Letter To The Editor

On Oct 4, 2010, at 11:05 AMthisisnotmyemailaddress@gmail.com> wrote:

Hey, Alberto –

It was awesome hanging out with you down in Richmond the other day. Psyched you could make the trip. My favorite part was when Witte ran over that old lady with his fixed-gear. That’s what you get for being a cripple in public.

Sorry about that thing with those dudes at the bar, though. I didn’t realize how pissed and, like, Samoan they were until his fist was about four inches from your skull. I know you’re a vegetarian and all, but that trick with the steak over the eye really does reduce swelling. I know ’cause I saw it on The Brady Bunch once. That was a sweet episode. How hot was Maureen McCormick back in the day, by the way? I would’ve loved to get handsome with her when she used to swap hand-shandies for cocaine. I had some pretty vivid dreams about that chick until my adolescent fantasy rolodex replaced her with Phoebe Cates from Fast Times and Samantha Fox’s chest.

So, I’ve been mulling over some of the stuff we talked about. In retrospect, I realize that 5000 words of speculative meta-history on how the lyrics to Siouxsie and the Banshees’ “Night Shift” provided the basis for every Cannibal Corpse song ever written is a bit excessive. But I think my point remains valid. Would you let me go 1800?

You’re totally right about that Appice Brothers cover story. I don’t know what I was thinking on that one. Yeah, they’re drum legends and all, but dB readers probably aren’t super-familiar with the work of King Kobra and, like, 3 Legged Dogg. I don’t care what anyone says, though: That first Blue Murder album is Hall Of Fame material.

I’m torn about the “Win A Candlelight Dinner With Glen Benton” contest. I’ve met that cat, and I’m fairly certain he’ll be bummed if a dude shows up to that fancy French joint the label is trying to book this thing at. Also: Since when does Tampa have a restaurant that serves something other than tainted shellfish and Coors Light?

I know I told you this already, but it bears repeating: I am totally cool with turning the entire Up Front section over to Fenriz.

Despite the fact that I argued vehemently against it for like 15 minutes, I’ve decided that letting Jeff Walker and Seth Putnam write all the reviews next issue might actually be kinda fun. Especially if we can dress it up with some of those photos Seth has been posting on the Interhole lately. Historically, dB seems to do really well at the newsstand when we have shirtless fat dudes in the mag. I’m not sure if the numbers will hold up if we switch it to bottomless fat dudes getting their dicks sucked by bony skanks from Revere Beach, but there’s only one way to find out.

Can you imagine the elegant romance of that first date, by the way? I can:

Seth: On your knees, bitch. This thing ain’t gonna suck itself.

Skank: Do you mind if I smoke while you fuck me?

Seth: You are so goddamn hot right now.

Skank: Do you mind if I snore while you fuck me?

Seth: Oooh, baby. I think I’m gonna come.

Skank: Just whip your dick out and chuck it into my pussy.

Other stuff I’ve been thinking about:

* Do you think we can get Deepak Chopra to interview Trey Azagthoth? Because I just don’t have that kind of time. (Is that new Morbid Angel album even coming out?)

* Can you hook me up with Jerry A. Deathburger’s email? I need to tell him about the grind band I’m pretending to start with a couple of the dudes from The Red Chord. We’re gonna call it Scab Mangler. Our first album will either be I Hope You Die In A Cancer Fire or I Love It When You Call Me Big Poppa.

* Q&A’s with Marty Friedman and Merle Allin. Seriously.

Okay for now. Talk soon, dude.

- JB

P.S.: I got dibs on the Leatherwolf Hall Of Fame.

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

Dear Dominator

My new friend Valdas Paskas, a.k.a. The Dominator, former vocalist for legendary UK proto-grind titans Face Violator, has asked (demanded) that I turn Cry Now, Cry Later over to him every once in a while (“whenever I like, you cunt”) so he can answer queries from his fans around the world. This is the first installment, obviously. And quite possibly the last.

Dear Dominator,

Many Hailz!!!! I love black metal, but I think posing in the forest in corpsepaint whilst wielding a sword is gay. What should I do?

Best,

Corky from Cardiff

Hey, Corky—I was just thinking the same exact thing while I was in the forest wearing corpsepaint and wielding a sword. Then I remembered that I had a life to lead.

Dear Dominator,

What do you think of these d-bags with sideways haircuts who are combining Auto-Tune with bad metal?

Maggie

Port Townsend, WA

Dear Maggie,

I’m glad you asked. What’s Auto-Tune?

Dear Dominator,

Did you really tell Ian Gillan to “huff my sweaty bag, fat boy,” when Face Violator opened for Sabbath in ’84?

Ronnie

Omaha, NB

First of all, Ian Gillan is the fattest, drunkest fuck in rock n’ roll next to Bob Hite (R.I.P.) from Canned Heat (R.I.P.). And what I actually said was: “You better clean up this beer, fatso. You wouldn’t want me to slip and accidentally put my foot up your ass.”

