The idea behind this interview was, first and foremost, to get a direct opinion and look at the uprisings and protests that have swept through Kazakhstan in January 2022, through the words of one of the few active punx in the country. So I decided to interview Shynggys a.k.a. Cody “The Count” Miller, the voice and mind behind the Global Despair project, probably the only band committed to playing crust punk in Kazakh land.
But not only about the Kazakh socio-political situation I was able to talk with Cody, who also expressed all his hatred towards Russia and Putin’s imperialism towards former Soviet republics such as Kazakhstan first and Ukraine currently; a hatred that of the leader of Global Despair that turns into a call for active solidarity and to stop with demagogy and sterile chatter from Western people with their asses in the fire.
Moreover, it is interesting to note the deep disaffection and disillusionment felt by Cody towards the punk and crust scene he felt closest to, condemning it as nothing more than a fad devoid of evolution or spirit of innovation and experimentation, unlike industrial music, which he has shifted completely even with his Global Despair’s latest record “Technodictature.”
If you are expecting a polite and correct interview from a Western- leftist perspective, you are completely mistaken in your approach. The words, reflections and positions expressed may appear controversial and provocative, but they reflect in this way a deep punk attitude and a solid social and political consciousness that animate the Global Despair project. In solidarity with those rising up against imperialism, war and the daily oppression of our lives, from Kazakhstan to Iran!
Goodbye, my comrade
We are already dead
We’ll never see the world we fighted for
But it’s better than living as we lived before.
How, when and why were Global Despair born? Choice and meaning of your name?
The band was born as a one-man project in 2017, and its name is mostly about the history of my country and my people, my nation.
Your first album, Fortress of Discord, featured sounds perfectly rooted in the early British stenchcore/crust punk of bands like Amebix, Axegrinder and Deviated Instinct. The new album Technodictature, released last year, has reversed course, presenting us with a more personal, experimental sound that combines crust punk and industrial sounds. What was the reason for this evolution?
Honestly – some industrial elements were used for the first time even in the debut. I love synthesizers, I love sampling. But Global Despair always was about making something that was never made before here, in Kazakhstan. When I was 17 or 19 years old – everybody meant d-beat first when it was about playing crust, so I wanted to be the first guy who would start playing classic crust or stenchcore.
But later, when I found out that there is some kind of fashion became here, in CIS, fashion of being “crusty”, being, you know, one of all these guys with greased pants and bootstraps who play something between Sacrilege and Hellhammer – I understood that I don’t want to play this “rock-a-rollish” crust/metal punk, don’t want to be, you know – another clone of Fatum, for example. For me – crust must not be fun to listen and to play.
The more I continued disappointing in punk itself – the more I was inspired by concepts of industrial music. For me – industrial is the most radical style of music. Music for the masses and music for no one – at the same time. Music of tribal, primitive rituals and music of power of The Machines. I felt that it is more suitable to our time, to our world right now than all this sub-medieval music.
Technodictature listen after listen reveals a lot of different influences. From Godflesh to Prophecy of Doom, from Spine Wrench to Sin and Depressor. What fascinates you most about these industrial sounds? What feelings and atmospheres do you think these sounds can evoke in your music?
I wanted to create an atmosphere of the machine, in its global meaning, the atmosphere of the progress within the wrong hands, the hands in which it should not be but it does.
What does the title of your latest album mean? What is this ‘Technodictature’? And consequently what do you talk about in your lyrics and what are the themes you deal with
“Technodictature” – I have chosen this album title when I suddenly found some French journalist and news titles with this word. When I chose this title, I meant it like a term for those social organization forms where technological progress is used not for increasing and providing the quality of life, but for oppression and control.
There is something so philosophic, isn’t it? We have done so much for our development and even more, but the progress is still in wrong hands, it is still more like an instrument of oppression and literal enslavement.
A concept of the album can be divided into two parts.
The first part is more “alive”, if it is a correct definition for its sound. It is sung on behalf of downtrodden people of my country (“Under the Flag of the Golden Sun’, for example, is about how I and my people live in a country of total government control, but in the same time this country is a raw material and resource appendage for modern empires and metropolies – Kazakh “golden sun” on album cover is black because it is made out of “black gold” – oil), and on behalf of the downtrodden all over the world (for example, in “Defamed Heroes” song I sang about Zhanaozen, BLM, and Belarusian protesters).
