An Uninterview With A Heavy Metal Band Called Allegaeon Who Is Very Good I Like Them
Posted by Keith Spillett 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 by Keith Spillett 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 by Keith Spillett 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 by Keith Spillett 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 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.
Is Metallica’s “Kill’em All” A Fake?
Posted by Keith Spillett 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?
Paul Stanley To Rock Hall Of Fame: “We Can’t Believe One Stupid Gimmick Got Us This Far”
Posted by Keith Spillett in Excessive Cruelty Towards Strangers on April 13, 2014
Paul Hates Us All
Friday night’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony certainly did not go as planned. The all-star gala turned into a near riot when Kiss guitarist Paul Stanley announced to the capacity crowd that he wanted to thank “all the morons who shelled out millions of dollars on our worthless toys and mindlessly dull records.” He continued, “if it weren’t for you people being dumb as a pail of hammers, I’d have never been able to afford all of the cars, drugs and mansions I’ve bought over the years with money that could have been used on things that actually might have bettered your lives.”
Stanley then reminisced about the early days of Kiss. “Jesus, I remember wasting nights with Gene playing god awful music at half empty dive bars in New York City back in the 70s. We both couldn’t play a lick, but we figured being in a band would be a good way to meet chicks. One night he looked at me and was like ‘Paul…I got it! Makeup!’ Next thing we know, you lemmings are plunking down hundreds of dollars just to get your hands on a Kiss lunchbox.”
As the audience began throwing ten-dollar bottles of Dasani water at the stage, Stanley continued to belittle the crowd. “Seriously, none of us are good at anything but marketing. In terms of actual artistic ability, the only thing Gene ever did that was worthwhile was that stupid movie where the robot spiders tried to kill Tom Selleck. Peter Criss is barely bright enough to lace up his own shoes, but he’s made something north of the Gross National Product of Luxembourg by doing nothing more than wearing kitten makeup. None of us can even read music.”
“In America, all you have to know how to do is get the suckers excited about something then….boom….you have a yacht. Mencken sure as hell was right when he said ‘No one ever went broke underestimating the American public’. We are the Cabbage Patch Kids of Heavy Metal…and you fools don’t even realize it.”
At that point, Ace Frehely tried to wrestle Stanley away from the microphone, but Stanley knocked him to the ground with a vicious roundhouse left. “Get away from me, Ace…it’s time we told these poor deluded bastards the truth!”
“We laugh at you people! All the time! It’s too damn easy. We howl for hours at all of these music school prodigy types who waste their lives learning to play musical instruments. Have fun playing in front of a bunch of poet socialist college professors and nine dollar an hour baristas at Open Mic Tuesdays over at your local Starbucks. I’m a little busy…you know…meeting with my accountants, buying new Ferraris and investing in strip mining ventures in the Congo to even bother learning how to tune my guitar.”
Stanley concluded his speech over a wild crescendo of booing and screaming with these words…“I originally wanted to end tonight’s ceremony by telling you that our induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is a victory for mediocrity. The truth is…that would be an insult to mediocre people everywhere.”
“This great moment is a product of two factors. Our being lucky enough to be the first ones to come up with this stupid gimmick and your need to be part some asinine communal consumer experience that you can share with the rest of the witless sheep around you. We have created nothing of value and have been rewarded for this with barrels upon barrels of money. Thank you to the Hall for recognizing our musical con artistry and all of the dumb animals out there who gave us so much for so little. If it weren’t for you, we’d still be broke. Thanks!”
Great Moments In Metal History: Jason Newsted Invents The No-String Bass
Posted by Keith Spillett in Excessive Cruelty Towards Strangers on April 8, 2014
In 1988, Metallica released their seminal album “…And Justice For All”. Beyond being one of the top selling metal albums of all-time it featured the debut of their new bassist Jason Newsted. Newsted took over for the late Cliff Burton who was considered one of the finest metal bass players on the planet.
The band selected Newsted out of a pool of thousands of candidates including jazz legend Victor Wooten, Primus front man Les Claypool and Egyptian Prime Minister Hosni Mubarak. Newsted, who was never really considered much of musician, was selected for his very metal looking hair and menacing scowl. Following Cliff Burton was a challenge for a guy who only recently had learned to use both hands when playing the instrument. How would Jason replace this legendary metal figure?
Instead of running away from this daunting task, Newsted devised a strategy before the “…And Justice” sessions that would forever change metal bass playing. He simply removed the strings from the instrument. “We knew he had no idea what to do with the bass,” said noted producer Bob Rock. “He’s right-handed and would pick the thing up like he was a lefty. We were really nervous. Then, Jason showed up with the bass with no strings and Lars was like ‘Hell yeah, man!’ The rest is history.”
