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 Patrick Haynes 

“I agree with that to an extent. But there are levels. “

Where do you find a teaching about “levels”?

“If we are just eating food that were meant for false God sacrifice, there’s no big issue there. But, doing the practices themselves and celebrating things by name, as Christians, has a very different weight to it. “

Ishtar worship included the following:

-animal sacrifices

-objects made of her sacred stone, lapis lazuli

-temple prostitution

Now if indeed we were engaging in or using these things then we might be worshipping Ishtar. But no one is. 

There is no other connection with eggs or rabbits and Ishtar either for that matter. It’s all fake news. The animal of Ishtar was a lion. The Easter bunny is a much younger tradition made by German Lutheran Christians in the late 1600s and the hare was used in medieval art prior to this as it was believed that rabbits were hermaphroditic and able to give birth sans intercourse, which is another thing  in itself but regardless it was never used in pagan ritual during Pascha. Though a man named Jacob Grimm speculated that Easter eggs were a part of Ēostre worship, there is no evidence of this aside his musings. The only thing remaining in common with that particular goddess is the use of the name Easter. But etymologists believe the word is an anglicized version of the word Ostern which was a shortened version of auferstehn which means “resurrection”. 

Halloween has similar Christian origins but again another thing in and of itself. 

“Such as many Christian’s who claim to love and worship Jesus, but they are worshipping a Jesus they make up in their own minds that is okay with certain sins, so they may be able to claim the free gift of salvation without living in true repentance. “

No doubt this is a common problem but not akin to the issue with worship we are talking about. Only those who worship in spirit and truth are worshipping Him at all. All other worship is vain and empty. 

“In all sincerity, men and women have gone to great lengths to try to please God. Without seeking His permission, they presume to add things to the worship of God because they are attractive and have a vague attachment to the One whom they look upon as their Savior. They think their sincerity in worship is more important than the truth.”

Both sincerity and truth are important.  But by your measure especially using the  Deuteronomic Code and Mosaic Law all of our worship is wrong. We do not make sacrifices. We do not journey to the temple for that purpose. We do not have one priest who goes in yearly to make those sacrifices.  In the passage that speaks of worshipping in spirit and truth Jesus amends or changes, or in my mind, supersedes the existing form of worship. In speaking to the woman at the well he says “21Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 22You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. 24God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

Jesus said they and we will no longer be beholden to the rules and forms of the mosaic law and Deuteronomic Code. They’re VERY much changed in nearly every way. 

“But God thinks differently: "Whatever I command you, be careful to observe it; you shall not add to it nor take away from it" (Deuteronomy 12:32). “

See notes above 

“Easter is a festival that has been added.”

Pascha has been celebrated since the original Passover. We now celebrate it as the resurrection of Christ. It also has been superseded. 

“It is syncretism, blending a practice from paganism into the stream of Christianity. “

Evidence shows otherwise as best I can tell. Also it’s not as if we are being led to also accept some other god or goddess. We gather to celebrate the resurrection of Christ. 

“Only the revelation of God shows how He will be worshipped, and He will not be served in imitation of other gods. God's way cannot be "improved" by human sincerity.”

And what is shown? We do not hold to the new moon festivals and temple sacrifice of the Jewish people. Rather we hold to what Paul says is worship. 

“I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”

‭‭Romans‬ ‭12:1‬ ‭ESV‬‬

And he goes on to describe how we might do that 

““Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

‭‭Romans‬ ‭12:9-21‬ ‭ESV‬‬

One of the reasons of writing the above and what I shared earlier in Romans 14 was to address the worries of the former Jewish believers who were held to a legalistic system or who were judging the new Christian believers and to new believers who were Romans who lived amidst a very pagan culture. These issues were very present then. And Paul says of those things - it’s not a big deal. They’re fake and vain. The old way of things is superseded. 

“Deuteronomy 13:1-18 defines the law regarding apostasy. Those who led others to worship other gods or adopt the practices of the nations around them were to be stoned!”

What did Jesus say about stoning people? Rather we see the Pharisees stoning Stephen and later other apostles for worshipping in ways they thought sinful. 

“Cities that fell under the sway of corrupt individuals were to be attacked, burned to the ground, and left as rubble! God considers tampering with His truth to be evil that must be eradicated!”

How does this look in light of the New Testament? Jesus says “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.”

Paul says “What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside?” 

“God is not to be mocked (Galatians 6:7)!”

Fair enough but where is the mockery here? I’ve had someone tell me that this verse means Christian rock is sinful because people make fun of it. 

