In Search of Mastodonia: A Land Where Metal Doesn't Suck

By: X-51

Hello there faithful readers (nods at three people). Today's blog is about m-e-t-a-l, ergo we will start off hardcore:

Great sweaty nads, is that the glave from Krull?

It is indeed that mythical weapon that slew the Beast, or at least injured him severely.

So you're saying to yourself: What the hell is the glave? Get off now, this ride is for people who are taller than the little red line on the hard-core-o-meter (TM).

Or you're saying to yourself: I have never cried tears of joy before this moment in time--we have found the weapon that will save the galaxy!

If you are person number two, walk with me for a moment.

You may be wondering what this particular blog has to do with m-e-t-a-l. We're getting there, I promise...unless you're Stace or Nick and you're waiting for the short bus to catch up; I'm getting there gentlemen: I'm not slow, just different.

I am discussing metal, or sadly, the dilution of metal music over the past two decades. So let's assume for a moment that you're a metal lover. I'm not talking like playground metal, or nu-metal, or the Linkin Parks and Breaking Benjamins your little sister's douche boyfriend had playing from his Honda Civic. I'm talking you don't shower for days. I'm talking worn out Ride the Lightning tees that weren't pre-washed three hundred times and then sold at Target--your shirt hasn't been washed yet, because James Hetfield spit on it at the last concert before he cut his hair. I'm talking Lemmy kissed your girlfriend and you shook his hand. I'm talking Danzig kicked your ass and you gave him an IOU for your first child. You're the Type-O-Negative, Motorhead freak who can't get a date with anyone under three hundred pounds who doesn't have backne.

You are the metal faithful, and as such, you have waited a very long time for any sort of promising metal music. You have waited through a very, VERY long couple of decades. For my intents and purposes, let's all agree that metal officially ended in August of 1991.

Let me start by saying this: thank the metal gods for Kurt Cobain and flannel. Glamrock needed to go, and its reemergence has caused me great distress. But metal, true metal didn't die with the grunge rockers. No, Metallica gave a clinic in metal album-smithing with the release of the Black album. Even if you're not a metal fan, or even if, like me, you think Metallica sucks hardcore goat tit nowadays, you have to admit: it's a classic. Start to finish, they pound every note home with meticulous care, attention to detail, and amazing production quality. In terms of complete albums, it's the metal equivalent to Revolver.

Yeah, I said it you Beatles snobs. Greatness is not reserved for the long-dead legends of yesteryear, so get over yourselves. At least Michael Jackson doesn't own the rights to all of Metallica's greatest songs (p.s. btw how do you let that slip at the patent office??? Way to go Paul and Ringo--George gets a pass for being dead, R.I.P.)

Getting back on track, let's just say that metal forever stopped being good after '91. Why? Because nothing else has really come out. The Slayer and Pantera fans are hissing, or cussing, or throwing their Natty's at the screen right now, but I stand behind this opinion, even in the face of angry greasies.

What followed in that decade was Metallica losing their hair, putting out an alternative album (hey, I like Load, but it aint metal) and a slew of sub-par bands with loose metal ties. Here are a few of these bands that ruined metal at the turn of the century (speaking of which, shouldn't metal have been on top at the turn of a new millennium? Can you think of anything more metal than the changing of a thousand years and rumors of the end of the world?)

1. Linkin Park: I have never heard a band with more insignificantly generalized lyrics. Many people have approached me and argued that Linkin Park speaks to them. I argue that the lyrics generally speak to everybody because they don't really say anything. Real + Feel = Rhyming. AND YOU CAN COLOR IN THE LINES! G'boy!

I submit to you that there is nothing less cool than pink hair, anime references in your music videos, electronic drums, Mike Shinoda, and lyrics like:

Crawling in my skin
These wounds they will not heal
Fear is how I fall
Confusing what is real

Okay, so something is crawling in his skin. At this point I'm onboard. Some sort of parasitic ethereal being is crawling beneath this man's delicate dermal layers: very metal. But here is the downfall: many people on the planet have had hurts that didn't heal well? How many people could tell you that heal, feel, and real rhyme? He never tells us what kind of blood sucking apparition is eating his guts: that would be metal. Instead, Linkin Park and all their bedwetting fans can get together and have a good mascara-soaked cryfest about how daddy didn't love them. Guess what? LOTS of people's daddy's don't love them, and some of them actually manage to make productive art out of that pain.

