Archive for March, 2015
Is Chuck Mangione Leaving Slayer?
Posted by Keith Spillett in General Weirdness on March 30, 2015
When most fans of heavy metal think about Slayer, the first word that comes to their mind is often “flugelhorn”. However, many heavy metal websites have noted that other heavy metal websites might have indicted that Slayer’s 2015 release, which will be called “Upcoming Slayer Studio Album”, might be the first since Hell Awaits to not feature the man many have called “The Jimi Hendrix of The Flugelhorn”, Chuck Mangione.
According to sources that overheard sources discussing the band, Mangione has become concerned about Slayer’s artistic direction over the past few albums. Flugelhorn solos, once a hallmark of the band’s distinctive “flugelcore” sound, have been few and far since the band released “God Hates Us All” in 2001.
While early Slayer records like “Reign in Blood” and “South of Heaven” are best known for the juxtaposition between the band’s jarring thrash metal savagery and Mangione’s light, breezy jazz sound, the newer material is either paint-by-numbers heavy metal which could numb even the most ardent Slayer fan into a coma or embarrassing, gimmicky nonsense meant to appeal to meth-addled, tone deaf Marilyn Manson fans (see “Playing With Dolls”).
Mangione At A Recent Slayer Show in Dusseldorf, Germany
Listen, now that I’ve got your attention…I need your help. I just made up the first part of the article to get it past the creatures that have been monitoring each of my correspondences with the outside world since 2010. I am currently trapped in the basement of a house in Spokane, Washington where a group of “government agents” have been conducting mind-altering experiments on me in the hopes of using my pyrokinesis to fight what they continue to call “The Enemies of Freedom”.
I’ve learned a thing or two about our government while down here. They speak loudly upstairs and I’ve learned to make out much of what they say. I’ve also been able to peek through the keyhole and observe them when they are not shooting me up with Monsanto weed killer and making me watch Joel Osteen sermons for hours on end. They are not what you think. I don’t want to sound paranoid, but I can tell you unequivocally that the United States has been infiltrated and is now controlled by gigantic insects that can morph into human form at will.
I’m not sure when it happened, but most of the world you know has been manufactured by these Bugs. From what I’ve heard, they took over the world at the end of The Great Bug War. Today we call it World War 2 and discuss the importance of fictional characters like Hitler and Churchill. In real life, a war did take place but it was much more similar to the one in Robert Heinlein’s novel “Starship Troopers”. The Bugs joke about that book a lot. Apparently they think it’s hysterical that the one historical artifact that has any truth to it has been passed off as fiction and consumed by an unknowing public.
They came down from space and destroyed many of our major cities. We fought valiantly, but were eventually defeated. Once they gained control of our world, they reprogrammed the human mind in order to share in a massive hallucination about the past.
All of our books, websites, television broadcasts and even historical artifacts in museums have been altered to hide history of the enslavement of the human race at the hands of our Bug overlords. They even created tiny versions of themselves that crawl and fly around in order to lull us into the belief that we are larger and more powerful than them.
When you’ve heard a few of them gather together and talk about the con job they’ve pulled on us, it’s terribly depressing. I remember crying for days when I heard them laughing about planting dinosaur bones throughout the world in order for scientists to “discover” them and make up crazy tales of what happened before humans were here on the so-called Earth. The scientists today aren’t real scientists…they are merely people who participate in a giant scavenger hunt created by the Bugs.
From the little I’ve been able to pick up about our true history, scientists of pre-Bug times were capable of miracles that run the gamut from inter-dimensional space travel to creating a low cost substance that could feed all human beings. Famine and disease had all been eliminated by these people. Apparently, our world was once like the Bug-created fictional Garden of Eden. But, Eden is gone.
The Bugs have taught us how to fear and hate one another. They have helped us create artificial divisions in order to isolate us from our fellow humans. They have instilled in us the ability to hurt and destroy each other in the name of control and survival. Apparently, humans used to live for hundreds of years. They have taught us to lower our life expectancy so we are never around long enough to see through the lies and learn the truth.
