Okay, assholes. Listen up. It's been a long-ass fucking time since we did one of these things. But it is time. And it is time because Mr. Jaime Glen Danzig (right) is pretty much IllCon's new BFF. Got it? Good. Now fuck off and fucking die, poser twat.
-Cobras
Hey dudes. I'm JGD and I do a blog called The Living Doorway. I mostly talk about childhood traumas, my idiotic pets, and how shitty my job is under the guise of writing about death metal, but the facade has worn really thin and I'm pretty sure everyone is on to me by now. Shelby invited me to write a Bromantic Interlude over here on the IC, which is awesome because my girlfriend once had a dream that I spent my entire life savings opening a rollerskating rink called 'Bromantic Slides', which presumably wasn't a very financially sound career move, but definitely a pretty awesome name for a rollerskating rink. It also sort of sucks writing stuff here because I'm not a music/actual nerd like the rest of you dudes and can't write a history paper on some cool obscure metal genre or whatever the fuck for you. I'm afraid you are just going to have to collect all your lo-fi Ukrainian folk metal information from someone else. The only other option I considered was writing about musicians who had most likely sold their souls to the devil, but I'm lazy and that requires a lot of research, not to mention that there is a surprising lack of Robert Johnston videos on youtube to help make up for the inevitable lack of content. So I dunno. Instead of making some bullshit "mix tape" of crappy death metal that you won't even bother to download, I'm going to take the easy way out and just shoot a bunch of retarded fish in a very small barrel. Yes, I'm talking about CELEBRITY BANDS.
Celebrities are awesome. They do all sorts of stupid shit to keep the general population entertained, most of the time without ever even having to act or do anything that requires any talent. They get arrested for drugs, drunkenly babble in barely coherent interviews, and have full on mental and emotional breakdowns on the world wide stage. They make us feel better about ourselves because most of us can actually hold down a steady job, raise a family, and sustain a healthy coke habit even without earning ten million dollars a year. That's why we are so delighted when Paris Hilton can't avoid getting thrown into the slammer because she's simply too stupid to not pull out a baggie of cocaine in front of a bunch of cops. Totally rad, right? YOU HAVE EVERYTHING AND YOU FAILED. For some celebrities, the complete inability to develop into a reasonably functional human being isn't enough: they actually have to go out of their way to make sure that the entire world knows they still have what it takes to totally suck. This usually happens when A: the celebrity gets cocky and thinks the world can't go another day without a song called 'Party All The Time,' or B: the fame starts to erode and they make a desperate bid to jumpstart their career with what will surely be the hottest single of the year. What most celebs don't seem to realize is that being and actor/musician is on par with being a car/boat. How many people do you see driving car-boats around? That's right: none. Because car-boats are shitty cars, and they are also shitty boats.
I'd like to start our foray into shitty celebrity music with a band called 30 Seconds to Mars, featuring a very pretty man named Jared Leto. You might remember him as the dude who got his face destroyed in Fight Club, or to a lesser extent, the fat guy with glasses in that shitty movie about John Lennon's murderer. I actually got a call last week from a good friend of mine, who was unable to have Thanksgiving with us because he was meeting with the management of this horrible band to potentially join them as a touring guitarist. I'm pretty sure that actually knowing someone who might join this group for having the right "look" should disqualify me from writing about metal for the rest of my life, but he assured me he would only accept the position in order to make retarded amounts of money while having sex with a lot of equally retarded groupies. I'll keep you posted, I guess. Anyway, it's important to point out that these fucking douchelords are faker than a cargo jet full of fake dog crap and I hope they all die slow terrible deaths for polluting the world with their foul existence. Potential touring guitarist excluded.
Oh great, a bunch of twangy generic fake-Americana bullshit from what is surely the ugliest man to ever have his name tattooed on the wretched harpy known as Angelina Jolie. What an absolute delight. It's awesome when dudes like Billy Bob get all bent out of shape when interviewers don't ask him enough band-related questions, when the only interesting thing about his entire existence is that he got to see Lara Croft: Tomb Raider naked.
"My name is Gladiator. Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife, singer of 30-Odd Foot of Grunts." I don't want to say anything too bad about this because Shelby is a pretty big fan, but yeah. Fuck this shit.
Before Rick James became famous again for having cocaine-fueled fights with Charlie Murphy, he made some music with his brother Eddie and it sucked. I think my mom used to listen to this a lot. She was pretty into cassingles for a while. Anyway, the real bummer is that this video is still better than any movie he's been in over the last ten years.
OHHHH WOWWWWWW SCARLET JOHANSSON SHE SO PRETTY. Big deal. Can you imagine how excruciating it would be to have to spend an hour in the company of this monotone idiot? Based on this one single song that I only listened to half of, I would suggest to Scarjo that she pursue different avenues of personal expression. Maybe some videos of her watching ice melt. Or a montage of her yawning several thousand times in a row. Or perhaps a triumphant return to her successful career of being a lifeless mannequin in every single movie she's ever been in. Apparently one of her big inspirations is Tom Waits, who reportedly flung his aging carcass from the roof of the nearest building upon hearing the news.
I'm trying to think of something shitty to say about this but it's just too good. Sick rhymes, good flow, great muscles. John Cena #1.
Oh jesus fucking christ. I told you this was going to be shooting fish in a barrel. Look at this guy. It's like a B-list celebrity version of Blues Hammer. I almost feel bad hating this because I bet Seagal could really use whatever amount of tips he gets at open mic night, but FUCK. What a bloated sack of humorless garbage. Law Man, my ass.
There's not a lot of actors that irritate me as much as Juliette Lewis. I can barely stand the sight of her face (is it me or is she slowly morphing into Steven Tyler?), let alone sit through an entire movie of her trying to act. So I was stoked when she decided to take a step away from film and focus on her crappy band for a while, because I figured it'd be way easier to avoid her that way. And yet, here I am, torturing myself with this god awful bullshit video of her running around town like some retarded 80's Pocahontas. I hate you, Juliette Lewis, and you certainly didn't deserve that role you scored in Old School.
Hey look it's fucking Edgar Frog from The Lost Boys being a fucking asshole in front of the entire world. I feel really bad that your conjoined twin died after filming License to Drive, but there's no excuse for ripping off every single one of Michael Jackson's moves and slaughtering them to a soundtrack of undiluted pop drivel. I could go on and on about how awful this is, but by now it's just a universal truth that Corey Feldman is a sad, talentless, attention-starved little man who no one actually likes. I'm sure that even his mom thought this sucked. And seriously, the real question is WHO THE FUCK thought this was a marketable idea? Who green-lighted this sonic/visual abortion and was like "yeah, lets sink some serious moolah into this kid!"? You could practically seen him him falling off the celebrity ladder and hitting every step on the way down as soon as The Goonies wrapped up.
