Posts Tagged dave mustaine
Setting The Record Straight: The Truth Behind Five Popular Heavy Metal Stories
Posted by Keith Spillett in Totally Useless Information on January 13, 2014
Often at this website, we are accused of fabricating stories or writing “joke news” articles. While we consider this sort of attack on our jurnalizmcore integrity to be unfounded and patently absurd, we are willing to admit that there is a good deal of fake news out there parading as truth. Tyranny of Tradition’s staff of over 500 reporters, 700 editors and 3,000 fact checkers constantly strive to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The same cannot be said for many of the best-known acts in heavy metal.
The truth is that many of the most memorable stories in metal history are just that, stories. Nothing more than creations of either the artist or the record label in order to drum up attention for the band. Here are a few of the most famous myths in heavy metal history unmasked once and for all.
Myth #1: Dio Invented The Heavy Metal Horns Up Hand Symbol In Praise of The Devil
For a myth to be effective, it often has to have a shred of truth in it. While it is true that Dio first used and popularized the symbol, it was not invented as the shout out to Satan that most people think. While Dio was touring with the band Elf in 1972, the band visited Canberra, Australia. While there, he was performing in front of a crowd filled with mostly deaf aborigines.
During the first song, many in the crowd realized that Dio’s fly was unzipped. The symbol in Aboriginal Sign Language for “your fly is down” is the horns hand gesture. Hundreds of people began flashing the sign to Dio, who, thinking it was a spontaneous show of enthusiasm for his music, began flashing it back. Finally, he realized why they were doing it and took care of the embarrassing situation. However, he was so impressed by the sea of horns up hand signs, he began incorporating it into his stage act. Satan had nothing to do with it.
Myth #2 Suicidal Tendencies Singer Mike Muir Is A Jehovah’s Witness
We are often astonished at how many people in our culture are members of this religious movement. From Prince to Venus and Serena Williams to Abbath, there are many recognizable cultural icons that you wouldn’t think are Jehovah’s Witnesses but are. Some, like Abbath, even still go door to door preaching The Word. Mike Muir, however, is not one.
An article appeared 3 years ago in USA Today about the religions history in which Muir was described as an active member of the faith. The reporter confused Mike Muir from Suicidal Tendencies with Mike Muir, a carpenter from San Luis Obispo, California. Don’t expect Cyco Miko to come a’knocking at your door anytime soon.
Myth #3 Dave Mustaine Was Once in Metallica
In many ways, this is truly The Great Rock’N’Roll Swindle. It started as a joke between friends Lars Ulrich and Dave Mustaine. The two concocted a pretend feud centered on a made up story about Mustaine being kicked out of Metallica. This was completely untrue. Over the years, the joke has gotten somewhat out of control with Mustaine going so far as to put a song exactly like a Metallica song on a Megadeth album (Mechanix, a direct copy of The Four Horseman) and several doctored photos and videos of Mustaine with Metallica floating around on the internet. Things really reached a ridiculous level in 2004 when Ulrich and Mustaine created the hysterical “little Danish friend” scene in the Spinal Tap sequel known as “Some Kind of Monster”.
Myth #4 Happy Days Actor Scott Baio Was The Original Drummer For Slayer
This is yet another in a series of examples of how, as Mark Twain once said, “A heavy metal lie can go halfway around the world before the truth can put on it’s combat boots”. Scott Baio, known for his work on sitcoms “Happy Days” and “Charles In Charge”, was linked to the band on several websites earlier this year including a Facebook site called “I Bet I Can Get A Million Lithuanians To Tell Kerry King To Let Scott Baio Back In Slayer.” The rumor, as strange as it sounds, wasn’t all that far from the truth. Baio is, in fact, a die-hard metal head and played drums briefly in the 80s thrash band Forbidden, but was never in Slayer.
Myth #5 Cronos is The Uncle of British Princess Kate Middleton
This ridiculous, unfounded rumor was circulated around the Internet by some 3rd rate metal Onion site. Why an Onion would be made out of metal is beside the point. Typically, Mother Nature is capable of producing both metals and vegetables, but rarely has she seen fit to create a hybrid of the two. And what would be the point of such a vegetable?