Many of our so-called “world leaders” are simply Bugs in disguise. Barack Obama, Angela Merkel, Rush Limbaugh, Benjamin Netanyahu, Bill Gates, The Clintons, The Bushes, The Gores, even Cat Stevens…all Bugs. They are everywhere, pulling the strings and making the world spin, all the while the Bugs use the lint created between our toes as fuel to power the rockets that allow them to take control of planets throughout the solar system. They invaded our world for this toe lint and now they have turned our world into a gigantic toe lint factory. They come to us in the night, when we are fully asleep, and take our precious toe lint for themselves.
We have only one form of resistance, the removal of our toes. If you are reading this, immediately go to your local emergency room and ask for these digits to be amputated. They will look at you in a strange way at first, but tell them the story I have told you. They will understand. The thing about the truth is, if you tell it to someone, no matter how bizarre it may sound, they will eventually see what you are saying and go along with what you ask. Down deep, they will know I am right and they will neatly, professionally cut your toes off.
It is important that you go to a hospital to have this done. I removed several on my own and nearly died from infection. They have special tools at most hospitals for toe removal. The Bugs only saved me because they want me to make the planet Neptune explode into flame so that their rival, the Worms, will lose a critical military base.
Digs Smooth Jazz
Metal websites have already begun to speculate about a possible replacement for Mangione. Metal Infection.net claims that the band has already contacted Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass about joining them on the next tour. Metal Bar Through A Guy’s Forehead.com has also reported that Kerry King was has been listening to “a lot of Kenny G” over the past few months and might look to include the diminutive jazz saxophonist in a future project.
Millions Of Heartbroken Tweens Mourn Abbath’s Departure From One Direction
Posted by Keith Spillett in General Weirdness on March 26, 2015
Tweens everywhere were shocked and horrified by news yesterday that singer, songwriter and pop icon Abbath had left One Direction. Reactions have run the gamut from mournful posts on Twitter to self-immolations. Across the world, saddened little Tweens with tear-streaked corpse paint makeup are suffering unimaginable suffering unimaginably.
Abbath was a god among many Tweens. Some Tweens loved him for his hotness. Others chuckled at the silly memes made using his likeness. Still others covered themselves in the blood of mammals and chanted the lyrics to songs like “Story of My Life” and “What Makes You Beautiful”. 
Now, millions of Tween dreams lie shattered in pieces on the sidewalk; a decaying detritus of prepubescent post-modern boy band botulism. A free-form fetishistic festival of fury has formed in the face of festoons of fermented festering but fleeting flulike symptoms. The Tween dream has turned into a full-scale Tween nightmare. And no one can stop it.
A walk through any local mall tells the story. Tweens curled up in a ball whispering “Abbath….Abbath….Abbath” over and over again. Tweens shrieking the lyrics to “Call of the Wintermoon” and destroying watermelons with sledgehammers. Tweens laying waste to entire rows of “Hello, Kitty” merchandise with no regard to their own safety or well-being. Tweens flinging cups of Orange Julius haphazardly at innocent nonTween bystanders. Windows to Hot Topics and Forever 21s boarded up; their owners fearing a wave of Tween looting. Gangs of Tweens shouting “Death To America!” while turning over mall cop segues. The whole Tween universe…a powder keg ready to explode at even a passing mention of Abbath.
A survey of Tween sadness done earlier today by The Aldo Nova Institute For The Study of Tweenology showed that over 90 percent of Tweens were “totally, like, messed up” by Abbath’s departure. Many media outlets have gone so far as to refer to Abbath’s departure as a “Twagedy”. 
If you are the parent of a child who might or might not be experiencing Abbath-related Tween Angst (word copyrighted 2015 by tyrannyoftraditionLLC), it is important that you take the following steps in order to help your Tween make it through this trying period.
