gone"

"Cannibals practicing the art of butchery Emotions don't exist, pain you can't resist"

"Seizure now sets in Torture will begin Example made from those to see Your freedom turned to misery"

"Decapitated head licking your cunt"

"It seems to be a conceded point now among those who are leading the way in our church that the Church of Rome has all the wisdom, and it must follow that, while some are striving to gain that wisdom, some will, as a matter of course, remain unquiet until they can gain the religious graces which she alone bestows with that wisdom."

"Sound is just ripples in the air. Musicians are like shamans; they learn how to manipulate people’s brain functioning through those ripples in the air. I have an important responsibility to capture those vibrations and transmit them, to spread those vibrations around the world."

"The church is still alive. There may be institutional decline, but it is not a decline in the Gospel or in the Eucharist or the Lord himself, right? That is all well and good and alive, and will be as long as there are people who will surrender themselves and trust in his grace."

"It is only after much hesitation that the writer has reconciled himself to the addition of the term "neurodynamics" to the list of such recent linguistic artifacts as "cybernetics", "bionics", "autonomics", "biomimesis", "synnoetics", "intelectronics", and "robotics"."

"... the handling of the first public announcement of the program in 1958 by the popular press, which fell to the task with all the exuberance and sense of discretion of a pack of happy bloodhounds. Such headlines as "Frankenstein Monster Designed by Navy: Robot That Thinks" (Tulsa, Oklahoma Times) were hardly designed to inspire scientific confidence."

"The term "perceptron", originally intended as a generic name for a variety of theoretical nerve nets, has an unfortunate tendency to suggest a specific piece of hardware, and it is only with difficulty that its well-meaning popularizers can be persuaded to suppress their natural urge to capitalize the initial "p". On being asked, "How is 'Perceptron' performing today?" I am often tempted to respond, "Very well, thank you, and how are 'Neutron' and 'Electron' behaving?""

"For this writer, the perceptron program is not primarily concerned with the invention of devices for "artificial intelligence", but rather with investigating the physical structures and neurodynamic principles which underlie "natural intelligence". A perceptron is first and foremost a brain model, not an invention for pattern recognition. As a brain model, its utility is in enabling us to determine the physical conditions for the emergence of various psychological properties... we are fully aware of the simplifications which have been made from biological systems; but it is, at least, an analyzable model."

"While I have seen a few museum pieces for sale in Afghanistan, there are a number of artifacts on the market that have recently been dug up in Afghanistan. Mujaheedin commanders in all parts of the country are involved in this illicit activity, most notably in the east near the Hadda museum. An important Buddhist pilgrimage site in the second through seventh centuries, Hadda has been totally stripped of its exquisite clay sculptures in the Gandhara style, which combines Bactrian, Greco-Roman, and Indian elements. Looted artifacts from Faryab and Balkh provinces in the north allegedly include jewel- encrusted golden crowns and statues, orbs (locally described as ‘soccer balls’) studded with emeralds and all manner of exotic ephemera, as well as fluted marble columns similar to those found at Ai Khanoum in the northeastern province of Takhar. These are being carted away to embellish the houses of the newly powerful, according to witnesses."

"You have to remember that the items that have been stolen from the Museum or have been plundered, are not owned by only one person and usually not only by Afghans. It is usually one or two Afghans with five or six Pakistani partners. And the underground stolen art business in Pakistan is just as well organised and it is just as dangerous as the drug business. In fact, I have heard some people say that as far as the end-result is concerned, it’s even more profitable than drugs."

"Afghanistan never did have any monuments on the world heritage list. As far as I know, nine different monuments have been nominated over time for inclusion on the world heritage list. The world heritage committee just opened their meeting for this year, and there is one Afghan monument, the minaret at Jam, being considered this time. Because of the sympathy and the general feeling about Afghanistan these days, people seem to think it has a good chance of being put on the list. But the reason the nine others never got on the list was because the government of Afghanistan could not fulfill the requirements for their protection."

"Dupree’s analysis clearly suggests that ‘the museum was not plundered by rampaging gangs of illiterate Mujahideen’. The looters in 1993 were discriminating in what they took and apparently had both the time and the knowledge to select the most attractive, saleable pieces. For example, they removed from wooden display mounts only the central figures (depicting voluptuous ladies standing in doorways) of the delicate Begram ivory carvings. It is also telling that although some 2000 books and journals remain in the library, volumes with illustrations of the museum's best pieces are missing."

"A discrepancy of this order of magnitude, by a real estate developer sizing up his own living space of decades, can only be considered fraud."

"Some of the most inclusive and visionary ideas of human liberation have historically been formulated by those on the margins, those excluded from formal political power, the stigmatized, semiliterate, “backward,” and “illegal.”"

"When women took to their piazzas and fields in Sicily in 1892–94, they focused their anger on those who directly challenged their ability to subsist. Many considered the nation-state, large landholders, and those priests who were allied with such interests to be the most egregious off enders. After the Italian nation was formed in 1861, many members of the urban bourgeoisie and middle classes supported the national project, but most of the poor actively revolted against it. For the vast majority of Italy’s residents—the peasantry—the new state meant excessive taxation, forced conscription, dispossession from land, widespread poverty, police brutality, and government repression."