It might come as a surprise to many of you, but there are actually other metal blogs on the interweb besides the Deciblog. I know—I was shocked to learn this, too! One of the Deciblog staff’s current favorites is the painfully funny Metal Inquisition, which officially launched this past January. Whether they’re contemplating the best application of Nocturnus’ time machine or getting perhaps a bit too enthused about the forthcoming Disfiguring the Goddess release, they never fail to amuse us and make us think. OK, that last part is total bullshit, but these dudes are definitely funny.

Recently, yours truly withstood a thorough M.I. grilling, so we could only reciprocate with the following, um, inquisition of five-man sausage party of Lucho Metales, Gene Hoglan’s Balls Sergeant D, Awakening and SkullKrusher. Check back tomorrow for the second installment:

Obviously the true identities of the Metal Inquisition staff must remain a mystery, but can you at least give us an idea of how old you all are and whose basements you’re currently located in?

Lucho Metales: This is a sensitive subject indeed. At the risk of sounding like a jerk, you are making some large assumptions here. First, you assume that there are in fact multiple people involved, but it could really just be me. Much like the strategy of “shock and awe,” Metal Inquisition’s is that of “confuse, and post about Deicide.” I understand that the phrase lacks the punch of the original, but it’s just as truthful. We aim to confuse, except when it comes to discussing Wild Rags releases. When it comes to that, M.I. functions like a fine tuned clock (serviced by Danny Spitz at his Boca Raton shop) that cares only about truth.

OK, OK. Yes, there’s multiple people involved. You can probably figure out our age (roughly) by our taste in music and references. I think it’s safe to say that our love for music peaked in like 1993 or something. So you do the math.

In regards to basements, why do you bring them up in such a negative light? They provide a great deal of privacy, space and are great due to their thermal inertia. Wood paneling is also a very forgiving surface, which allows posters to be attached and removed far easier than traditional drywall. I don’t see any negative here.

Gene Hoglan’s Balls: Being a responsible adult with a full-time job and a mortgage sucks dick. Every day I think about moving back in with my parents. Their basement is unfinished, but it’s huge. I could convert it into a killer lair. As for how old I am, let’s just say that the first cassette I ever bought with my own money was Ugly Kid Joe’s As Ugly As They Wanna Be EP.

Sergeant D: The first cassette I ever bought was Tone Loc Loc’d After Dark, followed by Suicidal Tendencies Lights Camera Revolution.

MI’s Sergeant D: He’ll beat you senseless, then break out the whips

Awakening: Old enough to remember and enjoy the good era of death metal. That sweet spot of ± 5 of 1990. To answer the other part, sadly there is no basement. I was always jealous of friends in Jr. High and High School who had basements. For one reason or another we didn’t have one. We just had a giant dug out dirt cave for the water pump and heater under our house, and that place scary as a kid. You kind of expected John Wayne Gacy to walk out with a corpse. I blame the rust belt and old, old homes for lack of wood paneled awesomeness. Since then I have moved up to the big time of a second-floor apartment in the Midwest! My plan still remains to have a basement someday, where my kids can enjoy watching Phantasm and Wrestlemania I.

Why are you guys so gay for Manowar, and why don’t you put that “homoeroticism” tag to better use by applying it to all of your posts about Shane Embury?

Lucho Metales: There’s nothing gay about enjoying Manowar. I’m insulted. I think it’s perfectly manly and metal to like semi-muscular men in chaps and/or fur thongs. Don’t you? If by us being “gay” for them, you mean we enjoy them… well, I’m insulted yet again. As such, I won’t answer that part of the question. As stated in their bio they are “the kings of metal,” do I have a choice? I like metal, they are the kings… what can I do? They crowned themselves, yes, but it is now a fact.

Shane Embury, when he has a beard, could be a fantastic bear within the gay community. This is a good point. I have just sent a memo to all M.I. staff telling them that from this day forth, if we post an anything with a bearded Shane, the tag shall be used.

SkullKrusher: It’s a good thing that this is cyberspace, bro. Otherwise you’d be in deep shit with the Kings of Metal. They are ALL man. And so are we!

Gene Hoglan’s Balls: I’m currently visiting my family in southern Italy where it’s not out of the ordinary to kiss a fellow male acquaintance upon greeting them. So what if I kiss dudes and listen to Manowar? That doesn’t make me gay.