Anyway, this rumor got so out of control that the Royal Family was forced to issue denials and actually barred the writer from ever visiting England. But, he was not planning on going there anyway, because he had heard that British people eat fish and chips off of newspaper. Which is disgusting.
2013: Year of The Hideous Baby Name
Posted by ndreaj in Excessive Cruelty Towards Strangers on January 1, 2014
One of the hideous, terrible truths about parenting is that with one stroke of the pen you are capable of sentencing a child to a lifetime of cringing every time attendance gets read aloud in a classroom and cowering sheepishly while handing in job applications. Marshall McLuhan once said “a name is a numbing blow from which a man never recovers.” In the case of many of the names dropped on poor, unsuspecting infants this year, one would expect them barely able to walk by the time they are 35. 2013 was a year that famous parents sentenced their children to name based humiliation at a near record pace.
In any society that valued justice or decency, parents who name their kids things like Type Two Diabetes or Pusillanimous would be rounded up and caned in the public square. Do celebrities really need more attention than they already get? By giving their babies ridiculous names, not only are they garnering more attention in the media for themselves, they are also dooming their child to a lifetime of recognition as a psuedo-celebrity that will never be taken seriously.
Honestly, would you go see a gynecologist named Respektdakrew Smith, OBGyN? Or a lawyer named Heavenly Flowing Lava Monster Bison-Lipton, Attorney at Law? Probably not. These unfortunate kids will have to live off of reality TV and royalties from tell all novels about their parents eating the flesh of homeless people at Hollywood parties.
The other problem with celebrity baby names is that they create a culture in which lesser celebrities copy their unfathomable taste, thereby creating, if you can believe it, even worse names. In any given year you will see themed clusters of baby names around, say, like automobiles, or intestinal parts. The following is a brief year-in-review of the worst names of 2013.
First there was Everest Hobson, (girl), born to George & Mellody Lucas. While the original name was not so bad, the names that followed in the theme of mountains seemed to lose their charm with each new birth. This May, Charlie Day and Elizabeth Ellis named their newborn daughter Matterhorn Lucas. Not to be outdone, Mark Duplas and Katie Aselton names their son baby Titicaca. Finally the anchor from Channel 2 News in Chicago upped the ante on mountain baby names and ended the trend when he dealt the punishing blow by bestowing the name K2 on his baby girl.
Bear Winslet, Kate Winslet & Ned Rocknroll’s son, popped out of the womb with a machete and a flint, ready to spend the night inside a dead camel for survival. This name was silly enough, but this sparked Lauren Parsekian to name her daughter Pink Fairy (a type of armadillo). The animal names continued with Jason Sudeikis and Olivia Wilde calling their son Parastratiosphecomyiastratiosphecomyioides. But the worst animal name goes to Sacha Baren Cohen and Isla Fisher who named their twin daughters Embarrassment and Panda. An embarrassment is the technical term for a group of pandas, and is also what these parents should be feeling about their naming abilities.
More embarrassment arrived with the naming of Emile Hirsch’s son, Valor, who was obviously showing noble characteristics when he escaped the womb while screaming bloody murder with tears rolling down his cheeks. Other notable but flawed character trait baby names this past year include Joanna Newsom’s daughter Fanatical and Will and Jada Pinkett Smith’s son, Vacuous.
Even heavy metal, whose artists once went out of their way to avoid mainstream trends, have gotten into the fray. Dave and Madolyn Mustaine named their newest daughter Psychotron. Venom frontman Cronos and his wife, television star Fran Drescher, brought young Ayatollah Khomeini Lant into being last month. Slayer axe man Kerry King and his bride of 10 years, former Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson, decided to cash in on an offer from a major corporation and name their child Smoothie King (Burger King made a slightly lower bid).
Shall I continue with the list of offenses? Kim Kardashian & Kanye West named their daughter North, prompting a rare copycat move by Bradgelina (who could have easily started their own trend) who named their adopted daughter, In That General Direction.
Of course, every year the nature loving hippies have to sacrifice their child’s named identities to prove their love for the great mother, the wolf teat, or whatever it is they are worshipping these days. Holly Madison named her daughter Aurora Rainbow, Channing Tatum and Jenna Dewan-Tatum named their son Mitochondria Cell-Division, and Kaitlin Olsen named her baby girl Chlamydia Luekorrhea. It kind of makes you miss the good old days of Moonunit and Dweezil.
