Posts Tagged Asking Alexandria
The Guy From Universe Number Five Has Hobbit Feet
Posted by Keith Spillett in People Who Were Willing To Speak To Me on May 31, 2013
As I was walking to Walgreens on Friday, a carrier pigeon with seven wings landed on my shoulder. I opened the message in its talons and it summoned me to a cave 52 miles outside of Provo, Utah. I immediately ran to my car, sped to the airport and bought a ridiculously priced ticket for Provo on a plane leaving in 35 minutes. After all, this sort of thing had never happened to me before.
The message read simply “The Guy From Universe Number Five Has Summoned You”. Then, it gave me the coordinates. That was all.
When I arrived in Provo, I stole a car out of the long term parking lot (2009 Ford Focus…the thing handles like a dream) and drove about 120 miles per hour to get to the cave. I arrived five minutes later with the hoof of a deer in the car’s front grill and a look of complete panic on my face.
When I entered the cave, I encountered a beast like I had never seen before. It had 47 horns and 22 tails. Fire shot from its gills.
“Are you…..Grimlock Von Myxlplyx?” I asked shyly.
“GRRR4AGDR7WHWY#U+=Y#U??!#?&#YG$#Y!#%#%aHB!#UJN$@NTR,” it responded.
And the interview began….
Grimlock…..where is Universe Number Five located?
A question a child might ask, but not a childish question. First, one has to look within themselves to determine where Universe Number Five is NOT. Then, after one has verified proof that a certain point is NOT Universe Number Five, one must accept that everything else is Universe Number Five. Up to and including this. And that.
What is your Universes current relationship with Universe Number 14?
Being that Universe Number 14 is part of Universe Number Five, I treat it in much the same manner the band Dead Horse would treat the Spice Girls. Even though there is a perceived separation, one can’t escape that beyond the illusion it is one and the same. And neither. While both.
What is the relationship between spirituality and metal?
If you cannot enter a deep meditation while listening to Gore Beyond Necropsy or Exit-13, you are simply not trying hard enough. When metal isn’t tried hard enough, you get bands like Asking Alexandria, Pantera and Black Veil Brides. When spirituality isn’t tried hard enough, you get religious zealots who want to manipulate the social structure of society or groups of easily misled young men willing to blow themselves up to further a cause that would ultimately seek to suck the life from humanity. When both are merged and utilized to their maximum potential in our everyday lives however, we can do a myriad of wonderful things, up to and including drinking coffee and eating fried chicken. That, my friend, is Mu. That, my friend, is Enlightenment.
I’ve heard you and the DRI mascot had a falling out. Can you tell us a little bit about what started the feud? Is there any chance of reconciliation?
If I were a lesser man, I’d blame Wendy Moncrief. However, I believe in accountability. Foremost, I should never have assumed that he was without emotion and basic human feelings when I reported his survival of the building fire. While I’m glad that he didn’t become a victim of a Righteous Pigs song, I was very callous in the way I handled the conversation with him. Plus, he’s Bobby Gustafson’s friend. For that he deserves a hug and some understanding.
If you were trapped on an island with one Incantation album for the rest of your life, which would it be?
If it can’t be their entire discography slammed into an mp3 CD, then with apologies to “Onward To Golgotha” and “Diabolical Conquest”, I’d have to select “Make It Big”.
If you were trapped on an island with Incantation what album would you listen to first?
I wonder if they’d play “Make It Big” in its entirety. Kinda like the “Mindcrime” tour… Just play “M.I.B.” followed by an assortment from their other albums. Hell, they could even do it unplugged if they had to. Ukeleles, Hawaiian style. “Oahu To Golgotha” Tour 2013, get your T-shirts! Get your programs!
If you were trapped in the belly of a giant narwhal all with the former members of Sepultura what would you listen to first?
Oh, that’s easy. I’d listen to something Wu-Tang-y like Sarcofago’s “I.N.R.I.” I figure if anything will get the Seps back to their roots (bloody or otherwise) it’d be that. Perhaps it would wake them from their coma or whatever malaise they’ve obviously been going through for the last 20 years.
According to Congressman and former Obituary saxophonist Allen West, one of the main reasons he lost in his bid to become President of Florida was because of the Universe Number Five article claiming he was made of gorgonzola cheese. How do you respond to these charges?
First of all, I stand firmly behind the reporting of my sources. If Source X says that West is Gorgonzola, then it’s true. Look, this is Florida. The strangest things in the entire universe happen in this state on a daily basis. So bizarre are we, in fact, that the West/Gorgonzola news wasn’t even newsworthy enough to make the papers that day. It was seriously news item #1,178 the day it broke.
What was your first reaction when you realized that Ice Cube was doing children’s films?
I was stoked, actually! The carbon-based electro-soul that represents itself to humanity as Ice Cube is a multifaceted being. People like to label him as the guy who made some of the greatest hip-hop albums of all-time. While, of course, that is true, he’s not to be pigeonholed. He is a rapper, an actor, an activist, a soccer mom, a balloon enthusiast, a kangaroo caretaker, the tuba player on Opeth’s “Blackwater Park” album, an electrician, an electric eel, eclectically ill, and has a license to chill. Respect.
What’s your opinion on consonants?
As a Scrabble player, I love them. Especially ‘Q’. Until I started playing Scrabble, I didn’t know that “Qi”, “Qat”, and “Suq” were actual words. Now they are straight up weapons of word game assassination. Also, when you experience getting “Quixotic” in a triple word score box, everything, including the Tampa Bay Buccaneers winning another Super Bowl, pales in comparison.
Who is your favorite Black Sabbath singer Tony Martin, Ian Gillian or Leopold Stokowski?
