VARG SPEAKS; THE DETAILS OF ARTIFICIAL ELEPHANT INSEMINATION

 Metal News, Mosh Pit  2 Responses »
Mar 132010
 

When we started this site, we committed to ourselves (and to you) that we would post something new here every day — rain or shine, weekdays and weekends, holidays and mornings-after-binging — no exceptions. Inevitably, something will happen and someday we’ll fail to live up to that commitment. But so far, so good.

Thinking of something new to add every day that meets even our minimalist standards hasn’t been easy. Sure, there’s always new music to hear and then write about, but that takes a fair amount of time, which we don’t always have. So, sometimes we let our minds wander around the interwebz, just to see what might make an impression.

Like yesterday. Two things caught our eye: (1) a recent interview by black metal legend, convicted murderer and arsonist, and recently reinvigorated Norwegian recording artist Varg Vikernes; and (2) more info than we wanted to know about the artificial insemination of an elephant that was perpetrated earlier this week in Seattle, as reported in grotesque detail by the city’s daily newspaper.

Are these two items related to each other? Well, not actually, though pairing them in the title to this post seemed like an eye-catchingly good idea. Do they both relate to extreme metal? Uh, not actually. What the fuck, we fudged a bit. So sue us. Actually, don’t sue us. Read these bits instead, which include our always-incisive commentary (after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

CATZ

 Mosh Pit, That's Metal -- But It's Not Music  12 Responses »
Mar 072010
 

I try to stay grymm. This is an extreme metal blog, after all. Brooding and scowling are the order of the day, except when we take a break for attempts at humor — which necessarily have to be tasteless or sarcastic. Problem is, I have a weakness for cats. I have a cat — or to be more accurate, I share a cat. He’s about 17 years old and a big part of my day. That makes me a little insecure, because as pets go, I have this nagging worry that cats aren’t considered metal, not like a Doberman or a pit bull or a wolfhound.

I got a little bit of an ego boost when I read Issue #62 (Dec 2009) of Decibel. It included an article called “The Cutest Kitties in Metal.” The article consisted of seven pages of dudes from metal bands with their cats, with photos and affectionate commentary from the dudes about their cats. That made me feel a little more metal about my own cat thing.

But that was a couple months ago, and I’ve started feeling insecure again about my metalness. Like when I saw the photo above and started laughing. I don’t even know why I’m making that confession.  Lolcats are not metal. I know that. I don’t even know why I’m putting this post together. Trying to justify my cat weakness I guess, at the risk that you readers will think this post is a complete, bullshit waste of space and time.

But fuck it, the die is cast. In for a dime, in for a dollar. Tomorrow we’ll have a post ready on some divergently awesome new music, but today, I’m afraid it’s all catz.

So, the cat above isn’t metal.  But what about this?  (after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

NEWS FROM ALL OVER: MACHINE HEAD, OZZY, TIGER WOODS

 Metal News, Mosh Pit  No Responses »
Feb 262010
 

This is just a mish-mash of funny shit we saw over the last 24 hours. I had planned to be talking about some new music today, but the demands of my day job kinda screwed over those plans, so there’ll be a slight delay until tomorrow. So yeah, today’s post is more or less filler. Forgive us.

MACHINE HEAD FIRES SAN DIEGO

First up, this kinda bizarre piece of news about Oakland metal band Machine Head (pictured above):

MACHINE HEAD frontman Robb Flynn has revealed that his band has “fired” the city of San Diego, and will never play there again. He tells Rock Radio DJ David “The Captain” Grant, “A lot of crowds are awesome. But if we’re playing San Diego, we’re not going to go on the radio and say, ‘San Diego crows are awesome’ — because they’re not. They’re beat. That’s MACHINE HEAD slang for ‘We don’t like them.’ They don’t come to a show and rage and go crazy. They come to a show and say, ‘Okay… this is cool. Oh, I like this song.’ We’re not into that. I don’t know why they come to a rock show with that kind of attitude. So we don’t go to San Diego anymore. They’re fired.”

This is the first time we can remember a band deciding to fire a whole city. Sure, bands have been known to write off a particular venue where they had a shitty experience, or refusing to participate in a particular tour because of bad experiences with a particular promoter.  But giving the finger to an entire city’s worth of fans? Maybe this is a manifestation of that NoCal – SoCal rivalry that’s been around since California became a state. Or maybe there’s more to this story than meets the eye.

But we’re guessing that now, the feeling’s mutual. Maybe some enterprising photographer will figure out a way to arrange a shot of all metal fans in San Diego gathered in a stadium and flipping the bird at Machine Head. (more after the jump, including some embarrassment about Ozzy and some wet-your-pants funny shit about Tiger Woods . . .) Continue reading »

FART-INFUSED METAL

 Mosh Pit  No Responses »
Feb 212010
 

The day before yesterday I flew from Seattle to my hometown of Austin, Texas, to visit family and friends. Yet another reminder that air travel basically sucks ass. One of the few upsides for me when I do it is the opportunity to catch up on new metal releases – and man, they’ve been piling up like snow drifts since the first of the year.

