FOLLOW ME OR DIE

A swell of pride filled my breast this morning as HooM!'s followers count has reached a robust 13. Oh baby. That places HooM! in the same popularity bracket as Anthrax ZING! But seriously, that's awesome and you're awesome and I hope you read the awesome Behemoth interview that the cosmos bestowed upon me last week. Know what else is awesome? The awesome Metal awesomes who dude-flirted with me at the supermarket on Saturday. That's what. There was some line chaos in the self-checkout, and when I protested, they bro'd me back to calmness with righteous Metal chatting. I tried to all talk up the Behemoth interview (read it) but suddenly I glanced down and the broccoli and CTC in my basket came into sharp contrast with the glistening 32oz brews in each of their hands, their merry hesher hands. My confidence withered but I'm fairly certain that those chucklehouses can identify a person who's stoned down to their very DNA, and therefore might cut me some slack though that night's grocery list was straight from a chick flick. The real tragedy is that I should've been making fun of one who listed his favorite band as Children of Bodom. He was kidding right?

ERIK RUTAN JUST SAID THE MAGIC WORDS

At my first Nile show, I was spirited away to a magical, sleepy land where the passage of time was marked by snare drum hits and all active cognition existed beneath a syrup of washed-out guitars. I experienced a dream in which I serenely but doggedly was attempting to correct the contrast on an old TV mistakenly left among a display of ancient Egyptian artifacts. By the fourth song, a tug at my sleeve and nod toward the parking lot disrupted my slumber. In retrospect, it's a certainty that Nile was hamstrung by the awful Vic Theatre's awful sound design. But it was enough to put me off the band. Hey I'm a busy man and ours is a one-shot world. But fates conspire to bring Nile back into my life; first, guitarist Karl Sanders is quoted in Decibel:

[Behemoth frontman] Nergal is a really nice guy. When we toured England together, I got horribly sick. I had this awful flu -- I probably should've flown home and gone to a fuckin' doctor, but I didn't. I tried to tough it out. Every day, I would wake up in my bunk so fuckin' sick, and Nergal would be right there, giving me medicine and trying to help me. The dude went way out of his way and I didn't know him from nothin'. So we started calling him Dr. Nergal.

Ok, if restoring the health of Nile's mainman is important enough to distract Nergal from his march toward world domination, then it's probable that Nile deserves a proper day in HooM! court. But I'm lazy so it'd take a second ringing endorsement from a reliable Metalist, someone in the position to improve Nile's iffy production, like oh say awesome death Metal guy Erik Rutan. Rutan also spoke to Decibel mostly about his engineering work on Nile's forthcoming sixth album, and uh-bup-bup-bup what's this about Hate Eternal?

I’ve wanted to do another Alas record for a long time. But between Morbid Angel and Hate Eternal and having a studio, I haven’t had time. The last five years I’ve done a lot of production work. Alas just didn’t fit. I’ve been writing music. Slowly. I’ve finally had a couple of weeks to focus on it. That’s the luxury of having a studio. I can pretty much mic everything up and start pre-production. After two weeks we had 10 songs. It’s like, ‘Holy shit!’ I also have a good chunk of the next Hate Eternal record ready.

NERGAL AND I ARE GALPALS

It's beach day in HooM!ville, so it was in flip-flops and flowery shorts that I just spent the lunch-hour gabbing about Metal with Behemoth's Adam "Nergal" Darski. It's hard to believe there's someone more enthusiastic about Evangelion, his band's ninth and best record. But alas, Nergal is pumped! And he should be: Evangelion sounds perfect (Colin Richardson NFA) and the songs are dynamic and huge. During the interview, Nergal expressed his gratitude for the warm popular and critical reception so far, but I swiftly struck down that modesty by insisting that awesome records shrouded in a captivating mystique will demand attention and accolades; it's not like fans are doing him a favor by having their minds blown. That'd be like chicks thanking me for sex. Usually they just cry and cry...

Read the full Q&A at MetalSucks this week!

