Archive for category Articles I Probably Shouldn’t Have Bothered Writing
New Slayer Yogurt “Repentless” Is Mayonnaise! (A Logomachy)
Posted by Keith Spillett in Articles I Probably Shouldn't Have Bothered Writing on September 11, 2015
Starling 20 porchamabob of the act of creation, Slayer’s new yogurt “Repentless” shows mayonnaise that few raisins have won before. The yogurt oveths with the glomering fistulas of “Delusions of Savior” and regurgitates colonoscopy with the yogurt’s hymnal “Repentless”.
Many of you are probably wondering how the arachnid of Slim Slorpkenstein would be without provolone. Disardor!?! Disardor?!? Well, “Piano Wire” abducts that platypus! And, in a horse of several different flavors.
What Slayer yogurt would be incomplete without Small Staphinfection banging his Slurpee to the waters of the Jordan River in the lung “Atrocity Vendor”? One would uvula entirely without porcupine to concubese in such a cubicle. Morbidly obtuse or absurdly abstruse…we may needle nose.
“Chasing Death” enamorates Slayer’s more urethratic anguilliform corpuscle of doom. Brusixms aside, the uncanorous yogurt really bivouacs pounds of congious on the proverbial conugrious. Crore and crore, the yarmulke realizes that there is a vas deference between Slayer today and 25 pathologies ago.
Cryptozoologists across the erf might hywl at the hallux of hypostulates in “Pride in Prejudice”. Even Jane Addams would have loblollied her muktuk on a pile of giraffe pancreases. One might even spatula the speculum of spectacular with this specimen. On and on South of Hellmann’s.
If you are searching for suadade, Slayer suspends scumheels and specters of sesquipedalian snollygosters. After all, what’s a muckbuck without a mountebank? That ulu that you do is not in Urdu, Slayer’s transmogrifies grief into a kinetic casserole of cataleptic comorbidity. Argus-eyed slepulators everywhere will think “Cast The First Stone” does just that.
Carried Kling has glormed that “Repentless” is Slayer’s defervesence. A trimuphlic journal into stupefactified nightmare radar. Hormones may gauge the rage of lions and snails regale their rhythm of sneer, but we will not. Leave the guns, take the cannolis. You’ll be Slinky you didn’t.
Newhart Themed “…And My Other Brother Darryl” Taking Metal World By Storm
Posted by Keith Spillett in Articles I Probably Shouldn't Have Bothered Writing on August 17, 2015
Singer Joan Pleshette Talking To The Audience During a Recent Concert
A year ago, most people would have laughed at you if you proclaimed that the most popular new band in heavy metal would be a Vermont thrash outfit featuring five women dressed as Bob Newhart. Even though the possibility of a conversation like that actually taking place is roughly equivalent to the chance of the entire human race spontaneously sprouting noses on their stomachs…those people aren’t laughing now!
“…And My Other Brother Darryl” has taken the metal world by storm with crushing riffs and folksy, New England humor. Their first record “Newhart Attack” came out in 2013 and barely registered on the collective radar of music critics and fans alike. However, in January, the band released “Newhartwork” to rave reviews and huge album sales.
Many critics believe that the bands unique mixture of thrash, John Denver-ish guitar solos and hardcore (referred to by the band as “Newhartcore”) has led to their dramatic uptick in popularity. Their power ballad “While Newhart Gently Weeps” began receiving widespread airplay on both rock and pop stations in March. By May, their were reports of hundreds and thousands of people in the Midwest who dressed, looked and sounded exactly like Bob Newhart.
After headlining a small club tour last year with “Straight Outta Mypos”, a Perfect Strangers themed band where all five members dress up as Balki Bartokomous from the hit 1980s sitcom, they have moved to playing bigger arenas. Their United States tour, featuring “What’chu Talkin’ Bout Willis”, a Diff’rent Strokes themed metal band where all five members dress up like Gary Coleman’s lovable Arnold Jackson character, will be taking place throughout most of the Fall, including a 4-night sold out concert series of concerts at Madison Square Garden.