It troubles me that you neglected to include Jeff Fenholt here. Fenholt has a resume that would make George O’Leary proud. According to his autobiography, he was once a full time vocalist for Black Sabbath during the 80’s. He even wrote of tales of drugs, abuse, debauchery, etc. Why? To further his televangelism career, according to his siblings. He wanted to sound as awful as possible so as to make his redemption seem more impressive. Once it came to light that the dude was at least semi-fraudulent, Trinity Broadcasting Network fired him, or at least kinda started neglecting him. In reality though, he was romantically linked to Salvador Dali’s wife in her last days. That is much more impressive than singing for Black Sabbath. Think about it, anyone could sing for Sabbath, heck they let Ozzy do it. However, scoring with the wife of the greatest artist of the last 200 years?? THAT is metal!
In closing, thanks Keith. When I grow up, I wanna wear your shoes. Also, if you don’t own “Testimony Of The Ancients” by Pestilence, I’ll pray for your lost soul. And stuff. Read the “Boomer Bible”. Tip your waitresses… over. Out!
If you haven’t been to Universe Number Five, you’ll end up there eventually. So…why wait?
Exclusive: The Secret CIA Plot To Break Up Slayer
Posted by Keith Spillett in Pointyheaded Highbrow Stuff, The Politics Of Catastrophe on March 6, 2013
The note under my door said “Meet at 3 AM in the parking garage behind the Waffle House.” I’d received notes like this before and, usually, they either led to great information or some guy in nothing but a trenchcoat asking me if I wanted to hold hands and whisper Carpenters lyrics into each other’s ears. Typically, these messages came from my high level contact in the CIA, a man who will only let me refer to him in public as Deep Thrombosis. He’s worked in The Company for many years and has put me onto some of the bigger stories Tyranny of Tradition has broken. He was the guy who tipped me off to Obama’s drumming on the first Overkill album and Nixon’s plot to assassinate the members of Black Sabbath.
I knew that a night meeting with Deep Thrombosis could be the thing that gets me that Pulitzer Prize I’ve been coveting all these years or even a date with The Great Kat. However, I was not prepared for the monumental significance of what he was about to tell me.
“Tonight, we are going to pull back the curtain,” whispered Deep Thrombosis while his shifty, beady eyes darted from side to side. “The information I’m about to give you could bring down the whole circus. If you print it, be warned, there is a good chance you will end up having a ‘boating accident’ or accidently hanging yourself while trying to install a garage door opener. And for godsakes, if you print this, you need to promise not to mention you got it from a source in the CIA! They’ll be able to track it back to me.”
“I will absolutely not mention how I got this information,” I told my CIA source. “I swear it!”
He proceeded to tell me the most outlandish story I had ever heard. A story of violence, intrigue and a CIA so out of control that it would go so far as to break up one of the great thrash metal groups of our time.
“The Company had heard some rumors that the next Slayer album was going to be all about drone strikes on Al-Queda bases. The thing was going to be called “South of Reason”. Typical longhaired hippie liberal propaganda. We’d have let Limbaugh handle them except they were going to reveal potential bombing coordinates, out some of our higher level agents, and really turn the metalhead public against the whole ‘secret murder of civilians who have had no trial’ thing. We couldn’t let it happen. So we took action.”
“The first part of the plan was to kidnap Kerry King and replace him with an actor who resembled Kerry King. We have a guy who has done some jobs with us in the past who was a dead ringer for King, a sort of grubby, misshapen fellow who slightly resembled a poorly shaven yeti. We scooped up the real Kerry and threw him into Guantanamo and told the guards he was actually Osama Bin Laden’s masseuse and to ‘not torture him’ until he gave us any information on the whereabouts of the secret terrorist training camps in Iceland.”
“The guy we are using as Kerry almost gave the thing away during the first show. He played three or four really great solos, which confused the audience. Luckily, one of our agents got ahold of him and told him to haphazardly move his whammy bar around really fast when it was his turn to solo and no one would know the difference. Things went fine after that.”
“We slipped a mind-altering substance into one of Araya’s drinks and, through the power of suggestion, convinced him to start listening to Asking Alexandria. We figured this would jam up any creativity that was flowing through his head. Then, we gave a copy of the band’s financial information to Lombardo. The rest is history.”
“It was our best work since we got rid of Mossedegh in Iran in ’53. Or Arbenz in Guatemala in ’54. Or Allende in Chile in ’73. Or….well, you get the point.”
“The thing is, I’ve begun to realize that this sort of thing is dangerous. After all, if the CIA can destroy Slayer or overthrow the government of a foreign country or randomly kill civilians who happened to be in the same vicinity as people we believe to be terrorists without the consent of the American people, then what is the point of even calling our country a democracy.”
“I started thinking of what a soulless, unaccountable beast like the CIA could do if it really put its mind to it. Forcing Exodus to do a ska album? Getting Testament to hire Michael Bolton as their lead singer? Letting Janick Gers write all the songs on the next Maiden record? The possibilities were too horrible to consider.”
“So, I have chosen you to help put a stop to this. Publish this article tomorrow and remind America that in a democracy, the government needs to be accountable to the people or else they have ceased being a democracy. That transparency is the only thing that can keep us from becoming a nation capable of any atrocity in the name of opening new markets and exploiting new sources of human capital. That America should stand for something greater than the principal of bending other, weaker nations to our will. And that Slayer should start writing stuff that sounds more like it did before Divine Intervention, because honestly, the new stuff hasn’t been all that impressive. Except for God Hates Us All. That was pretty cool.”
I heard the sound of a car door slam in the corner of the garage and turned to look at it. When I looked back, Deep Thrombosis was gone.
The Tyranny of Tradition 
