Keith Spillett
I have a lot of strange debris rattling around my mind that I need to work out in a useful way.
Homepage: https://tyrannyoftradition.wordpress.com
There is Nothing Fun About The Fun-Sized M & Ms
Posted in Uncategorized on May 19, 2014
One of the worst parts of being a part of a culture based on mindless, endless consumption are the hustles you have to put up with on a daily basis. Look, I’m a grown man. I walk around America with my eyes wide open. I know that someone is always trying to get a hand in my pocket. These are the rules of the game and unless I plan I on some grand Henry David Thoreau move to the hinterlands of Mongolia, this is the game I get to play. Fine. Just don’t puke on my back and tell me its warming lotion.
There is nothing fun about the fun-sized bag of M & Ms. All it is are M & Ms in a smaller pouch. If I want to have fun I might choose to go play basketball or go to a carnival or maybe sit under a tree on a sunny day. I certainly don’t plan on deriving my pleasure from a tiny bag of chocolate. Yet, those soulless vultures at the M & M Company try to convince you that eating roughly 12 M & Ms is a regular party in a bag.
I’m not saying eating chocolate isn’t fun. It’s great. I can’t get enough of the stuff personally. A regular sized bag of them is kinda fun. I could have a fine time with one of those gigantic bags that look like they could strap it to a horses’ face and feed it for hours. But, the M & M schmucks don’t call those “fun”.
Those miserable frauds lie to you when they don’t even have to. What would be wrong with calling it “the little bag” of M & Ms? Would that somehow demean the product? Would I somehow be having less fun?
If they were just to level with you about the thing you’d know what you were getting and there would be some integrity in the act of consuming them. They have to suck you into to some worthless, disgraceful lie about the type of experience you are going to have. I only want a few M & Ms, therefore, I’ll get the small bag. Seems reasonable. But everything has to be celebration. Even getting a tiny bag of freaking M & Ms, which is really one of the duller experiences a person can have in the general scope of things.
The worst part is, if you want a small bag of M & Ms, you have to participate in this con. I ate one of them earlier today and couldn’t shake the feeling that some retired scumbag ad executive is sitting on a beach somewhere thinking about the millions of dollars he has collecting interest in a bank in the Caymans because he thought up the idea of calling a little bag of M & Ms “fun”. I hope a shark eats him. In front of his grandkids.
I want to drink a soda, not an “icy cold Coke”. I don’t want to “Just Do It”, I want a pair of sneakers. I don’t want to be “the best a man can get”, I just want to use a razor from time to time so I don’t end up looking like The Unabomber.
Just leave me the hell alone. If I want something, I’ll buy it.
Manowar Uses Drone Strikes To Assassinate Anti-Metal Revolutionaries In Mountains Of Afghanistan
Posted in HEAVY METAL MUST BE DESTROYED on May 13, 2014
The War on Anti-Metal has begun. The opening salvo of a campaign to capture and kill members of PMRC (The People’s Metal Revolutionary Committee) started early this morning when Manowar launched drone fighters to bombard the anti-metal stronghold in the mountains of Afghanistan.
The PMRC, a nonviolent movement of insurgents known for scathing anti-metal satire and their bizarre manifesto “Heavy Metal Must Be Destroyed”, have taken to the hills to “eradicate the tired, stale traditions that have rotted away a once great form of music and rebellion.”
Several members of the PMRC sleeper were arrested last month by the FBI in connection with an attempt to pass out One Direction shirts to fans attending a Slayer concert. A similar arrest was made after two PMRC members took over the airwaves of WRAT, a metal radio station in Toledo, Ohio, and played Mariah Carey’s song “Hero” continuously for three straight hours.
The strikes, known as “Operation Black Wind, Fire and Steel”, are an attempt to root out the Enemies of True Metal. In a speech earlier today, Five Star Metal General Joey DeMaio stated that the strikes are meant, “to destroy The Axis of Posers”.
The laser guided precision bombs, similar to those used by the US military, were dropped on the caves of Tora Bora. 4 out of 30 hit their targets, breaking the record of 3 out of 30 set by the military back in 2003. Two of the bombs that went slightly off course did significant damage. One hit a village outside of Bangalore, India while the other destroyed a hot dog stand in Sacramento, California.
Metal Emperor Eric W. Adams announced the attacks on television last night in front of the Congress of Metal Gods. “The evil ones have roused a mighty nation of metal warriors. However long it takes, I am determined that we will prevail. And prevail we must, because we fight for one thing, and that is heavy metal, and the freedom of metal heads everywhere.”
In a rousing conclusion to his speech, Adams brought the crowd to its feet for a 10 minute standing ovation. “Ours is the cause of metal. We’ve defeated metal’s enemies before, and we will defeat them again. We cannot know every turn this battle will take, yet we know our cause is just and our ultimate victory is assured. We will no doubt face new challenges, but we have our marching orders. My fellow metalheads, let’s roll.”
