Death and dark times are always into creating something.  
Constant guests for the valuable greed of the worst sickness humankind has ever seen. But I still think the worst sickness is the deadly pestilence of an involuntary consciousness. This is the end of a time that has never seen the opulence of a great impenetrable light. 

After all, this infatuated syndrome of aggressive behavior was never intended to exist, though I could be exceedingly relentless, fustigated by days of overwhelming sadness. Relentless I will be. Ready to die by an increasingly desolate starvation for life. 
 
Sometimes I really feel the immaculate overwhelming sadness that I seek; all 
that I have left is an exhaustion that keeps the sky under my head unannounced and cold. No energy and an infinite tiredness contemplate the starlight skies with an infamous prosperity that never ends. No energy will ever be allowed to compromise the principles of my salutary comfort. 

Only a perpetual restless feeling that never ends anticipates the calmness of the truth. When the major elements of an incontestable truth are predestined to seek the glory of its own splendor, all humankind can persevere through the embrace of its own deleterious war of destructive hostility. This restless mind that speaks over these ludicrous extemporal engravings of valuable principles overcomes the night that runs endlessly inside our souls.  
 
One day darkness will come to close the night. The night barely overcomes
What exists inside the realms of this life. What conclusion could I possibly get, except that I'll never really be the light that hides inside of me? 
 
These times overcomes a falling truth that renounces a sorrow desperate to portray the pain in human eyes. As the night overcomes the sorrow, a true night will always portray the darkness of my old days. The night will always be inextricably attached to my old days, destined to abandon my fallen undisputed disposition behind me for good. 

All these noises bring back the anger of ancient agonies. All these old days are perpetually trapped in frustrations that will never be as old as the universe upon which I am inserted. The fact that I want to explain that night and day is dying, and a mordacious sickness seems to prevail over a malicious overthrow. 

Nothing lasts for too long. All the stars that are bright seem clear in the purely translucent stream of your eyes. No world can understand alone the sickness that feels overwhelmed by a sense of passionate declaration. 



​
Nights falling off the sky, what will become of this feeling no longer trapped inside a dream? I came directly to the point of never denying any existence:
I’m positively sure that God knows it all.  
 
Youth and wisdom never walks together. The lucid streams of time bring back a horizon that no longer seeks friends. They are not related, though everybody's amendments do not dare to judge the principles of a time lost in a fearful judgment of increasingly monotonous delusions.    

For once and for all, I dare to challenge unclear thoughts. 
The sky is clear, a system defied by a nefarious institution for which I have never expressed any confidence before. But I don’t reclaim the uncertainty of an imminent closure, for once and for all. 

Planets are everywhere, inside your thoughts, my life, my firm exposure of principles, my desire to reclaim freedom. Inside infinite dreams, inside stories of fundamental mental decay, the declaration of fools persist, nowhere to be seen, nowhere to be found. And all I have to say is that dark days are infrequent, always ahead of me, true to their mortal legacy, they stay.

Tiredness and bright sunny days are all over me, never fearful or resentful of any unspoken truths under a blind horizon. 

On these days of major alignment, it seems very difficult to stay happy for a great deal of circumstances. Slavery, intermittent cycles of benevolence, insistent noises of shadows, a vast amount of spurious indolence always relevant when I'm tired of everything.

They made loud noises behind the windows of my backyard grievances. They made loud noises behind the voices of my soul.

Even after several years, even after all these years, everything behind my voluntary sadness precedes the dark days of my monotonous anger. 

These days feels quite the same. Even after these days of unexpected weaknesses the indisposition gets higher and higher; in the empty vicinities of a life where all days are over, finished by a malevolent precarious and imponderable constituency where all evil is punishable by men with a children-like spirit. 
 
When will come to me the end of this morbid life? An unparalleled sickness gets louder than a vicious melancholy. All this loud noises, what they really mean? The slow victory upon which my ambivalence strikes your modest behavior will never feel the omnipotence of my lucid heart. 
 
This hazardous existence makes me awkwardly insane. Nobody can strike my alternative options, as to why I don’t particularly enjoy the meticulously bestial arrangements of life inside the end of my dream. 

And I dream. No dream inside these dreams of mine makes me want to kill these insane messengers of hostility. So all that I can declare, all that I can really say is that life is like a poison. Life is always deadly. And, as a result, only a few people can understand me. 

The pain in life will always serve as a prelude to chaos? Life is a killing category of endless cruelty. Who would not comprehend something so atrociously tragic? A painful abyss of never-ending disasters is a timeless breath that perhaps will be over in a distant future. 

This life of slavery will take everybody down. 
The sky will never be large enough to subsidize or to contain all my venomous fears. The night sky will be filled with deep grief and unhappiness, the assimilation of an unexpected mental misery taking us down. 

The sickness overwhelmed by the bright stars highlights clearly the interference of its own light. And what becomes of this feeling? Life can be so cruel, but that’s just the way things naturally flow. A life impersonated by despair came to know agony. And as far as I know, this majestic element became an acquaintance of me. 

Life became a really long darkness. Life is falling and I am falling. It can be quite hard for me to process this everlasting pain, this everlasting agony that undergoes through the vastness of my heart. Will a new world ever be possible in the everlasting conjuncture of my heart?  
 