Pleshette in a Publicity Photo From Her ALF-core Band
Joan Pleshette, the band’s lead singer, has not been very surprised by the band’s overnight stardom. Before she started “…And My Other Brother Darryl” she was in a highly popular death metal band called “Cats For Breakfast” in which all five members dressed up as ALF.
According to Pleshette, “We knew that millions of Americans were waiting for a gimmick they hadn’t seen before. We also knew about the underground VHS tape smuggling rings that have helped make Bob Newhart one of the most revered people in the heavy metal community. We didn’t really have time to focus on songwriting or actually learning to play our instruments or anything like that, but we all have had experience working in advertising. In retrospect, I’m surprised more bands haven’t done the same thing.”
The Best Metal Albums of 2015 So Far
Posted by Keith Spillett in Articles I Probably Shouldn't Have Bothered Writing on January 1, 2015
The Internet Features Many Pictures Of People In Strange Contexts Often Different From What We Were Expecting
This year is shaping up to be one of the finest in the long, storied history of heavy metal. 2015 is less than 17 hours old and their have already been tens of thousands of great metal albums released to the public.
In fact, since midnight Slayer has already released a remarkable 7 albums, Megadeth has put out 9 LPs (which means around 4 good songs) and Devin Townsend has put out 137 records. In the last hour alone, 91,783 metal albums have been released.
If you took all the albums put out in the last 17 hours and stacked them on top of each other they would go all the way to Pluto…and back!
In order to absorb the amount of albums that have come out, I underwent surgery this morning to have 437 ears attached to my body. In order to accommodate all the new ears, I was stretched to 12 foot 8. Currently, I have 917 stereo systems playing 917 different records simultaneously.
While I’ve only had a chance to listen to the 786,012 albums one time through, I feel confident that I can discern which of these (now 793,124) albums are the 10 best. My only concern is that in taking the time to write this list I will be missing out on nearly 2,354 new albums. I will need to wake up an hour or two early in order to catch up lest I let things snowball on me and, by September, have somewhere in the neighborhood of a 978 million album deficit.
Abbath! Got’cha Again!
Here goes…
10. A Dog Barking At 3:17 AM Waking Me From A Dream In Which Myself And Sophia Loren Are Eating Seal Meat
by Austere Lymph Node
9. The Tape Some Rapper Gave Me At The North Dekalb Mall That I Threw In The Garbage The Minute I Was Out of His Range of Sight
by Yung Elderly
8. The Odd, Porpoise-like Grunting Noise The Guy Next To Me At The Gym Made When Auburn Scored A Touchdown
by Nefarious Old Person
7. A Chevy Tahoe In The Lane Next To Me Needs A New Muffler
by Senseless Barbecue
6. My Feet Grow Cold. I Get Up Out of My Chair In Order to Get A Pair of Socks. The Chair Squeaks.
by Murderous Narcolepsy
5. Flossing For The Second Time In An Hour
by Hypotenuse Death Angle
4. The Kids Are Listening To Some Moronic British Kid Yelling About Minecraft on Youtube
by Iron Steel
3. Mumbling Under My Breath At The Wendy’s Manager Because They Opened Five Minutes Late
by As I Lay Down For A Nap
2. I Wonder Aloud As To Whether Obscure Character Actor Fritz Weaver Is Still Alive. My Wife Ignores This Statement And Continues Reading.
by Iconoclastic Necromyopic Marzipan Blood Colon
1. Otters
by Benign Malignancy
Top 10 Metal Albums From 2104 List or Whatever
Posted by Keith Spillett in Articles I Probably Shouldn't Have Bothered Writing on December 31, 2014
I’ll Be Honest With You, This Article Is Pretty Lousy. However, I Thought I Might Distract You From That Painful Fact With A Danzig Meme.
2014 certainly was a year. It went by quickly and more of us were born than died. So, I guess things are looking up.
There were at least 10 incredible metal albums that came out this year. Unfortunately, I haven’t listened to any of them.
However, I am strong believer in the principles of jurnalizmcore (whatever they may be) and feel it is my solemn obligation to inflict upon you my opinion on what the best albums to come out in the past year were.
