Posts Tagged Dimebag Darrell
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.
Protests Erupt As Pantera Singer Announces Same-Sex Reunion Tour
Posted by Keith Spillett in General Weirdness on November 25, 2013
Fourteen activists were arrested yesterday afternoon in Muskogee, Oklahoma during a rally to protest Pantera’s plans for a series of heavy metal same-sex reunion concerts. The protestors were enraged by comments made by singer Phil Anselmo during a press conference last week. The controversial singer announced an eleven state arena tour in which all members of the band on stage would be male (including a yet to be named male guitarist who will fill-in for Dimebag Darrell).
The “Far Beyond Homogeneity Tour” will feature the members of the band in tight tee shirts and jeans dancing provocatively while playing songs like “Domination”, “5 Minutes Alone” and even “Hard Ride” from the oft-forgotten Power Metal album. The tour will be supported by metal legends Sodom.
The announcement sent religious groups into an immediate furor. Anthony Perkins, President of The Family Research Council and star of Alfred Hitchcock’s classic horror film “Psycho”, was particularly appalled by the announcement. “Four men, writhing and squirming on stage in the unholy bonds of a heavy metal performance is not what God intended. It’s perverse. Metal should be between a man and a woman.”
Same-sex metal performances are illegal in 39 of 50 states. A few states like California and Iowa have recently passed ballot initiatives to allow these sorts of gatherings, while other states have grown more restrictive.
Recently, Mississippi outlawed same-sex water fountains while Alabama has gotten rid of same-sex bathrooms. Georgia has gone so far as to decree that men cannot use the same hairbrush or eat from the same buffet at Golden Corral. The Kentucky State Legislature is currently considering a bill that would restrict same-sex consumption of funnel cake.
While some states have adopted radical stances against same-sex metal, others like Nevada have taken a more cautious approach favoring “don’t ask, don’t tell” legislation that does not require bands to disclose the gender of the band’s members. Many politicians within the state, including gubernatorial candidate Ernest Rohm, believe that same-sex metal is fine as long as bands don’t go “waving their gender all over the place.”
In an October interview with Billy Graham’s Witchhunt Magazine, Rohm went so far as to claim he likes some heavy metal, has a few same-sex heavy metal friends and once employed a gardener who loved metal. “Honestly, with all that long hair, you can’t really tell, in most cases at least, the gender of metal musicians. I mean, Bon Jovi was my favorite band in the world until I realized Richie Sambora was a man.”
Comedian Jerry Dillon Retires “Phil Anselmo” Character
Posted by birthad1 in General Weirdness, Really Brilliant Things You Should Read But Probably Won't Because You Are A Pantera Fan on October 25, 2013
Jeff AD is currently researching the connection between Pantera listening and spinal meningitis at University of West Virginia. His book, Pantera, Whiskey and The New South, is scheduled to be released in October. He is currently a contributing writer at Tyranny of Tradition. He has a pancreas.
Actor comedian Jerry Dillon, best known for his long-running character Phil Anselmo, tells The Tyranny of Tradition that he is retiring his hard-rocking alter ego at the end of November. The decision coincides with the Housecore Horror Film Festival, ostensibly hosted by Anselmo, that will be held this weekend in Austin, Texas.
“It was a tough decision,” stated Dillon of his beloved character, “but after 27 years of portraying Phil, I feel like it had run its course. It’s still funny, and people enjoy it, but I feel like I’m starting to repeat myself.”
The versatile performer has portrayed several other characters on shows like Saturday Night Live and Chappelle’s Show, but it was the Anselmo persona that took Dillon to fame and fortune, albeit one that blurred the line between identities.
“Part of what made Phil a challenge is that I’d sometimes lose myself in there,” said the actor, “and I’d start to really think I was a brain-damaged redneck metal singer. And I always had to be ‘on’, whether it meant saying something totally stupid or doing an absurd live performance with one of the bands I created for Phil.”
The most popular “band” was Pantera, a heavy metal parody act co-created by David Wallace, who also portrayed guitarist Dimebag Darrel and participated in many skits and performances with Dillon. The two started collaborating in 1986 and proved to be a formidable comedy duo until they parted ways in 2003, which was punctuated by a staged break-up and feud. Neither actor broke character or discussed the genuine reasons for the split, though Dillon admits he was somewhat bothered by the way Wallace retired his character.
“That was pretty over the top,” he laughed. “Killing off the character on stage seemed kind of tacky at the time, because it upset a lot of our fans. Dave knew what he was doing, though. These days, the Dimebag character is more popular than ever.”
Indeed, merchandise for Pantera, Dimebag Darrel, and Phil Anselmo continues to rake in sales, and Dillon is satisfied with his legacy. But apparently the Emmy-winning actor is ready to move on.
“I’m looking forward to writing new material, acting with different people, and maybe coming up with some new alter ego to inhabit. I’ll always love being Phil, though. It was a blast to play him.”
Actor Jeffrey Wielandt, who often appears with Dillon and portrays the popular Zakk Wylde character, could not be reached for comment.
“Help!!! Pantera is Making My Son Dumber!”
Posted by Keith Spillett in General Weirdness on October 16, 2013
Often at Tyranny of Tradition, we receive strange emails from people. From being asked which metal band performs the best on stage animal sacrifice to getting lectured on how we are not a true metal website because we have done an article about The Devil Wears Prada, we thought we had seen everything. However, this is, by far, the best one that has ever graced our inbox.
Dear Mr. Spillett,
I write to you today to seek your help with a problem relating to my youngest son, Todd. I found a few articles from your website “The Tyranny of Tradition” while making a routine search of his computer and noticed that you are both a heavy metal fan and a parent. This may seem like a strange request, but I’m concerned about Todd thought you might be in the position to give us some assistance.
