Big (Fake) Amp Metal, a Genre is Born

From the humble world of small-amp metal, today we take you to the the heights of big-amp metal. In the image above a long-rumored fact about metal is exposed...no, I'm not talking about the fact Tom Araya is a christian, or that Crisco runs through Kerry King's veins... but rather that bands like Immortal don't really own that many Marshall stacks. Makes sense, since they go through the PA system, and black metal is all about appearances anyway...but it's still funny. I wonder if the second bass drum even has a pedal attached to it.

Small-Amp metal, the genre lives on

I've spoken before about the metal genre known as "small amp metal". In said sub-genre, the majority of the amps used by the band's musicians are generally shorter than the stage upon which they are playing. Long thought to be extinct, small amp metal (SAM for short) seems to be resurfacing slowly, much in the same way that creatures first rose from the primordial ooze. It's with this in mind that I share this video with you. Please pay close attention to the singer's amazing vocal abilities. Also notice that at :31 seconds, I think the singer utters the line "she has wonderful titties"

Thanks to reader Omair for sending this in.

My favorite venue

As a world-renowned blogger, people ask me questions all the time in order to get my opinion about important topics in the world of metal. The one I'm asked most often is:

"What is the best venue that you've ever seen a show at?"

While I'm tempted to talk about that one strip club in Fort Lauderdale where I saw Exhorder, or the Eagle's Ballroom in Milwaukee where I saw Testament, Overkill, Downset and Body Count all in one day...I always come back to the same answer:

The loading dock at my uncle's lumber business. The acoustics were so good there that no band ever had to use amps taller than their knees. It was also cool because you could park on stage with the band, as you'll see in the second video. Yes, it was there, at the loading dock that I saw some of the sweetest shows in metal history. Luckily, these days EVERYTHING is on YouTube. Thank god for the internets.

It's like Abruptum, only with an undercut. In a trailer park.

I could try to write something more clever, but there is not much to say other than the obvious: In this video, some white trash kid plays a solo black metal show on the patio of his trailer.

--

Oh to be young again

At first it's just him shrieking by himself, but later in the video he attempts to get some of the half-dozen people watching to scream "I hate people." I like the idea of mandatory audience participation, but not as much as I like his undercut. All he needs is an Ugly Kid Joe baja jacket and his look is complete.

The funniest part, though, is that the song is pretty sick, at least at the beginning-- it makes me think of, say, Abruptum meets Dystopia, and you could do a lot worse than that combination. Don't get me wrong, the kid has no talent and the song falls apart very quickly, but it starts on a promising note.

I just Photoshopped this, but I will pay a king's ransom for a garment like it if you ever come across one

But this intriguing video begs many questions: Where are the other band members? How did he force these 6 neighborhood teens to watch his performance?? What is he up to now? (I am guessing he drives a Frito-Lay delivery truck in the greater Indianapolis area) When will undercuts make a comeback????

The beauty and innocence of youth: Memories of outdoor shows in the early 90s

Two weeks ago, this amazing picture of New Jersey's Revenant was posted here at Metal Inquisition. To say that I love this image would be a severe understatement. I mean, many have tried to encapsulate the youthful abandon that permeated early 90s death metal, but few images have done it as succinctly as this picture. What, I ask you, is more metal than playing the Fourth Of July picnic at your apartment complex? The varying heights of their hi-tops, the varying shortnesses of their shorts, the varying degrees of shirtlessness upon their chests. If you were there during those years, you understand why this image is so great. This is what it was like back in the early 90s, and if you missed it...you missed it. Death metal was new, china cymbals were huge, and Morrisound Studios reigned supreme.

A sweet outdoor show in Italy, with an audience made up of no one...because the picture was taken with a tripod and a timer. This picture, by the way, officially started the musical genre known as "small amp metal". In short, this musical style can only be played with small practice amps, and is at its best when the stage the band is playing in is at least twice the height of the tallest amp.

Memories:

During my reign as drummer of a handful of so-so bands in the early 90's, I played a few outdoor shows...just like the one pictured above. The band I played the most with was more of a grindcore band, but our shows were almost exclusively with death and speed metal bands. As a drummer, these shows were particularly frustrating, since grass is pretty much the worst surface on which your drumset can sit as you attempt to rip a brutal blast beat. As my drumset rocked back and forth, the cymbal stands dug into the soft grass, and you suddenly realized that you were engaged in battle with nature. Luckily, the bands I was in never attempted to seem evil, so when my cymbals toppled over onto the flower beds in front of the drumset, I probably looked less stupid than the death metal bands who would play after us. They, I have to tell you, looked seriously stupid. Have you ever seen a dude growl "Our next song is about a brutal serial killer...and its called..." into a mic, while standing on grass, at 2 in the afternoon, and a fly starts buzzing around his stinky hair? By comparison, we looked downright presentable and cool. Which reminds me, at one such show, a local band who we despised introduced one song by saying the following:

