Archive for December, 2013
Steven Tyler Gives Terminally Ill Man Dying Wish By Cancelling Aerosmith Concert
Posted by Keith Spillett in Excessive Cruelty Towards Strangers on December 27, 2013
Tyler Moments After Saving A School Bus Filled With 5,000 Children From Drowning After A Crash In The Andes Mountains
Most people incorrectly perceive the world of rock’n’roll as a carnival of demented, brainless narcissists willing to claw their grandmother’s eyeballs out for ten seconds of media attention. While this is true about 99 percent of the time, there are some artists out there who quietly work to make the world a better place. One such person is Aerosmith front man Steven Tyler.
Beyond writing some of the most moving and powerful rock songs of the 1980s and 90s, Tyler is a compassionate man who believes it is his sole purpose in life to give of himself to others. From negotiating an end to the Eritrean-Ethiopian War in 2000, to risking his life while singlehandedly saving a raft filled with burning puppies and kittens that were about to go over a 600 foot waterfall in Ghana, to donating his colon and lower intestines to a group of needy children in Laos, Tyler has truly made a difference in this world.
That’s why it was no surprise when Tyler made the ultimate sacrifice by canceling Aerosmith’s scheduled concert last Friday at The Cow Palace in San Francisco. Tyler did so in order to honor the dying wish of Brian McCloud, a terminally ill man who passed away on Wednesday after a yearlong battle with Moosebumps. McCloud, who always despised Aerosmith’s music and Tyler in particular, wanted more than anything else to stop another group of concertgoers from having to endure horrendous live versions of “Janie’s Got A Gun” and “Love In An Elevator”.
“If I could do one thing to make the earth a better place, it would be to save the eardrums of a group of strangers from the vomit-inducing sounds that fall out of Steven Tyler’s bloated, pig mouth….even just for one night,” said McCloud as his last breath escaped his body.
Tyler was so moved by McCloud’s plea he initially agreed to have his voicebox removed and buried with McCloud, but later reneged on this offer when the family of the deceased implied that it might be in poor taste. Instead, he will have his tongue stapled to his forehead as an act of contrition for subjecting the public to almost 30 years of misery. Tyler plans to play less shows next year to honor McCloud’s memory.
“When you hear about a guy and he’s, like, on his deathbed, pleading for you to stop singing and literally tries to strangle the male nurse by his bedside in his last moments because he thinks it might be you….That’s powerful, man. That hits you right here (pointing to chest). You really see how your music can touch people’s lives,” said a misty-eyed Tyler during his daily hot yoga session.
Moshing Towards Bethlehem Or How Eugenics Can Save Heavy Metal
Posted by Keith Spillett in BlaK Dan's Theatre of Cruelty on December 25, 2013
The Falcon Can’t Hear The Falconer
(My brother-in-law BlaK Dan (or Zarathustra as he now likes to be called) has emerged from his cave in the mountains of North Georgia to eat a free meal at our house, scare my children with stories about Varg Vikernes and share his vision of how to save heavy metal from the forces of non-metalness. My wife asks me, as a favor, to let him write for the site occasionally in order to feel “useful”)
Let’s face it folks, the heavy metal world is in crisis. An invasion of hipsters, mall goths, meth-heads, beardos and garden variety morons have turned what was once a great scene into an embarrassment. Things have gotten so bad, the other day I told a guy at a party that I listen to nothing but folk music and trip hop. When you can’t turn on your television without seeing Ozzy Osborne’s wife hocking skin care products, when you hear the members of Savatage rocking out Christmas songs over the PA system at your local Wal-Mart, when 7/8s of the youth of America are unable to name a Metallica song besides “Enter Sandman”, when Iron Maiden spends the majority of their time writing 25 minute adult contemporary songs and selling craft beer…we are in deep trouble!
The center has not held. Real heavy metal is dying a slow, painful death and it seems like there is nothing we can do to stop it. Metal was once pure. People wore their hair long, played loud and wore denim jackets with Venom patches on them. But, those days are over. At a metal show today, you are likely to see a nightmare panorama of Buddy Holly glasses, pink hair, iPhones, ear gauges, and Chelsea Grin shirts.
