The Teen Who Chose Earache Over Algorithms: A Rebellion in the Age of Disposable Music
Imagine willingly subjecting yourself to 400 albums of sound that’s been likened to ‘the Book of Revelation: The Soundtrack.’ Now imagine doing this not as a masochistic stunt, but as a teenage hobby—complete with a color-coded spreadsheet and a 7 a.m. noise ritual. Meet Sam Andrews, the 18-year-old Georgian who’s turned the absurdity of listening to Merzbow’s entire discography into a cultural Rorschach test. His Instagram Reels—equal parts coming-of-age comedy and avant-garde endurance test—aren’t just going viral. They’re exposing a generational rift in how we consume music, the paradox of ‘deep listening’ in the TikTok era, and why some young minds are rebelling against the algorithm’s tyranny of convenience.
Why Would Anyone Want to Hear a Blender Full of Crows? Let’s Talk About Boredom
Let’s get this straight: Merzbow’s music isn’t ‘difficult’—it’s hostile. Imagine industrial static, pig squeals, and a car alarm fighting to the death inside a concrete mixer. To most ears, it’s pure auditory assault. But here’s the kicker—Andrews isn’t some basement-dwelling provocateur. He’s a Christian youth group member who works at a cinema, wears camp T-shirts, and calls AI-generated album art ‘kinda cheesy.’ So why the obsession? Because, frankly, boredom is the new counterculture. When Spotify playlists are engineered to keep you emotionally titillated but intellectually numb, forcing yourself to sit through 10 hours of Merzbient (a title that’s basically a prank) becomes an act of resistance. It’s not about the noise itself—it’s about rejecting the idea that music should always be ‘enjoyable’ or ‘useful.’
Gen Z’s Weird Obsession With ‘Unlistenable’ Art
Andrews isn’t alone. Scroll TikTok and you’ll find Gen Z weaponizing noise music as troll culture—playing Venereology through Alexa to traumatize parents, mashing Pulse Demon’s chaos with K-pop choreography, or using 30-minute single-frequency tracks as ‘ASMR’ for nihilists. But this isn’t just irony. There’s a deeper hunger here: a generation raised on hyper-curated content is now fetishizing raw, unfiltered experiences. Noise music, in its purest form, is the anti-playlist. It doesn’t care if you skip after 30 seconds. It doesn’t care if you ‘like’ it. In a world where every song is a potential ad for itself, Merzbow’s refusal to compromise feels almost heroic.
The Spotify Paradox: Why Algorithms Can’t Handle Music That Matters
Here’s where it gets uncomfortable. Merzbow has 23,000 monthly listeners on Spotify—a rounding error compared to Taylor Swift’s 60 million. But as Liz Pelly argues in Mood Machine, those numbers are lies. Spotify’s metrics reward repetition, not resonance. A track that punches you in the gut once and haunts you for years looks worse in the data than a forgettable pop single streamed daily. Andrews’ project forces us to confront this truth: The same algorithms that serve us ‘Discover Weekly’ playlists are actively hostile to art that demands effort. Noise music isn’t unpopular because it’s ‘bad’—it’s unpopular because it refuses to play the game. And that’s why Sam’s spreadsheet feels like a manifesto.
The Real Story Here Isn’t the Music—It’s the Attention
Let’s zoom out. What’s really fascinating isn’t Merzbow’s discography or even the music itself. It’s the fact that a teenager has trained himself to pay attention in a world designed to prevent it. When he describes hearing ‘the silence afterward’ of Pulse Demon, he’s not just talking about sonic contrast—he’s describing a muscle most of us have lost. In an age where TikTok trains us to expect a dopamine hit every 3 seconds, voluntarily sitting with 40 minutes of abrasive noise isn’t just rebellion. It’s a superpower. And if you’re worried about kids these days ‘not being able to focus,’ maybe the solution isn’t Adderall—it’s making them listen to a 10-hour noise album.
The Future of ‘Uncool’ Art in a Hyper-Curated World
So what happens next? Will Sam’s spreadsheet inspire a wave of noise-heads under 25, or will he remain a 1.6% outlier in a sea of algorithmically approved content? The bigger question is whether art that defies consumption can survive in a world where ‘engagement’ is measured in clicks. Merzbow’s music will probably never trend—but then again, neither did punk in 1976. What Andrews has accidentally revealed is that the tools of the attention economy (Instagram, TikTok, spreadsheets) might be the very things that let the next generation reinvent what ‘deep listening’ means. Maybe the future of meaningful art isn’t in rejecting technology, but in weaponizing it against itself.
Final Thoughts: The Day the Algorithm Died
I’ll leave you with this: When Merzbow himself briefly followed Sam’s account, then ghosted him, it felt like a passing-of-the-torch moment. Akita, the hotheaded pioneer who once raised chickens to spark an animal rights epiphany, now exists in a world where his most devoted listener is a teenager in Georgia who rates albums like they’re college applications. It’s absurd. It’s beautiful. And it’s proof that the most radical thing you can do in 2025 isn’t making noise—it’s choosing to listen.
