Sometimes, it’s hard to open a blog. The intro is such a delicate area. You need something that not only grabs the attention of the reader, but also serves as a gate to the realm of what is to come. Many people find it easiest to select a quote that lends itself to what is to come. So, today, I will open this blog by quoting the lyrics to a song that is both resounding with elegance and beauty. Here we go:
“In blood his victims will crawl. Body parts all over his house. They feed the need of his cannibal mind. Bloody murders he left behind. Jeffrey Dahmer – master cannibal. Jeffrey Dahmer – master of the gruesome”
Chilling in it’s poetic genius, isn’t it? Oh, how the transfixing melodies of Soulfly open my very soul and implant seeds of true emotional openness.
In truth, that song scared my heart out of my ass. He’s singing a song about Jeffrey Dahmer. You know, a song. A SONG. As in: La la la. As in: do ra me fa so la te DAHMER! Granted, I couldn’t make out most of the lyrics because they were screamed in such a way that I thought the radio was picking up static. It wasn’t. It was his voice. To be honest, he did capture the tone of the song… so kudos to him.
While at work, we tend to listen to a local listener-run radio station. The sheer variety of things played on each of the specialty programs throughout each night (this was at about 3 in the morning, mind you) are borderline limitless. From old school funk to crazy techno to this: the true metal show. You think you’ve listened to metal? Your metal is pansy baby bullshit compared to this metal. This metal rapes your metal in the butt. These metal bands urinate on your very SOUL with their metalocity!
As my blood pressure finally found it’s way back to normal from my fright, I began to analyze what I heard. Was he really singing about Jeffrey Dahmer? Naw, he couldn’t be. I mean, is that really subject matter for a song? I picture the creative force behind this song sitting down behind his desk, pen to paper. The scraps of previous failed songs lie strewn everywhere. Songs such as “An Ode To Ted Bundy” or “Charles Manson’s Love Ballad Number 6″. A kitten in the corner batting around a ball of paper. A pretty daffodil sits on the window sill. The BBC news coming out of the tv behind him. And here he is hit, finally, by a hammer called inspiration. What will soon be his magnum opus, his life’s masterpiece, begins to pour out of the end of his pencil. The words jump from the tip as he sips his green tea with just a hint of honey, humming a tune to the words as they come. It will be his time to shine!
Jeffrey Fucking Dahmer? I understand wanting to be a hardcore bad-ass metal band, but… JEFFREY FUCKING DAHMER?! How can you possibly write a more fucked up song?
Don’t EVER ask questions like that while listening to a death metal radio show, because not twelve seconds after the thought passed through my head, did I hear through the jumble of teeth-shattering bass and brain melting guitars, a wonderful lyric about SCHOOL SHOOTINGS!
Oh yes, student bodies line the halls indeed! Why the hell NOT write a song about school shootings? And these bands wonder why, when shit goes down, they’re blamed for it.
“Yes, the prosecution would like to present this album from the band Nun Molesters, titled ‘Why Don’t You Go Downstairs And Rape Your Sister In the Ear’. On the albums opening track ‘Kill Everyone At Your School’, vocalist and main lyricist Stab A. Baby sings… er… does something… screams… whatever… anyway, the lyric is ‘Take a machine gun and start shooting everyone in the auditorium’. Clearly this was the source of inspiration for the mass murder that took place on campus”
It’s at this time that Mr. Baby, real name Albert Kuttiefluffs, stands to defend his work.
“Your honor, we weren’t being SERIOUS when we said that!”
“The song continues, ‘No, we’re not kidding. We’re completely serious. Kill all the teachers first, and then rape all the female students. And then kill them. Seriously. You should go do this now.’ that… sorta sounds like you’re serious to me.”
“You just don’t understand music today. We were making an ironic statement about the current state of our government and world politics in general. If you only understood your kids, you’d realize that these lyrics are relevant to them and what they stand for. It was not intended to cause any real world harm.”
“…You do see how it could sorta be confused as… well… a call for massive killings though, right? I mean, in the song ‘Stab ‘Em In The Eye Balls’, you say ‘If someone makes you mad, stab them in the eye balls. And then piss in the hole where their eye’s once were.’ how does that NOT come across as a call for aggression? What possible statement were you making with that?”
“That’s clearly a rant about the current state of education funding and overwhelming student to teacher ratio!”
“Yes, clearly.”
Listen, I’m more than certain that MOST if not all of these songs aren’t actually calling for terrible acts, and I’m not one to blame music or media of any sort for violent acts, but these artists need to see that the possibility for someone to think it’s the source is there. I mean… you’re singing about school shootings. And someone who commits a school shooting happens to listen to your music. It’s kind of easy to make a connection.
