Unknown + Lies

Slayer was awesome, as these blurry pictures indicate. This was one of the best shows I've ever seen and I enjoyed myself greatly. To give you an idea, as I'm writing this it's two days after the show, I still have no voice and my neck still hurts from all the headbanging. Unfortunately, the night has to be remembered as somewhat of a bummer as we were stuck in traffic for 3 HOURS coming home. Anyone who lives in NYC and has seen a show at the Meadowlands knows it's really only a 20-30 minute drive across the George Washington Bridge. We got stopped less than a half-mile from the bridge at 11:50 (at which point we said, "Wow, it's not even midnight!" and were all smiles that we'd be getting to bed at a decent hour). Two hours later, we'd moved all of quarter mile, gone through every celebrity name we could think of playing The Name Game, and I personally was bottling up a venom against God and humanity. I remember watching the moon rise higher and higher and eventually wishing it would fall to earth and smash the bridge and whoever the fuck was imprisoning us in that hell. The cars would move 15 feet, then stop dead for 20 minutes. This went on for three hours. Fuck New Jersey, fuck the fucking construction workers on the bridge, fuck whoever made the decision to block off the bridge for 3 hours (MORE for the traffic that surely built up behind us), fuck asshole truck drivers, and FUCK New Jersey. I did nothing but spend $ in the crap state of New Jersey the whole fucking night and this is how they treat me when I leave.

Anyway, to focus on the good part of the day and night, me and my crew earlier in the day visited Untermeyer Park in Yonkers. There's this creepy little place there that has some local - devil-worship urban legend attached to it, so I thought it would be appropriate for our day of METAL. But instead of devilish and creepy, it was just very pretty. We saw a momma dear and her little fawn. They got very close to us and looked like giant mice. Thanks to Veronica Vinegar for this nice photo!

Then we went to Jersey and had fun in the heavy metal parking lot. Ms. Meowrgo drove so I could put my drink on! There were lots of meatheads there and I felt like my belly wasn't big enough nor my face hairy enough to be there. First, Mastodon played. They're an ocean-themed metal band with songs with names like "Seabeast" and "Aqua Dementia". They were pretty rocking and I think it's cool that metal is addressing the very real threat of being drowned by rising waters. Mastodon's album Leviathan is based on Moby Dick, which is the classic tale expressing the futiliity in an mankind's ego-driven pursuit against nature. Their songs are filled with vocals that sound underwater and drums where every beat seems like a drop of water crashing down from repeating waves.

After Mastodon, we went to the concession stand to get beer and eyeball people. A nice girl offered us her tickets to the General Admission area on the floor - Woohoo! So we went into the parking lot again to have a nice beer and smoke and watch the pretty pink sunset. When we re-entered, we were on the floor for SLAYER!!

Slayer is one of my favorite bands to sing along to. Tom Araya must have known that, because he kept not-singing and letting the audience participate. I liked watching the guitar alternation between Kerry King and Jeff Hanneman. They opened with "South of Heaven" and closed with "Reign in Blood". Notably missing in their set (for me) - "Behind the Crooked Cross" possibly my favorite Slayer song. They did play new songs and dedicated "Mandatory" to our soldiers in Iraq.

I've been meaning for a long time to write an open letter to Fugazi. In my formitive music years (the nineties), Fugazi was the band that spoke out against war and bullshit happening in the government. If you had told me then that there would be an unjust war under the son of George Bush, and that, with all the bullshit that has happened under the current administration, Fugazi would be disbanded and seemingly have nothing to say about it, I would have called you a liar. But it's true. Fugazi pussied out and decided to stay silent when we needed them most. I'm suprised, but encouraged, that METAL bands like Slayer and Motorhead continue to write music that calls us on our own bullshit and tells us to WAKE UP!

P.S.: Karl Rove is guilty. He's a traitor. He belongs in prison. This is bullshit.


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