Monday, June 7, 2010
It's official, I'm old and no longer understand what these young whippersnappers are into
via All Hail The Black Market
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Bands to watch for: Corn

Like Biohazard, it is kind of hard to say exactly what Corn sounds like because they are pretty much doing their own thing. The only band I could really compare them to is Bloodlet, because they both play down-tuned, sludgy songs about how you hate yourself. But unlike Bloodlet, who are kind of derivative and unoriginal, Corn adds a lot of elements to the mix that make them much more interesting.

Sometimes I think that they are an alternative band like Stone Temple Pilots because there are lots of parts where the singer talks about how nobody likes him, his stepdad is a fucking shitbag, and how he has low self-esteem. He probably got stuffed in his locker a lot in high school. But when the jocks would mess with him, instead of fighting back he would just put on a big forced smile and fake-laugh at them because he wanted to make it seem like he was above all of it and it didn't really bother him. He would just let them push him around like he didn't care, like he was soooo over the whole bully thing that it didn't phase him at all.

But actually, he would skip his last class ("Applied Math II") and go home and put his pillow over his face and scream as loud as he could "I FUCKING HATE YOU FUCKERS!!! FUCK YOU!!!!" because he saw this one cute semi-gothic girl that he likes watching him get stuffed in the locker. She wears cut-off denim shorts with those black-and-white tights underneath with Doc Martens, he ran into her once at a midnight showing of "Rocky Horror Picture Show" and felt like they had a really good vibe.

Also I bet his stepdad is like the dad from The Wonder Years, and was really disappointed when his son said he didn't want to play football. He probably came home from work one day all pissed off because he does framing/roofing and his foreman is a fucking asshole, and was like "Hey if all you're going to do is sit around my house and listen to Slipknot, get me a fucking beer!" Then the singer for Corn is all, "Fuck you, you're not my real dad!!" And his stepdad turns all red and pushes him up against the wall and is like "You think you can take me on you fuckin' pussy?!" and slaps him. The singer for Corn starts to cry and his stepdad is like, "If you're gonna act like a little bitch then I'll treat you like one!!" and sticks his finger in the singer for Corn's butt. I am not sure but I think that's what the Corn song "Clown" is about.

But they also seem like they like metal, because a lot of the songs are really dissonant and heavy. I feel like they are probably big noisecore fans because on the record there isn't even a bass player. In the parts where most bands would have the bass, they just have these weird sounds that remind me of pieces of metal clanking together. It seems like something 7 Minutes of Nausea would do. They have a guy who plays with them live and does "noise/effects" and sometimes uses a bass to make the clanking sounds, I don't know how he does it. He's probably into circuitbending or whatever and rewired the whole bass.

Also, are they Mexis? I can't tell. Some of them look like it, but they could also just be wiggers who work outside doing manual labor so they are really tan. I don't really see a lot of Mexis with cornrows, and usually the only people you see with dreadlocks are rapey white pot dealers. They will ask you if you want to come over to their place to smoke some fatty dank nuggets and watch "The Wall" but really they just want to feel you up in their van, then when you're like "Fuck you, get off of me" they laugh and as you're getting out of the van, they're all, "Ass, grass, or cash, nobody rides for free!!" and drive off to go get some Taco Bell and find a pay phone so they can call all the people who paged them.

What's next for Corn?
At the risk of sounding like a fanboi, I think Corn could be next Infectious Grooves (another genre-bending California band who I will cover in a future edition of Bands to Watch For). They would need to develop a charismatic mascot like Sonic, Bubsy, or Poochie, but I think the alien I made for the poster above would work perfectly so that's not really a problem. I just feel like the time is right for new-metal to break through into the mainstream, what with Desert Storm and the failure of the DotComs making everybody so nervous about the future. Corn's anger and vulnerability mirror the way that we all feel in these uncertain times.

The only thing I see potentially holding them back is the singer for Corn's health. I'm worried that being in a young band that is building a strong local following has led him into an unhealthy lifestyle. Because their music combines intense minor key riffs with dark lyrical themes, it seems like it probably attracts a lot of troubled young adults with low self-esteem, which means it would be really easy for an older dude in a moderately popular band to have sex with them. Since he hasn't accepted Christ into his heart yet I can see how that would be really tempting and probably put him in a lot of really bad situations and lead to tensions in the band.