Some of this breakdown in heavy metal morality can be linked to environmental causes like radiation from the Fukushima meltdown and the widespread use of tetanus vaccinations. However, the root cause of the deracination of true metal can be traced back to a much deeper, more profound issue. That issue is genre mixing.
It started innocently enough. A little bit of synth on an Iron Maiden album, Anthrax experimenting with hip hop, female vocalists fronting death metal bands, Slayer doing a punk album, Pantera… and all of a sudden we are in a vast wasteland of Deafhaven and pirate metal. As we mosh our way into oblivion, it becomes more and more clear that desperate times call for desperate measures. It seems unfashionable to talk about eugenics today in our politically correct world, but, the truth is, it is the only way to save metal from the dark, sinister forces of poseurness.
Subhumans
It is obvious to anyone who spends five minutes at a concert or on a metal message board that there is a hierarchy of metal fans. At the bottom of the ladder are the Hot Topicafied kids who tried to furtively ditch their Justin Beiber loving image by showing up to school one day in an Asking Alexandria shirt. They are the heavy metal Untouchables. If they are wearing a “Ride The Lightning” shirt, chances are they think that is the name of the band. At any moment, they could rediscover the Miley Cyrus album they considered throwing out a week ago and leave the scene altogether. But, they probably won’t.
They are slightly lower on the metal food chain then the hipster metalhead. If you’ve ever seen a dude quoting David Foster Wallace while wearing a Liturgy shirt, you probably know whom I’m talking about. Bookish, frail and generally annoying, these creatures secretly long to find someone else in the scene that owns every Paul Westerberg solo album.
Slightly above them are the dim-witted, slumped shouldered, neckless, meth-addled Pantera/groove metal fans. They randomly shout Slayer at inappropriate times and ramble on about how they wish they could beat up more of the people lower on the metal totem pole. They are noisy, poorly groomed, have enormous craniums and take Cannibal Corpse extremely seriously. Each of them secretly hope you think they are mass murderers, in spite of the fact that they have never done much worse than feed a hedgehog to their pet python. All of these groups fall into the subhuman metal category.
Those Worthy of Being Spared
Above them, there are better types. You have your old school Florida death metal types (Children of Chuck), your loony bird power metal fanatics (Middle Earthers), the veteran thrasheads who saw Exodus on the “Bonded By Blood” tour (Oldbangers), the Eurofabulous obscuritarian types who wander the earth fantasizing about being perceived as the next Wagner (known as Thomas G Warriors, this group was nearly wiped out by the release of Cold Lake) and many other breeds of slightly evolved metalheads. They are certainly not perfect, especially when they want to tell you for the six hundredth time how great Overkill was before Rat Skates left, but they are mostly harmless if kept separate from the upper classes.
The Brahmans
There are two groups of true Brahmans in the metal world. First of all, you have your proto-Nietzschean, back to Mother Earth, church burning, Necronomicon quoting black metal fans (Ubermenschians). They must be pure of heart and eardrum, because only they can actually tell what is happening on an early Darkthrone album. To the lower castes, it is simply noise. To them, it is art.
Above them are the serious New Wave of British Heavy Metal people (Metal Kings). They get the Judas Priest album “Rocka Rolla” at both an artistic and spiritual level. They can recite, from memory, every Diamond Head lyric. They’ll never forget where they were the day Dennis Stratton left Iron Maiden. These are the folks Manowar are really talking about.
The Problem
Were all metalheads to simply stay to themselves and not attempt contact with these other groups, things would probably be okay. But, there has been a mixing of the castes over the past decade. Oldbangers have bred with hipsters, Children of Chuck have mixed DNA with Panterites, Ubermenschians have mated with Thomas G Warriors, Metal Kings have blended with Hot Topicers, on and on South of Heaven. Nowadays most of these metalheads openly admit to listening to other genres and even brag about associating with the lower and upper classes. It’s gotten so that almost no one is pure anymore.
This is where eugenics come in (or UGH!genics, to the Thomas G Warriors). The metal community needs to step in and enforce a series of measures designed to keep these groups from diluting the metal in the blood of the best of us. Otherwise, all will be lost.