Up until 6 months ago, Todd was a truly talented, wonderful young man. He had a 4.0 grade point average and was in line for a lacrosse scholarship. He was an esteemed 11th grader at the illustrious Chatsworth Academy, the finest, most competitive prep school in Northeast. He was on his way to an Ivy League school and perhaps a successful career with a Park Avenue Law Firm or as the manager of a multi-million dollar hedge fund on Wall Street.
He was being invited to the best parties and making friends with some of the future leaders of this great nation. There were even some hints that he might be accepted to Pi Epsilon Kappa, a secret society for the most elite members of the Chatsworth community. Then, one horrible day, he picked up an album called “Vulgar Display of Power” by a band referred to as “Pantera”.
At first, Todd Sr. and I didn’t think it was that big a deal. After all, both of us have gone through our rebellious phases. Many of my closest friends don’t know this about me, but I went to a Bee Gees concert back in the 70s. In spite of this, I’ve gone on to be the President of our Neighborhood Association in one of the most exclusive gated communities in Connecticut. We just figured he would outgrow this dark and vile music quickly and get back to being the great American we all believe he can be.
Well, we were wrong. Lately, he’s gotten rid of his collared shirts and neatly pressed khakis and been wearing these “Pantera” shirts and jeans out in public. One of the shirts has a picture of a man being punched in the face, another has a picture of a drill going into a human head and one, which I have since thrown in the trash, had an unmentionable profanity in front of the word Hostile.
He’s been hanging out with a new crowd. Many of them are loud, unshaven and look like they haven’t taken a shower in quite a long time. Several of them look like they just robbed a 7-11. He seems less interested in his studies and even refused to go sailing with Todd Sr. in Kennebunkport last Saturday.
Honestly, we have no idea what to do. If this continues, his earning potential will decrease dramatically. He could end up one of those bums on skid row, in jail or even on his way to the electric chair. He’s talked about getting a tattoo that says “RIP Dime” on his back….God knows what that is a code for!!!! We think it might be part of an initiation to some heavy metal, biker gang or possibly part of a ritual from some satanic cult.
As his parent, we are worried that all of this “Pantera” music is simply making him dumber. We have considered locking him in his room on weekends, forcing him to have electro-shock therapy and taking away his music listening privileges until he stops acting like an animal. Todd Sr. even suggested hiring a group of barroom hooligans to slap some sense into him.
From some pictures we found of you online, you appear to be one of the cleaner and less dangerous of the metal thugs. You are able to write in complete sentences and you don’t have rings in your face. Because of the fact that you have children, we thought you might be able to identify with the concern we feel about Todd’s future.
We would love it if you wrote a letter or even talked to Todd (by phone) telling him about how listening to Pantera has destroyed your life and turned you into a degenerate. If we tell him about the dangers of this sort of behavior, he’ll simply ignore us. If one of you people tells him about how this perverted music has ruined your soul and chances for a happy, successful life, we think he might listen. We’ll be glad to pay you for your time.
Thanks,
Trudy Carrington-Smythe
President
Worthington Estates Neighborhood Association
New Canaan, Connecticut
Rumors of 2013 Pantera Reunion Picking Up Steam
Posted by Keith Spillett in General Weirdness, Uncategorized on March 5, 2012
In a story that may set the entire metal world on its ear, several sources have speculated that Pantera may reunite to play a series of shows in 2013. Pantera, whose seminal Vulgar Display of Power record turned 20 this year, have been broken up since 2003. The band was a major force in heavy metal, topping the billboard album charts in 1994 with their release Far Beyond Driven. A Pantera reunion would, no doubt, be the concert event of 2013, if not of this decade.
The rumors began during a conversation last week between my friend Matt and I. We were discussing the merits of “The Great Southern Trendkill” and I mentioned, “Wouldn’t it be great if they got back together!?!?!”
Matt replied, “Yeah! I’d travel anywhere in the country to see them, but Vinny and Phil are on really bad terms since Dime died. No chance.”
I looked at Matt and said, “But there would a lot of money on the table. A whole lot of money. My cousin Johnny ate a bag of thumbtacks once for 20 dollars. He ended up having to have surgery and now he can’t drink milk or ginger ale. He was never right afterwards. Sometimes, he acts like he’s a pirate and digs enormous holes in his backyard looking for treasure. He even makes fake treasure maps and ‘finds’ them in strange places that he hid them hours earlier. The point is, this Pantera reunion can happen if someone, like maybe the Koch Brothers or George Soros or somebody big puts about 100 million in front of them. That sort of cash moves mountains.”
Paulie Reznik, the guy we hired to fix the hole in our roof from last week’s storm, confirmed that a Pantera reunion could happen. “It could happen, man. For sure,” said Paulie, a diehard Pantera fan and owner of nearly 300 heavy metal bobblehead dolls, in a recent interview with Tyranny of Tradition.
However, my wife adamantly denied the possibility of a Pantera tour. She claimed that the rumors are baseless, that I had skipped a dosage of my medication again and that I was ‘allegedly’ pretending that things that I make up are really happening. “Honey, why don’t you go lay down for a while? You’re doing that thing where you are confusing fantasy and reality. Remember last month you thought Picasso had come back from the grave and told you to spray paint the cat orange and speak only in Aramaic? That wasn’t true either. You just need some rest.”
Pantera, for their part, have yet to comment on the rumors. Often, when a person or group refuses to confirm or deny a story it is because there is some truth to it. Where there is smoke there is fire, or so the saying goes. If Pantera continues to refuse to comment on the rumors that I am making up, you can pretty much bet your life savings that they will be back on the stage in 2013. Sometimes silence speaks volumes.