First, soak your Tween in a bathtub filled with vinegar for 5 hours. At first, they will protest and possibly even fight back, but it is critical to cleanse their pores of Tween Angst Toxins.
Second, talk to your Tween about other options to focus their obsessive little Tween minds on. Lavinia Fisher took time this morning to help her two Tween daughters Posh and Sporty Fisher take down the Abbath posters in their room. “My girls are heartbroken. Devastated. As a parent, I feel like it is important that I take action immediately and help them fixate on another cultural phenomena as soon as possible. It is critical to our survival as a species that we find some trivial novelty to think about so that pondering the looming specter of eventual death doesn’t consume our every waking second in this hell.”
Third, make sure that your Tween UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES runs away to join ISIS. There have been several reports of Tween Angsters so overwhelmed by grief that they have boarded planes to the Middle East in an attempt to deal with their sadness by “binge joining” jihadist groups. Be vigilant. Remember, YOU are the parent. Radical Islam is NOT OKAY for Tweens. 
Morbid Angel To Reissue Limited Edition Copies of “Altars of Madness” Covered in Sriracha Sauce
Posted by Keith Spillett in Uncategorized on March 25, 2015
Doesn’t This Thing Look Like It Is From An Episode of Scooby-Doo?
What do Thomas Jefferson, William Blake and Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer have in common? If you guessed that Morbid Angel is reissuing a thousand copies of “Altars of Madness” covered in Sriracha Sauce, you’d be correct.
That’s right, Sriracha sauce. That spicy sauce with the rooster on it that took America by storm in the summer of 2013. The sauce that has been linked to the death of famed character actor Wilford Brimley and Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah. The sauce that toppled the regime of Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega. The sauce that broke the major league record for most hit batsman in 1972. The sauce that indirectly led to the capture and beheading of Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin by magpies. The sauce that Shakespeare himself claimed launched a thousand ships when he wrote the King James Edition of The Koran in 1861.
In 1905, Belgian doctor Wolfgang von Golfwang created Sriracha sauce in an attempt to manufacture a new version of blood. The chemical was pumped in the veins of several men who were born without blood in an attempt to help them increase their libido. While the chemical killed all the test subjects, it was later discovered that it would make a great topping for food from the Far East.
Morbid Angel first began listening to Sriracha sauce in 2001. Along with Yoko Ono’s second solo album, Sriracha sauce became singer and nasal vestibule David Vincent’s biggest influence. In a recent interview with Boys Life Magazine, Vincent claimed that “You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.”
(When I was a kid, my mother had a VW bug. It had the trunk in the front and an engine in the back. It didn’t make the car drive all that differently, but it was the sort of ‘unique’ feature you can put on an automobile in order to sell it to people who don’t really know the difference between a V6 and a V8 engine)
THIS WAS BEFORE DRONES!!!!!
(Anyway, one time on a lark, we filled the entire front trunk with fake chattering teeth. The ones you find in novelty shops or in Groucho Marx movies. This was back when people at gas stations would check your oil and pump your gas. We waited and waited for months for an attendant to not realize the whole front trunk thing and open up the front thinking he was checking the engine)
MAKE THE HAMSTERS STOP RUNNING IN CIRCLES ON MY FACE!!!!
(Well, this went on for months and nobody ever opened the trunk. So we got the idea that I would ride in the front trunk with the false teeth and bang ever so slightly on the hood of the car to make it appear as if the engine were making a strange noise. After three months trapped inside the car, an elderly mechanic fell for it and opened it only to find me, covered from head to toe in mayonnaise in a trunk filled with chattering teeth. He fell over dead on the spot. Hours later, Iranian militants took over the American embassy beginning the worst hostage crisis in American history and single-handedly clearing a path for Ben Affleck to win an Academy Award. I can’t help but think that I am responsible and to this day break into tears anytime I see an Ayatollah Khomeini bobblehead doll)
Evil D: Keepin’ It Real
The reissue of the album will feature a Bee-Gees style remix of “Chapel of Ghouls” along with a recent live cover of “The Pina Colada Song” by Rupert Holmes. Unfortunately, Morbid Angel no longer own the rights to the song “Maze of Torment” and, therefore, were unable to put it on the newest version. The original was in a hope chest in the living room of the band’s former bugle player Mike Browning. In 2008, Browning’s home was robbed by futuristic droids who escaped in a flying DeLorean piloted by Michael J. Fox with “Maze of Torment” and 46 pounds of cream cheese in tow.