Slipknot.

Sorry...I had to leave blank space for laughter. Here's why:

Hey mom! I found all those stinky people who get our Salvation Army clothes. Way to go Iowa. If I was ever afraid of anything, it was never a clown with a pentagram on its face. I kinda want to squeeze his nose to see if it sounds like a bike horn. And oh, btw, the clown has knocked himself unconscious on his drums more than once...it doesn't get more metal than knocking your OWN ass out.

But really, Slipknot blows. They certainly capture the grease of metal, but not the cred...Alice Cooper is crying somewhere.

Hey Kids! Do you like ice cream and puppies? What about Dodge Caravans?

Ooh, what about Drowning Pool? I think the lead singer died face-down on a tour bus. That's kind of metal, in a cheap ring-tone sort of way. Okay, we'll leave that one alone. There are just too many quips to be made about bodies hitting floors.

Had enough yet? The ride could go on for hours. The point? METAL HAS SUCKED.

Until now. Remember the Glave? One band has had the testicular fortitude to wield such a weapon, and sell it at their merch table.

MASTODON.

This band brings a whole new kind of kick-ass, the kind of kick ass you get from a galaxy far, far away. This is viking type kick-ass, the kind that says foreign shores are mine, and all your women are belong to us.

This is the band that writes an album called Blood Mountain, or a concept album about Moby Dick.

Likin Park rhymes real with feel. Mastodon has a lyric, I kid you not: Lion Slicer.

What's a Lion Slicer? Hell if I know, but I want one...and if I had one, you'd better believe I'd be slicing some lion's loins clean off. The song--Colony of Birchmen--is about overgrown tree-men hunting and eating lions, ogres, and dwarves. What's not metal about that???

They also did the opening to Aqua Teen Hunger Force, called Cut You With a Linoleum Knife . It's not only super-hardcore, but it's the funniest part of the movie.

Comedy is hardcore.

I am a fat, screaming, bejeweled pirate! METAL, METAL, METAL!

Metal has returned my friends, and Mastodon's latest album, Crack the Skye, is incredible. It is a start to finish metal experience. A couple of my friends and I went to the recent show in Lawrence, and were literally blown away. I have never before left a concert with my chest hurting from the thickness of the bass. It was like someone taped a midget to my face and instructed said midget to kick me in the chest for three hours.

Get off you midget.

The best part, however, was the fact that they played, note for note, and super-sonic speeds, the songs from their albums. Their drummer is a living heart-attack. Brent Hinds, our singer/guitarist, is an absolute frothing madman. Harmonies this eerie haven't been around since Alice in Chains.

Metal is back ladies, gentlemen, vikings and ogres. I encourage you to lose the gut, grab an axe, and prepare to shred face. The heroes have returned.

I AM A VIKING LORD OF ROCK! I EAT MY OWN BOOGERS!

I DRINK MY OWN SWEAT OUT OF STAINED TUPPERWARE!

Enjoy.

A Kick-Ass Kick-Off

Ladies and gentlemen, if you will allow, let me introduce the new Super-Toast blog-comic lagoon of liquid hotness. I am very proud to announce that our blogish-compendium of sorts is now officially live. The first entry is a good one, and can be found below. I am pleased to let you know that the ever-talented and much envied Biglamp has brought us blogging gold. Please enjoy the first installment with more to follow from Loftmore and myself, X-51.

Without further adieu, the Lamp of Justice in: Blog: Part the First.

Nerd Guy and Sports Guy: Worlds Collide, or Sperds

By: Big Lamp

Damn that's a big lamp!