Corn has a demo and a 7" out. Both are excellent but I recommend the demo if you can find it. It's especially rad if you have a good system in your car. My friend Carlos, who made the "Blind" video at the top of the page, has a bomb-ass system in his Integra GS-R. We'll put the demo in his tape player and go to the Everett Mall and just chill in the parking lot or drive up Casino Road. Every time one of the bass drops hits people are all, "Damn what is that, it must be Def Bass Krew!!" but then the singer for Corn starts screaming and they're all like "Oh snap, I didn't know rock could bump like that!!" and we're like "What's up now, bitches!!" and give them the gasface.
Corn on MySpace
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Welcome to the "No-Thrash Zone": Embarassing Confessions About Growing Up Non-metal in Small Town America
Sergeant D is applauded by a group of sniveling yes-men at a recent Metal Inquisition Excellence In Blogging Seminar just outside of Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
It is fairly obvious that the creators of Metal Inquisition are slowly falling out of touch with their hip, young readership. As Sergeant D's elderly mind slowly waddles off into territory best left unexplored and Lucho Metales spends more and more time pontificating on crates of garbage from his youth, M.I.'s so-called "fan base" is losing interest quickly. That's why I'm here. You see, I'm only 30 (a "spring chicken" by comparison) and had a completely different experience in my metal education. While the creators of Metal Inquisition grew up attending the earliest Milwaukee Metal Fests and tape-trading with dudes from Impetigo, I grew up in a small town completely devoid of any sort of metal element whatsoever (Eureka, California - an hour south of the Oregon border with a population of roughly 25,000). With all due respect to Sr. Metales, Eureka was every bit as isolated (metal-wise) from any sort of cultural center, 5 hours from San Francisco and 8 from Portland. Lucho often complains that he had to subsist on 3-year-old copies of Metal Hammer, but we couldn't get Metal Hammer AT ALL, 3 years old or otherwise. It was a lot like Footloose, except with metal instead of dancing. Eureka was a cultural wasteland, devoid of access to "underground" music (besides our own little sheltered scene) or cool places to buy T-shirts. The closest (decent) record store was 20 minutes away in Arcata, and while their "punk" selection was decent, their "metal" selection was limited to stuff like Barren Cross, Cold Lake, and Stryper. While a few death metal bands existed in the area (such as Empire of Dust, Locust Furnace, and Transi), Hessians at the time were usually big, scary, leather clad barbarians, with swastika tattoos and goats living in their kitchen (this is NOT an exaggeration). As a result, me and my friends were denied access to all but the most "mainstream" metal bands of the early 90's, causing my metal upbringing to be backwards, scattershot, and most of all, embarassing. For example, I heard Cryptopsy WAY before I ever heard Broken Hope or Morbid Saint. My first exposure to At The Gates was on the flipside of a dubbed cassette copy of Stikky's Where's My Lunchpail?. I heard Formulas Fatal To The Flesh YEARS before Blessed Are The Sick. As Mike Browning could tell you, time was moving in the WRONG DIRECTION. By the time I heard Butchered At Birth and Legion in 1995, it was already too late. So here's a list of my 5 most embarassing secrets concerning my "metal education". I'm sure that not all of you can relate to the rich metal upbringing that the senile old codgers at Metal Inquisition were fortunate enough to be exposed to. But maybe some of you guys can relate to MY embarassing past, and the sad events that served as milestones for me.
1) MY INTRODUCTION TO "METAL" WAS D.R.I.'S THRASH ZONE

2) THE FIRST TIME I EVER HEARD ANTHRAX, IT WAS ON THAT REMAKE OF "BRING THA NOIZE" THEY DID WITH PUBLIC ENEMY Embarassing but true. I was a huge fan of P.E., beginning with the release of Apocalypse 91 back in, um, 1991. But what really blew me away was the totally innovate amalgamation of rap and metal they placed at the end of the album, a totally slammin' little ditty called "Bring Tha Noize". After doing some deep research (i.e. reading the liner notes), I found that the song was a collaboration with an awesome group of surf-trunks-wearing thrashers called Anthrax. I quickly rounded up copies of Attack of the Killer B's and Sound of White Noise, which, to my knowledge, were the only releases from these rap-metal masters. They even threw some sweet funk into the mix, which to my 13-year-old mind seemed like the best idea EVER. With 20/20 hindsight, it is fairly obvious that Public Enemy has retained their dignity better than Anthrax over the years, Flavor of Love nonwithstanding.
3) I USED TO PUT SLAYER AT THE END OF MIX TAPES... AS A JOKE

