Run, Piggy, Run

Okay, so I had this dream the other night, dude. It was kinda fucked up. At first, it was totally cool, like one of those recurring deals I have about Becky Griswold, where we’re in the bushes behind the armory and she’s giving me the business, real sloppy and nasty-like. Only we’re not in the bushes and instead of Becky Griswold it’s the dudes from Pig Destroyer and there’s no business going on anywhere. So right off the bat it’s a total bummer. But it gets worse, dude. Much worse. These dudes, they’re after me for some reason. And they’re all armed to the tits. But instead of like regular weapons they’ve got these fucking mechanical arms with huge pincer grips and C-clamps and massive rusty drill bits like the one going up that dude’s ass on the cover of Pantera’s Far Beyond Driven. You know—the original, uncensored cover. Before they pussed out and changed it to that stupid blue skull thing.

Anyway, I suddenly realize—in my dream, that is—that the dudes from Pig Destroyer wanna use that massive rusty drill bit on ME in much the same way Pantera used it before they pussed out. As in, NOT FUN AT ALL, dude. And I’m not positive what I’m thinking in my dream as far as the pincers and C-clamps go, but I’m pretty sure it involves something terrible and irreparable being done to my genitals. Like I get the feeling the whole general package area is in severe jeopardy. Horrifying, right? I’m not sure if this was one of those Freudian sexual inadequacy deals, or what, but that’s not really what I was concerned about at the time, you know? I was concerned about getting the fuck out of there as fast as fucking possible. So I do what anyone would do—I haul tits, dude. I run like I’ve never run before, like the dude from Chariots Of Fire. Like Carl Lewis all jacked up on muscle juice in 1984. Like Forrest Fucking Gump, dude. The word “fleeing” comes to mind, because that’s what I was doing. I was fleeing. For the safety and preservation of my package.

So I’m hauling balls, literally and figuratively. Through a field. Through a stream. Waist-deep in water. When I’m in the drink, I’m thinking about eels and piranhas and those creepy things with the stingers that killed that Australian dude on the TV. Oh, and candirú, dude. Are you familiar with these aberrations of nature? Totally vicious little fuckers, they swim up your dick hole when you blow a piss and lodge themselves in your urethra with these little spikes that they have. Think about THAT for a second, dude: Dick parasites. I guess they only exist in the Amazon, but I’m not exactly sure where this dream is taking place. Then, after the stream, I come to a bridge, and there’s bodies hanging everywhere with their guts spilling out. Just completely disemboweled, dude, like the cover of that Cannibal Corpse album. You know the one. And it smells fucking disgusting, like they’ve had the drill treatment, if you know what I mean. Have you ever smelled anything in a dream, by the way? Yeah, me neither. First time for everything, I guess.

Finally, I get to a rickety-looking shack under a flickering street light. I wish my REM cycle had more originality, but I guess that’s all it could come up with. Apparently, I’m a lazy bastard even in my dreams. Still, I’m totally creeped out at the sight of this place, and there’s no way I’m gonna set foot in there. But I can hear the dudes from Pig Destroyer behind me. They’re not very far back at all. And now that massive rusty drill is switched on and spinning with that high-pitched whir you hear at the dentist’s office and all I can think about is how much I hate the dentist, how much I really would like to keep my genitals intact and how I really, REALLY don’t want that drill anywhere near my poop chute. So I practically throw myself at the door, dude. And the dudes from Pig Destroyer are right behind me now. Even over the sound of the drill, I can hear them laughing at me—it’s more of an evil cackling, really—about all the unsightly shit they’re gonna do to my undercarriage. But the door won’t open, dude. It’s totally fucking locked or stuck or barricaded or something. And then all I can hear is the relentless whir of the drill as the dudes from Pig Destroyer grab me and start forcing my pants down.

That’s when it ends. And when I wake up, I’ve totally got a boner. Which is weird because none of those dudes are really my type.

This bullshit originally ran in the August 2010 issue of Decibel magazine.

