“Yeah, I’ve heard of these guys. You said they were called Antaeus, right? Some fuckin…some fuckin’ French shit, right?”

It’s common for your brain to conjure up vivid mental conceptions or images at a rate that is much faster than what you can express with the spoken word. For most people, this linguistic lapse is represented with those dreaded “umms” or “uhhhs” that make every high school speech teacher shudder. I never heard this fellow ever commit that sort of communication faux pas. For him, the “umms” and “uhhs” were always simply replaced with the word “fuckin.”

“Yeah man. Real intense—y’know? Really, like, fuckin… real fuckin’ feral.”

We were sitting in the café in our university’s student center. Students and faculty alike percolated in and out of the window lit room. Some were clearly grabbing a hurried bite between classes, while others sat laughing in crowded tables with their text books open as if they came here to study. I’d bet anything that one of the hipper professors was leading a small discussion group on one of the large round tables in the center. The music was struggling to come out of his small laptop computer’s speakers, but nonetheless cut through the background noise just lucid enough to get its point across. I sipped tepid coffee, nodding in agreement.

“The melody is dissonant… but its… right… fuckin…there.” I replied. His profanity was rubbing off on me. “I wouldn’t call them a minimalist black metal band like Darkthrone, say. But the music hits you in kinda the same way… like a fuckin’ battering ram ripping a hole into the void.”

Anteaus. Son of Persidon, slain by Herculeus. According to Dante guards he guards one of the circles of Hell. Also: some French shit. Real fuckin' feral.