Comandate 666 (Keith Spillett) During His Videotaped Message
Comandante 666 (a shadowy, demented propagandist named Keith Spillett) is the leader of the PMRC. Manowar has offered their entire discography on vinyl along with an autographed Karl Logan guitar as a bounty on Spillett. If his head is brought to Manowar in a burlap sack, they will also provide the assassin with a pair of drumsticks used by Rhino during the Triumph of Steel studio sessions. However, most of the merch, which the band paid the Halliburton Corporation over 10 million dollars to produce, will be awarded for Spillett “dead or alive”.
Spillett and the PMRC released a videotape to the major cable news networks from an unknown cave in the mountains of Tora Bora, located somewhere between Pakistan and Cleveland. In the tape, he announced a “Holy War against Manowar.”
The ten minute recording was highlighted by Spillett’s pronouncement that “metal has become cliché ridden nonsense. Corpse paint, Vikings, Lord of The Rings references, random band names taken out of medical textbooks, mosh pits, recycled trends and arguments about ‘who is more pure’ are pretty much all that is left.”
“Metal should be about rebellion from cliché and breaking away from the ridiculous standards placed upon us by a culture gone mad. Instead, it’s about elder worship, paying 80 bucks to hear some album live that you’ve heard eight thousand times and writing RIP next to the names of a bunch of ‘fallen heroes’ in order to show allegiance to ‘the cause’. Destruction is the only form of creation left to us. I love heavy metal with all my heart, that is why I believe it must be destroyed!”
“The idols of metal must be smashed! Its clichés must be annihilated! In its destruction, we shall create a new metal! A freak future! A new art completely outside of the traditions and rituals of our post-modern nightmare of a world. We shall capture and live in the moment we broke away from the conformity of society and discovered ourselves as metalheads. And we shall construct a new reality!”
An UnInterview with Josh Elmore From Cattle Decapitation; I Bought My Kidneys At Costco
Posted in People Who Were Willing To Speak To Me on May 12, 2014
This Is Josh Elmore. He is in Cattle Decapitation. He is wearing a green jacket.
As General Douglas McArthur said only moments after the Battle of Norway at the end of World War 7, “why interview someone when you can ask them questions that they are asked to ignore and answer anyway they want?” I fully subscribe to this philosophy and have tattooed these words on my inner thigh along with a picture of Bob The Builder wearing a Slayer shirt.
Cattle Decapitation is a band and Josh Elmore is in it. He agreed to be unInterviewed only if I promised not to mention him by name or say what band he is in. He claims to play guitar in the band in spite of that fact that I insisted that he played saxophone for Spiro Gyra. I met him to discuss the band and his time as a professional male model in Botswana in the 1920s outside of a Starbucks coffee that he had set fire to only minutes earlier. The last few questions were asked as we were hiding from the police and several walruses under a canoe in the back of an elderly person’s house.
There are 34 different breeds of bunnies. One is called the dwarf bunny. It fits in the palm of your hand.
1. I have heard Cattle Decapitation has the lowest prices. How would someone join?
Fans can wait about a year from now to be entertained by Cattle and the Decapitations fresh new “effort” which the band is apparently half way through writing at present. Expect less blatant late-90’s JL America roster rip-off artistry and more straight up Mordred worship.
2. My uncle has cholera?
It’s a seemingly odd but consistently observable trait that certain males like to project a tough guy image, yet always have at least one element to their persona that is a bit dandy. Maybe it’s some genius strategy to put off potential rival males vying for power, a mate or status. When you’re getting beaten up by some guy from Connecticut who’s wearing an Orlando Magic jersey, copious amounts of Dep and a Defiler flat-brim, it is hard to not laugh when all you can picture is them telling their mom that they’re just taking this one semester off or that they don’t know anyone who “does coke.”
3. If?
I’ve become more convinced that people who label themselves as Libertarian are just living in the stage of suspended animation between youthful liberalism and fully embracing their parent’s reactionary small-business conservatism. There’s a totally different generational mindset, y’know? I have lots of black friends.
4. How is a thing made round?
Do you think Ron Rinehart eventually hooked up with that blonde chick he was macking on during the Ultimate Revenge 2 show? I think she might’ve just been being nice.
5. My back hurts when I lift heavy objects?
There is no middle ground with metal dudes. Either they are simultaneously working on 10 different musical projects while pursuing their doctorate in existential philosophy or they’re looking to celebrate their promotion to shift manager at Auto Zone by downing some beers and cranking some METAL. At least that’s what Facebook told me.
6. If one day you found yourself trapped in cellar in Des Moines, Iowa with only a crowbar and a copy of Time magazine from 1947, what album would you listen to?