The Ballad Of Valdas Paskas

What can The Dominator tell us about the fading star of celebrity? Not much, we’d imagine. By the early ’90s, he’d lost the ability to speak. That was the official story, anyway. His ex-wives thought it was a ploy to avoid unpleasant questions—from journalists, ostensibly, but most likely from the ex-wives themselves. He put himself to pasture a long time ago, they’d say. “How far the great have fallen,” and other such well-worn platitudes typical of the speaker’s own fleeting devotion. But they had a point.

As heavy metal heroes go, you couldn’t get much heavier or heroic than Valdas “The Dominator” Paskas. In his prime, he stood 6-foot-7 and weighed 375 pounds. As a teenager in his native Lithuania, he reportedly punched out a mountain lion and then impregnated the beast as it lay unconscious. (To this day, rumors persist of a half-man/half-lion terrorizing weary travelers in the hills near the Belarus border.) As the lead singer for Face Violator, he was an intimidating stage presence, wearing thick industrial chains across his chest in the He-Man style and often hoisting guitarist Ricky “Pete” Damone and bassist Ron Rager onto his shoulders while taunting the audience with horrifying promises of a “severe backdoor delivery.” Toward the end of Face Violator’s career, it was widely reported that The Dominator had attempted to “Burton” Rager by threatening to push the band’s touring van (they hadn’t traveled in a bus for years) onto the bassist at a gas station somewhere near El Paso. No one present doubted he could do it.

Face Violator got their first break opening for Grand Funk in 1975, on that band’s decidedly bloated All The Girls In The World Beware!!! tour. To audiences across America, it was an obvious mismatch. Grand Funk’s waning “Some Kind Of Wonderful” mid-period performances were decidedly ineffectual after Face Violator’s delirious proto-grind had punished them so thoroughly. As The Dominator himself later pointed out, Face Violator had made Grand Funk look like “a buncha weepy teenage split-tails."

The band enjoyed steady popularity in the UK throughout the late ’70s and early ’80s, playing alongside the likes of Motörhead, Venom, Diamond Head and Tygers Of Pan Tang. In 1981, the editors at Sounds tried to arrange a charity boxing match between The Dominator and Samson drummer Barry “Thunderstick” Purkis, but it fell through when The Dominator attacked three constables during a race riot in South London and subsequently spent three nights in a Brixton jail.

In early ’84, Face Violator famously opened for Sabbath on the Born Again tour, which was more or less the beginning of the end. After joining Sabbath onstage for “Zero The Hero” in Cardiff, The Dominator had words with Ian Gillian backstage and reportedly told the former Deep Purple lung-smith to “huff my sweaty bag, fat boy.” Face Violator were unceremoniously booted off the tour and replaced by Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi’s then-girlfriend, Lita Ford.

Face Violator broke up in early ’87, after The Dominator caught Damone and Rager in bed together. (They refused to let him join in.) Ruined by the scandal, the duo never worked again. Though clearly deteriorated in the eyes of the public, The Dominator remained viable. As his contemporaries were busy drinking and whoring themselves to death, he did squat-thrusts at the Y and quietly plotted his revenge. Later that year, he landed a bit part as an SS officer in Roger Corman’s little-seen Nazi boot-camp flick, Iron Youth. (As Corman tells it, The Dominator demanded that his costume be made by the original manufacturers of SS uniforms, Hugo Boss.) The Dominator’s first solo album, Painful Insertion (1987), was bolstered by the modest hit, “I’m Gonna Make You My Reverse Cowgirl,” though many claim the songs were actually written by then-Whitesnake guitarist John Sykes, who still turns pale(r) when he hears The Dominator’s name.

By ’89, The Dominator’s mental state had become increasingly unstable. Some said it was dementia, others claimed a bipolar disorder was exacerbating his already semi-acute Frotteurism. Whatever his affliction, he was clearly out of step with the fans’ prevailing tastes. His second solo album, China Sideways, was greeted with the kind of enthusiasm that usually accompanies a particularly noxious dog fart, and The Dominator quickly went to seed. He ballooned to 500 pounds and cultivated an extensive chin collection before fleeing to Southeast Asia, where whisperings of drug abuse and Thai pool boys persist to this day.

When contacted via email for comment on his activities of the last 20 years, The Dominator simply replied, “What’s Decibel?”

This bullshit originally appeared in the June 2010 issue of Decibel magazine.