Dear Dominator,

When I was 12, I found a dead squirrel in the woods behind my house and decided to see what it would feel like. You know, on the inside. That’s when I discovered that it wasn’t actually dead. What do I do?

Alaksandar

Minsk, Belarus

Dear Alaks,

I suggest you toughen up and stop being such a faggot. Penetrating a small mammal is considered a rite of passage all across Eastern Europe. Suck it up, sissy.

Dear Dominator,

I hear you make an excellent lamb stew. Care to share the recipe?

Danke,

Karl from Hamburg

Okay, Karl. The recipe you seek is an ancient and highly guarded Lithuanian secret, but here goes: 1) Kill the lamb by strangling it with your bare hands. (2) Butcher, clean and dress the beast. (3) Throw everything into a cauldron over an open flame. (4) Go fuck yourself.

Yo, Dominator –

When I get out, Imma kick ya big white ass for what you did to my girl.

Tito

Pelican Bay SHU

Hey, Tito—your girl is actually right here. If she didn’t have her mouth full at the moment, I’m sure she’d say hi.

Dear Dominator,

Where can I find your albums? I’ve searched everywhere, even the Internet. Do you even exist?

Ian

Sheffield, England

Dear Ian,

Of course I exist. You just emailed me, genius. As for the albums, did you check your mom’s house? I’m pretty sure I saw some when I was over there.

Dear Dominator,

I used to be in a moderately successful third-rate metal band back in the late ’70s and early ’80s. Then our lead singer’s ego blew up like a balloon, so he split the band and went solo. He’s still kind of a prick, but I think we might have one more album in us if we put our minds to it. Should I get the band back together?

Pete from Brixton

I know this is you, Damone. The day we get the band back together is the day hell freezes over and Satan comes over to plant a money tree in my backyard. Faaaaaaahk youuuuuuuuuuu.

_________________________________________

The Dominator currently resides somewhere in Thailand with his three teenage pool boys, Zorro, Tonto and the Lone Ranger. You can email him your questions at maximum.domination@gmail.com

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

Face Pollution

I was talking to Alice Cooper the other day. Had he been present, he would have heard me telling this story I like to recount after about half a beer to whoever is within earshot:

I remember most of the details like it was yesterday. My barely competent attorney, Juan Perez, and I were at a Sebastian Bach show in Nashua, New Hampshire. This was probably like 10 years ago. Almost eleven. After the show—yeah, it was awesome—we spotted a couple of skanks leaning against the bar, waiting to be escorted backstage for an audience with “Baz.” These chicks were straight out of ’87—teased hair, short leather jackets, ripped fishnets, makeup applied with a spatula, giant hoop earrings, the full creature double feature. This is New Hampshire, remember. At a place called Sharky’s. Which is pretty much all you need to know. Well, almost. Because then Skank One turns to Skank Two, waves three fingers in front of her own tropical-fish-like visage and asks, “How’s the face?”

It was an excellent fucking question. Because what if The Face had been obscured by something other than five pounds of foundation, eyeliner and rouge? Or what if said foundation, eyeliner and/or rouge had been smeared across The Face in an unsightly manner, making Skank One look like the famous dead actor from that overrated Batman movie? (Granted, that movie had not been released when this happened. But you can see what I’m getting at here.) What if dust, foodstuffs or other detritus had become lodged in the gelatinous beige craters that just this morning had been plain old acne scars? The horrors were endless, but none more frightening than the potential result: If The Face was not presentable, perhaps Mr. Bach would be disinclined to put his wee-wee in or around it. Not that we have the slightest clue whether or not Skid Row’s former lead vocalist ever engaged in these kinds of sweaty extracurricular activities at midnight on a Tuesday, or whatever, in Nashua, NH. Last time we checked, he’d been married for like 300 years.

The upshot of witnessing this exchange is that my attorney and I replicate it at least a couple of times a month. Whenever we go out to lunch and one of us feels as though we might have crumbs in our beard, we bust out three fingers and a quick “How’s the face?” The question has to be asked with the kind of corpselike seriousness that Diane Sawyer used to summon effortlessly on 20/20 when she wasn’t completely shitfaced. If this routine qualifies as a male bonding ritual, I figure it’s at least way less gay than shirtless chest-bumping at a Rage Against The Machine concert, and maybe only slightly gayer than, I don’t know, watching football on the idiot box, eating hot wings and grunting at each other? But Americuh accepts the idiot box/hot wings/grunting scenario as so stereotypically hetero that its prominence in the national milieu reeks of overcompensation for all the ass-grabbing and bending over that happens on the scrimmage line. It’s like Chris Barnes’ Cannibal Corpse lyrics or something. Methinks the lady doth protest too much, dude. What’s that from, anyway? Shakespeare? Nothing gay about that.

