"The Big Shiny Prison" Re-Released As Free Download With New Artwork

Band Photo: Pig Destroyer (?)

Underground journalist Ryan Bartek has just re-released the book "The Big Shiny Prison (Volume One)" as a free PDF Download. Featuring new cover art and a redesigned look, this new version finally does visual justice to the original.

The product of one year spent traveling the USA underground, "The Big Shiny Prison (Volume One)" is a genre-bending work of nonfiction that is at once a road book and a journalistic expose on American counterculture as well.

In "The Big Shiny Prison (Volume One)" Bartek makes it through 35 states, spends 600+ hours on Greyhounds while interviewing a variety of celebrities, musicians, journalists and travelers. Covering all forms of counterculture with a heavy emphasis on extreme metal & hardcore punk, “The Big Shiny Prison” refuses to become a stereotypical “music book.” It instead falls into the category of the autobiographical road novel using a relevant approach that appeals to both the average reader & the critical academia.

Originally released on 11/15/09, the book features interviews/appearances by DWARVES, Brutal Truth, Pig Destroyer, MDC, Repulsion, Psyopus, Cephalic Carnage, Downtown Brown, HIMSA, Atheist, Foxy Shazam, STALAGGH, Absymal Dawn, Ludicra, The Angelic Process, AxCx & many more.

Bartek also commented on the new cover artwork:

"The new cover art of 'The Big Shiny Prison' does not depict a hooded KKK figure but rather an infamous image of the government directed abuse at the Abu Gharib prison complex. During the early period of the Iraq War, US soldiers corralled thousands of Iraqi Civilians into the most feared prison of Saddam Hussein’s rule. It was soon discovered that US forces were torturing prisoners by sodomizing them with nightsticks, handcuffing pyramids of naked men together; water-boardings, beatings, electrocutions. Many detainees held without trial were walked around naked on leashes like dogs while real MP dogs attacked them.

"The photos were leaked & subsequently led to the imprisonment of the low-level Military Police who were ordered to commit these war crimes by the Bush Administration. The cover image is of the anonymous hooded man who was cloaked in a ragged black sheet and forced to standing atop a wooden box for hours as the loosely hanging wiring repeatedly electrocuted his testicles. On the cover, this anonymous figure is represented as standing atop the base of a mock Statue of Liberty."

Download "The Big Shiny Prison (Volume One)" at this location or read it directly here.

"The Big Shiny Prison" is the first in a series of nonfiction books by Ryan Bartek. The second in