Disaffection be thy name. Saint Vitus were too gnarly to be punks and about as far away from thrash as you could get and still be birthed under a Sabbathian umbrella, and their 1984 SST Records self-titled debut is a middle finger raised to all expectation and provenance. It is high among the greatest doom albums ever made, and these 42 years later, it remains ahead of its time.

But what a time. As I write this, the skies are less yellow from wildfire smoke than they were, say, last night, but the forecast says there’s more coming as the world burns. You can smell it. It’s a sad one to recognize. My government hates and murders its citizens without consequence. We’re so dulled to war that we’re sponsoring and actively engaging in committing at least one genocide. Everything seems to get worse every day, and it’S like that’s accountability or speaking truth to power as rapist men with private space programs strip down the world for parts and sell it to each other.

This is a summer of old trees coming down in thunderstorms. Extreme weather events. There’s debris everywhere where I live, as new condo developments and warehouses loom like the box-shaped future fascism has such a boner for. That’s before you get to the rampant corruption, the dissolving of civil liberties, the hate that drives my country like all of these bigoted adult children in their bigboy trucks. The World Cup final is in New Jersey this weekend. I keep thinking about them playing in the smoke. Did you know trees make oxygen? Does anyone remember?

Saint Vitus‘ Saint Vitus was made for days like these. Its five-song/35-minute run is nigh on untouchable, from the initial splurge of caustic noise from Dave Chandler‘s guitar to the thickened tonal gruel that takes hold even in a relatively speedy cut like that opening eponymous title-track. Saint Vitus‘ “Saint Vitus” is an anthem and a clarion. For doomers, it is indelible. But it’s also among the most disillusioned sounds in all of heavy metal, in no small part because Saint Vitus were bringing together the anti-everything attitude of punk with metal’s aggression, playing a style of music that was never and likely will never be cool and still refusing to compromise on what it is or wants to be. It is a call to ‘drop out of life,’ as another band would put it years later. As an album, it doesn’t see a point to anything because to almost everything there’s none to see. No meme or very-correct take, it is righteously drunk on both cheap alcohol and its own disaffection. It will never take itself, or you, seriously. It is uppers and downers, musically and in terms of pills.

If that sounds like hyperbole, good. Frontman Charles Reagers, Chandler, bassist Mark Adams (R.I.P. 2023) and drummer Armando Acosta (R.I.P. 2010) deserve no less for the grime they conveyed, casting “White Magic/Black Magic” as a dramatic cultish violence in the thud of the latter’s drums and the ritualization of post-Iommi riffing following on from the story of Saint Vitus who in the lyrics dies “for his beliefs.” In the prescient crawl of “Zombie Hunger,” they tie doom to horror, which is a connection that underground subculture continues to make on the daily, and embody it in the stunted tempo of the track itself; the riff inspiring the narrative being conveyed; the riff as central; the riff as The Riff.

You could spend four-plus decades debating what the greatest achievement on Saint Vitus is, and that might honestly be a better way to live through the next 40 years than the actual-world is going to offer, but that’s the point. The sound Saint Vitus made could not have come from anyone else and become what it became. It was a sound from what the squares would call losers. The druggies. The drunks in the ditch, as the band itself would soon enough portray on the Thirsty and Miserable EP as they both trolled and reached out to punkers by covering (their label boss’ band) Black Flag. As Black Sabbath once took downtrodden, working-class tribulations and made them into dark art, so too did Saint Vitus embody their experience of place and time in their music, resulting in an even grimmer sound.

I’ll float the nine-minute “The Psychopath” as the most integral piece of Saint Vitus. The slow-motion threat of violence as the vocals meter themselves to the crawling nod of the guitar. Acosta keeping march on the ride. Adams somewhere in the mix but almost indistinguishable from the all-low-end of Chandler‘s guitar. Reagers gutting out the chorus: “Watch out/Beware/The psychopath is loose.” No, I don’t think he was talking about Ronald Reagan, but “The Psychopath” channels the been-fucked-over sensibilities of somebody steamrolled by the choices of those in power. As a record, it sounds like it’s had its ass beat by cops. “The Psychopath” might have been escapism for those making it, but it embodies that reality just the same, and is accordingly unflinching in its noisy shred near the finish.

They finish with the march and invocation of old gods on “Burial at Sea,” which like the song before it manages to be catch in spite of its tempo, but takes off at a sprint in its midsection, only to crash back into that same nod on the other side of it. The message isn’t of hope. There are no platitudes offered. Saint Vitus looks around, sees life getting worse and says “fuck it” on multiple fronts. It’s only a comforting listen in the way of making you feel less alone as you do the same.

The legacy of this record and the sheer didn’t-know-how-good-or-dynamic-they-were, unprogressive, unpretentious assault of doom it provides continues to spread, and 10 years from now if the internet hasn’t been completely consumed by bots, I might still be here talking about how it meets that particular moment as well. But right now, with particulate matter in the air and microplastics in the water being stolen to cool AI processors, Saint Vitus‘ Saint Vitus exposes and reaffirms the cesspool that lies beneath the veneer of capitalist normiehood, and the album’s omnidirectional disenchantment has never felt so vital.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.

—

The house smells good. Chicken went in the crock pot around eight this morning, after I finished the above, and it’s 11 now. The Patient Mrs. took The Pecan to the Guggenheim I guess about an hour ago. Actually, they left about an hour ago, after leaving once (we call that ‘take one’ around here) and needing to come back for The Patient Mrs.’ phone, which of course I had no way to tell her she’d left charging on the couch. In the meantime, I’d gone to BJ’s and Wegman’s because I’m white as fuck to procure apples and parmesan cheese and whatever else was on the list, so I missed them. If I get lonely, I can text.

That leaves me with the dogs, yes, plural, as The Patient Mrs.’ mother’s now-one-year-old corgi is still with us. This will be I think the second weekend? I don’t know how long it’s actually been. She’s been better this time than last, but is still a lot of work and even more fur on the good portion of the downstairs of the house. We bought a new rug for the living room and we’re waiting to put it out. We only realized after we made the decision that we’d done the same thing last time.

But we lived at her mom’s house rent-free for like eight years. Can’t say shit, and wouldn’t if I could. Hell yes I’ll take care of your pain-in-the-ass dog for however long.

To get back on track, The Patient Mrs. taking The Pecan to the Guggenheim came about basically to give me a break. That was the plan for today even before I got ditched (for a work meeting, to be fair; I wasn’t forgotten like the phone or anything) at UrbanAir yesterday afternoon. I’d had a couple intensive days though and The Pecan needed mom-time, so it made sense I’d stay here with the dogs — …and we’re back; my understanding is that neurotypical people don’t talk like this; how do you get/give context? — get stoned and play Nintendo all day and appreciate the hell out of my life and she’d take the kid out for some mommy-daughter time. Win-win. And they’ll be inside, which is better for breathing and air conditioning.

If you’re keeping up with the school saga, we still haven’t heard. I went swimming Wednesday and like swimming. That’s the update.

I hope you have a great and safe weekend. If you’re in Asheville, be safe and have fun at Doomed and Stoned. That is a killer bill, Duel and Howling Giant and all.

Thanks again for reading. Back Monday. Fuck fascism forever.

FRM.

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Tags: California, Los Angeles, Saint Vitus, Saint Vitus Self-titled, self-titled, SST Records

This entry was posted on Friday, July 17th, 2026 at 11:50 am and is filed under Bootleg Theater. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.