Would you be mad if I stapled your tongue to your forehead? Are you failed children?
Behind The Masque: The Day ISIS Tried To Recruit Me
Posted by Keith Spillett in Existential Rambings on March 9, 2015
I was wandering out front of my local twenty-four hour CVS a few nights ago when I felt a bottle smash into my head. Shattering glass, shooting unreasonable pain. My hand, simple white adornments to my arms, were now covered in blood. My blood! Another bottle to the head sent me reeling into an incoherent stupor.
I knew I was being lifted by my legs and arms. Why? Had I not paid the correct change for the package of gum I purchased? Confusing, absurd thoughts moshed through my mind. I know I gave them the correct change! “I ave u….now(spitting blood)….rect change.”
They dropped me next to a car. “Will you shut him up!” said a man in a black mask. I could barely make his voice out, but it sounded familiar.
At that moment, I was struck with the full annihilating fury of a boot to the back of the skull. Things went dark quickly. I reached to put my tooth in my pocket but passed out too quickly to make it happen. I liked that tooth. Gone.
It seemed like hours I was in the trunk of this automobile. I smelled of sweat and blood. I was able to mat down much of the blood with some stray socks left in back, but beyond that, I was in pretty bad shape. I was too weak to bang loudly on the trunk, so I rapped consistently until I passed out after what seemed like an eternity.
When I awoke I was out of the car lying in a comfortable hospital bed. The room had no windows. A black hooded medical attendant was there to try to see if I’d be coherent enough to participate in what insanity was about to take place.
I may have a concussion, hell, I might have worse that that, but I have watched enough of the news to know what is going on.
“You are those bastards in ISIS! Aren’t you?! You degenerate murderers. And now you’ve got me. And just what the hell do you think you are going to do to me. This isn’t that post-apocalyptic warzone Syria gave you because it wasn’t worth defending. We are in America, pal. You touch one hair on my head and my kids will be singing the National Anthem at the Super Bowl while you and your crew of “warriors” will be sucking pounds of Deer Park water out of a towel while some lunatic tries to get you to recite the zip code for every city in Bangladesh.”
The hooded man sat next to me. It was oddly comforting. In a computerized voice, used to protect the speaker from giving away any clue as to who they might be, softly said “I’m sorry for how we got you here. The boys get carried away from time to time. It’s a hazard in what we do. My name is T. Let me promise you right now, you will not be harmed for the rest of your time here. Let me also promise you this, if you like what we are doing, you are welcome to stay with us for a while and help the cause.”
“I’m an atheistic, anarchist Jew. The closest I have ever come to jihad was arguing with a Palestinian over the price of shwarma at a restaurant in the West Bank 15 years ago. I think you grabbed the wrong guy. My name is Keith Spillett.”
“The Keith Spillett who writes The Tyranny of Tradition website…kind of like The Onion but for….”
“YES!!!! YES!!!! That’s me! If I hear the Onion comparison one more time….”
“Didn’t mean to offend you. Actually, we are great admirers of your work.”
“I hadn’t realized that the Jihadist community was big on metal satire.”
“Oh…yes, we loved the Rick Santorum one. We even thought about creating some Celine Dion internment camps, for obviously different reasons. Oh…and the one where Cronos is related to Kate Middleton! Killed me! Al-Baghdadi himself said that your story on Van Halen causing Ebola was the hardest he had laughed in years. We spotted your talent right away. You have the rare ability to make a ridiculous lie sound completely truthful.”