“In several places in the Bible, He states quite unequivocally that He is a jealous God (Exodus 34:14; Deuteronomy 6:14-15)—He will not be worshipped like any other god (Deuteronomy 12:3-4, 30-31). When He instructed His chosen people Israel in the method of His worship, He warned them neither to add to what He had given them, nor take away from it “(Deuteronomy 4:2; 12:32”

See notes above. Unless you are practicing as the Israelites did your worship is a far cry from their methods. 

; see Revelation 22:18-19).”

That is about the scroll of Johns only. There was no New Testament compiled at the time. And he did not amend his prophecy to the Old Testament.

“Christmas is no better. When the so-called Christians added Christmas to Christianity, it had nothing to do with true Christianity at all. It was a ploy to win converts from paganism.”

A whole other issue but as regards the last sentence…if it led people to convert…is that bad? 

“It was a deliberate grab for power. “

Christianity was the state religion under Constantine but he never forced people to be Christians. He had power enough on his own. 

“From the beginning, Christmas, rather than promoting the true God and His way of life, has only led people away from the truth.”

How? 

“Peter writes that we are redeemed from these very traditions (I Peter 1:18). “

The traditions Peter is speaking about are the Jewish law and customs (see also the mosaic law and deuteroconic code) ““knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold,”

‭‭forefathers and he’s writing to the Jews. Jewish ways. Not pagan. 

“These traditions, inherited from our fathers, are a part of our culture. Jesus used His ministry to repudiate every addition, subtraction, and distortion that had attained any kind of specious, "divine" authority, and He did this by clarifying and magnifying the truth. “

I would agree with nuance but yet you’re making an appeal to the old ways that he set right. 

Enter the Nightmare.....AGAIN!

I'm using this page as a way to document the production of (or I guess the re-production of) the first Coexist album titled "Enter the Nightmare, Enter the Ecstasy". Though the meaning behind the title escapes me at this time, this album was something of a milestone in my life and the lives of my friends and bandmates in Coexist. Recorded in September 1998 with Miah of The Sound Lair, at what was Dwell Studios at the time, it was truly an experiment for all parties involved. To the best of my knowledge, we were the first band that Miah had recorded that wasn't his own, and this was the first time in a studio for at least half of us in Coexist (I'm not sure where Mat and Chris's band Updraft recorded their demo).

Dwell Studios was actually a combined effort of locations. The drum tracks and scratch tracks were all done at the home of Dwell's vocalist Tony, in a pretty nicely laid out studio, with dedicated tracking rooms and a control room under construction. However, air conditioning had apparently not been installed at this point, because it was rather hot and swampy in there. I can still smell the odor that the green acoustic foam gave off, possibly in hopes of making the noisy band go somewhere else. The drum tracking room was slightly bigger than a closet, but Mat was able to fit in there with his sizeable drum set, but I do remember it being quite an ordeal for him to get in and out.

Other than these tidbits, I don't recall much more about this day of tracking. What I do recall is an angry neighbor, tired of hearing drums. Though, there's no way he could have heard them beyond much more than a far off 'thwack'. I also recall the awe of wondering what in the world Miah was doing with his Roland VS880 digital recorders. I'd actually borrowed one from Butcher that he'd bought at some point and could make little sense of what to do with it aside recording a couple of tracks of guitar. And by 'tracks of guitar', I mean 'plugging into the input and making a horrible noise'. We do thankfully have a few pictures of this day of tracking, though I again recall little aside what I've shared above. Two things of note here are the Ampeg VH-140 guitar head, which is actually a FAR better amp than how I dialed it in or how it sounds recorded. More on that later. The other note is Chris Blackburn's Fender bass amp; which I would now kill to have. I think this was one of those cases of not knowing what we had.


 Guitar and bass tracking was completed at the second half of Dwell Studios, Miah's house, which is now known as The Sound Lair. A quick note here; Miah's neighborhood also had its own share of unhappy neighbors. Now, I've been an unhappy neighbor before; but the noise that we were making was even less at Miah's than at Tony's. Oh well.



Sadly I don't believe I have any pictures of the tracking at this location, and my memory of it is pretty foggy as well. I do vaguely remember what came to cause the biggest problem with the sound of this album. Miah was pretty insistent that we needed to record at least two guitar tracks. I was adamant that we didn't. I seem to recall the reasons why a bit, but not 100%. It seems that it was a combination of:

a) I didn't understand why it was necessary (it is so VERY necessary)

b) I thought that since we couldn't sound like that live, that we shouldn't on record either

c) It would take longer to do, and since we were paying by the hour, I couldn't justify it. Never mind that it might've taken an extra hour or two at the most. I think the final bill on this album was $600 if I remember correctly. Now, to be clear, that was a TON of money to us. It still is really, but it's nothing in the scheme of making a record, even these days with a  local studio.

