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.