“HE KNOWS WHEN YOU’VE BEEN BAD OR GOOD” (we’re all hosed)

 Mosh Pit  No Responses »
Dec 242009
 

Yes, Christmas Eve is upon us again. Unless you’re very lucky, you’ve already heard during this holiday season a rendition of “Santa Clause Is Coming to Town” by one or more of the thousand douchebags who’ve recorded it.  First performed in November 1934 on Eddie Cantor’s radio show, and the fucking thing just won’t go away. The song has been inflicted on generations of kids, basically as a way of scaring them into being “good.” You know the lyrics:

He sees you when you’re sleeping,
He knows when you’re awake.
He knows when you’ve been bad or good,
So be good for goodness sake.

Seriously, that’s some nasty shit.  And you, gentle readers — that song can’t make you feel very cozy. If you’re reading this site, then you can’t possibly have been very good — and as the perpetrators of an extreme metal site, it goes without saying that we hope you’ve been very, very bad.

Of course, that means your home won’t be visited tonight by the jolly old elf with the rosy cheeks and the “Ho! Ho! Ho!” You’ll be visited by the nasty looking orc up at the top of this post who’s decided your liver would taste yummy with a nice chianti and a side of fava beans. When he shrieks “Ho! Ho! Ho!”, it’s an accusation.

Santa Claus appears to have his roots in pre-Christian pagan traditions prevalent in Northern Europe. (See, e.g., our post earlier today about burning the goat.) So if even the jolly Santa is fundamentally a pagan figure, just imagine how brootally pagan Evil Santa is. No doubt the soundtrack accompanying his grisly visit to your abode tonight will sound something like this:

Marduk: Into Utter Madness

And in case you have trouble deciphering the lyrics from Evil Santa’s aforesaid theme song, here’s a taste:

Ever faithful — to unfaithfulness
Endlessly truthful — to untruthfulness
[We’re skipping this line to, uh, protect the children]
Thus my Ascension bound — to boundlessness

Nighty night! Don’t let the bed bugs bite.

BURNING THE GOAT

 Mosh Pit  No Responses »
Dec 242009
 

The charred remains of a Christmas straw goat stands in the town center of Gavle, Northern Sweden, on Wednesday Dec. 23, 2009.

We couldn’t make up stuff like this if we tried. We’ll just quote the whole Reuters story verbatim. It’s pretty fucking funny from beginning to end. This is definitely metal.

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – Arsonists set fire early on Wednesday to a giant straw statue of the Swedish Yule goat, a forerunner to Santa Claus in Sweden, defying security measures for a third year in a row.

Police in Gavle, north of Stockholm, said an unknown number of attackers had torched the goat in the early morning hours, leaving a blackened skeleton standing in the town square.

“It’s a tradition to burn it down,” Lofberg said. “It’s happened an untold number of times since the 1960s … it’s been burned down more years than it’s survived.”

Burning the goat has been a popular, and illegal, tradition in Gavle since the 1960s when an advertising executive first came up with the idea to endow the city with a giant replica of the goat, a Christmas decoration common in many Swedish homes.

There were no witnesses, but a bottle of lighter fluid was found near the goat’s frame, which stood about 12 meters tall at the apex of its horns, police told Reuters.

“We have some leads,” said Stefan Lofberg, who is leading the investigation for the Gavle police.

Police have tried a range of tactics to stop would-be arsonists, including posting guards near the straw goat, coating it with flame retardant and training security cameras on it.

But vandals have usually found a way around the foils and their assaults have become more elaborate: in recent years the goat has been run over, dragged into a river and attacked by arsonists dressed as Santa Claus and the Ginger Bread Man.

Flame retardant coating thwarted attempts to burn the goat in 2006, but the group sponsoring it then stopped flame-proofing it because of the ugly, brownish tinge its straw took on.

Goats have special meaning in Swedish Christmas tradition. Before Santa Claus became ubiquitous at the turn of the 20th century, men would dress up as goats and hand out presents to well-behaved children. Bad children received lumps of coal.

IMPOSTER SYNDROME

 Band Name Fodder, Mosh Pit  2 Responses »
Dec 082009
 

imposter4

Researchers have shown that people aren’t good judges of their own performance and often tend to overrate their own abilities.  Some people think they’re way better than they are, and their own sense of self-importance just oozes from every pore.  You can probably think of people like that in an instant – whether it’s someone you personally know or a celebrity you know about.  Take Dave Mustaine for example. But people can misjudge their abilities in the opposite way too.

A few days ago I was talking with someone who told me about imposter syndrome.  It’s not exactly a recognized psychological disorder, but it’s something that researchers have studied and written about.  It can be defined as a persistent feeling that you’re really not as good as other people think you are, that whatever success you’ve achieved isn’t really deserved, and that other people have just been deceived about you.  Those feelings are accompanied by a fear that your lack of competence or talent will be found out and that you’ll be revealed as a fake and a fraud.

It’s more than low self-esteem.  People with low self-esteem might actually be unsuccessful people.  People with imposter feelings actually have achieved some success, but aren’t able to recognize and value their own achievement.  And perversely, with each new success, the fear of being “found out” increases.   I’m guessing there are people in some successful metal bands out there that suffer from those fears and who can’t enjoy their deserved success as a result.  Poor bastards. Continue reading »

ENTER THE DRAGON

 Mosh Pit  2 Responses »
Nov 282009
 

burials_lees

I’m not really sure this post is metal.  You can be the judge.