Wagner

These were relatively cold and gloomy days. 
Gray and rainy, sad days, and I settled in the atmosphere full of my worries. I do not feel comfortable talking about what I was doing or what I was expecting. Because every day was precisely the same. Always the same. I went down the empty streets of my life to buy some things, in a matter of a few minutes I came back. Everything was monotonous and still the same. I do not feel comfortable writing about what I was doing, or what I was expecting, but for now it's enough for you to know what I am. The days here are always rainy, the sun never shines, and I am always waiting for something. Something or someone that never comes. But I do not want them to think that my days are sad, because they are not. In fact, I did not even know what sadness was until recently. Curious to know what it was, I bought it for free. And they delivered to me at home in a matter of days. 

I was relatively disappointed, it was something small, I thought it was much bigger. So, the disgrace was inserted in a gentle letter, sent from a distant planet. Suddenly, I’ve noticed they had pointed out the eternal skies that were the real ambivalence of my heart. They gave me the wrong life to live? Suddenly, I was a miniature of myself. Suddenly, reality wasn’t capable of making any sense. That's all of a sudden. I do not own the ones who know everything that I love. Another interesting thing about the intricate universe that I am marvelously compelled to describe is the brave solicitude that seeks in my soul the despondency for a voluntary personification of reason. 

I left the omniscient sickness of my personal dark days at the bottom of my reflex. Since the shadows of my voluntary analysis had no practical functionality or purpose, I left all those useless days behind my sentimental stream of memory. Nevertheless, I can positively say that my days were not sad, I did not even knew sadness until I saw the shadows of my imponderable thoughts. Outside, the rain never stopped, and the sky was always dark. In the night a dense fog took refuge in the most intense chasms of dawn, and I woke up apprehensively, wanting to check upon everybody, until I remembered that I lived only with the sinister ambivalence of strikingly forgotten shadows. Then I would get up to take a breath, and watch the dense and gray perpetual mist that every morning returned to the window, involving my world in a timeless black labyrinth that whispered the eternal night into my life. I stood there, paralyzed by the free hostilities of the night, alone, but relying in the strength of my principles, albeit feeling vulnerable and frail, reiterating the nocturnal sickness of my private world, thinking and reflecting, but never with a plausible capacity for concentration, or focus, or rational objectivity. 

I felt like an afflictive nighttime specter, a man lost in the dark expansion of his own night. But this always happened, it was common, after having those sinister impressions on the mists of night. So I went back to sleep, and when I woke up all things were exactly as before. Everything was monotonous, tragic and abysmal, and when I woke up, it was just me alone, as always. The days went on endlessly, filled with lethargy, and the monotonous quietness of the weeks guarded the effervescence of my latent anxieties and impulsive disturbances. 

Well, I have to conform, I think. If this is how life works for me, if this is the functionality that governs my life, if the gears of my existence stand in this way, who am I to disagree? I justified myself this way. And so the days passed by, in the forgotten emptiness of a cold day monotony. These days were all and the same. Always greyish and anxious, followed by virulent and distressing nights, always accompanied by a dense and deleterious fog that seems predisposed to capture me every night, but mysteriously, never takes me.


​Wagner

Today the earth is black, doesn’t matter what you feel, I can see. 
And tomorrow will always agree with the solitude of my soul. 
No righteous or virtuous children would ever be capable of understanding my evident selection of preferences, not even my conscience, so to speak. Nor a good-hearted splendor will seek the sun brightly infusing life over this inexistent earth. 

Maybe the shadows of resistance will no longer remember what I see. Darkness will remain visible seeking through the darkest horizons of my eyes. The pervasive unhappiness of my terrestrial eyes would trigger thoughts of foolishness and desire able to prevent rage and malice in the sentimental devices that I contemplate before my personal world of anxiety, affliction and uneasiness. 

Can good songs heal the soul and distract the heart? If the convoluted shadows of disappointment strongly affirm that the invariable sickness that protests over the revengeful stagnation of my audacious disappointment will provide the attestation of a nefarious infestation of inexistent realms, then these peaceful days will inevitably be over. My restless years will start to disappear. So I think, perhaps, that this would be the inextricable result. 

But it’s not correct to complain. The mordacious confluence of my sincerity can drain thoughts of serenity, as well as external pacts of melancholic ambivalence. 

The antagonistic healing of a suffering that never leaves. These answers will no longer understand the content of my soul. At least for a considerable amount of time. Relegated to a mortifying silence, no one would dare to declare the dead of the night to be my hostile impatience.  
 
Tomorrow will be the day that the whole world will stay black. 
Tomorrow will be an especially indefinite day. We can never rest at the dissemination of an evil horde of incongruous maleficence. Now we are drawn to a time where it is impossible to set back. I understand tomorrow will be as fragile as a cloud in the sky. Tomorrow I will seek the eternity at a hole in the sky.  
 

Wagner 

The pain and the insufferable doom of darkness always divide the soul in empty days. The most sincere destitution is always a resolute one. Into an everlasting fate, the destiny never collides with its own perception of precarious glory and malice. I can keep the vastness of my own strength, but if in the winter inadvertently I fall, my own sense of destitution will be an abstract coalescence at the epicenter of my vitality. 