But all good things come at a cost, and the price I paid on this plane trip was being subjected to an almost non-stop attack of farting. Seriously, my section of the plane was Fart Central for more than three hours. I don’t know who the perpetrators were, though I have my guesses. All I know is that I was enveloped in a noxious miasma, one wave after another, for most of the fucking trip.

If you travel by car with friends, or you’re in a metal band touring by van, and a fellow passenger cuts one, you can roll down the windows, or in case of a particularly vicious attack, you can get out of the car — preferably after it’s come to a full stop.

Those options aren’t available at 30,000 feet. You’re trapped like an animal with its leg in a bear trap. You’ve heard how wolves caught in a trap have been known to chew through their own leg to escape? That’s how I felt. Probably not as bad as being water-boarded, but if given the choice, I probably would have swapped tortures.

Anyway, I’m pretty sure that Immolation, Miseration, Meshuggah, and Carnifex didn’t intend their new releases to be heard under these conditions. Let me tell you, it’s a big fucking distraction. You start getting into the music – and that’s some mighty fine music I was cranking out – and then your nose hairs start to burn, and you might as well be listening to Lady Fucking Gaga.

Anyway, forgive me. I had intended to have a review of one of these awesome albums prepped and ready to roll out today, but I really gotta have a do-over on the listening experience. Meanwhile, I’m thinking that whatever they pay flight attendants, it ain’t enough. And I’m thinking of wearing a ski mask for the return flight to Seattle. It might actually be worth the body cavity search I’d get from TSA at the security checkpoint.

Have a very metal day. We’ll get back to music tomorrow.

SNØKÅATHLAAN

 Mosh Pit  No Responses »
Feb 132010
 

Are you planning to watch any of the Winter Olympics on TV? If you are, do you plan to mute your TV and listen to extreme metal instead of those annoying TV commentators? What do you think would be the most appropriate metal accompaniment for Winter Olympic events? Yeah, we thought the same thing: Viking metal.

But are any of the Winter Olympic events really metal? Biathlon comes close. People ski really fast cross-country and periodically have to stop and blast away with rifles at tiny little targets. Skeleton also comes close — you lie on your stomach atop a small, rickety-looking contraption and race face-first down a course at about 100 miles an hour.

But none of the official events is as metal as the one invented by The Onion: Snøkåathlaan

In typical fashion, The Onion provides all sorts of history and detail about Snøkåathlaan, including trail maps like the one above and the one we’ll show you after the jump, plus features on some “Snøkåathlletes To Watch.”  For example:

SNØRRI SNØRRISSON (SWEDEN): This intimidating competitor is unparalleled on the steeper slopes, is the best axman in the event, once fashioned a sled from the rib cage of his extra dog and, according to Norse naming conventions, is his own father

PYOTR “THE CANNIBAL” GLADKOVSKY (RUSSIA): One of the last Cold War-era Olympians and a true survivor, Gladkovsky’s only weakness is a tendency to gain weight proportional to the number of men who go missing in a given race

The description of what the sport actually consists of is a bit vague, but here’s what we’ve pieced together so far (after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

WHO DAT GONNA BEAT DEM SAINTS? NOBODY!!

 Mosh Pit  No Responses »
Feb 072010
 

No, you didn’t come to the wrong site by mistake. This isn’t a sports blog, no way no how. But we gotta make one tiny exception today, not just because today is Super Bowl Sunday — because that alone wouldn’t be enough to cause a departure from our usual subject matter — but because it’s Super Bowl Sunday AND THE NEW ORLEANS SAINTS ARE PLAYING!

Why do we care? Has a little something to do with a few generations on my father’s side of the family coming from Southern Louisiana, a little something to do with New Orleans being an awesome town that has weathered one shitstorm of bad luck after another, a little something  to do with the town and the people who live there being about as far outside the mainstream as extreme metal, and a little something to do with our instinctive affinity for the underdog in just about any circumstance.

Besides, if the Saints lose there will still be a bigger party in NOLA than there will be in Indianapolis if the Colts win.

So, we gotta show the Saints some love today, and in honor of the occasion, who better to bring you some parting thoughts before gametime than Ben Falgoust and Sammy Duet from Goatwhore — one of the best extreme metal bands in creation (and certainly the best from New Orleans).

So watch it.  It will bring a big smile to your face, and you’ll also see where the title to this post came from.


Goatwhore’s Pre-Super Bowl thoughts

Metal Blade Records | MySpace Music Videos

CRUISE SHIP CLUSTERFUCK (Part 3)

 Mosh Pit  No Responses »
Feb 042010
 

A couple days ago we posted a brilliant idea for saving a troubled business venture that planned to turn The Norwegian Star cruise ship into a floating hotel for the B.C. Winter Olympics:  Drop the nightly room price to the cost of a decent metal show ($20), keep the bars open 24-7, change the entertainment to non-stop live metal, and bill it as “The Immovable Fuck-the-Olympics Metal Cruise.”

