Opinion: We Need a Prog Metal Concept Album About the Dangers of Technology!

Posted on by John Danek

I’ve been a huge progressive metal fan since the 7th grade when my very confused great aunt bought me Dream Theater’s “Octavarium” instead of the Meet the Fockers DVD I asked for. It’s a wild concept album about the number 8 or stop signs or mixed martial arts, I’m not sure which. But when revisiting that album recently, I realized that someone needs to finally write a concept album about the ills inflicted upon society by rapidly advancing technology.

Why hasn’t anyone ever done this? So many great prog metal bands out there seem to avoid the topic. What are you doing, Queensrÿche? Meshuggah? Symphony X? You could write about genetic modifications or that time Google killed the Google Reader RSS program. But fine, leave a platinum record on the table if you wish.

There are so many angles one could use: AI, social media’s rotting of the mind, too many porn choices to fit into your average Friday evening. The damage done by technology is so obvious! So why are the shreddiest, most asexual metal bands terrified to address it? Maybe it’s because they are all so dependent on technology. Who is Devin Townsend without his eleven delay pedals? Who is John Petrucci without $6,000 guitar amps and a neckbeard? No one, I suppose.

Maybe I need to write this album on my own. I’ll call it… Mission: Thoughttheft. It’s about, like, government surveillance, Instagram giving people body dysmorphia, and big tech eroding the idea of objectivity and truth. Our protagonist (me) is smarter than everyone else and can see the chilling effects of technological dependence. The people won’t listen because they’re too stupid, but he persists. He fights off the robot horde, finds the big mainframe, and headbutts it to Hell where Satan kicks the shit out of it for eternity.

Oh, and the final track is about how Apple took away the Home button and replaced it with a gesture. Is there a better example of technology sucking total ass? I think not.

10 Horrible Global Conflicts That Inspired Pretty Okay Punk Songs

Posted on by James Knapp

War. What is it good for? Well, occasionally it can inspire some pretty so-so punk melodies at the mere cost of a few thousand human lives. Here’s 10 tragic atrocities that helped create forgettable toe-tapping punk tunes.

The Syrian Civil War

Mainstream sellouts The Roofscoofs basically ripped off their local news producer’s copy when they penned the classist but catchy “I Believe We Can Find a Way,” which does not seem to be in support of or against anything and, in fact, seems to have absolutely no understanding of the war whatsoever.

The War on Drugs

When sentient heaps of quaaludes began overthrowing every world government, the military responded in force. So did many punk bands, with opinion divided on either side of the conflict. Some, like staright edge hardcore outfit Stiffle Piss, supported the military with the song “We Fucking Told You Drugee Fucks This Would Happen.” Meanwhile, thrash stalwarts The Tasteless Assholes took the drugs side, going so far as to write the historically accurate song “Self-Aware Heroin Stabbed the President In His Dickhole,” which actually occurred twice on two non-consecutive occasions.

The Boko Haram Insurgency

If you reading this are well and truly honest with yourself then you will admit that you have absolutely no idea what this conflict is about. But that hasn’t stopped several punk artists from penning confusing lyrics about the Boko Haram Insurgency. This includes prolific folk-punk singer Ricky Gutless, whose protest song “Bring Back the Crack and Those Girls You Kidnapped” clocks in at six minutes, five chords, and 37 very forced slant rhymes with the names of Nigerian cities.

World War I

Though often overshadowed by its showoff, jockish sibling World War II, The Great War, as it was called, has still inspired some decent punk tunes of its own. This is no more apparent than on Rocket Dojo’s song “Trenchfoot In Mouth,” whose repetitive melodies and gray, uninspired lyrics seem to truly capture the essence of man’s inhumanity to man.

The Spanish-American War

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when punk started, though most music historians point to 1890s calliope pioneer Crackers Cobblesworth McGillicutty with his relative hit “Teddy Roosevelt Can Suck a Big Ol’ Bag of Buffalo Balls,” which the future president reportedly found to be “quite cantankerous and droll… like,  if I’m I really gonna fuck with some shit… wait, did you write that last part down.”

