Adam Parfrey

Disinfo.Con contains an amazing 4 hours of footage from The Disinformation Company's massive counterculture event in New York City's Hammerstein Ballroom. New York hadn't seen anything like this since the Nova Convention in 1978 which saw Frank Zappa, Patti Smith and others anoint William Burroughs as king of the counterculture. A quarter century later Disinformation's keynote speakers Richard Metzger and Douglas Rushkoff ushered in a dizzying, day-long array of performances ranging from sword-swallowing to sanskrit chanting, interspersed with lectures and conversations with counterculture luminaries like Mondo 2000 founder R.U. Sirius, industrial music progenitor Genesis P-Orridge, Grant Morrison, Robert Anton Wilson, theorists, performance artists and others from the extremes of popular culture. Nothing beats actually experiencing an event like this in the flesh, but this DVD comes pretty close to capturing the spirit of the counterculture as we lurch into the 21st century.

Boyd Rice may well be the only person alive who's been on a first name basis with both Charles Manson and Marilyn Manson. His career has spanned more than three decades, during which time he has remained at the epicenter of underground culture and controversy.

But what is the Church of Satan? Who is Anton LaVey? Where is he from? Why does he do that? It does not take much to imagine the worst. Orgiastic ceremonies, where one revels in the blood of virgins, moonlight lamb sacrifices, noise concerts in the basement of a historical building… No, really nothing that amusing among the activities in the Church of Satan. Anton LaVey is nothing like a horned Charles Manson, and his path is all the more unexpected. Nick Bougas allows us to discover the artist, the musician, the philosopher, all through hallucinatory images retrieved from archives, making this rare documentary only two years before the author of the Satanic Bible disappeared.

On August 8, 1988, the world’s first and largest Satanic rally took place. Ripped from a video featuring Satanist talking about creating a New World Order and killing off the masses. The 8-8-88 ritual was conducted right at the heart of the Satanic Panic. The goal, further exploit and feed upon the energies produced by the fears of the ignorant general public and media. It was shown to a sold-out crowd of degenerates promising them, “A Bitter Message of Hopeless Grief,” “A Nightmare of TERROR!” and “An Evening of Apocalyptic Delight!”

This is a video performance of their holiest ritual, the Sabbath Assembly, as recorded August 23, 2009 at The Silent Movie Theater in Los Angeles CA. About 50% of the video is the ritual itself, consisting of recitations from their unique liturgy interspersed with vintage hymns. The text is read by original Process minister Sammy M Nasr and the songs are performed here by the band Sabbath Assembly (Jex Thoth, Imaad Wasif, Kevin Rutmanis and Dave Nuss - obviously taking their name from the ceremony itself). Following the ritual is a slideshow presentation on the church narrated by original Process member/author Timothy Wyllie and finally a Q&A interview with Timothy conducted by Feral House publisher Adam Parfrey. So while it's not a documentary exactly, you certainly learn about the history of the church, its practices, and get a good feel of what it was like to be a member.

A young man journeys through a bizarre land inhabited by mentally impaired people, demons, and snails.