The invisible playing that Newsted performed on “…And Justice” is some of the most memorable non-playing in the history of the genre. Who could forget the fabulous non-bassline in Dyers’ Eve? Or the complex non-bass solo before the fade up at the beginning of Eye of The Beholder? By simply standing there pantomiming what an actual bass player would do, Jason helped create one of the most important albums in the last 30 years.
Newsted abandoned the no-string bass on later albums. This proved to be a career-destroying mistake. James and Lars called a closed door meeting with Jason and broke the news to him. “I told him ‘Jason, we simply can’t grow as a band if you continue to insist on playing actual basslines. It’s just not your strength. Maybe it’s time for you to move on.’ Besides the “little Danish friend” talk with Dave Mustaine in the movie “Some Kind of Monster”, it was the most difficult conversation I’ve ever had,” said a teary-eyed Lars Ulrich as he casually glanced at his watch.
Newsted tried to bring back the “no string” style on a solo album called “The Sound of No Noise”. He was accompanied by two no string guitarists, a drummer with no sticks and a mute vocalist. The album sold less than 300 copies. Newsted picked up studio work with several well-known bands, playing several times in the silent space between the last song on the album and the hidden track.
Today, Jason is a manager at a Herman’s Sporting Goods store in Bayonne, New Jersey. He doesn’t talk often talk about the time he spent in Metallica. Recently, he’s toyed with the concept of doing a ragtime album using a piano with no keys, but his musician days are probably behind him. He has no regrets about his life on the road with the band, but he is clear that his getting paid a lot of money for looking like he belonged in Metallica days are behind him. “There just isn’t much of a market for a bass player who doesn’t know how to play bass,” said Newsted as he calmly stacked boxes of Reebok sneakers on top of one another. “Honestly, in heavy metal, untalented, tone-deaf bass players are a dime a dozen.”
Otep To Re-Release Classic “Blackwater Park” Album in July
Posted by Keith Spillett in General Weirdness on April 7, 2014
Next month, Oscar nominated artists Otep plan to re-release the album that redefined the boundaries of progressive metal, “Blackwater Park”. The band, which is named after the Greek Sun god Otep, has become one of the top selling metal acts in world since the album’s release in 1983.
The band’s lead singer Otep Night Shyamalan, a noted thespian and director of the popular film “The Sixth Sense”, has become extremely well known for her outspoken political views. Her strong opinions have made her an important figure both in and out of the world of heavy metal. She was a noted speaker at the Republican National Convention back in 2008 and was cited several times by then-Vice Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin as “a positive voice for values and the traditional American way of life” during campaign speeches.
This summer Otep will be headlining the Mayhem Tour. Bassist Mikael Akerfeldt has hinted that the band plans to play their seminal “Rust In Peace” album from beginning to end on several tour dates, but has not indicated which ones. During a recent concert in Antarctica, the band went back to their roots and played several songs off of their first album “Show No Mercy”.
The band’s well-known singer Oprah Shamaya, whose Grammy winning television talk show went off the air back in 2011, recently issued a controversial tweet on MySpace where she called into question “fake news sites” like Tyranny of Tradition and cnn.com. In the tweets, she referred to herself as a “cultural arsonist” and threatened to set mimes on fire. Our reporters contacted several mimes that refused comment.
While the mimes have been silent on this issue, a representative from the heavy metal rock band Slayer indicated that everything that has been written in this article is completely untrue. “Anyone who knows Slayer knows that none of the members of the band Otep would even THINK about protesting the funeral of former Yankees and Mariners first baseman Ken Phelps,” said Slayer publicist and PMRC spokesperson Josephine McCarthy.
Pastor Ken Phelps Only Moments Before Tyranny of Tradition Made Up Lies About him
The Sick Among The Purell
Posted by Keith Spillett in The Poetry of Death on April 3, 2014
“I have so many selves, I cannot contain them all” –Kobo Abe
Never enough hand sanitizer
Bottles and bottles everywhere
But not a drop to drink
A bathtub filled with antiseptic
For the terminally dyspeptic
And still not enough to drown in
Never enough hand sanitizer
To kill the sin of germs
To kill the pain of waking
To kill the dissonance and consonance
Of everyday hell
Never enough hand sanitizer
To sting the wound into unbeing
All factors beyond the control
Of those who wish to vanquish
And be vanquished
Never enough hand sanitizer
To ebb the fatal tide
As the mass of men lead lives of desolate calculation
Never to emerge from slumber
Even in our waking nightmare
The Tyranny of Tradition 