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Metalachi
Today’s band was suggested by Lulie, one of our Facebook fans. (Yeah, we have a Facebook page…what, you haven’t liked us yet? Well, what the fuck are you waiting for?) They’re a mariachi metal band, which might make them the most quintessentially L.A. band of all time. Sunset Strip meets East L.A., baby! If this taco truck’s a-rockin, don’t come…okay, we’ll stop.
Anyhoo, Metalachi claim to be a group of five identical twin…no, wait, not twin. What’s the word? Quinteplet? Sorry, I’m writing this drunk. Five identical born at the same time brothers who were born south of the border and snuck into our fair land to discover…well, apparently they discovered Black Sabbath, who are actually British, but let’s not get all technical here. The point is that they discovered metal and proceeded to apply their god-given mariachi skills to the fine art of banging heads. With trumpets, violins and whatever that one really big guitar is called. And one dude who dresses up like GWAR.
Their YouTube channel has a bunch of videos, and they’re all pretty cool in their own way. (The violinist really shreds on “Master of Puppets.”) But of all their covers, the one that sounds the most like an actual mariachi song is probably “Crazy Train.” Who knew?
P.S. If you like Metalachi, may we suggest also checking out Beatallica (Metallica/Beatles cover band), Tragedy (Bee Gees metal cover band) and Schwarzenator (Arnold Schwarzenegger metal tribute band). What is it about metal that attracts so many goofballs?
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Attila
Today’s band existed only briefly back around 1970 and as you can see from the above album cover, they definitely qualify as among the weirder acts of their time. Besides dressing up like Medieval Times employees and hanging out in meat lockers, they also played a very early, very primitive style of hard rock that featured no guitars, just organ and drums. It was like a couple of dudes heard Deep Purple’s “Hush” when they were really stoned and were all, “You know what would be heavy? Doing that shit with no fucking guitars!” And after less than a year together, even they finally realized this was a terrible idea and broke up.
But here’s the kicker: see that dude on the right? That’s Billy fucking Joel. Yes, Attila was one of Billy Joel’s first bands, before he finally wised up and launched his solo career. Listen to the track below and keep telling yourself that this is the same guy who went on to do “New York State of Mind” and “Just the Way You Are.” Kind of hurts your head, doesn’t it? Or maybe that’s just Attila’s music. Gotta admit, they were actually pretty heavy for a band with no guitars. Not very good, but heavy.
Links:
- Attila on MySpace (fan site)
- Attila on Wikipedia
Dwarr
A long time ago, back before bands could mix entire albums with a secondhand Macbook and a pirated copy of Pro Tools, a guitar-toting loner from South Carolina named Duane Warr set out to make the heaviest heavy metal album ever, more or less by himself. The fruit of his labor was a 1985 (or maybe 1984?) album called Starting Over that didn’t really sound all that much like metal, but definitely sounded like nothing else before it and not much since. Part Sabbath and (probably by accident) part Residents, Starting Over and an even more amazing 1986 album called Animals were pretty much ignored at the time of their release but have since become cult classics among fans of weirdo, lo-fi stoner rock.
Warr dropped off the face of the earth for about 15 years—supposedly after becoming a Born Again Christian and renouncing all his old music. But he surprised everyone by resurfacing in 2000 with a third album, Holy One, and even followed that up with a fourth LP, Times of Terror, in 2003. Seems like he’s still a bit of a recluse though: The guy who posted the only original Dwarr video we could find (seen below), added a comment on YouTube noting that “I used to run the Dwarr MySpace page, but unfortunately I’ve been out of touch with Duane for a long time now. There are even more Dwarr videos, but I only had permission to post this one.” And the write-up for the 2010 reissue of Animals on Drag City Records gives no biographical background at all, only this awesome quote from Duane himself:
“I was working 12 hour shifts down at the sweat factory. One day, I was having a bad day and had a problem with one of the older guys. All of a sudden he pulled his packing knife out on me. I felt a rage running up through me and went running at him. He put the knife away very quickly. That night I had the dream for the title song ANIMALS. In the dream, I ate the human flesh, I crushed the human bone, I was an animal.”
It’s possible that is all just an elaborate put-on and Duane Warr’s mysterious backstory is all just part of his shtick. Or it’s possible that he just doesn’t want the world to know that he’s actually this guy. But we’re pretty sure he’s just a bonafide wackjob. And even though he’s kind of a terrible musician, he totally fucking rules. (P.S. The video has a weird, sorta pointless intro…give it about 30 seconds, it gets good, trust us.)
Links:
- Dwarr on MySpace
- Dwarr on Drag City Records
- Dwarr entry on Encyclopaedia Metallum (with links to hear all of Starting Over and Animals)
Iwrestledabearonce
To the untrained ear, all grindcore bands sound pretty weird. Cookie monster vocals, breakneck tempo shifts, rumbling double kick drums—if you’re not into this stuff, you’re really not into this stuff. And we can’t really say we blame you. Bands like Dillinger Escape Plan are sort of the haggis of metal—a lot of people claim it tastes good, but we’re pretty sure most of them ate it the first time just so their friends wouldn’t think they were pussies.
