Praise Jesus, Praise Real Estate!

Remember how Roger Martinez from Vengeance Rising was way into JC?



That was the old Roger. These days, he's got himself an oversized suit from the discount rack at Men's Warehouse, and he's now way into Real Estate.

Metal Cruise: The end of an era

As though we needed further proof that metal is either dead or on life support, today I received news of a disaster of grand proportions. What am I talking about you ask? I'm talking about the 70000 Tons Of Metal cruise. Proving to everyone that metal is an aging art form (okay maybe calling it an "art form" is a stretch), as are its practitioners and fans. Featuring such hot metal acts as Sodom, Amon Amarth, Raven and Trouble, the cruise is being described as such:

Imagine starting the year in style. In January 2011, 40 Heavy Metal bands and 2,000 fans will go to the Caribbean to take over the luxury cruise ship "Majesty of the Seas" for a 5 day and 4 night trip of a lifetime.

Make no mistake, this is not one of the cruises where you share the ship with regular cruise guests... This is 100% Heavy Metal! Tons of onboard live shows on several in and outdoor stages, open mic nights, bars that never close, a fun-and-sun-filled day on the beautiful island of Cozumel

Can you imagine being stuck on a ship full of fat, aging metal fans? Notice that the ship will be going to Cozumel, Mexico. So I think you can expect that members of Mexican thrash trio Toxodeth will be working as short order cooks. Can you imagine the quality of the performances that will take place on the "open mic nights"? Perhaps members of Raven will do their latest slam poetry...who knows, perhaps members of Sodom will showcase their new hilarious ventriloquist act, which features a masked puppet modeled after their numerous album covers.



Look, I don't fault these guys for trying to cash in just a bit. I don't fault them for trying to get a free vacation, particularly when their idiototic fans are willing to play along. Why not? I do, however, reserve the right to shake my head in disbelief in a manner that would have made an 11 year old version of me proud. A godamned cruise? Seriously? Metal bands aren't even supposed to be exposed to sunlight (much like Gremlins)...aside from that one time that Kreator showed off their sweet beach bods. There was also the seldom-talked about incident that Mayhem fans refer to as the "belly shirt we shall not speak of".





Yes, perhaps I'm in denial. Perhaps I'd like to keep the world as I saw it in earlier times. Metal seemed cool to me when I was young due in great part to its mystique. It was dark, unknown and potentially dangerous. I was 11 then...so perhaps it's time I just grow the hell up, sign up and go on the cruise with my old lady. Who knows, I may even enjoy Raven's poetry slam.

When Weed And Metal Goes Wrong

I originally approached this post about weed in metal like “When Keeping It Real Goes Wrong” from the Chappelle Show. By that I mean, most of the time weed and metal is a great combo, however, when you fuck it up, you fuck it up so bad that it’s laughable and/or sad.

Truth be told I didn’t even consider the legions of stoner/sludge bands out there for this piece because, in honesty, I think it takes a true fan of the genre to separate the good from the bad and I’m no expert. What I did want to talk about is the everyday, run of the mill metal band and how they tried to tackle the topic of good ‘ol Mary Jane and failed big time.

Six Feet Under – ‘4:20’ (from the Warpath album) Where to begin with this song? First of all there should be a big red flag when a band predominantly does one style (here, it’s boring generic death metal of the horror/gore variety) and then throws a creative/artistic curveball. We can play that childhood game of “One of these things does not belong” to establish this point quite easily here with songs from the Warpath album:

• Revenge of the Zombie
• Burning Blood
• War Is Coming
• 4:20
• Death Or Glory
• Caged and Disgraced

I mean, '4:20' sticks out like a sore thumb amongst that line-up. But I’ll play the conservative role and elaborate further: look at the lyrics for God’s sake! “Let go of perception - enter true reality, A sea of green will set us free, Dank, Expand my inner being, Through what the Earth provides, I hear her voice calling, The hour has arrived...” Yeesh! This is coming from the man who penned lyrics to the song ‘Entrails Ripped From A Virgins Cunt’ so you do the math. I know what you’re thinking, “Chill out, it’s death metal anyway, so you can’t ever tell what he’s saying with those cookie monster vocals!” WRONG! He actually, uses some clean vocals in ‘4:20’. Ahem, Chris Barnes singing with clean vocals (how often do you see that in the same sentence…? Oh yea, and it actually being true?!?! That’s what I thought). Needless to say, the writing is pretty much on the wall with this one, Mr. Frontman got a little carried away with his weed habit and it seeped into Six Feet Under’s music. Since then, it’s been pretty much back to the death metal basics since then (about nine albums worth of it, yawn…) but what cemented this as a major weed and metal DON’T, is the fact that the song happens to be four minutes and twenty seconds long and was recorded on April 20^th. I’m not even kidding. FAIL!