"This next song is about a cannibal who eats people"

Hmmm. As opposed to a cannibal who eats what? Tofu? By definition, a cannibal eats people, no? But anyway, I'm getting off track here.Out of the handful of outdoor shows (in reality, they were more like "backyard shows") that I played in during the early 90s, one surely sticks out in my mind above all others. Imagine, if you will, driving to a remote and rural location in the midwest...a town that was little more than a conglomeration of homes and had just recently gotten its very first stoplight. Then imagine a flatbed trailer, like from an 18-wheeler, with bands playing on top of it while it's parked in the middle of a depressing field. Billed as a "metal fest", the show was merely six bands and an audience of about 40 people. If you're a math genius like me, you can probably figure out that most of the audience was actually made up of the other bands. Depressing, I know.

Not happy with the fact that only horrible metal bands were getting to play outdoors, pseudo-prog bands have recently started to get in on the action. Here we see a prog band's singer and keyboard player praying that his parents don't come home early and yell at him for using all the extension cords.

It was one of the first shows that our band had played, so we set up a boombox in front of the stage to record our set. On the drive back home, I remember listening to the tape in my brother's car. Quickly we realized that two stoned Pantera fans had been standing by our beloved Panasonic boombox during the whole set, and endlessly did their horrible Bevis and Butthead impressions into it's tiny microphone. As a result, what we ended up with was a thirty minute tape of two rural jerkoffs with no teeth testing out their comedic chops onto our boombox. I remember what they looked like, slightly overweight and with nearly identical Vulgar Display Of Power shirts. The fact that they were only missing a few teeth, made them stand well above the rest of the audience, most of whom had even fewer teeth, and the few they had were dark brown. This, I would later learn, was partially as a result of drinking water pumped from wells, which lacks fluoride.

Outdoor shows in empty fields and backyards during the 90's would sometimes bring out bands who were barely metal at all. Like a community college who will let anyone in, backyard shows sometimes had bills with bands totaling well into the double digits. Inevitably, at least one band would feature a guy in a Dr Seus hat who was more than ready to use his wah-wah pedal for every song. Another interesting note about outdoor shows during that time: apparently no one was allowed to use anything other than small practice amps with 10" speakers.

You know how sometimes people talk about the "good old days"? When they do, all I can think about is that "fest". I remember standing in the hot sun for hours, playing on top of a trailer, watching fat dudes get drunk and turn their back on the makeshift stage as we played, so they could light off firecrackers in order to throw them in to the neighboring cornfield.

So why did I suddenly remember this less than memorable "fest"? Well, it's all because of the Revenant picture above, but also because of the videos below. The first video features an outdoor performance, but also the typical dude who is getting down, not realizing that he's really taking away from the "evil" atmosphere that the music is trying to convey. We had a few guys like this at our shows...one particularly memorable one was an elderly black man in a suit and tie who suddenly decided to take his tie off and wrap it around his head as he danced around like a six year old ballerina at a recital. His suggestive gyrating dancing is a sight I wont soon forget.

The second video reminds of this era because of the sheer number of bands that were this bad who I had the pleasure of sharing a bill with. Outdoor shows were particularly attractive to these types of bands. If at first you think they sound okay, keep watching...and wait until the singer starts. Thanks to the reader who sent this in.




This dude knows how to GET DOWN!




Although this show is taking place indoors, the musical quality is indicative of many small-amp/outdoor metal bands. Is this guy the greatest metal vocalist ever? Do you even have to ask? I'm glad that the drummer has headphones on, so he can play perfectly on time thanks to his click track.




A classic that we've posted before. Certainly worth checking out again.




Reader submission. Sometimes the show is not on stage at all...check out the dude dancing.

Hail to Spain, Hail to the Vuelta a España

In my ongoing effort to make people see how cycling is very metal, I've created yet another fake Mayhem record cover. This one features an image that was sent in by one of our readers. In case you're wondering, the badly translated name of this album is "this dude fell during a crit, and his bloody knuckles messed up his SRAM shifters." I ran it through an online Norwegian translator to make it even more kvlt. I know what you're thinking, I could have used one of those pictures of Jens Voigt after his crash..but that would be tasteless. I got to shake his hand and fawn over him this summer in Andorra...so now we are like best budz, and I won't do that to the man. Still, a reader requested it...so here it goes. The name of this album is "Jens Voigt busted his god damned face." If you don't get why these images are funny, perhaps you've never seen the original Mayhem record cover...or perhaps you think my sense of humor is horrible. I would certainly understand that too.

