(This is the last time you'll be seeing my ""human"" body represented on a Roxy Radclyffe album cover for the foreseeable future, since I'll be making the jump to full-time furry musicianship in 2025, and as such, I'm capping off this era with a bang. Here I appear more powerful & maniacal than ever, in part because you haven't the slightest clue what's truly in store for this discography going forward. I have over a dozen LPs lined up across 2025 & 2026 that you all know jackshit about, and at least three of them are arguably career suicide maneuvers, with serious potential to earn me my first ever Obviously Bad-Faith Transmisogynistic Cancellation Attempt™, a rite of passage all transgressive online transfem artists inevitably experience. I am done living in fear of the digital panopticon. Any remaining puritans will be weeded out of my audience as needed. They will not survive the winter.)

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Who is allowed to enact violence? This is the central question I find myself writing about in the wake of liberalism's pitiful demise, driven by a so-called "democratic" party's continued failure to muster up the slightest bit of courage in the battle against fascism, all while congratulating themselves for maintaining "civility". Time and time again, we find that the "high road" leads absolutely nowhere, yet nonetheless, nothing fucking changes. Rather than engaging in any serious introspection, or daring to deviate from the demands of corporate donors, they'll instead blame this loss on us trannies for being too unpalatable (despite their nominee essentially refusing to acknowledge our existence), and likely carry on as usual unless a true outsider manages to disrupt the status quo.

Imagine if any mainstream institutions claiming to represent the left actually had the capacity for sweeping violence. By this I don't mean strictly literal violence; I mean even just having a goddamn backbone, being willing to strike back with low blows of their own when necessary, utilizing populist rhetoric for material good instead of objective evil. Tragically, as far as the establishment is concerned, allowing any of this would be an act of violence against themselves, because without the fabricated distractions of "Perverted Queers" or "Criminal Migrants", all that remains is class warfare, and boy would that not end well for them. It is critical that we remain open to imagining these scenarios, and reiterate the observations leading up to them, no matter how obvious they should logically already be. VIRLGOID can be taken as my attempt to fulfill that purpose, even if it lacks some of the specificity I once envisioned it having.

VIRLGOID loosely follows the story of VIRLGOID, a metaphorical transgender vigilante group formed under the reign of Crossfire, a general stand-in for all flavors of christofascism currently running rampant in my country. Originally, this album was going to place a greater emphasis on the gritty details of its fictional world, but given the sobering reality of recent events, I've felt most drawn to the raw Feelings spearheading that concept in the first place, and ended up with more fragmented lyricism as a result. Even the more specific situations that did end up portrayed in the final version are far more simplistic than their closest real-world equivalents, and as such, their overall "narrative" is primarily meant to be an abstract source of catharsis amidst what feels like an apocalypse.

Realistically though, I as an individual will most likely survive the worst of this period, and any lyrics which might seem to imply I think otherwise are either non-literal or told from a community-wide perspective. Some factors to consider: I'm white, have an actively supportive mother (at least as of late 2021), and seem to ""pass"" sufficiently in public spaces despite not being the most ""conventionally attractive"" per se. The privileges at play here are not lost on me, and that is one reason why I feel a certain responsibility to be as loudly & obnoxiously queer as possible; on top of simply being true to myself, this behavior can also attract the most intense harassment like a lightning rod, which I know I can handle, and would hope to redirect away from queers who lack such safety nets. I will never buy into the idea that unfiltered self-expression "makes us all look bad"; if anything, I'd say it's one of our most vital tools, able to inspire boldness in those who still have yet to figure out their own identity, and ultimately keep the very concept of our existence alive. But in less tactical terms, what I truly hope for in being the way that I am — however naive or trite it may sound — is to spread trans joy as far and wide as I can. For as long as I have no money to spare, and continue to barely function as an "adult" in general, I sincerely believe that art is my best avenue for accomplishing this goal. I am not excusing myself from the frontlines forever, but working with what I have in this moment, trying to get my shit together one step at a time.

