THE BEAK FELL OFF.

Thanks, Elizabeth!

This is amazing. They shoved a fibre optic camera up this woman's nose and down her throat to get these shots. Your throat looks like an alien when you're singing. So great.

Thanks, Charles V!

Because I don't have a whole lot of awesome to talk about right now, here's a pretty killer video of Giorgio Moroder playing with his Vocoder. Please note the mustache.

Enjoy!

Good morning, Black Laserites! I'm not working this week, but I haven't forgotten about you. Here's an amazing video that will make your stomach drop.

The whole thing can be summed up in one quote, "At the beginning of wingsuit base jumping we were trying to get as far from the wall as possible, so basically clearing out the whole thing. And now it's getting boring so we play around."

Yeah, you read that. Jumping off the side of a mountain wearing only a jumpsuit with flying squirrel-like wings attached GOT BORING. What the fuck are they putting in the water in Norway?

Yesterday, before posting Die Antwoord's music videos, I sent them to my friend Gardner, absolutely sure that he would enjoy them. I was, of course, right. He loved the hell out of them right away. And, being Gardner, what does he do? He finds the band's e-mail and send them an e-mail about how awesome they are.

To: Die Antwoord
From: Gardner Loulan
Subject: You are now my gods.

I just came across your stuff via my friends blog TheBlackLaser.net and I am totally obsessed now. I was a VJ for MTV Networks in the US a few years ago and have a knack for getting excited about the next level of music and you are it. It's like you're bitch slapping Lady Gaga while melting The Knife in her propelled by The Sounds and blowing up Golgol Bordello with an M.I.A. bomb---- putting them all int he past and back together again in the future where you clearly reside.

Well done,
-Gardner Loulan

Now, one usually expects this sort of missive to go unnoticed or unreplied to. But did it? Of course not!

From: Die Antwoord
To: Gardner Loulan

what a FUCKIN nice thing to say
we fuckin love you for saying this

once my blaar!

NINJA
out

This trifecta of e-mails was completed with a brief note from Gardner to me.

To: Me
From: Gardner Loulan

My day is now complete.

Awesome. Thank you, internet, for allowing us to have such remarkable instantaneous contact with such diverse people from all around the world. Though we often take it for granted, the ease with which we can communicate with folks from such places as far from us as South Africa is truly incredible.

And also thanks, Die Antwoord, for being cool enough to respond to Gardner.

And thanks, Gardner, for being enthusiastic enough about everything to go out of your way, if only a little bit, to track these dudes down.

If you haven't yet watched the music videos below, do. And get yourself to Die Antwoord's website and listen to their, frankly, amazing debut streaming in its entirety. Go now!

Over at Invisible Oranges today, Cosmo Lee is further exploring his distaste for power metal. Personally, I like power metal. It's cheesy and stupid and ridiculous, but it is also totally awesome. It's like you've got a bunch of dudes sitting around after an epic campaign of AD&D (2nd ruleset, duh) and they're all talking about how to make the most epic metal ever.

"Well guys, we probably need operatic vocals," says one.

"And probably powerful sweeping guitars," says another.

"And the guitars could have solo battles with the synthesizers," says a third.

"Yeah, that would be rad," says the first.

"And we probably need a constant barrage of double bass drums," says yet another.

"And our lyrics should be about elves and unicorns and dragons and shit."

And thus was Power Metal born into this world. If ever there was a metal genre filled with earnest as hell guys pursuing the impossible dream by making the silliest, unicorn-filled music ever, it is Power Metal.

Here is a selection of some of my favorites of the genre. Let's start with Rhapsody, perhaps THE awesome, MOST ridiculous Power Metal band of all time. Even better, they're Italian. This is "Power of the Dragonflame." Is that not an awesome song title?

Next is Demons & Wizards, probably my first intro to true modern Power Metal. My friend Deegan came over one day and was all, "Dude, do you have Napster?" and I was all, "Over dial up, yeah," and he was all, "Dude, find a song called 'Poor Man's Crusade' right now," and I was all, "Ok." Well, I did and it was AWESOME.