Should this kind of music exist? Of course. Why not? I don’t like it. I think it sounds like someone is rectally violating a cat with a serrated steak knife. But someone likes it. And as such, it should be allowed to be made. Because guess what? The same horror and disgust I get from hearing a song about Jeffrey Dahmer, I get from listening to Celine Dion. My heart will go on? My heart will be torn out and eaten by legions of demons from the depths of Satan’s nard-sack? Both sound just as vile to me…
I suppose this means I should touch on the concept of blaming media for violent crimes. It’s an age-old problem. Everything is blamed on violent media. My son beat his brother to drool-and-helmet levels of brain damage with a steel chair because he saw a wrestler do it on tv. My daughter slit her throat open and bled all over the Thanksgiving turkey because she heard Marilyn Manson tell her too. My kids went out and shot up a 7-11 because they were playing Grand Theft Auto.
No, they did that ’cause you’re a shitty fucking parent and the world sucks total ass. Jesus, I’m just a hair away from buying a mansplitting sword and mowing people down on the bus myself, but it has nothing to do with music or video games. It has to do with the fact that a lot of people are cunts and deserve to be decapitated without mercy. I’m not going to do it, but the thought is there.
Your son took a chair and beat his brother into a wheelchair because your dumb ass was too busy watching The Biggest Loser to hear the clanging noises from the other room. Your daughter slit her wrists open because she’s “overweight” by magazine standards and you continued to feed her depressed nature by not paying any attention to her when she came to you saying she was being bullied by peers. Your kids shot up a 7-11 because… um… well, because they were out of Cheery slurpees, God dammit!
Listen, violent media didn’t breed a violent society. A violent society was what lead to violent media. Do you really think killing people only started when Metallica started making music? Satan wasn’t invented by Slayer, he was invented by organized religion! Shit, ever read the Bible? That stuff is far more horrible and morbid than any Pantera album ever could be. And it’s shoved down your kids throats at a far younger age than death metal music.
Hitler did not spend his free time playing violent video games!
“Mr. Hitler, sir, it’s time to conquer Poland…”
“Hold on! I need to get to the Laundromat and shoot this gang banger who stole drugs from me. I’m going to need to put in the Free Rocket Launcher cheat code for this one… oh,and fuck the Jews. The radio told me to kill them for some reason. And since I do whatever someone I don’t know tells me to, I’m going to gather up all the Jews and kill them.”
Oh, and school shootings? Usually the result of your cock-for-brains kids picking on someone for too long. You spend ten years being called faggot and given wedgies and then you talk to me about wanting to take an AK-47 and smearing someones brain matter onto a chalk board next to the algebra equations. If you taught your kids not to be such animalistic douchebags, a lot of this shit wouldn’t even happen.
We live in a society where personal connection is getting more and more unlikely. Gone is the day of bedtime stories and tucking you in. In it’s place? Texting “Gnite” from downstairs. If that. People don’t communicate, the can’t vent their depression and fears and anxieties, and they bottle it all up. They blow up. Fuel on the fire.
Is it all the fault of parents? Of course not. It’s real hard to pay attention to that little shit when you have to work two jobs just to pay for your home. It’s a domino effect. The world is fucked up, so the people are fucked up, so their spawn are fucked up. Eventually, some shit is going down. Hell, we shouldn’t vilanize the death metal bands: they’re the ones that put that angst and hate to good use. They’re the ones NOT gunning down people in the streets. They’re simply writing songs about it! Maybe if someone would have given Dahmer some singing lessons, he’d have ended up on MTV, not on death row. Maybe if he would have picked up a bass guitar, he’d be drinking Red Bull’s backstage, not drinking the blood of family members in a cabin in the woods.
Come on, wouldn’t it have been much more pleasant to see a poster of this guy on your kids walls!
…maybe not. But you get the point.
All I’m saying is, while this music was shocking and appalling to me, it’s not bad. I mean, it’s fucking awful, but it’s not bad. It has all the right to be here. And it’s not decaying the moral fabric of society. YOU are decaying the moral fabric of society.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, me and my band the Flaming Fetus Catapult Operators are about to go work on our new song, titled “Funny In Shadows Means Putting An Axe Through A Clown’s Spleen”. Doesn’t that sound a fuck-load more pleasant than a Lady GaGa song?
Oh, and in case you wanted to listen to my new favorite song… oh, and check out that pretty album art!