4) THE BLACK ALBUM WAS THE FIRST METALLICA TAPE I EVER BOUGHT AND it was the first time I'd ever even HEARD Metallica. AND I liked it. Wow, it actually feels kind of good to get that off my chest.
5) BODY COUNT SEEMED SCARY AND HARSH Keep in mind that this was before Ice T had appeared in Tank Girl (right) or smoked a joint with the Leprechaun in Leprechaun In The 'Hood. We was some backwoods, rural folks out there in Humboldt County, and "Cop Killer" seemed like the most hardcore, gangster, inner-city shit out there. Never mind Beatmaster V's inabilty to play a steady beat or Ernie C's atonal, amateur solos. Body Count was the REAL DEAL, a ghetto nightmare come to life on our very own Discman. Ice T was, without a doubt, a ruthless killer, a hardened criminal and a threat to the security of our country. And rap-metal, like I said before, seemed like a really good idea.
In retrospect, it's pretty amazing that ANYONE could take the band that wrote a song like "The Winner Loses" seriously. Except Eastern Europeans, of course (PS - these two videos were the only versions of said song I could find on Youtube).
Above and below: Two crown jewels from my mid-90's Humboldt Metal collection, Drunk By Noon's I'd Call In Sick If I Had A Job cassette demo (featuring the songs "Meat Box" & "Morbid Goat") and Locust Furnace's Ignorance Through Perception. The Locust Furnace CD is actually pretty good, but take a close look at the cover art. They just cut out and blew up a chunk of the cover art from Altars of Madness. Genius.
Now that I've gotten all this shameful information off my chest, I'd like to add one more thing, something that I've never told ANYONE: Once, when I was about 10 and bedridden with a terrible fever, I crapped my bed. There, I said it.
Now that we're acquainted, please take a moment to check out MY blog, Illogical Contraption, which one reviewer called "quite possibly the best thing on the internet, EVER" and another dude referred to as "the poor man's Metal Inquisition". Which it is.
Friday, January 23, 2009
Wigger slam update, winter edition
It's been a while since we made a wigger slam post, which is a tragedy that makes Darfur look quaint by comparison. I would trade the lives of every single Romanian orphan for a single chance to play the Repudilation discography on my iPod while I'm in line at Starbucks. Seriously, fuck those kids, they're as good as dead anyway. In any case, there have been some exciting developments in the wigger slam scene that need to be mentioned.
Composted's SLAMBULANCE shirt
While it is disappointing to see that brutal death band Composted don't appreciate wigger slam like we do, we are still excited to see them raise awareness for the genre with the shirts you see below. The band is only mediocre (even to someone like me who has extremely low standards for slam metal- I mean I listen to fucking Artery Eruption!), but you might think about paying their MySpace a visit anyway. I'm sure it would make their day, since they probably spend all day bagging groceries or something to scrape together a pittance that pays the rent on the room they share with 8 other disgusting creeps at the local dirtbag metal flophouse. I'm sure glad I was never stupid enough to be in a band.

