The closer – AS U Will Be Fine – offers a reprieve from the chaos to provide a moment of hope in amongst the tragedy, with grunge track assuring the listeners: “You will be fine / If we can help you lose your mind”. Elsewhere, more chaotic energy is found on tracks like AS Too Late and AS Acá – featuring Peruvian artist Lalita’s incredible vocal performance – that showcase Amnesia Scanner at their absurd best. Whilst not offering the roadmap to solving these crises, nor proclaiming to – as their continual distancing from Pitchfork’s tag of ‘Conceptronica’ shows –, Amnesia Scanner offer their emotional response to this insistently bleak era that could perhaps provide this apprehension.įar from tearless, their 2nd LP has gut-wrenchingly dejected moments corresponding with the sense of fatality and fury many feel today – like the slower-paced, black-metal ballad AS Flat. Given these conditions are yet to arrive for the minority of elites – who have the most structural responsibility and power to better them for the many –, attempting novel ways of helping these groups apprehend the majority’s collective consciousness and lived realities can only be productive to addressing systemic abuses and potential future collapses of say, the global ecosystem. Living in constant fear with no end in sight is not new to all people. Accordingly, ‘apocalyptic’ conditions exist as both a space of haunting potential and a continual presence in the present.

Colonialism, and the various other adversaries of subjugation under capitalist imperatives, are simply inseparable from many past and present abuses – and apocalyptic settings of tomorrow – one just has to look to the tragic killing of George Floyd in the United States to see these sorts of legacies in action. Yet, for those outside wealthy nations or the established taxon of society within them (typically the white, heterosexual male), this future already has and continues to arrive and unpack its suitcase to varying extents. Given the mounting interrelated social, economic and environmental crises in recent years, the post-apocalyptic setting of films like A Day After Tomorrow is perhaps edging closer to tomorrow. Covid-19 has altered preexisting social fabrics prompting various commentators to announce we must prepare for a ‘new normal’ a future beyond existing ways of life to prepare for an apocalyptic future. ‘Uncertain times’ is a phrase uttered from countless sources in recent months.

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