My parents were kind, intelligent, and very strict about the rules of life as I was growing up. I couldn’t stay up late, watch violent cartoons (no G.I. Joe unless I was at grandma’s house, where I got all the violence and sugar my little heart could endure!), or play with beebee guns. It was a hollow existence. There were two instances, however, when I got to break the great and terrible rule of bedtime: any NBA finals games involving the Lakers, and the very first television viewing of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi. I remember being only 3 or 4 years old, and my father shielding me from the heinous bedtime laws to allow me to watch Magic and Bird battle it out in the mid-1980’s. It was beautiful, and although I remember very few specific instances, I do remember sitting next to my father in the dark, watching the flickering lights and yelling every time Larry Bird did some injustice to our heroic Lakers. Later that decade, as I entered elementary school, another brief occurrence of rebellion happened: when I successfully petitioned my mother into allowing me to stay up for most of Return of the Jedi. I say “most” because my mother sided with the evil emperor and forced 6 year-old Phil to move kicking and screaming away from the ultimate Ewok triumph forty-five minutes before the end of the movie. I was not good at addition and subtraction, and apparently had asked and was granted a later bedtime that was not “later” enough to allow me to actually finish the movie. As Admiral Ackbar would say, “It’s a trap!” As I was being shooed into bed, I couldn’t help but argue that I got to stay up for the NBA finals. The difference in my mother’s mind was that I was required by law to go to school now. The difference in my mind was that Star Wars must not be as cool as Lakers basketball. I’ve been trying to reconcile the concept ever since.

Mother: Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!

I’m a man trapped between two worlds, and I thought that I might attempt a quick escape by writing an article for a blog that I fully expect to fail about two sentences ago. Since you’re still reading this, you are either a fool or genuinely interested. I’ll let you guess which one I suspect. At any rate, the parallels between being the cool sports guy and the not very cool nerd guy have eerily similar trajectories, and it is time that we finally admit that, as far as “coolness” goes, nerds might have finally pulled ahead. It is a ridiculous theory, I know, but allow me to substantiate with clear “evidence” that will not prove anything but make me feel better about my life.

Moving forward in the history of my insignificant life, I can point to the parallels between the greatest sports disappointment in my life and the greatest nerd disappointment. Fast-forward about a decade, and finally my pick-and-rolling Utah Jazz have achieved a trip to the NBA finals (yes, somehow I switched from “Showtime” fast-break basketball to the most repetitive, efficient offense in history… go figure). Note that they had made the playoffs for about 14 years in a row, and therefore failed to win anything of relevance for all 14 of those years, which represents most of my life. The Jazz finally making the finals was a crowning achievement for a long beleaguered fan.

Unfortunately, Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bull crapateers were their opponents.

The Jazz, as would be a soon-startling trend in both of my “world”, promptly lost in six games. Stockton and Malone were in their 30’s, and I thought the odds of them making another run weren’t great.But the next year, somehow they ran through the Western Conference playoffs with relative ease, and I started to believe.

Unfortunately, Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bull crapateers were again their opponents.

(For the record, I know the Buffalo Bills football team had it rough. They lost four straight, and I weep for all Bills fans out there. But when are we going to put the Utah Jazz up there with them? Three conference finals in a row, two finals, and they had to run up against the “team of destiny” with the ordained greatest-player-that-ever-lived as their opponent? Screw the Bills. They should have won at least one against that crap-ass Giant’s team (thank you Norwood) and they blew it. Boohoo. I’ve punched people in the face with less strength than Michael Jordan’s push off FOUL against Russell, with the only other difference being that my hand hurt for about a week and I have to see that damned Jordan clip every single NBA playoff year for the rest of my life. It is time to recognize our pain. Thank you for your time.)

I’m sure Jordan didn’t push. Russell just saw something interesting on the ground.

The parallel? None other than Star Wars again. I was 2 years old when Return of the Jedi came out, so I didn’t get to go see it in the theatres. Yes, I got to see the “Special Editions,” but Greedo shot first in those so it was like getting to watch Jessica Alba strip naked on the big screen while getting punched in the gut so hard you want to throw up. It wasn’t right. I had nightmares. Of course, this was before everyone knew that Lucas had been replaced by a Lucas robot run by an Ewok that had to wear flannel for power.

