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Metal Monday: Entombed

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Entombed knew their audience. ‘Eavy Metal might look tough, but it’s a decidedly nerdy music genre, so what would be more appealing than have your favourite lite Death Metal band sing about your favourite badass hero?

Entombed – Wolverine Blues



Gimmicks and MTV friendly image aside, Entombed has always been a good death metal band, but one that quickly grew bored with the somewhat limited reach of the subgenre, mixing other influences, especially hardcore punk — something that came natural for a lot of metal bands. This might be my favourite song in their original style.

Left Hand Path:



And this of their more modern style. In both cases the introduction sets the tone for the rest of the song, the long drawn out scream of Left Hand Path, the tching-tching of The Hollow Man, grabbing your attention before all hell breaks lose.

The Hollow Man:



(Just Another) Metal Monday

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If y’all been following Metal Monday the past couple of weeks you may have noticed the preponderance of death metal. This is not just because it’s one of my favourite subgenres, but also because so many of the better death metal bands seem to cluster in the early part of the alphabet. Today we have the classic Florida death metal band, Death itself, now sadly defunct after founder Chuck Schuldiner “pulled the plug” in 2001, having died of brain cancer. Though he denied it himself, he and his band were incredibly influential in shaping the genre and you can do worse than to buy their first two albums, Scream Bloody Gore and Leprosy. The latter album is represented here with the title song:



Diamond Head was a New Wave of British Heavy Metal band who never quite made it into the big time, but gained fame because Metallica nicked all their best songs, including this one: Am I Evil:



Finally, another Death Metal band, Deicide, with “Lunatic of God’s Creation. Unlike Death, Deicide is a seriously anti-religious, anti-Christian band; their name of course means “god murder”. It’s all so much posturing however, despite the socalled satanic messages in their music, Deicide doesn’t actually believe any of it, unlike the more extreme Norwegian Black Metal bands. The latter’s loathing of bands like Deicide and touring partner Gorefest might actually have led to an attempt to blow the band up live on stage in Stockholm…



That last video also nicely shows off the “death metal grunt” voice.

Malcolm McLaren

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Always sort of oscillated between annoyance and admiration about Malcolm McLaren, for his self promotion, ideas and undeniable knack for spotting new talent. If nothing else, I’ll always be grateful to him for the following song/clip easing puberty a lot…



Kyrgyzstan

economic crisis, Life under Capitalism, video
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Does anybody know what’s going on in Kyrgyzstan? Massive riots there in the past few days, as showcased in the video below:



From Wikipedia:

The riots stem from growing anger against the government of President Kurmanbek Bakiyev and the sluggish economy, and follow the government’s closure of several media outlets. Protesters took control of a government office in Talas on April 6, and on April 7 clashes between protesters and police in the capital Bishkek turned violent. At least 65 deaths and 400 injuries have been confirmed.[2] Overnight it was reported that President Bakiyev had fled the capital in his private jet south to Osh, and that opposition leaders were forming a new government led by former foreign minister Roza Otunbayeva.[3][4]

The 2005 Tulip Revolution doesn’t seem to have brought the desired results then: the government brought down now is the same as was swept to power then. The Tulip Revolution was the result of a genuine frustration and anger swept up into a manufactured revolution and as the sadly defunct blog Apostate Windbag pointed out at the time, this was likely to dissappoint and lead to a desire for a new and better revolution. Judging by what’s being reported as happening this time, the new revolts have not been co-opted (yet), aren’t stage managed and p.r. friendly.

On a more general note, I have the feeling that what’s happening in Kyrgyzstan will be repeated elsewhere soon and we’re in for a rough decade. The media might make optimistic noises about the end to the economic crisis, but for countries like Kyrgyzstan where in the past two decades things have only gotten worse it’s far from over. We’re seeing the end result of several decades of unrestricted capitalism and it’s no wonder it’s the more vulnerable countries that bubble over: they have nothign left to lose.

Metal Monday: Easter Celebration Blasphemy edition

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Heavy metal and Christianity don’t generally mix, though there are some pale imitations of metal bands that call themselves Christian — like every Christian imitation of a secular idea, they’re shit. In fact, whole subgenres have sprung up revolving around the hatred for Christianity or the joy of being a satanist. A lot of this is of course playacting, or just done to shock the bourgeoisie, but trust the Norwegians to have made it all real: the rise of Black Metal as a seperate genre in the early nineties saw a spate of church burnings, threats against more mainstream metal bands as well as at least one suicide and one murder. All this didn’t necessarily improve the music….

Venom – Welcome to Hell



Entombed – Left Hand Path



Mayhem – De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas — at the time of this album’s release, the lead singer had suicided and the guitarist had been murdered by the lead singer of a rival black metal band.



Nuclear Assault – Hang the Pope



Black Sabbath – Black Sabbath:



Happy Easter!