This song, "Fiddler on the Green," is from the same record. It is, I think my favorite song on the record and has a 3 and a half minute build to insanely powerful power metal magic.

Star One is a one-off side project by Anthony Arjen Lucassen of Ayreon. The record, called "Space Metal," is a Power Metal concept record based on Science Fiction movies.

Wait. Read that again.

A POWER METAL CONCEPT RECORD BASED ON SCIENCE FICTION MOVIES. What the fucking fuck? That is so awesome. Films include Stargate, Star Wars, and fucking Dune. Honestly, I can't think of anything that combines dork and awesome more perfectly.

Here's a fan-made video for "Eye of Ra" from that record.

Dream Evil, who I posted one below this one, is a Swedish Power Metal band I saw for the first time live playing with Carnal Forge, Testament, Immortal, and Rob Halford—a strange line up to be sure. But they totally rock. Here's "Fire, Battle, Metal!"

Hammerfall is another band doing epic heavy cheese as well as anyone and they totally rock. This is "Renegade."

With this light survey of Power Metal under our belts, what do we now understand. For me, Power Metal is awesome if you are able to relax and not take yourself too seriously. While I think that there are guys in this scene who live and breathe this shit, I also think there's a significant contingent of guys who are laughing right along with the fans. Sometimes you can make and enjoy things just because they're fun. That, more than unicorns and dragons and elves and trolls, is what Power Metal is about for me. I love Pig Destroyer, but my music doesn't always have to be so serious.

Because this is totally awesome and if you don't agree you're wrong.

Wow.

Last night Juli and I watched Tyson, a documentary on the legendary and oft reviled boxer, Mike Tyson. It was quite an illuminating experience and really helped flesh out the character of Mike Tyson in my brain. Before the film, all I really could have told you about him could easily be summed up in the following list.

• He was a boxer.
• He went to prison.
• Mike Tyson's Punch Out.
• Don King.
• Robin Givens.
• Face tattoo.

Comprehensive, right?

Now, the film struck me in two distinct ways. First is that is has humanized Mike Tyson for me. Where once he was this media icon, a person I heard about on the news but about whom I knew nothing, now I feel like after hearing his nearly incomprehensible, insane rambling for 90 minutes I understand him for what he really is: a frightened man-child who was thrown into a world he had no tools for coping with where people wanted to take advantage of him because he was able to dominate guys in a boxing ring. It seems clear that this man who can barely form a coherent sentence, nearly breaks down crying when talking about his childhood in Brownsville, Brooklyn, and whose minds wanders wildly onto all sorts of tangents is ill equipped to deal with the world on any level, much less a high demand career surrounded by men trying to use him to fill their bank accounts. What Mike Tyson needed was a mentor and a hug, not managers and trainers and millions of dollars.

Of course, I'm not excusing his behavior. There is no doubt that he has done some terrible things in his life. He readily admits this, in fact, explaining his explosiveness after release from prison as being driven by the fear of never wanting to be back in that position of powerlessness again. Really, it is an extension of his childhood fears resulting from growing up in the ghetto and constantly having to fight physically and mentally not to get killed. You can see when he talks about it that he's pretty messed up inside, confused, angry, uncertain. You can tell when his speech degenerates from his normal bumbling patterns of repeated phrases and half finished sentences to venom filled curses that he is, if nothing else, being honest about his feelings.

Tyson's is a harrowing story of what can happen to people when the enter into a world of fame and riches without the grounding needed to cope. It's really sad that this man who was indomitable in the ring was eventually brought down because, as a person, he was incapable of making sane, healthy decisions for himself. I know that sounds like a truism, but in Tyson's case, it's rather acute. The peaks of his successes and the valleys of his defeats are so much more extreme than what most people could ever dream of experiencing that his tale serves as almost like this abstract object lesson, this parable of how not to live your life.

Second, what struck me about the film was that it really doesn't follow traditional documentary techniques. Based on Tyson's clothes and the set ups, it's like they had four or five days of one on one interview with the man and then used that interview SOLELY as the basis for the film. Where as other films might get interviews with people from his past, from his current life, director James Toback has used only Tyson's words, along with a smattering or archival footage, to tell the story. It is incredibly effective. To enhance the sense that the inside of Tyson's head is a jumbled mess, Toback overlaps sections of the interview both visually and temporally with bits of dialog coming in on top of each other and trailing off, a web of ideas and thoughts barely distinguishable from the next.