The Solution
Step #1: Mandatory Sterilization of All Pantera Fans
These people tend to breed like rabbits. The average Pantera fan has 9.71 children. At this rate, by the year 2030, there will be more Pantera fans than people in Australia, Asia, Europe and South America combined. Pantera genes tend to dominate all other metal genes, so the child of a Panterite and a Metal King will invariably become a Cowboy From Hell. When they begin mixing with other metal fans, the possibility for a “Pantera Population Bomb” where the metal world is only able to support bands that sound like Pantera becomes a very real possibility
Step #2: Deport All of The Lower Metal Classes to Greenland
Here’s how you do it. You build a really big boat. You promise most of them that Metallica will be playing a concert in Greenland where they will do nothing but songs from Kill’em All. You’ll have to explain why this is significant to the Hot Topicers, as they will probably wonder if that means they will play “Until It Sleeps”. Drop them off in Greenland and get out as fast as possible. Occasionally, you can air drop the things they need to survive to them (copies of Spin Magazine for the hipsters, raw meat for the Panterites, and A Day To Remember hoodies for the Hot Topicers).
Step #3 Use Science To Create a Perfect Heavy Metal Being
The human race has yet to evolve to a point where we can scientifically generate perfect beings, but we have to prepare for a day when this is possible. We must make an effort to collect all the DNA from people who purchased the first two Maiden albums on vinyl before 1983 and still have them in pristine condition. We will use that DNA to one day create a Metal Messiah. This Metal Messiah will destroy all those who have false metal blood and lift all those pure in thought and gene to their rightful place as masters of the lower animals. And then, we won’t have to talk to them anymore.
You Own A Gun Because You Are Afraid To Fight Me
Posted by Keith Spillett in Here's Why I Dislike You So Much on December 19, 2013
In America today, guns are often confused as a symbol of masculinity and power. This misconception has been brought about through years of exposure to media images of powerful men with guns defeating Native Americans, Russians, Terrorists, and Orcs. People in this demented nation of ours spend millions upon millions of dollars a year that could actually be used to improve the lot of themselves and those around them in the faint hopes of appearing to be what they are not. But that is beside the point, because I’m not talking to them….I’m talking to you.
Yeah…you. Sitting there on your couch reading this right now. Not somebody else. Not the other guy. Don’t sit there thinking this is some abstract, philosophical exercise that you can remove yourself from while you sit back in judgment of some fictional, moronic cross-section of the American public. It’s not. I’m talking to you. Directly. I can see behind the absurd little lies you tell yourself in order help avoid the painful truth that you are the guy on the beach who gets sand kicked in his face by people like me. The reason you own a gun is because you are a weakling.
Sure, I’ve heard all of your arguments. “The Second Amendment says that I have the right to carry a gun.” You are hiding behind some document that some dudes in wigs wrote 2000 years ago. Everybody who owns a gun is a constitutional lawyer (except when it comes to, you know, the other 26 Amendments). Do you know how utterly hysterical it is to watch you switch from doing your Stallone impression to pretending to be James Madison? “Yeah, I’m a tough guy, but I got smarts too!” (read that last part in your best Fredo Coreleone voice) Put down your law books and we can see what’s up, Tough Guy.
“But, it’s just for hunting.” Sure. You bought that military grade A4 assault rifle that fires 80,000 rounds per second at Walmart so that you can stop a deer from trying to get away. Ah….yeah…that’s it. The truth is, you bought it because you know that if it ever came down to it, I would beat you like a rented mule. That little survivalist fantasy you keep conjuring up in your mind is simply a distraction from the simple truth that you are afraid to catch a beating from me.
I look at Wayne LaPierre, the little geek who runs the NRA, and my first thought is, “wouldn’t it be fun to push his face into a vat of french fry oil at my neighborhood McDonald’s”. If I had that guy in a room for 15 seconds, I’d have him singing the Soviet National Anthem and screaming “Obama in 2016”. Another one of those pasty, bloated old guys who think that having the ability to shoot up a room full of strangers makes people forget that he looks like 140 pounds of whimpering, soft serve ice cream. I’m right here, Tough Guy. Anytime you want. As much of a cowering little baby that LaPierre is, he’s not even half as sad as you are.
