The Tar Pit, 88.5 Chicago, WHPK

by J †Johnson

On a Thursday afternoon at the end of February, 2025, after the world has ended and we’re picking through the rubble for signs of intelligent life, we’re treated to a full set of Denver cosmic death metal band Blood Incantation, from their Live Vitrification album, interrupted briefly with a call for volunteers to help catalog WHPK Chicago’s record collection, which dates back to the ’60s. DJ Livy Onalee uses the break to describe the album art and read its warning about the hazards of opening interdimensional portals through which the music passes along with psychic alien cargo. After this set, we proceed immediately to Blood Incantation’s Timewave Zero, its Tangerine Dreamy ambient album from 2022. Today’s show opens with face-melting tracks from Beherit and Bosse-de-Nage, casually glossed with tasty bits from the station’s resident extreme metal scholar. Discerning headbangers are delighted to hear DJ Livy return from a New Year’s break, back on their bullshit after hinting they would reformat their weekly spot, “From Space Rock to Cosmic Death Metal: Tracing the Extraterrestrial in Metal Music.” The program may now go by “The Tar Pit,” but we’re still way, way out there at the edge of the metal universe. And DJ Livy is still giving lessons every show, not only in their selections, but also the playful and informative takes on the music cooking our brains. This is what makes local radio stations special, and the ability to stream some of them from wherever our bodies happen to reside is pretty much what the internet was made for. WHPK’s site functionality may be hit or miss, but the broadcast usually streams at the press of a button, and if you do so Thursdays at 2pm ET, you’re in for an hour of interstellar audio adventure.

“Sorry to interrupt that trance,” DJ Livy cuts back in to close the hour. We’ll have to wait another week for the next transmission from beyond the ruins of Earth.