Dead Rebel Society, Blitzkrieg Reviews, Shaolin Death Squad, Intelligent Design

Great… Grace gets to review the new King Diamond album and what the fuck do I get stuck with?

“Here, Beppo… This is GREAT! This is the band that King Diamond’s drummer ALSO drums in!”

“Who? Motorhead? Sure, give me that shit! Motorhead rocks!”

“Eh, no… It’s King Diamond’s CURRENT drummer’s other band. You know, Matt Thompson… Matt? You know?”

Gee, thanks a bunch. I get some fucking welfare Mikkey Dee Jr’s side project to dig my decaying teeth into. What is that little burger they have at McDonald’s that tastes like ass? The “Single Cheese Burger”. Is that the shit I was just handed? We’ll see, won’t we? The shit I do for you people…

All right… So the cover looks pretty cool. It’s got some artsy fartsy shit on it that leads you to believe we are about to experience some thinking man’s music. Right? (In case the album title "Intelligent Design" didn't give that shit away off the bat. Isn't Intelligent Design that shit George Bush wants us to call God these days, anyway? That's like calling the cleaner a "Sanitary Technician" I guess, or me a "Music Reviewer".)

It starts off with “A Terrible Way to Use a Sword”, or “A Terrible Way to Start off an Album” as it is also titled. Did you guys ever hear Devin Townsend’s Ocean Machine shit? This also has that big layered vocal thing with all the uber-schizo fucking instrumentation pulling in all of 5,000 different directions of self-proclaimed musical geniuses at once, trying to impress us with their dumbass “look how fucking weird we can be” concept.

This shit better start getting better soon, or my editor will have to hire some security for his stupid ass.

Hey, you know what… Halfway into the song it is actually pretty cool… After this brutal breakdown of thundering double bass, the tune opens up into some sort of slow and groovy summer song with a more coherent musical theme. Fuck it, I actually liked that until they decided to weird me out again with their crazy ass breaks.

“Catastrophic Disobediance” starts out much cooler. Some clean guitars just kinda lulling me in, like I was some child in a playground and this song was a big piece of shining candy pulling me into the rusty old van. And, yeah, sure enough, here comes the anal rape… The nice music is rudely disrupted by some more death metal grunge shit on crack. God fucking knows I love my shit brutal (the music – not the rapes), but I don’t like to be put in a pleasant dreamy mood for five seconds and then torn into some barrage of mayhem the next, and then back again without warning. The first two songs on here sounds like something Captain Beefheart would come up with after having the wonders of Opeth explained to him, without ever hearing the band. Or the other way around. What the fuck ever.

I’ll tell you one thing, though. The drummer fucking kicks ass on here. Why the hell doesn’t he drum like this in King Diamond? Mikkey Dee was the shit, man – and on this album Matt sounds like he could pull some serious fucking punches on his own. Maybe he’s afraid of King? After all, I know some 50-year old goth with a Napoleon complex scares the fucking shit out of me. Dude, you’re a fucking drummer. If you’re this good and obviously play in a crazy ass band on the side, why not let that shit shine on a King Diamond album, son? Maybe I would even start listening to the fucker again. (All King’s shit sounds the same these day: chugga chugga - normal voice shit -chugga chugga - straight beat - chugga chugga - crappy production - b-rated story about some shit I couldn’t care any less about - chugga chugga shit shit.)

OK, what do we have here? “Choreographer of Fate” sounds like one of those musical Broadway narratives describing a scene in some old Jack the Ripper play, right before the shit hits the fan. Kinda like Jellyfish right before their meth lab blows up. I love it… against my fucking will, of course. I actually like the singer when he’s not yelling at me. His normal voice sounds like it belongs to someone I would buy at least two bottles of Snake Oil from.

“Radio Feeler” is more of the same we had in the first song. Too much shit going on at once. Hey, I love Dream Theater’s crazy shit, but at least they give me a chance to breathe once in a while.

“Face Insecurity Killed” and “Escaping Absynthe” (HAHA - spelled it wrong - fuckheads!) are slower numbers and a bit more accessible to my absinthe pickled brain. I can only take in so much information, kids. I filled my lifetime quota back when Tom Hanks delivered his fucking thanks-for-the-award speech at the Oscar ceremonies for that fucking the fag up the ass movie he made. When was that? 1990 or some shit? I can’t retain much ever since.

“Fall, rise, laugh… fall” sounds like a Saturday night in Beppo-land, but it is actually a song on here as well. It’s not that much fun, but it sure carries over the mood from the previous songs nicely. I am starting to see some sort of pattern here. Am I supposed to smell funny colors halfway through this album? In all their fucking annoyance, these songs actually make sense when listened to back-to-back. I am sure they sound like absolute garbage taken out of context, but if you are bored, with no life (like me), then you actually have the testicular fortitude to sit through this shit and actually end up liking it. It’s almost musical masochism, like finding out that biting your nipple off is pretty nice after first being shocked at the thought of it. Or something… Not that I would… Stop looking at me you fucking pervs.

“A Story Lives Forever” starts off like that System of a Down song I Like so much, “BYOB”, but that is where the likeness ends. It’s more Vaudeville Metal on top of a mushroom with that trusty old Caterpillar. Puff that magic dragon’s ass, boys! Don’t mind me, I am just going to chew off my other nipple while you guys crack out.

“First Half of Yesterday” finishes off the album with a bullet to the back of its head, and I am both sad and relieved. Fuck me into a fetal position, if I ever heard a weirder album that left me more confused. I have heard some strange shit in my life, but at least I would either hate it or love it instantly. In this case I have no fucking clue what just happened. I just know Matt Thompson surprised me by actually kicking ass here.

I guess I have to wipe the blood off the floor and listen to this fucker again. Just one more time. Last time… I promise…

Maybe.

I will definitely not listen to it tomorrow.

Maybe just once. But that’s it.

Fuck.

Comments? Go to the Blitzkrieg Guest Page.