“Well, is this a job interview?,” I said laughing uncomfortably.
“Yes….yes…you could say that. Certainly not in a traditional sense, but we would like you to help us better get our ideas across to average Americans. They see us doing these beheadings and are horrified. But, they are missing the deeper meaning. I have chosen you to bring that meaning to them.”
“And if I don’t???”
“I give the briefcase of money to someone else, you take a nap in the trunk and you’ll be there for work Monday morning. We mean you no harm.”
“Can you try to better explain to me what is happening and what you want?”
“Better than that…I’ll show you.”
As I walked out of the makeshift hospital room it finally dawned on me that I was in the back of a trailer. The trailer door opened and a radiant, punishing sun beat down on my head. Men dressed head to toe in black were pacing around filled with frantic, nervous energy. It looked horrifically familiar. I’ve seen this place before. This is ISIS territory! Where they do all the beheadings! My god! They are going to kill me!
My breathing sped up, I began hemorrhaging sweat, my eyes darted around looking for a way out. A calming hand caressed my back. “How did I get here? We can’t possibly be in the Middle East. Not unless I was in the back of a flying car!”
“Relax…we are somewhere in a safe area of Alabama. Type of place you go and people don’t ask questions.”
“So….you do some of these beheadings IN America???”
“Sure! It’s much easier in terms of organizing the supplies you need inconspicuously. We’ve done some shoots overseas as well, but this is usually our favorite setting. It looks very dramatic around nightfall.”
“So…ISIS members are everywhere! Jesus Christ! We’ve been overrun. They are taking control. I should have never voted for Obama!!!!”
“Relax, Keith. Just relax. Let the events unfold. You will understand soon enough.”
I sat alone on a side of a hill unguarded. I could have run off, but they knew they had played deeply enough on my morbid curiosity to keep me around. Things were so bizarre. These anti-modern religious men were putting together what could only be properly described as a scene for a movie. A set was created from the natural elements of the ground, fake trees and a lighting scheme that made the whole place seem like the most dramatic dusk since the one Jesus saw on the cross.
Suddenly, they brought out a woman. She was screaming and trying to escape. Writhing with agony. She had been clearly beaten and tortured. It was apparent that these were going to be the last moments of her life. My God…they were going to behead her!
Was this a trick? Did they want me to make up some story about how some crazy fake ISIS beheading of like, Lita Ford, took place. T quickly found me and grabbed me by the arm. “We must go there now! Now! It’s happening NOW!”
She handed me a video camera and I ran with her. I had lost my identity for a moment in the crazed energy that exploded out of her. I knew only to run and then film. The woman’s head was pushed onto a wood block. “Now….you must film NOW!” and so I did.
The blade of her executioner smashed down on her neck. Blood shot out, but the neck remained intact. Her scream was the worst noise I have ever heard. There is nothing it can be compared to. He hacked again and again. I disappeared into the task at hand. ‘Tell The Story With The Camera’ I kept saying over and over in order to keep from shaking or collapsing.
What happened next was unforgettable. The executioner lifted the head from the ground and held it skyward in unspoken presentation to Mohammad. Blood drained all over his black outfit. Then, he casually tossed the head off screen. T told me “Cut!”
“Jesus Keith….that was great!!! You got the whole thing in one shot. Perfect. You have the guts of a cat burglar. I told you this was the guy! He gets it! This guy really can look past the horror to see the truth.”
In an oddly familiar voice, the executioner mumbled, “yes…yes he can.”
“You look like you need a drink. Sit down in the chair right over by the trailer.”
I slumped into the chair. T followed quickly with two glasses of bourbon. I took a glass and fired it down without speaking a word.
T began, “I’ll never forget my first beheading. It was extremely difficult at first, but once I understood…”
“UNDERSTOOD! We just murdered a woman. I just filmed the murder of a woman.”
T began laughing…”Yeah…yeah you did!”