Ever notice how “the Midwest” is the new “the South?” Apparently the newly defined geographical location of said “Midwest” is anywhere east of Vegas and west of Philly. Talk to any 22-year old from Orange County for more than 5 minutes and they’ll be sure to mention that they’ve been to Bhutan 6 times but never east of Phoenix, cuz like, why? LOL
7. Do you have? If so, why?
The Internet has been the death of finding stashed pornography in a ditch or at the forest preserve. This rite of teen male passage is now extinct. It makes me want to slug Al Gore in the feedbag.
8. The Middle East?
Have you ever had camel’s milk? All I could compare the flavor to is a combination of that burnt pasta smell/taste and the odor of grandma’s recliner.
9. Sometimes, when I’m alone, I stare at a picture my grandmother painted back in 1963. I’m pretty sure there is another painting underneath, because it looks like there are additional arms coming out of the body. But, sometimes I wonder if she INTENDED it to look like. Almost like some sort of optical illusion. Like Escher, but not as detailed. Honestly though, that’s quite inconsistent with her style as an artist. But then, Picasso went through many phases as an artist. Maybe this was just some sort of experimental thing she did one time, but never repeated. Are you wearing pants?
If you are as sick of dealing with ill-disciplined stump-broke calves as I am, it would be wise to appeal to the animals’ more base appetites in order to modify and eventually squelch the defiant behavior. Swirl your finger in about a tablespoon of blackstrap molasses and then let the calf satisfy itself with the viscous treacle. You will have a domestic beast that is now all too willing to pursue your task regimen (both in the field and repertory) in hopes of a sweet reward.
10. If you had to tour with one band on the planet, would Gandhi still be alive today? If so, would he look like Eli Wallach? If not, will you recognize the People’s Republic of China?
(Editors Note: At this point, Josh provided a link to a video as a way of not answering this question. If you click here, you will see it. If you don’t click on that last sentence you won’t. You will be missing out and will be racked with guilt and emptiness for the rest of your natural life)
11. Satan? If so, Gary Coleman? If not, elephants have babies, why can’t plants?
It is time to put a stop to this lemon in the water trend at restaurants. Did I ask for that? No? Then get that disgusting thing out of my water. People have said; “they’ve always done that.” LIES. In my nearly 4 decades of existence I cannot remember any time except the past couple years that lemon is in everything. Do I throw a carrot in your Dr. Pepper? NOPE. I don’t want to smell that citrus reek on your fingers or stinking up the break room at work. The next person I hear say “but it’s so refreshing” is getting a roll of quarters to the jaw.
Danzig To Sue Everyone On Earth
Posted in Excessive Cruelty Towards Strangers on May 7, 2014
You’ve probably heard of him before. He’s part wolf, part lion, part ubermensch. He is possibly the most evolved being in human history. He is Glenn Danzig and He is suing you.
In a stunning declaration of war against the entire human race, Glenn Danzig has filed a lawsuit in Manhattan Federal Court against over seven billion human beings. Danzig, who is acting as his own attorney, claimed in one of the over 40 billion documents brought into court by an entire fleet of Federal Express trucks that “He has been done wrong by everyone including Misfits bassist Jerry Only, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, actor Eli Wallach, NFL quarterback Sam Bradford, Frank Oz (the voice of Yoda) and everyone else on this godforsaken planet.”
While some of the suits have been thrown out by the Court as frivolous, over two and a half billion cases will be heard over the next five centuries. Danzig, who is immortal and has over 35,000 defense points (ten times as many as Snorlax), plans to argue each case “with the passion and burning rage of a thousand suns”.
Judge Marvin Barnes labeled many of the suits “patently absurd and possibly indicative of a severe break with reality that could signify mental illness”. For example, Danzig attempted to sue everyone in the country of Azerbaijan for erecting statues in his honor without properly compensating him for the use of his likeness.
His lawsuit against the 1.6 billion citizens of the People’s Republic of China for building thousands of environmentally hazardous coal plants without consulting Him or giving Him proper credit for the invention of coal was also considered not worthy of the Court’s time.
Here’s The Picture of Danzig Buying Kitty Litter For Absolutely No Reason
Barnes begrudgingly agreed to hear 2.5 billion lawsuits because he “greatly admired Danzig’s first four solo albums and even a few songs by Samhain.” Danzig’s five hundred thousand dollar suit against Carol Mosley, a tax accountant in Boise, Idaho, for listening to “How The Gods Kill” without headbanging during the part where the song gets really heavy will go forward.
His 1.2 million dollar suit against Edward Callahan, a construction worker in Sacramento, California, when, in 2011, Callahan laughed hysterically at Danzig’s famed discussion of his book collection where He talks about the crimes of Jesus, clay people and the occult roots of Nazism will also see its day in court.