An aggressive darkness falls beyond all categories of imperial desolation. An outstanding journey that relies sober at the cycle of fruitless vicissitudes that never end, easily connected through the holes of your bleeding eyes. Which make me recall that coercion is never a salutary option. No more memories to forget, just empires to replace. A loosing sense of revengeful illnesses that always increase the testimony that battles a memorable war in the sky. A groundbreaking melancholy that seems to be unraveling an abominable descent into a battleground of tragedy. The sincere senselessness of a rogue life. The furious wisdom of a character principle that is standardized over a deformity of nature. 

This is beyond the wrath of any infamous interior desolation. Parallel worlds will never be visible, solidified or abolished. And we have to be fairly conscious that when the eternal night strikes out, melancholic shadows will overflow constantly throughout our personal worlds of abundant devastation and disgraceful displacement. Morbid eyes, so I can see relentlessly the infinite fear at the bottom of a spurious transcendence, that will never be genuine. But tiredness always overcomes the malevolent nights of the hardest days, and as a result, the spurious dissolution of an atrocious agitation will permanently be confined to the sensorial rules of an evasive light. This is a place for no ordinary minds. And so the darkness falls indulgently, descending over a precarious terrain of beauty and decisive sapience, tremendously exerting over its barbaric achievements the preeminent element of a cohesive truth. There is no outright moment before the lucid reverberation of a discriminatory conflagrated doom.          



Wagner 

 The film begins with a woman receiving a call from the police, informing her that her home is being invaded, but the law officers will do their best to control the situation. ​She grabs a gun for defense, and gets worried for her infant daughter. Then, it is revealed that this call was a prank from the aforementioned group of young pranksters, one of many they do to upload on their successful website. 

​One afternoon, Sam and Brady reunite in Sam’s home. They are both alone, since Sam’s parents are away for the weekend. Sam is a little frustrated by virtue of his situation with his girlfriend, Peyton. So Brady decides they should grab the phone, and do some prank calls, to improve Sam’s mood. 

One of their first pranks is to a neighbor. They call to a pizza-delivery service, where their friend, Jeff Mosley, works, as well as Peyton. Pretending to be Sam’s neighbor, they ask the pizza to be delivered in his address. When Mosley appears to deliver the pizza, the boys call Sam’s neighbor, telling him that several robberies have been taking place in the neighborhood, most of them by an assailant dressed as a pizza delivery guy. When the neighbor sees Mosley, he assumes him to be a criminal, and persecutes him. Mosley, suspecting the prank, crosses the street and confronts Sam and Brady. To appease their friend, they buy the pizza from him. 

After doing several more prank calls for their personal amusement, a stranger calls them. Despite telling both very bizarre things, Sam and Brady decide to shut off the call, dismissing it as an ordinary joke. Nevertheless, the stranger calls a few more times, and finally succeeds to attract the boys’ attentions, after telling them their complete names, and the addresses of their homes, to their total dismay.    

At first assuming their friend Mosley is behind the prank, in Brady’s mobile phone he receives a message saying it’s not Mosley. Both get surprised to discover that the prankster has Brady’s mobile number, and for rapidly assuming their suspicions concerning their friend. Suddenly, Brady realizes that a picture was also sent to him. In the picture, it is possible to see two persons tied to chairs. Brady soon recognizes them as his parents. 

Realizing they are in great danger, the two friends are progressively strained in a labyrinth of despair. Eventually, they dial 911, and hysterically tell to the attendant everything that is happening to them. Unfortunately, for their astonishment and unpleasant surprise, the person talking to them in the other side of the line reveals itself to be the mysterious prankster, who is effectively exerting control over every communicating device inside the house, including the television, by which he starts to send images of Brady’s parents. Sam also realizes that Peyton’s car is outside the house, which is strong evidence that she was probably captured by their mysterious aggressor. She had visited the two briefly in the beginning of the afternoon just after Mosley had left.      

The mysterious assailant – who attends by the alias of “Mr. Lee” – soon reveals itself to be in complete control of the situation, and succeeds in viciously putting the two friends against each other. The mysterious prankster tries hard, in different occasions, to stimulate disagreement between them, even engaging in an effort to make the boys resort to murder each other in a secretive deal, first offering redemption to Brady if he kills Sam, and then to Sam, for killing Brady, but he fails both times. Nonetheless, he manages to increase the terror generated by his constant menaces, affirming that he is disposed to kill the boys’ loved ones, for he has nothing to lose. When analyzing, though, the images in the screen, Sam sees a clock behind Brady’s parents, with a two hour gap, indicating that they were seeing recorded, and not live images. As they were practically receiving calls from the mysterious prankster all the time, their communication was constant through the speakerphone, and Sam demands to see proof that Mosley and Peyton are still alive. In the meantime, Brady begins to suspect that his parents are no longer alive. Soon thereafter, the mysterious assailant talks to both Brady and Sam onscreen. When he leaves, it is possible to see Brady’s parents dead, both having their throats slit, much to the complete horror of both.  

In several occasions, Brady has threatened to leave the house, and call the police, despite severe warnings given by their antagonist that they shouldn’t, under the menace of drastic consequences. Discording over this matter, Sam and Brady begins an argument, that escalates to a physical altercation. Managing to subdue Brady, Sam handcuffs him with a nylon strip to the handrail, limiting his movements, and preventing him from leaving the house. The assailant, nevertheless, manages to put Sam against Brady one more time when he uploads a video of Brady having sex with Peyton. When Sam sees the video, he gets terribly disturbed, and another serious fight, more aggressive this time, ensues between the two.     

