Megadeth at Irving Plaza

It's a good night to be out; the weather is cool without being cold, with a little too much humidity that makes any time outside uncomfortable only with some exertion. We're not outside for any real extertion; we wander with a purpose in the Union Square area, waiting for the 9:45 hour, when the bands with metalcore names leave the stage and Megadeth comes on. We sit in a bar, and drink, and talk about music. The sound system is high-end, large sound-reinforcement type speakers dominating a room so shitty-looking it could be out of a punk documentary. The speakers and the room are diametrically opposed in quality; they shouldn't be in the same two block radius, let alone the same room, but the whole thing works. Maybe it's because of the weird mix of tracks: Jawbreaker, Minor Threat, Embrace, James Brown. I'm told to expect "The Trooper" to come on at any second. We talk about Ian MacKaye and his DIY ethic, Blake Schwarzenbach and how he now teaches English at Hunter College. It's a good way to warm up for a concert; a much better way than listening to whatever crappy bands Roadrunner's packaged on this tour.

Seeing Megadeth has become a common occurrence; five times in two years far outstrips my frequency for any other band. It's a little ironic; I remember thinking after I heard that Dave had hurt his wrist that it sucked I would never see that band live. Maybe I'm making up for lost time.

Irving Plaza is packed, almost to the gills. We start out below the overhand, where the sound sucks and for some reason they're not using the extra speakers they've added. As Megadeth takes the stage we squeeze our way through the crowd and into an open area near one of the doors. The difference in sound between the overhand and the open room is palpable. The sound still sucks, but it's gone from a dull roar to a wall, a wall of high frequency fuzzed harmonics and deeper guitar distortion, interspersed with the rhythmic smashing of the drums and the indistinct wailing of whomever is singing. It's like having your head cut off with a sound wave. The air is electric and it feels good.

Mustaine has a cold, or some sort of sick thing that makes it hard for him to sing; he apologizes but tells us he didn't want to cancel. We love him for it and we let him know, just like we let him and the band know how happy we are to be there after every song. The crowd - whatever the capacity crowd is for Irving, small but not insignificant - doesn't sound like 1,000 people in a club when we cheer, but 5,000 or 10,000 or more in an arena or a stadium. It's huge; it reverberates from the ceiling of the old concert hall and startles me every time it happens. It adds to the atmosphere, to the excitement of seeing this band do their thing and do it well once again.

Megadeth, as always, plays a mix of the very new and the very old; think "Washington is Next" meets "Hangar 18" meets "Kick the Chair" meets "In My Darkest Hour" meets "Symphony of Destruction" and you'll get the idea. The crowd doesn't know the new material as well and no one can hear Dave, so the new tracks turn into respectful silences and physical breaks for the crowd, who throw everything they have into every old track the band plays. I sing at shows, when I know the songs; it helps me let myself go into the music more. I'm singing - but I'm always singing - but it feels like everyone else is, too. It's communal, unifying, and it makes the show that much more memorable, because we're all getting our faces melted together and we all know it. They play the new version of "Toute le Monde," and I realize that Dave's little remake trick must be working; there are a lot of women in this crowd. They play "Tornado of Souls" and the fifth time I hear it live is just as good as the first. I lose my shit; I love that song.

It's 11:20. The night's over, the set finished just on the cusp of going too long. We stumble out into the street, swap stories of other shows and other good times built around music and metal. I walk back to the subway, thoughtful. Nights like these are why I go to shows, I decide, in search of the high that only good live music can bring. It's a good addiction.

Super Happy Metal Fun Time!

I work in the editorial department of an online publishing company, and we get a lot of random stuff from PR agencies: books, CDs, press kits, product samples; we even got a bunch of cleaning products in a wooden coffin once, which was a little odd. Since our writers work off site we need to determine whether or not to send this barrage of material on to them; most of it goes on its merry way, but some things, especially the stuff that's misaddressed (sent to one of parenting writers, say, when it really should go to one of the home & garden writers), stay in the office and join our collections of Weird Desk Stuff. I'm the Metal Guy of the editorial department, so when the Heavy Metal Fun Time Activity Book by Aye Jay Morano came in, addressed to our classic rock writer, I snagged it and added it to my desk display, which includes, among other things, a model of this place, a signed print of this online comic, and a postcard promo of this album I picked up outside of an Opeth show in 2005.

