Greetings, true believers! Just when you thought it was safe to go back on the internet, I'm back, cutting no slack in my attack on the wack, and, uh, praising the good. It's been a slow start to the summer, but things are starting to pick up, by the look of things! So, without further ado, on to the thrashing and the burning!
Now, right off the bat, I'd like to send some hearty thrashing out to the Summer Slaughter tour. They're going to be hitting Vancouver in a summer tour season where many larger festivals are passing us by, including the Warped and Rock the Bells Tours! So, yeah, big thanks to the people at The Kirby Organization for putting it together and keeping Vancouver on the itinerary! While I'm not necessarily a huge fan of some of the bands on the bill (Deathcore, not a big fan), there are some killer acts on the bill like instru-metallers Animals as Leaders, the cannabis-fueled deathgrinders in Cephalic Carnage, and the first North American tour for headliners Decapitated since their aborted winter 2007 tour with Amon Amarth. This is a huge event for the extreme metal community, and I for one am stoked to be seeing this all go down at the Rickshaw Theater here in Vancouver on August, 19th.
I'd also like to set aside some thrashing for Decapitated as they return from a set-back that would have destroyed most bands. In October 2007, the Polish death metal band was touring Eastern Europe and were in a serious accident while in Russia. This accident, sadly, killed their drummer, 23 year-old Witold "Vitek" Kiełtyka, and effectively crippled vocalist Adrian "Covan" Kowanek. The band went on hiatus with an uncertain future after the accident, with Witold's older brother and band mastermind, Wacław "Vogg" Kiełtyka, left to sort through the proverbial wreckage. After a stint with fellow Polish deathsters, Vader, Waclaw has reassembled Decapitated, with a new line-up, and is ready to hit the road again. I would like to salute Vogg for the strength it takes to do this, and wish him nothing but the best.
Now, things just wouldn't be complete without the burning. There's a lot of targets right now, but I'm going to have to go after the media and Hollywood in general for how they're handling the recently released tapes of Mel Gibson, where he admits to assaulting his ex-girlfriend, Oksana Grigorieva, and threatens her even more. The media's problem with this, however, is not the admitted and threatened violence, but the fact that Gibson used racial epithets. Yes, using the "N" word isn't the smartest course of action, but let's look at how the word was used. He used it while saying that his wife should be gang-raped, and I'm sorry, but I think the gang-rape thing is worse than saying the "N" word. Why does Hollywood, and by extension, the media allow this? He admitted, in one of the leaked tapes, to striking Ms. Grigorieva, while she was holding their child, and yet the fact he said a racial epithet is worse?! Seriously, people! What the hell is wrong with this picture we're getting?! When words are given more value than actions, then we're on a slippery slope to a place where responsibility is completely abdicated, and that is a world we need to avoid!
It's a messed up world we live in, folks. There are people who are scarily violent and potentially insane, and there are situations that rip away the things and people we love. It takes a lot of inner strength and a great support network to start to come back from these things, and I hope that the people I've discussed, and all those who read and are going through tough times, have at least one of those to fall back on. I know I'm sounding like the ending monologue of a bad daytime talk show, but that doesn't make my words any less true. Take care of eachother, people, and yourselves.
Godspeed and Party On,
Jé-Pé
