Apocalypse Culture

I found a quote from Adam Parfrey on a flier for one of the old school black metal bands I listen to, so I looked him up and decided to give this book a try.I was expecting a cornucopia of alternative thought pieces from the '80s. What I got? Welp, it's trash.I'll be upfront and say I only read 30 pages- I cannot stand to read any more. The book opens with an absolutely jumbled essay on Lycanthropy and the "Wolf-Nature" in man, penned by Parfrey himself. Which might be cool, except Parfrey never really makes a point with it. He does however do the "Conspiracy Writer Thing" where he takes a bunch of lofty topics like Judeo-Christian behavior suppression, the worship of Sirius (the dog star), Aleister Croweley, etc and strings them all together because apparently that is the key to decoding the secrets of this world. The essay concludes with a sweet picture of a dog biting some guy.The next piece is an interview with a woman who engages in Necrophilia. No gripes here, I was not particularly interested or disinterested.From there it moves on to the "Infernal Texts" section of the book. This includes a poem by Mel Lyman about turning the Earth into an asteroid belt via nuclear apocalypse, an essay by Louis Wolfson which expresses the immorality of allowing mankind to survive, and a paragraph(!!) by Dan Burros which explains the act of killing as a necessity for mankind's advancement.It's at this point I reach the opinion that I am not reading a well-edited collection of alternative media, but rather a pile of shock texts. I can see how this might be interesting in the '80s when you couldn't go on the internet and access unlimited content. But today, you could friend 10 random degenerates on Facebook and get this quality of writing in your news feed.Personally, I enjoy occultism, conspiracies, UFOs, all that fun stuff! But only when it's explored from a critical, scholarly perspective. As the reviewer below me says, this book is basically just full of sick and twisted essays. Apocalypse Culture is juvenile and I don't recommend it.

If you haven't read this book (or 'Apocalypse Culture II'), then you must have still been in diapers in the 90s. A crucial vertebrae in the backbone of any "Alternative" literature library. I probably bought and gave away ten copies of this in the nineties, and I'm still buying replacement copies of this groudbreaking peek at the counter-culture before it became the stuff of which Hot Topic and other freeloaders are cashing in on these days. Essential pre-internet fringe dossiers and relentlessly enthralling articles on everyone from Good Ol' GG Allin to Public Enemy's "Minister of Information" Harry Allen to Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey right on up to a personal reminiscence of The Process Church of the Final Judgment by the always entertaining Mr. R.N. Taylor. You personally owe Adam Parfrey a debt of honor for making all this stuff so readily accessible at your Dorito-stained fingertips on the internet nowadays. Buy this NOW, why dontcha?

This is, hands down, the weirdest book everyone should read. To understand human nature, our own nature, you must understand our timeless obsession with the end of civilization. As we wrestle with the inevitability of our own individual deaths, we express part of that in our dread of the collapse of our cherished and needed external structures.It's a long, weird, sometimes painful read but every page is worth it.

Not for the weak of heart but a look at the weird and disturbing parts of life. If you don't get easily offended it's worth a look.

Great fun and provocative reads all through-out, yet the number of typos is significant enough to range somewhere between moderately amusing to moderately annoying depending on my mood.

Hasn't travelled, in time, as well as I would have liked. Either that, or I've not travelled as well. I read this book back in the early '90s and enjoyed it a great deal, but, then, everyone was looking forward to the end of the millennium. Well, it's long since come and gone and the world continues, excepting a few wrinkles, as much as it always has.The book now reads more as adolescent diatribe than prescient and cogent cassandraing. I'm sure there are readers out there whom will enjoy this work. Mostly, those trapped, psychologically, with the New Left and the Counter-Culture with a post-structural bent. And this will be the perfect book for them.However, I and the world have moved on.Interesting but dated.Mild Recommendation.

I remember when this came out. Somewhat like a previous commenter had mentioned, this was on the shelf of every wannabe anti-hero of the 90s. It is very interesting, informative and well compiled. The doom and gloom can be cloying, but like the title says, it's "Apocalypse Culture!"Editing is a different matter. There are some mistakes and it seems that Parfrey sometimes wishes to drive home the fact that he is no dilettante by generously peppering the entire work with sesquipedalian words (like so).I know I am happy to have it again.

Amazingly I've seen these for sale on the shelves of Borders in the past. Thought "Special Interest" literature wasn't available unless you knew what you were ordering in advance somehow.Still this is a good and dark and disturbing collection of bizarre fringe opinions. Beware this book. It's totally work safe and family friendly, if the workplace is undergoing a post office style job complaint and the family is like that famous "Fifth Beatle" who ruined the song "Helter Skelter".

A very good and unique lecture , recommended for everyone . 5 stars.

Great book which contains many underground authors and counter-current ideas in a series of articles. If thou art in modern satanism, transhumanism, anarcho-ontology and other explosive/mental stuff, this is for you.

Had to skip a lot of content. The interview with the necrophiliac was pretty good, the others felt like something an edgelord would post on 4chan. Boring and not really informative. I guess this was pretty hardcore for Gen X’rs back in the day. Was expecting a more academic study of apocalyptic thought, not self indulgent essays from weirdos like the founder of the Church of Satanism.Hard pass. Save your money.

This book is a collection of magazine length articles about alternative culture opinions about the world.Examples of the stuff in this book: an interview with a female necrophiliac, was Wilhelm Reich a victim of a conspiracy to silence his discovery that radiation is harmful, weird letters sent to magazines, a collection of pro eugenics quotes from sources such as Aldous Huxley and lots of other strange things.Some of the stuff here is quite crazy but a lot of it made me stop and think.This is one of the interesting books I have ever read and a must read for people that like strange things.

Dieses Buch hat Devianz (also Abweichung) als Konzept. Es sind viele kleine Artikel über Themen wie Nekrophilie und Menschen, die sich Löcher in den Kopf bohren etc. . Dazu gibt es oft krasse Bilder. Die Artikel sind meistens kurz und man kann gut einen vor dem Einschlafen lesen.