Well, here is 100% irrefutable proof that Will Smith is the king Midas of suck. Everything he touches is rendered irrevocably shit-blasted, as evidenced by Jada Pinkett Smith's misguided attempt to front a "heavy metal" band on national television. Fuck dude, I don't even know what to say about this. It's beyond eye-rolling or groan-inducing: it's a veritable black hole of terribleness, consuming every ounce of my strength to carry on. This is life-destroyingly bad. I just want to lay down and sleep forever so I never have to be exposed to this video again. Why didn't anyone stop her? Why didn't anyone say, "hey, your band is absolute garbage and even if they weren't, your voice sounds really stupid and you don't have a fucking clue what you are doing, so maybe you should reconsider playing live on LATE NIGHT WITH DAVID FUCKING LETTERMAN." Nope. Not one single person chimed in with a whisper of reputation-salvaging advice. Not even a "Hey, it's gonna take a lot more than crazy eyes, big jeans, and some cool robot moves to pull this off, Jada." The thing that really sucks is that you can tell that the guy in the Carcass shirt knows better and is totally ashamed of himself, but hey, your kids braces aren't going to pay for themselves, you know?
Okay, this has put a big enough dent in my soul for one evening, so I'll leave it at that. I'm sure I missed a ton of other incredibly shitty celebrity garbage, so why don't you go ahead and post your favorites in the comments. Oh, and thanks to Shelby and the assorted bro-dogs at Illogical Contraption for the space. I like the way you do stuff.
Wait wait wait. It feels weird doing a post without talking about death metal, so maybe I'd feel better if I also posted some of my favorite records of 2010? Yeah. Let's give it a try:
In no particular order:
Undergang - Indhentet af Døden Vasaeleth - Crypt Born & Tethered To Ruin Acid Witch - Stoned Hail Of Bullets - On Divine Winds Necrite - Sic Transit Gloria Mundi Decrepit Birth - Polarity Stargazer - A Great Work of Ages Weapon - From The Devil's Tomb Father Befouled - Morbid Destitution of Covenant Deathspell Omega - Paracletus Cemetery Urn - The Conquered Are Burned Sargeist - Let the Devil In Entrails - Tales From the Morgue Swans - My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky Defeated Sanity - Chapters Of Repugnance
The ever handsome and mysterious Wendy Stonehenge is a prolific visual artist/drummer/vocalist/mustache enthusiast currently residing in Oakland, CA. His band Glitter Wizard is at this time both owning and enslaving the entire heavy glam scene. They’re a total doomed out, boa clad, ass shaking, riff ripping, boot stomping, skin pealing, white knuckled, mind bending, freak show of a band and I will be posting their top notch 7” later on this week. Being a friend of the blog, Wendy has agreed to contribute to my award winning series, SF on SF, with this post on HOT FOG.
WS on SF - HOT FOG
It’s Sunday evening, you’ve got a two liter of Mountain Dew and your favorite set of dice. Pizza’s on its way. Only one thing left- gotta pick your soundtrack. But wait, where did your copy of Caress of Steel go? Shit, you lent it out last week and haven’t gotten it back yet. Not to worry. Your DM brought a copy of Hot Fog’s new EP, Wyvern and Children First.
Hot Fog have been shredding around San Francisco for the past three years now and they have finally decided to grace us with their first official release. Recorded and engineered by drummer, Donny Newenhouse, Wyvern is a perfect blend of fancy NWOBHM and early thrash. Triumphant vocals, dueling guitars, and a powerhouse rhythm section make it perfect gamer metal. And these guys aren’t just blowing smoke (or fog) up your ass. The band actually plays D&D together. How cool is that?
Oh yeah, and did I mention they have lasers?
And because they’re such nice and generous dudes, they have provided my favorite track for you, the reader, to download and enjoy. That’s 20% of the album for FREE. You should be so lucky. Download “Blood Wedding” here.
You guys know Helm already. And you know of his propensity to discuss pet subjects... AT LENGTH. I will keep my introduction brief, as you will need all your energy to fully digest what you are about to read. The subject is the oft-requested subgenre of Technothrash. Most images (besides custom compilation cover art) are my addition. All text is his. Get comfortable.
- Cobras
Hi, this is Helm again. We talked about Greek black metal and about progressive metal and now we're going to have a go at Technothrash. Techno-thrash. Technical thrash. Flash thrash. Progressive Thrash.
God, you know what this is about, right? You can picture it in your head right now. It has a marble gray cover and the bass is missing in the mix, angry but vague socio-political lyrics, choppy songs with too many interchangeable parts, on the back the band members have their sternest faces on, and yet... there's a humanity there, underneath the guitar clinics and all the rusted machinery ticks a skipping heart.
Metallica's "...And Justice For All" characterizes a brief sideways movement of thrash metal but it's not its spearhead, that is to say, it's a reaction to it than its instigator. If you're interested in 'what could have happened' if thrash had taken a turn towards the technical like in "...And Justice for All" instead of mutating into death metal, then I have good news for you. This happened, only not very many people noticed. Some interpretation of history follows.
The term 'techno-thrash' belongs to Austin Texas quartet, Watchtower
"complex, abstract techno-thrash!"
And I sincerely doubt they ever meant it to become a metal sub-genre in its own right. Keep in mind that in the second part of the '80s, Heavy Metal bands were trying to carve out their own individual niche that secured them some marketing visibility. A lot of what we now consider prescriptive labels like speed metal, power metal, black metal and indeed technothrash were once merely descriptive brands for the individual artists that devised them.
When it comes to black metal or power metal, so so many bands came after - Venom and Helloween respectively - that it's warranted to talk about these genre identifiers without deferring back to the source all the time (which makes Venom's consistent claim that "we are black metal and nobody else is!" all the more the frivolous) but given how few the standout technothrash bands were, it usually all comes back to Watchtower. Well... almost, as we'll see below.
Also a note on "Why technothrash?". Why not use 'progressive thrash' or 'technical thrash' when discussing this in 2010? After all 'technothrash' has a confusing connotation that it might be Detroit techno mixed with Megadeth or something (although that sounds awesome for a few seconds). And as I myself say above, the term was a fabrication by one band that didn't largely catch on to become a subgenre staple. My reasoning is two-fold. First, there's lack of a better choice. Technical thrash means nothing to me because thrash was already technical music, all of metal is largely technical music as compared with rock and roll. Progressive thrash is unhistorical because progressive metal happened after technothrash and as such it's revisionist to apply a tag that was woefully overplayed in the 90's (we had progressive death metal, progressive power metal, progressive black metal, progressive my ass) to something that happened under a different set of circumstances years before. The only reason to do that is to serve some rock journalism warped sense of continuity in naming, as if we're indebted to record stores and have in mind their plastic record tag categorization schemes when we examine the history of music. Nonsense.