The attacker then shows them that he has, in fact, their friend Mosley in his power, and suffocates him with a plastic bag, for Brady and Sam’s complete shock. Suddenly, Sam sees in the screen the picture of a little girl, which was the profile picture of a person who requested his friendship in a social network earlier. Upon searching the personal page of this individual, he sees on the profile several pictures of him and Brady, as well as Peyton, Mosley, and a lot of their friends, several of them going as far as a year ago. Terrified, they conclude that they had been watched for months, or possibly, more than a year. 

The two friends begin to suspect the mysterious assailant to be inside the house, or nearby, and they decide to check it out. Sam frees Brady, they arm themselves with a baseball bat and a knife, respectively, and decide to confront the maniac that is harassing them.   

For his shock and horror, Sam discovers Mosley’s body in the back door, with a plastic bag all over his face. Mosley’s body falls when Sam opens the door, but the corpse is tied with a rope to the door frame. Desperate, thinking there is a chance of Mosley being alive, Sam rips off the plastic bag from the face of Mosley, and pulls it off from his head, just to discover, in horror, that his throat has been slit, and the tape around his neck securing the plastic bag was also preventing him from bleeding. In a matter of seconds, Mosley bleeds profusely and dies, to Sam’s complete affliction. Brady, by this point, gets exceedingly traumatized as well.

Brady demands Sam to leave the house and call the police. With the prerogative of verifying the vicinities, pretending to go with him, Brady manages to lock Sam out of the house, and insist for Sam to save his life and to ask for the help of authorities. Sam initially is angered, and hits the door furiously, pleading for Brady to open the door. Since Brady ignores his pleas, Sam, despite the heavy rain, decides to inspect the neighborhood, and sees a suspected van parked outside his house. Checking the van, he sees Peyton bound and tied up, and frees her. Suddenly, both hear a scream, and decide to go check it out what was happening, supposing that Brady was attacked.  

Returning to the backyard, Sam and Peyton see a masked assailant going their direction with a knife, trying to attack them. Sam manages to counterattack their aggressor, and stabs him with his own knife, killing him. Suddenly, he recognizes a tattoo in the arm of the assailant, the same tattoo Brady had shown him when he recently had arrived at his house. Desperate, he removes the mask of the attacker, and sees Brady, with a duct tape on his mouth. Realizing that he has killed his own friend, Sam cries in desperation.  

Suddenly, the true attacker arrives, and reveals himself. When Sam asks the motive for all that aggression he has been inflicting on them, the mysterious assailant reveals the reason behind his actions. He was married to the woman victim of the prank shown in the beginning of the movie. When they called her, with the prank that their house has been invaded, she grabbed a gun in order to protect herself and their daughter. By the orders of the pranksters – that she thought was the police – she moved a balcony in front of the bedroom door, to protect her from the supposed invaders, since she hasn’t a key to lock the door. She put her cell phone above the balcony, but it fell off to the ground underneath the bed, when she moved the furniture again, to clear her way to her daughter’s bedroom, since she became desperate to check upon her child. No longer holding her cell phone, she hasn’t heard when the pranksters announced that everything was a joke. Unbeknownst to them, she wasn’t aware that she was the victim of a prank. Truly believing that her house was being invaded, she grabbed her gun, and decided to check upon her daughter. Seeing that she wasn’t in her bedroom, she panicked. When she heard the door next to her opening, she became frightened and gave a shot directly through the door. To her desperation, she shot her own daughter – who had only gone to the bathroom –, who died instantly. Profoundly disturbed by the tragedy, the woman put the gun against her chest and committed suicide. So the aggressor, identified as “Mr. Lee”, was the man taking vengeance upon his wife and daughter. 

Sam cried in desperation, saying that it was never their intention to hurt anyone. Then the man stepped over Sam’s face, and a gunshot was heard. Suddenly, its morning, and we see Sam alive, waking up. He has a knife on his hand, and a gun on the other. Next to him, he sees the body of Brady, and going outside, the body of Peyton, who had been shot in the head. He doesn’t release neither the knife, nor the gun, suggesting that they might be stuck in his hands. In the living room, the video of Brady having sex with Peyton plays nonstop. Suddenly the police arrive in the scene, and the news is already noticing the terrible manslaughter that took place. Apparently, as the footage suggest, the massacre was executed by a sadistic young man, jealous of discovering that his best friend had cheated him with his girlfriend. 

In the end, we see the photo of the little girl, used as picture for the profile “Mr. Lee” uses on the social network, making a friend request to another member of the group of pranksters, suggesting that he will continue his journey of vengeance.         

Although this is not exactly a masterful movie, Don’t Hang Up has audacities and qualities that deserve to be praised. The movie has a cohesive story line, a plausible expectation of possibilities, credible plot scenarios and evaluations, good acting and a very genuine approach in what concerns the main elements of fear and tension.

Undoubtedly, while this movie can be considered, at least, in a more broad analysis, just one more flick, it is unquestionable the fact that there is a creative level and a consistent element of mordacious originality here. Although the central theme of an individual getting revenge from an inconsequential adolescent prank gone wrong has been explored in movies before, certainly this is one of the best exemplars released so far. Despite the conciseness of the story, the whole concept is intriguing, works out very well, is definitely coherent, and doesn’t disappoint, although there are some predictable aspects in the story as a whole.   

