S/FJ

ASSISTANT DISTRICT ATTORNEY IN THE BOROUGH OF HOLY SHIT, BRAH

Listening to "Angel of Death" right now on the Slayer box, Soundtrack To The Apocalypse, and I am convinced no other music ever needs to be made or listened to. (Is that overstated? Hey, call 1-800-EAT-SHIT!) My coffee is huffing and puffing to keep up with Kerry "Frozen Metal" King. Chilly can be hot.

Also having serious flashback to early 90s when Dave Reid and Andy Hawkins and I would listen to AC/DC and dub really loud and talk about what underrated human being was actually more of a genius than the people who are normally called geniuses. Thank God that type of A versus A argument has died out!

I'm not sure you shouldn't just buy Reign In Blood seventeen times and be done with it. But I haven't gotten to the end of the thing yet.

One sentence from liner notes: "As introspective as Slayer lyrics can be..." I don't point this out to rrock the tired "celebrating dumb culture by circularly defining it as dumb and cynically celebrating it" routine, nor do I mean to snap on a non-professional writer for not thinking through an aside. But I do. The POINT of metal is that it creates effective narratives that don't depend on clichés of interiority or naturalism or hoary concepts of the real and hyperindividual. Metal practices the confessional inside the generic, dramatic position OF the group it chooses--e.g.: gone crazy because of system; inherently evil ectomorph; blind and legless soldier; all-seeing grouch; helplessly violent refusenik--but rarely outside this form, and rarely in defense of a character that isn't widely generalizable. That's the difference between Slayer and Drive Like Jehu--the attitude toward how vocals express character. (That and and a smattering of generational feelings about tunings and feedback, but those feel like ancillary differences.)

it feels like time for the unfinished Killing Joke thing. In eight minutes we start real work, but let's do it anyway.

Posted by Sasha at December 9, 2003 09:25 AM | TrackBack