Of course, I opened it first and delighted at cheekiness within. Besides an endorsement from Dio, who no doubt loves metal enough to laugh at the music and the culture at least once in a while, the Heavy Metal Fun Time Activity Book features an introduction by Andrew W. K. (he's metal now?) full of insipid thoughts about the nature of reality, and then the centerpiece: page after page of all of those pen-and-paper activities you did as a kid, all with a metal twist. There's a word seek with songs by Neurosis; a maze where you help the members of Spinal Tap get to the stage (get it?); two pages where you can color in the 1983 and 1989 versions of Metallica; etc., etc., etc. My favorite is the Death Metal Sudoku, where all of the pre-filled numbers are sixes.

For the retail price of about $10, the Heavy Metal Fun Time Activity Book doesn't price up to a car ride diversion like the books it's modeled upon, but that's not really the point. I don't want to fill out the activities in my copy; I just want to open it up every once in a while and smirk my way back into a good mood.

Short Meditation on Street Sounds

Walking down into the subway this morning on my way to work, I heard the strains of a solo violin, playing something in a classical figure. Street musicians abound in New York and even though the MTA makes anyone playing in subway go through a licensing process to improve the quality, they aren't always good. This guy, though...something about the silence of the morning as people waited for their morning train, the chill air outside and stuffy warmth down by the tracks, the stone-lined surfaces that turned his concert hall into a miles-long reverberation chamber; all of it made the sound so pure and so sweet that anyone who could hear was happy to just listen and anyone who couldn't feel some sort of tug at their soul is as dead to the world as a freshly departed corpse.

Countdown to Darkness

I came back from the gym this morning with a real yen to hear "Architecture of Aggression" - or, as I was calling it until recently for some reason, "Architecture of Regression" - and eventually put on the whole disc for my sonic enjoyment. About three-quarters of the way through, I realized something that's been in the back of my mind for years; probably ever since I bought the CD as a lad: Countdown to Extinction is very dark record.

It's not the lyrics per se; Mustaine had been writing lyrics about war and destruction for years and Countdown... fits right in that same mold. The difference is in the music; for the first time there's not much thrashing, so the sound timbre doesn't have the frantic brightness that thrash brings to the mix. Instead, it's gloom and doom in both the words and the music. I remember listening to the spoken word part in the middle of "Countdown to Extinction" and freaking out thinking about all of that life disappearing, faster and faster. Previous Megadeth albums were like the Mad Max world of post-nuclear apocalypse, disease, death and the fight for survival. Countdown... was more like the moment the bombs go off, when your old life crumbles around you and you wonder if it's better to die in the fiery flash or try and survive with what's left.

It's also got Dave Mustaine singing about selling man pussy, which is a comic highlight to a Megadeth album if there ever was one.

Film Review: Get Thrashed

Last week I had the distinct pleasure of attending the New York City premiere of Get Thrashed: The Story of Thrash Metal, a documentary about - you guessed it - the history of thrash from its origins in the 1980s to whatever form it's still kicking around in today. Directed by Rick Ernst, Get Thrashed featured Rat Skates, formerly of Overkill, as associate producer.

The showing took place in a theater on the East Side as a part of the New York International Independent Film & Video Festival. This association probably made the whole showing possible, but it lead to a few problems that very nearly killed the fun of this party before it got started.

First, there was the matter of seating arrangements. Because New York City is one of the world's original thrash capitals, many of the members of the NYC-area bands featured in this film wanted to come to the premiere. Because New York City is a place where class equality is a convenient lie, the organizers decided to reserve the front four rows for the bands and their families, even though there weren't really enough chairs for all of the ticket holders and this wasn't a crowd for acting star struck. Clearly, fire code be damned when there are rock stars involved.

But then the organizers went too far: they informed us - less than a minute before the show was supposed to start - that Get Thrashed would have an unannounced opener, a piece called Bang Bang You're Dead about an indie rock band from Utah. And they even had the director, a neophyte giving his first showing, in the audience to make an introduction.

As you can no doubt imagine, the result was a disaster. The film itself wasn't that bad - it reminded me a bit of Instrument, if Instrument had been Jem Cohen's first film - but anyone with half a brain would know that showing a film with no real narrative and a bunch of disassociated imagery about a group of college-age indie kids to a crowd of mostly 30+ metalheads would go over like a lead zeppelin. I was impressed: the crowd managed to maintain a sullen silence for the first few minutes before the conversation rose to low roar, people started actively booing the endless transitions or announcing loudly they were going out to get popcorn. The film's end after half an hour was a mercy killing overdue by about 25 minutes, leaving us to wonder if we had been the victims of a last minute switch due to poor ticket sales for Bang Bang Your Dead or some sort of bullheaded stupidity by our hosts.

