Posts Tagged Dio
Ronnie James Dio’s Family To Sue University of Texas For Stealing Heavy Metal Horns Symbol
Posted by Keith Spillett in General Weirdness on October 20, 2014
For years, the University of Texas has used the “Hook’em Horns” hand gesture without properly crediting its originator, hard rock icon Ronnie James Dio. According to a representative from the Dio family, it’s time that Texas starts paying for it.
In a lawsuit filed in Texas Superior Court on Monday, the Dio family has asked University of Texas to pay 730 billion dollars to Dio’s estate for “taking the most significant symbol in the satanic heavy metal community and polluting it by associating it with college football and a state best known for barbeque, executions and electing half-wit governors.”
Dio’s horns have been stolen by thousands of organizations and artists in an attempt to seem more edgy. Everyone from Eminem to soon-to-be presidential candidate Hillary Clinton have co-opted the sign in order to cash in on “the metal image” while not paying any respects to the man who created the symbol. The American Sign Language community has even perverted the satanic horns gesture and made it mean “I love you”.
Dio first began using the gesture at a Black Sabbath concert in Birmingham, Alabama in 1979. In an interview with MetalRoofing.com in 2001, Dio claimed that he saw the image of the Virgin Mary hovering over an International House of Pancakes about an hour before the concert. That image was devoured by the image of the demon Azazel. When the demon finished eating the Virgin Mary it stared Dio in the eye and flashed him “the sign”. The rest is history.
The lawsuit is another in a series of blows to the once proud University of Texas football program. The team is off to a horrendous 3 and 4 start and several key players have been kicked off of the team.
Many have questioned whether the curse placed on the program by Dio at the end of the 2005-06 National Championship season is responsible. Dio, who was a huge USC fan, and his spiritual advisor Ned LaVey, son of Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey, allegedly performed a ceremony where they drank a mixture of bulls’ blood, Jagermeister and the spinal fluid of Longhorns quarterback Vince Young.
This ritual has led to a series of troubles for the University of Texas including a critical injury to Quarterback Colt McCoy during the 2009-10 National Championship Game and boils developing on the face of Coach Mack Brown during a 2011 game against Oklahoma. Once the University pays the Dio family the 730 billion dollars it is owed, the curse will be removed and Texas will once again return to prominence in the college football world.
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.
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.
Help Us Raise $250,000 Dollars For Bolt Thrower to Play My Daughter’s Birthday Party
Posted by Keith Spillett in General Weirdness on August 5, 2013
We have always been a Bolt Thrower family. Many of our happiest, most memorable times have been spent listening to their music. Whether it was me soothing my son on his first trip to the dentist by playing him all of “In Battle There Is No Law” or my wife and I making the long car trips from Atlanta to Minnesota go by quicker by singing “Cenotaph” with them, Bolt Thrower have almost been like relatives. This is why, on my daughter Jo-Anne Bench Spillett’s sixth birthday, we’d like to hire Bolt Thrower to play the party.
However, as you probably have figured out, hiring a death metal band to fly from England to Atlanta to play can be expensive. My wife and I talked about how to make it happen financially, but short of working nine more jobs and selling the platinum grill I had made during my brief rap career, it didn’t seem affordable. Enter the miracle that is Kickstarter! We have seen several projects from a Veronica Mars movie to an Obituary album to a nose job for Sebastian Bach all get funded this way. Why couldn’t our dreams come true as well?
Therefore, I am proud to announce that The Tyranny of Tradition will be starting its first Kickstarter campaign to raise $250,000 dollars to get Bolt Thrower to play my daughter’s 6th birthday party on November 22nd. Sure, $250,000 is a lot of money, but I want to assure each and every one of you that each and every penny will be put to good use. In the spirit of transparency, here is an itemized list of what the money will be used for.
Band Compensation $25,000
Bolt Thrower is a legendary band and they won’t come cheap. Being metal legends, they deserve to be well compensated for their time. They will, of course, be responsible for their own airfare.
Hotel: $3,000
While we’d love to have them in our home for a one-time, special birthday concert, the wife and I are not particularly keen on letting them stay in our house overnight. We live in a gated community with an extremely active homeowners association. I’m not sure they would be willing to tolerate Baz Thomson walking out at 7 o’clock in the morning holding a Miller Lite and wearing nothing but his boxer shorts to get the newspaper. Let’s face it, they are kind of, well, dirty looking. Not any more than most metal bands, but certainly not the type of people we necessarily want the neighbors to see us with. They’ll fit in fine at the Super 8 motel out in Snellville.
Permits: $20,000
According to the City of Atlanta, I’m not technically allowed to have a death metal band play in my backyard without a permit. Because of the potential noise and disruption, several local city officials have told me that it will be impossible to get a permit for the event. The $20,000 will be used to bribe the necessary City Council Members needed to get us the permit or, in case they are unwilling to be bribed, to hire a private investigator to dig up humiliating blackmail information on them.
Security: $10,000
Instead of hiring one of those costly, pretentious professional security companies, I have contacted a local motorcycle gang, known as The Disciples of Satan, to make sure that things don’t get out of control. Not only will they be tasked with crowd control, they will need to go door to door in the days leading up to the concert and threaten my neighbors with violence or the potential kidnapping of their children should they complain to the police about the noise or lack of available parking. The Rolling Stones used a similar approach to security with great success.
Home Renovations: $80,000
Our home is simply not ready for a concert of this magnitude. The backyard will need to be equipped with arena style seating, a stage and adequate bathroom facilities for the 10 or 20 children that will be attending. Also, a hot tub will need to be added overlooking the backyard in order to allow me to help loosen up my back from moving furniture to ensure the children don’t break anything if they wander into the living room. We will also need to add marble countertops in the kitchen and a new family room in order for us to spend quality time together.
Opening Bands: $10,000
Bolt Thrower is an older band who probably can only do a one hour set without risking collapse. Most parents expect these parties to go 2 to 3 hours. So, the show will feature several talented local bands including Spectrecide, Butter Knife Appendectomy, and Dysrythmic Sphincter Valve who will perform while the kids are playing party games like Pin the Murder Rap on Randy Blythe.
Live Pokémon Characters: $5,000
Besides old school death metal, both of my young children love Pokémon. What would make them happier than if people dressed in Pokémon suits came out during Bolt Thrower’s set to really get the pit moving? We’d have Snorelax, Charazard and even, during the encore, a visit from the one and only Pikachu.
Incidentals: $10,000
It’s amazing how many things need to be rented or purchased outright in order to make something like this work. Lights, speakers, smoke machines, animal parts to be tossed into the crowd, a cake, and goodie bags filled with Bolt Thrower merchandise can really add up.
Remaining Money For Personal Compensation: $87,000
This is America. No one works for free. My wife and I plan on working hard to make this day very special for our little girl. Thusly, our effort should be rewarded in the form of monetary compensation for our time and labor.
Hopefully, this campaign will raise the funding necessary to make my daughter’s birthday a day to remember. If it is successful, this is only the beginning. I am already in the planning stages of several possible Kickstarter campaigns including a $300,000 campaign to stop Megadeth from making another album, a $5 million dollar drive reanimate Dio and a $250 million dollar fundraiser to take over the nation of Botswana and declare it a Heavy Metal Republic. So, take a moment of your time and help us to make November 22 the best 6-year-old birthday party ever. You’ll be glad you did.
The Tyranny of Tradition 