Archive for category General Weirdness
Georgia Bans Cute Pictures of Kittens From Facebook
Posted by Keith Spillett in General Weirdness on May 3, 2012
As of midnight on May 4th, 2015, Georgia will become the first state to formally ban cute pictures of kittens from the popular website Facebook. The move comes in response to a deluge of pictures of kittens in sinks, kittens wearing Darth Vader masks and kittens doing activities typically done by human beings like water skiing or juggling. In a poll of Georgia voters, kittens on the internet ranked third behind the economy and the threat of poor people receiving adequate medical care as issues that threatened the future of America. Governor Nathan Deal said yesterday in a press conference that “kitten picture crime might well represent the greatest threat to an efficient and democratic society since baby ducks.”
According to a recent study, 2/3s of the traffic on Facebook is believed to be adorable pictures of kittens. Republican Representative David Wayne from Hiram, Georgia was fed up and introduced legislation last year to ban these offensive images. According to Wayne, kitten pictures cause people to become “distracted and less productive” around the office. Wayne estimates that kitten related work slacking costs the state over 1 billion dollars in revenues on a weekly basis as people waste hours of time giggling and showing their friends all the funny things that tiny cats can do.
While these pictures seem harmless to many people, many critics, including syndicated conservative talk show host Mike Howe, have speculated that pictures of baby cats could be a way for Al-Queda to communicate with sleeper terrorist cells throughout the country. “Some people think a kitten rolling around in a pile of string is hysterical,” said Howe during yesterday afternoon’s show, “they laugh and laugh and laugh. Ha. Ha. Ha. Meanwhile, instructions are being given to groups of terrorists to release biological weapons at Dairy Queens throughout America. I’ve seen the face of fear folks…and it has whiskers.”
Other politicians had more practical concerns. Representative Ronny Munroe from Valdosta, Georgia sees the current “kitten picture crisis” as an example of the erosion of American values. “Kittens are soft and weak. If you expose one to the extreme heat of a microwave oven or throw one into a bear cage, it will die within seconds. What happened to the rugged individual? Our nation was founded by men who would stay outside in a blinding snowstorm for three weeks without food or shelter while bleeding profusely from their eyes and scalp. They didn’t have pictures of kittens or government programs to keep them safe,” announced Munroe during his daily massage at the Eggmont Golf and Athletic Club.
The Kitten Crime and American Freedom Act is being hailed as a landmark piece of legislation that should help create jobs and imprison political deviants throughout the state. Similar pieces of legislation are being considered around the country. The new law stipulates that a first time offender could be forced to serve 12 months in prison and pay a twenty five thousand dollar fine. A second offense could lead to the criminal being forced to attend five regular season Atlanta Hawks games. Whatever effect the law has, it has become clear that posting pictures of kittens on Facebook is no longer a laughing matter.
Deicide’s Glen Benton Saves Baby From Burning Building; Throws It Back
Posted by Keith Spillett in General Weirdness on April 26, 2012
Deicide vocalist Glen Benton has gained a reputation over the years of being mean-spirited and callous. There was the time shot a squirrel with a pellet gun during an interview, or the time where he interrupted Christmas service at a local Tampa church by jokingly crucifying a senior citizen, or the time he sold chemical weapons to former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. However, as we all know, even in the darkest and cruelest of human hearts, there is a bright light that shines. No better example of this exists than what took place in Clearwater, Florida on Wednesday night.
Benton was walking home from his weekly Bible study and burning at a local Denny’s when he noticed a fire had broken out in a single family home. Benton witnessed a man and a woman out on the curb screaming about a small baby trapped in the burning hulk of a building.
Without a moments thought, Benton rushed into the house, climbed two flights of smoke filled stairs and burst through the door of the infants room. The stairs had become impassible so Benton tucked the baby into his jacket and leaped out the window grabbing a tree with his free arm. There he hung in agony for seven minutes waiting for the fire trucks to arrive.
At this point, a small crowd of neighbors had gathered round. As the firemen helped Benton down from the tree they began to applaud his amazing feat of bravery. When he reached the ground and ran to the street, the group surrounded Benton and began thank him as tears of joy streamed down their faces.
