There is no place for irony in heavy metal, part one

In a time when every Vice Magazine reading asshole thinks it's hip and cool to wear cock rock band t-shirts for the sake of some misunderstood irony, it's time to raise the flag of hate again. Metal always was, still is, and will forever be the greatest fucking musical genre on earth ever. Period. I mean it.

So, dear fellow headbangers, put on your sleeveless denim jackets, ride your battle horse into glory, turn the fucking volume all the way up and have a look at some of the greatest moments in art history with GLW/DRK...

W.A.S.P. - Animal 12"
All right, everybody - never ever disrespect W.A.S.P.! I mean it. You might shrug it off as just my opinion, but trying to argue with me that W.A.S.P. is not one of the greatest bands of all time might result in a massacre. What's not to love about them? Blackie Lawless even replaced Johnny Thunders in the fucking New York Dolls (for a few days only, but still...) This is way cooler than your lame hardcore band will ever be, no doubt. And any band that has a debut single like Animal just flat out rules. Period.

But let's take a look at the cover, shall we? One thing that immediately catches your attention is the lettering that was used for the title. It's exactly the same font as on the cover of NWA's Straight Outta Compton, and if you ask me, this is cooler than Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer together. I also love the fact that the title says "F**k Like A Beast". That's like flipping the bird to the moral majority. "You're not gonna let us print the word fuck on our own cover, you posers? Well, we're gonna use the picture of a man in tights instead, and we're gonna put a bloody sawblade on his private parts. That's how heavy we are, Tipper Gore!" The band logo is a wonderful example of heavy metal typography: it looks like four pieces of metal with screws. And fuck it, who cares about tracking and letter spacing? This piece of modern art was created years before desktop publishing software became widely available, so the sawblade between two letters and painfully varying spaces are a-ok.

(On a side note, does it really say "mum" on his belly, written in blood? How metal would that be?)

Exciter - Heavy Metal Maniac
What we have here is one of the most underrated albums ever. It's basically their demo pressed on vinyl, and that was when bands still did demos with 9 songs and spread them all over the world on tape, instead of recording one lame track and putting it on MySpace. Exciter was a speed metal trio from Canada, with a drummer who also handled the vocal duties - a concept that was later utilized by Snuff and Satanic Surfers, but none of these bands were even remotely metal (despite the word "satanic" in one name).

The cover sums up the title perfectly. Just look at the man's arm! He's got a heart tattoo with a banner around it that actually reads "metal". You just have to be a true heavy metal maniac to get some sweet ink like this. Talk about being down for life! Even though my initial assumption was that the person in the picture is someone who auditioned for the Village People, the credits on the back cover tell us that this is the arm of someone called the "East Side Slasher". No matter how you look at it, it's awesome. I would kill to hang around with someone called East Side Slasher. "Hey East Side Slasher, want another beer?" But maybe the East Side Slasher really did audition for the Village People. It would explain a lot: (a) his semi-gay leather biker bar outfit, and (b) the act of violence he commits to the Marshall amp. After all, he cuts a pussy into that amp. An act of retaliation maybe? The Village People were never known to be as heterosexual as let's say the 2 Live Crew, so who knows...

Pokolgép - Pokoli Színjáték
Ladies and gentlemen, fellow metalheads, and now... the most amazing metal cover of all time. Ever.

Even though I don't know shit about Pokolgép (which means "hell machine", or more loosely translated just some random piece of explosive device), I just had to pick this up at the flea market. It was super cheap, I had seen Pokolgép tapes all over the place when I was on holidays in Hungary as a kid, and nothing screams m-e-t-a-l! like the cover artwork. Come on, just look at the logo! Chains and metal, just what a true headbanger at heart needs... and don't forget the reflections. This was done in 1987 with Eastern European crayons, and Adobe has not been able to come up with a Photoshop filter like this until now. Pure genius.

But let's check out the little details that add to the overall greatness of this masterpiece...

1. The monster-robot (or whatever the fuck this is supposed to be) is apparently holding a baseball bat, which is way ahead of it's time. It's almost prophetic: bands like Biohazard or Madball were doing this years later.

2. The rings! Four of 'em! Two skulls, one happy devil with a Rolling Stones tongue (pop-cultural cross references, anyone?), and a sad devil. That's like Yin and Yang in a heavy metal kind of way. To make the whole imagery even more metal, one skull has not two but three rows of teeth, and the sad devil even has four. Really, count them. Can you get any heavier? Maybe this is some kind of social criticism that I don't get, but please keep in mind that Hungary offers some of the best and cheapest dental services on the face of this earth.

3. I love the robot's helmet. It has (a) two horns (to make it look more diabolical), (b) it says 666 (even more evil!), (c) it looks a bit like the Motörhead war pig logo (another reference), and (d) the helmet is either cracked and shattered from battling other demons, or the artist was going for a bio-mechanic look, trying to add veins. I don't know what's cooler.

4. I can't stop to sing the praise of this amazing artist. His name is Giorgio Soós. Does he have any books of his artwork available? When's his next solo exhibition? Seriously, this guy was a true visionary. Everybody rips of Shepard Fairey these days, or Pushed, or even me - but let me enlighten you. I am sure you haven't noticed until now. Take a close look at the robot's face. See? It's fucking MF Doom's metal mask! More than a decade ago! (And Sido ripped off that shit even later.)

Flotsam and Jetsam - Doomsday For The Deceiver
Holy fuck, now this is an all-time classic, both musically and visually. In case you didn't know (which would make you a wimp and a poser), Jason Newsted played bass on this album, before he was chosen to replace Cliff Burton in the band that should have broken up after ...And Justice For All. But historical details aside, what rules about this album (apart from the über-metal riff-o-rama, of course!) is the wonderful front cover artwork.

It's one hell of a epic battle scene: Scuzzlebutt from South Park versus the funny little devil from Maiden's Number Of The Beast cover! This is heavier than Rocky versus Mr T, or Luke Skywalker versus Darth Vader, and perhaps even Jack Bauer versus everyone. I have a few minor complaints about the cover, though. Scuzzlebut (a) is green instead of brown, (b) doesn't have Patrick Duffy for a leg, and (c) there's no piece of celery for his right hand. But I can see past the last mistake, because random vegetables are just not as evil as reptile claws. And could you rip out somebody's eye with celery? Probably not, unless you are Jack Bauer. Or maybe these two cuties are just playing, and Scuzzlebutt played a little bit too rough? We'll never know. Maybe the devil just didn't like the wicker baskets Scuzzlebutt was weaving, which would make him the deceiver. About time his doomsday is here! Boo! As an extra added bonus, I'm sure it hasn't slipped past your experienced art critic eye that this battle of epic proportions takes place on the corner of Flotsam and Jetsam Street or Avenue or something or other.

(Reading the lyrics to the title track, I actually found out that it's not Scuzzlebutt, but another fine gentleman called Flotzilla. He even had his own EP after this album. Wow, cool.)