The War of the Worlds

Orson Welles 1938 radio drama wasn’t the only War of the Worlds to cause mass hysteria and unregulated suicide. During the brief, intergalactic wars of 1983 between invading extraterrestrials from The Planet of Cows and a global coalition of space navies led by Finland, countless punk bands tentatively embraced patriotism. Pro-Earth songs of the times include Stale Eyeballs’ “President Alien,” Brummers’ “No Cows In My Squat,” and The Silly Boners’ “Just ‘Cause My Dick’s Already Green Don’t Mean I Fuck With Y’all.” Truly a pointless time to be alive.

The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

This ongoing and deeply frustrated conflict has long been a source of influence for activist punks to woefully misunderstand. For instance, Sweet Sabbath’s controversial single “I Get a Hard On For Zion,” which appears to espouse that the band believes the territorial maelstrom is predicated on some sort of landlord dispute, briefly created common ground by offending both sides equally.

The Vietnam War

Though usually associated with the hippie movement, the conflict in Vietnam actually served as the inspiration for some of the earliest punk bands on the scene. Such was true for proto-punk outfit Death From the Side with their single “Napalm In the Evening, Napalm At Suppertime,” which was later ripped off and pacified by the guy who wrote the Bagel Bites jingle.

Cola War
Most punk bands took the Pepsi side in this atrocity as Coca Cola’s CEO at the time was a literal wheelbarrow full of reeking money. The lone detractors were pop-punk outfit The Chaperones with the earworm “New Coke’s For Friendly Folks.” The track espoused the restorative properties of the landmark soft drink while also claiming its sugary denseness helped “heal the heart you tore apart, Amanda.” In hindsight, it’s actually a bit of a downer.

Future War

Just because it hasn’t happened yet hasn’t stopped numerous artists from speculating wildly about what the next big global apocalypse may be. Here’s a handful of current punk songs that might be the precursor to the end of mankind:

The Flannel Cops – “Don’t Fuck Me, Luxembourg”
Runny Buns – “The Day Second Hitler Farted”
The Brokeners – “BEES! BEES!”
Dr. Batman – “We Support the Clown Mafia”
Clobber Gutter – “This Nunnery Stinks Like Napalm”
On the Bend – “Tropical Satan”
Sloppy Cram – “Hail, Overlord Hootie!”
Sniff – “Who Wants a Golden Brainbug For Christmas?”
Land Spencer – “The Probiotics Turned On Us”
The Ashtray Buffers – “Doom From the Deep”
The Brokeners – “SHRIMP! IT’S SHRIMP THIS TIME!”
Crapclap – “Superman’s Real and He’s Super Pissed Off”
The Butlers – “I Didn’t Know Soviets Could Be Hot”
Joey Crackster – “Mo’ Dimension Beasts Mo’ Problems”
Old Long Slap – “Fell Asleep In Spain, Woke Up In Montana”
Working Cad – “Home Depot, Motherfuckers!”
The Dead Butts – “It Was All Steve’s Idea”
Unboobied – “Texas? More Like ‘Shmexas!’ (But Seriously, Please Release All Those Women Back To Their Homes. It’s Weird That, With All Your Power, You Just Make Them Play Softball Constantly)”
Blanket Space – “Oh Shit! Those Cow Aliens Came Back!”
Uptown Bitch – “We Didn’t Even Know Jamaica Had An Army”
The Brokeners – “BEES! IT’S BEES AGAIN!”
WonkaWonkaWonka – “The Toad People Took My Toddler To the Re-Education Center”

Pompous Music Reviewer Can Only Find Two and a Half Stars in James Webb Telescope Picture

Posted on by Harry Valentine

NEW YORK — Seasoned review writer, and so-called ‘realist,’ Gio Moreland struggled for several days to find the stars pictured in NASA’s newest images from the James Webbe Space Telescope, multiple disappointed astronomers confirmed.

“I’m calling it. The pictures have 2.5 stars, and anyone who says they see more suns than that is brainwashed by NASA marketing or paid off by the people trying to promote JWST,” said Moreland, while waving a magnifying glass over a printed image. “Don’t get me wrong. NASA has some strong material. Their early stuff is transcendent. When I look at classic Hubble images, I can definitely find 10 stars. But with this James Webb garbage, they leaned into slick production and lost what was left of their talent. What a waste. There’s just nothing here.”

“Not to mention, infrared has no heart — it’s like the whole picture was made from an algorithm,” continued Moreland, squinting an inch from the paper under an antique desk lamp. “Or a team of scientists in a lab.”

