Harper's Bazaar
“No one needs you to be optimistic right now” was a sentence I needed to hear. I’m the primary caretaker of a three-and-a-half-year-old, so optimism—and looking forward—has been my daily stock in trade. As one of those people who laughs to keep from crying, I often feel like a stubborn optimism is the one thing that keeps me here, present on the earth. But hearing that I could just marinate in sadness? Think about the way the world has been cruel and random and unfair? That it was time just to despair over problems like climate change and war and cancer and world-shaking events that keep striking every time I have a big birthday looming? I felt a strong sense of relief, one I didn’t need to chase away with my phone.”
Elisabeth Donnelly
The Brooklyn Rail
“In the modern era of social media-driven misery and hourly reportage of war, famine, environmental disaster, and societal breakdown, Despair Sanctuary is refreshingly honest about processing one’s feelings and how blithe positivity is not the solution for everyone.”
Andrey Henkin
Interfaith America
“Drone metal is defined by low, distorted guitars with sustained tones, usually anchored on a single note. Playing it at full volume is a powerful, immersive, and cathartic experience. I like to think that sound waves take up all the negative energy in space and cast it into the air, like a great mass of water overcoming poison.”
Jack Holloway
Hands of Doom: The Apocalyptic Imagination of Black Sabbath
"The world today is such a wicked place," Black Sabbath declared in 1969, when they recorded their debut album, set against a backdrop of war, assassinations, social unrest, and disillusionment. Cries for justice from the Civil Rights Movement, and for peace and love from the culture of "flower power," had been met with violent backlash from the ruling class. It was on this stage that Black Sabbath entered--the heaviest rock band the world had yet known. This band was shaped by a working class upbringing in Birmingham, England, where actual metal defined the small town existence of factories, bombed-out buildings, and little else. With their music, Sabbath captured the dread and the burgeoning pessimism that was haunting the minds of young people in the sixties and seventies.Today, we are in a similar age of crisis: climate disaster, extreme inequality, police brutality, mass incarceration, and now, pandemic. Black Sabbath speaks to our time in ways few other bands can. They deploy apocalyptic imagery to capture the destruction of the planet by despotic superpowers, and they pronounce a prophetic indictment on agents of injustice.
In this book, theologian and cultural critic Jack Holloway explores Black Sabbath's music and lyrics, and what they had to say to their historical context. From this analysis, Holloway outlines a Black Sabbath theology which carries significant import for modern life, reminding us of our deep responsibility to transform a broken world.”
Author: Jack Holloway
Publisher: Wipf & Stock
Date: June 27, 2022