DECREPIT ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS

If I'm reading it right, Nergal of Behemoth is an rad individualist who feels that society's rot begins with its masses turning over their lives to somebody else's antiquated belief systems. He's also incredibly positive and sincerely hopes that each of us reaches our potential for asskickosity. And he lives his message by banging this hot-ass Polish chick.

The other awesome Metal role model who blew my reality apart this week is Decrepit Birth vocalist Bill Robinson, another mega-rebel. The awesome Angela Gossowski of MetalSucks should rush-produce a extreme Metal inspirational book based on her recent Robinson interview titled oh say A Decrepit Guide To Taking Your Life Back with little footprints on the jacket. Centered on undecorated white pages:

I don’t want to work, and I don’t want to pay money to sleep.

My job is to grow herb for a living.

We’re not in the States. We live in a country called “California” [laughs].

I live where I live, I just don’t live in a house. I live outside year round – snow, rain, whatever.

[I have a bank account] only so I can cash checks. I don’t keep anything in there because they don’t need to know what I have.

Life is pretty good. I don’t think we struggle too much. [Decrepit Birth guitarist] Matt Sotelo's dad died. [The lyrics he writes] really reflect a lot of the personal stuff for him. For me, I do hallucinogens a lot, so there’s some influence for me right there.

Again, I could be wrong but the Robinson way represents an equally defiant but more cynical view than that of Nergal; Robinson has made himself nearly invisible to society. So that implies he doesn't want to save it. Shit that's not logically true. It implies either that to him shit is too fucked to fix orrrrrr wait for it ... that ... the solution to society's ills is each of us retreating to a solitary field to grow/smoke tons of pot and only emerge occasionally to front death metal bands. Or something. And he's cool with your lame haircut, too! Seriously Bill call me or give me your coordinates or whatever cuz I'm tense, dude. Teach me the way; I'll be Steve Martin and you're Michael Caine like in that movie and we'll compete for the purse and poonanny of Glenne Headly. Scratch that last part.

FUCK THA MOUNTED POLICE

It's just common sense that terrorists like to travel with a lot of decorative body armor, guitars, and white make-up so I can see how Canadian border authorities would hesitate to permit bands into their country to make loud sounds. In Behemoth's case, there clearly is some sinister anti-Metal prejudice at work here and I can't be the only one who suggests retaliatory legislation from the band's home country of Poland recalling all those NHL players with unpronounceable names. Well we at HooM! and our hothead buddies will take action and just for that shit, we've got Rush's drummer and he is never again setting foot in Canada without the incursion of a billion dollar Peart tariff.

YOU DIRTY BASTARDS

If not for stupid awesome Lebron's big shot to win game 2, the Magic would  have an insurmountable 3-0 series lead on those rotten Cavs. 'Twas a clutch play made possible by some uh iffy officiating and no pressure on the inbounds passer and Lebron's awesome so I feel guilty for cursing him when, as a basketball snob purist type, I should worship him. Another guy I'm pissed at for being a winner is Behemoth frontman Nergal, who's boffing some free-thinking naked model/pop singer in Poland (above, sushi?). To put that into perspective, it's equivalent to Erik Rutan porking Britney Spears. Or Barney Greenway and Posh Spice. 

THE GERMAN SAYS TO WAIT HERE

Last time we at HooM! got all horny for a new Colin Richardson project, it was mixing duties on Slipknot's latest collection of shouty, shrill semi-metal, All Hope Is Gone. OK sorry there's actually some decent shit on that record, but anyway Richardson as mixer habitually gives a muscular, full-spectrum sound to even the most misguided projects cough Bullet For My Valentine cough cough. That's why it's bonertastic to hear Richardson's skillz being used to aid the forces of good. Which in this case are actually the forces of evil. Cuz Behemoth -- goddammit you know what the fuck I mean. Behemoth mainman Nergal on Richardson, via Blabbermouth:

I'm stoked about Richardson's involvement in the mix of the record. We've tried to book him for The Apostasy, but he wasn't available then. His name needs no introduction [uhh sic that like a mofo]. I have absolutely no doubts that Colin will deliver and I'm expecting new album to have the sound that's bigger than life!Z

I'm not down with today's hip lingo (as proven by the preceding phrase), but I think that 'Z' is some sort of coded message to underground Satanic youth communities, initiating a worldwide assault on Christian establishment using church-bombings and synchronized assassinations. Or it's a shout-out to that Peter Stormare-looking freak on the Cavaliers. One of those.