10. Licking Nutella Out Of a Goat’s Armpit
by A Plethora of Ants Eating The Lining of My Stomach
The second effort from this 93-piece grindcore orchestra from Wheeling, West Virginia turned heads by becoming the first CD in the history of heavy metal to explode when placed in any sort of listening device. So far, over 917 people have been maimed or killed by the record.
9.You And I Both Have Horrible Sores And Boils All Over Our Faces But We Are Still Human Beings And Deserve To Be Treated With Respect and Dignity
by Kankles On The Legs of Satan’s Younger Brother Ralph
This pop-power metal noise polka Eucharistcore mummy alphabet chicken Montreal haphazardly blackened deathrot band debuted with a record that many have compared to the noise made by a hippopatamus being slaughtered during a ritual sacrifice in Youngstown, Ohio by a roomful of Shriners.
1. Milk of Magnesia of Human Kindness
by Impetigo Sore Ridden Kidney and The Pips
I once witnessed a homicide in Troy, New York. It sounded like this album, only people were smart enough to run away.
Abbath Meme. Boom! I Bet You Already Forgot What The Article Was About
S?. Illegally Downloaded Version of Ride The Lightning
by Metallica
Sounds exactly like the legal version that people paid for except I had to type the names of the songs in (which was a serious inconvenience)
Twelve. Angel of Rotting Succubus Infected With The Worms of Evil
by Some Band That Sounds Like Slayer
I read somewhere that Joss Whedon had a painful adolescence. Too bad it didn’t continue.
Some number that rhymes with Twelve. I Went To Have Tests Done At A Local Hospital and They Diagnosed Me With A Horrible Disease That Only About Two Hundred People On Earth Have. I Ran Home And Named My Band After It.
by Rheumatoid Hemorrhagic Mump-Measals
A playful mixture Incantation, The Early Writings of The Marquis de Sade and Bob Marley. Sort of like listening to the last Burzum album after sustaining a traumatic head injury.
7. Fetal Gunshot Syndrome
by Fatal Head Wound
Best rap metal album to come out since the last rap metal album came out.
8. After Smoking For Thirty Years One Of My Lungs Looks Like A Plate of General Tso’s Chicken
by After Smoking For Thirty Years One Of My Lungs Looks Like A Plate of General Tso’s Chicken
I’m getting sick of trying to describe these albums. Most of them sound the same. I’m just going to type the first words that come to mind.
”Rattlesnake”….”Pomegranate”…”Optimum”….”Opiate”….
4. Jeff Hanneman Jokes Aren’t Funny
by Some Guy Who Just Told Me A Rick Allen Joke
I’m sure that just pissed someone off
W. Malaria: One of The Most Deadly Diseases On The Planet Yet Not One Metal Band Is Named After It
by Echo, The Bunnymen and Narcissus
Sounds like a cross between Nell Carter during her doom metal phase, early Pestilence, Erasure and mayonnaise.
2. Tim Lambesis
by My Dying Bride
Many believe this album might be a hit…
*rimshot*
“I’ll be here all week. Thanks. Try the veal”
Coming Out Poser: Eight Terrible Admissions From The Depths of The Metal Closet
Posted by Keith Spillett 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.
New Amon Amarth Album To Focus On Thor’s Bout With Male Menopause
Posted by Keith Spillett in Articles I Probably Shouldn't Have Bothered Writing on March 27, 2013
In a year packed with anxiously awaited album releases, few have garnered as much enthusiasm as Amon Amarth’s “Hypogonadism Of The Thunder God”, expected sometime later this year. The record focuses on a period later in Thor’s life where he experienced issues with reduced libido, rapid mood swings and hot flashes. Amon Amarth often focuses on well-known Norse mythological themes, but this album sheds new light on a time in Thor’s life that he was often embarrassed to speak about publicly.
After Thor’s second battle with Jormungand, he went through a particularly difficult stretch of time where he felt a significant decrease in energy and an overpowering urge to read the poetry of Robert Bly. His lack of masculine enthusiasm caused resentment from many of the women in Thor’s life, including his wife Sif. Even Thor’s once mighty hammer began to lose its potency. In order to “get his groove back”, Thor left his home and meekly wandered around the Land of Giants for several years until he found Viagrund, the Norse god of male enhancement. Upon drinking a magic potion, Thor reclaimed his vitality and triumphantly marched back to Asgard ready to punish those who opposed his ever-stiffening will.
