So, yeah, this video will not change the world or save BMX. It will not blow your mind or destroy your senses. It has some technical glitches because I don’t know what I’m doing (and I’m doing my best to not go back and Lucasing the whole thing, although my OCD is a very tough opponent). What it is is a guy having fun on his bicycle, which I think should be enough.
I am no longer an angry young man. There are more than a few people out there who would say I was never a young man, having what we in the South call “an old soul,” but the fact of the matter is at 37 the things that mattered to me at 27 or 17 are not the same. At 37 I’m not pissed off that I can’t get laid or that my girlfriend left me, I’m annoyed that the mortgage and the car note are due on the same day and that I stepped bare footed in a puddle of dog pee left by a 13 year old Labrador in the middle of the night. It’s not very metal, it’s certainly not “brootal,” but it’s what happens when you grow up, suddenly your problems become boring.
Similarly, at 37 I don’t feel the need to listen to (or make) the most soul crushingly aggressive music ever anymore. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’ll always have a soft spot in my heart for Reign in Blood and I think it’s nearly impossible to look at Metallica’s foray into Slightly Southern Fried Hard Rockallica as anything but pure fail (“Gimme fyoo, gimme fie, gimme that which I diseye” my ass) but, you know, sometimes you just need some good, hard rockin’ music to put the window and the hammer down to. Something like Nickelback or Godsmack or Disturbed, only not at all like them because I said good.
I get the feeling that Volbeat main man Michael Poulsen probably felt similarly when he threw fans of his death metal band, Dominous, a curve ball by releasing a slab of southern fried straight up metal with the album Vol.Beat. More so when he put a stake through Dominous’ heart and brought to life his next project, the “Elvis metal” Volbeat.
Now four albums in, Beyond Hell/Above Heaven is in my grubby little ears (really, anybody got a Q-Tip?). Giant hooks, smart pop sensibilities a cool ’50s aesthetic and an obsession with hot rods and outlaws. These guys should be massive, but this album came out last year and I didn’t even know about it. Apparently their record label doesn’t understand the concept of marketing music to drive fast to. How awesome is this album and how badly is Universal dropping the ball?
There are no words.
That sound you hear is James Hetfield’s splooge hitting the floor as some guys from Denmark (who are not Lars Ulrich) fully realize his psychobilly wet dream. I don’t know if there’s another album where you can hear a double bass play in unison with double bass drums or hear death metal vocals along side cowpunk rhythms but you’ll hear it here and you’ll here it good. There are no bad songs on this album. There are some oddities (the aforementioned death grunt on “Evelyn” and the death inflected rhythms on “7 Shots”) and some tracks that could easily slot in on the radio (“Fallen” and “Heaven Nor Hell”) but nothing stands out as “bad” nothing even stands out as “average” it’s all “good” or “really fucking awesome.”
Look, if you’ve ever bought a Social Distortion album and liked it, this album is for you. If you’ve ever bought a Social Distortion album and thought it needed an injection of HGH directly to the ball sack, this album is for you (I am not a doctor, injecting HGH to the balls could result in shrinkage, I don’t know, but it seems like it shouldn’t). If you have a “Cash” sticker on your helmet, this album is for you and it’s available here.