But even by the standards of grindcore, Iwrestledabearonce is pretty out there. They’re so far out there, in fact, that we’re not even sure it’s fair to call them “grindcore”—”spazzcore” might be a better term, or even “avant-garde metal,” which is what someone wrote on their Wikipedia page, although that sounds way more serious and pretentous then they actually are.
A typical IWABO song, if there is such a thing, might start off sounding like straight grindcore, before shifting into a slower, more melodic chorus, then getting a little expansive and proggy, then back to more grindcore, maybe a nice, tinkly little jazzy passage or a Primus-like bass solo, more grindcore, a little country two-step, then a quick, spazzy two-bar guitar solo leading into a big ol’ Headbangers Ball worthy finish. All in about four minutes. Have trouble concentrating at concerts? Then IWABO is the band for you. Maybe we should just call it Ritalincore and be done with it.
The folks making this insane racket are six five seemingly nice kids from Shreveport, Louisiana, led by a ridiculously awesome little chick named Krysta Cameron who can sing like a bird one minute and then scare the living crap out of you with a spawn-of-Satan growl that would do Glen Benton proud. Seriously, if there’s a more bad-ass vocalist in metal right now of either gender, we have yet to hear him/her.
IWABO have a lot of great songs, and a lot of great song titles (“Corey Feldman Holocaust,” “Alaska Flouder Basket” and our favorite, “I’m Cold and There Are Wolves After Me”–Simpsons reference!) but their most famous song is probably “Tastes Like Kevin Bacon,” which has a truly fantastic video that we present below. Turn it up! Or if you’re really a pussy, watch it with the sound off until about the 1:45 mark. It gets real purty after that. Well, for about 30 seconds.
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The Metal Shakespeare Company
Even though we blog together, roomed together in college and have probably gotten drunk together more times than Tiger Woods cheated on his wife, the truth is that Eddie and I have pretty radicaly different taste in music. Where I tend to go more for the headbang/facemelt school of rawk, Eddie mostly prefers bands you can listen to without fear of spilling your part-skim soy latte. Highbrow high-fallutin sissy music, as I like to call it–but only to his face, because it’s fun to watch the way it makes his ears turn red.
But the other day, our pal Nicole (thanks, Nicole!) turned us on to a band that, for once, we can both agree on. They’re called The Metal Shakespeare Company and their name says it all, really. If Ozzy even played a Renaissance Faire (yeah, like that’ll ever happen), it would probably sound like these guys.
Anyway, this video pretty much tells you everything you need to know about these guys. Has theater geek dorkiness ever looked this awesome? I thinkest not.
(All lyrics by Shakespeare himself, or so the band claims. I’m frankly not that up on my Bard quotes, and even if I was, most of the time the strangled cries of lead singer Lord Simms are pretty much impossible to understand, anyway.)
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Schwarzenator
Okay, this one really doesn’t require a whole lot of explanation. They’re a metal tribute band to Arnold Schwarzenegger. Any questions? Didn’t think so.
Mostly it’s a bunch of guys you probably never heard of, although they do lay claim to featuring Korn’s Shane “I replaced Head when he found Jesus” Gibson on guitar. Song titles include “Commando,” “End of Days” and my personal favorite, “Conan.” If they haven’t played this on The Tonight Show yet, then I’m sorry—O’Brien deserves to lose his job back to Leno.
Update: Thanks to our ever-vigilant readers, it has been brought to our attention that Schwarzenator are one of at least three Schwarzenegger-themed metal bands in existence. The others, if you’re curious, are ArnoCorps and Austrian Death Machine. We could spend all day debating which one is the best, which one merits a place on the Weird List, etc., etc., blah blah blah. We could even spend all day debating who came up with the idea first: Austrian Death Machine has been around since about 2006, Schwarzenator claim to have been at it since “the early 2000s,” ArnoCorps has been active since at least 2000—again, blah blah blah, what-fucking-ever. At the end of the day, here’s the thing: Only one band has a video of themselves rockin’ out in matching Conan O’Brien masks, and it’s these guys. As far as we’re concerned, that’s game, set and match.
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Tragedy
We’ve blogged about cover bands before on TWBITW, so we won’t repeat our general observations about the general suckage of cover bands. We’ll just say that, when your whole career is based on somebody else’s songs, it’s a fine line between having a clever gimmick and being truly weird–and it’s one Tragedy manages to strut along with more attitude than John Travolta wolfing down two stacked slices of Lenny’s thin crust during the opening credits of “Saturday Night Fever”.