Thankfully, the rest of the evening's awesome was proportional to the beginning's suckitude: Get Thrashed is an excellent, excellent film that gets even better when you watch it with a room full of fans not afraid to show their love for a nostalgia trip down heavy metal memory lane. Focusing on the world's four big thrash areas (LA, San Francisco, New York and Germany) and moving in a rough chronological order that tied the US Big Four (Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer and Anthrax) and German thrash giants Kreator to the scenes they helped spawn, Get Thrashed happily traced the progression of thrash from its roots in Metallica's garage in LA and Exodus's brutal live shows in San Francisco in 1980 to the movement's apogee with the 1990 Clash of the Titans tour, using photos, video and interviews with everyone from Blitz Ellsworth and Rat Skates to Dave Mustaine to Zetro to Lars Ulrich to the members of Dark Angel to those crazy bastards from the Old Bridge Militia to tell the tale.

While all of those interviews are informative, a few go beyond and become truly memorable. Blitz Ellsworth, for example, is either really funny or really, really crazy, but in a way that makes you want to have a beer with him so you can hear some stories. Dave Mustaine is...well, Dave Mustaine, the strange cross between super arrogant guitar god and comic book geek. My favorite moment in the movie was when Mustaine goes on a short rant about how he made the careers of everyone in Megadeth, could play better than everyone in Metallica, was, in fact, responsible for thrash music as we know it today - cue a gasp from the crowd - and then the film makers cut to Scott Ian, who tells the camera, "if it wasn't for Dave Mustaine, thrash music probably wouldn't exist."

There were some nice tribute moments, too: moments of silence written in for the memories of Cliff Burton, Paul Baloff and Dimebag Darrell made even more poignant by the sentiment of the crowd, which gave each man a full round of applause. These moments underscored how much of a community metal can be when it's brought together around something good; when in-fighting and external attacks aren't part of the equation and the mood turns to celebration of what's been done.

All of these moments underscore what seems to be Get Thrashed's underlying purpose: to set down the official story, such as it is, as a monument to one generation of metalheads and the bands they loved. It's a huge strength for the film, but it also underscores the film's one weakness: Get Thrashed puts thrash metal's foundations in a near vacuum, as if it sprang fully formed from the minds of a few guys who liked playing loud and fast, tiptoes around the more difficult issues and ascribes everything that's going on in metal now to what started 27 years ago. Historically it makes the film a little skewed, but that one problem pales in comparison to the enjoyable experience Get Thrashed provides to the viewer. If you can go see it, do; you'll have a great time.

Metal: Why I Listen

I am what some people might call an intellectual, which means - in this case - that I enjoy contemplating ideas and experiences. I also happen to enjoy writing about those contemplations, which is why this blog - and another on a different topic - exist, albeit within the confines of their respective topical spheres. One of the things I think about on a regular basis is why I listen to metal, a line of thinking that I like to think has more in common with "is there a God?" than "am I a meat head for listening to this type of music?" In other words, my motivation stems from natural curiosity about the depths of self than from lack of confidence about my perceptions in the eyes of others.

A couple of weeks ago, when looking for a picture to anoint one particular post, I came across an article entitled "The Philosophy of Heavy Metal," published by the American Nihilist Underground Society. I read the article with interest and do intend to write a response to its ideas at some point in the near future, but today when clicking around the site I came across a passage that struck me. From "History of Heavy Metal Music and the Heavy Metal Subculture":

Its primary distinguishing characteristic is that metal embraces structure more than any other form of popular music; while rock is notorious for its verse-chorus-verse structure and jazz emphasizes a looser version of the same allowing unfetter improvisation, metal emphasizes a motivic, melodic narrative structure in the same way that classical and baroque music do. Each piece may utilize other techniques, but what holds it together is a melodic progression between ideas that do not fit into simple verse-chorus descriptors. Even in 1960s proto-heavy metal, use of motives not repeated as part of the verse-chorus cycle and transitional riffing suggested a poetic form of music in which song structure was derived from what needed to be communicated.

The writing is a little obtuse and the tone more than a little arrogant, but the idea of metal being pop music's answer to classical music jumped out at me and made me wonder if the above paragraph contained the underpinnings of my metalheadom.

