What's in a name? Everything, for Eskatology. His music has his name written all over it.
The rapper, who is also known as 27-year-old South Australian Jonathan Stier, first came across the term "eschatology" through studying religion.
“Religion does play a part in my life, and I was doing a bit of religious studying and came across this word and it intrigued me,” he says.
“So I found the meaning to be 'an end or talks of a world end’. The name stood out to me because my music is always based on life and death and everything in between, and an end is in everyone’s future. My relevance to the name comes down to trying to live through life and bettering myself and continuing to make this music to the very end, being able to hold onto something till the end. It also reflects the religiousness through my music, that I believe there will be an end some day, and I believe we are living in the last days.
"I thought it matched well with my stories, about preparing for an end, and righting wrongs before the end, as well as me turning over a new time in my life.”
Eskatology's second album, Eskape Reality, told how he made a new start after a tough upbringing marked by absent father figures.
The rapper, who is a heavyweight in stature as well as stanza, was raised in the small town of Crystal Brook by his Ngarrindjeri grandmother and her husband. He never knew his grandmother’s previous husband, a German who fathered his mother. He also did not know his own Yugoslavian father.
"I grew up knowing more of my Aboriginal heritage than any of my other mixed blood," says Eskatology, who was baptised Lutheran.
“My grandma was full blood and I didn’t know my German grandfather and my dad wasn’t around. So I guess that’s all I knew.”
It’s a sentiment that calls into question the views of Bess Price, the former chair of the Northern Territory Indigenous Affairs Advisory Council. Shortly after Eskape Reality was released, she chided fair-skinned Aboriginal people for identifying as only Aboriginal. Her comments led radical artist Richard Bell to retort: “I have been a blackfella all my life. I don’t know any of my white relatives. In fact, I have never met even one of them. So Bess Price, or any other idiot non-friend, don’t tell me to be proud of those fuckers.”
Such issues are never simply black and white. In fact, Eskatology identifies as Aboriginal, German and Yugoslavian.
“I struggled to find myself a lot of the time,” he says. “I grew up mainly with my grandparents, until I was 10, then went back to my mum. I have only just come in contact with my father. Haven’t had anything to do with him.”
The rapper pays tribute to his mother and all matriarchs in his song "Cradle To The Grave" on the EP A Dose Of Reality.
"This track was written to provoke thoughts about everything that is within life, from birth to death," he says.
"It reflects a more 'past, present and future' look on life, for those that forget where they come from and what they can strive through. There is always respect shown for the mothers out there. Gotta respect the women that brought you into this world, no matter what."
It's often said that if women ruled the world, there would be no wars. There certainly might be fewer. On "G.O.D." Eskatology raps:
First Iraq, went on to Afghan, on to Iran
Not before they had Libya in the thumb of their hand
Walking through the jungles to Sudan
See these death camps of refugees without a plan
Soldiers cranked up with the highest demand
Dropping bombs for war like they did to Japan
Worldwide drama happening in every spot on the globe
The end of the world soon? Only the lord knows...
"This reference streams from the wars, violence and just the destructive nature a lot of people are turning to in the world," says the rapper.
"Any time you turn on the TV there is something happening and it just feels like it's getting worse. I guess some could say that there was and always will be violence, but it just seems to be more fluent nowadays.
"Basically, the reference around the Middle East is to the governments who are always getting involved with civil wars for their own benefits - Iraq, Afganistan, Iran, Libya, now Syria. I've worked with many refugees in my job as a youth worker and you hear stories about Sudan and how there are camps set up, where they're tortured and murdered - it's something people need to hear about. The US always wants to drop bombs in war, look how Barack Obama was quick to talk about dropping missiles on Syria. Same shit happened in Hiroshima where they dropped those nukes and killed so many. I watched a doco on the people of Iraq, who are now affected by the radiation - babies born deformed.
"My belief is that in the end days, which I feel we are living in now, there will be so much drama and evil in the world, that that's when we know it will happen - and that eventually it will consume us all, the more war, the more death.
"The people that are running countries like America, Australia, are all working for evil and not the good of the people. These politicians or government officials run the country in a police state, which uses repressive and controlling tactical ways to control the people and affairs."
On "G.O.D." Eskatology also raps: "In a police state, we know who are the officers."
Asked about the lyric, he says: "Everyone knows who they are, everyone knows the people running these countries are just puppets on a string, being pulled. If they don’t know, they need to be educated and the people who can't see, need to see. I think they make themselves more visible because people are catching on and exposing these people. Check out Alex Jones's 'Police State' for more information on this matter."
