Posts Tagged Kerry King
Is Chuck Mangione Leaving Slayer?
Posted by Keith Spillett in General Weirdness on March 30, 2015
When most fans of heavy metal think about Slayer, the first word that comes to their mind is often “flugelhorn”. However, many heavy metal websites have noted that other heavy metal websites might have indicted that Slayer’s 2015 release, which will be called “Upcoming Slayer Studio Album”, might be the first since Hell Awaits to not feature the man many have called “The Jimi Hendrix of The Flugelhorn”, Chuck Mangione.
According to sources that overheard sources discussing the band, Mangione has become concerned about Slayer’s artistic direction over the past few albums. Flugelhorn solos, once a hallmark of the band’s distinctive “flugelcore” sound, have been few and far since the band released “God Hates Us All” in 2001.
While early Slayer records like “Reign in Blood” and “South of Heaven” are best known for the juxtaposition between the band’s jarring thrash metal savagery and Mangione’s light, breezy jazz sound, the newer material is either paint-by-numbers heavy metal which could numb even the most ardent Slayer fan into a coma or embarrassing, gimmicky nonsense meant to appeal to meth-addled, tone deaf Marilyn Manson fans (see “Playing With Dolls”).
Mangione At A Recent Slayer Show in Dusseldorf, Germany
Listen, now that I’ve got your attention…I need your help. I just made up the first part of the article to get it past the creatures that have been monitoring each of my correspondences with the outside world since 2010. I am currently trapped in the basement of a house in Spokane, Washington where a group of “government agents” have been conducting mind-altering experiments on me in the hopes of using my pyrokinesis to fight what they continue to call “The Enemies of Freedom”.
I’ve learned a thing or two about our government while down here. They speak loudly upstairs and I’ve learned to make out much of what they say. I’ve also been able to peek through the keyhole and observe them when they are not shooting me up with Monsanto weed killer and making me watch Joel Osteen sermons for hours on end. They are not what you think. I don’t want to sound paranoid, but I can tell you unequivocally that the United States has been infiltrated and is now controlled by gigantic insects that can morph into human form at will.
I’m not sure when it happened, but most of the world you know has been manufactured by these Bugs. From what I’ve heard, they took over the world at the end of The Great Bug War. Today we call it World War 2 and discuss the importance of fictional characters like Hitler and Churchill. In real life, a war did take place but it was much more similar to the one in Robert Heinlein’s novel “Starship Troopers”. The Bugs joke about that book a lot. Apparently they think it’s hysterical that the one historical artifact that has any truth to it has been passed off as fiction and consumed by an unknowing public.
They came down from space and destroyed many of our major cities. We fought valiantly, but were eventually defeated. Once they gained control of our world, they reprogrammed the human mind in order to share in a massive hallucination about the past.
All of our books, websites, television broadcasts and even historical artifacts in museums have been altered to hide history of the enslavement of the human race at the hands of our Bug overlords. They even created tiny versions of themselves that crawl and fly around in order to lull us into the belief that we are larger and more powerful than them.
When you’ve heard a few of them gather together and talk about the con job they’ve pulled on us, it’s terribly depressing. I remember crying for days when I heard them laughing about planting dinosaur bones throughout the world in order for scientists to “discover” them and make up crazy tales of what happened before humans were here on the so-called Earth. The scientists today aren’t real scientists…they are merely people who participate in a giant scavenger hunt created by the Bugs.
From the little I’ve been able to pick up about our true history, scientists of pre-Bug times were capable of miracles that run the gamut from inter-dimensional space travel to creating a low cost substance that could feed all human beings. Famine and disease had all been eliminated by these people. Apparently, our world was once like the Bug-created fictional Garden of Eden. But, Eden is gone.
The Bugs have taught us how to fear and hate one another. They have helped us create artificial divisions in order to isolate us from our fellow humans. They have instilled in us the ability to hurt and destroy each other in the name of control and survival. Apparently, humans used to live for hundreds of years. They have taught us to lower our life expectancy so we are never around long enough to see through the lies and learn the truth.
Many of our so-called “world leaders” are simply Bugs in disguise. Barack Obama, Angela Merkel, Rush Limbaugh, Benjamin Netanyahu, Bill Gates, The Clintons, The Bushes, The Gores, even Cat Stevens…all Bugs. They are everywhere, pulling the strings and making the world spin, all the while the Bugs use the lint created between our toes as fuel to power the rockets that allow them to take control of planets throughout the solar system. They invaded our world for this toe lint and now they have turned our world into a gigantic toe lint factory. They come to us in the night, when we are fully asleep, and take our precious toe lint for themselves.
