Friday Q&A: 6/6/2014

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Welcome to Friday Q&A. Every week, we’ll put up a question for the staff, friends, bands, and you, the reader, to answer.

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This Week’s Q

What would be your metalhead obituary?

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METAL JOURNALIST FOUND DEAD WITH QUESADILLA LODGED IN HEART

Writer, radio show host, and anti-pants activist Scab Casserole was found dead in his apartment yesterday, authorities report. He was 28. Casserole, son of Gash and Buboe Casserole and brother of Stoma and Dante Bean, was famous for his obsessions with the sexual arts, varying skin diseases, and the destruction of all worldly religions and the institutions spawned by them. He was known for his excessive consumption of alcohol, marijuana, and pizza burgers, as well as his love of blazing riffs and vocals similar to the sounds made by souls trapped in Hell. But deep within his calloused exterior, report his cohorts and colleagues, rested a powerful respect and compassion for humanity, and for the overwhelming power of metal’s undying energy. What they remember most, though, was the smell. “Seriously,” said former East Village Radio cohost Wyatt Marshall, “the dude was ripe, constantly.” Services will be held in the bathroom of St. Vitus in Greenpoint; attendees are asked to dress in formal attire, denim and leather, or nothing at all.

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“Because metal is awesome,” was Ian Chainey’s common response to most questions, including those posed in job interviews, thus accounting for his crushing debt. To him, metal was the best method of escapism, transporting Ian from a confusing reality to a place where he finally felt powerful. “I’ve diagrammed the clockwork of my soul with soaring falsettos, torrents of tremolo, and guttural grunts,” he wrote in a rambling 10,000 page manuscript found half-eaten on his kitchen “table” (floor). He departed this plane his way, buried under an avalanche of ’80s demo tapes. He leaves behind a battered Fender Squire with markers outlining the chords to Pentagram’s “All Your Sins.” His final wish was to have his tombstone rigged with a motion-triggered speaker playing King Diamond’s cackle whenever activated. Instead he was cremated and put in a humidifier. He’ll be mist.

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Caroline Harrison died last Thursday at the age of 55 after decades of her own body waging a slow and irritating war against her. Beloved crazy aunt to her nieces and nephews, Harrison will be remembered for her artwork that made people say, “… eugh.” In her final hours, she was heard to say, “Godfuckingdammit, it’s the future. Why haven’t you invented bionic organs yet?” before succumbing to a rare auto-immune disorder that was previously only found in tapirs. She leaves behind a devoted dog and an excellent book collection. Local radio stations will be playing Dax Riggs in lieu of a public memorial service.

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Sometime around her seventieth birthday, writer Kim Kelly’s sundry sins and astronomical stress levels finally caught up to her. Her vision began to blur in the middle of transcribing an interview with yet another marble-mouthed bore; half a swig of Maker’s and two popped blood vessels later, the scourge of some folks’ sad little lives was out cold. She is survived by her better half, her idiot cat, and far too many records.

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A lifetime spent trying to determine just how much ensorcelled by khaos was too much ensorcelled by khaos; trying to figure out exactly what shade of none more black was too much none more black; trying to discover if there was a magic number of times belting out Manilla Road’s “Necropolis” that was too many times (spoiler: nope); trying to understand a world in which it was possible that everyone didn’t share the same abiding love for drama and power and excess and irony-murdering beauty. Not everyone else in his life got it, but they all got him, and that was the blessing.

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Wyatt Marshall was found dead in an oven with Gash Casserole.

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From a young age Vanessa was attracted to the darker side of life. She was an only child who spent her time finding dead bugs and frogs in the yard of her house and keeping them in jars so she could see what happened to them over time. When she discovered metal music, it was the answer to both her confusion about life and death and her strange attraction to it. She leaves behind her collection of 1,000 records and about twice as many CDs to her children, who will probably donate them all to Goodwill after flipping through them and being repulsed by the cover art.

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Melodramatic and limp-wristed hack Joseph Schafer was found dead somewhere in upper Allegheny near Pittsburgh. According to a note left on his desk, he intended to hike to the East coast in search of a domicile within reasonable driving distance of a potential Immortal gig in the possible future. Sadly, he fell less than a half hour’s walk to the nearest Vietnamese Sandwich shop. Had his backpack not been laden with colorful scarves,180-gram vinyl double LPs and hardbound books, he might have survived the trip. His last words, scratched with one finger into the clay beneath his feet were ‘Sorry, mom.’ The last thing he listened to on his iPod was some wussy female-fronted power metal band.

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Sultan Rhys I of the Holy Empire of Western North Carolina did return to meet his Mystikal Father St. Chuck of Schuldiner on this sorrowful day, the year of our Rhys 108. His last words, croaked from his bloody mouth as he committed seppuku rather than die a peaceful death in a comfy bed with his mixed-gender, consensually-selected harem, were “LAY DOWN YOUR SOUL TO THE GODS ROCK AND ROLL.” He is succeeded to the Nokturnal Bacon Throne by his bastard son, Man, who commented, “The only regret I have at my father’s passing is that I did not tell him how much I resented him for making my entire existence a pun at Eric Wood’s expense.”

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Beth caught the riff bug in her mid-teens, and from there it was an irreversible downhill slide into the world of epic guitars, windmilling hair, mosh pits and unreadable band logos. Her favorite music straddled two separate continents of sound, one angry, bombastic and dirty; the other melancholy and beautiful. Within this kind of metal, she found a safe place to be herself, a cohort of like-minded friends, and the closest thing to a religion she’d ever join.

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You’ve read ours, now what’s yours? Let us know below and enjoy your weekend.

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