I CAN STOP ANY TIME I WANT

So here's some breaking news I'm an idiot and forgot to link to Tuesday's coverage of Steel Panther on Metal Sucks. I love the MS guys cuz they know all the good shit and so what if they like IWABO? Really! I have an aunt who's been a cokehead for like four decades and her Christmas presents are always great, so we're cool. Likewise, Axl + Vince shit out holiday gifts onto my chest all year round by asking me to cheapen their internet-best Metal site with incoherent, monomaniacal Bellow Journalism (I like copyright that term or something). Oh and they love Living Colour too which is the unmistakable mark of people of taste and good genes. Everybody has a certain player who drove them to pick up a guitar and Vernon Reid is mine I heart you VR.

We're off topic but yeah once again it's Steel Panther time, today in honor of the kinda-new and extremely awesome video for "Fat Girl (Thar She Blows)" (above) a tune that's "Here I Go Again" meets "Down Boys" with backing vox ripped from Hysteria. So yes it's a perfect song. And the vid is a Metal Injection exclusive yummy! Finally, this time I swear there's no Steel Panther story left. I'm don't need to write about them. Shit this here writing is mostly about Metal Sucks. So that's it. Well, until Monday night. Godda wuv me!

ALRIGHT! SHYEAH! C-C-COME ON!

Well, Tuesday was the big day and after devoting about 700 column inches to Steel Panther since the morning "Death To All But Metal" spurted into my life, I am like out of words. Still I whipped up something to commemorate Feel The Steel's stateside release for Metal Sucks, but just cuz I'm a shitty writer doesn't mean I'm insincere about SPanther's bravery. Not real bravery, but y'know Charlize Theron in Monster bravery. The kind that emboldens you to petulantly demand that pussies always be shaved. That's what this world needs. Listen to Feel The Steel here, dickbag.

DEVIN TOWNSEND HAS SUCCUMBED TO MY MIND CONTROL

Like many, I gargle the nuts of Devin Townsend and like slightly fewer, I didn't comprehend his last record. Though there's little of the accompanying despair and disappointment, as Devy is so reliable and evolutionary that one is compelled to take the blame if and when his tunes fail to stick. Further, Ki is the first that hasn't and it came at a time when my mid-life crisis has oriented me backward, and shit I'm not really prepared to just Dorothy into the surreal dimensions of Dev's brain. Which, not for nothing, seems to be enduring a crisis of its own since well forever. Wow that's arrogant of me to write but anyway a November 17 release for Addicted means not even a half-year will've elapsed between parts one and two of Townsend's New Devin Quadrilogy; so it would seem that the two albums may be similar but that's entirely impossible according to Townsend:

Musically, Addicted is along the lines of the big, wall of sound hard rock/heavy metal; [it] is a very direct and 'to the point' album with an emphasis on groove and the chorus. In the past, lots of my records end up taking a kind of Pink Floyd-ish route (between song meandering, etc.) Addicted is really simple: 11 rocking songs with no bullshit.

I wanted to make a record that was heavy, without being dark or depressing. When I got into metal it was for the energy behind it, but somewhere along the way that energy started getting really negative. In music right now, there's a ton of heavy bands that are really depressing to listen to loudly. [Yes! - ed.] I wanted to make a record without any real deep metaphor on the surface. Something that sounds good, has a good beat and a positive feeling. [Yes!!] It is still heavy as-all-get-out, but I think there's a differentiation to be made between being 'peaceful,’ and being peaceful but wanting to celebrate loud, crushing music. [Oh god yes!]

I absolutely love this record and it affects me in a way that I wasn't prepared for. It's a fully rocking album of optimism. If you just want to 'play it loud' without any crazy metaphor, this album might be for you. The reason that Addicted exists is maybe a little deeper than what the record sounds like up front. But up front, it kind of states: 'Life is tough, the world can be an ugly place...so let’s forget about the dramas and Rock - here's some heavy guitars, big choruses and killer beats.

OK having read the above and listened to this new song from Addicted -- and crapped myself with joy -- I can say that this record may end my life. It just might be the record I've been demanding from Townsend: a big-production pop-metal album. This is like the greatest pastry chef in the universe making a donut. This is Kobe on my team for two-on-two. This means my efforts to manipulate his thoughts have succeeded and boy howdy! He just booked his first live date too! Though he must've misheard my directive cuz it's in fucking Europe, which happened with Faith No More too. Shit. Incidentally, this applies to Mike Patton, too, cuz the heavy pop dalliances of each are goddamn fucking awesome. One could make a (shamefully brief) mixtape of these tracks (opening with "Fluke," above), but a post 9/11 Hysteria, as Townsend indirectly promises this November, would pretty much explode my reality. Somebody tell Patton to take off that tinfoil hat.

IT'S A GAY ROMANTIC FLING

I'm successful with the ladies thanks to a system of Copperfield-esque diversions and infusions of alcohol so I'm free to commit questionable acts like eschewing the only implicitly homoerotic football game (Favre you shank) for TCM's feature presentation of Gigi, a fruity musical about the transformation of a Parisian tomboy into a young woman much to the delight of her bored would-be suitor. For the record, it's that rotten Robert Osbourne who sucks you in with intros, providing valuable context and endorsements. Lucky for me, it turns out that Gigi is less gay than NFL after all, what with its opening number, sung by a leering old man, called 'Thank Heaven For Little Girls'. That's right, I just defended my heterosexuality by pointing out that Gigi is uncomfortably pedophilic. I'm not sure that's a word but I'm not going to fucking google it unless I want Pete Townsend showing up here followed by the FBI.

Anyway, hours after my brush with perilous erotic messages, my antidote was to rub a bunch of Slayer on my balls. That shit defeats the pernicious influence of foofoo dandies mincing (Gigi was awesome btw) or tight-panted men penetrating each other's defenses while also protecting their own brown thing. After Decade of Aggression, I feel much straighter again but now I kinda want to skull-bang a dead nazi or something. Ick.

DON'T YOU FUCKIN' DARE TO UNCHAIN THE NIGHT, YOU SON OF A BITCH

I was thinking about Dokken today (yesssss I was watching Nightmare on Elm Street 3) and hey did anyone else think at first that they were European? If you had any awareness of the scene and George Lynch's rep back then, you'd know otherwise. But if say you grew up in the indifferent suburbs of the nation's box spring, L.A. might as well have been fucking Laos. So anyway, the first hint was their bizarre name, which seemed to belong to a German coffeemaker or golf clubs used by Japanese businessmen. It turned out to be the pouty one's last name. Then you have the brooding, minor key rockers and dignity-free histrionics that would embarrass Coverdale, each song treating infidelity and heartbreak like pending nuclear holocaust. Oh oh and the bad metaphors, with which Don warns against unchaining the night and the perils of a "Heartless Heart" whatever that shit means. Anyway it says here that in the band Dokken's pre-natal stages, Don guested on a Scorpions album (shudder) and through an acquaintance with Accept landed a record deal in Europe. So there you have it. This was supposed to be about Slayer. Sorry bout that but Dokken is hilarious.