Posts Tagged Religion & Spirituality
Celtic Frost Reunite To Rock Needlebaum Bar Mitzvah
Posted by Keith Spillett in General Weirdness on January 30, 2012
Thomas G Warrior and The Boys After Wolfing Down Some Potato Kugel and Manischewitz
In this year’s most talked about metal reunion, the original members of the metal legends Celtic Frost returned to the stage to help celebrate the passage into manhood of young Shlomo Needlebaum. The Needlebaums have been lifelong fans of the band and Sol Needlebaum, Shlomo’s father and owner of Honest Sol’s Linoleum Flooring with 40 locations throughout the Midwest, knew that this was the perfect opportunity to bring the band back together. “Morbid Tales has been a constant part of Shlomo’s life since he was a little baby. We played Dethroned Emperor at his bris and he’s been in love with them ever since,” proclaimed Sol outside of the Moshe Dayan Memorial Temple in Mayfield Heights, Ohio.
At first, Thomas Gabriel Warrior (or Fischer, as most adults like to call him) was dead set against the idea. However, the chance to help a fan like Shlomo start the exciting journey into adult life along with a check for 50,000 dollars helped Warrior change his tune. Warrior’s love of the traditions of Judaism were also a major influence on his decision. “I have always had a special place in my heart for the Jewish people and particularly their traditions,” said Warrior decked out in corpse paint and a yarmulke before he strode on stage, “I often think of the great quote by the German poet Berthold Auerbach who said ‘Judaism lives not in an abstract creed, but in its institutions’. UGH!”
Celtic Frost opened The Bar Mitzvah Concert at Epstein’s Deli and Reception Hall on Saturday night with their classic song The Usurper. Then, they launched into two altered versions of classic songs in honor of the evening. Into Crypts Oy Vay sent the crowd of 200 into a frenzy and Bacon (For The Wicked) caused the floor to rumble with the charging fury of pure metal metalness. The highlight of the night was when Warrior was lifted onto a chair during the hora (which the Rabbi Jacob Greenblatt referred to jokingly as “The Circle of Tyrants” dance) and carried around the restaurant while singing “Inner Sanctum”.
The night was not without incident. Bassist Martin Ain, confused and annoyed by the challah that was being thrown at the band, fired Franco Sesa’s drumstick at 12-year-old Annie Blechman. The stick slammed into her forehead, sending her to Mt. Sinai Medical Center for overnight evaluation. Ain was briefly detained by police after the event but was released on his own recognizance pending investigation.
All things considered, the evening was a major success. The band sounded crisp in spite of its four-year layoff. Warrior, who has made millions of dollars over the past few years in the fortune cookie message writing business, is seriously considering putting that project on hold and going back on the road with the band. Celtic Frost has already confirmed that they might be playing a full Bar Mitzvah World Tour in the fall with stops in Israel, Poland and Miami Beach.
Souls in The Heads of Corpses: A Psychological Review of Allegaeon’s “Fragments of Form and Function”
Posted by Keith Spillett in Existential Rambings, Pointless Music Reviews, Pointyheaded Highbrow Stuff on July 9, 2011
Few people realize that the recent Allegaeon album “Fragments of Form and Function” is a doorway to a separate dimension. Even if it hadn’t turned my body into a giant alpha wave and projected me into the substratum of the upper atmosphere, I’d have thought it was an entirely captivating record. At first, my ears began to shoot orange beams from them. My children noticed this and were immediately frightened. Eventually, they got used to it and my daughter continued talking to my toes and trying to feed them milk. As the solo from the song The God Particle came through my cheap 9-dollar Sony headphones, I became a bundle of pure light energy and bounced from wall to wall. I had the right headphone in my left ear and vice versa, which caused my body to carom with on a strange, knuckleball like trajectory. And then…..a universe without dimension……
Freud once posited that original sin was actually a strange response to witnessing a patricide. After all, the divine sacrifice wouldn’t be called for unless it was in response to a murder. A universe that avenges theft with murder or lust with murder or greed with murder would be the most unjust possible universe. But why would this idea bother us so much? Maybe it is the idea that what creates life also “owes its death to the universe” that fills us with such dread and wills us to punish ourselves over and over. When you are hurdling through the universe at light speed, it all seems irrelevant. The human conception of justice cannot be understood at this speed. All actions happen simultaneously. From above, it’s all the same.
As the stirring stillness of the post-script guitar solo in “Biomech –Vals No. 666” began to well up in my consciousness I became vaguely aware of the illuminated bits of human spiritual form in these bodies of light that surrounded me. Then, the whole ride came to a screeching halt. I realized that I was, in fact, deliriously spinning into some weird new age fantasy that had no baring on anything and would be useless to anyone unfortunate enough to read it. People don’t devolve into sweetness and light, they lumber along in these fleshy tombs for what qualifies as eternity (or about 76.8 years, depending on where you live). We are not spiritual beings on some wondrous journey. We are getting deader by the hour. There is nothing poetic about a corpse that isn’t aware enough of itself to begin rotting. Trapped in this dying form and making up stories about interconnection and light and love and beauty and meaning. Charming.
“WHO ARE YOU TO DESIGN THE LIFE WE LIVE?!?!?!?!!?!!”
A Cosmic Question. Don’t bother. Don’t bother with any of it. “What defines reality? What defines a soul?” That’s your problem, pal. I’m just decay with a bit of personality. Apatheism is the only answer that allows my monstrous form any solace. Yet…I want to know as well. Do I suffer because I want to know or do I suffer because I cannot dream? Descartes went around trying to find souls in the heads of dissected corpses. (Come out with your hands in the air!!!!!!! Put the soul on the ground next to you and don’t make any quick moves!!!!! Up against the wall, Descartes!!!!!) I’d take it over pretending knowledge I do not have or seeking knowledge I cannot gain. I prefer the ever-quickening pace of the double bass in “From Seed To Throne” to any rational explanation of what I am or to anything else this moment can offer. There is that much for now.
The Tyranny of Tradition 