“Oh, but I need it to protect my family.” Way to hide behind your children, Ace. See, I’m not a threat to your family. Just you. You are scared that I’m going to drag you through the town square from the back of my Lincoln while all the kids laugh and throw rocks. The sheer volume of humiliation that I would heap upon you is why you’re up at 3 o’clock in the morning trying to figure out if it is legal in your state to own a bazooka.
“But, Obama is coming to get us!” Do you see how silly you sound? All these movies you watch cater to this depressing little fantasy that you are so powerful and cunning that the government actually cares about anything you do. Obama doesn’t care whether you have a gun or not. As a matter of fact, Obama doesn’t care about you at all. He lives in some insulated bubble in Washington, surrounded by hundreds of Secret Service agents, old rich people and really good chefs. Are you really so deluded as to believe that Obama would take a second out of his day to punish some coward sitting behind a computer keyboard typing nasty things about the Kardashian sisters on a Facebook thread? Obama is not your problem…I am.
Your little comedy act is over. Just remember, the next time you buy that copy of Guns and Ammo at the newsstand in order to show what a big man you are, I’ll be there. The next time you swagger out to the range to go kill a bunch of cardboard cutouts of Bin Laden, I’ll be there. And when you are sitting around the locker room pretending to be Mr. Expert, bragging to the fellas with all those fancy expressions like “muzzle breaks and recoil compensators”, so proud of yourself that you used the word “aught” in a sentence, I’ll be there too.
No matter how much you spend on weapons, no matter how many times you practice that thing that Clint Eastwood does with the side of his mouth in the mirror, no matter how many tough talking, pro-violence idiot politicians you support, you can’t avoid me. Don’t you see….I’m inside of you.
Mott The Hoople Inducted Into Rock And Roll Hall of Fame For Seventh Time
Posted by Keith Spillett in General Weirdness on December 17, 2013
English rockers Mott The Hoople headline a star-studded cast of bands that will be inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame in a ceremony to be held in Cleveland on April 10th. Best known for their rock classic “All The Young Dudes” and some other songs, Mott The Hoople are a band that, according to Rolling Stone reporter Ralph Dullard, “changed the landscape of modern music”. They have been so influential that the Hall has decided to induct them again, even though they have performed this same ritual on six previous occasions.
Mott The Hoople are not the only legends to be going into the Hall. Several big time acts including England Dan and John Ford Coley, Right Said Fred, Joey Lawrence, Van McCoy, Spandau Ballet, Quarterflash and The Georgia Satellites round out the list of performers being inducted. Several key figures in the industry will also be enshrined including Mark Jameson, Mick Jagger’s longtime gardener, Stone Billingsley, Keith Moon’s drum tech during the Quadrophenia tour, and Arnold Weisman, the record executive who tricked Miles Davis into signing a lifetime contract that deprived him of most of the royalties from his music.
One name that was not on the list are heavy metal legends Iron Maiden. Their had been a campaign among many metalheads to get the band inducted this time around, but the Hall felt that the band was simply not significant enough to make it. “Look, I know a few people really love Iron Maiden and they are a talented group, but we can’t induct a band based on one well-known song. In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida is fantastic, but really, what else have they done?” said Joel Peresman, President and CEO of the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame Foundation.
In spite of the passion of their fans, Iron Maiden wasn’t even the closest runner-up among the Hall’s voters. They finished well behind .38 Special, Sir Mix-A lot, The Strawberry Alarm Clock, Lou Christie, Dexy’s Midnight Runners and Detroit Tigers pitcher Jack Morris.
The ceremony, which will be attended by some of the best-known arrhythmic, tone deaf, middle-aged hacks in the industry, will be broadcast on HBO about 46 times in April and May.
Crowbar Headlines President Warren G. Harding’s 12th Inaugural Celebration
Posted by Keith Spillett in The Politics Of Catastrophe on December 16, 2013
President Warren G. Harding was easily elected to his twelfth term last month in a landslide election, garnering a record 98 percent of the vote, easily defeating the New Whig Party candidate and Metallica guitarist Dave Mustaine.