Don’t Hang Up is not an extremely fascinating movie, and will not change your life. Nevertheless, certainly can be regarded as a minor gem precisely executed, and a marvelously good work of art. On this movie, we see two young adults having to deal with the consequences of a catastrophic wrongdoing, and gradually discovering the result of a tragedy for which they were the major responsible agents, but totally ignore the level of malevolence for what they have done.

With splendorous moments of tension, an inquisitive demand for affliction and wonderful components of dreadful expectation, Don’t Hang Up certainly will delight you with an amazing time of entertaining exhilaration. You can’t afford to miss this interesting thriller.         


Wagner Hertzog

After seducing a beautiful girl in a local bar – being himself a charming and seductive individual –, they go to her place using a Ryde driver. There, pretending that they will have sex, he coldly and violently kills her, stabbing the girl in the bathtub. After cleaning up the scene, the killer starts the Ryde app, and the same driver that drove them before appears to pick him up. 

Pretending to be just a regular customer, the killer tells the driver to leave him at his house, asking the driver to wait for him. After changing clothes and collecting weapons, he returns. The ride continues and both engage in interesting conversation. After some minutes, the killer request the driver to stop for him to smoke, and invites the driver to join him. 

When they return, the killer murders the driver, puts his body on the back of the car, and takes his place. Attending by the fake name of Karl, at the course of the night, the killer went to reclaim several more victims: unwary passengers that mistakenly think the killer is just a regular Ryde driver. As the night begins for the killer, he deliberately engages in a vicious and cruel rampage. 

In one of his drives, the killer is stopped by a police officer, demanding to see his license and registration. Asking why he was being checked out, the officer tells him that he has parked in a forbidden zone. Suddenly three girls enter the vehicle, and demand the officer to be gentle with the driver, saying they were to blame for his fault, as he was waiting for them. When the driver is ready to leave the scene, the officer demands him one more time to stop, and to open the trunk, saying that the back lights of the vehicle were irregularly blinking. He offers himself to fix it up the cables, as a favor to the driver, preventing him from being pulled over by the police for a second time in the same night. Since the body of the real driver was there, the killer faced the danger of being caught. So he discreetly lowers himself down to pull a knife he has on a sheath attached to his foot, when suddenly the officer tells him that the verification is no longer needed, as the lights were slowly stopping to blink. 

So the killer drives the three girls to the luxurious home of one of them. As they find him attractive, two of them try to seduce the driver, and invite him for a private party in the pool, where, initially pretending to engage in sexual activity with them, he murders them both. A third girl, too drunk to understand what has happening, was spared by the killer, that carries her to bed.    

Everything gets more exciting when the killer drives a couple, arguing for the fact that they have to attend two parties that same night. He clearly gets an interest in the girl. After leaving the couple in the place of their destination, the killer continues his night rides and his murder spree. Nevertheless, after some hours he encounters the same girl in a street food tent, pretending to find her coincidentally. After she recognizes him, they engage in mutual conversation, and the killer offers to drive her to her place, and she accepts. Guessing that she would be alone, her boyfriend, leaving the club upon which they were attending the party earlier, which was near, suddenly appears. Their discussion is intensified, but he decides to go in the ride with her.        

Surprisingly, when the same girl needs a ride again, the driver appears one more time to collect her. Visibly upset by virtue of the discussion with her boyfriend, she stays more silent than in the occasion before. The driver, being exceedingly charming and sympathetic towards her, offers her an opportunity to talk about her problems, and encourages her to see him as a kind of “therapist”, to which she politely denies. Nevertheless, he is persistent, and after he compliments her good looks, she starts to feel threatened. At first, she demands him to return, affirming that she may have forgotten something at the party, and then she asks the driver to stop, saying that she is feeling sick and wants fresh air.

When he stops, he gets close to her, and tries to kiss her. She rejects his advances, and a fight ensues. After a hideous physical altercation, the killer subdues and ties her, and they continue the ride. Inside the car, the girl attacks him, and the killer loses control of the vehicle, colliding with an abandoned car in a stretch of deserted area. 

The girl awakens in the hospital. Her boyfriend and her best friend are there. The physician tells her that she is pregnant, and her boyfriend apologizes to her. As they reconcile, an LAPD detective approaches her, and tells her that she needs to identify the body of her assailant in the morgue. As they go to the mortuary, the girl sees a badly burned and disfigured corpse, but affirms positively that the body is not that of her attacker. As the camera gets close to the body, the spectator can see that the body is, in fact, of the real driver, murdered by the killer, and put in the trunk of the car.     

This movie deserves a very good and sincere evaluation. Although Ryde is not exactly a fantastic or splendorous movie, it is, indeed, a very good one, with tense moments, an afflictive story line, and a very cohesive plot. Good interpretations and dense character impersonations guarantee a dramatic, intense and exceedingly realistic approach. Some very profound and poetic moments – like a majestic and very cinematic scene when the main character is in a nearly empty cafeteria in the dead of night, with a perceptive look in his eyes that transmits his cold void feelings looking anywhere in his singular universe of mortifying nothingness, with a very beautiful woman that strongly and romantically flirts with him getting disappointed after he ignores her and unexpectedly leaves –, emphatically exhibits a glimpse of the character’s disturbed mind, as well as his personal world of destitute desolation, violence and bestiality.