The Seattle Times reminded me this morning that actor and martial arts icon Bruce Lee would have turned 69 yesterday but for his untimely death in 1973 at the age of 32.  He was born in San Francisco and grew up in Hong Kong, but he moved to Seattle in 1959 and spent 3 years at the University of Washington where he met his wife.  He’s buried in Seattle’s Lake View Cemetery on Capitol Hill.

Next to his grave is the grave of his son Brandon Lee.  Brandon died in 1993 at the age of 28 from an accidental shooting during the filming of The Crow, in which he starred as an undead rock musician bent on revenging his own death and that of his fiancee.  (The Crow is a cool movie, by the way, and featured songs from bands like Pantera, Helmet, Nine Inch Nails, and Rage Against the Machine.) Brandon was to be married 17 days after he died.  His tombstone is inscribed with a quote he liked from the writer Paul Bowles, which had been printed on the wedding invitations:

“Because we don’t know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. And yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, an afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four, or five times more? Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless…”

METAPHORS — PART 3

 Mosh Pit  2 Responses »
Nov 272009
 

Formula

Yeah, I know.  It took me a long time to come to the point.  But if I’d tried to put all this into one long post, you’d have gone back to the bong, that six-pack of PBR, or the latest episode of Metalocalypse before finishing.  If you’ve stumbled on this site for the first time today, what follows will make (slightly) more sense if you read Part 1 and Part 2.

Just about anything packaged that you buy to eat or drink comes with a label that identifies the ingredients.  Often, one of the components will be vaguely described as “natural flavors” or “artificial flavor.”  Turns out there are companies you’ve never heard of that generate mountainous piles of cash manufacturing flavor additives for food and beverage makers. Some of those flavor additives are made using natural ingredients and some are synthesized from stuff you would never think of putting in your mouth. Those companies are constantly searching for new flavors that might become a hit with consumers and sometimes all they try to do is mimic flavors that have already become a hit. They identify chemical compounds that when mixed together in the right formula produce a taste that people already like and will keep buying — at least til they get tired of it.

My favorite example from the New Yorker article that prompted these posts is the flavor company that was being paid to analyze dips made from natural ingredients and then develop chemical compounds that could be injected into a “slurry” of starch, oil, and salt to create stuff that tastes (for example) like guacamole. Or the makers of energy drinks trying to capitalize on the popularity of Red Bull by having the flavorists intentionally make their shit taste bad, because that’s what consumers have been conditioned to believe energy drinks are supposed to taste like.  So what does this have to do with metal? Continue reading »

METAPHORS — PART 2

 Mosh Pit  No Responses »
Nov 252009
 

feedlot

In the first part of this post, courtesy of Raffi Khatchadourian’s article in The New Yorker, I introduced you to Givaudan, the biggest manufacturer of flavors and fragrances in the world.  (For those of you who already knew about Givaudan, hot shit!).  This company and others like it manufacture flavors for addition to processed food and beverages.  They are constantly searching for new flavors, mixing and matching the chemical building blocks of known tastes, as well as mimicking existing flavors that are proven favorites with the livestock consumers.  Take Red Bull and other energy drinks, for example. Continue reading »

BAND NAME FODDER

 Band Name Fodder, Mosh Pit  No Responses »
Nov 252009
 

Taibbi image

Earlier this year, the brilliant journalist Matt Taibbi wrote an article for Rolling Stone called “Inside the Great American Bubble Machine.”  It was all about how Wall Street investment bank Goldman Sachs has been the driving force behind every major stock market bubble since the Great Depression, including the one that led to the market collapse from which our economy is still trying to recover.  The opening paragraph of that story has stuck in my head ever since:

The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it’s everywhere. The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.

Regardless of what you think about Taibbi’s thesis, you gotta admit that’s a pretty great opening blast.  As journalistic lead paragraphs go, it’s definitely metal.  In fact, there are some great potential band names in there, don’t you think?  Vampire Squid, The Face of Humanity, Relentless Jamming, Blood Funnel, Smells Like Money.

Oops.  Looks like two of those names (IMO the best ones) are already taken!  There actually appear to be bands already out there called Vampire Squid and Blood Funnel.  And they claim to be metal bands.  Don’t know if they’re worth a shit, but they’ve got good names.

Fortunately, based on a quick Google search, the other Taibbi names still seem to be available.

METAPHORS — PART 1

 Mosh Pit  No Responses »
Nov 242009
 

New Yorker 2009_11_23_p139

I read shit most of you wouldn’t go near in a hazmat suit.  Don’t ask me why.  But every now and then I come across something that makes it worthwhile, and I’m here to share it with you.

Case in point:  The Nov 23 issue of The New Yorker includes an article by one Raffi Khatchadourian called “The Taste Makers.”  And he means that literally.  It focuses on a Swiss company (with at least one factory in the U.S.) called Givaudan — the largest manufacturer of flavors and fragrances in the world.  There’s so much fascinating shit in this article, I had a nut-busting time figuring out where to draw the line in sharing it with you.  But in this multi-part post, I’ll give you the highlights and explain what (in my twisted way of thinking) this has to do with extreme metal. Continue reading »

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