Harding, leader of the Democratic-Republicans For God Party, continues to be the most significant politician in the history of the United States and is expected to be the leader of the nation until the world’s predicted destruction in 2173. Tonight, Crowbar will be the final act in what is expected the most widely witnessed television event since the execution of the ten leaders of the Kennedy Rebellion in 1969.
Harding’s political career is the stuff of legends. Even the youngest school child has heard the stories. After a relatively lackluster first term that featured corruption in the form of the Teapot Dome scandal and economic turmoil, Harding died of a heart attack on August 2nd, 1923. Had Harding not risen from the dead during his own funeral on August 4th, his presidency would have been a forgotten chapter in the history of the United States of the World.
Harding, who claimed God had allowed him to come back to life in order to lead the United States of The World to its current position as the most powerful nation on the planet, was reelected to a 4 -year term in 1924 after the still unsolved murder of Democratic Presidential candidate Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Harding’s mission to bring “normalcy” to the world began during this term. He invaded Canada, England and Mexico days after his election and by 1934 the United States controlled all of North America and most of Europe. Only its defeat in The Great Nuclear War with Argentina in 1962 stopped America’s march towards world domination.
Argentina’s nuclear strikes destroyed most of Harding’s empire and led to the revolutionary forces of John Fitzgerald Kennedy taking control of most of the Northern United States and renaming it Camelotia. Harding’s forces regrouped and retook the North in what was known as The Second American Civil War. Still, many questioned Harding’s leadership and he looked like he might lose the election of 1972 to Paul Newman. It was then that Harding performed The Five Miracles.
Harding, Who Will Only Allow Himself To Be Photographed In Black And White, Celebrating His 12th Term As President
These miracles included Harding making the nation of Albania disappear, turning water into Coca-Cola, using lasers from his eyes to melt The Washington Monument, reanimating Thomas Jefferson and the creation of flying cars. Harding eliminated Congress and the Supreme Court and declared martial law, which lasted until 2003. He rebuilt the military and, with help from the visitors from the Planet Klorg, was able to take control of the entire world except for Mongolia, the last stronghold of anti-American forces.
Harding occasionally still allows elections, but few experts believe that the opposition is given a fair chance to be victorious. All people who vote against him are immediately executed and used to feed the multi-headed battle giraffe drones and robot oxen that the USW have used to militarily control many of the Outer Territories.
With the outcome of the election never in doubt, many television and Conquernet experts have spent their time speculating who would headlining the inauguration. The prevailing wisdom was that Pentagram would be the band because of the close relationship between President Harding and vocalist and former Vice President Bobby Liebling. However, it is also known that Harding is a huge Crowbar fan, particularly the Odd Fellows Rest album. Last Friday, Crowbar vocalist Christina Aguilera and her husband, guitarist Kirk Windstein, received a call directly from Harding announcing the news.
Rumors have already started to swirl that if Crowbar has an excellent performance, Dave Lombardo, the band’s drummer and former Ambassador to Mars, might be asked to be Secretary of State. Lombardo has refused to comment directly, but his manservant Kerry King did indicate to several reporters that the famed drummer would take the job if it were offered. King, many remember, was enslaved by Lombardo after the failure of his 2005 neo-disco solo album “I Like To Boogie, Boogie” drove him into bankruptcy.
Tom Araya Hints At Retirement In New Slayer Songs
Posted by birthad1 in General Weirdness, Totally Useless Information on December 14, 2013
LOS ANGELES – Kerry King aired his frustration about the lyrical direction of the next Slayer album in an interview on the Fuse Network today, stating that frontman Tom Araya won’t stop submitting song lyrics about retirement.
“Tom keeps writing all these lyrics that at first seemed weird and dark,” said the famously grumpy guitarist, “but now I’m not really sure what he’s really trying to say.”
“This early one, ‘The Final Sleep’, sounded cool and promising,” he continued, “but then he started handing in stuff that started getting way off-base.”
As King leafed through the stack of material, songs with titles like ‘The Charade is Over’, ‘End of the Line’, ‘How Much is Enough’, and ‘Let Me Rest’, were all visible, and the condition of the pages became visibly more ragged as newer entries were examined. Finally he arrived at the most recent submission, which was simply a cocktail napkin with the word ‘STOP’ written across it in black magic marker.