We have only one form of resistance, the removal of our toes. If you are reading this, immediately go to your local emergency room and ask for these digits to be amputated. They will look at you in a strange way at first, but tell them the story I have told you. They will understand. The thing about the truth is, if you tell it to someone, no matter how bizarre it may sound, they will eventually see what you are saying and go along with what you ask. Down deep, they will know I am right and they will neatly, professionally cut your toes off.
It is important that you go to a hospital to have this done. I removed several on my own and nearly died from infection. They have special tools at most hospitals for toe removal. The Bugs only saved me because they want me to make the planet Neptune explode into flame so that their rival, the Worms, will lose a critical military base.
Digs Smooth Jazz
Metal websites have already begun to speculate about a possible replacement for Mangione. Metal Infection.net claims that the band has already contacted Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass about joining them on the next tour. Metal Bar Through A Guy’s Forehead.com has also reported that Kerry King was has been listening to “a lot of Kenny G” over the past few months and might look to include the diminutive jazz saxophonist in a future project.
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.
Tom Araya Hints At Retirement In New Slayer Songs
Posted by birthad1 in General Weirdness, Totally Useless Information on December 14, 2013
LOS ANGELES – Kerry King aired his frustration about the lyrical direction of the next Slayer album in an interview on the Fuse Network today, stating that frontman Tom Araya won’t stop submitting song lyrics about retirement.
“Tom keeps writing all these lyrics that at first seemed weird and dark,” said the famously grumpy guitarist, “but now I’m not really sure what he’s really trying to say.”
“This early one, ‘The Final Sleep’, sounded cool and promising,” he continued, “but then he started handing in stuff that started getting way off-base.”
As King leafed through the stack of material, songs with titles like ‘The Charade is Over’, ‘End of the Line’, ‘How Much is Enough’, and ‘Let Me Rest’, were all visible, and the condition of the pages became visibly more ragged as newer entries were examined. Finally he arrived at the most recent submission, which was simply a cocktail napkin with the word ‘STOP’ written across it in black magic marker.
“What am I supposed to do with this?” asked King as he held up the napkin, “and look at this one – ‘401K’? What the hell? I originally thought it was another serial killer reference, but now I’m not so sure.”
Araya and the late Jeff Hanneman were known for collaborating on some of the band’s most memorable lyrics, and many fans had already voiced concern about Slayer’s direction in the wake of Hanneman’s passing.
When asked about the outcome of the next album, the lead axeman remained confident, stating, “I have written plenty of lyrics for Slayer, so it’s not like I can’t handle this myself. Tom’s welcome to contribute, but he’s going to have to give me something better than songs about driving an RV, fishing, or spending time with family.”
Tom Araya could not be reached for comment, as he was reportedly at home and watching television while stretched out on the couch.
Slayer Accused Of Using Satanic and Anti-Christian Imagery On Albums
Posted by Keith Spillett in Pointyheaded Highbrow Stuff on November 8, 2013
Heavy metal rock band Slayer has come under fire over the past few weeks for allegedly using satanic imagery in many of their songs and on album covers. Several influential religious groups have recently discovered satanic references in the band’s work and are looking for answers. Barbara Weishaupt, the leader of Christians For Decency and So On and So On, has gone so far as to claim that Slayer actually makes several direct references to hell on the 1985 album “Hell Awaits”.
In a statement released by the band, lead singer Tom Araya denied that the band was referring to the mythical land of the dead where sinners are punished, but was, in fact, attempting to acknowledge famed Hungarian astronomer Maximilian Hell. Hell is best known for his patient, lifelong study of the surface of the moon. His work was so influential that several lunar craters are named after him.
However, not all of Slayer’s references to the devil can be so easily explained. For example, the band has been accused of referring to the dark prince of the underworld in the song Altar of Sacrifice when Araya screams “Enter to the realm of Satan!” In fact, in a 2006 interview with Boys’ Life Magazine, guitarist Kerry King claimed that the song is actually a reference to the final act of Shakespeare’s 1973 play “Macbeth”.
In the play, Seyton, Macbeth’s servant, bares witness to the decline and fall of the Scottish ruler’s empire. King, who recently portrayed Romeo in a Shakespeare in the Park version of “Romeo and Juliet”, is an avid fan of The Bard’s work and wanted the song to “reflect the realm of despair that Macbeth’s was in as he and his trusted servant dealt with news of their immanent demise.”
In the song “Skeleton Christ”, Slayer has been accused of using the expression “hail Satan” as an attempt to show their allegiance with the devil. This lyric, in fact, was written by Tom Araya during his conversion to vegetarianism and is actually supposed to be heard as “hail seitan”.
Slayer has also gone on record in the past in an attempt to clear up the misconceptions related to the song “Jesus Saves”. While some in the religious community have claimed the song to be a sarcastic dismissal of Christian values, it is actually meant to be in praise of Christians who are frugal with their money. The band’s original drummer, name withheld at the request of Kerry King, even went so far as to say that the band considered opening a bank called “Jesus Saves” in order to offer better interest rates to deeply committed members of the Christian faith.