But I seem to be getting off track here. Somewhere on an air-conditioned indoor golf course in Arizona, Alice Cooper is losing interest in my story. Oh, right: The Skanks. The 14-year old inside of me—you know, the one who writes for this magazine—is still secretly in love with those skanks, even though neither of us can remember what they looked like. (That 14-year old would’ve been just three years old back then, but he still knew a sure thing when he saw it.) In a way, those lusty ladies weren’t all that different than my attorney and I that night. We were all reliving a particularly fond piece of our teenage years; we were all psyched to be getting our drink on in the general vicinity of a once-mighty rock legend, and we were all definitely singing along to “Eighteen And Life.” At Sharky’s. In Nashua. Wow. The more I think about it, the more I sincerely hope those faces made the cut.

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

Montreal Scene Report: Get Your HAD On

As you know, we here at Decibel magazine pride ourselves on our ability to bring you the latest and greatest in extreme underground metal stylings. In that spirit, we offer the following Montreal scene report from our intrepid reporter and comrade, J. Bennett. Doctor Bennett filed this report while still in Montreal, that sparkling city by the bay (ocean? lake?) from which he has yet to return. We fear his “full immersion” style of journalism has compelled him to join some of the vagabonds profiled in this piece.

Outside the Mont Royal metro stop, Crazy Henri shakes his dirty fists at the heavens and curses the god that has forsaken him. The noise coming from his mouth sounds like a dying whale being fed into a wood chipper by an army of smelly homeless dudes suffering from the DTs. That’s probably because Crazy Henri is a smelly homeless dude suffering from the DTs, right down to the green teeth and semen-encrusted pantaloons. But our man isn’t feeding a dying whale into a wood chipper. He can’t even afford a wood chipper. Luckily, the hot new music genre Crazy Henri is credited with inventing is totally and completely free—despite the fact that you can’t yet steal it off the Internet.

Yes, the latest extreme metal craze currently sweeping the rues of Montreal is called homeless a cappella doom—that’s HAD for short—and it sounds a little something like this:

“AAAOORRAAARGGHHHH!” (Repeat 22 times.)

That’s right, oh faithful readers. No shredding solos, tasty riffing or thunderous blastbeats required. This shit is au naturel, from Crazy Henri’s armpit-microphone to Allah’s uncaring ears. And what began just a few months ago as one unspeakably horrible-smelling human being throwing down the doom—homeless a cappella doom—outside of Who Wants A Crepe? can now be found panhandling in the entryway of nearly every Couche Tard convenience store in this magical quasi-European burg. Today, Crazy Henri enjoys godfather status in the HAD scene. Later this week, he’ll open for local punkers Vaginal Croutons at Les Foufounes Electriques, a.k.a. the Electric Asshole, over on Saint Catherine.

Meanwhile, the occasionally deflated but always hilarious junkies on Saint Laurent congregate in the parking lot behind Club Soda in hopes of catching an impromptu performance by Monique LeTrec, otherwise known as The Sea Hag. Rumor has it she washed up on the beach back in ’03 after fleeing Newfoundland on a raft made out of balsa wood and fish heads. But today she’s the gin-blossomed Bonnie to Crazy Henri’s shitfaced Clyde: The doom-loving duo often go dumpster diving together in the alleys behind Montreal’s most glamorous jack shacks.

Of course, where the smoke from a burgeoning musical trend befouls the local air, the firemen of opportunity always come calling with lighter fluid and recording contracts. Pierre “Peaches” Benoit, a longtime HAD supporter and part-time social worker, is one of these soul-sucking carpetbaggers. But he agrees to meet us for a drink upstairs at Pussy Corps, so we let him run through his talking points. “Homelessness is not a joke, and with a decent push from a big label like Warner Brothers, homeless a cappella doom won’t be one for much longer,” he insists. In a nod to local custom, Benoit arrives at our meeting in typical Quebecois summer garb: baggy three-quarter length cargo pants (white), a bright neon tank top and a moldy pair of burlap man-sandals. “Plus, I read the first half of Nick Flynn’s Another Bullshit Night In Suck City last year, so I know what I’m doing when it comes to dealing with these artists.”

Benoit’s first cash-in is a HAD compilation called Get The Fuck Off My Car, Creep—a re-appropriation, he says, of an epithet often hurled at many of the compilation’s contributors in between street performances. An advance copy of the track listing reveals that Crazy Henri recorded at least two songs for the collection, including his hits “I Got Arrested For Public Urination (Again)” and “Brown Bag Blues,” while the Sea Hag delivers her asphalt anthem “Olde English Lover” and a doomed-out cover of “These Boots Are Made For Walkin’” Elsewhere, newcomer Gilles L’espalier chimes in with “URRRGGGHHHHH!” and “I Needs A Dollar For The Muthafuckin’ Aliens,” a local buzz track that fuses HAD with London-style grime rap.

“I don’t know about you,” Benoit says as his halitosis nearly knocks us off our barstool. “But I think this shit could be huge.”

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