Danzig’s six hundred million dollar claim against The Tyranny of Tradition for implying that he gave birth to identical twin girls, a suit that would bankrupt myself and my progeny for the next three thousand years, is also proceeding. Danzig also plans to sue this website for having to waste time filing a lawsuit. Finally, Danzig will sue this site for having to file a lawsuit about filing a lawsuit; again wasting valuable time he could be using writing songs about being the nephew of the Devil and his general disdain for having been born.
An Uninterview With A Heavy Metal Band Called Allegaeon Who Is Very Good I Like Them
Posted in People Who Were Willing To Speak To Me on May 6, 2014
The interview is dead. There have been thousands of them in the history of heavy metal and what have they really accomplished? War, global warming, famine, infant obesity and the looming specter of canine halitosis still haunt us. The time has come to ask the question that our beloved former leader George W. Bush once asked: Is we learning?
We have now embarked on a bold new journey. Welcome to The Age Of The Uninterview.
Allegeaon is a band. They have a very challenging named to spell, but they are very talented at playing the heavy metal music. (I offer proof of that in the form of their new video which is utterly hysterically brilliant and excellent and good. CLICK HERE AND THE VIDEO WILL APPEAR ON YOUR SCREEN….BELIEVE IT OR NOT COMPUTERS CAN DO THAT NOW AS WELL AS COMPLEX MATH PROBLEMS AND PLAY CHESS)
I like them. I got to talk to a bearded, scary looking fellow named Ezra Haynes who claims to be in the band. I think he plays some instrument or sings or something. He’s very good at it.
In Hebrew, Ezra means hard worker. I’m not sure if he knows that and I forgot to tell him. He might speak Hebrew, but honestly, the subject never came up so I can’t be sure. If you spill water on Ezra, he will sprout hundreds of mini-Ezras from his back and neck. He and I met for coffee in one of the 36 stomachs located within a cow named Gertrude in Provo, Utah.
These people have an album coming out. They call it “Elements of The Infinite”. You can buy it. If you want. Because we have free will. Unless you are in prison or trapped in the basement of a serial killer.
Back to this Ezra guy. He has been instructed to not answer any question I ask him, which is good, because many of the questions are remarkably stupid.
1.Are you French? If so, why?
Yesterday I woke up at 4:00pm, nothing makes you feel more like a scum bag than waking up at 4:00pm. On top of that, I wore only basketball shorts and ate quesadillas for the rest of the day. Pretty scummy.
2. I’ve heard that Allegaeon is Swahili for “one that works with oxen”. If this is true, how do you explain the existence of evil?
I once ran through a Scientology building in Los Angeles yelling “Tom Cruiseeeeeeee”. Later that night I found myself walking around Hollywood with a samurai sword. This is all very true.
3. Women often tell me they are surprised that I’m a Scorpio?
The new record came along great! We’re just gearing up for the release this Summer and plan to tour relentlessly to promote it. We look forward to sweating it out in the van.
4. When you were young, did you chew on your clothes? Did you chew on other people’s clothes? Did you chew on other people? Did you chew?
I really don’t like the word ‘muddle’. It sounds so gross to me. I work at a bar in Fort Collins and one of the drinks calls for cucumber and mint leaves to be ‘muddled’. One muddled muddling muddler coming right up! Muddle.
5. How come the Kansas City Royals insist on playing Lorenzo Cain over Dyson Spheres even though Spheres is capable of stealing 80 bases if given regular at bats?
Last night I had a dream that I was cleaning my cat’s litter box. Why did my brain waste all of that energy on that? Wearing sunglasses assures that you never blink in photos.
6. So, I hear you like milk?
Why did I get a external hard drive with moving parts? I should’ve sucked it up and paid for a flash external hard drive. I wonder how many days it has left? Why is it on? It looks pretty trashy with an empty beer can on it.
7. What’s with all the guitars and stuff? I mean, isn’t that stuff hard to lug around everywhere? Do you have any back problems? Have you considered surgery?
I should give Corey a call. Hearing him complain about life makes me feel good.
8. I have a spleen, but I’m not sure why? Or where?
Boy is Greg cranky today. I love him.
9. If Jive Time Jimmy Camiby fought the Ooglabot in Guam (with Moo Goo Jerry Gonzales as the referee), why do you suppose people continue to bring children into this hellish, godforsaken world?
May 5th – 3:40 pm I woke up at 12:00pm today. Still eating Quesadillas though. Baby steps. Progress.
Sincerely, Ezra Haynes
10. Lady Gaga is missing an eye. Do you think that someone took Pokerface literally?
I think I’m supposed to do an interview today.
11. A train leaves Chicago travelling 40 miles per hour?
That new Godzilla movie looks really cool.
12. Do you think there is outer space?
I am terrified of horses.
13. Who invented titanium golf clubs?
Horses are like, really BIG.