The second reason is that technothrash is the only term that was historically used at that period to describe the efforts of at least one band that was trying to do something different in the thrash metal field than copy Exodus or Anthrax. It may be the case that the others that followed were not aware of the term 'technothrash' at all, but it doesn't matter, it describes what they attempted to do just as well as it does describe Watchtower. So yes, it's a fabrication and a largely unpopular one today (searching online for "progressive thrash" as opposed to "techno-thrash" tells the tale) but I'm trying to do my part to return to a terminology that at least has a reference to historical continuity. These are the things that are important to me, good god.
Now, speaking a bit more broadly, technothrash has its roots a couple of other bands besides Watchtower, namely the Canadian outfit, Voivod and the German one, Mekong Delta. An argument could be made that Megadeth (and perhaps Annihilator, Forbidden, Destruction, Kreator) also contribute to the form but that's neither here nor there. The three originators basically characterize three different but similar approaches to teching up thrash that from my own long examination of the genre seem to hit all the bases to the point where extending ownership to satellites like Kreator is not needed to explain the genre to a newcomer. It goes without saying that technothrash bands listened and were influenced by other thrash or Heavy Metal bands or whatever else bands and so should you. You should do exactly what I tell you to.
Watchtower were clearly there first. They mixed the rhythmic sensibility, expansive guitar chords, very prominent and active bass of Rush with the novel thrash metal guitar and drum technique, as innovated by Overkill and popularized by Metallica. On the morphological level, that's all there is to it, really. On the aesthetic side, socio-political paranoia and disaffection reign. If there is a characteristic that makes techno-thrash a strongly modernist and therefore dated movement, is that it blossomed and thrived during the peak years of the Cold War. Imagery of impending nuclear holocaust dominates, FBI conspiracy theories, biochemical warfare and so on. Once the Berlin wall comes down, the clock starts ticking in reverse for techno-thrash and in three years or so, that electrical fire hazard of a genre is quickly extinguished. Metal loses the socio-political mandate and techno-anything readily mutates into death metal and its various grotesque strands. But for now, think Reaganomics, think Red Dawn, think end-of-the-world.
This isn't to say that there was no humor in Watchtower's approach, quite the opposite. Their whole thing seems darkly cynical but strangely playful. The color of their work is one of bright individuals struggling against a dark futile futurity that vastly overtook individual effort: geopolitical trajectories locked on a course of mutually assured destruction. One can only laugh at that, or go insane. That is the feel technothrash captures, what is the thinking being, the self-determined individual (as Neil Peart of Rush had educated the metalheads, the objectivist) to do against forces vastly overpowering them?
Mekong Delta's story is characteristically similar. Originally conceived as a 'secret super-group' by several German thrash/speed metal musicians and under the guidance of producer and bassist Ralph Hubert, their raison d'etre was to take what Metallica did with "Fight Fire With Fire" and push it to a higher level of technical excellence and intensity. I'm not simplifying things here, that's pretty much what happened, straight from the Shoggoth's mouth, as it were. Some time in 1985, Jörg Michael plays said Metallica song for Hubert, whom decides to employ rhythmic technique borrowed from Romanticist classical composers like Igor Stravinsky and Modest Mussorgsky to one-up the - in relation - rudimentary thrash assault of the Americans (worth noting is that when it comes to Mekong Delta, it's one of the few times where claiming metal music has classical inspiration and heritage is largely warranted). They adopt a secretive and obscure image, complete with funny H.P. Lovecraft-inspired nom de plumes and refusals to do interviews or be photographed and put out a series of records that do exactly what advertised: with a characteristically German attitude they sternly augment the Metallica blueprint to the point of becoming neoclassical technothrash. Whether Mekong Delta had heard of Watchtower is debatable, as they certainly had ample time to (Watchtower debut in 1984, Mekong Delta get together in 1985). What's important is that they sound nothing like them, yet they too represent a widely influential technical take on the thrash rudiments.
Aesthetically these Germans had a morbid fixation that spans from the socio-political doom-mongering customary to the genre to much more personal tales of horror that for all intents and purposes seem to be directly indebted to the work of writers as the before mentioned H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith and similar pulp. Although the sonics of Mekong Delta were to be imitated by the whole 'German school' of technothrash, their particular literary fixations were largely not, leaving them a very distinctive and idiosyncratic band to this day.
Voivod are an article in themselves but in the context of technothrash they're not so much important because they were themselves never in this genre with both feet. They're important because nearly any technothrash band in the 1987-1990 period seemed to have an affinity for Voivod chord voicings (say that three times fast) and some even adopted similar brands of weird that characterized the Canadian outfit.
This makes sense because Voivod strongly predate technothrash and had a very established identity before Metallica put out "...And Justice for All", in fact they are contemporaries of that band. Forming somewhere around 1982 and putting out their first - and absolutely crude - demo in 1983, full of Venom, Priest and Motorhead covers, this is in some ways in direct opposition to techno-thrash sophistication.
But Voivod were a characteristically progressively-minded band. No two records of theirs sounded the same and through sheer work they eventually reach a point where their music is certainly technical, and certainly thrash, through through a very different trajectory to the above-named bands. This sense of 'outre' is I believe the defining appeal of Voivod and the reason so many musicians followed their aesthetic blueprint, they seemed outside the metal paradigm, which meant people that enjoyed aspects of Heavy Metal without necessarily subscribing to its subcultural cliche finally had a way in. Weird metal was born.
Voivod are included because of this aspect foremost. Technothrash is on the whole, a genre outside the metal paradigm circa 1988. Thrash, especially American thrash is characterized by a meathead mentality. Crushing beer-cans on the forehead, out to party and slay posers. Think of Paul Baloff of Exodus. The people that love thrash, love it because of this belligerent and irreverent attitude and this is clear to see in the waves of recent retro-thrash outfits that ape those characteristics.
Technothrash however took another page from Rush in that it was music by nerds, for nerds. They were attracted to thrash technique because it was demanding and complex enough to accompany similarly complex ideas (or ideas that seemed so by young adults, let's not get too much into the actual intellectual validity of it all). By the time technothrash arrived to fruition, it was a genre generally opposed to the vanilla thrash archetype. And this is easily felt by sampling the listeners of regular thrash and technothrash and seeing there's a very small overlap in that Venn diagram. Most real thrashers find technothrash boring or pretentious and most technothrashers (all three of them) find endless variations of a slayer riff for no purpose to be nonsensical. Guess where I stand.
So, that's a general interpretation of the historical outline. Below is a mix that includes the foundational bands and then a series of deliberations and variations by lesser known outfits. If you're interested in 'what happened after technothrash?' you should read my Progressive Metal piece.
(General note of warning. The music here is pretty demanding, so it may be best to listen attentively to 3-4 songs at one sitting and then go do something else or put on some ambient music just to cleanse the palate. As with all music that tends to extremes, the edge is dulled from overexposure.)
