A minor cult classic of outsider punk lit, the 1995 novella The Primal Screamer is Nick Blinko's first book; mostly known as the front man of legendary deathpunk gods Rudimentary Peni and an acclaimed illustrator whose surreal, obsessive drawings and paintings have been shown in galleries around the world, the man can also weave beautifully dread-filled phrases with his withered pen. And as most Peni fans already know, Blinko has also struggled with mental illness throughout his life and has been diagnosed with Schizoaffective disorder; his adventures in the world of psychiatry, suicidal desire and hallucination have always informed his art, and nowhere more so than with The Primal Screamer.

This strange little book tells the story of a psychiatrist and a deeply troubled youth named Nat Snoxell who comes under his care after a gruesome failed suicide attempt. Told as a series of dated journal entries, the story accompanies Snoxell through the burgeoning anarcho-punk scene of early 80s Britain and becomes a veiled auto-biography of Blinko's own experiences with Rudimentary Peni. But as Primal Screamer develops, it gradually shifts from psycho-analysis and an anecdotal recollection of the lives of punk youth in the anarchist squats of early 80s England into a strangely surreal sequence of events that become increasingly more disturbing, gradually revealing the presence of an unfathomable, unseen malevolence to the narrator that lurks out of sight of the narrow lens of human experience. By the end of the book, it becomes something more akin to one of Thomas Ligotti's tales of cosmic dread.

Completely unlike any other book I've ever read from a "punk"/anarchist publisher, The Primal Scream blurs the lines between hallucination and reality and offers glimpses into a monstrous dreamworld that serves as a metaphor for schizophrenia. I had originally been hunting for this book just for the artwork, which I've been a huge fan of; the book features scores of Blinko's artwork, twisted and skeletal pen-and-ink nightmares that draw from the same occult energies as Aubrey Beardsley, Odilon Redon and Austin Osman Spare. The original printing on Spare Change Books went out of print years ago and became a pricey collectors item, though, so for the longest time this book has evaded me. Thanks to PM Press, we now have a high quality trade paperback edition available once again, and its a must-get for fans of Rudimentary Peni, early anarcho-punk arcana, and vague hallucinatory horror...