Feb 232014
 

It’s been about six weeks since the last time I assembled one of these THAT’S METAL! posts, so the list of potential items I keep as I see things around the interhole has grown to gargantuan proportions. Because I’ve waited so long to prepare a new installment, this will be a jumbo edition, with 10 items. If you’re new to this series, I collect images, videos, and occasional news items that I think are metal, even though they’re not musical.

ITEM ONE

The first item begins with the image at the top of this post. It’s a photograph of flesh yielding to the pressure of grasping hands. But it’s not real flesh and those aren’t human hands. It’s a detail of a sculpture carved in marble.

The artist was only 23 years old when he completed the sculpture. His name was Gian Lorenzo Bernini, and he created the sculpture between 1621 and 1622 in Rome, where it is still located today. Its name is “The Rape of Proserpina” and it depicts the abduction of Proserpina by Pluto, the god of the underworld.  The statue also includes Pluto’s three-headed dog Cerberus. Phenomenal. You can see more photos below. Continue reading »

Mar 062012
 

I think this is the first installment of this series in which I didn’t lift a finger to find any of the items myself. Every one of them came my way either through an e-mail suggestion from one of our readers or via a post on FB by one of my friends. Having other people do your work for you is definitely the way to go. It allows you to spend more time not working.

For new readers, the focus of this series is not music, but photos, videos, and news items that we think are metal. However, in this installment, I’m cheating at the end: The last items does involve music, but it’s not really the music that makes it metal. It’s the spark of creativity. You’ll see.

ITEM ONE

The first item is the photo you see at the top of this post. I saw it through a FB post by JZ. It turns out that it’s one of many created by a photographer named Seth Casteel in a series called “Underwater Dogs”. He seems to spend much of his time photographing pets for people who can afford to have pet portraits made, which seems kind of ridiculous, but then again all sorts of things undoubtedly seem less ridiculous when you have the money to do them without sacrificing something else important like food or beer. But this “Underwater Dog” series is not ridiculous. It’s metal.

In addition to the fact that the quality of the underwater photos is amazing, they capture man’s best friend looking either really scary or really alien or both. Go here to see the whole series, and check out one more right after the jump. Continue reading »