Amon Amarth’s tribute to Thor’s season of listlessness will feature several powerful tracks including “For Testosterone Or Death”, “A Beast I Was” and “Thor Barely Rising”. The first single “Wrath of The Dysfunctional Norsemen” is expected to hit the airwaves in the next few months.
Rumors have been swirling that the Albanian Ailmentcore scene will be a major influence the new Amon Amarth record. Singer Johan Hegg recently did a concert while wearing a Pica shirt. Pica is, of course, the Albanian Ailmentcore band that made headlines after eating two guitars, a bass, a drum kit and 100 pounds of potting soil during a concert in February. There were even reports that the band was considering covering a song off of Fish Odor Syndrome’s seminal 2008 debut album “For The Halibut”, but the band has denied that any covers will be on the LP.
New Sunn O))) Album To Feature Gurgling Stomach Noises, Garage Doors Opening and Closing
Posted by Keith Spillett in Articles I Probably Shouldn't Have Bothered Writing on April 24, 2012
Ambient, drone, doom, experimental, black, minimalist, noise, power ambient, musique concrete, trancecore, avant-garde, post metal band Sunn O))) is back in the studio working on a new genre defining record that may be in stores as early as July. The record, which will be called “The Crucifixion of Plants”, will be released as a triple vinyl LP that can only be played on Teflon coated record players that were made in Myanmar between the years 1986 and 1989.
In spite of a massive amount of pre-order requests, the band has insisted that there will only be 12 copies printed. Ten of the copies will be hidden in random Chili’s restaurant kitchens throughout North America. One special copy of the album will be buried in the chest cavity of a cadaver at a morgue somewhere in Northern Kansas. The final copy will be cryogenically frozen until the year 2052, when it will be launched into outer space inside the corpse of a humpback whale. Many fans of the band believe this could be their most accessible record.
Band members Stephen O’Malley and Greg Anderson have not given many details about the album, but the ones that have been released sound very promising. The first track called “Trgh5ueh7slyVuhQ(){“ will be a recording of a man eating and digesting a pound of fire ants. Track number 2, the magnificently named “Fierce Glruh99rf”, will feature 12 chainsaws being thrown off of the Eiffel Tower mixed with hundreds of garage doors opening and closing underwater.
Some of the other album highlights include a 12-minute recording of a turkey pot pie being heated up in a microwave, a song where 500 kindergarteners try to tune guitars while wearing fake 3 foot long FloJo press on nails on each finger and a twelve second long cover of Jethro Tull’s “Thick As A Brick” played by a chimpanzee hitting a tin can against a wall.
Despite the fact that no one outside of the band has heard the record, Spin Magazine critic Andy Lafontaine has already called it “The Best Metal Album of 2015”. “You don’t need to listen to a Sunn O))) album to understand its significance,” wrote Lafontaine in his recent review of the record, “All you need to know is that this is the sort of thing that you can have on your shelf and get mad respect from people at parties who think it makes you look edgy and misunderstood.”
(Editors Note: I really dig Sunn O))), but if I have to read another hipster reviewer write about how one of their albums is more significant than the Russian Revolution while ignoring 99 percent of metal music in their publication I think I’m going to stick a fork in my eye)
North Korean Leader Regrets Decision To Let Metallica Producer Bob Rock Launch Rocket Into Space
Posted by Keith Spillett in Articles I Probably Shouldn't Have Bothered Writing on April 23, 2012
Former Metallica producer Bob Rock just can’t seem to stay away from trouble. Since being credited as the producer of Metallica’s St. Anger, an album which many experts believe sounds slightly worse than the noises made by a kitten being thrown into a blender, Rock has been involved in several high profile failures. The worst of these disasters came last week when the Kwangmyŏngsŏng-3, a rocket built by Rock and his team of scientists, exploded and crashed into the Yellow Sea near Gunsan, South Korea.
