Thursday, August 7, 2014

Mustache Ride

From the official minutes of the 2nd annual Broward County Death Metal Convention & Symposium, held in Plantation, Florida, on August 23-25, 2013


Friends, fans, enemies…

[Laughter]

With this many people here, you know we’ve got enemies in the room!

[Nervous laughter]

Nah, I’m kidding! 

[Audible sighs of relief]

First off, I want to welcome you all to the second annual Broward County Death Metal Convention & Symposium at the La Quinta Inn and Suites here in scenic downtown Plantation. Thank you all for being here on the opening night!  Now, don’t forget we’ll have complimentary microwave burritos and Mountain Dew available in the lobby from 9 to 9:15 tomorrow morning. Then the real festivities kick off at noon with the air guitar competition, Cannibal Corpse Karaoke, the Karl Sanders look-alike contest and of course, tomorrow night, the Hoffman Brothers bench-press/squat thrust tutorial followed by Holy Deception, Broward County’s finest Deicide cover band!

[Polite applause]

But tonight we’re gathered to talk about an important topic: Death metal outerwear.

[Applause]

We’ve got a lot of ground to cover in the next four hours, what with camo pants, camo shorts, denim shorts, high tops, athletic socks—all the way through band shirts, leather jackets, denim vests, cut-offs and longsleeves. But first I wanna start things off with what I feel, on a personal level, are the most important accoutrements on the docket tonight: Sweatpants and mustaches.

[Applause]

Notice I didn’t say sweatpants OR mustaches…

[Riotous applause]

[Laughs] Right! Because while you can certainly have one without the other—and here I nod in deference to our brothers in arms who are unable to grow mustaches; they live in what I like to call Peach Fuzz Purgatory, hahaha… But of course the mustache/sweatpants combo is always preferable. Just ask our special guest speakers tonight: Rick Rozz and Will Rahmer!

[Applause]

You know Rick as the prime shredder in Massacre, and of course as an early member of Death, going back as far as the Mantas days…

[Louder applause]

Yeah, yeah—I know. Incredible pedigree on this guy. And you’ve seen the photos of Rick from back in those days. Classic death metal ’stache—classic Floridian moose knuckle, too!

[Laughter]

I kid, I kid. Now, as many of you know, Rick has been clean-shaven in recent years. But I’m here to tell you—spoiler alert!—that he’s rocking the ’stache again, and he’s gonna debut it here for you guys tonight!

[Riotous applause]

Now, our second guest speaker, as I mentioned, is Will Rahmer. You know him from Mortician, of course—Yonkers’ finest!—and for those of you with a little more, shall we say, underground tastes… yeah, you know what I mean… he’s also the mastermind behind the almighty Prosthetic Cunt!

[Applause]

Now listen, guys—one stipulation with Will, okay? No questions about the Polish incident. You know, the alleged “stealing a taxi at knifepoint” scenario or whatever. Alleged scenario. That was almost ten years ago at this point and Will doesn’t wanna talk about it. He’s here to talk mustaches and sweatpants and if you wanna ask Mortician questions of course that’s cool. I know we’re all curious what the status of the new album is!  But the Q&A session will be cut short if anyone brings up the Polish thing, so don’t spoil it for the rest of us, okay?  

[Murmurs, nods]

And to be honest with you it came up in the Green Room earlier, someone mentioned it, I won’t say who, and Will was totally cool about it. As it turns out, the Polish authorities made way less of an ordeal out of the whole thing—alleged thing—than you might think. But Will explained to me that he just doesn’t wanna talk about it publicly. So, yeah: You guys know the drill from last year, anyway, when we had Phil from Malevolent Creation up here to talk about Slurpee etiquette and other convenience-store protocols.

[Murmurs, nods]

Okay, cool, cool. I know I can depend on you guys. So without any further what-have-you, let me bring out our first guest. Guys, give a big hand to Mr. Rick Rozz! And guys, wow, let’s hear it for that amazing mustache, am I right?

[Riotous applause]



This bullshit originally appeared in the November 2013 issue of Decibel magazine.