In all the excitement and commotion, he threw the baby as far as he could. It landed with a horrible thud in the smoldering wreck of a house. The crowd was so stunned by Benton’s selfless actions, they ignored the burning child and lifted them onto their shoulders, carrying him up and down the street while singing the chorus from “Dead By Dawn”.
This isn’t the first time Benton has done something truly beautiful in service of his fellow human. Back in 1998, Glen donated his earlobes and nose to a seven-year-old child who needed them to survive. In 2003, he began a shelter for injured llamas and three-legged-pigs, which he runs out of the basement of his house to this day. He spends his weekends helping to nurse sick baby woodchucks back to health at the local Tampa Zoo.
Glen’s work with one particular charity is particularly impressive. He donated most of the profits of the Deicide album “The Stench of Redemption” to Brands For Babies, a non-profit organization that helps small children get inverted crosses burned into their foreheads. Benton is the national spokesman for the organization and has helped over 50,000 infants get the mark of Satan on their heads since 2006.
Of course, he will be remembered for creating some of the most punishing and horrifying music ever to be recorded, but there is a softer, more loving side to Glen Benton that few people see. If you look past his menacing Manson-like countenance, his frightening behavior and his cold, dead eyes, you’re likely to see a man with a heart of gold.
Satan Suspended Indefinitely For “Soul Bounties”; Cronos Named Interim Devil
Posted by Keith Spillett in General Weirdness on April 19, 2012
On Wednesday, God suspended Satan indefinitely from his role as Devil for promising demons as much as 10,000 dollars for each soul they lured into temptation. Satan’s two head assistants, a gargoyle named Thoth and former American President Ronald Reagan, received slightly lighter suspensions of up to 5000 years, but may be reinstated earlier if they successfully complete anger management classes.
While it was well within Satan’s purview to try to encourage poor behavior on the part of human beings, offering cash incentives for their souls was going a step to far. Yesterday, the Lord released a statement highlighting examples of the many violations and stating that this sort of “encouragement towards lawlessness and immorality is outside of the bounds of what we call fair play.”
When confronted with this statement, Satan didn’t hesitate to fire back. “Wait, so I’m getting scolded about morality by the guy was responsible for the extinction of nearly the entire populations of Sodom and Gomorrah. This is the same God who, on a bet, let me destroy the life of one of his most committed servants, Job. You’ll excuse me; I have to go throw up,” sneered Satan as he spat upon the ground.
In Satan’s absence, Venom frontman Cronos has been named Interim Dark Lord until Satan’s reinstatement. Cronos is a veteran of the dark arts having served in Satan’s Army since 1981. Cronos even had brief experience running Hell back in 1986 when Satan broke five of his legs in a terrible water skiing accident.
Cronos has many exciting new plans he has considered for Hell including an open mic night, the addition of all-you-can sin brothels and building a stadium in an attempt to lure the Buffalo Bills to Hell, giving the Underworld its first pro sports team since the 1976 Oakland Raiders.
Experts believe that Cronos is a good fit for the position and could bring untold glory to Hell. However, many fans were disappointed when their first choice, former Giants and Jets coach Bill Parcells, turned the job down. While Parcells was a flashier name, those around the game respect Cronos for his undying commitment to poisoning the human race with heavy metal and believe that he will be the perfect choice to get Hell back on track.
Dennis Rodman’s Million Dollar A Month Heavy Metal Habit
Posted by Keith Spillett in General Weirdness on April 11, 2012
As rumors of NBA Hall of Famer Dennis Rodman’s possible bankruptcy fill the news, recent court documents have revealed that his collection of heavy metal albums may be a major factor in his current financial crisis. Rodman, who is believed to owe hundreds of thousands of dollars to his ex-wife, apparently averaged spending 1.3 million dollars a month purchasing metal records over the past three years.
Rodman’s mind-boggling collection takes up two-thirds of his Malibu estate. It features a mountain of great metal treasures from original vinyl pressings of Iron Maiden’s “The Soundhouse Tapes” to numbered collectors editions of the first ten Judas Priest albums.