The second is more “mechanic”, it’s in more industrial-ish manner. This part is opposite to the first because it is performed from the point of view of the powers-that-be. This part is about total surveillance and their megalomania which based on their “glorious” past and which they try to form as a new ideology for the masses.
Those parts are not sequential, they are intertwined. You can notice it in the interludes of this album, as you can notice that “Hatred” song is more about to be lyrically in the first, but musically – in the second part.
You are from Almaty, Kazakhstan. Your country has recently experienced a massive series of riots and protests by workers against not only the rising costs of daily life, but also against authoritarianism and government corruption, police violence, repression and exploitation. Would you like to tell us about the situation of riots and repression that you have gone through and are going through in your country? What do you think have been the most interesting moments and the most valid claims made by the people and workers who have taken to the streets?
I live in Almaty but my homeland is Jetısu, and my hometown is Taldyqorgan, so my hometown is known for crushing the lifetime monument of so-called Elbasy – first president of my country. It is symbolic, really.
Those riots and protests from now and forever will be our national trauma, not only because our people have risen against our over 30 year old authoritarianism, old Nur Otan nomenclature but also because we felt the taste of Russian imperialism as we never tasted it before, since, maybe, December 1986. Bloody January will always be our Prague Spring.
Russians, even if they are position themselves as anarchists, antifascists, leftists, etc. – like demagogue about this situation. They like telling us that Russian troops did not do anything more than guarding the banks, municipal objects, etc. It is a manipulation because there are proofs of their participation in suppressing protests, shooting the people, but even if there were not any proofs – the fact of their entering we regard as a natural intervention with purpose of intimidating us as metropolis intimidates “high-handed” colonies.
For about a month and a half later Russia invaded Ukraine. I was as happy as a kid would be when I found out that at least part of Russian divisions who intervented my country had been destroyed in Ukraine, because it is a karma for them for using us as their training ground. Russia delenda est – this goddamn empire must be defeated and destroyed, and my nation must become truly independent – inside and outside.
Global Despair are rooted in the tradition of anarcho punk also from the point of view of ethics, attitude and political consciousness. What role can punk play today in 2022? Can it still be a threat to an existing world dominated by the state and capital and thus by oppression, repression, misery and alienation? But above all, what does it mean for you to play (crust) punk?
As I said before – punk disillusioned me because it has lost his aspiration to move forward and to crush the old. A spirit of avant-garde is living in another genres and waves – and, unfortunately, punk is not in this list anymore. It has become a fun for retrogrades, as, for example, heavy/speed/thrash metal became decades before.
There I want make a kind of appeal to Western punks and especially for anarcho punks and other political musicians, especially for old ones. I know that you lived in patterns of Cold War where it was a rule of fashion to hate your own countries and military hysteria from both sides, so that is why you continue criticizing your own America, Great Britain, or Europe. Sure, there is a lot of shit around them, but your songs and posters did not stop Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. You, Western punks, were against Clinton and Bush but were not against Putin when he destroyed independent Içkeri, when he slaughtered people in Georgia. But you CANNOT fuck it all up again, and that’s why you MUST force your governments to send all the arms Ukrainians need in this war, that’s why you MUST support their ARMY by all the ways you can. This would be the most peaceful and the most antifascist thing you ever did in your whole fuckin’ lives. Stop your fuckin’ whining and “what-about” demagogue shit because now, unfortunately, you remind me about all those WWII American “pacifist” wankers who sabotaged military draft, counted their taxes and called US government for not participating in World War. Who knows how much more blood would have been shed if US had listened to these “pacifists”? Nazi Germany was a threat for whole humanity, so fascist Moscovia is.
Special message for Reagan Youth in general and for Paul Bakija in particular (I want them to see this, really) – after all the shit you told about “Ukrainian fascists” I don’t care how “antiracist BLM LGBT+ friendly” you are – I’m happy that Dave Insurgent is dead because at least he will never see what a morons you have become.
The graphic and artistic style accompanying Technodictature but in general the whole aesthetic of your band manages to be very distressing and evocative. How important is the artistic and aesthetic side for you and what do you want to convey with it?
When it goes to art around our music, we must thank my sister, Mariyash. She makes badass artworks when I come to her with my concepts or ideas of concepts. Nobody will understand my concepts and realize it in art as she does.
Art depends on concept of its album, no more, no less. Our first album was more “medieval” in its aesthetics, so that is why we used our traditional Kazakh nomadic art style – in its gloomiest side. To be honest – did this cover art remind you of Deviated Instinct art style? If yes – congratulations, compare it to 1988 “Rock’n’Roll Conformity” art by Rob Middleton. This person is one of the coolest artists and musicians I ever know.