It's something I've explored a bit in the past: a love of music is one of the fundamental binders of my mother's family and my parents did their best to inculcate me with the value of classical music from a very young age. Perhaps in response, I did my best to tie my respect for classic music and my love for popular music together into my college thesis (further demonstration of how much time I've spent thinking about these ideas), where I tried to parse the history of progressive metal; i.e., metal in the form where it most apes classical music. Whether or not I succeeded is a question for another time, but looking back I can see the appeal: classical music had practically become part of my genetic material, but all the same, it did not appeal to me on the fundamental, motivational level I craved. Rock music created that motivational drive, but could not answer my need for narrative flow. At its best, metal fulfills both needs and thus I listen.

Entitlement Kills Heroes

I'm catching up on back editions of the Henry Rollins Show on my DVR and just put on the May 25 episode, where Rollins starts off the show by talking about heroes: how we love to set 'em up and how we love to take 'em down. It occurred to me that while the reason humanity needs heroes is something we learn about from the first fairy tale we here, there might be a socio-cultural reason (or two) why reality TV and tabloid news give us as Americans the scandal we all seem to crave so much: our taught-from-birth sense of equality demands it.

We're a country that prides itself on believing (on the surface, at least) that liberty is an alienable right, that anyone can make it big by trying hard enough and everyone is on the exact same level playing field. Our legal system codifies justice based not on our social status or economic wherewithal but on our standing as citizens. Our government promises us all an equal piece of the pie - a pie that our society names to be sweet and juicy with a flaky crust that anyone can enjoy. We learn these values in school along with our ABCs and state capitals and we know, deep inside, we're just as worthy as anyone else to get what we want out of life.

This extreme individualism helped the United States succeed on the global stage. It helped build our way of life. However - and here's my point - with that same individualism we're more than happy to take any of our heroes, no matter how much we need them to guide us, down a peg or two when we can. We even revel in the idea and the execution, taking pride in our judgment as those we once held high are laid low. We do these things, I think, because deep down inside we never want anyone to forget: we don't just want that piece of pie, we don't just need that piece of pie, we deserve that piece of pie. Entitlement kills heroes.

Review: Testament - The Chance Theater, Poughkeepsie, NY - 7/13/07

I don't usually drive two hours out of my way to see a show, but Testament and I have a little history: I was supposed to see them at the exact same theater almost two years ago, prompted by one of the opening bands - I knew the drummer - and ended up not going because the band in question broke up before the show. Stupid reason, I know, but thus are stories made. However, since Testament refuses to tour anywhere closer to New York City and I gotta have me some Chuck Billy and Alex Skolnick, off I went.

The Chance is a charming relic. A remnant of an earlier age - it was originally a movie theater in the 1920s - it's preserved its faded glory character and soldiers on unrestored and with dingy grace as a rock venue. In appearance it reminds me of The Palladium in Worcester, MA and Irving Plaza in NYC, although it has one unique quirk: all of The Chance's useful sitting space sits high above the entrance, accessible through doorways and stairwells hidden by large crowds. Walk in after a show has started, as I did that Friday night and low ceilings, the overhang of the balcony, the blocky shapes of the bar and the soundboard all confront, pushing you inexorably towards the front, towards the built-in pit.

I found myself on the right side of the stage, the stairs to the pit - I know, how civilized - yawning towards me like temptation in wood-and-steel form. 'Come down,' they called to me. 'You don't have your camera, nothing to break - you'll be fine!' With the restraint of saint - and the experience of a man who knows the pit far too well - I shrugged the idea off.

Testament arrived late, taking the stage a good fifteen minutes past their announced starting time of 11:15, but when that blessed moment finally came, everything - the long drive, getting lost in the spread of Poughkeepsie, waiting through Merauder (real NYHC, which seemed to consist of not playing quite fast enough, coupled with a singer who was way too drunk/messed up in general to be on stage) - was worth the wait. Chuck Billy could fill a room with his mere presence alone. Always front and center, striding around the stage that suddenly seemed too small to contain him, Chuck Billy and his microphone stand, a three foot voice-amplifying baton that he carried at all times, were the centerpieces of much of the show. When Chuck Billy wasn't singing into the mic, he was air guitaring the solos on it. When he wasn't recreating the solos, he was using it to conduct, or to pull vocal contributions from the sweaty, eager crowd.