Entorturement vocalist drops some science
We have some insights on the origins of wigger slam from none other than the originators of the genre, Entorturement (and also the band who can legitimate claim to the worst name ever). He chimes in on the comments to an older post of ours, "The Facts About Wigger Slam":
LOL! This is Tim (former vocalist for entorturement). This is funny shit. Ok, yes Repudilation was the first to actually infuse a bit of Jazz into Death Metal. brian, their drummer, joined us and we wanted to do something different. So we went all out combining internal bleeding and suffocation with jazz,NYHC and Hip Hop. Growing up where we were you listened to Hip Hop. That was just how it was, mainly just NYC groups like Wu-Tang,Nas, Jay Z. It was like you are death metal (or deadhead,or jock) and you listened to hip hop. I am sorry for people taking it wayyyyyy out of hand. All the "thuggery" was taking the NYHC attitude at the time and multiplying 10 fold. In general, making fun of them.Note that New Yorkment left them a nice comment on their Last.fm page:
OH FUKKKKKKKKK YEAH SON THESE BE THA SIKKKKKKKKEST SLAMZ EVAH!!! TOTAL BEATDOWN BRUTHAZ STYLE FO LYFE!!!Amazon opens a wigger slam store
MI reader Matt Smith from Relapse tipped us off to Amazon's new wigger slam store. I'll be honest, the selection is a bit lacking (currently just a few Dying Fetus and Devourment shirts), but I'm happy to see that a big company like Amazon sees the potential for developing this market. I am sure that once they start producing Katalepsy and Abominable Putridity arctic camo parkas they'll have trouble keeping them in stock. MAKE IT RAIN!! I'm hoping they can hook up with Paul Wall and make some Soils of Fate grills. That shit would be HOT, and I'm sure all the European wiggers would eat it up. As anyone who ever sold anything metal-related in the 90s know, Europeans will buy anything!! I mean, without them, Joey DeMaio would have been out on the streets decades ago, picking cigarette butts out of the trash and selling Diet Mountain Dew cans for food.
See the store here!

Frogkill: World's first self-identified wigger slam band??
Perhaps I'm tooting our own horn here, but it seems that our influence has spread as far as Germany. We have been singing the praises of wigger slam for a while now, but it has so far been a externally-applied label. And to be honest, bands are generally not that stoked when we call them wigger slam (like these comments from that butthurt pussy in the Virginia-based wigger slam band Short Bus Pileup). A new one-man band named Frogkill is the first band we are aware of to call itself wigger slam, which is an amazing thing to behold! Congratulations, my friend! You are blazing new trails!We especially liked this statement on their MySpace:
And there was guttural slamming sickness.
And God saw that it was good.
Now here comes the sad part. This poor kid is probably 19 or 20, and instead of sowing his wild oats banging hot German scene girls, he's spending his free time trying to impress internet metal nerds by making a one-man wigger slam band! Kid, you are going to look back on this part of your life and cry your eyes out at the way you pissed away the best years of your life. But congratulations on amusing a bunch of jaded metal dorks in their 30s at the expense of your youth!

Last.fm tags up 182%
Finally, thanks to everyone who has been dilligently using the wigger slam tag on Last.fm! If you haven't already, please tag all the relevant tracks you can. Fight the good fight! I'm not sure how Fall Silent got in there, but that's pretty funny.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Who wore it best?

Okay, this is a big moment in my life. I'm about to admit to M.I. readers that I may have read an issue or two (or thirty) of US Weekly in my lifetime. It's with that in mind that I am asking our readers the question that US Weekly often asks its readers: Who wore it best?

I know that US Weekly poses the question when two celebrities have worn the same outfit, but this is close enough damn it! If you must, please take into account that Lindsay Lohan is no Johnny-come-lately to the world of metal. Oh no. She's been rocking other Maiden shirts that her stylist gave her for some time. We want you, the readers, to vote.
On a somewhat related note, the new Paul wall album features the Iron Maiden font.

Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Metal + Hip Hop. A Marriage Made In Heaven.
When people talk about landmark moments in the blending of metal and hip hop (or "rap" if you so desire), they often bring up the classic Anthrax tune "I'm The Man". Those with more metal pedigree will talk about Downset, Biohazard or the drum machine breakdown in the Atheist song "Earth." Others will talk about when Chris Barnes started to wear JNCO jeans, or Chuck Billy getting cornrows.