Some experts claim that he overvalued many items and paid ridiculous sums for them. For example, Rodman spent 40,000 dollars on two copies of the recent Morbid Angel IIud Divinum Insanus Wooden Box Set. The set, which included a red 180 gram copy of the record, a leather bound CD edition and two red candles, was valued at 199 dollars. He also spent 130,000 dollars to purchase all six hundred and sixty six copies of the Marduk-Panzer Division Set, valued at 40 dollars per copy.
Rodman was duped into purchasing many “autographed” albums that were fraudulent. For example, Rodman paid 10,000 dollars for a vinyl copy of Anthrax “Among The Living” that was signed by Johnny Belladonna, clearly not the singer from Anthrax. He also paid 30,000 dollars for a copy of Danzig III: How The Gods Kill. The album was autographed by Glen Danzig, a misspelled version of the singer’s name (which has two n’s).
Rodman even purchased European versions of albums that did not actually exist. He paid 800,000 for one of the supposed 12 copies of Dimmu Borgir’s “Morbid Fascist Iconoclast”, a demo that the band was believed to have recorded in 1989 (four years before they were actually formed).
In spite of the problems, Rodman’s collection is still a sight to behold. Imagine a record store with everything from Anacrusis to Znowhite. Rodman has entire rooms dedicated to genres and sub-genres. His NWOBH metal room, complete with life-sized photos of Steve Harris and Rob Halford, is located right down the hallway from his thrash room, which features a stuffed and mounted fake heads of Chuck Billy, Steve “Zetro” Souza, and Nuclear Assault’s John Connelly on the wall.
For a brief stretch, he even had the real Paulo Jr. from Sepultura living in a caged room in near the garage. Paulo was kidnapped by a group of Hamas agents and sold to Rodman for 150,000 dollars. He managed to escape Rodman’s collection by gnawing through the bars when Rodman was on a weekend vacation in the Bahamas.
Rodman did, for a brief moment, consider selling his collection. It is, after all, valued at over 8.7 million dollars and would set him up securely for the rest of his life. But Rodman believed that selling his collection might make him a poser, so he quickly shelved the idea. He has instead, considered selling one or both of his kidneys in order to get himself back on firm financial footing.
Deathtöngue Honored By Imaginary Rock & Roll Hall of Fame
Posted by Carrie Patrick in General Weirdness on April 9, 2012
Bill The Cat (Frontman and Lead Tongue)
Metal fans are rejoicing today as one of the most iconic fictional bands of the 1980s, Deathtöngue, is finally inducted into the Imaginary Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. As pioneers of imaginary metal, Deathtöngue had a lasting influence on non-reality-based musical history.
Based in Bloom County, USA, the band’s lineup featured Bill The Cat on lead tongue, Opus The Penguin on electric tuba, and that guy whose name we can never remember but we think he might have been a woodchuck or a beaver or something. Band manager Steve Dallas wrote most of their music, which included the hit singles “Snail Snot From Satan,” “Demon Drooler of the Sewer,” “Leper Lover,” and “Let’s Run Over Lionel Ritchie With A Tank.” Never afraid of controversy, the band famously one-upped Ozzy Osbourne when, live on stage, Bill The Cat bit the head off a roadie.
Opus (Electric Tuba)
Deathtöngue’s innovative tongue-based sound was never successfully imitated by any other group. “They really paved the way for a lot of modern imaginary metal,” says imaginary fan Mike Wilson, of East Armpit, Alabama. “When you talk about imaginary metal in the ’80s, most people think of the well-known groups like Spinal Tap or Wyld Stallyns, but Deathtöngue was right up there too. Today, we just wouldn’t have ugly obnoxious jerks such as William Murderface [bassist for imaginary metal superstars Dethklok] if Bill The Cat hadn’t been there 25 years before, showering audiences with spittle, hate, and incoherent songs about pus-filled pimples.”