Alex Skolnick, meanwhile, held his own. The band didn't switch positions much, so I didn't get to see Skolnick's fretwork up close, but the sound was more than enough to satisfy as he and the rest of the band tore through a set list that drew mainly from the first three albums. In addition, a treat: "The Afterlife," the first new Testament song in six years, which seemed a worth addition to the catalog and a tantalizing reminder of the new album scheduled to come out next year.

There were some problems, of course: the mix on the first three songs was wretched, as if someone gave the volume knobs on the board an uncorrected spin, pushing the drums over the top and simultaneously alerting me to the previously unknown difficulty of trying to head bang without a guitar rhythm. I don't recommend it. Testament promised us an "eighteen or nineteen song set," a warm up for an upcoming festival appearance in Germany, but either the late start or some sort curfew ended the night, without encore, a few songs early. On the balance though, Testament put on an excellent show more than worth the travel and price of admission.

Hy-Brazil

Currently in rotation on the chronological MP3 list is the Death in Pacaembu bootleg, a soundboard recording done of an Iron Maiden concert done in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 2004. It's a decent recording, although it could have used some additional mixing in the studio; Bruce's voice tends to overwhelm the rest of the band and the recording does not flatter his high range. Anyway, the reason why I bring it up is the crowd, which sounds like something you hear in TV broadcasts of soccer games in Europe or Latin America: an enormous roaring beast that feeds off of the performers' energy, chews it up and spits it back at twice the size. They chant, they sing along in their thunderous thousands, they make up a presence. It's pretty awesome.

I also have a copy of Scream for Me Brazil, Bruce Dickinson's solo live album, also recorded (if you couldn't tell from the title) in Brazil. As with Death in Pacaembu, the crowd is an element of the performance, a testament to how much better than the original album a live rock show can be. Listening to either selection makes me think that - no matter how difficult it would be to get there and get tickets - the ultimate live Iron Maiden experience might be to see the band play in Brazil, to be a part of a temporary human collective so big and so connected as to overwhelm the individual consciousness. I imagine a bloom of harmony, the product of thousands of souls in momentary concord, flaming up into the night above the stadium like a burning ball of gas.

Apologia: Responding to UN Dispatch

Seth alerted me to this post over at the UN Dispatch that purports to address all of the supposed inaccuracies in the title track of Megadeth's most recent release, United Abominations. Dave Mustaine being Dave Mustaine (boy is that the subject of a whole other post), he's written a long, rambling response that comes down to, "You're right and wrong, but I'm still right. Nyah!" plus some stuff about how the fans love him best anyway. I could hope for something more erudite and incisive from the song's creator, but then I wouldn't feel motivated to write my own response and point out, point by point, all of UN Dispatch's mistakes and really, what's the fun in that? See the original article for full context of quotes and note that I'm only responding to those sections that are either incorrect or seem to miss the song's point. Without further ado:

Last summer, UN Dispatch learned that the heavy metal band Megadeth was recording an album titled United Abominations, which featured cover art depicting a 9-11 style attack on the UN building in New York.

Not to be pedantic, but "9-11 style attack" would be something involving planes or, at the very least, a group of terrorists. The album art, which blogger Mark Leon Goldberg reprinted in a blog he wrote last August - the same post he references in the quote above, by the way - shows what looks like a meteor attack, a group of bloodied angels and Vic Rattlehead looking bad ass and holding a shotgun while glowering at the meteors streaming in from the right of the viewpoint. I think we can all agree that terrorists are as much a source of meteor attacks as Britney Spears is a source of good music.

But not being much of a Megadeth fan, I forgot to pencil the release date into my calender.

Mr. Goldberg will go on to prove how little he knows of Megadeth's music many, many times during this article.

Blaming the UN for 9-11 is a new trope, even for conspiracy mongers--and rightly so.

Actually, the line in question is "[the United Nations] failed to address the most dangerous threats facing the world," not "[the United Nations] failed to prevent 9-11." You'll notice that threats is pluralized, which dovetails with Mustaine's rant about UN lapses at the end of the song. Mustaine's politics aren't always crystal clear, but his lyrics have always been anti-war, starting with Peace Sells...But Who's Buying?, where incidentally, the band chose to depict the UN after a nuclear holocaust in the cover art. Mr. Goldberg also misquotes the lyrics several times in this section, which doesn't add much credibility to his arguments.

Assuming the antecedent to the pronoun "they" refers to the UN Secretariat, lead singer and guitarist Dave Mustaine (whose voice we now hear) seems to be implying that UN staffers are enriching themselves while the poor in their country suffer.

