Exclusive: The Secret CIA Plot To Break Up Slayer
The note under my door said “Meet at 3 AM in the parking garage behind the Waffle House.” I’d received notes like this before and, usually, they either led to great information or some guy in nothing but a trenchcoat asking me if I wanted to hold hands and whisper Carpenters lyrics into each other’s ears. Typically, these messages came from my high level contact in the CIA, a man who will only let me refer to him in public as Deep Thrombosis. He’s worked in The Company for many years and has put me onto some of the bigger stories Tyranny of Tradition has broken. He was the guy who tipped me off to Obama’s drumming on the first Overkill album and Nixon’s plot to assassinate the members of Black Sabbath. I knew that a night meeting with Deep Thrombosis could be the thing that gets me that Pulitzer Prize I’ve been coveting all these years or even a date with The Great Kat. However, I was not prepared for the monumental significance of what he was about to tell me.
“Tonight, we are going to pull back the curtain,” whispered Deep Thrombosis while his shifty, beady eyes darted from side to side. “The information I’m about to give you could bring down the whole circus. If you print it, be warned, there is a good chance you will end up having a ‘boating accident’ or accidently hanging yourself while trying to install a garage door opener. And for godsakes, if you print this, you need to promise not to mention you got it from a source in the CIA! They’ll be able to track it back to me.”
“I will absolutely not mention how I got this information,” I told my CIA source. “I swear it!”
He proceeded to tell me the most outlandish story I had ever heard. A story of violence, intrigue and a CIA so out of control that it would go so far as to break up one of the great thrash metal groups of our time.
“The Company had heard some rumors that the next Slayer album was going to be all about drone strikes on Al-Queda bases. The thing was going to be called “South of Reason”. Typical longhaired hippie liberal propaganda. We’d have let Limbaugh handle them except they were going to reveal potential bombing coordinates, out some of our higher level agents, and really turn the metalhead public against the whole ‘secret murder of civilians who have had no trial’ thing. We couldn’t let it happen. So we took action.”
“The first part of the plan was to kidnap Kerry King and replace him with an actor who resembled Kerry King. We have a guy who has done some jobs with us in the past who was a dead ringer for King, a sort of grubby, misshapen fellow who slightly resembled a poorly shaven yeti. We scooped up the real Kerry and threw him into Guantanamo and told the guards he was actually Osama Bin Laden’s masseuse and to ‘not torture him’ until he gave us any information on the whereabouts of the secret terrorist training camps in Iceland.”
“The guy we are using as Kerry almost gave the thing away during the first show. He played three or four really great solos, which confused the audience. Luckily, one of our agents got ahold of him and told him to haphazardly move his whammy bar around really fast when it was his turn to solo and no one would know the difference. Things went fine after that.”
“We had the fake Kerry plant a robot spider containing a laboratory made virus to bite Hanneman and keep him out of action for a while. We slipped a mind-altering substance into one of Araya’s drinks and, through the power of suggestion, convinced him to start listening to Asking Alexandria. We figured this would jam up any creativity that was flowing through his head. Then, we gave a copy of the band’s financial information to Lombardo. The rest is history.”
“It was our best work since we got rid of Mossedegh in Iran in ’53. Or Arbenz in Guatemala in ’54. Or Allende in Chile in ’73. Or….well, you get the point.”
“The thing is, I’ve begun to realize that this sort of thing is dangerous. After all, if the CIA can destroy Slayer or overthrow the government of a foreign country or randomly kill civilians who happened to be in the same vicinity as people we believe to be terrorists without the consent of the American people, then what is the point of even calling our country a democracy. I started thinking of what a soulless, unaccountable beast like the CIA could do if it really put its mind to it. Forcing Exodus to do a ska album? Getting Testament to hire Michael Bolton as their lead singer? Letting Janick Gers write all the songs on the next Maiden record? The possibilities were too horrible to consider.”
“So, I have chosen you to help put a stop to this. Publish this article tomorrow and remind America that in a democracy, the government needs to be accountable to the people or else they have ceased being a democracy. That transparency is the only thing that can keep us from becoming a nation capable of any atrocity in the name of opening new markets and exploiting new sources of human capital. That America should stand for something greater than the principal of bending other, weaker nations to our will. And that Slayer should start writing stuff that sounds more like it did before Divine Intervention, because honestly, the new stuff hasn’t been all that impressive. Except for God Hates Us All. That was pretty cool.”
I heard the sound of a car door slam in the corner of the garage and turned to look at it. When I looked back, Deep Thrombosis was gone.
