Today 39-year-old Lana Lokteff is one of the most visible faces of the white supremacist alt-right movement. For years she’s hosted or co-hosted shows at Red Ice, an independent Virginia-based media outlet run by her and her husband Henrik Palmgren. One of those shows, Radio 3Fourteen, has catered to conspiracy theorists, anti-feminists, white nationalists, and Holocaust deniers.

Yet even before she began poisoning minds on YouTube she was, almost as egregiously, poisoning the airwaves with her own brand of “music.” There’s a bit to unpack here, but let’s start with the fact that Lokteff was the lead vocalist in not one but two bands, Thirty Day Notice and Magdalene’s Dream. You can still find trace evidence of this on the Internet, including an old Myspace page.

The website for Magdalene’s Dream, which is still accessible via The Wayback Machine, showcases the artwork for the band’s only full-length album, Magdalene’s Dream. It depicts a man and a woman facing two separate elevator doors; one opens to reveal a sunset while black and white birds fly by, while the other shows people riding a series of escalators for some reason.

Copies of the album can still be purchased for a couple bucks if you have shady black market contacts — and I do. The album is comprised of 13 songs (including two “radio edits”) which sound virtually identical: generic synth-pop dreck with Lokteff whisper-singing angsty lyrics which wouldn’t cut the mustard in a middle school talent show.

The artwork inside the CD case shows her passed out next to a wine bottle — likely a sign of things to come for the listener.

The opening track, “Coming To Get You,” can best be described as six and a half minutes of auditory Quaaludes, as Lokteff repeats “coming for you” on a loop. Her vocals are listless and the melody is forgettable, which doesn’t bode well for the rest of the tracks. And sure enough by track two we get “Still In Love,” which is just as bland as “Coming To Get You.”

“Still In Love” starts with sharp electronic noises — presumably to wake up listeners who dozed off during the last song. The lyrics aren’t included in the liner notes, but I had no trouble transcribing them because there’s so little variety:

I’ve been here, waiting for you
I’ve been here, thinking of you
I’ve been here, watching you
I’ve been here, hoping for you

This is followed by an equally generic chorus:

I am still in love with you
I am still in love with you
I am still in love with you
I am still in love with you

I am with someone I don’t wanna be with
I am with someone I don’t wanna be with
I am with someone I don’t wanna be with
I am with someone I don’t wanna be with

I won’t stop until you come back to me
I won’t stop until you come back to me
I won’t stop until you come back to me

Riveting. Two minutes in and I began questioning my life choices. And this is a nearly five minute song.

In songs like “I’m Coming Home,” “Drifting,” and “What Do You Want?”, the instruments are both deeply unpleasant to the human ear and louder than the vocals — often to the point that they’re barely audible. But it’s “Are You Ready?” that might be the worst — and gloomiest — on the album. Here’s a sample of the lyrics (based on what I could hear):

The light is getting dark
The light is getting dark
The light is getting dark

The end is coming soon
The end is coming soon

The stars are falling down
The Earth is [spinning?] fast
The end is coming soon

Are you ready?
Are you ready?
Are you ready?
Are you ready?
Are you ready?
Are you ready?
Are you ready?
Are you ready?
Are you ready?

The sea is turning red
The sky is turning black
The ground is caving in

If this isn’t sufficient evidence that Lokteff was going through a serious emo phase, just look at the artwork for Magdalene’s Dream – Radio Singles, in which Lokteff is doing her best impersonation of Amy Lee from Evanescence:

And you might wonder: But why, if she’s such a phenomenally bad lyricist and singer, would a record label actually sign her on? Well to get to the bottom of that I had to look up the label, Piggyback Records. Although no longer operational, records at the Oregon Business Registry state that Piggyback Records LLC was registered on 10/02/2001, and list the registered agent and manager as Lana’s mother, Vera Lokteff.

A kook in her own right, Vera Lokteff operates her own blog — its tagline is “Esoteric & Metaphysical” — where she writes bizarre things about minorities. Take this July 3, 2018 post titled “Response To Two Very Stupid Questions,” in which Vera writes:

The cycle and recycle of the tranny question –
is easily put to bed by each individual’s original birth certificate – issued at time/date of birth. Period. This one was a Fail on so many levels …. lol

The Jewish question is easily put to bed, beyond dna testing,
by reading about the family history – which is documented on all four sides of the family; starting before, and including the lists and journals belonging to
Ivan The Terrible as well as his list of Princes & Shining Ones, the story about one of the characters in a novel by Pushkin, Cossack lists, Russian Orthodox church records, books written about Christianity and the Russian Christians who escaped from Russia to China, the White Russians who fought the communists in China, the name of the father of stealth technology before JPL got their hands on it, and
files within the USSR as to the families listed as “enemies of the state” and their crimes. (Prior to the fall of the Iron Curtain.)

If you can make sense of that word salad you’re a better person than I. Other business ventures Vera Lokteff is linked to include Piggy Back Publishing LLC, Bend Paralegal, Golden Light Records LLC, Deadline Management LLC, Thirty Day Notice LLC, and, of course, Thirty Day Notice Merchandising LLC. Each business has the same Oregon address.

Still, no amount of nepotism can make this cringe-inducing noise more palatable. And I know we’ve all done stupid things when we were younger but considering the venom Lokteff spews at Jews, the LGBTQ community, interracial couples, fat people, liberals, etc., I refuse to cut her any slack on this. Now if you’ll excuse me I think I need to see a physician because my ears have begun to bleed.