In the end, it was a horrible idea. I believe that had we double-tracked the guitars that the overall sound would have improved dramatically. Instead, we left Miah with one guitar track to try to fit into the mix. Never mind that I had the gain maxed, the bass and treble on 10, and mids on zero. I know this because that's how I understood things to always be dialed in on a heavy guitar amp. (And sometimes it is!)

I can also recall Mat tracking vocals, but not really Chris. I need to get with the other guys to see if they want to add their own recollections as well. Basically, we've reached the ends of my memory banks on the production/recording of this record, for better or worse depending on the opinion of the reader.

Anyway, many moons have passed....many, many. But at some point, late last year I found the HM Magazine review of this album/demo, and I took a good listen to it.  I'd spoken with Miah at other times about having those tracks "exported" to where I could re-record my parts over the existing production, but due to the format that it was recorded on (the Roland VS880), getting the tracks transferred off would be quite a chore, let alone in a format that I could use easily. So, I started looking into how to grab those files and convert them, and it turns out that it would be quite easy if I had the hard-disk from the Roland. When I approached Miah about it, he said he'd actually seen (as I had) that the Roland units now commanded a fairly substantial price these days and he was going to sell his. He decided to just transfer the audio straight out onto wav files so I could use them.

This is both good and bad.

I was expecting the files to basically be the audio as heard on the disc; with effects, levels, EQ, all the details taken care of. It turns out that his effects section wasn't rendering things correctly, so I got the raw audio.

In other words, I had to start learning the art of mixing.

On a scale of 1 to 10, my level of knowledge on the subject was a solid zero, if even that.

So I've embarked on many months of study and experimentation, trying to figure out what in the world I'm even doing. At this point, I've actually gotten things mixed to the point where I'm happy with them, surprisingly so considering my lack of good equipment, and my even more lacking knowledge bank. So, I've started recording guitars, which something else I've had to relearn (which is another story in itself; basically, recording and balancing w/ REAL audio tracks vs. sampled  (triggered drums) is quite a bit of a different ball game)). On top of that, I'd never attempted to really get the sound of my Mesa to 'tape'. So that's also been a learning experience. It's quite different (in good and bad ways) from the 5150II that I'd owned for years. In some ways I prefer one over the other, but the Mesa Dual Rectifier was THE sound of the time for us. All of our favorite bands, from alternative guys (Bush and Soundgarden) to hardcore and metal (Zao, Meshuggah, Cannibal Corpse) played these amps. This was the sound we all wanted. So that's what I'm aiming to get, the sound that I think we would've wanted to have back then, not what we'd be more likely to hear out of modern heavy bands. It's been kind of funny trying to even get back in that state of mind...I mean, who did we want to sound like? We had so many inspirations at the time, Zao and Fear Factory especially, Korn though no one would admit it (that was probably more on my side of things I guess), Meshuggah and Fear Factory have a very sharp and cutting and precise tone, which is quite different from what Zao and Korn brought to the table with their brand of downtuned sludginess, so I've been trying to find something that's in the middle, or trying to cut certain parts that were in the spirit of those bands with sounds that were closer to theirs. We were adamant about not copying any of these bands directly, and I think for the most part, we succeeded, for better or worse, as the HM article did make a point about our lack of focus, the hip-hop influenced "Something Like Autumn" probably didn't help that, but even without that song, we were still all over the map.

In working on this, one thing that's struck me, is that I didn't know any of the lyrics to our songs for the most part. I've really worked hard on getting the vocals to a different level (literally and figuratively) and though I dislike the repetition in the first two tracks, some of the lyrics are fairly deep and thought provoking (knowing what we had in mind theme-wise, especially w/ the Collective), and while some are not, it's almost like a record I've never heard, because I'd never been able to discern what Chris was saying before. That's all changed now. I'm looking forward to folks hearing all of this in a new way. The drums have more separation and punch, the bass has more snap and presence to it, the vocals, as I said before or worlds away from the raw audio. Weirdly, I'm having more trouble with the guitar tracking/production than anything at this point, probably because I'm so 'close' to it. None of this is a slight to Miah, it's just that production tools are more available now for free to cheap, and also that working on a PC is quite a different beast than working w/ the Roland's interface.

