I'm posting this for no other reason than that it slays and I love it.

This is the first of two poetry jokes I am about to post.

Princeton professor and Pulitzer Prize-winner Paul Muldoon critiques my favorite pop starlet of the moment, Kesha. In my opinion, he accurately describes the majesty of Kesha's work, the wonderful way she uses word meaning in novel ways to express fresh ideas, and her obvious homage to Yeats.

I feel inspired by her work to create and to continue to create in the face of people not being able to understand the true depths of your work.

My favorite French blackened metal band, Celeste, continue their (s)ification of metal on their newest release, Morte(s) Nee(s). I don't have any thoughts yet since I am just now listening to it for the first time, but I do know that you should get yourself over to their site at denovali.com and download the album for free.

Legally.

Awesome metal for completely free? Awesome. I have nothing but wonderful things to say about this band. Just do it.

Last night I was at The Belmont Lounge for my friend Dumaine's birthday party. We arrived just a little after 8 right in the middle of some sort of unsigned R&B/hip hop artist showcase which sounded like an open mic, but wasn't. Dumaine and his fye-ance Erika had reserved a table in anticipation of the friends who would eventually show up. A smart move, I think. We spoke to the hostess and got her to seat us at the table. Apparently, the woman running the showcase had placed some record company folks, whatever the HELL that means, at the table with the delicately lettered "Reserved" sign on it. When the hostess did her job and moved the record company folks to seat us, this woman raised a hell of a stink.

Instead of doing the right thing and saying, "Hey, you know, I know you have this table reserved and everything, but I would love for these folks to be able to see the rest of the show from here since I'd love for my performers to make some sort of deal with them. Would you mind if they stayed here?"

You know what we would have said? We'd have said, "Of course! No problem. There's only three of us right now and we'd be happy to share the table for the remainder of the show."

But, no. She had to pull the passive aggressive card and give us stink eye all night and bitch to the staff and call us out on the microphone. We were polite and didn't let her bother us, because, really, what's worse for people who are passive aggressive than to reply to them with straight positivity and politeness?

We sat and listened to the second half of the show. After 2 or 3 7 dollar Brooklyn Lager bottles (I know, right, what the fuck), I'm getting lost in my own head a little as all this not-very-good R&B blares through the bar. Conversation was impossible with the volume, so all I had was my own brain. Luckily, at this point, we're friends.

I recognized that every song we heard was about how much the singer loved someone and how they either wanted to spend their lives with the other person or how they were the most beautiful in the world or how they wanted to take them home and sleep with them or whatever. You get it, I think. It was all hyperbole and adolescent descriptions of love and relationships. Kind of silly, really. Not realistic at all.

I got to thinking that it would be really awesome to do a song in the same style where the guy basically told the woman that she was all right, maybe a little annoying, but that he liked fucking her. That he didn't want it to get too serious since he really couldn't see them in a relationship. That he thought she was ok, but not really that great and, in the end, he didn't care too much about her and that she'd probably be better off with someone who respected her. All of it sung in that "I can't just hold a single note" style of modern R&B singers that I dislike so much. It's like constant vocal gymnastics that seems to me more often cover up the fact that the singer's not really hitting the note they're trying to hit. Instead of just singing, they're masking that they can't sing. But whatever.

On the way in to work this morning I was thinking about the song still when I realized that I already KNEW a song like that. Funny, right? It took me 12 hours to process that the song I thought would be so funny pretty much exists. Here it is.

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Now, the Dag track isn't quite exactly perfect, but it's pretty close. Do any of you brilliant people out there have any songs like this? Let's start a collection!

In a day when there were only two cores—hard and grind— and before anyone crabwalked their way through a music video, before there was a scene for which there could be hair, before anyone auto-tuned the clean vocals in their songs, Morbid Angel released an album called Domination. The year was 1995 and I was 13 years old. I had been listening to Morbid Angel for some time at this point. I owned 1989's Altars of Madness and 1991's Blessed Are The Sick, but it was their third album, 1993's Covenant that was the important one. I have no idea how many times I've listened to this album, but it must be in the healthy triple digits. The count was probably into the triple digits when Domination came out in 95. It was right up there with Vulgar Display of Power and Chaos A.D.

I listened the living hell out of that record. In case you are somewhere around my age and are unfamiliar with Covenant but you were around to see Beavis & Butthead, then you might recognize this video.

Pretty killer song right?

I know it is.

And then Domination came out and for some reason I thought they'd gone soft on me. I was disappointed with the album and it never really enter heavy rotation the same way that Covenant had. The songs were weak and soft. They basically made a fucking pussy ass country record I thought. I felt betrayed, so Domination was lodged into the back of my brain as Morbid Angel's failed mid-career attempt at selling out.