Okay, this is the official beginning of the post:

This past weekend, I found myself at a rather pleasant ice cream shop with Mrs. Lucho Metales and fellow MI staffer Gene Hoglan's Balls. Aside from being known for their delicious ice cream, this place is also known for having highly unusual toppings such as bacon, wasabi peas and salmon. Although I doubt that anyone actually gets these toppings, since they would probably taste horrible with any ice cream, the mere idea of it certainly ads to the charm of the place. When selling an out-of-town guest on the idea of going there, I'll say "they have great ice cream, and you can get wacky toppings like bacon." Friends are usually revolted by the idea, but then will say "sounds cool, let's go." Similarly, I know that many find the posts that have anything to do with cycling on this blog to be a bit like the bacon topping. Most of you dislike the mere idea of it...but I hope that they add to the charm of the place. Also, what else am I going to post about? Tom G. Warrior's appendectomy?

So why a post with a cycling picture? Because the Vuelta A España started on Saturday, the last of the three Grand Tours of cycling. On the one hand, this is sad news, because it means that the summer (and the pro cycling season) is almost over. On the other hand, it means that my Dark Angel and Celtic Frost long sleeve shirts will be making their first official appearances this year....a real highlight for me, and all the ladies in town who are no doubt amazed by my fashion sense. It also means I'll get to ride wearing those ridiculous lobster gloves, and will thus get made fun of some more by strangers. Still, this all gives us the opportunity to take a closer look at Spain's metal output once again...and no, I'm not just going to write about Baron Rojo and their receding hairlines. Like punching a baby in the face, it's just way too easy.




I'm also not going to make stupid cycling/music references that only two people in the world will get...that would be retarded. For example, I will NOT be pointing out how the drummer in Earth Crisis looks exactly like America's cycling semi-sensation Christian Vande Velde.



But seriously...don't they look exactly alike? They even have similar Coco Puff-like moles on their general nose areas. But anyway...what I'm here to do is to once again look at Spain's metal output, and I do mean look, since I'm certainly not going to take the time to listen to any of these horrible bands.




Question
What's the difference between this guy and the pile of dog shit he unknowingly just sat on?

Answer
The ill fitting t-shirt.

*As one of our readers pointed out...please notice the horribly stretched-out neck on this guy's t-shirt. Disgusting. Does he think he's in Flashdance?



Is this his best attempt at a cool metal pose for the picture on their album? No, this is the face you make, and the pose you hold when your venereal warts flare up.




Just look at his face, he knows that simply hitting that first chord in The Final Countdown can bring entire nations to their knees...so don't test him! He has a Korg X5D keyboard, and the sheet music to the entire Europe catalog...and he's NOT afraid to use it!




Inspired by the likes of Lacuna Coil, all young European bands are now forcing their nearly-attractive female cousins to join their bands. Due to a continent-wide shortage of Valtrex, these young women are often kept as slaves, and forced to sing for these bands in exchange for little more than a single dosage of the herpes medicine. On an unrelated note, please note the sweet eye make up on the guitar player. Alice Cooper? Juggalo? Black metal fan? We'll never know.




The all-brown outfit makes him look like the last shit I took. Check out his cigarrette, and the fact that he not only brought out his guitar, but also his guitar stand for this picture. This guy's middle name is: Commitment. His last name? That's easy: CreepyEuroRapist.




Speaking of creepy euro rapists...Andoni's hobbies include: polishing his throbbing, red, phallic guitar, and asking "you want to make sexy with me?" to unsuspecting American tourists. If said tourists respond with "no..get away from me you creepy euro", his hobbies will also include chasing them into their hostel and trying to seduce them by playing Joe Satriani riffs.




This is Juan's patented "I'm casting a spell on you" pose. Why do I get the sneaking suspicion that if these guys sang in English, the word "thrice" would be included somewhere in their lyrics? As in : "The fair maiden cast her spell upon me, not twice but thriiiice!"
Lastly, can you imagine how disappointed you must be as a parent when your son comes home wearing a fucking pirate shirt like this one? The day he wore this home for the first time after buying it at the goth/pirate/s&m shop, his parents probably exhaled with extreme sadness and said "we'll be in our bedroom...awaiting the sweet release of death."




The upside of starting a band in a small town in Spain is that you will be an instant demi-star within the local scene. The downside is that there is a lack of musicians to choose from. It's for that reason that you'll always end up having to ask the local janitor with a slight case of cerebral palsy to join the band. What other choice do you have? He's the only guy in town who owns a drumset! So what if he drools while he does a wicked blastbeat? Hey, you have to break at least one egg to make an omelet.





Nothing, and I do mean NOTHING says "extreme metal power" like practicing Pantera riffs through a Peavy practice amp with a 10" speaker.





Apparently, being insanely unatractive while tucking in your shirt and pulling your pants up until your genitalia burns in agony is not just for members of Mythic anymore.

An unrelated example of the same look, which we here at MI lovingly refer to as "Metal Mama" Jeans