The band broke up in the late ’80s, reformed briefly as Billy And The Boingers, and broke up again after a downward spiral of self-destructive behavior from its tongue player that included reading the Bible and experimenting with politics and televangelism. Attempts to contact any surviving members of the band were unsuccessful.
Steve Dallas (Lawyer, Manager, Songwriter)
The Imaginary Rock & Roll Hall of Fame was built in 2009 to recognize the significant impact of imaginary music on modern society.
“No other single genre has had such a major effect,” said Hall of Fame spokesman Rufus. “In fact, a recent survey of well-known musicians showed that in 100% of cases, their very first musical experiences were in that genre. Whether we’re talking about Eric Clapton’s early performances on a tennis racket while jumping on his bed at the age of seven, or Dave Lombardo shrieking randomly while beating the sides of his highchair with a half-eaten hot dog, all had one thing in common: solid early training in pretending to be the best freakin’ musician ever.”
Rufus said there were numerous challenges in creating the Hall of Fame. “In many cases, because of the imaginary nature of the music, we do not have actual recordings that can be shown to the public,” he said. “But we find that most visitors understand these constraints. One of our most popular recent exhibits was a retrospective of the supergroup Blast Radius, formed in Wales in 1997 by 13-year-old Joey Thomas. As we all know, Blast Radius featured Yngwie Malmsteen, Eddie Van Halen and Randy Rhoads on guitars, Keith Moon on drums, Chewbacca from Star Wars on bass, Rob Halford as backup vocalist, and Joey Thomas himself as lead vocalist.”
“While there is no surviving audio or video of Blast Radius’s performances, we were able to display the band’s logo, which was drawn by Thomas in the margins of his geography homework. It was a tremendously successful exhibit, with all visitors saying they learned a lot about Blast Radius and agreed it was one of the best imaginary bands of all time, especially after Thomas departed the band and was replaced by themselves.”
It Turns Out His Name Was Hodge-Podge And He Was Obviously A Rabbit
The induction of Deathtöngue will be marked by a special exhibit that will include a bottle of Bill The Cat’s verminous cocaine-laced urine, some of Steve Dallas’s hair grease, and a tuba similar to the one played by Opus. All admission fees will be donated to a charity that provides spaceship-themed wheelchairs to disabled veterans.
“The board of trustees of the Imaginary Rock & Roll Hall of Fame extend their warmest congratulations to Deathtöngue on this most excellent occasion,” said Rufus. “As a proud Imaginary-American myself, I am happy to see our nation hosting the world’s greatest repository of music that doesn’t even exist in any meaningful way but would be awesome if it did.”
Guest reporter Carrie Patrick plays both real and imaginary guitar. On the latter instrument, she was recently voted Greatest And Best-Looking Player Of All Time for the 30th consecutive year, by a panel of international experts who live in her head.
Lemmy Has Surgery To Remove Both Livers; Plays Concert That Night
Posted by Keith Spillett in General Weirdness on April 5, 2012
Lemmy On Stage Hours After Liver Removal Surgery
For most people, having one liver removed is a torturous affair that leaves them with months of painful recovery. Yesterday afternoon, Lemmy Kilmister became the first man to ever have both livers removed at the same time. The marathon 6-hour surgery was followed by a half hour of recovery, dinner at a local bar and a 2-hour set of classic Motorhead tunes at The Rock Center, a metal club in downtown Pocatello, Idaho.
Doctors advised Lemmy to take at least three months off from performing, but his commitment to playing heavy metal was too great to hold him back. “I didn’t want to let the fans in Idaho down. After all, what do they really have to live for beyond the occasional concert?” said Lemmy this morning during his 3-hour weightlifting session.
Lemmy is no stranger to overcoming medical emergencies and soldiering on. Everyone is, of course, familiar with the time that in 1983 in Antwerp, Belgium he was mauled on stage by 15 pit bulls and continued to play his bass in spite of missing 9 fingers.
Who could forget the time the Chinese government accidentally detonated a nuclear bomb at a test facility 1,000 meters away from a Motorhead concert in Shanghai in 1988? Everyone within a radius of 12 miles was killed except Lemmy, who went on to play the entire Orgasmatron album from beginning to end to an arena filled with annihilated corpses.