Those in the know will dig deeper. Yes, these examples are from two bands that many would not qualify as "metal" per se...but watch the videos below and you will see that these are incredibly important moments in musical history.
First, Paul Stanley raps to a littler person wearing a cape and guy on stilts while wearing a red leather jacket. Listen closely to hear him say "what be this". This song alone set back race relations in America a good 30 years.
The second example is from the Rush song "Roll The Bones". In order to connect with a young audience, Geddy and the boys hired a rapping skeleton from Toronto's booming hip hop scene to come down to the studio and spit some lines. Watch the skeleton keep time with his foot. He's one cool dude. If this doesn't show you how disconnected and white Canadians are, nothing will. *
*Sorry to any Canadian readers, but you know it's true.
Monday, June 2, 2008
My Guitar Pick Collection

Another Glen Benton story. My brother and I wrote a letter to Metal Maniacs back then and it was published. Because of that letter, we got lots of mail from people all over the country, including a few from people in prison. I guess those metal dudes in the slammer would, from time to time, get tired of raping each other and would write people whose addresses were printed in magazines. One guy wrote us from a prison in a nearby state, and sent us a photocopy of a drawing he had done of Glen Benton. I would give my left hand to have that drawing today. Anyway, along with that drawing he sent us two pictures, one of him and his creepy redneck/metal buddies in jail, and the second one was of him meeting Glen at the very show where I caught this pick. In the background of that picture, it was possible to see yours truly standing around staring at Glen Benton. Even though I remember thinking Glen was a douche at the time, the picture tells another story. I seem to be admiring the guy....so I guess my memory must be a bit cloudy.

Anyway, before the show we saw a large crowd gathering in the club's parking lot. It looked like a fight was about to go down, but as we got closer we saw that it was something far more sinister. Members of the Misfits had a bench press on tour, and they were lifting as the small audience cheered them on and counted their reps. This is without a doubt the silliest moment in musical history.






Another post-show find from the floor of a venue, this one had real meaning to me back in the day. I was a huge D.R.I. fan as a kid, and getting to see them live nearly blew my mind. They were opening for Testament during that tour, but where I lived they were booked as headliners. Their opening band was called The Legacy, which is a Testament song, and album and was their original name. It didn't take a genius to figure out Testament would be opening, but the hush-hush quality of that show still makes me scratch me head. I had heard of Metallica booking themselves unanounced in small clubs as The Four Horsemen. Megadeth, in an attempt to do everything Metallica has ever done, had often booked themselves as Vic And The Rattleheads. I could undersand the reason why a band that would normally play arenas or stadiums at one point having to use an alias (however unimaginative or ill conceived) in order to play a club. Testament, however, was playing the very venue they had played only months earlier, and would play again the subsequent year.

When they came out on stage, Chuck Billy came out and suddenly said "Ha ha! We are........TESTAMENT!". You could hear chirps in the silence of the crowd. Anyway, Testament played a good set of only old songs, but D.R.I. blew them away. By this point, Definition had just come out, and they were clearly limping along (musically speaking) but the show as fantastic.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Paul Stanely: Stage Banter All-Star

The entire Metal Inquisition staff is committed to finding the very best in stage banter for the enjoyment of all our readers. As such, it was only a matter of time before we put together a multi-media presentation to share the magic that is Paul Stanley on stage. Listen and be amazed by his effeminate antics, his homoerotic commentary and his vaudeville-style black accent. Even if you are not a Kiss fan, this one is a must. Enjoy.
Friday, April 11, 2008
We Sentence You to Death... by GUILLOTINE!

Like I needed any more reasons to think Sacramento is the worst city in America (second would have to be Greensboro, NC), here come these assbags. Is the bass player wearing a trench coat or was he getting a hair cut right before practice? "Thanks for the haircut, Kayleen. Sorry, I don't have time to take off the faux-silk robe, I gotta get to practice! ... Oh, no we're still practicing at grannie's. She hates that Exploited poster I put up in the living room every time we practice. Her maid is Mexican, so, yeah, I use her flag to cover my 4x12." They have a song up on their myspace page (they got 75 fans, mostly grannie's friends, I'm sure). I'll save you the pain, it's as bad as the band looks. They recorded it using gramma's tape recorder. Hey, they need a drummer, so if you wanna relocate to Sac, go for it. Judging by what I heard, knowing how to play drums is optional.

These dbags are actually "Guillotined." They label themselves as "black metal." Dude, my super is more evil than these turds and he plays in a Journey cover-band, no joke. These kids are from Illinois and are horrible. I mean terrible. But that's all I'm gonna say about these dudes, my mom always told me it was wrong to make fun of the mentally retarded.