“What am I supposed to do with this?” asked King as he held up the napkin, “and look at this one – ‘401K’? What the hell? I originally thought it was another serial killer reference, but now I’m not so sure.”
Araya and the late Jeff Hanneman were known for collaborating on some of the band’s most memorable lyrics, and many fans had already voiced concern about Slayer’s direction in the wake of Hanneman’s passing.
When asked about the outcome of the next album, the lead axeman remained confident, stating, “I have written plenty of lyrics for Slayer, so it’s not like I can’t handle this myself. Tom’s welcome to contribute, but he’s going to have to give me something better than songs about driving an RV, fishing, or spending time with family.”
Tom Araya could not be reached for comment, as he was reportedly at home and watching television while stretched out on the couch.
CIA Confirms Jon Bon Jovi Was A Spy For The Soviet Union Until 2012
Posted by Keith Spillett in General Weirdness on December 10, 2013
In a stunning announcement, several top CIA officials today verified Monday’s New York Times story that claimed that former Bon Jovi singer Jon Bon Jovi was a spy for the KGB from 1983 until 2012. The Soviet Union, as well as the famous heavy metal singer, have denied these charges but several highly placed sources within The Agency have confirmed that Bon Jovi used several of his albums to leak highly classified documents to “The Evil Empire”.
The most shocking charge was that Bon Jovi aided the Soviets in a failed 1986 plot to kidnap former President Ronald Reagan. According to a source within the agency, the song “Wanted Dead or Alive” was actually written in a code that was meant to give secret information as to the whereabouts of Reagan during his trip to Berlin in July of that year.
The verse “I’m a cowboy, on a steel horse I ride”, is actually meant to indicate that Reagan (who the Soviets codenamed “The Cowboy”) would be aboard Air Force One (the “steel horse”). Later in the song, Bon Jovi states “I’ve seen a million faces and I’ve rocked them all”. The letters to this incredibly asinine lyric actually correlate with a 1980s era KGB code that gave the time and date that Reagan would be flying over Spain. At that point, the Soviets were planning to intercept the aircraft using several skydivers who would plummet from a secret Russian space platform, land on top of the plane, board it at gunpoint and hold Reagan hostage until he agreed to give the Soviets control of the entire United States nuclear stockpile. The Soviets eventually cancelled this plan fearing it was too risky.
Bon Jovi’s spy activities did not stop after the Soviet Union’s fake collapse in the late 1980s and early 90s. He helped plant information in the media that helped convince most Americans that the Berlin Wall had fallen and that the Russians had abandoned communism.
It was on his secret visit to Russia in 1997 for a “concert” that he met another Soviet spy equally committed to the fall of the United States. This agent would eventually become one of the most powerful figures in America. His name is Barack Hussein Obama.
While Obama, a former member of the American terrorist group known as the Weather Underground, urged the Soviets to use violence in order to overthrow the government of The Greatest Nation on Earth, it was Bon Jovi who proposed a much more gradual approach. He felt that the America could be slowly destroyed from the inside by electing communist agents into positions of power. These officials, after gaining the trust of the American people, would introduce legislation designed to turn the United States into a communist dictatorship. The cornerstone of this plot was to introduce a sinister program later to be known simply as Obamacare.
Bon Jovi finally dissolved his connection to the KGB in 2012 when he caught the original version of the movie “Red Dawn” on television late one fateful night. He was so deeply moved by the courage of the brave young “Wolverines” who defeated the Russian Army that he decided it was time to come clean. He immediately revealed his crimes and, in exchange for playing a series of fundraisers for the Democratic Party during the 2012 election, was secretly pardoned by his former comrade, President Barack Hussein Obama.