However, because of Lemmy’s advanced age, going on stage after a surgery of this type may be his greatest feat.
Doctors are baffled as to how a man who has done so much damage to his body continues to exist. There were rumors as recently as 2003 that he was killed and replaced by a Lemmy-like robot, but several doctors have done independent tests to prove that he is a human. There was also rampant speculation that Lemmy has regularly been shooting the DNA of famed Russian monk Rasputin directly into his arm in the hopes of becoming indestructible, but this also has not been confirmed.
Some researchers have reasoned that it is possible that consuming the amount of Jack Daniels that he has ingested over his lifetime has actually made his body impervious to harm of any kind. Regardless of what his secret is, it is very possible that Lemmy cannot be destroyed by traditional means and will live on well into the next millennium.
Agnostic Front’s Vinnie Stigma To Publish Children’s Book Called “I Thought You Were My Friend”
Posted by Keith Spillett in General Weirdness on April 4, 2012
Vinnie Stigma has been many things in his long and intriguing life. The enigmatic guitar player from Agnostic Front has been an actor in the hit film New York Blood, a professional stunt car driver and even the Secretary of Agriculture in the state of Oklahoma for a short time in the 90s. However, few people expected his recent career change. Stigma has become a renowned children’s author.
“You know, I was thinkin’ about how stupid kids are today with all of the hugging and sharing nonsense they get in the schools. I want to rap them upside the head with a newspaper and say ‘What’s a matter with you?’ So, I wrote this book to help them not be so freakin’ dumb. Teach’em some stuff that could make them so they don’t get their skulls smashed in everyday and whatnot,” said Stigma on the steps of his Brooklyn townhouse.
The book, which is the story of five streetwise but cuddly rabbits from Coney Island, takes place on the seedy streets of New York after dark. The rabbits are drawn to a convention of animals that takes place in the Bronx where they discuss a truce between all the other animals in the city. However, after the wise fox named Cyrus who called the meeting is gunned down, the Rabbits are pursued by the other animals who believe they killed him.
Most of the story centers on their journey back to Coney Island and their battles with rival groups of animals for survival. The climax of the book is an all out fight between the rabbits and the rats out on Coney Island Beach. Reviewers are already excited about the book, comparing his work to early Dr. Seuss and Shel Silverstein.
“Stigma has written a beautiful parable for the ages,” remarked noted New York Times critic Dwight Garner, “he captures all of the magic and beauty that children experience when hitting another child in the head with a tire iron for the first time.”
James Wood, book reviewer for The New Yorker, was even more effusive in his praise.
“Young people today are just too soft,” wrote Wood, “this book teaches them important life skills like how to hotwire a car and how to make a Molotov cocktail. Things that our liberalized school systems have omitted from their curriculums in the name of political correctness.”
“I Thought You Were My Friend” is intended for children 3 to 7 and includes pop-up police snakes along with scratch and sniff sewers and subway cars. However, Stigma believes the book will resonate with everyone, from toddlers to adults.
“Wanting to beat and maim someone because they are in your way is a simple human characteristic,” said Stigma. “If adults don’t read this book, fine. I’ll go to their house, put my knee into their chest and read it to them. People need to understand that this book has an important and timeless message and if I have to give a beating to every single American to get the message across, that’s what I’m going to do.”
Queensryche Hits Snag With New “Operation: Mimecrime” Album
Posted by Keith Spillett in General Weirdness on March 30, 2012
Don’t expect to be hearing anything from mimes anytime soon. Queensryche’s long awaited album Operation: Mimecrime, the third in the Mindcrime trilogy, has been put on indefinite hold after Queenryche was unable to get the troupe of mimes that they hired to do anything but pretend they were trapped in boxes. “We had a whole concept where the mimes were going to sing on the record,” said Queensryche vocalist Geoff Tate. “Come to find out, that violates some portion of their professional code or something. Not cool at all.”
