Posts Tagged Ripper Owens
BlaK Dan Returneth To Speak To The Priests of Judas
Posted by Keith Spillett in Articles I Probably Shouldn't Have Bothered Writing, BlaK Dan's Theatre of Cruelty on May 25, 2026
I have returned to you, my people, with a message.
I slumbered in my basement in darkness with Bolt Thrower “In Battle There is No Law” on repeat. I had reached the outer limit of human experience, but was awakened by some eight-year-old kids doing Tic Toc dances on my front lawn. I shot at them several times before they returned fire and ran into the woods. But, regardless of the reason…I was awakened and now I returneth to you. The Bettleheim of the Blastbeat. The Borgia of Borknagar. The Scapula of the Soul of Sadistic Solipsisic Slayerism. For I am Blak Dan, and I can’t fall back asleep.
At first, I pondered my wasting words on you. Having to think them, a burden. Having to speak them, a chore. Having to write them, a punishment. But, I have stared into the abyss long enough now and have realized that the replies I thought I was getting were mere echoes. Which was disappointing. I thought I had found my soulmate. Instead, I peered into the sheer vacuity of my soul, mate.
I come not to speak on politics for you have already done that. Your opinions like maple syrup running into your collective hashbrowns. All opinions have been had and repeated. Scattered. Covered. Smothered. Chunked. Diced. And forgotten. Your blood sport no longer calculated in rational numbers on a scoreboard, now broken into electoral statements of condemnation of righteous hatred for thine neighbor.
I come not to speak of economics. For I know not of the math you now practice. I thought crypto a venerial disease and do not care if the Fed cuts rates. If it feels good, do it, I say. Inequality has always seemed fine with me. For I wade in a cesspool of inequality anytime I leave the house and suffer the presence of others.
For I am Post-Everything. In my slumber, I transitioned into a state of Meta-Post-Everythingness. You won’t understand what that means for another century, but trust me when I say, I seeeth. Deepethly. You are playing chess, whilst I am playing ten dimensional strip Parchesi with beautiful coed lizardwomen. You speak of numbers, yet can you even hear the One when I speak?
I come not to speak of wars or rumors of wars. Or rumors of Fleetwood Mac albums. For what price a man’s soul if he hasn’t truly understood the teachings contained in Tusk. Iran? Iran so far away, indeed.
I come to philosophize on a subject of consequence. Many of you use your words in the vain hope of persuasiveness. I need not persuade because I speak only in immutable truths and don’t bother with useless words like “Ouch, you’re stepping on my fingers” or “just take the battery out of the smoke detector and it’s no longer a problem”. I have only the truth at my disposal. Post-truth really. Post-meta-proto-truth. The type of truth only known to those who have gained enlightenment and then stumbled back into this mad charnelhouse of a planet looking for a good fibula to gnaw on can understand.
For whilst you concern yourselves with issues of politics, issues of power, issues of survival and other such banalities, I come to speak the words unspoken. Until I speak them. Which I’m going to do at some point. For as man seeith nations burn and fortunes spin like weeble-wobbles on the scorching hot pavement of time, I see only what needs seeing.
I speak these words to a specific audience. I have allowed many of you along for the ride, because the members and former members of Judas Priest have obtained restaining orders from your so-called “courts” and thusly, speaking directly with them is no longer possible for me.
For you, Judas Priest, you have sinned against nature. You have doneth the unthinkable. And you lie. Your snake-like tongues spit truthless venom in our ears. You pretend there never was a Jugulator. You gaslight the human species with your acquired, refined insolence. Your singer, that guy who was in that really good band called Fight, claims to never have even heard of what I speak. Yet, you hold Jugulator hostage in an Iranian Embassy of the mind. And you take from us, your adherents, the one moment of true perfection you ever achieved. For it is YOU Judas Priest, that deny us access to the song Cathedral Spires! J’accuse toi!
I have exerted and strained as I searched the so-called “internet”. Humbled myself before its streaming services. Scrolled and scrolled seeking even a mention of it. Allowed my mind to be devoured by millions of offers of essential oils that are no longer essential to me. Nary a word about it. Nary a suggestion. Nither a live recording with Mr. Halford singing. Nither a 25th anniversary remaster with studio outtakes of Mr. Downing screaming lines from Dante over an early abandoned riff to “Bullet Train”.
Only Ripper hath spoken truth. For it is he who remembers. He who has acknowledged the song’s legacy and deadly aftermath. He who speaks of rising up only to retire. He who still tires while watching the world expire.
He who shouteth the words “Cathedral Spires”.
And yet, he is forgotten to the pages of history. Written out like that cute kid Oliver on the Brady Bunch. Replaced by Mark Wahlberg in the movie and left to rot in the wretched refuse of former members of other bands. We speak not of Ripper or his sacrifice. Or of his glorious burden. We go on pretending Jugulator never was.
The absence you feel in your lives that you confuse with the death of meaning is merely the absence of this song. It is as if the entirety of the human experience led to one ultimate, defining moment. And that moment moulders in the cutout bin of human pathos somewhere between some 311 ripoff band and the only remaining copy of the Garth Brooks’ Chris Gaines CD left on the planet. And you mock it with your ignorance. We say “Jugu-later” when we really mean “Jug-u-never”.
So, I say to you, Priest of Judas, do not betray us with your lies! Do not place a crown of thorns upon this head of metal! Do not crucify us on this Cross of Brutish Steel! Bring forth a new recording of Cathedral Spires with Mr. Halford’s mighty voice intoning the words. Free Cathedral Spires from beyond the realms of death!
Uplift us, ye Priests. Uplift us, to where we can look down from those spires you promised and see all that we have wrought and all needs wroughting. Uplift us, to the downtuned soaring heights from which you left us dangling. For I am Blak Dan, and I command you! Bring forth the Spires, so I can renew my slumber and be free of this 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.
The Tyranny of Tradition 