Either way, just like the Jazz double finals, I waited my entire lifetime for a chance to see new Star Wars on the big screen. I did my senior project on the new special effects the film would use, and I hyped it so much to all my friends that the day after the midnight showing, I had to get up in front of the entire Band and give a review (yes, I was in band and played basketball… and was never more than moderately good at either… this essay is about me just getting drilled as a nerd and sports fanatic over and over again, with the benefits of neither… why am I writing this?). What I got was Jar Jar Binks, Natalie Portman with TOO MANY clothes on, and a bad guy that talked but once in the entire film. It was like someone charged me five dollars, made me pull an all-nighter, and wait twenty years to find out Megan Fox is a dude underneath her clothes. And then I had to pretend everything was o.k. in front of my entire world the next day and tell people it was great!

That one hurt more than the Jazz, though, because I was always a little bit more of a nerd than a sports freak. Unfortunately, it was also very hard finding friends. Sure, there were crossovers between nerdom and sportsdom over the years, but do we really want to speak of James Worthy as a Klingon or Shaq pretending to be a super hero? How many people, outside of a select group, really would admit to knowing that James Worthy was a Klingon once, or that they actually saw Steel? There were a few, but they were far in between.

We’d all like to forget this happened!

Fast forward yet another few years, and I finally get to rejoice because nerds are IN. Anyone who has watched The Big Bang Theory lately and compared it to the crapathon that is Two and a Half Men, can testify to the beautiful love our culture finally has for all that is nerdy.

Star Trek is back, and my students say things like “I know it’s Star Trek, but I’m actually excited to see it”. My two-faced life has flipped on end, and now all of the sudden it might be as good to admit that I like Star Trek as it is to admit I like the NBA (and after watching the officiating this past year, I’m starting to think Star Trek is straight up better!). The comparisons don’t end there:

Chloe vs. Cuthbert: The nerdiest girl alive truly achieved supremacy this past season when people finally began to realize that Chloe might be one of the best things on the show, and that Kim Bauer, AKA the Cuthbert, is the most terrible thing that ever happened to the most masculine show on television, 24. TV Guide Magazine columnist Matt Roush spent almost an entire column justifying that Cuthbert was “OK” and not a detriment this season. She sucks so bad we have to justify her existence when she was ok? This is like apologizing for the third Star Wars Prequel just because it didn’t shatter your soul like the first two.

The one you’d like for a date is not the one you’d want on the show. Go nerds!

Marc Blucas’s Playing Career vs. Marc Blucas’s Acting Career: This guy is the prototypical “nerd guy vs. sports guy” example. He was a pretty good player in college, played with Tim Duncan for one year at Wake Forest. He tried out for and failed to make the NBA, played professional basketball in England for a year, and then quit. He decided to become an actor, joined the nerdiest cult-fest of all time, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (what a great show, huzzah!), and God rewards him by PAYING him to make out with Sarah Michelle Gellar on the show. They have an entire episode devoted to them making out so much that evil lust demons take over. Seriously. Then, if that wasn’t enough, he gets a leading role making out with Katie Holmes in a terrible movie called First Daughter, and then he gets engaged to Ryan Haddon. This guy is my hero.

Charisma Carpenter… enough said: Charisma Carpenter started out as a San Diego Charger’s cheerleader. But what gets her famous? Roles on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Charmed, and Veronica Mars. Pretty much the nerdiest shows ever. Then she poses for Playboy (and I know you Google image searched that… it is ok… I forgive you). Is being a nerd not the best thing ever?

Charles Barkley Gets Wolverine Claws: He might be a drunken gambler, but what can redeem him? Yes, it is one of the many NBA to Nerdom Movie Crossovers, complete with threatening Kenny with Wolverine claws.

That’s my spam, Kenny!

Although these items do prove the point that being a nerd might be cooler than being a sports guy, I don’t think it is about that. The last entry, featuring Charles Barkley, brings me to my ultimate dream of joy and joyness.