Mimecrime was meant to pick up where Mindcrime 2 left off. Nikki, who killed himself at the end of the second album, is revived by a voodoo mime priest named Ralph in a bizarre ritual involving Santeria and the first two Venom albums. Since Nikki’s death, Dr. X’s son Dr. Y has been causing havoc in the United States by using a group of hired mime terrorists to kidnap politicians and force radio DJs to play that terrible LMFAO song on their stations at gunpoint.
Ralph explains to Nikki that he must become a mime and infiltrate this group in order to stop the madness. He then goes through a training sequence similar to the one in the first Karate Kid film where he learns the nuances of miming. He also learns The Mime Code, which stipulates that a true Mime will always seek to behave honorably and never, under any circumstances make balloon animals.
He finally is able to join the mime cell, but soon becomes addicted to mime heroin, an invisible substance that causes euphoria, addiction and the need to pull on a pretend rope. Eventually, Nikki finds himself committing mime atrocities and enjoying them. This leads to a powerful ending where Nikki is forced to look at himself and confront what lies beneath the white face paint while singing the song “Mime In The Mirror”.
The album would have featured several new compositions including “I Don’t Believe in Gloves”, a song about how the traditions of miming require white gloves, but younger more modern mimes tend to not want to wear anything on their hands. The album had called for an ironic version of “Speak” that would have been sung in Braille. Their were also plans to re-record a stirring, climactic version of “Breaking The Silence” where the mimes begin the song with their fingers and finish with their voices.
The album was meant to capitalize on the recent mimecore trend where metal, industrial and punk bands dress as mimes and perform heavy music. Mimer Threat and Mimeless Self Indulgence have both charted on Billboards Top 200 list with mimecore records. Industrial bands Mime Inch Nails and Mimestry recorded a split 7 inch called “A Mime Is A Terrible Thing To Taste” which has become a huge hit in Burma and Turkmenistan. Black metal band Mime Furor has gone so far as to record 45 minutes of blank space calling it the first “Tr00 Mimec0re Album”. Unfortunately however, Queensryche’s foray into mimecore may never hear the light of day.
MTV to Manowar: “We’re Sorry About All The False Metal”
Posted by Keith Spillett in General Weirdness on March 27, 2012
In an unexpected move, MTV and their parent company Viacom today issued an apology to the metal band Manowar for what they referred to as “crimes against true heavy metal”. Kurt Jamerson, MTV’s Vice President of the Council on Metalhead Affairs, issued a short statement thanking Manowar for their commitment to “keeping it real” all these years and refusing to play on anything below 10.
“At first, MTV started with the best intentions, but soon, our programming became a hodgepodge of hair metal and, eventually, rap metal. We left no room for artists who were committed to true metal in its most pure, unsullied form. For this, we are deeply sorry.”
While MTV did acknowledge that it had shows like Headbanger’s Ball where some true metal was played it admitted that for every one true metal song they played viewers would see “Talk Dirty To Me” by Poison or “Cherry Pie” by Warrant over a thousand times. According to statistics revealed by MTV, the network’s true to false metal ratio was as high as 1 to 100,000, an unacceptable number for a network who prides itself on being on the cutting edge of music. After years of extensive lobbying by Manowar, the network has admitted its mistake.
In the press conference following the announcement, Jamerson, who has been with the network for 24 years recalled “I remember getting a letter from Manowar. The one they talk about in the song Blow Your Speakers. It was a sheet of paper that had the words ‘What’s going on, man. Don’t you care about me’ scrawled on it in barely legible handwriting. Below it was a childlike drawing of Thor driving his hammer into the head of Vince Neil. I was deeply touched by the words and picture. I realized that, as a network, we’d been playing on about 7. That day, I swore an oath to one day get the network to admit its faults.”
MTV has no plans to follow the announcement by adding more true metal to their programming. Instead, they announced in the same press conference that they plan on extending the series Jersey Shore to a 9th season. Jersey Shore, along with several other programs featuring highly intoxicated, perplexed looking white kids wearing their pants too low, currently comprise 20 of the network’s 24 hours of daily programming.