Then a few weeks ago, I decided I'd give their "new" record a shot. Of course, this was early 2010, 15 years after its release. Morbid Angel had released three records afterward, yet in my head, for whatever reason, Domination was still the "new" one. Weird how that happens.

And, wow. Was I wrong in my opinions of the album. Domination fucking SLAYS. Perhaps you'd be interested in hearing the song that pretty much convinced me that Morbid Angel had gone soft on this record? Here it is.

What the hell? Was I serious? Something in me thought that this wasn't heavy enough? "Where The Slime Live" is an amazing song, yet 13-year-old Joe thought it was total pussy crap. I was an idiot! In all likelihood I still am!

In case the sample wasn't enough, here are a couple more tracks from the record I had dismissed as not heavy enough.

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Yeah. I know. Totally soft right?

I think I've proven myself here. If you've got some old records around that you maybe didn't get into the first, give them a listen. You might be pleasantly surprised by what you hear.

I have never been a huge fan of Black Metal. There is something about it that has never appealed to me. It's not the culture surrounding it, but something about the style, the musical tropes they engage, the synths, the high pitched scream, whatever, that just has never appealed to me that much. I mean, I've listened to as much Emperor as the next guy, but I would not call myself a Black Metal aficionado. It's always a bit "meh" to me.

When I read a post on Metal Sucks in August about the band Celeste, my eyes immediately went to the phrase "Black Metal" in the article as I skimmed it. But I also saw that they had two albums available for free download, so I thought, Fuck it, right? How horrible could they be?

And holy living fuck am I glad I downloaded them. The "Black Metal" thing completely threw me off initially, but it's really only a faint Black tint in the music, not full bore Black Metal. I don't think French lyrics have ever sounded this awesome. Of course, I don't understand a word, but since when have I judged my enjoyment of metal music on whether or not I could understand the lyrics? The songs possess a savage intensity and rawness that seems to be lacking from so much modern Heavy Metal music. It's not a horrid mess of bad production, but it's also not super clean, super mastered, bland. There is fire and darkness in the music and they sound like no other band in my collection, high praise to be certain. In an age when so many genres and subgenres are basically interchangeable, to release a record with a sound that stands apart from the crowd is a significant achievement, one which Celeste has accomplished. They are one of the freshest bands I've heard since I encountered their fellow Frenchmen, Gojira.

Here are a few sample tracks.

Celeste - Misanthrope(s)

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Celeste - Nihiliste(s)

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If you have any remaining reservations about how amazing this band is, do yourself a favor and just download the records. If you don't have reservations, you're probably downloading already.

Yes, I know. You're welcome.

It's the middle of the night (00:37) and I am watching vintage videos of vintage synthesizers being played by vintage synthesists. What are you doing, huh?

You might know Dr. Samuel Hoffman from his exotica records of Les Baxter. Wait, you don't? What about the record he did with Billy May? Not that either? Wow.

How about a demo track or two, huh?

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Pretty great, right?

You know, I want to like this SO BAD—it's got everything, lasers, geekiness, TRON, garish colors, electrobeats—but I just don't. I don't know what it is. Oh wait...yes I do. It's homeboy's bullshit rapping and weird, totally inappropriate, faux-ghetto hip-hop posturing. Am I reading this wrong? Is it, like, totally ironic or whatever and I'm just not getting it? I think not. I think that, for as perfect of a visual milieu this is for me, the music just sucks. They aren't even good beats. And they rapping is sub standard. All these guys have going for them is style, and even that feels forced.

Maybe if they did a video in this style to the following track...

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...or maybe this one...

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Yeah, you tell those fuckers, Scott Hull!

And, indeed, probably one of the heaviest bands on earth including those with drummers. I'm not exaggerating. Here, have some sample tracks.

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See? These guys are fucking nutso, in the most adorable, heart-warming way possible. Shit, I don't even have anything all that clever to say. Just listen to the music. Scott Hull kicks fucking ass. Is there anything that dude makes that isn't awesome?

Everyone's favorite Christian Death Metal band has a new record coming out later this month and I am super stoked about it. My brother "found" a prerelease copy on the interwebs and sent it to me. It's pretty awesome. It lacks the mind-blowing punch experienced the first time you heard Impending Doom, but that doesn't make it a bad record. I've given it a casual listen through and I am excited about my pre-order come the end of March. Overall, they've broadened their musical battalion in a way that shows real growth for the band. And, oh, is that harmonized growls I hear? Oh yes, yes it is.

Awesome.

Here are two tracks from the record that I feel are demonstrative of Impending Doom's growth.

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