Metallica Names 2,000 Pound Walrus as New Bass Player
Ending weeks of speculation, Metallica has chosen Nessie, a 2,000 pound performing walrus, to be their new bass player. The search began back in 2011 when bassist extraordinaire Robert Trujillo was eaten by a pack of feral orangutans at the Jones Beach Toll Plaza in Long Island, New York. The band had auditioned over 62,023,017 potential bass players before finally settling yesterday on Nessie. Before being selected by Metallica, Nessie has had a storied career that included a stint as halfback for the New York Jets and three years as a backup singer for the Isley Brothers.
Nessie is relatively new to the metal scene, but has already made a big impression. During a freezing cold outdoor concert in Oslo, Norway, Nessie laid on top of Megadeth singer Dave Mustaine for the entire song Tornado of Souls in order to save him from frostbite. However, not all of Nessie’s experiences with the metal scene have been positive. Controversy followed Nessie after he knocked Kerry King unconscious after a Slayer show in March. King had apparently tried to eat one of Nessie’s fins, driving him into a wild, murderous rage.
Nessie will begin his tenure in Metallica next month when the band gets to work on recording its next album, the nautically themed “A Porpoise Driven Life”. The new record will feature several exciting new tracks including “Of Wolf and Manatee”, “Trapped Under Ice Fishermen”, “The Cod That Failed”, and “Saint Angler”. They are also planning another in the long series of Unforgiven songs, this one called “The Unforgiven Mambo Number 5”.
Industry experts expect the album to come out sometime in late 2013 in order to coincide with Red Lobster’s yearly Endless Crab Legs promotion. Red Lobster became the official sponsor of Metallica earlier this month.
Metalhead Insult Form Letter
Occasionally we receive insulting or life-threatening posts or emails here at Tyranny of Tradition. While we enjoy these greatly, we have begun to notice an alarming trend. Most of them are either poorly written or possibly symptomatic of a severe break with what we commoners like to refer to as “reality”. In order to improve the quality of these insults, we have created a form letter for those of you that struggle with expressing themselves in writing.
The answers are based on the most common, clichéd insults or recycled comments that we have received over past year and a half. We left out any profanity or pseudo-ironic internet abbreviations that tend to be a major part of these letters so that we could focus more on content. Questions 6 and 7 are meant to be representative of the majority of our insulters, so feel free to add your own information after word “Other” if the responses don’t properly represent you. Please use this form if you feel the sudden urge to attempt to humiliate or degrade us. It will save us the many seconds that were wasted trying to figure out what you were talking about.
Dear ________________________________,
A. Internet Warrior
B. Poser
C. Guy who lives in his mother’s basement
D. Troll
E. Idiot
Your blog sucks. I read your last post and you are ______________.
A. not funny
B. not heterosexual
C. a little troll who lives in his mother’s basement
D. a butthurt, hipster English major
E. overweight
F. skinny and frail
G. the type of guy who thinks his beard and haircut makes him look like Kerry King when in fact it just makes him look homeless
H. Both E and G
I. Both F and G
J. All of the Above
I hate you. Your blog is _______________.
A. second-rate Onion
B. a third-rate Onion
C. just like The Onion
D. like that internet site that does parodies of news articles
A. drown in a lake
B. die in a fire
C. get a girlfriend and stop writing
D. start doing something productive with your time
E. stop spamming pictures of Scott Baio onto my Myspace profile
F. move out of your mother’s basement
G. Learn the proper uses of there and their
A. Everybody Loves Raymond
B. dog vomit
C. The Onion
D. the last Morbid Angel album
I spend a lot of time judging other people’s writing in my time as _____________ and yours is the worst I’ve ever read.
A. a metal message board moderator
B. inmate 657891 at the Dannemora Correctional Institute
C. the president of the fan club of some black metal band that no one has ever heard of
D. a highly bored casualty of the current downsizing trend
E. Other___________________________
If I see you on the street I’ll probably _________________.
A. stare at you with a menacing look and hope that you notice my Burzum hoodie
B. tell you how much I love your blog
C. mutter under my breath about you living in your mother’s basement and hope you didn’t hear me
D. ask you if you write that blog that’s like a metal version of The Onion
E. drive a spike through your head and dance on your corpse while singing “Transylvanian Hunger”
E. Other_____________________________
You suck,
Your fake internet name here_______________________________________
Friday Night At The Masquerade With In Solitude
Photos by Shannon Mcginty-Spillett
The first thing you need to know about seeing a metal show in the American South, Atlanta in particular, is that almost every person in the audience is going to look nearly identical. It’s beyond bizarre. Standing there in the middle of the ballroom floor at The Masquerade, my wife and I could have easily been at a casting call for actors looking to play Slayer’s Kerry King in a movie. Short, squat, bald with scruffy beards, tattoos and black shirts. How do the police ever tell them apart?