Much of Slayer’s career has been filled with these false, libelous accusations. The album 2006 album, often incorrectly dubbed “Christ Illusion”, is actually supposed to be “Christ Allusion”, and is meant to be an indirect reference to famed German botanist and inventor of the fern Konrad Hermann Christ.
Many album covers are thought to be satanic themed drawings. Again, it’s merely an unhappy coincidence. Years ago, Kerry King asked his 7-year-old niece Wendy to draw him pictures of what she witnessed on her journey through the streets of downtown Cleveland, Ohio, promising her that the band would use the pictures as album covers. To date, every album cover has been taken from the drawings that little Wendy produced on her visit to East 55th Street on that fateful day.
The band has weathered the many storms of bad publicity and controversy due to the often deluded, utterly paranoid American public’s breathtaking ability to become wildly concerned about issues that have no impact on their lives, but it has come at a cost to their reputations. Things have gotten so bad that Kerry King has had to abandon his missionary work in Zanzibar because of all of the bizarre stories about the music.
Sadly, Slayer seems doomed to spend the latter part of their careers fighting off these irresponsible and inaccurate allegations made by a public hell-bent on removing satanic references from the minds of America’s young and impressionable future corporate employees.
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.
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.
Metalhead Insult Form Letter
Posted by Keith Spillett in Articles I Probably Shouldn't Have Bothered Writing on March 19, 2012
Occasionally we receive insulting or life-threatening posts or emails here at Tyranny of Tradition. While we enjoy these greatly, we have begun to notice an alarming trend. Most of them are either poorly written or possibly symptomatic of a severe break with what we commoners like to refer to as “reality”. In order to improve the quality of these insults, we have created a form letter for those of you that struggle with expressing yourselves in writing.
The answers are based on the most common, clichéd insults or recycled comments that we have received over past year and a half. We left out any profanity or pseudo-ironic internet abbreviations that tend to be a major part of these letters so that we could focus more on content. Questions 6 and 7 are meant to be representative of the majority of our insulters, so feel free to add your own information after the word “Other” if the responses don’t properly represent you. Please use this form if you feel the sudden urge to attempt to humiliate or degrade us. It will save us the many seconds that were wasted trying to figure out what you were talking about.
Dear ________________________________,
A. Internet Warrior
B. Poser
C. Guy who lives in his mother’s basement
D. Troll
E. Idiot
Your blog sucks. I read your last post and you are ______________.
A. not funny
B. not heterosexual
C. a little troll who lives in his mother’s basement
D. a butthurt, hipster English major
E. overweight
F. skinny and frail
G. the type of guy who thinks his beard and haircut makes him look like Kerry King when in fact it just makes him look homeless
H. Both E and G
I. Both F and G
J. All of the Above
I hate you. Your blog is _______________.
A. second-rate Onion
B. a third-rate Onion
C. just like The Onion
D. like that internet site that does parodies of news articles
A. drown in a lake
B. die in a fire
C. get a girlfriend and stop writing
D. start doing something productive with your time
E. stop spamming pictures of Scott Baio onto my Myspace profile
F. move out of your mother’s basement
G. Learn the proper uses of there and their
A. Everybody Loves Raymond
B. dog vomit
C. The Onion
D. the last Morbid Angel album
I spend a lot of time judging other people’s writing in my time as _____________ and yours is the worst I’ve ever read.
A. a metal message board moderator
B. inmate 657891 at the Dannemora Correctional Institute
C. the president of the fan club of some black metal band that no one has ever heard of
D. a highly bored casualty of the current downsizing trend
E. Other___________________________
If I see you on the street I’ll probably _________________.
A. stare at you with a menacing look and hope that you notice my Burzum hoodie
B. tell you how much I love your blog
C. mutter under my breath about you living in your mother’s basement and hope you didn’t hear me
D. ask you if you write that blog that’s like a metal version of The Onion
E. drive a spike through your head and dance on your corpse while singing “Transylvanian Hunger”
E. Other_____________________________
You suck,
Your fake internet name here_______________________________________
Friday Night At The Masquerade With In Solitude
Posted by Keith Spillett in The One Time I Left The House on September 24, 2011
Photos by Shannon Mcginty-Spillett
The first thing you need to know about seeing a metal show in the American South, Atlanta in particular, is that almost every person in the audience is going to look nearly identical. It’s beyond bizarre. Standing there in the middle of the ballroom floor at The Masquerade, my wife and I could have easily been at a casting call for actors looking to play Slayer’s Kerry King in a movie. Short, squat, bald with scruffy beards, tattoos and black shirts. How do the police ever tell them apart?
