Zazas Zazas NaSatanada Zazas!

The magnificent missive displayed below is a scan of a flyer handed out by a few brave souls (apparently on behalf of someone named G/) at last night's Kreator show in NYC. When you read it (click on it to load a larger version for easier reading), be sure to look for these highlights:

• The use of inconsistent title case throughout the flyer. It's almost like the writer wanted to drive home a point, but worried about going too overboard with capitalization. I can almost see him sitting at his computer, corpse paint melting off his face as he labors over his call to arms, thinking to himself, 'No, don't capitalize every word; you don't want them to think you're a crazy person.'
  
  
• Using "ov" instead of "of" to demonstrate the band's uber-kvltness.
  
  
• The band's influences: we've got some death metal (Morbid Angel, Entombed, Dismember), some black metal (Beherit), some of both (Dissection, Bathory)...and Iron Maiden. Oh, and the touches of doom. Can't forget those. Since we know the band has "a Full-Lengths Worth ov Material Written," I can only imagine they're planning on releasing an album that sounds like a terrifying cross between In Flames, Behemoth, and My Dying Bride.
  
  
• The Lovecraft-style allusions to ancient evils and nameless horrors and the use of fake foreign languages. The hand-written text at the end is particularly awesome. Is it for special emphasis? Did the writer forget to write it before printing and decide not to reprint because he was too cheap? Why is there a dot in the middle of the upside down star?
  
  
• The exclamation points. You can never have too many exclamation points when you're trying to move people.
  
  
• The email address. When you're forming a band, always remember: AOL is by far the most metal free email service. I also like the use of the phrase, "Interested Parties May Contact," which sounds like a crib from a Victorian horror novel.

Enjoy:

I Agree With RiB: Vote Murillo!

Normally I would not give even a portion of one shit about the contestants of American Idol, no matter what their connection to metal: I don't care enough to even want to hate on the show, and I generally listen with tolerant indifference when someone brings it up. However, when it comes to Daniel Murillo, I think Elise at Reign in Blonde has it right: the need for the metal community, no matter what their opinion about the show and Hollywood Undead, to get behind Murillo's cause is just too big. Elise has some excellent reasons why, but I'll add another one: if American Idol symbolizes everything that's evil about the crossing point between business and music - and boy does it ever - making the guy who fronts a band that symbolizes everything that's evil (and not in a good way) about metal the show's 2010 champion is one of the best ways to fiddle while Rome burns that I can think of.

Nostradamus Ingrained

I feel like this opening is a set up to a joke: "A man listens to Nostradamus for 145 days straight..." but it's the truth: some dude from Cleveland has, in fact, been alternating between the CD and vinyl versions of Priest's latest record for 145 days straight. I think he might trying to make up for me, because after a variety of different friends with an equally large variety of tastes panned the album, I avoided it like the plague, limiting my exposure to the two songs Priest played this summer.

Here's what I don't get, though: I can understand falling in love with an album - although usually that intense first stage only lasts a few days, not months and months - but from his picture, the guy in question is clearly pushing mid-40s...which means he's heard other, better Priest albums before. Heck, he's heard other, better metal albums before and he no doubt heard them at a time when music distribution was more limited and playing a record for days in a row wasn't such a strange thing. Seriously, buddy: you do have other options.

Dethklok at The Nokia Theatre

I've described this show four or five times since I saw it about a week ago, and every time I say the same thing: "it was actually really cool, until they ran out of video." For those of you not in the know, here's how it went:

Well, actually, for those of you really not in the know, here's what Dethklok is. Think Gorillaz, but they have a late night TV show, so there's more exposure and slightly larger plot lines. Adult Swim, in their genius, has episodes online, so you can check it out and see how much of a genius Brendan Smalls is for making absurdist comedy out of death metal. For everyone else:

Brendan Smalls got a band together, including Gene Hoglan (whose street cred makes up for how unmetal the rest of the band is) to play the music, which makes up most of the show. He and the rest of the band play in the dark, while a video projection behind them shows Dethklok playing in a series of music videos, reprising material from the show's career. There's a brief sketch of a plot - the Tribunal tries to kill them and all of their fans with some sort of poison gas but fails in the usual deus ex-machina style that characterizes all of their plots - and some interludes with the band where they tell us how much they hate us and how much they weren't there. Brendan does all of the voices - or at least appears to - relying mainly on the characters he voices in the show.

All well and good, particularly because the Nokia had installed screens on the second level of the auditorium (where I was standing) that allowed me to watch all of the video without having to break the fourth wall and look through the band to watch the action. Maintaining the illusion was a very important part of the experience, even if it meant that I was essentially paying money to watch a cartoon show at very high volume. Where things fell apart (as you've no doubt guessed from the first line of this post) is when the band came out to do the encore and opted to play without any additional video.

Here's why doing so is weird to me: encores aren't spontaneous things. The house knows the band is coming back out - they leave the lights down until the show is really over - and the audience knows, too. In fact, the band knows (or should know) the audience knows, and they should (and as far as I can tell, usually do) plan accordingly. Given all of that, why would you not plan footage for the encores? I know it means practicing to synch up two more songs to the video screens (which is really impressive, by the way - they never really missed a beat), but that seems a small price to pay to see three geeky-looking guys (and one very metal drummer) empersonate a sociopathic death metal band on stage.

However, I'm more than willing to overlook that one flaw: for an hour, Dethklok kept us entertained. For two hours before that, Soilent Green didn't suck too much, and Chimaira was pretty good. The show was about the right length, was fun to watch, made me want to go watch Metalocalypse again, and would certainly be worth catching on subsequent tours. I'm a fan.