Watchtower - Meltdown
Although I consider their second and so far final record, "Control & Resistance" their best material, historically this is where a compilation on the technothrash quasi-genre needs to start. This recording features original guitarist Billy White who had at a time a more straightforward style than his eventual replacement, Ron Jarzombek. This sounds like a thrash song, right? But keep in mind that this recording is from 1984. Metallica had just set the bar with "Fight Fire With Fire" and the sharp compositional stop-starts, the frenzied but nuanced guitar phrasing, the hysterical vocals frankly demolish that bar. That muted scale run at 3:52 must have been some of the most intimidating picking you could hear in metal circa 1984. Innovations that we consider now public domain in technical music start here.
Everybody in the Texas metal underground at the time were aware of what Watchtower were doing and if one delves into the archives of that time the influence is clear across the board. There were many lesser technical thrash bands springing up and even reactions to that like doom stalwarts Solitude Aeturnus had extra chops to keep up in that climate. Also, Helstar were peers (from Houston, but still) in that era and Helstar and their Bach... you know. It must have been a pretty heady time to be a metal musician in Texas.
I think if the unaccustomed listener approaches what Watchtower are doing here with an ear to the Rush influence, it'll make more sense, at least as I got into Watchtower slightly before I got into Rush, when I finally put things in order there was a huge 'oh, I see now!' moment for me. The chromatic coda to the verse riff, straight out of La Villa Strangiato (only in ascent instead of descent). The whole middle segment with the riff variations and manic drum fills commenting deliberately on the leitmotif signifies a slight shift in the scope of thrash metal. It moves it from its more punk-derived 'three riffs and we're out' initial conciseness to a premeditated self-examinatory space where the musicians are not only playing frenzied crazy fast metal music but have the desire (and chops) to comment on it playfully and intelligently. I think that was the point of awe that cemented the future trajectory of thrash metal as technical, not just extreme music.
The lyrics are about imminent nuclear plant catastrophe! Two years later Chernobyl happened. Watchtower wrote another song on the subject on their sophomore outing that is resonant even today.
Mekong Delta - Without Honour
This song is terrifying if you're listening along, with the lyric sheet at hand. I don't know what it is, something about the distant reverberated vocals back in the mix while the guitars and drums pound mechanistically in the forefront. This isn't even a 'riff' exactly that Mekong Delta are so fond of (variations of it can be found in every single of their records, really) it's a snippet of Stravinsky crescendo is what it is, repeated over and over the bass drum sixteenths. People go on about how Bolt Thrower capture the sound of warfare and I agree but back in 1987, this must have sounded really shocking in the same way. The lyric is pretty literal, and one of the few cases where the band's choice of name is relevant to their mythos. The cover is very telling of where their priorities lie in terms of aesthetics. Mekong (a soldier) Delta, and above a huge Lovecraftian horror.
The think that's horrifying about the lyric is where it goes 'mutilated limbs, and no one knows from whom they are' and singer Wolfgang Borgmann accents the end of the line with a demented laugh, it really gets me. It gets me because it's not the usual politically correct moralizing of thrash bands like Anthrax, "prejudice, something we all can do without!" that rests so much on the assumption that we shouldn't do bad things because they're impolite, basically. Mekong Delta here, with their German-English and whatever other failings, paint a picture and the horrifying thing is the internal representation of it they force on the listener. You can only laugh at that sort of madness. When art can achieve such a thing inside a receptor, that's more real than anything they see on the outside. The abstract solo creates almost a metaphysical distance from the carnage and it's really impactful for me how the lead melody is repeated two times, book-ended by more chaotic leads and then the second time it's advanced to a conclusion that seems to reach a realization. Of futility? Of hopelessness? The crescendo keeps hammering the picture in the mind's eye.
'Without Honour' isn't the best Mekong Delta song musically by any stretch (seek "Dances of Death" for that) but it's very striking existentially and a clear foundation for the 'socially aware intelligent individual trying to survive a Cold War reality' identity of techno-thrash.
Voivod - Macrosolutions to Megaproblems
A year later, Voivod have found their voice and it's a weird one, at least in the context of what other thrash bands were doing. Lots of open space where Exodus-clones would put constant open-E palm muting, high-pitched and unusual chords that outline the nodes of a melody line the listener is invited to fill in themselves, almost pointillist in a way. Open mix, more relative to a post-punk band than a metal one. Again, Voivod reach their peak for me with next year's "Nothingface" (complete with Deluxe Paint pixel artwork) but for a discussion on technothrash, this is a much more pertinent document.
The thing with Voivod is, they make sense but it's a strange sort of ran-twice-through-babelfish type of sense. The lyric genuinely feels as if it's trying to say something (and I think I get it) but its wording is so incongruous and open-ended that it could just be words in a random order. As the melodies invite filling in and interpretation by the listener, so do the words
"It's gonna be, hostility
Hypothetic is liberty
Anti-being society
As directed reality"
That's why the people that are into Voivod really love them, I think. When I listen to them intentionally, I'm collaborating on what all of this could mean. This is a gentle process which is not often encountered in Heavy Metal, thrash metal much less, where the message, if there is one, is usually ham-fisted and right there. Voivod are instead a strange new language that when internalized, can only lead to peculiar but personal poetry.
For me the best way to get into Voivod is a very roundabout one. Play, if you can, the game 'Captain Blood' on the Atari ST (emulators exist) or just watch a video of it being played.
THIS is Voivod. You think this makes no sense? It makes perfect sense. Once you - I shit you not - learn its own brand of peculiar sign language. I once had, and I could write you little haiku-type primary emotion poems in it. I might not remember the lexicon as well as I could 10 years ago but the emotional-neural connections are still functioning in cryohibernation mode.
Look, I know that I'm telling you that in order to get Voivod you need to parse an even stranger fifteen-year-old French 8-bit cosmic adventure game, but tough, this isn't Anthrax, this is technothrash.
Sieges Even - David
This is some of my absolute favorite music in the genre, stellar, magnificent, still unparalleled. It sounds like a confusing mess at first, right? It did for me although it was attractive even when I didn't understand it because I could tell something tangible was there. After years of inattentive listening and finally, a couple of weeks of attentive listening, I started to map out what's going on in this music and then, I was hooked for life.
Sieges Even were Watchtower clones on this, their debut (from the second record "Steps" and onwards, they were clones of nothing). Watchtower were said to have been informed someone was ripping off their style and were annoyed at this, but this many years later when it's all said and done and there's been so few worthy competitors to Watchtower one kinda wishes more bands would have outright tried to out-Watchtower Watchtower, you know?
