Frankly Hating: A Journey Through Youthful Frustration

No! This title is not misleading you. It doesn’t reflect the kind of ”good” hate Nazis always talk about. No, this story is all about how confused teenagers could possibly navigate life. They could do it if they were just a tiny bit more, let’s say, creatively rebellious in their behavior. In such cases, hate will transform into music. Let me tell you a story about weird personal development.

Vanquish is the new title of a track I created as a young and frustrated kid in my early 20s, fed up with various ”competing aspects” of life (girls), that sometimes were becoming too much to handle. Prior to this, I had been working on a series of songs over different periods. They are collectively referred to as ”Hata Frank” (”Hating Frank”). These tracks were recently released on SoundCloud for historical reasons under the name Frankly Hating, though I’m now considering renaming the series Frankly Speaking to make it a bit more subtle. I no longer live with that same feeling of hate anyway. These tracks were produced at a very amateur level in FastTracker 2. They are perhaps best left in the archives, but I’ve collected them as part of documenting my creative history.

The original Frankly Hating/Speaking series was inspired by a personal ”demon” from my youth. A younger man frequently visited my mother. He often made me feel like he was invading my space. Although his intentions weren’t bad, it felt intrusive as a teenager. As I documented in my blog, four versions of the track were released, representing this period of frustration.

Later, in the late 1990s, I encountered a new nemesis on the IRC channel #kärlek – _hugin. Hugin, around 25-26 years old, chatted with every girl he could, often crying on the phone to gain sympathy. At the time, I had just started dating someone and found his behavior frustrating. Instead of confronting him directly, I channeled my frustration into music: ”The Raven”. To be honest, it was pretty shitty.

A new track morphed into Vigvatten, Silverpil & Påle (”Holy Water, Silver Arrow & Stake”) in the early 2000s, becoming a more rave-driven track, not similar to the old versions at all, and entirely created with Propellerhead Rebirth.

Frustration can do amazing things to you, can’t it?

The Raven became the final project in the original series, as the bird theme grew tiresome and creatively exhausting. Vigvatten, Silverpil & Påle recently transformed into Vanquish during this year (2024), as the Swedish title likely wouldn’t work well on platforms like SoundCloud or Spotify (even though there are Swedish listeners, of course).

Around the time after 1999, Through Your Neck took shape due to a ”final contact with hugin,” who I believed had given up all attempts to get anywhere in life. Through Your Neck became the new track that diverged from the demonizing theme of the unlucky raven (olyckskorp) as a bird. Multiple remix attempts were made with Through Your Neck and the tones were much more calm than the prior edits.

In 2009, Whiplash was released. The title change was motivated by concerns that the original could be seen as too controversial for those involved. The original included lyrics such as ”the bullet you shoot something-something goes right/straight through your neck,” with the central image of a silver bullet instead of an arrow, as the whole theme was initially based on mythology and supernatural beings. While Whiplash no longer dealt with gunshot wounds directly, it maintained subtle references to the neck stuff, serving as a weird ”easter egg.”

In recent years, a remix (almost titled Dear Joey) was created, though it remained unfinished. The remix is long and ends abruptly, carrying the message that the unlucky raven (olyckskorp) is left behind, for another partner. The next project likely won’t focus on ravens at all but will explore a new direction. Only time will tell what that direction will be.