14. If Adam and Eve didn’t have belly buttons, would it prove the existence of a merciful and loving creator? And what do you think of Kreator?
#Allegaeon2014
Tipper Gore To Release Heavy Metal Album
Posted in General Weirdness on April 29, 2014
One of heavy metal’s greatest critics has finally come around. In a striking reversal of her earlier position, not only has Gore come out in support of heavy metal, which she now believes is “a positive influence on America’s youth”, she is even working on a metal album, tentatively known as “Scream Tipper Gore”, scheduled to be released in December.
Tipper Gore’s group, the Parent’s Music Resource Center or PMRC, formed in 1985 in an attempt to limit children from accessing music with violent or sexual themes. Many of the artists targeted included Mercyful Fate, Venom, WASP and Judas Priest. The PMRC’s campaign eventually led to a Senate hearing and labels being placed on many metal albums.
In retrospect, Gore regrets her war on metal. “Honestly, at the time, I hadn’t heard much metal. Possessed was the first Venom album I listened to. Terrible. Abaddon’s drumming is worse than listening to my two-year-old niece banging a tin cup against a glass table, the solos are laughable and Cronos sounds like a porpoise gargling salt water. Later, I picked up Black Metal and At War With Satan and realized how wrong I was. Both of those are great albums.”
The album that really changed Gore’s mind was Cannibal Corpse’s seminal death metal classic “Tomb of The Mutilated”. During her divorce with former Presidential candidate and climatologist Al Gore in 2010, she turned to music as a source of strength. One day, she was searching through Youtube for new music and came across the song “Hammer Smashed Face”. “It was love at first listen,” said Gore as she revealed the recently inked “Butchered at Birth” tattoo on her left thigh.
She immediately immersed herself with metal albums and now is an expert in the genre. Ms. Gore has reached out to many in the heavy metal community and begun friendships with several noted artists including Patrick Mameli from Pestilence and Suffocation vocalist Frank Mullen.
She has become particularly good friends with death metal guitar legend and producer James Murphy. It was Murphy who first gave her the idea of recording the album. “I hadn’t really played much since I was the lead tambourine player in my church’s production of Jesus Christ Superstar. James told me if I put my mind to it I could create the next great metal album. When I started my band Inflammatory Bowel Disease, I set out to do just that.”
Gore recruited an all-star cast of metal musicians to appear on the album and even talked Murphy into playing guitar on the band’s first single “An Inconvenient Brutal Truth”. She considers herself a top-notch death metal vocalist and described her style of singing as a cross between Angela Gossow formerly of Arch Enemy and Antti Boman from Demilich.
Here is the track list from the forthcoming release “Scream Tipper Gore”:
- Regurgitation of Thyroids
- Polyuria and The Fugitive Mind
- Pancreatic Picnic (featuring Ludacris)
- An Inconvenient Brutal Truth
- Eaten By Rabbits
- Pituitary Gland Barbeque
- Infant Brutality
- Staring Wistfully (At The Blackie Lawless Poster On My Wall)
- Kitten Flavored Yogurt
- I Am Putrefaction
- Global Warming Is A Lie
- Necrotizing Bloodfunnel
“Metal Onion” Website Angers Public By Creating Hoax About Release of New Judas Priest Album
Posted in General Weirdness on April 28, 2014
Tyranny of Tradition, an online heavy metal website similar to The Onion, enraged heavy metal fans today when writer Keith Spillett ran fake story claiming that heavy metal rock band Judas Priest would be releasing their seventeenth album in July. The story, which was picked up on several major Internet sites as well as on CNN, claimed that Rob Halford and the boys would be putting out a new record known as “Redeemer of Souls”. In fact, Judas Priest has no plans to release a new album.
The article went so far as to manufacture an interview that never actually happened with guitarist Glenn Tipton. Tipton did not claim that, “sometimes in the past we may have come under fire for being too adventurous musically – so we have listened.” He went on not to say, “from start to finish, Redeemer of Souls is 18 songs of pure classic-Priest metal,” in spite of what this Onion-like website claimed.
Fake Artwork From The Judas Priest Album That Isn’t Coming Out
Metal fans were not amused. Some of Priest’s biggest supporters threatened violence in the wake of the hoax. “For the first time since 2008, I felt genuine happiness. I started thinking about the joy I’d feel at getting a chance to hear new material from my favorite band. Then, I realized that it was some stupid troll making stuff up in a website that’s like The Onion only about heavy metal. Now, I just want to get this writer ‘Keith Spillett’, if that is REALLY his name, and knock his teeth down his throat,” announced Cyrus Necrovomit, head of the Northern Idaho chapter of the Judas Priest Nation, in a press conference this morning.