Could be...the meaning of "they," used throughout the entire verse, is so ambiguous that Mustaine could talking about UN employees as thieves, or - especially in the second half the verse - the UN as dupes to President Bush. Also, that's been Mustaine's voice throughout the song.

By warning of 'another mushroom cloud, another smoking gun,' Mustain [sic] seems to be implying that the nuclear threat from Iraq was real, or at least as real as the threat from the United Nations. [emphasis in the original]

Or, once again, Mustaine could be implying that the UN didn't do enough to stop the invasion of Iraq, which would be a message much more consistent with Megadeth's anti-war stance.

This is where things get weird. 'The Locust King' is drawn from the Book of Revelation, Chapter 9. Mustain's [sic] decision to use apocalyptic literature found in Revelation is quite, uh, revealing. He seems to be sympathetic to a fundamentalist doctrine known as pre-millenialism [sic], in which an anti-Christ is said to rule the world during a period of tribulation before the messiah (Christ) returns. Some modern day pre-millenialist [sic] sects believe that the United Nations (or the Secretary General), is either literally the anti-Christ, or is setting the geopolitical conditions in which the anti-Christ will rise. Mustaine seems to believe this lunacy as well.

You know who else is a Christian? President George W. Bush - and he's had no qualms about incorporating his religious beliefs into his governing doctrine. Following the UN-as-dupes theme, Bush could be the Locust King, dragging the United States into a conflict that becomes the war that spawns Armageddon. Knowing Megadeth's song catalog as I do (and as Mr. Goldberg clearly does not), I'd have to say a literary allusion from a guy known for songs about comic books superheros and fictional characters doesn't seem too far off the mark.

Again, Mustaine seems to be ascribing pre-Iraq war intelligence failures to the UN.

As with most of the first verse, there are no proper nouns, so Mr. Goldstein seems to be filling in the blanks by drawing on the title of the song. "The decision to attack/Based on secret intelligence" is an indictment of the lies told by the US government before the Iraq invasion. Added evidence: you can clearly hear Mustaine add "Iran and [North] Korea," which are the other two countries named as the "Axis of Evil" by President Bush in 2002.

At this point, you can hear French spoken in the background. The only thing I could decifer [sic] was, "Nous besoin d'ordre mondial," meaning, "We need global order." This apparently upsets Mustaine, because he launches into a monster guitar solo!

The French speaker in question actually says "we need a new world order" first and then "yes, a new order." It's actually too bad Mr. Goldberg missed this tidbit, as the phrase "a new world order" is a pretty important piece of 20th century history: it started as an expression of optimism for peace after the First and Second World Wars, incorporating the spirit that led to the foundation of the League of Nations in 1919 and then the United Nations in 1945. After the Cold War, the first President Bush co-opted the phrase to build support for the first invasion of Iraq. Look at that: two tie-ins to the song, just by going back and listening closely.

In 1986, Libyan agents bombed a nightclub in Berlin, killing two US servicemen. President Regan retaliated by bombing two sites in Libya. It is hard to see how this episode is somehow an indictment against the United Nations.

To quote the UN Peacekeeping FAQ: "The United Nations was founded, in the words of its Charter, in order “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war”." Bombings and counter-bombings by two members of the United Nations on the soil of a third would seem to fly in the face of the organization's charter. In other words: the UN can't even prevent its own member nations from fighting each other.

Facing War without end, looking into the future, there (grunt) was
(grunt) no (grunt) more (grunt) UNNNNNNNN!

Grunt?! Did you listen to this song on a telephone speaker when you transcribed the lyrics? Do you not recognize double-tracked vocals when you hear them? Enough of you, Mark Goldberg, you're done.

Playing the Tongue-in-Cheek

The Onion has it right:

The gentleman they "interviewed" for this piece on the wonderful diversity of heavy metal is spot on - I've spent today listening to Anthrax (Greater of Two Evils), Queensryche (Operation: Mindcrime II), Black Sabbath (The Mob Rules) and - my newest joy - Blind Guardian (Nightfall in Middle Earth and Somewhere Far Beyond) and feel like a better person for having done so. So hats off to you, Curt Webber of Logansport, Indiana; you're a righteous, open-minded dude in my book.

Hold that thought: you're a cretin for liking nu-metal and hating on all rap metal. Sure, a lot of that stuff was crap, but doesn't mean you need to discount Rage, you narrow-minded freak. Fred Durst is ok, but Zack De La Rocha gets no love? What a loser.