Baking cookies ist krieg.

Shopping ist krieg.

Pumping iron ist krieg.

Sweet Cobra guitarist Mat Arluck is recovering from his second bout with cancer. Tonight at Kuma’s Corner in Chicago, all tips are being donated by the staff to help Mat offset some of his mounting medical bills. If you live in the area please stop by, grab a br00tal burger (try the Black Sabbath) and drop a few in the name of metal and charity.

You can also send a personal donation to Mat via Paypal at deminer666@yahoo.com

Mature SBM, 30, athletic build, seeking interested Juggalos and Juggalettes to appear in new snuff porno. I like my women like I like my shish kebob –� on� a motherfucking skewer! Likes: HIMSA,� Hot Topic mallcore bands,� your mom, John Carpenter flicks, the smell of burning flesh, your mom, cannibalism, tech 9s, your mom, Aesop’s fables, voyeurism, minor league hockey, Faygo pop, your mom. Follow my lead, because I rule this game…unlike that fat fuck Necro and his wack Psycho+Logical Records posse.

Sutter Kain, “Cannibal Ferox”

Mature SWM, 35, athletic build, inviting hot NYC bitches who like to suck dick to a special Passover seder/orgy. Staten Island hos step off! Likes: Nuclear Assault, death metal, UFOs, your mom, coprophilia, new-school Headbanger’s Ball, your mom, Hostess Ding-Dongs, Herschell Gordon Lewis, your mom, .44 magnums, comic books, hardcore gang vocals and gang rape, your mom. I’ll rip ya nuts off, because I rule this game…unlike that fat fuck Sutter Kain and his wack “Ghetto Metal” movement.

Ill Bill f/ Necro, “Chasing the Dragon”

According to a terse press release, UK nu metal paragons Raging Speedhorn can’t get it up anymore and have decided to call it quits. Decibot considered draping a black shroud over Andrew Bonazelli’s desk for the sake of empathy, but Bonzo is already jumping up and down from the pile of cash he made in Decibel’s Official Nu Metal Dead Pool. Teen angst does have a body count. Decibot would like to salute Raging Speedhorn for making it this far with one riff, one dick joke and a little pile of pocket lint. That dick joke was fantastic! And that riff was a winner, too, especially when Raging Speedhorn dropped all pretense of Eyehategod sludge and embraced the ‘core. Decibot will be spending the rest of the day — possibly, the whole week — in mourning.

***************

The Least Worst of Raging Speedhorn

“The Hate Song”

“Iron Cobra” [live 2003]

“$30 Bag” [Eyehategod cover, live in Norfolk, VA 2/9/06]

What has four feet, fur and tusks and totally fucking rocks? Trick question! The answer could be Decibel’s longtime masturbation fantasies Mastodon or D.C. stoner trio Wooly Mammoth. Why does the world need two bands named after a prehistoric elephant, anyway? As you can see from the illustration below, there is a difference:

The Mastodon looks like a total puss compared to the Wooly Mammoth, no? Well, Wooly Mammoth’s vocals are a little too “Audioslave” for my tastes, but I love how high the rhythm section is in the mix on 2006’s The Temporary Nature. Jason Daniloski’s drums sound massive. Scott “Wino” Weinrich loves these guys — he played second guitar on a couple of the record’s tracks and Wooly Mammoth were perennial openers when The Hidden Hand rolled through town. There’s sort of a chip-off-the-old-block thing going on here — Wooly Mammoth and The Hidden Hand are playing with the same raw material and on the same obstinate mission to redeem Molly Hatchet in the eyes of non-believers. It’s a Southern thing, dudes. Like mint juleps and seersucker suits. And their last record’s opener (”The Arsonist”) and gonzo 11+ minute closing track? I’m not even sure what to call those besides “otherworldly.”

Slap these dudes on a tour with Mastodon and the Thai Elephant Orchestra and we’re in business. Trunks are \m/:

Chi-town, what up? Decibel is sponsoring a monthly DJ event at the Continental, hosted by our pals Laurent Schroeder-Lebec (of Pelican) and Ben Fasman. And it’s totally free (except for the drinks), so come get sloshed as Laurent and Ben spin “everything from cock rock to dc punk to no wave to Norwegian black metal.” Laurent’s got Unearthly Trance, Slade and Bathory on his playlist and this month’s special guest DJ is John Herndon, Chicago legend and drummer for Tortoise and Isotope 217. As always, we’re holding out hope for a Fenriz set.