Which is what Sieges Even achieve here. However the Watchtower that they're outdoing is the 1984 incarnation, not the concurrent 1989 version that did "Control & Resistance" which was by then, even farther outside the stratosphere. That isn't to say that Sieges Even hadn't heard some of the Watchtower material from what was to be their second, definitive record, as the recording process of that album was much belabored and demos existed for at least a couple of years before release. And okay, Sieges even have a song called "Repression and Resistance" in here, also it's named "Life Cycle" (another Watchtower song is "Life Cycles") so there's isn't much argument as to what an inspiration they were.
But the clone argument is overplayed as this really, once you've come close to it, sounds very little like Watchtower. More thrash, certainly more dense rhythmically, more chopped up (infinite amounts of stop-starts in these songs, perhaps they liked Mekong Delta too, or perhaps it's just Rush again), more chromaticism in the riffs, and due to its German heritage the whole thing comes across as extremely serious. Severely so, perhaps. Humor wasn't in the artistic lexicon. Bertolt Brecht is quoted in the inner sleeve ("he who doesn't know the truth is a stupidhead, he who knows it and tells instead a lie is a criminal"), and this song is about the persecution of the Jews under the Nazi regime (and before and after that also).
Where Anthrax wrote bullshit PC anthems about problems they'd never actually encountered, here Sieges Even come across as very informed, aware and sensitive to the actual core of the issue instead. This isn't the "serious song on the album we can play to our mom to prove we're artists and then back to the moshing and beer drinking" that the hateful Anthrax gave us every second record, the whole record is like this.
"Back in the days of doubt and dissent,
From the soil of Palestine
A wandering began, matchless
In the annals of history and time
Exiled and expelled, trapped in the walls
Of Babylon, only a leg on their way
A consequence unheard-of, dispersion
And pursuance for no rational cause
Symbol of compassion, held in contempt
An endless voyage through time
Prejudice, unreason, contagious seed
Today we shake our heads, can't comprehend
In medieval times the Christian church
Made itself a part of the crime
Conversion and judgment in blind infallibility
Executed upon the Jews
Bigotry and prejudice are persisting
Basic characters of man
As essential feature not to accept dissenters,
It's so easy to judge
But at nightfall of civilization,
When reason fell and fascism prevailed
A malpractice tarnished the world,
Rendered by a subservient mass
Accustomed to misuse and fear
We're looking back insensibly
What happened then won't happen anew,
Close your eyes in arrogance and simply forget
So much injustice and grief
Done unto the star of David
Remind unsound doctrines of an Aryan race,
The concentration camps, the relentless exodus
Some folks say it will never come again,
Are they oblivious? Full of unconcern?
So look at Pretoria and the fascist-like regime
Will man ever listen to reason?"
Scream the last word with them, I always do. Ah, the positivist fantasy where the whole globe has a little sit-down and talks their problems out and sees they're just not rational and so everything is solved. I'm not kidding when I say that as a younger boy my mind was blown by the synergy of lyric and music in songs such as this. They really impressed on me the weight of the social situation in ways that more traditionally instructive sources could not. Heavy Metal taught me how to think, I'll never underplay its influence and that's one of the reasons I can never empathize when people complain Heavy Metal doesn't have good lyrics and lyricists.
Realm - Slay the Oppressor
If you're wondering, the juxtaposition is intentional here. Realm were amazingly technically proficient, but the lyric is as base as that of many metal bands earlier in the decade, in stark contrast to Sieges Even above. But boy, do Realm here let the instruments do the talking.
I'm very drawn to the riffs that include unbalanced triplets over eighth notes as finishes, Psychotic Waltz do that a lot too. Quintessentially thrash triplet-heavy riffs over polka beats married to the playful technical flourish usually found in fusion and jazz playing. And there's a tasteful breakdown as well! The only other entry in this compilation hitting the same cues is the Forced Entry one below. As is clear, the American style of technothrash, post-Watchtower, is much more involved in trying to be both fancy and bludgeoning thrash at the same time. Perhaps Annihilator, Forbidden and Megadeth had an influence in shaping this aspect of the situation.
Medieval Death - Desperate Calls
Here's a Greek oddity that came out in 1989. What I enjoy most about Medieval Death is how they fluidly converge their romantic aesthetic, lyric and vocal style, with the otherwise forceful thrash. You wouldn't expect romantic thrash to work and I don't think there's too many other examples to go from, but Medieval Death will always have a place in my heart for this. "Tomorrow I'll be crucified but I'll just fly away. I'm still alive, I'm still living, I'll fly away".
I feel that thrash metal, barren as it generally was aesthetically (given its punk and hardcore pedigree) left a contribution to Heavy Metal that could best be described as technical and production-relevant. Thrash might have not have been about much but the guitar and drum technique, along with the production approach, but these few things were very impactful on nearly any type of metal that came after it. So it's not so strange to see some Greeks in 1989 writing romantic prose that could perhaps fit well with a gothic sound but furnish it instead with robust thrash styling.
Forced Entry - Bludgeon
Remember how I said that techno-thrash was mostly music by nerds for nerds? Well these guys, taking their page from Forbidden, certainly projected a different feel. Untactful and visceral, almost tough-guy in a way, they take their stop-start odd-meter riffs and hammer them violently. There's still grace and nuance of course, but the end result feels much more low-brow than say, the Sieges Even track above.
That said, I have a soft spot for both Forced Entry records. Can't deny talent I guess. I don't usually go for mosh parts and gang choruses and that sort of pastiche, but there's a lot to redeem it here. The rhythmic acuity, the choice of where to put the vocal line... I know that sounds kinda trite but if one's tried writing complex music with a lot of stop-starts and changes of tempo/feel they'd have probably noticed how difficult it is to make it cohere and even more to make it have a gut impact. So I respect Forced Entry for the highbrow beating, really.
Aspid - Comatose State
Talking about violence, here's a Russian lost offering, recently unearthed and issued on CD by Stigmartyr Records. Absolutely essential addition to a technothrash library even if I have no idea what the Russian lyrics are about. I've heard it enough to have sorta made up my own stories to go with the venomous delivery and the razor-sharp riffs and it's mostly about how pissed off these gents are with everything.
But the best thing about their take on the Cracked-Brain-era Destruction techno-thrash is their touch of Russian class, really. They're such great players and with purposefully idiosyncratic flourish. I can tell the guitarists here know their way around interpreting classical music for the guitar instead of say, having learned how to play by copying Metallica. This is a common feel in a lot of Russian metal, the almost arch sophistication. Also worth checking on that level are Valkyria, Credo, Magnit and so on.
The first few times I heard this, hell let's not lie, even now, I wondered how everyone kept count of the changes here, and screw keeping count, how they all hit the cues so forcefully. I'm aware it's a matter of practice but there's also a degree of innate talent for that sort of thing I believe, otherwise bands such as these would never get to writing more than two songs, given the amount of rehearsal that would go into making those few cohere.