As much as we can hope and pray that this celebrity baby naming madness will come to an end, we know from scientific graphs drawn by lemurs paid in cicada that it will only get worse. Luckily, the heat death of the universe is just around the corner and all of these really clever ideas and fascinating people will one day be sucked into a vast nothingness in which their existences will no longer matter to anyone or anything.
Crowbar Headlines President Warren G. Harding’s 12th Inaugural Celebration
Posted by Keith Spillett in The Politics Of Catastrophe on December 16, 2013
President Warren G. Harding was easily elected to his twelfth term last month in a landslide election, garnering a record 98 percent of the vote, easily defeating the New Whig Party candidate and Metallica guitarist Dave Mustaine.
Harding, leader of the Democratic-Republicans For God Party, continues to be the most significant politician in the history of the United States and is expected to be the leader of the nation until the world’s predicted destruction in 2173. Tonight, Crowbar will be the final act in what is expected the most widely witnessed television event since the execution of the ten leaders of the Kennedy Rebellion in 1969.
Harding’s political career is the stuff of legends. Even the youngest school child has heard the stories. After a relatively lackluster first term that featured corruption in the form of the Teapot Dome scandal and economic turmoil, Harding died of a heart attack on August 2nd, 1923. Had Harding not risen from the dead during his own funeral on August 4th, his presidency would have been a forgotten chapter in the history of the United States of the World.
Harding, who claimed God had allowed him to come back to life in order to lead the United States of The World to its current position as the most powerful nation on the planet, was reelected to a 4 -year term in 1924 after the still unsolved murder of Democratic Presidential candidate Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Harding’s mission to bring “normalcy” to the world began during this term. He invaded Canada, England and Mexico days after his election and by 1934 the United States controlled all of North America and most of Europe. Only its defeat in The Great Nuclear War with Argentina in 1962 stopped America’s march towards world domination.
Argentina’s nuclear strikes destroyed most of Harding’s empire and led to the revolutionary forces of John Fitzgerald Kennedy taking control of most of the Northern United States and renaming it Camelotia. Harding’s forces regrouped and retook the North in what was known as The Second American Civil War. Still, many questioned Harding’s leadership and he looked like he might lose the election of 1972 to Paul Newman. It was then that Harding performed The Five Miracles.
Harding, Who Will Only Allow Himself To Be Photographed In Black And White, Celebrating His 12th Term As President
These miracles included Harding making the nation of Albania disappear, turning water into Coca-Cola, using lasers from his eyes to melt The Washington Monument, reanimating Thomas Jefferson and the creation of flying cars. Harding eliminated Congress and the Supreme Court and declared martial law, which lasted until 2003. He rebuilt the military and, with help from the visitors from the Planet Klorg, was able to take control of the entire world except for Mongolia, the last stronghold of anti-American forces.
Harding occasionally still allows elections, but few experts believe that the opposition is given a fair chance to be victorious. All people who vote against him are immediately executed and used to feed the multi-headed battle giraffe drones and robot oxen that the USW have used to militarily control many of the Outer Territories.
With the outcome of the election never in doubt, many television and Conquernet experts have spent their time speculating who would headlining the inauguration. The prevailing wisdom was that Pentagram would be the band because of the close relationship between President Harding and vocalist and former Vice President Bobby Liebling. However, it is also known that Harding is a huge Crowbar fan, particularly the Odd Fellows Rest album. Last Friday, Crowbar vocalist Christina Aguilera and her husband, guitarist Kirk Windstein, received a call directly from Harding announcing the news.
Rumors have already started to swirl that if Crowbar has an excellent performance, Dave Lombardo, the band’s drummer and former Ambassador to Mars, might be asked to be Secretary of State. Lombardo has refused to comment directly, but his manservant Kerry King did indicate to several reporters that the famed drummer would take the job if it were offered. King, many remember, was enslaved by Lombardo after the failure of his 2005 neo-disco solo album “I Like To Boogie, Boogie” drove him into bankruptcy.