Despite the fact that Ryde, for the most part, can be seriously defined as a very regular movie, it is a majestically effective, masterful regular movie. There are no flaws and no mediocrity in this production. From the technical devices to the acting to the whole concept of the story, everything was greatly executed. If you want to see a good thriller film, Ryde certainly is highly recommended. I can personally assure you will be thrilled with this movie.               


Wagner Hertzog 

The United States as a country is an extremely unequal place. But this probably doesn’t come as a surprise to anybody. The country, though, has become extremely impoverished in recent years, something severely intensified – but also felt as a direct result –, by the crisis of 2007 and 2008, to the point that this problem is now seen by authorities and the government as a major issue, that is intensely affecting the American lower classes, and greatly reducing their standards of living. With a lot of dramatic consequences in several social aspects, affecting mentally, physically and economically all the individuals struck by the decrease of their living conditions, this problem also compromises, in a more general basis, the possibilities of prosperity of the nation. Since a lot of Americans lost their homes in the recession, the number of destitute people highly increased. To counterattack this problem, several governmental and non-governmental programs of easy-buying household facilities were launched, to a modest degree of success. Nevertheless, since the bureaucracy, and even the costs, sometimes acts as terrifying obstacles for destitute people to acquire a home, there are a lot of American citizens that are as distant of decently living in a house of their own, as the problem to receive a plausible and definitive solution. 

Another major issue is the question concerning the ever increasing costs of living. Even American middle-class citizens, with two different jobs, are having trouble sustaining themselves, their families and a mortgage. There has been an evident increase in poverty in the United States in recent years, with poor and destitute people receiving little to no help from the government. Sometimes, extremely poor individuals live side by side to rich ones. Los Angeles, the center of the American movie industry, a place inhabited by the elite of cinema, is also the world’s capital of the homeless: every night, approximately 100.000 individuals sleep in the streets, since they have no home of their own.   

What is happening to the United States? Seen as a country of immensurable possibilities until some years ago, now, to conquer the basic needs to sustain life has become a major challenge. Evidently, poverty always existed in the United States. But recent years testified a preoccupying increase in the number of people becoming poor, with a millions of them living below the poverty line.   

Is there an easy solution for this problem? No, there isn’t. As the economy goes down, the living standards are consequently lowered altogether. The unfortunate decadence of a country always seen as a measure of development is not a fact that concerns only the USA. Directly and indirectly, this occurrence affects the entire world. 

Fortunately, there are people worried, and seeking a solution for this ordeal, which is not an easy task. Since even the government is limited in what concerns implementing an effective solution that could resolve, at least partially, this ongoing problem, or to correct the cause that generates this undermining difficulty, Americans will have to resort to social programs on their quest for help. But mainly, for the most part, they will have to count on themselves to solve their own adversities. The ones who have family, friends and neighbors are the most fortunate. Millions can’t even ask help to their loved ones, since they don’t have anybody. The goodness of strangers to completely destitute Americans is a last resort. What a terrible exceedingly rich and resourceful country, with so many people that doesn’t have anything. 

 Wagner 

Let's start with a little game. Guess all the animals in this song (use the comments) and maybe you win an animal themed CD. This experimental track by the legendary Pink Floyd appeared on their 'Ummagumma' album, back in 1969.

From "several" animals we go to just two, 'human' and 'fly'. We do that just to mess with religious people who think we humans are above animals. HAH.

I think many people will agree with me that this is one of the greatest songs in the history of the animal kingdom. That, and bunnies are fucking cute!

Most people might know this one from the Bonobo remix but we prefer the original, which is a bit more jazzy.  We usually do.

Coming off 'Future Sounds Of Jazz - Vol 5', this is an excellent tune to take your beloved ducks out for a walk. ​

From ducks to camels, because just like most of us after an evening of heavy drinking, camels walk funny. Plus, this is a fun song.

It doesn't always have to be 'Too Many Puppies', right? Then again, I'm not sure that this song is about an animal at all.

My God, Luc De Vos looked young when he was young. This song is not really about piranhas but certainly good enough to be on this list. Luc was god. Fuck, we miss this guy. 

And since we're dealing with flesh eating fish, we have no other choice than add Heart's 'Barracuda' to this list. We'll move to safer and friendlier animals soon, I promise.

And from hard rock we go to an immersive jamsession by psychedelic masterminds 3rd Ear Experience. Bees are friendly, a lot friendlier than flesheating sea dwellers...

Damn, this clip looks so eighties. Then again, in that age, people still believed that "every little thing is gonna be alright". Things have gotten a little more aggressive since then, just like this list.

Ever since they released this 'Goat Perversion', Finnish black metal masters Impaled Nazarene have maintained a tradition of including at least one song on every album which has the word "goat" in the title. I told you we were getting aggressive...

Maggots are animals too. Now go hug one.

Ok, this is not really about animals...or is it? I mean, this thing we call "humanity" is a joke, right? Just listen to these lyrics...By the way, sorry about the sound quality but YouTube wasn't very good yet in 1970.

Ozzy was not the only one who engaged with animals in 1970. So did Ronnie en de Ronnies, a weird gang from The Netherlands, which in itself is already a weird gang. There is also a dance version of this song, but I think a vasectomy is more pleasant. 

From the very beginning our goal was to be as open minded as possible. From classical music over jazz to post rock and black metal, but also ambient, psychedelic electronics and techno, we dig into everything. Of course, that first article about Incubate already contained heaps of different styles since that festival was one of the broadest we have ever encountered. Since then, we have been on an amazing journey through the vast world of music exploration. We have been doing this for three years and the will to carry on is very strong.