Ministry Announces Final Album and Tour

I got an email from a PR agent today announcing the release of Ministry's final album, slated to hit the streets on September 18. Entitled The Last Sucker, it's 11 songs about how much Al Jourgensen dislikes our country's leadership, which seems as good a topic as any. It even claims to be "the third in an unrelenting and uber-critical CD trilogy aimed at exposing the plethora of foils, failures and fabrications perpetrated by the George W. Bush Administration," so I guess Al's got a lot of hate backed up. The tour that follows will usher in the end of Ministry, so if you're into that sort of thing get your wallets ready - Jourgensen prefers to "be behind the console than behind the mic" these days, which I guess translates into a Beatles-eque retirement from the stage.

I wouldn't call myself a huge Ministry fan; I have a tape copy of The Land of Rape and Honey, but that's about as far as I got. I am curious though to see what Ministry does with a cover of "Roadhouse Blues," which might be the most gutsy evil song on The Doors' debut disc and the addition of Burton C. Bell on backing vocals for three tracks should be interesting. This album might be a good excuse to explore another new-to-me classic band.

Power Metal Original on Finnish Idol

Not to belabor the point, but Finland's version of Idol featured the above tune - sung by Ari Koivunen, the same guy who covered The Evil That Men Do in an earlier episode - as Ari's final performance. The same guy just sold 30,000 units of his debut album, making him a platinum artist (smaller population means lower relative numbers for sales, I guess) in Finland. The music in the video isn't particularly interesting (straightforward power metal offering nothing challenging) and I wouldn't call Ari a captivating performer - at least not at this stage of his career - but you better believe the same guy in the US wouldn't get nearly as much respect in American Idol, let alone on the album charts.
Via Latency Issues

Metal Mutability

My wife and I had a party at our apartment this past weeend, which isn't relevant to this blog except that it means lots of cleaning, which in turn means I spend time listening to music and pontificating while my hands get the manual labor done. On Saturday my wife was out for the day, so I had the place to myself while I cleaned up the kitchen. To keep me company, I loaded up the stereo with Black Sabbath's Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and Nirvana's In Utero (in that order) and soon fell to thinking about Sabbath's influence on Nirvana and then - just to make things interesting - metal's mutability.

By mutability, I mean the music's incredible ability to successfully meld with almost any other style of Western music you throw at it, making metal like type O negative blood, the universal music donor. Think about it: how many different types of metal can you describe just by combining metal and some other type of music, like mixing chemicals in a vial? Here's a few I came up with off the top of my head:

• Thrash: metal and punk rock.
• Grunge: also metal and punk rock, but Sabbath-style 70s metal instead of 80s style NWOBHM metal.
• Hair Metal: take metal, glam and pop, mix together, shake vigorously. Serve with a cocaine chaser off the back of a stripper.
• Rap Metal: mix metal and rap. Spend years ripping off Rage Against the Machine. Be proud of it.
• Metalcore: metal and hard core. Metal and punk rock mixes tend to be very popular, because punk is almost as diverse as metal.
  
• Progressive Metal: metal and classical or jazz, depending on the artists. Not the same as jazz fusion.
• Industrial Metal: metal and the more hardcore aspects of electronica. Can't see the same thing happening with house music, though.
  

See, isn't this fun?

WWIII, or How I Learned to Practice Safe Rock

As I'm pretty sure I've admitted on these pages in the past - yup, there it is - I've been listening to my mp3/AAC collection chronologically. Because I have a 20 gig iPod and far more than 20 gigs of music in my collection (damn, when did that happen?), I've broken things up by decade - right now I'm on the 2000s. This morning's first selection on the way to work was the title track from KMFDM's WWIII, a song that always blows me away with its sheer power; it's the sonic equivalent of getting punched in the gut, then getting angry about it. Every time I hear "WWIII," though, I think about the last time I saw KMFDM live.

Boston, November 1, 2003. I had just returned to the city, caravan style, from Middlebury, VT after a journey of almost epic proportions: driving up to Woodstock from Boston on Friday to spend Halloween with my buddy Steve, going with him over the border to New Hampshire (Hanover, I believe) for a costume contest that we lost for reasons that still boggle the mind, driving back to Woodstock in disgust, then deciding to drive up to Middlebury in the middle of the night to visit friends at Middlebury College with the express intent of drinking heavily and running a radio show at 3 AM. All four hours I spent sleeping that night were on a floor, so it was probably a miracle I made it back to Boston, but made it back I had and - pounding, sleep-deprived headache aside - it was time to rock.