Ulysses Stern, Actor Known For Playing Dave Mustaine in Megadeth, Dies at 83
Posted by Keith Spillett in General Weirdness on June 30, 2013
Ulysses Stern With Megadeth Bandmates Michael Corbin, Humberto Quintero and Phillip Riesling
Veteran character actor Ulysses Stern, who played the controversial singer and guitarist from the heavy metal band Megadeth from 1992 until 2007, died earlier this morning in his Pomona, California home of a heart attack. Stern had been battling Alzheimer’s Disease since he retired from his role as Mustaine in 2007. He was 83.
A veteran of hundreds of plays, movies and television shows, Stern made his acting debut in 1958 in the Broadway version of Tennessee Williams’ classic “A Streetcar Named Desire”. From there he moved on to television, where he was featured on several hit shows including The Twilight Zone, Wagon Train and Petticoat Junction. He briefly replaced Eddie Albert in the role of Oliver Wendell Douglas for six episodes on the television show Green Acres in 1968 during Albert’s highly publicized bout with leprosy.
He spent most of the 1970s and 80s playing colorful roles in major motion pictures starring some of the most popular names in Hollywood. He was in four films with Burt Reynolds, including a memorable two-minute performance as a police detective in the Oscar winning film “Sharky’s Machine”. In spite of this, by the early 90’s his career was in a tailspin. He had reached the point where the only roles he could land were in Lifetime movies and Budweiser ads. That was when he caught the eye of talent agent Mickey Krantz.
Krantz was so impressed by his performance as Jimmy Nolan, a Vince Neil-ish grifter, in the Lifetime movie “Baby Monitor: The Sound of Fear”, that he offered Stern the chance to play Mustaine. Carmine Trovatelli, who currently plays Robb Flynn in the band Machine Head, had played Mustaine through a good part of the 80s and 90s, but left the role in after a nasty contract dispute. This paved the way for Stern to take over the role upon the release of “Countdown To Extinction”.
Although critics were often fond of Stern’s portrayal of Mustaine, the public had mixed feelings. Megadeth achieved its greatest period of commercial success under Stern, but many of the fans believe the songwriting was far superior when Trovatelli was playing Mustaine. “Megadeth was the thrashiest, most inventive band in the world when Trovatelli was playing Mustaine. When Ulysses Stern became Dave Mustaine, Megadeth sold out as far as I’m concerned.” wrote Lemmy von Corpsegrinder on the “RIP Guy Who Played Dave Mustaine When They Started To Suck” Facebook page that appeared seconds after Stern’s death.
Funeral services for Mustaine are planned for Wednesday. Hector Bayley (the actor who currently plays Mustaine), George Lemansky (the actor who plays Bruce Dickinson) and Arnold Weismuller (who recently took over the role of Rob Halford) all plan to be in attendance. However, Victor St. Pierre (best known for his work as the post-ReLoad Lars Ulrich) has already gone on record stating he wants no part of the funeral and will not attend along with the rest of the actors playing members of Metallica.
New Megadeth Song So Bad It Will Give Your Kids Hepatitis, Says Controversial Doctor
Posted by Keith Spillett in Health Tips for An Early Death on May 1, 2013
While many reviewers and enraged Megadeth fans have panned the new single “Supercollider”, one man has taken his criticism a step further. Dr. Josef Kranken, a researcher recently fired from the Monsanto Corporation, claims that, in a study conducted using one hundred volunteer 8-year-olds from a Phoenix elementary school, he has found evidence that repeated exposure to “Supercollider” could lead to inflammation of the liver consistent with the Hepatitis X virus.
Of the 50 children infected with the new Megadeth song, 46 of them developed symptoms within 3 to 5 hours. The other 50 students, who only listened to songs off of “Rust In Peace”, showed no immediate health issues and, in fact, scored higher on standardized tests the following day.
Up until recently, Hepatitis X was referred to as Hepatitis D. The virus changed its name during its conversion to Islam while in prison in 2010. It is best known for causing an enormous growth in the size of people’s ears and large, droopy sacks of skin to bulging from a person’s forehead. If not treated within 48 hours, it can lead to teeth growing out of the back of the victim’s neck.
This is not Dr. Kranken’s first foray into studying the health effects of heavy metal on human beings. He authored a paper two years called “The Great Radikult Syphilis Epidemic of 2011” where he forecast a major worldwide outbreak of syphilis due to Morbid Angel’s release of the album “IIud Divinum Insanus”. The study was debunked by several doctors, including noted Harvard immunologist Dr. Steven Copley, who went on to famously quip “the only possible way to catch a venereal disease listening to heavy metal is by standing too close to Vince Neil during a Motley Crue concert.”