The evening started promisingly enough. My wife and I were accosted by some inebriated, bearded lunatic in a panel van who slowed up to tell us his motor was dying, then drove off when he noticed the can of mace my wife was clutching tightly in her right hand. The van, which had an ominous Mothers For Palin sticker emblazoned on the back, had clearly been used in some sort of white slavery ring that we collectively wanted no part of. But these things happen from time to time.
Dressed For Excess
We were there to see In Solitude, but most of the throngs of concertgoers were there to see Down. We had no such plans. We are two middle-aged adults who have learned to value a good night’s sleep over the wild excesses of staying out past 10 to see a band. The original plan had us dipping out by 9 o’clock after the In Solitude set so that we could collapse into an orgy of Chinese food and Friday night re-runs. Unfortunately, The Masquerade pulled the old bait and switch on us and put some highly talented but unfortunately named band called “Pony Killer” on before In Solitude. My wife and I retreated to the benches outside where I was given a Nobel worthy dissertation on the entire life history Jeff Loomis, formerly of the band Nevermore, by some complete stranger with a broken leg wearing a shirt featuring Jesus smoking a cigarette.
As we walked into the club, I noticed Crowbar singer and Charles Addams cartoon character Kirk Windstein standing about 15 feet away from me. I have always loved Crowbar and I thought strongly about getting a picture with him, but I had some concerns. I had met Windstedt once before in Albany, New York when they were opening for Sacred Reich in the mid-90s. Our brief meeting took place as we stood next to each other at a urinal before their band went on. I excitedly stammered, “YOU’RE The GUY from CROWBAR!!!!!” Windstein silently looked straight ahead at the wall and tried to escape my glowing gaze. When I reached my hand out to try to pat him on the back, he sprinted out of the restroom with a terrified look on his face. It was a highly awkward moment that I had repeated over and over in my mind for the last 15 years. Out of sheer concern he might have remembered my poorly timed outburst, I put my head down and kept walking.
I was horribly bored standing in the audience before the set. The thing you forget about shows when you are not there is the pure tedium between bands. Standing on your left foot, then your right, smelling the guy next to you who hasn’t washed his Watain shirt in about five concerts, watching the one lonely guy in the Incantation shirt pace and talk to himself, randomly thinking about how your 401K performed last week. You get a brief rush when the guitar tech comes out to check the levels, then, nothing. Ten more minutes of overhearing conversations about what the real meaning of Black Metal is. Sheer mind-numbing misery.
Pelle The Conquerer
All of a sudden, I felt my head snap backwards. In a wild rush of incense and power, In Solitude appeared on stage and launched into a violently surging version of “The World, The Flesh, The Devil”. Adrenaline shot through my veins. My pulse went from a calm, resting 60 to an unrestrained, thumping 180 in a fleeting span of seconds. I felt like a had been sleeping in the middle of a highway and raised my head up only to see an 18 wheel tractor trailer bearing down on me. IT had begun.
The way they started out was pure magic. The first thing you notice about In Solitude is presence. Some bands act like they plan to spend the entire show apologizing to you for being up there. Other bands act like they completely and unquestionably belong where they are. They command your attention and hold it unreservedly for the duration of their set. In Solitude falls squarely into the latter camp. They are there for a reason and you WILL understand that reason before they are finished. The stage was simply too small for them. They were hooked uncompromisingly into the Master Cylinder, bringing a message that transcended all other thoughts and ideas that had existed in me up till the moment of their arrival. They demanded complete and total connection and, with their every action, settled for nothing less.
Their set covered most of the critical material from their two albums. The crowd, which was clearly more inclined to listen to slow, lurching southern metal riffs, was won over by the third song. Wild-eyed singer Pelle “Hornper” Ahman managed to work the crowd into a bloodthirsty frenzy through a series of high-pitched shrieks and animalistic antics that ran the gamut from spasmodically shaking his thin frame to ramming the microphone into his head. The only thing I could possibly compare his energy level to are the few live recordings I’ve seen of Paul Di’Anno fronting Iron Maiden at The Ruskin Arms around the time Killers was out. Ahman simply hemorrhages sweat and intensity to the point where you are concerned for his well-being. By the time Down front man and metal legend Phil Anselmo strode out on stage in a Ghost shirt to bellow a few bars of “To Her Darkness” with the band, their was no doubt that this was an act on the precipice of greatness.
Anselmo Tears It Up
There is simply something unique and memorable about In Solitude. They are cut out for greater things. Even my wife, who finds the B-52s to be a bit on the heavy side, seemed deeply impressed with how they carried it. We witnessed something arrestingly powerful last night at The Masquerade and everyone there knew it. The performance seemed to be part of an elaborate first act in a career that will have a lot to say about the direction metal music is going in.
The Tyranny of Tradition 