That night was one of the few concerts where I've viscerally regretted not bringing earplugs. Intellectually, I know I'm doing irreparable damage to my ears every time I go to a concert and don't (as Chris Cornell once put it) practice safe rock, but this particular show burned the message into my consciousness with the fury and precision of six-inch tall letters of fire burned into the inside of my skull.

After the opening band cleared the stage, I made my way to what turned out to be the acoustic centerpoint of the club, watched KMFDM take their positions, heard the countrified opening of "WWIII"...then felt my skull compress and my jaw drop as the machine-gunned guitar and heavy, thumping bassline crushed my eardrums into oblivion with volume I could not have thought possible, while the lighting rig went into an epileptic strobe, dazzling me with the sort of shock and awe then popular in Iraq. It was the beginning of the most physically possessing concert I've ever been to, one where the waves of sound were such a physical presence they felt tangible - something I've never encountered since. It also left a ringing in my ears that lasted for enough days afterwards I thought I was slowly going deaf, like Beethoven but without the composing ability. 'Point taken,' I thought afterwards, when my hearing returned to normal. 'Ear plugs from now on.'

Metal for Bike Geeks

I'm not really much of a biking nerd - in fact, the best I do is the occasional circuit around the park near where I live - but if I was, you'd better believe I'd lay down the loot for a biking jersey like the one pictured. It's a part of a group of $80 biking jerseys from Primal Wear Clothing that all feature rock and metal-influenced designs.

There are a lot of good options - Iron Maiden/Killers, Led Zeppelin/Houses of the Holy, Metallica/Master of Puppets, Judas Priest/Screaming for Vengeance - but if someone was to put a gun to my head, I think I'd pick the Metallica/Ride the Lightning jersey, for two reasons: first, it's one of my favorite album covers of all time, very simple and clear with its entwined promise of metal and electrical death. Second, if you're going to lay down the money to wear a bike jersey instead of a t-shirt, why not have it tie in to speed and going fast?

Via David Fiedler

The Disability You Want to Get

Three weeks after I declare Finland the world's Most Metal Country and Sweden returns with this broadside: they've recognized as heavy metal addiction as a disability. According to The Local ("Sweden's News in English"), a 42-year-old part-time dishwasher named Roger Tullgren convinced the Swedish government's Employment Service (and three occupational psychologists) that he's so addicted to metal that he has a disability, qualifying him for additional payments from the government, the right to go to job interviews and work in whatever clothes he wants and the right to go to concerts as he chooses, as long as he makes up the work later. He's also been given permission to blast metal on the radio at work, as long as he doesn't disturb diners.

To be sure, Roger doesn't sound like the most productive member of society and he goes to over 300 concerts a year (talk about dedication), but that's not what's important: the point is that Sweden is such a metal country that they'll give you money and benefits for loving metal, albeit a love that's probably far beyond healthy. I may have to reconsider my moving plans.

Finland had no response to Sweden's challenge to the Most Metal Country title at the time of this posting.

Via Seth and SuicideGirls

Bruce Dickenson, Tumbling Artist

I have a bit of a quandary, here: did he manage to recover so quickly and easily because he's a fencer and knows how to fall, or because he's so awesome and therefore took fencing lessons? Which comes first, the fencing or the awesome?

John Lennon was Effin' Metal

My wife was holding a wooden massage tool when her hand happened to fall into the metal horns, starting a train of thought that lead her to ask - as confirmation, because she's pretty metal herself - whether or not it was Dio who came up with the gesture. After some discussion about Dio's claim versus Gene Simmons's claim, we hit The Oracle for some answers - and came up with this page on Blabbermouth. Assuming the drawing to the left - which matches the criteria, while the picture that Ear Candy claims as proof cuts off Lennon's thumb - is not doctored, we've got cartoon-style John Lennon, staring in the Yellow Submarine, throwin' up the horns long before Dio or Gene. John Lennon was a rock and roll guy, so chances are he'd probably agree with the spirit of rebellion traditionally associated (in metal) with the horns. In that spirit then, I'm going to nominate him progenitor, because if nothing else it'll make good discussion fodder for parties.

Finland's Metal Domination Continues

Two pieces of awesome:

1. Even Finnish television underscores how metal the country is.
2. The drummer is wearing an Avenue Q shirt, which seems wonderfully incongruous with the setting.

I think I may need to make emigration plans...