Also, to anyone that happened to see the trailer (I need to post a link I guess), one little 'easter egg' would be that the jazz tunes leading up to the 'reveal' came from a happy accident of sorts. Basically, I had some cables hooked up in a bad configuration, attempting a vocal effect idea that I had, and I was picking up some horrible radio interference. So, I recorded what you heard, slapped some reverb on it to make it cooool, and there's history no one cares about.

In my next entry, I hope to share some pictures and information on the tracking process of the guitars, and also to present the idea of possibly starting a Kickstarter or something similar to re-release the album physically, with a full color, multi-page layout with pictures and the whole lot; the way we wanted to do it, but couldn't afford to. 

And here's a few pictures from the day we recorded drums/scratch tracks. 
 
 
 

Top 5 "Listened to" List of 2013

1. Thrice
   
   From Kensrue's solo material to "Major/Minor", this has definitely been the year of Thrice for me. I fell in love with the song "In Exile" and sought out all of the albums I'd missed since "Artist in the Ambulance", while the Alchemy albums left me mostly disinterested, everything else I'd consider "can't miss".
2. Extol
   
   See my top 5 Metal List as well, but I've played every Extol and Extol related album (Mantric, Lengsel, Borud's solo material) until I've worn grooves in them this year. Such an amazing band w/ such an amazing come-back this year.
3. Audrey Assad
   
   Though I didn't enjoy the newest album quite as much as the two before it, I can't get enough Audrey Assad. I believe pretty well everyone that I know could get into this, and should...NOW.
    
4. Music of the 80's
   
   
   
   At some point I got on an audio-engineering kick and started studying how all of my favorite old records had been made and wanted to see what they "really" sounded like. Phil Collins, GnR, old Metallica, hair-metal of all kinds, Van Halen, and Peter Gabriel were at the top of the list, but no 80's artist was spared. 70 cent CD's from Hastings only fueled this sonic adventure.
   
   
5. Music of the 90's
   
   Pretty well the same situation as above, but also extended over into death-metal and nu-metal. This (and the 80's revival too) were spurred on by the newest Soundgarden album (which rocks by the way). Particular favorites included Living Sacrifice "Reborn", Fear Factory's "Obsolete", Pearl Jam's "No Code", early Foo Fighters, Cannibal Corpse's "Bloodthirst", the Soundgarden discography, and Boyz II Men/ Mariah Carey; yes, you read that right. If I can ever get my hands on a Korg Trinity I'm going to start churning out 90's style R&B classics in record time.

My Top 5 Metal Albums of 2013

1. Extol - EXTOL
   
   
   This one could take up the whole list honestly, but for the sake of whatever, I'll do 4 others as well. But this is metal in its most awesome form. Soaring, brutal, melodic, technical, yet catchy. Just amazing from start to finish, musically and lyrically. Album of the year overall for me.
   
2. Killswitch Engage - Disarm the Descent
   
   This one shares a lot of the same qualities as the Extol album, but can't quite get to that same level of awesome.Having Jesse Leach back is awesome (though I do like Howard's vocals quite a bit), and the vocal melodies are just out of this world on this release. The guitars sound, weirdly enough, kind of weak and lacking, but the riffs themselves make up for it.
   
3. Love & Death - Between Here and Lost
   
   This is what the new Korn could've sounded like (it didn't). This blows away anything that Korn's done since the 90's. Catchy, unrelentingly heavy, great vocals and lyrics. Crazy-good guitar tones everywhere. Nu-metal, yes, I don't care. It's just great.
   
4. The Burial - In the Taking of Flesh
   
   This one was a bit of a surprise as their older material did little for me. This is absolutely punishing from start to finish. It reminds me in a way of older Morbid Angel or Behemoth, maybe even Gorguts, it's great. Just completely great, and I'm looking forward to more albums w/ this lineup.
   
   5. Drottnar - Stratum
   
   I don't know what to call this. They call it 'bunker-metal', I guess I'd laboriously call it bleak yet beautiful technical post-black-metal. It reminds me of later Mayhem a bit, but more 'punk' in a way. The thought-provoking lyrics don't hurt either
   
   
   Honorable Mentions:
5. Carcass - Surgical Steel
6. Living Sacrifice - Ghost Thief
7. Gorguts - Colored Sands
8. Benea Reach - Possession
   
   All of these are on Itunes and disc, help the artists out and purchase these (after a listen online to see if you like them as well).