Deathrow - Events in Concealment
Here's another German offering of note from 1988. The story behind it is a bit sad though and perhaps tarnishes its initial impact but a truth is always more interesting than a lie so here it is. Most of the original Deathrow members resent this record somewhat because it's the brainchild of a then-new member and guitar wizard, Uwe Osterlehner, (who also went on to collaborate with certain Psychotic Waltz personnel on a lesser technothrash item 'End Amen'). The rest of the band was given to a more Kreator-type raging thrash idiom and doesn't now feel the more technical approach of the record whence this song comes from (and to a lesser degree of the final record that followed it) represents the ambition of the band. They consider their legacy to be more about their first two albums, and as a person much enthralled with their technothrash period, I don't want to hear that, you know?
There's just so much to love in this record. Again note triplets over eighths in so many riffs, quirky syncopation that accents the claustrophobia inherent in the song theme, unpredictable chord and lead choices in a disharmonious dialogue, perfect. And how tight it all is (barring some drumming issues that become all the more apparent if you play this right after Aspid, heh). The Germans certainly had the technothrash thing down instinctively. And the lyric is very well-done and thoughtful.
In the end I kind of see their point in how this record is derivative of a scene that Deathrow didn't have in their original intention to enter. One can hear it, the one side of the guitar mix (Uwe Osterlehner's, I'd expect) is much more playful than the harmonies on the other side, and the drummer is struggling with some of the changes. But as I said, there's so little great music in this idiom it's often worth paying closer attention to the diamonds in the rough too.
Wolf Spider - Inclined
Here's something from Poland in the same period. Now, Wolf Spider wanted to be part of technothrash very clearly. And I applaud them for taking a difficult road to get there (the one that also involves writing songs, not just playing guitar in a fancy way). The guitarists use some unexpected chord voicings sure and there's so much inventiveness in the relatively few themes presented in the song but perhaps most strikingly, this is one of the catchiest songs in the compilation, due to the quirky vocal melody lines. It's a bit unfortunate that the vocals are mixed so high, but hey, this is Poland in the '80s, I'm glad the guitars sound like guitars, let alone that I can hear the chord shapes through the distortion (a difficult thing even with today's production technology).
There's a very clear Rush feel here, from how they return to the second verse on the up-beat, the various expressive chords and certainly the singer's attempt at Geddy-range (a valiant failure, but charming). The thematics of the song are slightly marred by English-as-a-second language phrasing but the point of it is one worth considering.
"We are so inclined to
Tell these funny lies, stupid lies
Lies exhaust your mind,
Filling you with fear, turning mad
I have killed truths myself
Some of them killed me in turn
Cheated for my tender heart
Nurtured with the kindest evil
I am clad in truthful lies
Falling face down on the drivel"
Again, in light of how much Heavy Metal music is maligned for being lyrically vacuous, I posit a band from Poland in 1988, writing about a subject any sensitive adult will have had to negotiate at many times in their lives, as evidence to the contrary.
Anacrusis - Explained Away
Talking about great lyrics, here's one of the best lyricists in all of Heavy Metal. Kenn Nardi feels like a friend to me. Kenn Nardi has said no lies. I've never met the man nor have I even exchanged a polite e-mail, but his music has been in valuable dialogue with me for a decade now and I've only become a better human for it. Let's look at the whole lyric here
"Donning a sweet contented mask
Acquiring bliss, a grueling task
Adoring a regretful past
Wondering how long it can last
Frequenting a cold empty void
And fearing I am, paranoid
Obeying this despondent way
The crumbling hopes, the price to pay
Contorted veil of false fulfillment
So easily explained away
Nothing changes the future past
Pretending to the very last
Contorted veil of false fulfillment
So easily explained away
Driving onward, must gratify
I'm posing in a satisfied lie
Disregarding this emptiness
And settling, now, for so much less"
This existential issue, of not really being able to tell how I feel about my life, if I'm content (or 'content enough?' what a curious notion) is one I've had to deal with for as long as I've noted I exist and Anacrusis helped in letting me know I'm not the only one, at a formative stage. Not to say I've had to live a difficult life, perhaps exactly because I haven't had to live a very difficult life from an external point of view (I didn't lose a leg to a mine or half-starve to death, for example) it's so hard to navigate these feelings of worthlessness and at the same time, of a hunger for something better. Society tends to mock the middle-class and semi-comfortable for their existential distress, juxtaposing it with the real horrors of the world. Heavy Metal often goes into gruesome detail about death and destruction, but even there I see what Kenn Nardi is saying here much more directly: isn't the fascination with the extremes of experience belying a current discontentment with the middle-ground of everyday existence? That I think drives most of Heavy Metal.
Musically the defining characteristic of Anacrusis is the bi-polarity between the subdued melancholy of their softer passages and the violent energy of their all-out thrash. Some complain this is an unfortunate precursor to the teenage-angst nu metal paradigm. To this I say (somewhat polemically, but Anacrusis are worth it) teenage angst is a very real thing and if nu-metal sounds contrived and annoying to you it is not because it is referencing a set of real emotions that people have, for as long as humanity existed, tried to negotiate through art. The thrash that is always-full-on like Slayer isn't a more honest depiction of the human psyche. Anacrusis tried a very difficult thing and I think they're startlingly successful: making modernist metal bent on describing the human condition in non-contrived, personal terms. I could only wish other metal bands in the future are inspired by them and attempt to cut deeper to the bone.
Coroner - Pale Sister
Alright, truthfully, I have no idea what the lyric is about even after all these years. Perhaps you can help me.
"With wounded knees
And the musty scent
Of incense in her hair
Captured by the barbed hook
Of eternal devotion
Stigma bleeds
In the book that leads
To her final end
Civitas Dei
She lives on your planet
But not in your world
She speaks the same language
But you can't understand
The weight of chastity
Makes her eyes cast down
And the skin of humility
Is white as snow
Stigma bleeds
In the book that leads
To her final end
Civitas Dei
She lives on your planet
But not in your world
She speaks the same language
But you can't understand
Paralyzed she's followin'
The ancient message
It's more much more
Than just belief"
Any of that ring any bells? Civitas Dei means "City of God" if my Latin serve me, and the church bells make me feel there's an ecclesiastical theme going on but otherwise, I'm all out. I get the feeling 'Pale Sister' refers to something literary that would be the key in understanding what got Coroner's attention enough to write a song on.
But this is an awesome display by Coroner, musically. Really, nobody else has ever come close to copying them at any point in their multi-faceted trajectory through and beyond Heavy Metal (well, Aftermath were a Coroner clone, but whatever). Fluid solos and neoclassical leads stacked against harsh and almost atavistic two-chord riffs that stop-start and leave little time to breathe. Listening to Coroner is a disorientating experience for me still, and man, I've listened to Coroner more than is healthy I think sometimes. But they're just so good. It's generally the mark of a great band for me if I change my mind about which record is my favorite every other year. Usually it's "Punishment for Decadence", sometimes "Grin", recently it's "Mental Vortex" from whence this song comes.