Many industry analysts have speculated that the announcement was part of a settlement with Manowar. The band had brought a 523 billion dollar lawsuit against the network for being “posers”, but the lawsuit was unexpectedly dropped last Friday. During the press conference, MTV offered each member of Manowar a Whitman’s Sampler, but there is no evidence that money changed hands.
The True Metal Reparations Movement, created by Manowar to heal historical injustices against the armies of true metal, still claims to be at war with most of the major rock radio stations in America for being “losers who better learn that no one controls our goddamn lives.”
Whatever the outcome of the trial, Manowar have vowed to not stop until the armies of true metal triumph over the years of historical oppression. “When Odin is in the Valley of Doom and Slepnir rides across the starry, blood filled skies, those who did not sell out and wear polyester suits or other crackerjack clothes will be redeemed,” read bassist Joey Demaio’s lawyer, Abraham Freidman, in a written statement given at the MTV press event. “No one can tell us that we must turn down…..NO ONE. No one can tell us that we do not control the night……NO ONE. We are the immortals. We have won a great victory for metal that is real today. Tomorrow, we conquer the world!”
Dave Lombardo Has Additional Arms Added To Keep Up With Younger Drummers
Posted by Keith Spillett in General Weirdness on March 26, 2012
Dave Lombardo Today
Eventually, Father Time catches up with us all. Former Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo was once thought to be the undisputed greatest metal drummer on earth. Scores of adolescents spent many a Saturday night watching Headbangers Ball and air drumming his fills from the beginning of “Seasons in The Abyss”. Nearly every great young drummer used to be called “the next Dave Lombardo”. Then, at some point, the world caught up with him.
“Some of the new wave of drummers are just quicker today. They have taken my style and improved it with a youthful energy that it’s hard for a 47-year-old to match. I needed something to get my edge back,” said Lombardo last night in an exclusive Tyranny of Tradition interview. What Lombardo did was both amazing and terrifying. In a first of its kind surgery, Lombardo had two additional arms added to his body. The arms are functional and just as useful as the two he was born with.
The possibilities for Lombardo are now nearly endless. His drumming style will most certainly take on a uniqueness that the metal world has never thought possible. He will also probably become an amazing juggler and will be able to put away groceries with the speed and dexterity his family has never seen. But, the deeper ethical concerns about a drummer being able to add limbs was the talk of the metal world after Lombardo’s announcement.
“It’s not right that someone can just have limbs added to be a better drummer,” said Battleax Kidneystone, drummer from the death metal band Malignant Pancreas. “If a major league baseball player added extra legs to run faster there is no way they’d let him play.”
Others, like Chainsaw Bloodcolon, from the band Carpathian Impetigo Sore, were less concerned. “If he wants to run around the rest of his life looking like a freak, I say, let him. I’m sticking with the two arms that Satan gave me.”
Still, Gene Hoglan, the recently named Commissioner of Metal Drumming, is looking into whether Lombardo should be allowed to play for Slayer on their next tour. Hoglan, who recently ruled that performance enhancing drugs like beer, crack and Moon Pies were allowed for drummers, is faced with an even more challenging issue here.
Some argue that this could lead to a slippery slope where drummers will have more and more arms added to be competitive. Imagine if Sean Reinert from Cynic decided he was going to add 10 arms and 14 legs. Dream Theater would take Mike Portnoy back in a second if he showed up with no less than 100 additional limbs. The next phase would be guitarists having additional fingers and singers having additional mouths with separate voice boxes. Think of how many strings a djent guitarist could put on his instrument if he had 52 fingers to play with. It is possible that if Hoglan allows Lombardo to keep his additional arms, the metal scene in five years will be indistinguishable from a circus sideshow.
However, if Hoglan rules against Lombardo, the case will surely end up in court. As most legal scholars know, the 2nd Amendment to The Constitution guarantees the right to bear arms. “The founding fathers wanted us to have life, liberty and the pursuit of additional limbs, otherwise they wouldn’t have written it down. Besides, what is more American than using technology to grab every possible competitive advantage over others,” said Lombardo. “Being a highly successful four-armed mutant is, in many ways, the American Dream.”
The Tyranny of Tradition 