In Tragedy’s case, the clever gimmick is pretty simple: they’re a metal band that does Bee Gees songs (or, as they like to say, they’re the tri-state NYC area’s greatest all-metal Bee Gees tribute band…got that?). But as with most truly weird bands, it’s all in the execution, people. Instead of a one-note gimmick, they actually manage to be a pretty solid metal band, with a knack for finding all the right headbanging analoges to the Gibb bros’ disco touches. And they do it without, as far as I can tell, ever resorting to “I Was Made for Lovin You”-style disco/rock cheese. So… “How Deep Is Your Love?” becomes the lighter flicking monster ballad, “You Should Be Dancing” turns into a Spinal Tap/Iron Maiden-style epic…and so on. It’s all sort of brilliantly stupid, in the way most good metal is.
Tragedy’s signature song, of course, is “Stayin’ Alive.” This video features that song and also introduces the band…including my personal favorite, bass player Gibbous Waning. With that name, he could moonlight in a Morbid Angel cover band while he’s at it.
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Beatallica
Let’s face it, most cover bands suck. Why would I pay money to see a bunch of no-name dudes pretending to be The Doors or Creedence Clearwater Revival? Oh, wait, Eddie tells me that those are actually the current incarnations of The Doors and CCR. But you get the idea…cover bands are basically just something like Creedence Clearwater Revisted, but with a thick extra layer of suck owing to the fact that no one in the band ever even met John Fogerty, let alone got a cease & desist letter from his lawyers. It’s just kareoke with instruments.
Still, a fair number of cover bands out there manage to liven things up by being, say, a bunch of hot chicks playing cock rock, or sticking a fat Elvis impersonator out front for no apparent reason. Then there’s Beatallica, who manage the neat trick of being two cover bands for the price of one. Yes, Beatallica is a Metallica/Beatles mashup cover band. I shit you not.
Beatallica would be awesome enough just on the basis of song and album titles like “Got to Get You Trapped Under Ice” and Sgt. Hetfield’s Motorbreath Pub Band. But the kicker is that they’re actually kind of good. Check on the clip below for “All You Need Is Blood” and tell me it doesn’t make you want to bang your head…or at least laugh your ass off.
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GWAR
At this point in rock history, just putting on crazy outfits really isn’t enough to qualify your band as weird. Slipknot? Not weird. Hollywood Undead? Please. Even KISS, the original crazy costumed band, doesn’t seem all that weird in retrospect. Really, they’re just a bar band with face paint and really good pyro. Hose them down and songs like “Beth” could be .38 Special for all I can tell.
But there’s something about GWAR’s particular brand of costumed mayhem that beats down the gates of Weird City, blood cannons blazing, and enslaves every puny pretender to the Weird Throne that’s come before or since. Compared to GWAR, KISS is almost cuddly. I mean, these guys take the whole costume thing to another level.
GWAR has been around for 25 years—not as long as KISS, granted, but they also never had KISS’s level of success, either. The guys behind these monster masks are in it for the love of the game—especially one David Brockie, the man behind lead critter Oderus Urungus and the only constant member of the band. The guy’s straight-faced dedication to GWAR’s mix of sci-fi and horror camp, thrash metal, and juvenile humor is almost as superhuman as Oderus himself. At this point, he must sweat spirit gum and latex every time he goes to the gym.
By the way, it’s worth noting that other current and past members of the band have included Flattus Maximus, Balsac the Jaws of Death, Jizmak Da Gusha, Hans Orifice and Nippelus Erectus. Did we mention they’re kinda juvenile? But in a good way!
With the band celebrating their 25th anniversary and the arrival of their 11th (11th!) studio album this year, GWAR seem to be enjoying some kind of resurgence…if a band that was never more than a cult oddity can ever be said to have a resurgence. Oderus is even becoming something of a media personality. He has an advice column on MetalSucks.com and has been making regular appearances on Fox News. No, we’re not making this up.
But really, it’s all about the music. So here’s a concert clip, too. All hail the mighty GWAR!
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Bang Camaro
Sometimes, weird = awesome. Take Bang Camaro, a classic rawk band out of Boston based around a simple, brilliant idea: why bother trying to make our one lead singer sound like Sebastian Bach by multi-tracking the hell out of him when we can hire 10 lead singers and, in the words of the great Bill O’Reilly, say, “Fuck it! We’ll do it live!”
When I saw these guys in L.A. earlier this year, they only had about eight lead singers…or maybe it was just four, my beer goggles were pretty thick at that point. Anyway, even scaled down a little, the hesher chorus still sounded pretty killer. There’s nothing original about the music exactly…if you like Skid Row, Def Leppard and Poison, you’ll probably dig these guys…but the whole Army of Singers idea is so great it really doesn’t make much diff what the music sounds like. You’ll be fist-pumping in no time, bro.
This is an old video of them performing at what looks like Harvard or MIT or some shit…not very rockin I know but of all the live videos I could find, this one has the best sound and really gives you an idea of fantastic it sounds to hear that many dudes singing arena rock all at once. There’s even a few harmonies and shit. Good stuff.
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