But our wants to be a Turkic version of Deviated Instinct or Amebix are gone forever and ever, and this has been being since we started our “industrializing”. When it started – and it started literally few moments after “Fortress of Discord” album’s release, I fell in love with suprematism and constructivism in art. Malevich became my most favourite artist. Suprematism and constructivism in art is the same thing as industrial in music – both are about moving towards new, towards something more sincere and ritual.
Art is the half of every album’s concept success, because it is a mirror where the whole concept reflects.
Kazakhstan is a country about which little or nothing is known here in the West. Even less is known about its underground, punk and DIY scene. Would you like to tell us about the Kazakh punk scene and movement? What are the most interesting and active realities (squats, collectives, bands, etc.)? But above all, what are, if any, the biggest difficulties in playing a certain kind of music in your part of the world?
There is no such a thing as a punk “scene”, you know, and even less “movement”.
I can already foresee some people wanting to make fun of the fact that I am not a concertgoer or that GD have never been on stage for so long, due to various circumstances, and therefore I have no right to talk about it like that, as I do. However, I think you do not have to eat a rotten apple to know that it is rotten, so those mocka-jokers who are offended by everything I have said for the umpteenth time can go fuck themselves.
I have been to enough concerts to make conclusions for myself, and I consider concerts without good material to be the masturbation of pseudo-culture, the most vulgar imitation of art. If it were up to me and if I had the means to do so, I would probably lock the band and myself in the studio and write albums, just as The Beatles did.
In general, it is okay to go to a “punk concert” and listen to some sub-grunge or alternative mixed with some blues, or to stand and listen to a set of a band that plays some trash version of something between death and grindcore about shit and dismemberment but positioning themselves as thrash metal. The weird thing is that everyone will have the same tag, but one band under that tag will play what I described above, the second one will play alternative metal with just slightly more upbeat and angry riffs than usual, the third one will have some faster hard rock, and so on.
Only the bands that initially had more starting opportunities to get good PR, high quality design, and their own audience have any relative success, and the rest, as a rule, are with these teams as a warming-up support. Alternatively, they vegetate in bars, playing their material for a man and a half for a can of beer, to put it crudely. So that’s the monopoly – either be born with a silver spoon in your mouth and already play a rock star, or console yourself with the thought that music is just a hobby for your pleasure, even though deep down you know that’s not true at all. Yet – all this is called DIY, or as it is more commonly called here – “indie”.
The desperate ones are so upset that they have gone to cover bands, of which there are more than a handful here.
I once heard an interesting idea about the local scene, saying that the problem is that there is more demand than supply. I do not agree fully, the problem is that the musicians are afraid to do something, even trivial, but particular, and try to cover it with “creative freedom” and “the desire not to be closed in frames”. Therefore, the audience does not know what to want, and does not want to know – for it is not important the performer, style, genre, for it is important the process of going to the concert. As a result – you get a loop of indifferent audience and indifferent performers.
Nevertheless, at the same time, I do not want to “raise” any “local scenes” here, you know. If I was younger – maybe I would say so, but now – come on, we play industrial – music for people, not subculture. If all the bands who play punk, metal, etc., or wants to play it, tries to play it, understood this simple but important thing – there would be much more magnificent, wonderful, diverse music made by people for people, not by punks for punks and so on, you know. For example, for all the crusties I could say – more Crass, less NWOBHM.
Future plans for Global Despair? Are you planning to organise a series of concerts or a tour outside Kazakhstan in the near future perhaps?
Thee Despair Family will grow up, some of its projects are already in process of making their stuff (https://www.instagram.com/mutism_industrial), some of them have already released their stuff, as, for example, my Japanese-alike burning spirits one-man band Victor Charlie (https://band.link/IB2PW). I’m pretty sure that there will be only more projects because at a moment I understood that I cannot realize all my concepts and thoughts by one genre only – there must be tens of them. As I said before – this is more important for us to make good material than to perform, but when we start performing – this must be a goddamn’ show, yeah.
I leave this space at your complete disposal, you can write and add anything else you can think of. A big hug, full solidarity with the Kazakh people in revolt and let’s not forget to make punk a threat!
Слава Україні!
Жыве Беларусь!
Алга, Кыргызстан!
ایران آزاد خواهد شد! (Iran will be free!)
Alğa, Qazaqstan!