The Ten Best Metal Songs To Play When At A Fast Food Drive-Thru Window
Posted by Keith Spillett in The One Time I Left The House on December 5, 2013
There are many hidden pleasures in being a metalhead. That moment where you start talking to a stranger and realize he actually knows that Peter Steele was in Carnivore before he was in Type O Negative. The moment where you are at the gym and you see a person on the workout machine next to you wearing a Carcass Heartwork tee-shirt. That feeling you get when you are watching a bad, 1980s made-for-television movie about high school and notice one of the extras wearing a jacket with a giant Nuclear Assault patch on the back. You’ll meet a ton of people throughout your life who think metal is nothing more than bad hairstyles, ripped up jeans and “Enter Sandman”, but that moment when you really feel the presence of another member of our bizarre little community is truly a compelling experience.
There is another type of joy that being a metalhead can produce. Very few things are as invigorating as the feeling of completely freaking out unsuspecting strangers with your music and all of the insane, preposterous imagery that surrounds it. A bunch of senior citizens walk by you in the mall. They notice you rocking that vintage Cannibal Corpse “Eaten Back To Life” shirt and quickly avert their eyes. You imagine them wandering around Sears twenty minutes later muttering about how society is in the brink of collapse and decrying the death of all that is sacred and humane.
I’ll admit, it’s a bit of a cheap thrill, but there are some days that this sort of savage and surreal amusement can fill you with a genuine zest for life. Over the years, I’ve learned how to create and actively seek out these sorts of situations. I’ve experimented with many different methods of achieving this sort of “gore-vana”, in some cases with disastrous consequences. However, the one sure-fire place I know I can count on creating a minute or two of total metal-induced awkwardness and not be forced to spend an evening in the county lock-up is at the drive-thru window at fast food restaurants.
You drive up to the window with the first track of Suffocation’s “Effigy of the Forgotten” (Liege of Inveracity) booming through your speakers. The person working there has probably spent most of the day having their humanity completely ignored or, even better, being scolded by vengeful, self-righteous morons deeply scarred by the fact that two weeks ago the Wendy’s forgot to include packets of ketchup with their Value Meal. They are in that mode we so often see in consumer cultures, where the employee is simply treading water in the hopes of surviving the low wages and disrespect that are supposed to one day connect them to that shining pot of gold that politicians and suckers like to refer to as The American Dream.
Then you come along, blasting Frank Mullen’s doglike vocals and Mike Smith’s demented blast beats. That blank stare quickly changes into an expression of total confusion. What sort of person listens to this madness on purpose? Is this person a psychopath who feeds on the blood-curdled screams of the children locked in the trunk of his car? What does this unshaven weirdo hear in this music that I can’t?
You are the great and frightening Other. The Alien. The one who awakens them from their post-capitalist, slumbering nightmare for a brief second in order that they have something to post about on Twitter before they collapse into the awful sameness of reality television and quiet rage.
Over the years, I’ve accumulated a few songs that I believe are perfect for these moments. If you are having a boring afternoon and want a little more adventure in your life, try blaring one of these the next time you are picking up a cheeseburger. (For added effect, wear corpsepaint and sing along loudly and off key)
10. Anything From Gorguts-Obscura. I say anything because, as much as I love that album, I have no idea of the difference between any of the songs. (This also applies to most pre-2000s black metal)
9. Vader-Decapitated Saints. Those fast, indecipherable vocals are great, particularly if you are able to bug your eyes out and work up one of those Charles Manson looking stares.
8. Misfits-Bullet (Before you start whining about the whole it’s not metal, it’s punk thing, please understand that I find that conversation almost absurd and pointless as listening to someone describe how to properly prepare hog maws) The lyrics from this one are bound to at least elicit a smirk from your mark. Particularly when you get to the part where he starts saying, well, you know….
7. Slayer-Altar of Sacrifice. This one is a bit tricky. It involves timing. If you can manage to have Araya bellowing “Enter To The Realm of Satan!!!” right as you are presented with your jumbo-sized Diet Coke, you will achieve maximum effect.
6. Metallica-Creeping Death. Same as above except you need to sync it up with “DIE…BY MY HAND!!!”.
5. Suffocation-Liege of Inveracity. We’ve discussed this.
4. Manowar-Black, Wind, Fire and Steel. It’s not the most intimidating song on this list by a long shot, but something about that note Eric Adams holds for a half an hour at the end of the song really works for the situation.