Well, those fuckheads promoting the floating hotel idea at “Newwest Special Projects” just wouldn’t listen.  From The New York Times, dateline February 2:

Vancouver’s Floating Hotel Pulls the Plug

Hundreds of visitors to the Olympic games in Vancouver are scrambling to find alternative accommodations following the last minute cancellation of a plan to use a cruise ship as a floating hotel.

Newwest Special Projects, a subsidiary of a travel agency based in Edmonton, Alberta, said in a statement late Tuesday that it has abandoned its much publicized plan, “due to slower than expected sales along with expenses associated with the charter that were higher than anticipated.” . . .

Exactly how many people are affected is not clear. Last year, Newwest said that the ship, the Norwegian Star, has 1,119 staterooms which it hoped to fill with 8,960 guests over the run of the Games. Some Canadian news reports indicated that about 1,000 people had made bookings. . . . The Toronto Star reported on Wednesday that the disappointed include 11 seriously ill children who were booked into the hotel by Make A Wish foundations in the United States, Canada and Australia. . . .

Because of a lack of space at Vancouver’s cruise ship terminal, the plan was to dock the Norwegian Star at a commercial port across the Burrard Inlet in suburban North Vancouver, otherwise best known for holding large, yellow piles of sulfur.

We have no doubt that some really astute business whiz could have found a few flaws in our proposal for converting the floating-hotel-thing into an immovable extreme metal show. But really, how could it have been any worse than this reality? Docking the ship at a port best known for storing big piles of sulfur? Stranding 11 seriously ill children?

All together now, repeat after me.  If we all say it at the same time and say it really loud, maybe the geniuses at Newwest Special Projects will hear us:

FUUUUUUCK YOOOUUUUUUU!!!

LIVING SACRIFICE: THE INFINITE ORDER (Part 2)

 Album Reviews, Mosh Pit  2 Responses »
Feb 042010
 

Yesterday, in the first of a two-part feature, we posted our review of the new album by Living Sacrifice. Today, we’re posting (for want of a better word) a meditation on these questions: When there’s no clean singing in extreme metal, do the lyrics really matter? And if they do, how do they matter?

THE MEDITATION: Think about songs in which you can hear the words. Sometimes the lyrics can be important. Beautifully crafted lyrics can tell a story that sticks with you, or they can express ideas or emotions in a way that resonates like poetry.

That kind of lyricism can combine with the music in a way that produces something more powerful than the sum of the parts — the words enhance the music and vice-versa, and each makes the other more memorable.

Of course, those things are possible only if you can hear the words. In extreme metal songs with no clean singing, you can’t hear all the words or sometimes any of them.  It’s rarely the content of the lyrics that contributes to the emotional appeal of those songs. Instead, what matters is the sound of the singer’s voice, which functions mainly as another instrument.

As a consequence, the songwriter’s ability to create memorable lyrics is often pretty unimportant in this subgenre. On those rare occasions when I look up the lyrics to a metal song I like, I’m not surprised to find that usually the lyrics suck – and I don’t really care that they suck because they don’t matter much to what I hear or how I feel about the music.

I suspect that lyrics rarely play an important part in the creation of extreme music either. Most bands seem to work out the riffs, the rhythms, and the melodies first (if melody happens to be a part of the band’s sound), and the lyrics are added later.  By definition, the words aren’t inspiring the sound; if anything, the reverse is true. Sometimes, the words seem to have nothing at all to do with the feeling that the music conveys. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

CRUISE SHIP CLUSTERFUCK (Part 2)

 Mosh Pit  No Responses »
Feb 022010
 

Yesterday we imagined the questions we’ll be asking when that disaster-waiting-to-happen, the 70,000 Tons of Metal Cruise, returns to port in late January 2011. And then what should greet our bloodshot eyes in this morning’s Seattle Times but this story, excerpted as follows:

Plan to use cruise ship as Olympics hotel hits rough water

Despite sharply cutting prices, a Canadian tour company has been unable to entice customers to a cruise ship it planned to used as a floating hotel during the Winter Olympics, and is scrambling to keep the idea afloat.

Meanwhile, customers who already have booked rooms on the Norwegian Star are uncertain whether they’ll need to look for other hard-to-find lodging in Vancouver. . . . A statement released by Newwest Special Projects said, “Our sales have not been what we had hoped for and our expenses have increased beyond what we ever expected.” . . .

Rates aboard the 1,100-room ship, once planned to top $1,000 U.S. a night, dropped to $500 last fall and, as of Monday, were listed on the company’s Web site as low as $275 a night, including meals and onboard entertainment. . . . One of Newwest’s investors in Alberta, Abe Neufeld, told the CBC that negotiations over the ship’s contracts are “tense” and a “tough struggle,” but he remained hopeful the project would go ahead.

Those fuckheads at “Newwest Special Projects” didn’t ask our advice, but we’re giving it anyway: Drop the nightly room price to the cost of a decent metal show ($20), keep the bars open 24-7, change the entertainment to non-stop live metal, and bill it as “The Immovable Fuck-the-Olympics Metal Cruise.” Why does this make sense? And why is it a big improvement over the 70,000 Tons of Metal Tour? Read on after the jump . . . Continue reading »

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