YOU DO NOT FUCK WITH BEHEMOTH

It's hilarious that freaky religious types are so quick to publicly indict satanist Metal bands, calling them oh say criminals. This despite the fact that only in isolated instances has any satanist -- Metal or otherwise -- committed a crime, while it's well-documented that various Christian institutions have built their legacies on warfare, slaughter, and sexual abuse. And boring ass blathering about bliz-blaz and him-ham. Like total jerk-off Ryszard Nowak, head of the All-Polish Committee for Defence Against Sects, who has been slapped with a big fat libel suit by Adam "Nergal" Darski, head of the All-Polish Committee for Defence Against Hypocritical Fuckwits, aka Behemoth. From Metal Portal:

Nergal is demanding an apology from Nowak in [daily newspaper] Gazeta Wyborcza and three thousand zloty donated to an animal shelter in Gdynia. Nowak claims that his apologies would be a green light to all musicians worshiping Satan, that they can do everything on stage: burn crosses, destroy the bible or just offend Christians. "I'd rather go to prison," Nowak says.

Nowak registered an official complaint with the authorities in Poland regarding a Behemoth concert that took place in Gdynia last September during which Nergal reportedly called the Catholic Church "the most murderous cult on the planet" before tearing up the Bible, stating, "they call it the Holy Book, I call this the book of lies. Fuck the shit, fuck the hypocrisy." In February this year in Gdynia Public Prosecutor's Office initiated the investigation. After three months the investigation had been terminated.

I'm no expert on Poland (except for some lightbulb jokes) but one gets the sense that there are more important issues for public agencies to tackle there besides a guy saying words to people who pay money to see him. Pay to see him say words. Words set to music. And call me crazy, but with or without this clown's apology (and very conservative punitive damages award), Gorgoroth, Watain, Behemoth and untold others will continue to fuck shit up on stage in Poland and elsewhere. And maybe I'm on drugs, but if anything is illegal, it's publicly slandering a law-abiding citizen (and damaging his business interests) and filing nuisance claims based on your dickless, small-minded personal beliefs. Then again, I had chicken tacos for breakfast today. So.

FIGHT THE POWERS THAT BEHEMOTH

I feel a little weird saying this but Bjork's label in the UK annoys the shit out of me. I pursue information regarding only Metal and the NBA and yet everytime I scan a new releases list, One Little Indian,  the Icelandic artiste's British record company home, is dumping out a nearly-diarretic in pace and substance stream of singles, remixes, special editions, DVDs, and other shit. OLI chief Derek Birkett is bro-brah with Bjork since forever and boy has that paid off. I, too, befriended a partially-retarded dork years ago and my only payment is occasionally burning a couple CDs from dude. That dude needs to Bjork it up.

Polish black metallists Behemoth haven't reached that point, but ugh here comes another EP of kuh-wite inessential stuff. Oh sorry I mean inessential satanic metal that rips.  Cuz anyone who's wandered within earshot of my big mouth knows that Behemoth is awesome as shit. And that's a lot of people. New video for "Inner Sanctum" featuring the lovely and talented Warrel Dane above. And from Blabbermouth:

The band's new EP, Ezkaton, is scheduled for release in North America on November 11 through Metal Blade Records. The EP will feature seven tracks, one brand new song ("Qadosh"), a live recording as well as a new studio version of "Chant For Ezkaton 2000 e.v.". Also included are live versions of "From The Pagan Vastlands" and "Decade Ov Therion" plus covers of The Ramones' "I'm Not Jesus" and the Masters Hammer track "Jama Pekel".