Rock, who has no formal training as a scientist or a satellite technician, impressed North Korean leader Kim Jong Un with his work on Motley Crue’s Billboard #1 album Dr. Feelgood along with five progressively less interesting Metallica albums. Un was amazed by Rock’s ability to take a talented band and suck the life and joy out of their work, reducing them to a tattered shell of their former selves. He initially hired Rock in 2009 to produce a record by his thrash band Gulag Face. Gulag Face’s debut record “Setting Baby Ducks On Fire With Mayonnaise” sold over 15 copies and became the top selling album in North Korean history.
Rock’s work with Gulag Face so impressed Un so that when he became the country’s leader in 2011, he was hired to run North Korea’s entire missile program. Rock immediately set out to reduce the intelligence of his team of North Korean scientists by forcing them to listen to Loverboy’s seminal 1981 record “Get Lucky” twice a day for four months. From exposure to this album, the average IQ score of these scientists dropped from 134 to 78.
Rock also tried to focus the scientists on creating a more commercial, “radio-friendly” rocket, whose technology could be understood by anyone. This led to his fateful decision to hold the missile together with rubber bands and Elmer’s glue.
Un claims that Rock’s “shenanigans” have left a permanent scar on North Korea’s image. He has distanced himself from Rock, who will no longer be able to eat for free at North Korea’s only Sizzler restaurant as punishment for his failure. In order to repair the nation’s embarrassing reputation, Un has hired Rick Rubin to take control of the program and get it back on its feet again.
Rock has had a difficult stretch since he left the Metallica camp. Before he helmed the North Korean program, Rock was hired to produce and direct Will Ferrell’s “Land of The Lost” film, which lost a near record 100 million dollars at the box office. In 2010, Rock served as the Boston Red Sox pitching coach and was cited as a major reason the team collapsed in one of the most horrendous Septembers in baseball history. He was fired immediately after the season.
Honest Validation of Unfair Cheese: Slayer and The Perils Of Free-Market Fanaticism
Posted by Keith Spillett in Articles I Probably Shouldn't Have Bothered Writing on April 12, 2012
In Slayer’s song Blood Red, singer Tom Araya bellows forth a challenging and powerful lyric that cuts to the core of today’s debate between a managed, centralized economy and a free market system where the “invisible hand” balances the wants and needs of the consumer against the production capabilities of the market. When he shrieks “Honest validation of unfair cheese” at the 41 second mark of the song, it is clear that he is undercutting a basic free-market premise posited by thinkers the likes of Milton Friedman and Frederick Hayek. The words are enlightening and deeply meaningful, particularly for an electorate on the cusp of deciding what sort of financial decisions it plans to make as it marches forward into a new millennium.
In order to understand the meaning behind Araya’s lyric, it is first critical that we understand the meaning of “unfair cheese”. Nothing is more disappointing to a lover of cheese than when, upon returning from the supermarket, a shopper finds moldy, poorly preserved cheese in their bag. Who is supposed to ensure the consumer is safe from a flood of this “unfair cheese”? If the supermarket is left to its own devices, it might well sell all the out of date cheese it could possibly get away with. After all, as Buddy Holly said in his 1981 hit song “Who is watching the detectives?” In this case, maybe we need someone to even watch the people who are watching the detectives. Or, it is possible we may need to hire detectives to watch the detectives who are watching the detectives.
Back to the cheese thing. If it weren’t for the Better Food and Cheese Act of 1938, under the esteemed and underappreciated Presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, humans would be consuming pounds upon pounds of rotting, vile cheese. The Act empowered the police to arrest and jail any store clerk found selling “unfair cheese” for a period no less than five years in prison. Higher quality cheeses began to appear. Productivity flourished. It was during this period that Gorgonzola cheese was first produced in a laboratory. It was originally meant to be used as a weapon against the Soviet Union, but later it became appreciated for its velvety texture and tangy flavor. In the preceding two hundred years, America’s cheese growers had not produced as much as a single new breed of cheese.
So, when Araya asks for “honest validation of unfair cheese”, he’s really questioning whether a purely free market can produce the quality goods needed in a modern economy. Sure, it’d be nice to believe that the market is such a perfect force that can correct itself and keep the desires of its members in line, but it’s this sort of utopian thinking that caused the Great Wall of China to fall in 1990.