But everything goes with ups and downs and perhaps our third year was a decent example of that. Our growth has not been as exponential as our second year in business, although we more than doubled our visitor count since the first year. I can only imagine one reason for that: lesser articles. I think we wrote less reviews than in 2016. Other projects and personal issues have been keeping all of us occupied more than Merchants Of Air has. Some of our writers needed a long break and at the same time very few new aspirant writers contacted us.

We had a few. Two women ask for guest writer spots but they wanted to add links to certain shopping websites. I told them that we are a music webzine and that they will have to prove themselves with reviews first, just like I did, just like Wagner did. I never heard from them again. In fact, only one serious applicant contacted us. I hope his first reviews will enter my inbox soon. Until then, I'll keep his identity a secret.

Yet, even through a decline in number, our articles seem to attract more people to the website. The series about Belgium has been quite successful. With these columns I digged into the musical history of our own little country, much to the delight of thousands of readers. It will undoubtedly be continued soon, and so will the new series about the correlation between music and science. It has been fun to write these and I've come to the realization that writing stuff like this is what I like doing the most. 

The past few years, each time on 25 September, we released a compilation album. This year, for reasons stated above, our annual compilation will be postponed to December. With that, it will also correlate with our end-year overviews, best-of lists and columns about the musical highlights of 2017.

So yes, there are still plenty of spots open. Bands and projects who want to join our compilation can still contact us. We're also planning another project to be finalized by then. So December might be a huge month for Merchants Of Air. 

This past year has been fun, that's for sure. Once again I have encountered hundreds of amazing albums, seen plenty of awesome gigs and shook hands with artists from allover the world. The rest of the world is letting me down, letting pretty much all of us down. Terrorism, world leaders with the IQ of a cracked brick, the ever growing hatred towards everything that deviates from an unrealistic norm, natural disasters... Yep, the world is in a bad state but here we are, doing our thing, keeping the brotherhood of underground music alive.

I know, that world would have been very much alive without Merchants Of Air too but I'm quite proud of what we have accomplished over the past three years. I have said it before and I will say it again, I have never felt so appreciated and respected while doing some kind of work for somebody. Not one of my previous employers has sent me so much "thank you" and "great work" compliments than all of you have been doing. To be brutally honest, this level of appreciation is one of the few things that keep me going.

Perhaps over these past three years, Merchants Of Air has finally grown up. Our website witnessed only slight changes in lay-out. Our promo pictures for the t-shirts we design have been left behind and currently we're only promoting 'Cecilia's World'. With that, I clearly noticed a decline in income too, to the point where year four will once again be paid out of my own pocket. It's too bad, but I'm not going to change things now. I hate begging for money but if you want to support us, we will appreciate it.

How to support Merchants Of Air? There are plenty of possibilities. There is our shop with awesome shirts, metal decks, stickers and so on. There are the occasional Amazon links on our reviews which provide us with a little percentage, even if you buy something completely different. We have a few free/pay-what-you-want compilations and of course, there is my book. I think out of all these possibilities, purchasing 'Cecilia's World' will be the most appreciated by me. Like I said, I'm a writer...

We will see what the future has in store for us. Today, I'm going out for diner and I'll be celebrating this little birthday with a glass of champagne. Why? Well, when I moved into this apartment and this neighbourhood, I told my wife that I was going to tell people that I am a writer, rather than a helpdesk employee. In these past three years, I became exactly that. Just look at the content on this website. Just read my book. Just wait for the dark follow-up to 'Cecilia's World' which carries the working title 'Misanthrope'. 

Whatever the future holds, I have reached my goal. In a few days, I'll be at the printers and shortly after that, copies of this book will be shipped to Australia, Germany, India, Belgium, USA and many more. But before that happens, I will probably have published another heap of reviews, brieviews and columns. This is what I love doing, and I want to thank all of you for making it possible and for appreciating the words/worlds pouring out of my brain.

​Thank you for three years of Merchants Of Air.



Serge

At this very moment, large parts of the world are in crisis. Forest fires, hurricanes, disease spreading mosquitoes, water shortage, food shortage,... We're in deep shit, which is ironic because according to some people; most of these disasters are caused by gay sex. Yes, sodomy is the number one cause of the problems we're in. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people die each day because some men can't keep their penises out of other men's buttholes. 

Shame, isn't it? All those thousands of years of scientific research, all useless now. I mean, if all those scientists, all those people who have worked their entire lives to solve man's problems, had just tried to find a way to stop gay men for fondling each other, we would still be in the happy ages. We would all still die of the plague and other diseases and we would have no idea whatsoever why the sun disappears at night, but we'd be free from natural disasters, right?

I have never trusted opinionists and I don't think I'll ever will. That's probably why I avoid marketing people, priests, journalists, managers and - most importantly - politicians. Who I trust? Scientists, people like Neil deGrasse Tyson, Dick Swaab and Richard Dawkins. People that prove things, people that build our future based on knowledge which in itself is based on repeatable experiments with repeatable results. People who have discovered cures for polio, people who invented solar panels, people who put Kepler into outer space.

That is also why I never ever have someone's opinion about music influence mine. If you tell me that Pink Floyd sucks and someone else tells me that Pink Floyd is the greatest band in the world and both opinions would influence mine, I'd go crazy. Therefore, obviously, I'll make up my own mind. I base my opinion on Pink Floyd, and all other bands, on a few observations. 

