I'm not great with contemporary genres and subgenres of music. There seem to be so many extremely slight variations and people get very offended if you classify their music with only the slightest inaccuracy. But I would say folk-punk or folk-metal might be the closest approximations to it, all strained through the filter of a fringe counter-cultural movement that's responding to the mundanities of reality by imagining the post-apocalypse the way they wished it had happened. Basically, imagine edgy teenagers who are upset that the apocalypse came and went and they didn't even get to be Mad Max warlords.
To illustrate the X-Ray culture a little bit, I'll share a passage from my book, in which the main characters have to enter an X-Ray nightclub to apprehend a certain target:
Frankie rendezvoused with Bill and Silas and made the arduous trek around the margins of the dance floor, squirming and slipping through the sardine tin of revellers. They brushed shoulders with civilians dressed in gas masks, welding hoods, aviator’s goggles, feather boas, and animal pelts. They found some reprieve when the turntable slowed to a halt and the disc jockey’s voice reverberated through the loudspeakers.
“Yeah, that was No More Miami Nights, by the Thousand Suns, the craziest motherfuckers to ever break out of Cajun country,” boomed the announcer. “But brace yourself for what’s comin’ up next, because we’ve got more of that classic Taos sound from Atomic Orphan. Get ready for ten thousand motherfuckin’ watts of electric wizardry, because that’s the kind of shit we play at the End of the World. This is School’s Out, by Atomic Orphan.”
The music flared up with a heavy percussion introduction before the vocals kicked in.
YEAH THE MEN WITH THE GUNS
(yeah the men with the guns)
AND THE BOOTS ALL COOL
(and the boots and the stripes)
PUTTING BULLETS IN THE HEADS
(lead lead lead lead)
OF THE CHILDREN AT SCHOOL
(ratatatatatat)
NOW GIMME THAT PENCIL
YOU WON’T NEED IT TO SURVIVE
YOU USED TO RUN AND PLAY
NOW YOU’RE BARELY ALIVE
AND THEIR HOPES AND THEIR DREAMS
AND THEIR WORRIES AND THEIR FEARS
AND THE FOREIGN INVADERS
AND THE BYGONE YEARS
AND IT ALL FADES TO DUST NOW
IT ALL GOES IN SMOKE
AND IT ALL FADES TO DUST NOW
WE CAN LAUGH AT THIS JOKE…
The vocals yielded to an intense cymbal solo, which was later joined by the addition of what sounded like banging PVC pipes.
Some of them literally are; the last remnants of the federal government in Midland, Texas are now basically an Aztlan vassal state. Once we get into Texas, you'll see what kind of a bloated, patchwork colossus Aztlan's become. It's hard to even really classify what Aztlan even is because there are so many different elements to it. Maybe neo-feudal, but it's gotten past that point and is more like a confederation of different smaller realms united by a Latin American dictator. Hopefully this article illustrated the point that the Carlsbad government of New Mexico is not even really a state and more of a frontier territory for these petty new lords to settle and rule over.
They look goofy and are for weird hippy crunchy granola types, though they do seem to be genuinely advantageous for off the grid living. For some reason they’ve got a bunch of them in Taos IRL.
What would be a comparable song/genre to X-ray music?
I'm not great with contemporary genres and subgenres of music. There seem to be so many extremely slight variations and people get very offended if you classify their music with only the slightest inaccuracy. But I would say folk-punk or folk-metal might be the closest approximations to it, all strained through the filter of a fringe counter-cultural movement that's responding to the mundanities of reality by imagining the post-apocalypse the way they wished it had happened. Basically, imagine edgy teenagers who are upset that the apocalypse came and went and they didn't even get to be Mad Max warlords.
To illustrate the X-Ray culture a little bit, I'll share a passage from my book, in which the main characters have to enter an X-Ray nightclub to apprehend a certain target:
Frankie rendezvoused with Bill and Silas and made the arduous trek around the margins of the dance floor, squirming and slipping through the sardine tin of revellers. They brushed shoulders with civilians dressed in gas masks, welding hoods, aviator’s goggles, feather boas, and animal pelts. They found some reprieve when the turntable slowed to a halt and the disc jockey’s voice reverberated through the loudspeakers.
“Yeah, that was No More Miami Nights, by the Thousand Suns, the craziest motherfuckers to ever break out of Cajun country,” boomed the announcer. “But brace yourself for what’s comin’ up next, because we’ve got more of that classic Taos sound from Atomic Orphan. Get ready for ten thousand motherfuckin’ watts of electric wizardry, because that’s the kind of shit we play at the End of the World. This is School’s Out, by Atomic Orphan.”
The music flared up with a heavy percussion introduction before the vocals kicked in.
YEAH THE MEN WITH THE GUNS
(yeah the men with the guns)
AND THE BOOTS ALL COOL
(and the boots and the stripes)
PUTTING BULLETS IN THE HEADS
(lead lead lead lead)
OF THE CHILDREN AT SCHOOL
(ratatatatatat)
NOW GIMME THAT PENCIL
YOU WON’T NEED IT TO SURVIVE
YOU USED TO RUN AND PLAY
NOW YOU’RE BARELY ALIVE
AND THEIR HOPES AND THEIR DREAMS
AND THEIR WORRIES AND THEIR FEARS
AND THE FOREIGN INVADERS
AND THE BYGONE YEARS
AND IT ALL FADES TO DUST NOW
IT ALL GOES IN SMOKE
AND IT ALL FADES TO DUST NOW
WE CAN LAUGH AT THIS JOKE…
The vocals yielded to an intense cymbal solo, which was later joined by the addition of what sounded like banging PVC pipes.
“This shit gives me a headache,” Silas grumbled.
“We know, Silas,” Bill replied. “We know.”
We Aztlans are white hidalgo
Some of them literally are; the last remnants of the federal government in Midland, Texas are now basically an Aztlan vassal state. Once we get into Texas, you'll see what kind of a bloated, patchwork colossus Aztlan's become. It's hard to even really classify what Aztlan even is because there are so many different elements to it. Maybe neo-feudal, but it's gotten past that point and is more like a confederation of different smaller realms united by a Latin American dictator. Hopefully this article illustrated the point that the Carlsbad government of New Mexico is not even really a state and more of a frontier territory for these petty new lords to settle and rule over.
"Earthships" sound like soy pods
They look goofy and are for weird hippy crunchy granola types, though they do seem to be genuinely advantageous for off the grid living. For some reason they’ve got a bunch of them in Taos IRL.