So, long story short, go see it. You have no excuse.

Coffee Talk with Cobra Commander has been making me laugh for days. COBRA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA!!!!!!!

Here are a few good ones.

Check the site for more.

Today I learned about a genre of metal called "New Old School Death Metal" or NOSDM. While I think the resurgence of old school style Death Metal is awesome, I'm a little surprised by it. Had it really gone anywhere? I was always of the opinion that since its inception, there have been dudes playing Death Metal the same way. Sure, the bands change and the members of the bands change, but hasn't there always been a core of old school Death going on somewhere?

Did I miss out on something? Was I too busy listening to Old Old School Death Metal (OOSDM) records to notice?

Did Death Metal change so much that we're experiencing a revival of the classic form much in the same manner as thrash suddenly became huge again about three years ago? Do we refer to Municipal Waste and Toxic Holocaust as "New Old School Thrash Metal" or NOSTM? Are all these labels really necessary? If we didn't call these new DM bands NOSDM, but just plain called them Death Metal, would it be so hard to understand? Would it be wrong?

Let's posit that Death Metal in its traditional form peaked about 1994, to be superseded by the Swedish style that dominated the later 90s and early 00s. (No, nü-metal doesn't fucking count.) The earliest known uses of the term "Death Metal" were found somewhere around 1984, giving Death Metal a 10 year run. Now, if a style falls out of favor but does not disappear completely, can we really call its resurgence by a new name? Composers wrote Baroque music for 160 years. It's not like when Baroque first showed up, went through a wave of initial popularity, decreased slightly in public opinion, and then showed up again they called it New Old School Baroque Music (NOSBM), did they?

The whole thing, and really the extreme fragmentation of metal subgenres in general, seems pretty silly to me.

And, because I am such a caring person, I won't let you go without some examples.

Let's do a chronological survey of some of my favorite Death Metal, shall we?

1987's "Beyond the Unholy Grave" - Death

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1987's "Bleed for the Devil" - Morbid Angel

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1989's "Sacrificial Suicide" - Deicide

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1990's "Burden of Evil" - Monstrosity

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1991's "Jesus Wept" - Suffocation

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1992's "Hammer Smashed Face" - Cannibal Corpse

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1993's "Preacher of Sodomy" - Broken Hope

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1994's "Born Headless" - Cryptopsy

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1995's "Nothing But Fear" - Morbid Angel

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1996's "Permanently Disfigured" - Dying Fetus

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1997's "Save To The Cross" - Deicide

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1998's "Flame To The Surface" - Cryptopsy

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1999's "Blowtorch Slaughter" - Cannibal Corpse

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2000's "Christians To The Lions" - Behemoth

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2001's "Blind The Vision That Shatters" - Neuraxis

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2002's "Dead Sea Scroll Deception" - Lock Up

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2003's "History Is Rotten" - Misery Index

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2004's "Sensual Sickness" - Decapitated

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2005's "The Victorious Reign" - Hate Eternal

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2006's "The Crawl Inside Me Uninvited" - Coldworker

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2007's "Rebirth In Blood" - Blood Red Throne

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2008's "Slaughtering The Will To Live" - Bloodbath

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2009's "Carrion Sculpted Entity" - Cannibal Corpse

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Sorry, for some reason I don't have any Death Metal from 1988 on my iPod right now. I'll fix that oversight when I get home tonight.

Now, listen to the bands on an article by Decibel Magazine about NOSDM. It seems to me that besides some basic evolution in the quality of the productions, that Death Metal has been alive an well since at least 1987. So, do we need this new label at all? Can we not just keep calling it Death Metal? Do we need OOSDM, MEOSDM (Mid-Era Old School Death Metal), and NOSDM? What happens when NOSDM becomes Old New Old School Death Metal (ONOSDM)?

For the initiated and uninitiated out there who take the time to read and listen to this, what do you think? Comment away.