1. Does it annoy me?
A lot of songs annoy me (a lot of people too but let's not go there for now). That's the first criterium. It's also repeatable. If you play 'Paradise By The Dashboard Light', I will be as annoyed as every single time I hear that tune. (On a side note, I don't hate Meatloaf. I don't disrespect him for making music I don't like. That would be childish.)

2. Does it have something extra?
A well written song always has something more than others. Taake's 'Myr' is their only song I know the name of, just because of the banjo solo. It's unexpected and well executed. Gorki was awesome because of the Dutch lyrics. Many others of my favorite bands are innovators and pioneers, doing something different.

There are other criteria too but I'm not going to turn this article into a science essay about music appreciation. The point is, the way you appreciate music is completely and utterly based on how your brain works. Your brain filters whatever it needs from both your DNA and your environment to make you like or dislike a song. Think about that for a second while you listen to this Taake song. The banjo solo appears in the second half, but also listen to the drums.

So, by now you might be wondering what the point of this whole article is. Well, I'm a science fan as much as I'm a music fan and quite frankly, I see both  trapped in a whirlpool of dumbing down. Hurricanes are claimed to be caused by gay sex and songs with lyrics like 'You a stupid hoe / You a / You a stupid hoe' become massive hits. So perhaps this article is an effort to save both from being obliterated. I'm a music journalist (one of the few I trust - sometimes) and I see links between the two. Science and music fit perfectly well together. So let's put a bit of science into the music we listen to. It's going to be fun, I promise you.

In recent weeks I have been reading a book by Dutch neuroscientist Dick Swaab. In 'Our Creative Brain', Swaab explains how art and the brain impact each other. It's tremendously interesting literature which I can recommend to anyone. One passage reminded me of drummers and their use of blast beats. Swaab never really talks about black metal, or any alternative music for that matter, so I'll do that.

Have you ever noticed that - unless professionally mastered - blast beats never sound as loud as other times the stick hits the snare? It might seem logical to you but let's go over the entire process. To drum and keep a steady rhythm, a drummer needs to lift his arm and lower it again many times, each time with the exact same amount of time in between. The upward movement, the one you don't hear, is just as important as the hit, if not more. It's in that movement that the precise moment of the hit is being decided. To be able to do that, our brain has to react and decide in nanoseconds and it does too. According to Swaab, our brain thrives on these tempos. Our sense of rhythm is quite unique in the animal kingdom. It requires ultimate precision, thus nanoseconds. To be able to create blast beats, your arm, controlled by the brain, has to hit faster which works best by not lifting the arm up so high. That's where physics come in. Lower distance is less loud. It's simple but it needs a lot of brain effort to do it properly. That is also why musicians practice.

Categorizing music is something for music journalists. They came up with most of the names, like "grunge", "metal", "progressive". However, for genres to exist, you need science. 

Once upon a time a caveman was experimenting with the sound of a tubular piece of wood. When he blew through it, it made a whistling sound. He punched some holes in it and noticed that it sounded different when he covered or uncovered some of the holes. That moment might have well sparked ages of folk music. 

In 1897, Thaddeus Cahill invented the Telharmonium which eventually led to to synthesizers ànd their early adopters. Kraftwerk were hooked on electronic instrumentation from the very beginning. While the technical possibilities expanded, so did the sound and so did Kraftwerk's influence on the world of music. 

While electronics became a household thing, science kept having its influence on music. Around the time America landed on the moon, space rock came into existence, inspired not only by all kinds of psychedelic drugs but also about the popularity of NASA and their missions. 

At one point in their lives, these young metalheads had a future occupation to choose, a study to decide on. Guess what, a lot of them went into archeology and Scandinavian history. In the past ten to fifteen years, we have discovered so much more of the vikings, of ancient Europe as a whole. Those metalheads inspired a whole generation to go literally dig for their roots, before it all disappears under a massive slab of concrete. 

If you look at today's hip hop and rap scene, you will indeed encounter shiploads of cringeworthy lyrics, mostly about genitals. Apparently, today it's incredibly creative to talk about your private parts. Any knowledge about anatomy, physics or how what metal detectors actually do seems obsolete. Did Sheldon Cooper ever do a rant on hip hop lyrics? If not, he should do that. Or Neil deGrasse Tyson. He should make a comedy show about that. 

Right, rap is dumb. But wait, what about Eminem? 

"Rap God" contains 1,560 words, which gets Eminem a spot in the Guinness Book Of Records. The song was eventually replaced by MC Harry Shotta's song "Animal" (which includes 1771 words). I had a solid listen to both songs. Personally, I favor "Rap God". It's simply more creative. While "Animal" feels like an effort to outdo Eminem, "Rap God" is a massive story, something Marshall Matters can do like nobody else. "Stan" is another epic example. It even got the rapper into the official English vocabulary. A stan is an obnoxious fan. Eminem's IQ is estimated to be around 140, not bad.

You'd think that he is an exception but we found another rapper who goes very creative. Baba Brinkman raps about...science. Driven on hip beats, he introduces the listener to religion, rationalism, medicine, biology and evolution. It's fun to listen to and you can learn a thing or two. So we end this article with a few raps. It has become a strange article and I have a strong feeling that there will be more about the correlation between science and music in the near future.