SLAYER, the GREATEST FUCKING METAL BAND PERHAPS OF ALL FUCKING TIME EXCEPT FOR MAYBE IRON FUCKING MAIDEN AND BLACK FUCKING SABBATH, will be on the Sound of Young America tonight at 9:00 PM EST (9/13/2010).

I am simultaneously delighted, BECAUSE IT’S FUCKING SLAAAAAAYAAAAAH!!!!!!!!!!, and horrified, because WTF, Slayer on NPR for an INTERVIEW?

But it’s an excuse for SLAYER VIDEOS and if you’re laughing at the all-caps it’s because when it comes to SLAYER I literally turn into Beavis and Butthead SLAYERSLAYERSLAYERSLAYERSLAYERSLAYERSLAYERSLAYERSLAYERSLAYERSLAYERSLAYERSLAYERSLAYERSLAYERSLAYERSLAYERSLAYERSLAYERSLAYERSLAYERSLAYERSLAYERSLAYERSLAYERSLAYERSLAYERSLAYER

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And because it is SO ugly, tasteless and evil, here is a REALLY NSFW video for “Angel of Death”, a song about Josef Mengele.

Sorry, I just get a little excited about Slayer. That is some fucking METAL.

Adding: the last video is NOT for the faint of heart, it has some truly awful images from the Holocaust. From the comments at youtube:

Most of this footage is from ‘Nazi Murder Mills’ (1945) and some is from the capture of Auschwitz by advanced Soviet cavalry units.

Don’t feel too superior. Sometimes I have an uneasy feeling we’re not to far removed from this kind of evil right here in America.

Ronnie James Dio, a legend of heavy metal, died yesterday from stomach cancer at the age of 67. It’s a terribly sad end for one of the genre’s true innovators. Dio popularized the “heavy metal horns” sign:

… and never stopped performing. I saw Dio about two years ago on the Heaven and Hell tour, reuniting with Vinnie Appice, Tony Iommi, and Geezer Butler, the lineup for that album. Ronnie is my dad’s age, but you wouldn’t have guessed it from the way he leaped around the stage. The guy had the energy of a much younger man, but was well aware of his advanced years. At one point during that show, which had a significant population of dads who grew up on Black Sabbath and Dio themselves bringing their teenaged kids for their first taste of arena metal, Ronnie invited the audience to sing along on Voodoo by “following the bouncing Dio”, a reference to sing-alongs in old age homes.

When I was on tour with Uncle Fucker, we’d roll into pretty much every town blasting either Dio or Waylon. It got to the point where our banjo player was ready to take the cd away for good, and so we’d take a break for a few days, and sometimes just a few hours.

During high school, I was never a huge fan of Dio, but times were different: the hardcore/metal crossover hadn’t really begun yet, but even then, Dio was from the old school of metal, singing incomprehensible songs about demons, dragons, mysticism, and stuff that had nothing to do with my teenaged political awakening to Reagan, the USSR, and the impetus to smash the state. But maybe that was the point of Dio’s body of work: escape and escapism.

I’ll close this tribute to Dio, one of the kings of heavy metal, with a double-shot of what’s perhaps his best-known song, Holy Diver. Here’s the original:

…and here’s an update by Killswitch Engage, with a cameo by Ronnie:

Goodbye Ronnie James, and safe travels wherever you are.

Since late last week, my inbox has been flooded with advocacy/fundraising pieces from Planned Parenthood, NOW, NARAL, the Democratic Party, HCAN, and pretty much every other interest group with a dog in the health care fight. Every single one of them has some version of “It’s not over yet!”

That’s how you know it’s over: when the equivalent of Homer Simpson goes chasing after the equivalent of “the pig de resistance” as it goes careening down the hill, covered with dirt, falling into the river, until it finally goes airborne never to return, all the while screaming “It’s just a little slimy, it’s still good!”

Never doubt my capacity to be wrong, but I think heath insurance reform is about as dead as dead can be.

It didn’t have to be this way: the democrats could have come up with a bill that met their campaign promises. What they developed was largely a giveaway to insurance companies. And since that was never going to fly with the voters, they had to twist themselves into all sorts of painful contortions to say make the bill seem like something other than what it is. But look, people aren’t stupid:

[W]e wasted 2009 “negotiating” with bad faith actors like Snowe and Mike Enzi. The tools were available to quickly pass a health care bill, yet Democrats were too incompetent to do so. And on issue after issue, they’ve proven completely ineffective.

THAT’s why the base is sitting things out. They don’t need blogs or MSNBC to tell them that Democrats can’t govern. They already knew that Republicans don’t want to govern, but the Democrats were supposed to be different. And they are, they want to govern, but they can’t. And the voters that worked their asses off to give Democrats the White House and super majorities in Congress are now realizing that it was all for nothing. That all that talk about hope and change was cynical bullshit designed to motivate them. It worked once, but that crowd is learning the art of political cynicism, and it ain’t pretty.

And so we are left with a flying pig.

And yes, I’ll fucking join fucking facebook, alright? Jeez louise!

I lost my copy of their re-released The Bags ‘89, available here. It’s really impossible for me to fully articulate what a great band The Bags are, and how great their 1989 eponymous release is. It’s really something you have to hear for yourself. As Tim Kelly (who would know) says “If there is one Bags album that you need to hear, it is their sophomore effort, 1990’s eponymous full-length.”

It wasn’t until The Bags cut their ties with Restless, enlisted budding sound engineer Carl Plaster (if there ever was a “fourth Bag,” it was/is Carl), and took their arsenal to local garage label Stanton Park that Bags records actually started SOUNDING like the mind-crunching powerhouse the band had always been. First came the “Hide And Seek”/”I Know” single, a two-headed monster of heavy sludge clobber and hooky, dynamic punk pop craftsmanship that teased at the shape of things to come. Then they gave us the record: The Bags. It didn’t need a title. This, make no mistake, was The Bags. (I’ll get to where Swamp Oaf fit in to the whole picture when my pitch to the 33 1/3 book series gets approved…)

Basically, the point is that these guys were punk rockers who grew up on the heavier rock of the 60s and 70s, and their music reflected both worlds. The Bags weren’t the only band that was blurring those lines and stretching the bounds of genre at the time — thankfully, that approach to rock-making continues to this day with “stoner rock”. But they were among the first to not only try it but get it so damn right. This record captures the core essence of this remarkable band.

And now, after how many years out of print? 16? 17? It’s available, finally, again.

Buy it. You will NOT regret it.

Yeah the video’s goofy, but it’s such a rockin’ chunk of metal.

And like the man says,

And let me tell you something

Before you go taking a walk in MY world, you better take a look at the real world
Cause this aint no Mr. Rogers Neighborhood
Can you say “feel like shit?”
Yeah maybe sometimes I do feel like shit
I aint happy about it, but I’d rather feel like shit than be full of shit!
And if I offended you, Oh I’m sorry
But maybe you needed to be offended
But here’s my apology and one more thing: Fuck you!
Cause you can’t bring me down…

This band is really pretty evil. And this video is scary.

The lead guitar player of Demassek and I were in a band together in high school.
Demassek gets their name from a high school yearbook. Apparently, one Tony Demassek, whose metal mullet had magnificent plumage, was the student voted “Most Likely to Rock”.

You can’t go wrong with a name like that.

and hey why the hell not, Ace of Spades too. I’m in a metal mood.