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Quick question! What do Nile and Hall & Oates have in common? If you said that they both feature a core duo of a blond dude who only looks somewhat attractive when compared to his creepy as fuck counter part (see here, and here) you’re close (not really) but no where close to the mark.
After getting my head cleaved in half and my testicles ripped off by Nile’s latest Titan of an album called Those Whom The Gods Detest I quickly did all I could to look up the producer of such an amazing album. I was under the impression that it was Erik Rutan of Hate Eternal because I remember reading that he was working on the album. Turns out he only recorded the drums (which he did a great job on). The actual producer for this death metal epic was one Neil Kernon, better known during the 80’s as the producer of Voices, Private Eyes, AND MOTHERFUCKING H20.
The man who gave the world “I Can’t Go For That (No Can Do)” and “Maneater” is the same man who has given unto us, the people of the world, some of Nile’s BEST work including “Permitting the Noble Dead to Descend to the Underworld” and “Iskander D’hul Kharnon”.
I raise a hollowed out skull in the name of Neil Kernon: a man who now serves as a convenient connector for an incredibly specific game of 6-Degrees of Separation.
Next challenge is to connect Suffocation to Meatloaf. I’m pretty sure if you tried hard enough you could find one (or a series of six). Anyone?
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1988 Tampa News report on Death Metal. ft. performance by Amon which some will know them as Deicide. Warning sound is shit but I have a bit of a weird thing for 80’s news reports on Metal.
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Battle At Sea - Mastodon (Lifesblood. Relapse Records, 2001)
This is old…like as old as a…fuckit, I can’t think of a proper simile right now.
My educated (was the top of my class in Metal Nerdology) guess is that this footage dates back to 2000, a whimsical time when a little Georgian band named after the retarded cousin of the Woolly Mammoth (seriously, look it up) were just getting their metal feet wet.
Battle at Sea turns out to be one of my favourite songs off of the band’s debut EP and can be found on their compliation record Call of the Mastodon for those interested. But aside from the choice of song and a freakishly skinny Brent Hinds the most interesting part about this is Eric Saner (not Sanders, as some sources have mistakenly related bassist Troy to him) the band’s lead singer. He toured with the band for a series of shows throughout the months of 2000 but was quickly dropped in favour of the dual pipe-assualt of Troy and Brent, and they probably didn’t want to stretch their pitiful earnings over 5 members when they could easily do 4. Either way, seeing what they are today it’s cool to see what a band like Mastodon started out as.
This is video is damn fine enough quality that I’m within my right of showing it to the internet without looking like a crazed fan. If anything this is like the band’s baby pictures, even if it is the ones of them playing in mud…Wait a second! <—-THERE’S MY SIMILE!
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What am I watching right now? I’m watching my favourite new Spike TV program: Deadliest Warrior. I love it so much. It’s such a guy thing too, which is why it’s on Spike TV which now seems to be making a show to answer ever drunken argument every man has ever had (which I guess is the purpose of such a network).
I’m pretty sure the concept for this show started when two Anthropology students got into a heated (ie. drunken) debate over purely hypothetical confrontations between historical warriors. Like most men do, given the rest circumstances. A segment of such a conversation probably would go like this:
Genius #1: Nah man, a Viking would TOTALLY kill a Ninja! He has, like, a fucking helmet, and they yell and everything!
Genius #2: Yooou are soooo wrong you dumb fuck! Ninja would toe’dally win! Ninja is sooo fast you don know wat will hit cha’!
Genius #1: No-NO! You’re WRONG!
(G#1 spills beer on G#2; fisticuffs commence)
That being said the show does its best in showcasing a hypothetical match between two historical warriors by testing out four-five weapons that were characteristic of each warrior (eg. Great Axe for Viking). They do some serious calculations to estimate the damage dealt by each warrior and actually play out a realistic outcome for such a fight (not that is actually matters). The best part of the show is that each warrior is given two Experts to help display the technique and skill used by said warrior. What really makes this an endearing feature is that the Experts tend to be douchebags - they find any form of positive evidence for the opposing Experts’ warrior as a direct threat to their own personal manhood rather than apply it to the harmless hypothetical that they are trying to solve. When the calculations prove that a competing warrior’s weapon causes an impressive amount of damage they are always quick to belittle such evidence with childish bickering (not dissimilar to the conversation seen above). It’s awesome.
The show is entertaining enough that anyone who holds a cursory understanding of historical battles would find it interesting.
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Overseas Connections is a split studio album between the Quebec grinders Fuck the Facts and Death Metal troop of Sergent Slaughter (later renamed Kobra Kommando) from the Lorraine region of France. Of the numerous splits and eps produced by FTF, this one holds up has having some of my favourite FTF tracks on it, including the beastly Medicated Like a Motherfuker, the poignant carnage of La Tête Hors De L’eau and the pseudo-jazz fingerlicking Ventriloquist Complex.
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Before he joined on as bassist for a little band called Carcass, Jeff Waker was the guitarist and vocalist for the seminal UK-punk group Electro Hippies.
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[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]Escape – Electro Hippies (The Peel Sessions. Peaceville, 1987)
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I’m not posting this video by Entombed because I think it is either good or funny (which I feel that it is neither) but because there is a bit of a history lesson here, because this is the point where Death Metal failed during the mid 90’s. Two reasons why the scene experienced a lapse in popularity during the mid 90’s: the scene was overrun by too many low-quality bands that sounded the same, and the poor job of mass-marketing the genre to the mainstream by a select group of Record labels.
The song is Wolverine Blues, released off of the 1993 album of the same name. This was during the early-mid 90’s “success” with Death Metal, as the scene’s most prolific record company, Earache, had just made a deal with Sony BMG to release selected records through Columbia Records (whose parent company was Sony BMG).
According to drummer Nicke Andersson the song itself is based on a book by James Ellroy (I’m not clear which one) about a killer with a fascination with wolverines. Sony saw this as a brilliant marketing tool (the emphasis on Wolverine, not the book) and made a deal with Marvel Comics to use the likeness of their character in association with the band. Marvel did them one better: they drew up animations of the video Wolverine Blues and supplied the original pressings of the album with a mini-comic booklet.
The album itself was lacking in strength. As the band’s first major-label record, the album played into the trend of seeming watered down inorder to garner a wider fanbase. Wikipedia calls the album Death’n’Roll, which is an actual sub-genre (Carcass’s last album Swansong is an example of this) characterized by Death metal-style vocals with heavily distorted instruments being played at tempos and structures more akin to Rock and Roll. This can be attributed to experimentation with the group’s sound as the group started recording the album before the deal with Earache and Columbia was signed (however it wasn’t finished until after the deal was down).
The album failed. It sold poorly to the public and was rejected by hardcore fans of the band. It had failed to compare to their previous album sales and that was back when Earache was independant.
In all, Earach did a poor job with its flirtation with the mainstream, however that’s not because of the genre as a whole. Case and point: Morbid Angel’s album Covenant was released on Giant Records (owned by Warner Bros.) the same year as Wolverine Blues and it is hailed as one of the highest selling Death Metal release of all time.
