Q & A IV: The True Rapture

Is it really that time again? No? Well I don't give a shit. The concept of time-keeping; days, nights, hours or weeks is all but lost on me. It was the biggest issue everyone had with me in my last job. Four hours late they said? Blow me on your knees. Brenocide is always on time for Brenocide. I don't care what time it is in your pathetic queef of a time zone you're reading this blog in, you're running on That's Not Metal time now. If it takes longer than your lunch break to finish this article, boohoo. If your boss even breathes a word of defiance against your true metal education, it is your civic duty as a true-blooded metal head to stomp his ass into mush and break that clipboard against his squirrely little face. The human body can survive days to weeks without food or water. Your kids can wait at school until tomorrow for you to go pick them up. This is your time. This is my time. This is our time. It's time for Q&A, and since the time I started writing this was 7:27 on May 21st, 2011, that means I single-handedly fended off that pussy Christian rapture everyone was puckering their little buttholes about for the last week. Suck it Lord. You can't stop the metal.  

What are your views on the Fender guitar company?
- Røbert Sjöström

You mean the corporation that bought and turned a legendary metal axe company like Jackson into a sniveling Chinese-made dicksnot of its former self? Oh we're just peachy. Fenders are kind of a mixed bag. I mean, if I look at Iron Maiden playing live, I have to check twice to see and make sure if I'm actually watching Iron Maiden performing live, or if it's just the annual get-together of the Fender Guitar Fan Club on stage.

Iron Maiden: Brought to you in part by Fender and Bengay.

Then we have everything else against Fender, like how its instruments kind of suck. When you have all these prominent big names playing Fender guitars like Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, Geddy Lee, Ynwie Malmsteen, and... John Mayer... you can get away with making an inferior product based off its guaranteed commercial success. Millions of weird necked middle-aged guys with dirty finger nails that smell like cheese and tobacco buy guitars like Fender and Gibson because they're the only names they know, and they were the only guitars that got played back in their heyday. Everybody is under the delusion that the American Les Paul or Stratocaster is the pinnacle of guitar sound perfection, and I fully realize this, because whenever I see some kid writing his half-assed review on his $200 Dean, the first thing he points out is how it sounds better than his dad's/uncle's/brother's Strat or Les Paul. Maybe your piece of shit cheapy guitar doesn't sound beautiful after all? Maybe all Gibsons and Fenders just sound like garbage, and get sold based on name recognition rather than sound or quality. I'll finish up this point by saying that due to the fact that Green Day and John Mayer play Fenders, it's not a guitar known for its metal anyway, so just steer clear and go for something less hip and better equipped for metal playing. Then again, Alexi Laiho plays an ESP, so I guess we just can't win. 

What's your opinion on the whole 'djent' thing?

- Jonathan Webster

How to palm-mute. Happy djent playing.

For those of you who don't know, the word "djent" is an onomatopoeia for a heavily palm-muted distorted guitar chord, and a name for this fangled new musical genre that someone came up with on their own. I guess this was considered a fitting label for "bands that sound like Meshuggah sounds." Because heavily palm-muted distorted guitar chords don't happen anywhere in heavy metal music except in djent, right? Toss my salad with bacon bits. 

The djent riff is low tuned, super muted and super chunky. It's also easier to play than my dick, repetitive as shit and used to the point of exhaustion in long, drawn out boring music. I don't consider 'djent' really a fitting onomatopoeia for the genre. A sound more fitting to describe it would be to put my cheeks in my palms and blow fart noises in short, quick bursts. To get myself a bit more familiar with the 'genre' I set out to listen to a couple of bands considered djent to provide a more well rounded opinion. I listened to Periphery and subsequently gave up. Here's a sample of flagship djent band Meshuggah with their thought provoking, progressive, mind-bending, non-repetitive musical mastery: 

I especially like the part where the guitar goes: JUNDALAJUNDALAJUNDALAJUNDALAJUNDALAJUNDALAJUNDALAJUNDALA... 

Yes, I think Meshuggah really sucks. Yes, you can blow me doing a handstand. 

What's your opinion of "metal" A Capella groups like Van Canto?

- Jane French 

You know, when I started watching this video, I thought this could be pretty awesome. Then the guy leans forward, stares intensely into the camera, brings the microphone to his lips, and starts chanting "RIDDLY DIDDLY RIDDLY DIDDLY..." Any and all coolness factor goes right down the proverbial toilet.  After I got done laughing harder than I've had in weeks, I came to the conclusion that this kind of the thing is the silliest shit ever, and there's no place for A Capella in the world of metal. We're sort of leaning towards the realm of irony when considering such a concept, and if I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times. There's nothing metal about being ironic.

Would you rather listen to Hip-Hop/Rap or Metalcore?

- Matt Ryan

Holy shit, Matt. Thanks for the balls. Now we're getting somewhere. Everyone's got to ask me all these soft pillow talk bitch conversational questions like "what's my opinion of this" or "do I like this or that", but not Matt. Matt brings the heat. Backing me into a corner with a hardass rhetorical question: If I had a gun in my mouth, and was given the option to either listen to a hip-hop album, listen to a metalcore album, or have my face shot off, what would I choose? Well, after strongly considering the upside to eating bullets in this situation, I would definitely choose listening to hip hop. Surprised? You shouldn't be. Metalcore is the worst music ever made, even on its best day. I'm not talking quality hip-hop either. I would rather jam with Kanye West albums all day, rather than put up with a single It Dies Today track. As close to metal as metalcore may be at times, it's not metal. It's the worst possible music anyone could listen to. Ever.

When did you first get into metal?

- Devin Udall 

I was always into metal, I just didn't know it yet. Since my very conception I have been on the neverending quest to listen to badder, bolder, more awesome, more epic music. First starting out, there was no high-speed internet. If you wanted to check your e-mail, you didn't get phone calls, and it took half an hour to download a picture. The only real outlets I had for hard rock were MTV and The Radio. Both extremely unmetal pieces of media, and as such, so was the music I thought was enjoyable. Like most little kids, I was big into pro-wrestling (WWF, WCW), but in my lust for all things more brutal and badder, I wanted a wrestling program that was as well. I got into ECW, a pay-per-view wrestling show that featured more blood, broken glass and barbed wire than the other guys. A lot of the prominent ECW wrestlers came out to heavy metal entrance music, (Rob Van Dam came out to Pantera's "Walk", Sandman came out to Metallica's "Enter Sandman".) I thought their entrance music was the baddest thing I ever heard and I needed more in anyway I could get it. So with what little strength my 28k modem could muster, I spent my adolescent years surfing the slowest web ever to look into what sort of music I was hearing on ECW, and the rest as you know, is history.

 Sort of odd looking back on it and realizing that ECW is what first introduced me to heavy metal music... 

On second thought, maybe not.

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