3. Cannibal Corpse-Hammer Smashed Face I’ve tried many different options when it comes to inducing Cannibal Corpse freakouts, but for my money, this is the one that produces the most terror.
2. Morbid Angel-Hatework Part 70s horror film score, part growl from the depths of Hell, this song has a way of leaving lasting scars on the uninitated. For years, I used the last three minutes of God of Emptiness, but this seems to make more of an impact.
1. Deicide-Dead By Dawn This song, by far, has gotten me the most perplexed, stupefied looks. Glen Benton isn’t good for much, but making some high school wage slave drop a Frosty all over the register is an area in which he excels.
You Are A Terrible Person Because You Own A Dog
Posted by Keith Spillett in Here's Why I Dislike You So Much on December 1, 2013
Chances are, if you own a dog, you have these notions in your head about how you love your pet or how it’s part of your family. You think of your dog as your companion. What you have to understand is that the reason you think this is that you are an awful human being. A total and complete monster. You are not completely ignorant of this fact, you just happen to be engaged in a gigantic game of pretend with the entirety of our culture. I’m not going to tell you not to feel bad about it either. You are guilty of a miserable, disgraceful thing and it’s about time that people start telling you the truth, instead of letting you dance around in that little bubble that you refer to as reality.
This strange dog fantasy you are experiencing has been nurtured by the fact that our culture tends to hide its greatest cruelties under a veneer of nostalgia and manufactured love. You turn on the television and there’s another dog bouncing around with respect and great reverence for its master. You look on a Hallmark card and there’s another stupid looking dog performing some humiliating show for your entertainment. Getting its nose caught in a cookie jar or cuddling with a kitten or accidentally tracking mud on the new carpet with an “aw shucks” type dog grin. AWWWW…look at that, the dog surrendered its dignity again. Don’t you just love when it demeans itself? Isn’t that cute?
Maybe you think back to when you were young and that special animal filled you with the warm feeling of home or family or some other absurd illusion. And maybe, just maybe, the dog really did love you, too. But I doubt it. Look at it from the dog’s point of view. Its entire way of life has been annihilated. It has no freedom. No self-determination. We’ve bred all of the characteristics and will out of it and turned it into a hollow shell into which we project memories and myth. You are its ticket to survival. Better put on a hell of a show.
To the loving owner, the dog is moving, highly symbolic furniture. They are a showpiece meant to express unspoken facets of the person’s identity. Kind of like a table. In truth, it is nothing more than sick product of an insane society that revels in debasing anything that cannot speak for itself. If dogs truly understood their lot, they would bite every human they came in contact with. Of course, if they did that, they’d be exterminated immediately. No opposition to our hegemonic pet fantasy can be tolerated!
I saw a bumper sticker the other day that indicated that you should neuter your dog so that you don’t have to euthanize a bunch of other dogs in the future. A big, goofy Labrador sat on the person’s front seat. That person probably thinks of themselves as a kind, loving pet owner. I imagine they have conned themselves into thinking that these two actions are the only possibilities. But, can we seriously consider anyone compassionate who thinks that castration or genocide are the only two conceivable actions when discussing a living creature?
Whether you treat your dog well is beside the point. Maybe you let him run around outside and give him treats all the time. Maybe you scratch her belly and heap upon her massive amounts of affection. Maybe you take care of him when he is sick. None of this matters. The autonomy of a living thing is all that means anything. It has been systematically stripped of that through decades upon decades of love and adoration. We have killed its spirit with kindness. You may love it, but it has never been given the honest choice to love you back. It cannot leave or dislike you without existential peril. It is not your pet; it is your captive.
Dogs are the ultimate nightmare scenario. Life without choice. Life without will. Being paraded on a leash. Being entirely controlled and objectified. Broken, not just as an individual animal, but also as a species. Our victory over dogs is so complete that they have become our culture’s mascot. Children laugh and pull on their tail. We dress it up in sweaters and cute little outfits to impress other people. We go so far as to delude ourselves into thinking that they are our “best friends”. But, they are not. Friendship requires mutual consent from both friends. The dog has never been given the option to consent. It has been given its place and it will stay there.
The Tyranny of Tradition 