It is an epic title, but this plan requires it. The other final connection between nerdom and sportsdom is their mutual love for crossovers. From Bo Jackson to Deon Sanders to the recent articles on ESPN wondering how good Lebron James would be at football, sports is obsessed with their greatest heroes and villains entering multiple arenas. Remember when Karl Malone and Dennis Rodman wanted to have an all out WWF style wrestling match? We loved it! Nerds love theirs as well, from Summer Glau moving from Firefly to The 4400 to Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (please take a brief moment to reflect on just how beautiful she is now…sigh), to straight-up Marvel vs. DC crossovers. As a group of nerdysports (sportynerds? Sperds? Norts?), we must finally have the ultimate crossover between our two loves. What sports star could captain the Enterprise or Battlestar Galactica? Who could play a linebacker in the NFL? What evil villain from sports could fight a Jedi? I’ll get us started.

Bill Belichick and Emperor Palpatine: The crossover connections are numerous. Both cheat. Both twist words. Both wear hoods. Both make us root for things we never thought we’d root for (Ewoks and Eli Manning, respectively). Both obviously lead us towards the dark side. But both might be just a little bit better in each others’ worlds. Don’t you think Belichick would do a better job of twisting Luke to the dark side? Belichick is tactical. His hood is grey, so he might not be completely evil. And he has never shot an Ewok. On the other side, do you think idiot wide receiver who-shouldn’t-have-even-been-playing-and-will-forever-be-shown-on-ESPN-classic-instead would have caught that ridiculous pass if Emperor Palpatine was on the sidelines? A tiny push with the force and that ball is caught by a Patriot.

We are the hooded duo. Nothing can stand in our way. All your base are belong to us.

Jerry Sloan and Admiral Adama: These two men are eerily similar. Both have course, low voices. Both are in charge of apocalyptically dire situations (trying to win without ever acquiring free agents or having Greg Ostertag on your team, and trying to save the human race on a 50 year old spaceship that is falling apart). Both look like they could use a whiskey. But both might be just a little bit better in each others’ worlds. Jerry would bring a lifetime of defense and efficiency, but also a little old Chicago farming to the Galactica. And how great do you think the pick and roll would be with old man Adama running the show. You think Boozer wouldn’t play hurt for that man? I think Adama would physically throw Boozer out on the floor. Game over, Chicago Crapateers.

Get these men a whiskey.

Lou Holz and Yoda: Ok, they shouldn’t crossover, because Holz is an idiot. I just wanted to throw in that they look eerily similar and both are 900 years old.

George Lucas and John Madden: Both are very, very old. Both like really cool things (Lightsabers and Brett Favre). Both did great things in their (relative) youth, but are way past their prime. One made Jar Jar famous, the other made six-legged turkeys famous. Both are loved or hated by everyone. But wouldn’t they do better in each others’ worlds? Imagine John Madden running a Star Wars movie. Do you think there would be any crazy waterfall love scenes in which Natalie Portman is wearing a huge dress even though it is the middle of summer? No. Brett Favre, a Jedi Hood, and a light saber mowing down bad guys “Boom” and “Wap” style. As for George Lucas commentating on a game? We’d get at least TWICE as many awkward I-don’t-know-what-he-just-said-and-I-don’t-know-how-to-get-out-of-this-conversation silent pauses from Al Michaels. Glorious.

Who could do a better commentary for Return of the Jedi?

So I challenge you, norts and sperds. How else can these two universes collide?

Image

Because of the image size, you'll need to download the image to your desktop and view it in preview or whatever program you use to zoom. Thanks for your help, and enjoy!

Super Toast(s): II MEET YOUR MEMBERS!

Here is the second installment of Super Toast, in which you will meet the players of our humble, humble, stage of humility. Please like us.

Super Toast!

The first EVER episode of SUPER TOAST!
Eat it with your face. You love it.

Alpha: The Beta

This is the beginning test run of Super Toast: The Sitcomic. Genre-bending? Yes. Mind-blowing? An emphatic maybe. Suck on the future fat-ones, appearing below.

I'm Head_Brain.



He's Draw_Face:




We will kick you fayce.