Hundreds of threatening emails and thousands of hated-filled comments were posted on the site. The article was taken down an hour ago after Spillett found a human head in a bag with a note attached saying “Tak The Articul Down Or Dy! -Preest For Lif” on his front porch.
No one has claimed responsibility for placing the head on Spillett’s porch, but many experts have been left by a shadowy terrorist organization simply known as “The Bangers”. The group is wanted in connection with several random attacks on posers throughout the Southeast, including the beating of an 87-year-old woman who had just purchased an Asking Alexandria shirt at a Hot Topic in Atlanta. After the woman was knocked to the ground, she was held down by several of the group’s members while a tattoo of Eddie, Iron Maiden’s notorious mascot, was etched onto her forehead.
Meanwhile, Rob Halford is in talks to collaborate with pop star Lady Gaga on a yet to be named project after he finishes the Judas Priest album that doesn’t exist.
According to Halford, “I’ve been into her since she first burst on the scene. I just love everything that lady stands for. First and foremost, her voice is extraordinary. She’s an accomplished musician who plays piano, oboe, zither and tambourine really well. She’s just a great songwriter. And she’s a beacon of hope for a lot of people in the world.”
Heavy Metal Must Be Destroyed
Posted in HEAVY METAL MUST BE DESTROYED on April 26, 2014
We are the freak future. We are the new violence.
We are rapidly approaching a new epoch in human history. One marked by the complete destruction of all form and meaning. This formless apocalypse appears to us now in the form of a rapid decay of authentic creativity and a terminal bloodlust for conformity. That will change.
It seems as if the envelope has been pushed to its limits and there is nothing left to do but repackage the old as the new. New technologies once seemed to open an unlimited array of possibility; instead of using this to push beyond the boundaries of mystery and wonder, we have recycled our thoughts and ideas to the point of unintelligibility. The world is a meme of a kitten playing with a ball of yarn.
This horrible present will not last. Eventually, the strings to the puppet show will become so obvious, even the most blind and witless among us won’t be able to delude themselves into thinking the grand illusion is truth. Our culture of zombiehood, our everyday suicideless suicide is unsustainable.
There are no more landscapes to be painted. No more sunsets to be photographed. The art of the future will be the expression of the psychic terror at the core of our being. The repressed animal within us can only be held down so long.
You can see it everywhere you look. We have defiled our economic, political and social lives with empty expressions of the past. We are hell bent on the destruction of our planet, our communities and our physical selves because we have begun to sense the hollowness at their core. We have begun to awaken only to find ourselves imprisoned in a coffin six feet under the ground.
There is only one means to revive our worm-infested corpses from the decay and rot that has become our world. A new destruction. A new violence. Complete and total annihilation of tradition in all of its hideous mental forms.
Even the idea of destruction has been castrated by cliché. People often equate destruction with physical violence. What is rarely understood is that the French Revolution ended the minute the first head fell into a basket. The Russian Revolution was over the moment the Czar and his family had been slaughtered. Physical violence is not a revolutionary act, rather an attempt to mirror the tradition of the consolidation of control that has stymied the best impulses within us.
The destruction being talked about here is much more akin to the idea of rejection. It is a non-stop war on reality. This battle will be fought on a psychic level in every moment. The minute it is given a name it has lost its power. It can only exist in the present and can only be understood in the form of contradiction. We think therefore we are not.
All revolutions begin and end in the mind. They are physically manifested in art but are reified and trivialized in their transformation to the form of commodity. Only when metal was new to us, a creation of our need to rebel against anything and everything, was it real.
At the core of each metalhead is a revolutionary. The moment each of these disparate people discovered their own alienation and connected to the experience of isolation and hopeless embodied in this form of music was the moment that each of us threw off the chains that strangle the thing within us that seeks to live.
The simple classification as heavy metal as a style of music is wrong. Metal is, in its rawest form, an accusation leveled at our societies the failure to treat us as authentic beings. Our moment of awakening was our revolution. But we have let it wither and die by making it a thing to be bought and sold.
Instead of understanding this break with organized, polite society as a revolutionary action, we have simply attempted to return to the moment of our awakening over and over again, never understanding that this myth of eternal return is the single greatest death we could ever experience.
This is why we must destroy heavy metal. Only by destroying it can we live. Only by tearing down its mythos, by defaming its heroes, by annihilating its stagnant form can we bring about a moment-to-moment revolution of the spirit.
Walk away from metal. Right now. In the middle of this sentence, walk away. Use its destruction to power your new life. Pick its body clean of experience and leave its carcass in the past.
We are the freak future. We are the new violence.
Coming Out Poser: Eight Terrible Admissions From The Depths of The Metal Closet
Posted in Articles I Probably Shouldn't Have Bothered Writing on April 23, 2014
Rarely do I ever tell the truth on this website. As a matter of fact, the purpose of the site is to declare war on the asinine construction that we have termed reality. However, I feel an unnatural obligation to level with you this morning. I write all sorts of terrible things about strangers, why shouldn’t I write an article that entirely discredits myself as a metalhead and in the process alienates a good 2/3rds of the audience?
