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The origins of Dwid/INTEGRITY’s “holy terror” tropes

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Picture 59I’ve got no idea if he’s still jocked relentlessly today, but a few years ago when I would randomly troll B9, Dwid/Integrity and the Holy Terror stuff seemed to be everywhere. People would jizz themselves over a new Dwid shirt design. I’ve always heard people talk about the whole ‘Holy Terror Church of the Final Judgement’ under their breath, never really understanding whats going on. So fuck it, I’m gonna shed some light.

First off, I honestly give about zero fucks about Integrity. I, like everyone else in the hxc scene went kinda nuts over their first album “Those Who Fear Tomorrow” but even by “Systems Overload” I was off them. IDK, kinda all sounded the same to me. And even then I found myself eye-rolling over the Armenian Genocide liner notes. I remember opening the Integrity CD with the Process logo (interlinked Ps) and thinking – what the fuck is that doing there?!?, and fully understanding that I was probably one of the *very* few hxc people that knew what the hell that thing was (I can give details of *why* I knew it in the comments, if wanted).

What is the Holy Terror Church? Well, as far as I can tell from talking to people ‘close’ to those involved, it’s mostly a made up idea to lend ‘mystique’ to the Dwid/Holy Terror brand. And nothing against Dwid for doing so – good marketing I guess – but it’s just not a real thing. Even the ‘Holy Terror Church of the Final Judgement‘ and the ‘Jack Abernathy’ character are made up. I can’t say what Dwid personally believes or doesn’t, but this idea that there is this deep underground ‘church’ spreading some amorphous ‘message’ is just not real.

downloadMore interesting is where did Dwid get the ideas from? This is largely just (informed) speculation – but much of the vocabulary used seems to come straight from the writings found in the Re/Search book Industrial Culture Handbook. That book is basically an overview of 70s and 80s ‘performance artists’ (yuck), like SPK, Throbbing Gristle (more on them in a sec) and Boyd Rice. Words like ‘sonic terrorism’, ‘art as terror’, or any other crazy term you read in a Dwid interview sound like they come straight from this book.

Integrity Cover vs Psychic TV Logo

Integrity Cover vs Psychic TV Logo

Point two is the character of Genesis P-Orridge, (co)founder of bands like Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV, and (more importantly) rediscoverer of the Process Church. P-Orridge came across some Process Church magazines in the 70s and really embraced the design ethic of the group (jury out on how much of their teachings he absorbed). So through P-Orridge, an ‘extreme’ musician, Dwid, a professed early fan of ‘extreme’ music would have some exposure to the look/basic ideas of The Process. (FYI Throbbing Gristle is like entry level ‘extreme’/industrial noise music. And unlistenable to boot) P-Orridge’s obsession with Manson is pretty directly linked to Integrity imagery as well…

shirts

Integrity Shirt vs Psychic TV Group Shot… Similar?

So – what the hell is/was the Process Church (full name – The Process Church of the Final Judgement… hmm…) Basically, it centered around two very charismatic cast-outs from the 60s Scientology movement in London. Banned by omega-level weirdness guru L. Ron Hubbard, these two took the Scientology ‘auditing’ idea underground and formed a closed group that started living communally. They eventually moved to Mexico on some isolated sugar plantation, and had a kind of group mind-fuck where they thought God was speaking to the group, and wrote these down as ‘The Xtul Dialogs‘ (links to a 500 page terribly done PDF). Feeling they ‘had something’ the group moved to the states, drafted on some crazy Jehovah/Satan theology, opened some coffee shops and dressed in robes like insane people. Got somewhat big, had major group implosions and disappeared.. but not before they published a few issues of their magazine that was, if nothing else, very graphically advanced for it’s time. FYI – ‘Humanity is the Devil‘ was a foundational document of the Process Church…

2014-12-12_19-54-33The group went through a bunch of closures and ‘rebrandings’, eventually rejecting the Process teachings, becoming The Foundation and eventually morphed into an animal welfare group out of Utah! But luckily a few used copies of Process magazine found their way into P-Orridge’s hands and the rest is Holy Terror history… If you got questions, I’ll answer ‘em in the comments.

PS: Just noticed – in the linked PDF above, you could basically randomly pick sentences from any Process writings and sound liek a super dark Holy Terror hxc band… Fuck this shit is gold!2014-12-14_20-22-23


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