Black Label Society – ‘Stoned and Drunk’ (from the album The Blessed Hellride) This one I will admit I’m a little biased about, but I think it’s a valid reason. To again repeat myself, I think weed and metal can be a very winning combination, however, here it’s done ultra cheesy and white trashy. This band, and specifically this song is like the metalhead’s gateway drug to meth. Years ago, I was on a tour and Black Label Society was on the bill for the whole tour and I never saw so many white trash, missing teeth, redneck, ignorant fans. Full on there were so many of those terrible novelty shirts with a 1950’s era guy on it saying like ‘Marijuana! Hey, at least it’s not crack’ (ironically, most people wearing those kinds of shirts are the ones down to smoke some crack), or just blazing pot leafs, etc. It was like the dregs of society secretly had a subconscious war on weed and were trying to re-appropriate it as the idiot-class drug or something. Anyway, again, the lyrics are bad, but I think it’s the blatant Ozzy/Sabbath worship, particularly in the vocals, which drives me a little crazy. This is compounded by the fact that Sabbath wrote ‘Sweet Leaf’ – THE definitive weed and metal song of all time (speaking of which, check out Thou’s cover of ‘Sweet Leaf’, it’s so heavy it’s like, “Ouch!”), so BLS please distance yourselves a bit.

Brujeria – ‘Marijuana’ (from the Marijuana EP) This one kind of pains me to mention cause I love Brujeria. Musically, their satanic druglord shtick, I dig it all. However in 2000 they released an EP at the height of the ‘Macarena’ craze with their own reinterpretation. A few things wrong here: you CAN’T make that song NOT bad, so to give Brujeria some credit, the chips were stacked against them from the get-go. However, rather than give the song their typical death metal/grindcore delivery with Spanish lyrics, they actually incorporate some of the techno-salsa music of the original song. It’s a bad combo, very bad. Also, like the Six Feet Under selection earlier, lead vocalist Juan Brujo attempts a stylistic shift to using some of the more clean vocals, most notably when we sings the chorus “Heeeeeey Marijuana!”

(Stick to the satanic druglord death-grind please)

Dope – (Anything and everything they’ve ever done) Let’s make this a quick one, after all it’s easy like shooting fish in a barrel. First their name is Dope, and while I can respect the fact that, as their Wikipedia notes, they sold drugs to survive and purchase instruments, once you pigeon hole yourself to such a highly specialized niche, you’re instantly relegated to ONLY that small demographic (Bongzilla, is somewhat in a similar position, but they’re so tongue in cheek about it and I like their music better they get a pass). If they’re going for the mainstream thing on rock radio or whatever, they have their cheesy name and drug connection as a huge liability for success, but apparently they like it and are sticking to their guns (just like hordes of fantasy based power metal bands, never gonna get wide recognition, but are content to rock with the D&D lifestyle).

Beyond trying to piggy back the shock value of their drug referencing name, they also covered “You Spin Me ‘Round (Like A Record)” on their first album, one of their minor claims to fame, which also landed on the American Psycho soundtrack.

And finally, look at their early 90s pseudo-industrial dreads (almost ten years after pioneering bands like Front Line Assembly, Skinny Puppy et al were just getting DONE with that style)… sigh.

Stay tuned! There could be other editions of ‘When Weed And Metal Goes Wrong’ in the future…

Wanderlust: Metal Edition :: Mexico City is "muy caliente" (El Chopo)

We have discussed to length before how the rest of the world is still living in 1988 and it's the U.S. alone that thinks metal is dead. I recently spent 2 weeks in Mexico City and, let me tell you, it was an ALL-OUT-METAL-ASSULT! Or, like they'd say over there: TODO-AFUERA-ASALTO-METALERO!

Sometimes, when I fall asleep listening to Slayer, I dream of a place where you can hang out with other metalheads with South of Heaven blasting from a car parked near-by. A place where thousands will gather to show off their backpatches. A place where I can buy an Iron Maiden Eddie rubber mask for $9 and Morbid Angel's complete bootlegged discography for $0.75. Well, my friends, that place exists, and it's called El Chopo. This heaven on earth is basically the awesomest flea market in history. Hundreds of little metal/punk/goth street vendors set up shop on the weekends through about 8 blocks of city streets. They sell EVERYTHING metal, from spikey belts and bracelets to Acid Reign bootleg DVDs; from Pungent Stench T-shirts to King Diamond embroidered patches. My Mexican friend Memo warned of the sheer amazingness of this place, but I was not ready for this level of absolute, dark, metal mayhemic (Metal Sin reference) rock-o-rama! I'm sure right now you are thinking: "No way, 'Krusher, you GOTTA be lyin'!" Nope, I'm not. Proof? I got your proof RIGHT HERE! (I'm grabbing my crotch and pointing to this YouTube video narrated by Pedro, from Napoleon Dynamite... not really.) Ignore the punk, goth and hippie shit:





Oh, yeah, they also have awesome live bands:






So, of course when I was there, I met lots of Luchadores and bought plenty of shit. I asked my new Luchador friends to pose, wearing some of the shirts I bought and here's the gallery of my treasures:

Dr. Wagner Jr. sporting an awesome WehrMacht tee.

Ultimo Dragón wearing Dark Angel


Avismo Negro (R.I.P.) in a gorgeous Venom long sleeve


Mistico (my current fave Luchador) rocks the CF t-shirt right

Please Note: The above are not the ACTUAL luchadores. It's just me wearing their masks in my apartment. Please don't make fun of my circa 1998 hp scanner/printer that I haven't used in over 5 years or of my lady bug kitchen towels, my still-sealed spice rack or my never-been-used red kettle. Shaking off the remains of my ex-wife's influence in my life is tougher than I thought. Well, Abismo Negro died like six months ago and Ultimo Dragón lives in Japan, so it's not like this fashion show would have been impossible anyway.