Dammit I'm gonna run out of insults and I'm only to #3. Teenagers are plain creepy. Period. I want them all to die. This dude's myspace title is "Nothing is Everything." Yeah, that's how deep this fucker is. The music is your average run of the mill bucket-of-shit Casio keyboard electronic waste of time. He needs to stop making crappy "music", take care of that mole on his face and bring me that bag of Chippers. I'm hungry. I wonder if everyone in McKinney, Texas is this retarded.

This Guillotine's from New Delhi, but I really can't make fun of them. I could not find any of their tunes and the photo looks pretty normal. Well, the one dude's got a sweet axe. The other guy's got rad cow-lick, which in India is like being kissed by the Virgin fucken' Mary. Maybe the drummer shouldn't have taken the photo in their parents' Indian restaurant.

"Holla't me playa'!" I love it when I can use the "appropriation of black culture" tag! MC Guillotine is from North Carolina. I guess they haven't heard of cellphones down there. Do they even have electricity? Maybe he's so broke he just hasn't payed his April phone bill. Here's a line from his myspace:
"WE WOULD LIKE TO THANK YOU FOR THE PRAYERS AND PHONE CALLS FOR SHAYTON AKA GUILLOTINE. HE IS RECOVERING FROM A CAR ACCIDENT THAT LEFT HIM WITH A BROKEN LEG."
Is that sad or funny? I'm not sure.

I didn't even look to see where these posers are from. They all have short hair and got a chick in the audience? They might as well be from Fruitville, Gaytucky. Emofags, punch yourselves in the face...NOW!

Giljotina means Guillotine in Slovenian. I wonder how say "broken cymbal" or "put some pants on" in Slovenian

OK, out of all the Guillotines on this post, this LA outfit is the only one signed to a real label. That is the REAL cover of their record. WOW! The cover belongs in one of Sergeant D's 'Great Moments in Art History' posts. Unfortunately for all of us at MI, these geniuses have split-up. We are all wearing black armbands around the office today. We are only left with this review of their 1989 Full-length "Bring Down the Curtain":
"There’s a sticker on the front cover that totes some guy named Mark Senasac as the producer. After one side of this nine-songer, it’s apparent that's all the record has going for it, and the production is hardly anything to parade around town with."
Ouch.

"Hey dudes, guess what? My step-dad is moving the grill so we can practice in the dock! The only thing is that Anthony has to use the bags of Kingsford to stop his bass drum from sliding and scratching the deck." These imbeciles list their lyrical themes as: Fantasy, Fate, and Norway. I'm not kidding. Do they have a song about how Norway's rugged coastline is broken by massive fjords and thousands of islands and stretches over 2,500 km?

Speaking of Scandinavia, this Guillotine are from UmeƄ, Sweden. They are pretty damn good old school thrash. Check out their names: Snake, Spider and Cobra. Ex-member Rat. You can't make this shit up. Their future members might include Bat, Gecko and Ocelot. In the photo, looks like Spider (rocking a Popeye shirt?) just sneezed and Cobra looks sad. Why is Cobra sad? This is what I got from their website:
"...drummer Cobra was never a real member. He was asked to join the band for a photo shoot. Although he claims he can play the drums, he was never equipped with the skills or know-how to play in a serious band.
I'm telling you, you can't make this shit up!


These dudes from Santo Andre in Brazil are the hands-down winners! Look at them! They got the mark of true metalheads: awesome long hair, slightly overweight and TONS of patches on denim vests (not to mention their sweatpants)!!! Good patches, too. I spot Slayer, Possessed, Sodom, Motorhead, Anthrax and Dark Angel. If I'd kept attaching patches to my denim jacket past 1993, it'd probably look like this by now. Too bad I'm a fucking poser, 'cuz these cats look all the rage! But it's not all looks, their names are brutal as shit, too: Rene Iron Hell, Marcelo Destructor and Angelo of Death. Plus former members Bruno Mad Butcher and Viviane Possessed. Their music is pretty good, too. They have a ragin' tune called Sexthrash and it kills. There's nothing about these dudes that isn't fucking metal. Congrats playas, you win!