“What the hell is wrong with you? What kind of Jihadist would give me alcohol? And you are laughing! Don’t you understand what you…what WE just were a part of?”
T’s mask turned towards me, “I certainly do…I just think that YOU don’t. I think when you’ll see the whole picture you’ll understand. It’ll make all the sense in the world, Keith. Then, you can decide what you want to do.”
Then, T shouted something loudly in a language I guessed to be Arabic. Quickly, all of the black robed, black masked ISIS killers surrounded me.
“Alright,” said T, “here goes!”
With that the mask was untied and I was staring directly into HER face. The soothing radical jihadist with the computerized voice was none other than Hillary Rodham Clinton. She smiled ear to ear and winked at me.
“WHAAAAAAAA???”
Then, the executioner removed his mask. It was President Barack Obama.
“HOWWW!!!!?!?!?!?”
The next mask removed belonged to former President George W. Bush. “Fooled ya, huh!?”
“I DON’T….”
Each face more bizarre than the next, former football player Ray Lewis, Metallica “drummer” Lars Ulrich, Tim Tebow, Danzig, Steve Jobs (who I believed had died!), Mrs. Glessman, my former 3rd grade teacher. All of them. Others too. They simply became a blur. What the hell was going on?
“T…or…Hillary…why are you doing this? WHY?”
“Freedom!”
“FREEDOM!!!!”
“Yes! Yes! Freedom! True Freedom!”
I stared incredulously.
“Keith, you know the answer to this question, but I’m going to ask it anyway. Who is more free, a Jihadi who can kill or steal anytime the mood strikes him? This person has the power to act on every horrible whim that passes through his mind at any given moment? Or the fellow who spends his entire life with his head buried in a cubical praying he gets a raise so that he can afford to buy another piece of electronic equipment? The zombie…drifting from cradle to grave trying to create tiny manipulations in order to get the simplest, most basic image of freedom for a fleeting few seconds. Hell, if you cut his head off, you’d be doing the second guy a favor!”
“Why Keith? Because this carnival you see here….THIS IS TRUE FREEDOM. We sprinkle in a bit of the sections of the Koran to show we are capable of restraint and all that but never doubt for a moment that this is about Freedom.”
“But, she was an American?”
“Yes she was. Of course! This is Alabama! Who were you expecting? A Korean?…..Are you following this? You still look a bit confused?”
“Why me?”
They all began laughing. “Because you are the audience, dummy! Who do you think this is all for? When you realize you can do whatever you want whenever you want to whomever you want, you have become a true member of the freest society on the planet. We got there first and as your public servants, we plan to bring as many of you as we can with us.”
“Keith, we need you to write stories for us. Crazy terrorist plots that were foiled in the nick of time. The crazier, the better. Make them funny. Have terrorists shoot the Space Needle at New England! Have “ISIS” set up a casino style betting service where people can profit through decapitations and different styles of murders. The government is 100 percent behind this. Blow up Yankee Stadium! You know you want to! We can make whatever you write come to life. Just give us a few days notice, we’ll make it happen.”
“For us to truly realize our birthright as Americans, freedom, we must destroy all the things that stand in our way. Love, compassion, empathy….all impediments to experiencing true freedom. We will teach them freedom through wars and beheadings. Freedom will come to America when we can own every awful thing we’ve done or will do with a smile on our face and without a trace of guilt. Because this is what it means to be free!”
She extended her hand out to shake mine. In that moment, everything flashed before me. All my actions, my thoughts, my beliefs, my fears, my dreams….every element that mentally constructs the thing that calls itself Keith Spillett. No one to answer to, no God to punish me, no law to force me into a prison cell….only the will and what it most wants in every moment.
Every day a celebration of my innermost wants above the needs of all others. A license to will the world into whatever I want it to be. So much suffering will be caused, so much sorrow, so much terror, so much pain…but not for me.
I shook her hand and smiled, “When do we start?”
The Tyranny of Tradition 