Caught this on one of the five thousand or so interchangable music channels our cable company thinks we need. So rare to find a Dutch language song that’s actually interesting and good enough to show the world. Most Dutch artists either go for local succes or pastiche rock.
video
Metal Monday: you slay me
Four bands today: three old favourites and one newly discovered old veteran. To start with the last, Saxon is an old unrepentant New Wave of British Heavy Metal band, of whom I got a couple of albums but which was never a true favourite. Until I rediscoved this:
S.O.D., Stormtroopers of Death on the other hand I’ve always liked. A side project with several of Anthrax’s original members, they don’t really take themselves at all serious. Some of their ballads are on the long side however:
Slayer is one of the Big Four of Thrash Metal, together with Anthrax, Megadeth and of course Metallica. They deserve two songs/ First up, South of Heaven:
And this is their most evil song: Dead Skin Mask:
Then there’s Sepultura, another giant of Thrash Metal, with Dead Embryonic Cells:
Metal Monday: R is for ummm
Plenty of metal bands starting with “R”, but none that I actually like all that much. Rainbow? Rush? Not my cup of tea to be honest. The only band I actually got music from at the moment is Rammstein and personally I always think of that as industrial rather than metal, though I do have a fairly personal definition of industrial, true. So what the hey, let’s have some Rammstein anyway.
The band is actually named after that US Airforce base, Ramstein, which you may know of that horrible airshow disaster back in ’88. Their self-titled song on their first album Herzeleid refers back to that disaster:
As per usual when any German band actually sings in German, goes for a heavy sound, goes for militaristic looking outfits and dark lyrics, they’re accused of glorifying nazism or terrorism. To be fair, Rammstein does like to challenge their critics, with songs like this:
Actually one of their less offensive songs about (homo)sexuality and such — Buck Dich:
And let’s end with two videos for the (old) superpowers — Amerika:
Moskau
Metal Monday: Queen of the Rÿche
Okay, so heavy metal is a deeply silly musical genre at the best of times anyway, two parts pretension and juvenile angst to one part cock rock, with the best metal bands deeply aware of how silly it all is. But when you mix progrock influences in it, that’s when it gets really bad. And by bad I mean good, if you’re not too embarassed by bands taking themselves a little bit too serious. It helps to have a sense of humour and irony about these things, though not too much or you’re just another goddamn hipster tourist. If you want to enjoy a band like Queensrÿche, you need to embrace them wholeheartedly, no matter how uncool they are.
Because they can be a mite over the top and given to concept albums. Especially on Operation Mindcrime, all about a junkie rescued from the gutter to be a political assassin and how he breaks his brainwashing…. From the album came the livetour, which was as much a stage play as a proper concert. It was during the local radio station’s annual metal top fifty countdown (“Vara’s Vuurwerk Vijftig” if that means anything to y’all) that I first heard this and I was immediately sold. What can I say: I’m a sucker for properly done bombast and bathos.
“Kill Her. That’s all you have to do”.
“K-kill Mary?”
“She’s a risk. Oh, and get the priest as well”.
Next message saved Saturday at 9:24 p.m.
Sorry, I’m just
It’s starting to hit me like a um…
Um…two ton heavy thing
Anybody Listening?
Jet City Woman — always reminds me of Bubblegum Crisis which I had discovered at the same time:
Hero for Hire
Think of this video as Isaiah Mustafa’s audition for the role of Luke Cage masquerading as an Old Spice blipvert:
I would love a wellmade Powerman movie, but it might turn out to be another Daredevil. As a character Luke Cage was originally nothing more than a watered down, code safe blackploitation cash-in, but still strong enough to carry his own title for fifty issues and the one he shared with his friend the white fictional martial arts artist for another seventyfive. Doing a film with him can be done, as long as it is recognisably set in New York and manages to walk a fine line between too mundane and too outrageous. You don’t want it to become just a blackploitation homage, but neither do you need the full on superheroics of a X-Men movie for example.