Kranken, who graduated from University of Phoenix in 1979 with a degree in botanical psychology, was a top researcher for the Monsanto Corporation for over 20 years. He worked on some of Monsanto’s most infamous projects including the one that convinced the company to market Posilac (or rBST), a chemical that has been known to cause extreme suffering in cows. In his 1993 review of the effects of Posilac, he concluded that cows “might actually grow to enjoy the feeling of having gargantuan, swollen utters”. Monsanto fired Kranken in 2009 when he refused to work on a program designed to create 1000-pound flesh-eating rats for the Chinese military.
Thus Spoke BlaK Dan
Posted by Keith Spillett in BlaK Dan's Theatre of Cruelty on March 11, 2013
(translated from the original grunts and pig noises by Walter Kaufmann)
I.
When BlaK Dan had turned 37, he put down his autographed Burzum album collection and left the comfort of his basement and went into the mountains. He was alone. He waited for the one pure note to emerge from his body, uncontaminated with the essence of those creatures he had survived being around all these years. He did not tire of the solitude, for it is all he had ever wished for. But, at last, a change came over his heart, and one morning he rose with the dawn, stepped before the sun, and spoke to it thus:
“You great star, what would your happiness be if you realized you had to shine on all those who rest below you? If you realized that your light was illuminating the way for others, would you not extinguish yourself in a lake of tears?”
“Behold, I am weary of my own purity. These chumps at the bottom of the mountain, they spend their time waxing poetic about how much weight Snooki lost and what Jessie James Dupree will do for an encore. Even the ones that try to be pure of the world end up owning Metallica’s Reload on vinyl.”
“Bless the cup that wants to overflow and drown those at the bottom of this mountain with the righteous torrent of nothingness. For I am BlaK Dan and I am full of emptiness!”
II.
BlaK Dan descended down the mountain and came upon and old man. The old man was wearing a Dio shirt. Blak Dan sneered.
“It has been a long time since you passed this way, BlaK Dan. The last time I saw you, you were carrying the ashes of the church burned by Samoth. Do you fear that arsonists do not get all the girls?”
“Out of my way, you old fool. I have no time for your false metal jokes or your tales of pits gone by. I have no time for women. Nor men for that matter. I have a world to cleanse of humanity. For I am BlaK Dan, and I have come to philosophize with the blastbeat.”
III.
When BlaK Dan arrived at the next town, he found many people gathered together in the market place; for it had been promised that Black Sabbath would be performing a cover of N’Sync’s “Tearin’ Up My Heart”. And BlaK Dan spoke thus to the people:
“I teach you the Overman! For you people are something that is to be overcome! Ten years, ten long years, I sat in that cave at the top of the mountain pondering how to escape you forever. For even ten years of solitude couldn’t cure me of the memories of watching you simple-minded beasts jump from trend to trend in the name of impressing other people with your metalness. Well, I am here to tell you that I am the most metal. And I know this, because I am the most empty.”
“Behold, I cannot stomach any of you anymore, so I teach you the Overman. This one time I will tell you how to live correctly. Because I am bored. You will probably ignore it, because you are animals. But, at least at the end of your sorry, pitful existences, I can proudly tower over your coffin, telling anyone who will listen “I told you so!” But they will not listen either. Because they too are morons.”
“A polluted stream is metal and you donkeys lap it up as if it were the best thing you’ve ever tasted. One must be completely empty of all moisture to truly be metal. And I know, because I have emptied myself of all that is moist. All that is caring. All that is kind. I spit in the face of all that come to me seeking solace. I turn my back on humanity. I have emptied myself of melody. Of harmony. Of style. Of substance. I am the Overman, because I am Post-Everything!”
IV.
“And you say, ‘But what of God?’ And I say “God is dead! There is only me.” And you say, ‘But what of the joy music brings?’ And I say, ‘But what of the mud a pig wallows in. If the pig is happy, is that mud, in fact, holy?’”
“Once the sin against God was the greatest sin; but God died and now you’re stuck trying to piece together who you are from a bunch of copies of Slayer records. And so you replace your old God with Slayer and perform the same old silly rituals, only this time with the knowledge that you are a unique and clever fellow. You jump up and down and repeat evil words and think you are something special. You are no different than the idiots who came before you. The only difference is you buy more stuff.”