By Efrim Menuck, Silver Mt. Zion

1. THE SOUND OF DRILLS RINGING THROUGH POURED CONCRETE WALLS: the hotel bed you wake up in is half an hour from where you were and 6.5 hours from where you need to be. you took the expressway here and arrived at 3 AM. check-in involved bulletproof glass and a night clerk who is either young, angry and underpaid or old, underpaid and crazy. the day manager pegged you as degenerate musicians the moment your reservation details blinked across her database, and assigned you to the fourth floor. the fourth floor is undergoing either fumigation or construction, or both. the power drills start at 7 AM, ominous as distant aeroplanes until the 1/2-inch bit finds its torque- then the ceiling and walls vibrate at their own sympathetic pitch and sing like enormous concrete strings. you are a musician in a moderately popular rock band, your head is like a clapper in a giant muffled bell.

2. “FREE BREAKFAST” IN THE LOBBY: in the corner of the lobby there’ll be a breakfast bar. the breakfast bar is complimentary, which is another word for prepared without love. coffee, bagels, donuts, and a poster depicting either a beaming hotel employee holding a basket of cinnamon buns aloft, or a man in a handsome business suit grinning wryly over a cup of steaming 100% arabica coffee. in both of the posters, the sunlight is as rich and orange as a jar of honey. the actual lobby sunlight that you find yourself standing in is rather more atomic- thin and white and unforgiving. it washes through the windows like a dirty grey sheet, backlighting the potted dwarf-fir bushes which sit hunched along the front driveway like orphaned blast-barriers. the breakfast bar will sit in that glow until 11:30 AM, at which point all that food will get bagged and dumped in a utility closet next to the bottles of clorox, roach dust, and flower-killer.

3. 4 RIVAL GAS STATIONS STARING AT EACH OTHER ACROSS THE EXPRESSWAYS’ WINDSWEPT CROSSROADS: you’ll have to cross a broad expanse of concrete to get to the streetlights. regardless of the season, the wind will be a tribulation. the light will stay green just long enough for you to make it halfway across the expressway, at which point you’ll have to stand on the concrete median and wait. you’re a greasy, under-slept, longhair musician stuck halfway ‘cross a rush-hour highway, means that you’re the 9 AM headliner at the rubberneck jamboree. it’s a five minute show- stand there as still as a frightened cow and sadder than any mime, avoiding eye-contact with every idling driver until the light changes, and then cross the street and walk into the gas station. the gas station is ringed by more hunched bushes and tangled plastic bags flap from their branches like sad little flags. buy yourself a bottle of tap water and two packs of menthol cigarettes for the drive. menthol is a good driving cigarette for american highways- smoking them, you can pretend like you’re maria in “play it as it lays,” pretty as jackie-o in headscarf and shades, grasping at redemption by crossing four lanes of highway at 75 mph in a smooth arc that’s as sublime as the orbits of jupiter’s 63 moons.

4. BURGERKINGTACOBELLSUBWAYWAFFLEHOUSEWENDYS: cut to the chase and go to denny’s. buy yourself a boca brand vegetarian hamburger with american cheese. they’re manufactured by the prepared-foods division of lockheed-martin. they don’t taste much, but neither do they haunt. they’re as simple a protein-delivery device as you’ll ever find on a highway, and they will do. somewhere nearby, two children with ketchup smeared on their cheeks will pummel each other while their mother stares into the pained sunrise. as you sit waiting for your bill, your presence in the restaurant will anger some, sadden a few, and amuse many. the waitress will not call you ’sweetie.’

5. ONE ABANDONED SHOE, SWEET AND BEDRAGGLED, AWFUL AS THE BODY OF A DEAD CHILD: on the walk back to the hotel, there will always be an abandoned shoe somewhere. pick it up and carry it with you. show it the rest of your band when you meet in the parking lot. embrace it as a totem to the loneliness and dread of the modern touring musician, and love your band. know that you will carry the noise of these highways inside of you for the rest of your life, and love your life. know that you’re lucky to see the things that you’ve seen. go forth, get down, and be proud of the fact that ship hasn’t yet sunk. grin into the sunlight as you yield and merge- playing music can be an honest trade.

13 Blues for Thirteen Moons, the latest full length record from Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band, is currently available on Constellation.