To those who do already possess the resources to engage in more direct forms of praxis, I would like to endorse:

- The Working Families Party, for being our strongest push away from the duopoly currently dominating US politics

- Crimethinc, for being a crucial source of radical thought in general, and outlining ways we can all move forward

Above all else, take care of each other. That's not just a platitude, I am dead serious. Enough with the infighting. It was always fucking stupid to begin with, but in this particular moment it has become even more gravely irresponsible to waste any energy waxing moralistic about whose kinks are socially acceptable, or exiling those with mental illnesses too inconvenient to romanticize. Not one of us can pass the purity test where it actually matters, so please get your head in the game and stick together. Shit's about to get real ugly.

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A (likely incomplete) list of people & projects whose artistic DNA had some noticeable influence on this album's creation, or at least crossed my mind during it:

Car Bomb, Celldweller, Code: Pandorum, Disturbed, Encenathrakh, Frontierer, Gorguts, Humanity's Last Breath, Influx, Korn, Kretery, Limp Bizkit, Lorna Shore, Matt Stephens, Meshuggah, Mick Gordon, Mushroomhead, Periphery, Phyllomedusa, Portal, Serpent Column, Slipknot, Sunn O))), The Body, The Dillinger Escape Plan

Also XXXTENTACION I guess?? (specifically for the track "One Minute", which blew my mind in 2018 and presumably planted the seeds for me getting really into nu metal a few years later. I just listened to it again after writing this, and it's considerably more scuffed than I remembered, but I'm built different enough to understand that as a selling point rather than a downside. What a wonderfully strange artifact that song is.)

• The original idea for this album's cover was written as follows:

extreme scoliosis-inspired cover? like abstraction of me at fuckin 90 degree angle type shit w maniacal smile nd sharp limbs

would also be cool to depict visible signs of having these alt treatments done on me, like cupping marks, that weird needle shit, etc

fiery color palette, black bg, minimally clothed

The other unused idea for this album's cover went like this:

walking away looking back satisfied at the destruction around me // perhaps sort of a side view from slightly below, and im smiling looking up toward the corner where the severed head would be on one of my antlers

• Much like LP12 and LP13, this cover's photoshoot contained dozens of possible image sources that never made the final cut. Here's some of my favorites:

• This is the first ever Mainline Roxy Radclyffe Project to contain ZERO usage of Soundgoodizer in its mastering process. No Luck. Pure Mixing Skill. I have officially broken my 6-year habit of mixing to the whims of a default plugin on its default setting, inadvertently obscuring my vision, and cramming everything I make into the same overall sound profile regardless of the situation. Prepare your earholes. These brick walls just got a whole lot cleaner.

(Yes, my brickwalling is indeed an intentional choice, both for stylistic reasons and because it's my personal preference for pretty much all music in general. I make what I wanna hear! The type of guy who cries and pisses their pants over "the loudness war" fails to account for the fact that people like me exist; I am not ignorant of the matter, I am diametrically opposed to your bullshit standards, and in fact LIKE when music subsumes me into its all-encompassing storm of sound. Some day you will have to accept that mastering practices have simply evolved over the decades, and as new generations continue being born into these conditions, your antiquated methodology will be all but extinct. I, for one, couldn't be happier. My discography is not a safe space for anyone who seriously refers to the Dynamic Range DB as a marker of quality. Lick the dynamic range of my balls if this offends you.)

• The "Vermillion" in TRACK 1's title was a real typo I didn't notice until over a year later, after which I just decided to retcon it as being an intentional bit of wordplay, alluding to Millions of Dollars, like Greed, like Capitalism, Do you Get It?? Get It??? This is the difference between you and me. I believe there is no such thing as a "mistake" in art. Everything has a silver lining, and finding them is half the battle. Every reason you think you have to despise any given piece is just waiting to be reexamined as an advantage. It's literally so easy to feel the joy that I feel.

(Apparently "Vermillion" is also an acceptable spelling, actually. Not sure why the Roxy of December 2024 thought otherwise. But I like the underlying sentiment of this fact enough that I wouldn't feel right removing it entirely.)

• TRACK 5's vocals were recorded in a closet using a different microphone, because I ran out of timely opportunities to record while home alone, and had to take drastic measures if I wanted to do any more screaming before my self-imposed deadline.