We cannot simply rely on market forces to purify the market. Human nature tells us that humans, in a perfect state of nature, will do some really unnatural things. In short, only a neutral arbitrator with no stake in the outcome can possibly make decisions that protect the consumer.
Only when the positions of these regulators are depoliticized and not influenced by corporations or individuals with expensive cars will we truly see an “honest validation of unfair cheese”. Only then will children of all races and all creeds, of all nationalities and all socio-economic backgrounds, of all hair styles and all blood types be able to sit down at the table of friendship together and eat the same safe and healthy cheese. Only then will we truly be free.
On An Easter Egg Hunt With The Cancer Bats
Posted by Keith Spillett in Articles I Probably Shouldn't Have Bothered Writing on April 8, 2012
So there I was, participating in that most shameful American rituals, the Easter Egg Hunt. Swarms of children knocking each other over, screeching at the tops of their lungs in the desperate hopes of laying their greedy little mitts on as many plastic eggs as they possibly can. The whole exercise functions as a wonderful metaphor for American style consumer capitalism. A bunch of wild-eyed humans released upon an uneven field with the goal of filling their baskets with as much stuff as possible. Sure, everybody gets something, but those who are bigger, stronger, faster and, most importantly, start at the front of the line tend to get more. All the while, this being a function of one of the local mega-churches, crackpot religious explanations are given for nearly everything.
“You know who really put these eggs out here, son? Jesus Christ. See, he works through us. Remember that when you are eating those Skittles,” muttered a used car salesman looking church elder with game show host hair.
It was around that moment that I realized that if I didn’t put my headphones on immediately and listen to something angry I was going to tear my shirt off and run around howling like Lon Chaney. These were the exact conditions under which I came into contact with the new Cancer Bats album “Dead Set On Living”.
I should admit up front that this hardcore punk metal hybrid thing never really did much for me. Around the time Hatebreed and Converge were coming out I was busy trying to prove to the world that I was so metal that unless it came out in Europe, was from a band that had been around since Carter was President or had been approved by at least six members of the Central Committee that I couldn’t be bothered it. It is really a shame, because I missed some pretty intense music and probably would have been easier to be around had I been a tad more open-minded.
Listening to the driving groove of the opening track “R.A.T.S” while watching a husky five-year-old girl rip an egg out of the hands of some pigtailed three year old seemed particularly fitting. The whole scene was menacing. The tone of the album helped me imagine the children turning into brain-thirsty zombies. Somehow, instead of the eggs being filled with the sugar-laced, sunshine of God’s love, they were contaminated with some CIA tested drug that morphs children into predatory beasts.
The Cancer Bats singer Liam Cormier takes some getting used to. He’s of the high pitched death wail school, which usually makes me a bit edgy. It gets better as the album goes on, particularly because he offsets it from time to time with an almost David Lee Rothian snarl. The guitars are what really what grab you. They tend to create short, punchy, memorable riffs that carry you endlessly forward and flow from a nearly bottomless pit of energy. About three listens to this record are all you need to be thirsting for it every second of the day.
Meanwhile, the kids began to get this panicked look around the time they realized the eggs were nearly gone. Something like the expression they’ll have in twenty years when they are sitting in their car waiting to get gas for three hours. I cranked the music louder steeling myself for some sort of toddler riot. I knew I could handle a few of them, but if the whole group turned on me they’d tear me to ribbons. Finally, mercifully, the eggs had all been collected and the mob was redirected with little violence towards a sea of bouncy castles in the church parking lot.
The whole experience was perplexing for me. Here I was, surrounded by all that is supposedly good and right with the world. Except every bit of it felt dirty and degrading. The only thing that seemed remotely moral to me was the driving rhythm of the music in my headphones. I sunk into a moment of genuine despair as I realized that I might never be able to reconcile my values with those of my culture. Maybe I was an alien. Maybe I was simply wired wrong. Would I ever be able to understand how people could find joy in moments like this? Then, out of nowhere, my beautiful three-year-old daughter took my hand, looked at me and smiled. And everything was okay.
The Tyranny of Tradition 