Mystic Negro dot Com

When I do an album you didn’t buy it’s usually because I came across some random, forgotten gem on Amazon (or, more and more lately, the Zune Marketplace). Then I live with the album for a week or so. Or at least I try to. Sometimes I can’t. Sometimes..

Oh let me just say, this album has a high degree of shittiassitudiness.

Way back when I was a wee Mystic Negro in college I was transitioning from listening to the hair metal bands of my youth to heavier fare I decided to give this album a try. This was based mostly off a recommendation of the only Faith No More guitarist that was actually worth a damn then Faith No More guitarist Jim Martin proclaiming its heaviness and awesomeness.  Unbeknownst to me Jim is a filthy, dirty liar.

I thought that given my advanced age and appreciation for heavier music…

OK, let’s just break this down, with few exceptions (“Self Immolation” and…”Self Immolation) there really isn’t anything here.  It’s a sprawling mess full of riff salad loosely collected into “songs.” Full of samples that are meant to be “disturbing,” or “heavy” or maybe “scary.”  Some would call it “progressive,” but it’s just an aimless mess (much like this review).  One track, “Natividad” (which I believed is named after guitarist Dino Cazares’ grandmother) consists of what sounds like a metal trash can thrown down a concrete staircase.  I love you too, nana!

If this is music you didn’t buy, you’re smarter than me.

Over on the Deciblog they’re still doing “Justify Your Shitty Taste in Music” (I STILL think someone should do “Justify The Shitty Music in Your Web Edit”). They got around to someone justifying liking Celtic Frost’s Cold Lake. And they posted the video to Cherry Orchards

I had forgotten how bad that song was. Really. (I will agree that the opening riff is pretty awesome, though)

To understand why Cherry Orchards is so bad you kind of have to hear what Celtic Frost is supposed to sound like.

I’m waiting for Sean to chime in on how it wasn’t that bad. It was that bad. Tom G. Warrior, the man who wrote “Procreation of the Wicked” is wearing fingerless, white, lace gloves. It was that bad.

There are weird things in this world and there a really, truly, amazingly, fucking weird things in this world.

This is the latter.

20 years ago, someone decided that it’d be a good idea to have Napalm Death on a children’s television show. Lee Dorian appears to be high, and not even the Brits understand that one accent where they pronounce “th” as “f” (“It’s def me’al.” I think that was The Hard Corps who came like 2 – 3 years after this). I’d also like to point out two things about the band.

1. Everyone at or around the age of 40 in any band in England was in Napalm Death at some point.  To an extent, they’re like London, only you’ve actually heard of Napalm Death.  Please note that this is the version that contained Lee Dorian (now in Candlemass) and Bill Steer (Carcass).
2. Not a single person who is currently in Napalm Death  was in Napalm Death when this video was shot.  Napalm Death is not a band, it is an idea…of death by napalm, or something.

What do you do when you’re a Grammy winning children’s film scorer (Check out “Elmo in Grouchland”) and not at all closet metalhead? You take videos on YouTube and remake them in brilliant ways.  Oh yeah, that’s what you do.
Suddenly my plan to cover “McArther Park” as a death metal song doesn’t seem so bad.