“You ask me what meaning has life. It is a contest that is already over. I got there first. You lose. Sucker. For you are still winding your way through Megadeth’s early discography and I am on Z. I have heard it all. I have done it all. That which I haven’t done isn’t worth doing anyway. I have come to the end of the road. You are a bunch of pimply-faced kids trying out your death stare on old people in the mall. I am the end point of history.”
V.
Then, something happened that made every mouth gape open and every finger point. A cute puppy wandered into the center of the courtyard. The adorable animal jumped up and startled an infant. The infant giggled wildly. People pulled out their phones in order to record what was left of this magic moment and send it to thousands of different people all over the world. Finally, after all the commotion had died down they turned back to BlaK Dan. They all had forgotten what he was saying.
VI.
BlaK Dan left the town muttering under his breath. He found an uncomfortable place to sleep and lay down for what seemed like a thousand hours. At last, however, his eyes opened and gazed into the distance. He rose quickly, like a drunkard whose CD player had begun skipping, and announced to no one in particular that he had discovered a new truth.
“An insight has come to me: ‘People are perishable!’ Sure, everything about them disgusts me. They always want to play you the songs they like and use your mini-refrigerator to store food. They ramble on and on about useless ideas. They make funny noises. They smack their food when the chew. They fall asleep during the best part of Headbanger’s Ball. Will it not be better when they are all dead?”
“But I did not pay attention in Biology class, so I know not how to create a plague to wipe them all away. And I have neither the training nor the patience to seek out members of terrorist cells. And I have not the time nor the funding to buy weapons grade uranium. But I know this one thing. Eventually, they will all die. Sure, I too will die, and that will be a sad day, but I can take comfort in the thought that the rest of them will experience a fate at least as bad as my own, in some cases worse.”
“Some may outlive me, yes, but they too will eventually yield to their own mortality. Everyone on this earth will be dead at some point. Maybe even soon. As I ascend back to the top of the mountain to look down upon this tainted world, I can finally rest in the knowledge that no one ever gets what they want from life and it all ends brutally.”
“Life is a curse of which I hope they are soon cured. But, until then, they can have their dumb little lives. Let them bounce from one dumb crisis to another. Let them anxiously wait by their computers for news on who will be playing drums on the next Doro Pesch record. Let them get worked up over what Dave Mustaine thinks about the customer service at Men’s Warehouse. I am cured. It no longer matters. They are dead to me.”
Metallica Names 2,000 Pound Walrus as New Bass Player
Posted by Keith Spillett in General Weirdness on October 3, 2012
Ending weeks of speculation, Metallica has chosen Nessie, a 2,000 pound performing walrus, to be their new bass player. The search began back in 2011 when bassist extraordinaire Robert Trujillo was eaten by a pack of feral orangutans at the Jones Beach Toll Plaza in Long Island, New York. The band had auditioned over 62,023,017 potential bass players before finally settling yesterday on Nessie. Before being selected by Metallica, Nessie has had a storied career that included a stint as halfback for the New York Jets and three years as a backup singer for the Isley Brothers.
Nessie is relatively new to the metal scene, but has already made a big impression. During a freezing cold outdoor concert in Oslo, Norway, Nessie laid on top of Megadeth singer Dave Mustaine for the entire song Tornado of Souls in order to save him from frostbite. However, not all of Nessie’s experiences with the metal scene have been positive. Controversy followed Nessie after he knocked Kerry King unconscious after a Slayer show in March. King had apparently tried to eat one of Nessie’s fins, driving him into a wild, murderous rage.
Nessie will begin his tenure in Metallica next month when the band gets to work on recording its next album, the nautically themed “A Porpoise Driven Life”. The new record will feature several exciting new tracks including “Of Wolf and Manatee”, “Trapped Under Ice Fishermen”, “The Cod That Failed”, and “Saint Angler”. They are also planning another in the long series of Unforgiven songs, this one called “The Unforgiven Mambo Number 5”.
Industry experts expect the album to come out sometime in late 2015 in order to coincide with Red Lobster’s yearly Endless Crab Legs promotion. Red Lobster became the official sponsor of Metallica earlier this month.