Coroner were one of the most convincing power trios in the thrash field. There is never the problem of a band sounding as if they'd be augmented by the inclusion of a second guitarist. And though this is due to double-tracked rhythm guitars in their recorded material, one can check them out live on youtube and be startled at how full they sound.
This is a real oddity from 1989. Little-known Spectral Incursion (what a name!) remain obscure. I've found them through the wonderful Corosseum some years ago and I'm still digesting their two demos and EP with much interest.
The cover art for this is spectacularly horrid/awesome, I simply must share:
This seems kind of 'outside' like Voivod but I can't place what about it makes it so. It's certainly more structured and conservatively melodic than Voivod, no pointillist space, the guitarist is going on pretty much straight through the song. I think it's the joyous over-exposition of melodic ideas that makes this sound not-exactly-metal, in a sense. I feel as if someone's playing a mini-suite for me, he just happened to know how to play metal guitar instead of piano. And yet, unlike piano, as this is a power trio, it sounds so monophonic! Not to say it sounds bare, the guitarist plays enough notes for three guitarists, but it's just so... on-off. Here's half a riff. Here's a scale run for a coda for the riff. Oh, here's something else. All linear, in a row. Well, I lie, there's a guitar solo overdub in the middle but that's the only bit where this sounds like something a different band would play, perhaps.
I sincerely don't know how many listeners would enjoy this sort of music, but for me it hits all the spots that I think some of these ironic-rock-with-lots-of-riffs bands like The Fucking Champs hit for others, and is also delightfully unaware of itself. Oh and if you track down the EP, it's not all instrumentals, I just happen to prefer this cut the best.
Depressive Age - Never Be Blind
We close this examination of a small quasi-genre now forgotten in time with a message that should be timeless.
"I see love and I see hate
I see pleasure and I see disdain
I see hypocrisy and sincerity
I see famine and gluttony
And I will never be, never be blind
I see torture and I see cure
I see patients and freaks very cool
I see mockery and sympathy
I see greed and I see modesty
And I will never be, never be blind
I see yesterday and I see today
I see sunlight and I see dark night
I see meanness and generosity
I see misery and luxury
And I will never be, never be blind"
That's it. Techno-thrash may have traveled into doubtful directions in its guise of progressive metal in the 90's and Heavy Metal on the whole might have lost the onus for existential examination in the last decade. Whatever may happen in the future certainly will happen. Even if we're not prepared to accept it, we must allow ourselves to gaze at its horrid multitude of acts and thoughts and desires and make an interpretation, our reality. At the end we'll count our final score and chisel our initials on a gravestone, let it be written under them, as Jan Lubitzki of Depressive Age would hope, "I was never blind".
Everyone remembers phelpster (right), right? He swung by here last month to donate a fantastic Bromantic Interlude based around the concept of MURDER. Well, one post just wasn't enough to satiate phelpster's enthusiasm for said subject. Welcome to Murder 2.0. Oh yeah, I should also mention that phelpster is curator of both The Manchester Morgue and Space Bastard!, and that if you don't read both of which on the regular, you are most likely an asshole. Asshole.
- Cobras
Phelpster here again with the sequel to Warning, Murder in Progress, I call it The Hands That Threaten Doom. Most sequels feel the need to outdo the original. Filling it with more explosions, more jive-talking racial stereotype robots, more evil usses. But I've actually went and made this one much more focused and less random. The music genres are still all over the map, but I've tried to make it stick closer to the murder theme. So these are all songs about people who have commited murder, (or in one song a person guilty of conspiracy to commit murder).
Church of Misery - I, Motherfucker
Klaatu - Mister Manson
Rammstein - Mein Teil
Dead Boys - Son of Sam
Swans - Killing For Company - Dennis Nilsen
Tormentor - Elizabeth Bathory
The Adverts - Gary Gilmore's Eyes
Serial Killers - Heidnik's House of HOrrors
Sigh - In The Mind of a Lunatic - Jack the Ripper
Siousxie and the Banshees - Night Shift - Peter Sutcliffe
Alkaline Trio - Sadie
Green on Red - The Drifter
Severed Heads - Dead Eyes Open
Serge Gainsbourg et Brigitte Bardot - Bonnie and Clyde
Below you will find the same track list, but after each track I've posted the name of the person(s) the song was written about, and a small summary about their crimes. Sure, everyone knows who Ted Bundy or Chuck Manson are, but some of these people aren't very well known so I've just done it for every track. All of the summaries are swiped directly from Wikipedia, so any inaccuracies are the fault of the respective Wikipedia posters.
Church of Misery - I, Motherfucker - Theodore Robert "Ted" Bundy, born Theodore Robert Cowell (November 24, 1946 – January 24, 1989), was an American serial killer active between 1973 and 1978. He twice escaped from county jails before his final apprehension in February 1978. After more than a decade of vigorous denials, he eventually confessed to over 30 murders, although the actual total of victims remains unknown. Estimates range from 26 to over 100, the general estimate being 35. Typically, Bundy would bludgeon his victims, then strangle them to death. He also engaged in rape and necrophilia. Bundy was executed by electric chair for his last murder by the state of Florida in 1989.
Klaatu - Mister Manson - Charles Milles Manson (born November 12, 1934) is an American criminal who led what became known as the Manson Family (the "Family"), a quasi-commune that arose in California in the late 1960s. He was found guilty of conspiracy to commit the Tate/LaBianca murders, carried out by members of the group at his instruction. He was convicted of the murders themselves through the joint-responsibility rule, which makes each member of a conspiracy guilty of crimes his fellow conspirators commit in furtherance of the conspiracy's object.
Rammstein - Mein Teil - Armin Meiwes is a German man who achieved international notoriety for killing and eating a voluntary victim whom he had found via the Internet. After Meiwes and the victim jointly attempted to eat the victim's severed penis, Meiwes killed his victim and proceeded to eat a large amount of his flesh. Because of his deeds, Meiwes is also known as the Rotenburg Cannibal or Der Metzgermeister (The Master Butcher).
Dead Boys - Son of Sam - David Richard Berkowitz (born Richard David Falco; June 1, 1953), also known as Son of Sam and the .44 Caliber Killer, is an American serial killer and arsonist whose crimes terrorized New York City from July 1976 until his arrest in August 1977.
Shortly after his arrest in August 1977, Berkowitz confessed to killing six people and wounding seven others in the course of eight shootings in New York between 1976 and 1977; he has been imprisoned for these crimes since 1977. Berkowitz subsequently claimed that he was commanded to kill by a demon who possessed his neighbor's dog.