The evening started promisingly enough. My wife and I were accosted by some inebriated, bearded lunatic in a panel van who slowed up to tell us his motor was dying, then drove off when he noticed the can of mace my wife was clutching tightly in her right hand. The van, which had an ominous Mothers For Palin sticker emblazoned on the back, had clearly been used in some sort of white slavery ring that we collectively wanted no part of. But these things happen from time to time.
Dressed For Excess
We were there to see In Solitude, but most of the throngs of concertgoers were there to see Down. We had no such plans. We are two middle-aged adults who have learned to value a good night’s sleep over the wild excesses of staying out past 10 to see a band. The original plan had us dipping out by 9 o’clock after the In Solitude set so that we could collapse into an orgy of Chinese food and Friday night re-runs. Unfortunately, The Masquerade pulled the old bait and switch on us and put some highly talented but unfortunately named band called “Pony Killer” on before In Solitude. My wife and I retreated to the benches outside where I was given a Nobel worthy dissertation on the entire life history Jeff Loomis, formerly of the band Nevermore, by some complete stranger with a broken leg wearing a shirt featuring Jesus smoking a cigarette.
As we walked into the club, I noticed Crowbar singer and Charles Addams cartoon character Kirk Windstein standing about 15 feet away from me. I have always loved Crowbar and I thought strongly about getting a picture with him, but I had some concerns. I had met Windstedt once before in Albany, New York when they were opening for Sacred Reich in the mid-90s. Our brief meeting took place as we stood next to each other at a urinal before their band went on. I excitedly stammered, “YOU’RE The GUY from CROWBAR!!!!!” Windstein silently looked straight ahead at the wall and tried to escape my glowing gaze. When I reached my hand out to try to pat him on the back, he sprinted out of the restroom with a terrified look on his face. It was a highly awkward moment that I had repeated over and over in my mind for the last 15 years. Out of sheer concern he might have remembered my poorly timed outburst, I put my head down and kept walking.
I was horribly bored standing in the audience before the set. The thing you forget about shows when you are not there is the pure tedium between bands. Standing on your left foot, then your right, smelling the guy next to you who hasn’t washed his Watain shirt in about five concerts, watching the one lonely guy in the Incantation shirt pace and talk to himself, randomly thinking about how your 401K performed last week. You get a brief rush when the guitar tech comes out to check the levels, then, nothing. Ten more minutes of overhearing conversations about what the real meaning of Black Metal is. Sheer mind-numbing misery.
Pelle The Conquerer
All of a sudden, I felt my head snap backwards. In a wild rush of incense and power, In Solitude appeared on stage and launched into a violently surging version of “The World, The Flesh, The Devil”. Adrenaline shot through my veins. My pulse went from a calm, resting 60 to an unrestrained, thumping 180 in a fleeting span of seconds. I felt like a had been sleeping in the middle of a highway and raised my head up only to see an 18 wheel tractor trailer bearing down on me. IT had begun.
The way they started out was pure magic. The first thing you notice about In Solitude is presence. Some bands act like they plan to spend the entire show apologizing to you for being up there. Other bands act like they completely and unquestionably belong where they are. They command your attention and hold it unreservedly for the duration of their set. In Solitude falls squarely into the latter camp. They are there for a reason and you WILL understand that reason before they are finished. The stage was simply too small for them. They were hooked uncompromisingly into the Master Cylinder, bringing a message that transcended all other thoughts and ideas that had existed in me up till the moment of their arrival. They demanded complete and total connection and, with their every action, settled for nothing less.
Their set covered most of the critical material from their two albums. The crowd, which was clearly more inclined to listen to slow, lurching southern metal riffs, was won over by the third song. Wild-eyed singer Pelle “Hornper” Ahman managed to work the crowd into a bloodthirsty frenzy through a series of high-pitched shrieks and animalistic antics that ran the gamut from spasmodically shaking his thin frame to ramming the microphone into his head. The only thing I could possibly compare his energy level to are the few live recordings I’ve seen of Paul Di’Anno fronting Iron Maiden at The Ruskin Arms around the time Killers was out. Ahman simply hemorrhages sweat and intensity to the point where you are concerned for his well-being. By the time Down front man and metal legend Phil Anselmo strode out on stage in a Ghost shirt to bellow a few bars of “To Her Darkness” with the band, their was no doubt that this was an act on the precipice of greatness.
Anselmo Tears It Up
There is simply something unique and memorable about In Solitude. They are cut out for greater things. Even my wife, who finds the B-52s to be a bit on the heavy side, seemed deeply impressed with how they carried it. We witnessed something arrestingly powerful last night at The Masquerade and everyone there knew it. The performance seemed to be part of an elaborate first act in a career that will have a lot to say about the direction metal music is going in.