The reference to US radio host Alex Jones, often dismissed as a conspiracy theorist, holds a key to what eschatology means for Eskatology. It's an aspect that also reveals itself in Eskape Reality’s artwork.
"In the middle it is the 'all-seeing eye’, which is a symbol of the New World Order," he says.
New World Order theorists believe the world is headed towards an eschatological event in the formation of a one-world government. They have also been dismissed as conspiracy theorists - but “conspiracy theorist” is a term that has perhaps become too narrowly defined.
As intellectual and activist Noam Chomsky has pointed out: “Every example we find of planning decisions… where some people got together and tried to use whatever power they could draw upon to achieve a result - if you like, those are ‘conspiracies’. That means that almost everything that happens in the world is a ‘conspiracy’...
“The developing needs of this new international corporate ruling class - it’s what has sometimes been called an emerging ‘de facto world government’. That’s what all of the new international trade agreements are about... These are all efforts to try to centralise power in a world economic system geared towards ensuring that ‘policy is insulated from politics’ - in other words, towards ensuring that the general populations of the world have no role in decision-making.”
Eskatology’s song “Mr Wolf” intones, “without a democracy there is no solution”. Asked to elaborate, the rapper says: “A democracy would allow the people to stand up and control the affairs of people, and without this, who is going to keep control of this world and its affairs? The same leaders that brainwash us, the same ones that give praise to the US leaders when they are in need of war.”
But for Eskatology, eschatology is as personal as it is political. His second album tells of three deaths in his family in three years as well as his close friend dying.
Award-winning Aboriginal affairs reporter Chris Graham says one of the main differences he sees between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians is the fact that Aboriginal people deal with death far more often.
"I would have to agree with Chris Graham," says Eskatology. “It usually comes in three deaths with Aboriginal people. I lost my uncle in '96 to pneumonia, my aunty who was 26 died in '97, and my nana died in '98.”
Dealing with such grief has led him to substance abuse.
“I started drinking heavily in Port Augusta,” he says. “I suffered bad anxiety from a young age.”
On "Demons Within" he raps about battling those emotions.
"'Demons Within' is more of a personal reflection on my own struggles, about fighting with your demons within. I have been a sufferer of anxiety and panic for many years and this track fits perfectly to what I'm feeling at the time. It also reflects fighting with doing good and bad. I'd always heard of God, but didn't know him till lately. It's also about bettering those demons, filling yourself with goodness, instead of feeling like shit and down all the time."
In “Thousand voices”, Eskatology raps about taking Prozac to help him with the anxiety. Some psychologists say the anxiety suffered by conspiracy theorists arises from a combination of them holding strong individualist values and lacking power. In The Return Of The Public, author Dan Hind suggests a general rise in anxiety over the past 30 years has come about as a result of the rise in inequality, and the real underlying issues are not being addressed. He says drugs such as Prozac are addictive and only marginally more effective than a placebo.
“Well, I would agree and disagree,” says Eskatology. “I would say it doesn’t have a placebo effect because I have noticed changes a few weeks after taking it, which I didn’t really get from others, but it is addictive.”
However, he has quit his other addictions, so the concept of eschatology has arisen again in Eskatology turning over a new leaf, health-wise.
“Eskatology also symbolises the old me,” he says. “I slowed down drinking, I quit the weed and cigs, so it was like a new start.”
Eschatology can be taken to mean rebirth or resurrection. Eskape Reality - Eskatology's sophomore album - marked the second coming of a fine rapper. The following EP, the mellifluous A Dose Of Reality, is like a new dawn. Eskatology says the strong melodies are something he strives for.
"Most definitely. I love music that touches the soul or makes you feel something when you hear it. I want people to feel what I'm writing just as I feel and see it in my own mind, and having a melodic sound moves those chords inside to make you feel what I'm saying."
And for all of Eskatology's talk of end times, the EP's track "Believe" points to a brighter future.
"'Believe' is one of the more uplifting tracks, something that I hope can inspire change and make people feel better inside, feel the positives to achieve," he says. "It is about believing in yourself, being who you can be, just about finding that potential in yourself and believing that anything is possible. It's more uplifting. I want to do more uplifting tracks, to inspire. It helps to inspire myself and to inspire others."
It certainly feels like a new beginning.
