Abaddon

Bob Larson

Bob Larson's Abaddon, the sequel to his novel Dead Air, is possibly the funniest book I have read in the past decade. In many ways, Larson reminds me of the kind of televangelist who's out to get ratings and nothing else; he attacks popular culture (even when it's not really popular, as in this case), does just enough research to get some glitzy facts, and then either makes up the rest or completely misunderstands what he's seeing as he goes along. And like said televangelists, Larson's work is always good for a long, loud laugh when you most need it.

This time, we find Wes Bryant (according to a few reviews and interviews, a character Larson based on himself), his new wife Annette, and her daughter Jennifer in Colorado, where Wes is the GM of an all- talk radio station. His main competition is KZOO, a rock station no one who's listened to the radio since the advent of Howard Stern won't recognize, a morass of shock DJs and awful music. With a twist: the station plays death metal. In heavy rotation. Okay, THAT'S new. (Larson does, to his credit, mention very late in the novel that most radio stations don't.) KZOO is sponsoring a Night Sacrifice show on Halloween night, and Bryant, whose stepdaughter is falling under the spell of Night Sacrifice, has singer Clint Blade come into his studio for a dust- up with his most popular talk-show host. Bryant ends up confronting Blade over the air himself, and, disturbed by what he sees (and the depths to which his stepdaughter is getting into the stuff), starts researching the phenomenon that is death metal.

Yes, there is a mystery here, although what that mystery is one isn't sure until the final few pages. Nuff said about that.

The true humor in the book comes from Larson's complete and utter misinterpretation of his readings (one hesitates to say his experiences) on both death metal and psychology. Now, to be fair, such landmark tomes as Lords of Chaos had not yet been released when Larson wrote this book. But still, one figures a guy who goes over to Boyd Rice's house for dinner on a sporadic basis is going to know a little more about underground music and the motivations behind it than the average bear. And for all I know, Bob Larson is actually an expert in the subject; it just doesn't come through here. His occult research seems a bit lacking as well (e.g., his description of a Book of Shadows, confusing a pentagram and a symbol of Baphomet, and various other hilarity-inducing niggles), but not in nearly the scope as the others.

Larson might well have been able to use this book to address the real reasons for the underground popularity of the death metal movement, but instead, he takes a rather more dangerous path—attributing a love of death metal to, of all things, multiple personality disorder, and then going on to assert that MPD is a common and easily-controlled (by the enemy, of course—the good guys will have to spend years curing it, but the enemy can make new personalities appear almost at will!) disease. Hopefully those who have read this do remember that this is fiction, and that multiple personality disorder is a rare and very difficult disease. Not something to be flippant with, one would think, when an author is trying to assert deeper truths. But there you go. I could have even bought that Larson was using MPD as a metaphor for disaffectation and apathy—wouldn't be the first time such things have happened—if not for the acknowledgements page, which should have been placed after the text so as not to mention the MPD angle the book ends up taking (I'd not have included it here had it not been spoiled on the very first page of the book, before the text even begins).

Unfortunately, my humor fades when I realize that Larson's target audience is probably taking this stuff seriously. Those who would like a better look into the phenomenon of underground music and the reasons for its existence are encouraged to look to nonfiction by and about the artists themselves. The aforementioned Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground is a landmark; American Hardcore: A Tribal History, Apocalypse Culture, and such biographies as Lexicon Devil: The Fast Times and Short Life of Darby Crash and the Germs are all well worth seeking out. The soon-to-be-released England's Hidden Reverse holds much promise as well.

Abaddon, on the other hand, gets * ½ for amusement value and absolutely zilch for accuracy, writing skill, characterization, unpredictability, or anything else remotely related to writing a good novel.