I’m going to admit to a few things in this article that may make you uncomfortable. They are all horribly true. I make no apologies for myself. I know what I like and what I don’t like. Unfortunately, many things I like are terribly embarrassing. The awful truth is…I’m a poser.
7. My favorite Judas Priest song is from the Ripper Owens era
Not many people have given the Ripper Owens years their just due. Two excellent studio albums from a vocalist who only years earlier was covering “Turbo Lover” in front of 12 Clevelanders on open mic Mondays. On the first of those albums, he recorded the song “Cathedral Spires” which is one of the most incredible pieces of music I’ve ever heard. He’s not Rob Halford, but besides Rob Halford, who is?
I know the correct answer is to say something from the Halford era like “Hell Patrol” or “Dissident Aggressor” in order to prove the depth of my Judas Priest knowledge. Or I could claim it is “Metal Gods” or “Electric Eye” and rail on about how one of these songs found me at a low point in my life and changed me at a spiritual level. But, truthfully, while I love all of the aforementioned songs, I’ll take Spires any day of the week.
6. I’ve listened to more Tangerine Dream in the past year than Iron Maiden and Slayer combined
I know as a metalhead I’m supposed to get on bended knee every morning and thank Odin that the gods deemed us worthy of hearing Bruce Dickinson howl the chorus to “Aces High”. Every moment of my waking life should be devoted to air drumming the fills from “Seasons in The Abyss”. I’ve listened to these records a million times. People would get sick of ice cream if they ate it everyday for twenty years. These, and many other albums critical to “the metal experience”, bore me to tears at this point. I’m much more interested in exploring music I’m less familiar with than sacrificing more of my time on The Altar of True Metal.
5. I have no idea what is happening in most black metal songs (“The Emperor Has No Corpsepaint” hypothesis)
There are about eight black metal songs I like. As much as I respect the fact that musicians who play this style of music are capable of producing noises that resemble a walrus with indigestion, I can’t say I really know what on earth they are doing. As a matter of fact, I have a theory that no one actually likes black metal all that much. We pretend to because we don’t want to be the one person who admits they don’t see the appeal in a bunch of grown men dressing up like the Wyrd Sisters from Macbeth, shrieking about their love Yog-Sothoth.
4. I really don’t care when legendary heavy metal figures die
I feel bad for everyone who personally knew and loved Dio, Hanneman and Dime. They lost real flesh and blood humans in their lives. However, the outpouring of RIPing that comes out of people based on the passing of people that they don’t know is staggering. I have no doubt that these people and many others had a huge impact on the genre and probably wrote a song or two that made a bad day better, but come on. People die constantly. Everywhere. It’s the one thing human beings are consistently good at. Turning a genuine tragedy for the friends and family of a person you don’t know into your own because the musician wrote a few riffs you liked is grotesque and bizarre. Life is miserable enough without parachuting into someone else’s misfortune.
3. Don’t Call Me Your Brother, Cause I Ain’t Your @#%^ing Brother
This whole “Brotherhood of Metal” thing is hysterical. I meet people all the time I can’t stand. Including metalheads. Generally, I have a low threshold of tolerance for morons, whether they have the first Overkill album or not. The minute you start mentally tormenting some sock-brained metalhead online for spouting off nonsense that would embarrass a self-aware 7 year old or telling some guy with a Deicide tee-shirt that his children will probably have hooves, one schmuck invariably chimes in with the “why can’t metalheads get along” nonsense. Here’s why…because the number of mouth breathing idiots in the metal community is equal to the amount of inarticulate dolts in the world at large. This isn’t kindergarten. I don’t have to be nice to someone because we both happen to like Sepultura.
2a. I dread going to metal concerts
I really don’t like to leave my house much anyway, but the idea of being crammed into a really loud, dimly lit room smelling the armpits of beer soaked strangers is a fate worse than death for me. Usually, the music is way too loud and I get aggravated waiting through opening bands which are often as entertaining as cholera. I was so bored watching Zakk Wylde at OzzFest I actually fell asleep. Which was significantly more enjoyable than having the guy next to me either A. ask me whether I think Phil Anselmo is back on the heroin or B. Tell me about the time he saw so and so open for so and so in some backwater, lice infested bar way before anyone had ever heard of them.
2b. The whole moshing thing embarrassing
Concerts are expensive and, as noted above, banal, disgusting experiences. The single worst part about them is having to spend the time I’d like to take watching a band I came out to see and dedicating it to not having my feet stepped on by some neo-Cro-Magnon lummox who, instead of hashing out his troubles in group therapy, has decided that running headlong into a group of equally troubled delinquents is a way to release the demons.