Swans - Killing For Company - Dennis Andrew Nilsen (born 23 November 1945, Fraserburgh, Scotland) also known as the Muswell Hill Murderer and the Kindly Killer is a British serial killer who lived in London.
Nilsen killed at least fifteen men and boys in gruesome circumstances between 1978 and 1983, and was known to retain corpses for sex acts. He was eventually caught after his disposal of dismembered human entrails blocked his household drains: the drain cleaning company found that the drains were congested with human flesh and contacted the police.
Tormentor - Elizabeth Bathory - Countess Elizabeth Báthory de Ecsed (Báthory Erzsébet in Hungarian, Alžbeta Bátoriová in Slovak, 17 August 1560 – 21 August 1614) was a countess from the renowned Báthory family. Although in modern times she has been labeled the most prolific female serial killer in history, evidence of her alleged crimes is scant and her guilt is debated. Nevertheless, she is remembered as the "Blood Countess" and as the "Bloody Lady of Čachtice", after the castle near Trencsén (today Trenčín) in the Kingdom of Hungary (today's Slovakia), where she spent most of her adult life.
After her husband's death, she and four collaborators were accused of torturing and killing hundreds of girls and young women, with one witness attributing to them over 600 victims, though the number for which they were convicted was 80.[1] Elizabeth herself was neither tried nor convicted. In 1610, however, she was imprisoned in the Csejte Castle, where she remained bricked in a set of rooms until her death four years later.
The Adverts - Gary Gilmore's Eyes - Gary Mark Gilmore (December 4, 1940 – January 17, 1977) was an American criminal and spree killer who gained international notoriety for demanding that his death sentence be fulfilled following two murders he committed in Utah. He became the first person executed in the United States after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a new series of death penalty statutes in the 1976 decision Gregg v. Georgia (these new statutes avoiding the problems that had led earlier death penalty statutes to be deemed unconstitutional in Furman v. Georgia). Gilmore was the last person to be executed by firing squad in the United States until John Albert Taylor in 1996.[1]
Serial Killers - Heidnik's House of Horrors - Gary Michael Heidnik (November 22, 1943 – July 6, 1999) was an American murderer who kidnapped, tortured and raped six women and kept them prisoner in his Philadelphia, Pennsylvania basement. He is often referred to as a serial killer, although having committed only two murders, he would not fit the FBI definition of a serial killer as the FBI standard dictates "three or more murders" to be classified as serial killer.[1] However, in the National Institute of Justice's definition of a serial killer, a minimum of two murders is designated.[2] On Dr. Michael Stone's scale of evil ranking from level 1 to level 22, Heidnik was placed at level 22.
Sigh - In The Mind of a Lunatic - "Jack the Ripper" is the best known pseudonym given to an unidentified serial killer active in the largely impoverished districts in and around the Whitechapel district of London in 1888.
Siousxie and the Banshees - Night Shift - Peter William Sutcliffe (born 2 June 1946) is an English serial killer who was dubbed The Yorkshire Ripper. Sutcliffe was convicted in 1981 of murdering 13 women and attacking several others. He is currently serving life imprisonment in Broadmoor Hospital. After conviction, Sutcliffe began using his mother's maiden surname and became known as Peter William Coonan.
Alkaline Trio - Sadie - Susan Denise Atkins (May 7, 1948 – September 24, 2009) was a convicted American murderer who was a member of the "Manson family", led by Charles Manson. Manson and his followers committed a series of nine murders at four locations in California, over a period of five weeks in the summer of 1969. Known within the Manson family as Sadie Mae Glutz, Atkins was convicted for her participation in eight of these killings, including the most notorious, "Tate/LaBianca" murders. She was sentenced to death, which was subsequently commuted to life in prison. Incarcerated from October 1, 1969 until her death, Atkins was the longest-incarcerated female inmate in the California penal system, having been denied parole 18 times.
Green on Red - The Drifter - Bundy - Yeah, I have Bundy on here twice, I couldn't choose between the two songs.
Severed Heads - Dead Eyes Open - Patrick Herbert Mahon was a British criminal found guilty in 1924 of the murder of Emerly Bielby Kaye in the case of the "Crumbles murders". He killed her in Eastbourne and mutilated the body.
Serge Gainsbourg et Brigitte Bardot - Bonnie and Clyde - Bonnie Parker (October 1, 1910 – May 23, 1934) and Clyde Barrow (March 24, 1909 – May 23, 1934) were well known outlaws, robbers and criminals who, with their gang, traveled the Central United States during the Great Depression. Their exploits captured the attention of the American public during what is sometimes referred to as the "public enemy era" between 1931 and 1934. Though known today for his dozen-or-so bank robberies, Barrow in fact preferred to rob small stores or rural gas stations. The gang is believed to have killed at least nine police officers and committed several civilian murders. They were eventually ambushed and killed in Louisiana by law officers. Their reputation was cemented in American pop folklore by Arthur Penn's 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde.
Macabre - Holidays of Horror - Ronald Gene Simmons, Sr. (15 July 1940 – 25 June 1990) was a retired United States Air Force sergeant who killed sixteen people, fourteen of whom were members of his family, and wounded four others between December 22-28 1987.
Sufjan Stevens - John Wayne Gacy, Jr. - John Wayne Gacy, Jr. (March 17, 1942 – May 10, 1994) was an American serial killer.
Between 1972 and 1978, the year he was arrested, Gacy raped and murdered at least 33 young men and boys, mostly teenagers. Although some of his victims' bodies were found in the Des Plaines River, he buried 26 of them in the small crawl space underneath the basement of his home and three more elsewhere on his property. He became known as "Killer Clown" because of the popular block parties he would throw for his friends and neighbors, entertaining children in a clown suit and makeup as "Pogo the Clown".
Melvins - Zodiac - The Zodiac Killer was a serial killer who operated in Northern California in the late 1960s. The Zodiac killer's identity remains unknown. The Zodiac killer coined the name "Zodiac" in a series of taunting letters sent to the local Bay area press. These letters included four cryptograms (or ciphers), three of which have yet to be solved.
Deeds of Flesh - Infecting Them With Falsehood - Herman Webster Mudgett (May 16, 1861[1] – May 7, 1896[2]), better known under the alias of Dr. Henry Howard Holmes, was an American serial killer. Holmes opened a hotel in Chicago for the 1893 World's Fair, which he built himself and was the location of many of his murders. While he confessed to 27 murders, of which nine were confirmed, his actual body count could be higher.
Monte Cazazza - Mary Bell - Mary Flora Bell (born 26 May 1957 in Newcastle upon Tyne, England) was convicted in December 1968 of the manslaughter of two boys, Martin Brown (aged four years) and Brian Howe (aged three years). Bell was ten years old at the time of one of the killings, and eleven at the time of the other.
Okay, assholes. Listen up.
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