People talk about mosh pits like they are mystical experiences (“I’ll never forget the night back in 1987 when we made The Wall of Death at a Nuclear Assault concert”). Really, it’s just a bunch of people running around and bumping into each other with mean looks on their faces. It’s not all that different from Black Friday at Target.
1. I Don’t Mind The Last Morbid Angel Album
I debated putting this in here, because to be honest, admitting this is the equivalent of telling a beautiful woman you are interested in that in your free time you like to make masks out of human skin and paint using other people’s blood. This album was so universally panned by critics and fans alike that you would have thought it featured Kevin Costner with gills. I’ve made fun of it on several occasions. If Mother Theresa was still alive, she’d have made fun of it.
I remember reading this interview with David Vincent after the album came out where he said some preposterous thing like “you don’t know it yet, but this will end up being your favorite Morbid Angel album.” I couldn’t even believe he could get that out with a straight face. Yet, honestly, every time that silly “crossing the line since 1989” song comes on my iPod, I end up listening to the whole thing. I don’t even mind the “Destructos” song. Or the one where he starts babbling in Spanish. I’ve listened to those songs much more frequently than I’ve busted out anything else by them…so maybe he had a point.
Is Metallica’s “Kill’em All” A Fake?
Posted in Pointyheaded Highbrow Stuff on April 15, 2014
One of heavy metal’s most beloved and revered albums may not be what you think it is. According to musical forgery expert Dr. Elmer Hory from the Lillehammer Institute of Ersatz Studies (LIES), the version of Metallica’s first album owned by most people is actually an impeccable forgery created by a group of Metallica impersonators. “Almost every copy out there is not the real album Metallica recorded, but rather an incredibly detailed copy,” claimed Hory in his soon to be released book “Fake Hearers: The History of Heavy Metal Forgery”.
Hory listened to the original studio tapes of the album and compared them to an actual copy of the album bought last year at his local Sam Goody music store. While nearly everything on both versions sounds exactly the same, there is one point in the middle of the song ‘Phantom Lord’ where the original has a barely audible guitar note that is not heard in the fake “Kill’em All”. Hory was only able to pick up the note after listening to the record over 800 times in a two week period, but he is certain that there is a difference.
Upon researching the roots of the album and following up on some rumors he had heard, Hory discovered Neil and Cliff Irving, two struggling musicians from Southern California who heard the record days after it was released and claim to have copied it nearly perfectly.
“We had seen Metallica at clubs for years and loved the record. We wanted to see if we could make a perfect copy of the album and sell it and make a few bucks to buy prairie dogs to feed to Neil’s pet python. The copy we made was identical down to the sloppy drumming. “
“We omitted one guitar note in “Phantom Lord” to let our friends know it was us. From there, I’m not sure how it happened, but all the copies that are out today are without a doubt the version we recorded,” said Cliff Irving, now a mattress salesman in Rancho Cucamonga, California, who moonlights as a Neil Diamond impersonator at children’s birthday parties.
While both Hory and the Irving brothers are uncertain as to how the phony album came to be known as the real one, it is clear that even the most devout metalhead is unable to tell the difference between real and fake metal. Last week, Hory played both versions for a target group of lifelong, die-hard metalheads between the ages 35 and 60 all of whom claimed to have hung out with James Hetfield “before the band got big” and everyone in the room believed he had simply played the same album twice.
If this revelation is true, it raises troubling questions about whether there is any truth in heavy metal at all. Even though Metallica created “Kill’em All”, is it not the Irving Brothers, whose version almost everyone is familiar with, that should get credit for the record’s popularity? After all, just about no one has really ever even heard Metallica’s actual recording. Just how is “real” determined in music? Elvis Presley re-recorded strikingly similar versions of Otis Blackwell’s “All Shook Up” and “Don’t Be Cruel” and those are known by just about everyone as “real” Elvis songs.
More importantly, if Metallica copied Dave Mustaine’s song “The Mechanix” and changed it to “The Four Horseman” only to have their copy copied by The Irving Brothers who were then copied by Mustaine when he re-recorded “Mechanix” on “Killing is My Business…And Business is Good”, whose song is the “real” song and which version is the “fake”?
Does it make a difference who recorded the album? If Metallica fans never read this article and never come into contact with Dr. Hory’s research, they would still believe “Kill’em All” was a Metallica album. Nothing would change.
If this article is simply some moronic joke made up some crackpot writer who can’t figure out if he wants to publish satire or armchair philosophy, but the reader thinks it’s real because they only read the title and fail to grasp the fact that the Internet is largest hi-tech illusion machine ever created, will it change the experience of the album for them? The songs certainly won’t sound any different.
Does it even matter?
Any of it?
The Tyranny of Tradition 