Becca Cunningham, a long-time reader of Moreland’s work, believes his assessment of the most groundbreaking look into the cosmos is correct.

“When I first saw the James Webb images, I was stunned at the beauty of the universe: the vastness and grace of the galaxies’ arrangements, our small part in it all, and yes… the literal awesomeness of the stars,” said Cunningham. “But this same exact thing happened to me with Broken Social Scene. I loved ‘You Forgot it in People’ until Gio accurately pointed out it was a little derivative of their earlier work. So now when I look at that sloppy telescope photo I don’t even see the stars anymore. All I see is cringe.”

NASA officials were compelled to respond following the publication of the review.

“I’m shocked anyone still reads what that guy has to say. I’ll be honest, I thought his Nihilism was charming at first, but being a contrarian doesn’t count as having personality,” said Dr. Amy Rivera, a lead engineer involved in the telescope’s launch. “And just from a practical standpoint, the deep field image alone captures hundreds of galaxies with millions of stars each, so yes, there are more than two. I don’t know this Mr. Moreland, but I wish he would let people enjoy things.”

According to sources, no one at Rolling Stone magazine is allowed to leave their offices until they rank the top 500 stars of all time.

“You Are Important” Sticker In Venue Urinal Turns Man’s Entire Life Around

Posted on by James Knapp

HARRISBURG, Penn. — Local human disaster Jason Melvin recently managed to pull a complete 180 in every aspect of his previously pointless existence with the help of a “You Are Important” sticker strategically placed in the lower left side of a urinal, newly optimistic sources confirmed.

“I was really close to the end there for a while. My wife left me, I lost my job, my roommate stopped hooking up with me and then she kicked me out after learning that I had a wife and no job,” explained Melvin of his pre-sticker situation. “I was pretty loaded that night, but once I saw that sticker getting blasted by my forest green pee stream, I realized that I really do have a lot yet to offer. I got a good new job, a nice apartment, I’m dating an absolute jewel of a woman and, not to get too ahead of myself but, I’m pretty sure I’m gonna be able to fuck a few of her friends and her sister. Yep, everything’s coming up Melvin!”

Sticker placer Roke Samuelson detailed his thought process while shoving his hand in the Scooch’s piss epicenter.

“I always knew that sticker would make a difference. Putting it in that urinal was the right, smelly decision,” said Samuelson while licking a salty substance off the webbings between his fingers. “There is a stigma out there that men need to be stoic and they can’t express feelings or accept kind gestures. So I make sure my stickers reach men at their most vulnerable; while their dicks are out in a public restroom. Letting everyone know that they are important was totally worth the hepatitis!”

Longtime bartender Cathy Jarvis says there is a rich history of lavatory decoration.

“It kinda comes and goes in waves. Those stickers get eroded and rot off with punk piss every few weeks so there’s rarely a consistent message,” said Jarvis. “That time someone put a ‘Heroin Kills’ sticker in there nearly bankrupted our door guy, he’s been providing decent smack for years and suddenly the market dried up. A few weeks later someone put up a sticker that said ‘Heroin Makes the Pain Go Away’ and business picked back up. It’s all just pee-based politics.”

At press time, venue staff had been directed to “clean that fucking urinal once and for all,” potentially negating future rehabilitative stickers.

Will I Understand the New Coheed & Cambria Album if I Have Had Sex Already?

Posted on by John Danek

“Good Apollo I’m Burning With Secrets of Silent Earth 3 Volume IV: Section B (The Diaxis Continent) Addendum” What the fuck does any of this mean?

I went with a friend to see Coheed & Cambria live and really dug the songs and shredding. But when I looked up their music at home, all I found were astrophysics thesis statement titles. And they have a new album out, which will make things even more confusing.

So let me just ask this upfront: will I understand this new Coheed album if I have had sex? Or is this the type of thing where only virgins can hear a specific frequency and parse meaning out of all this gibberish?

Look, I understand the appeal of science fiction as much as anyone. I had a subscription to Star Wars Insider magazine as a kid. But then I got my genitals touched. It was awesome and put a lot of things into perspective. I did not renew my subscription after that fateful Monday.

My (obviously virginal) friend who took me to the show claims that all the songs and albums and artwork are related to some comic book series, which makes it even worse than I thought. Every time I start reading the series summary on Wikipedia, memories of sexual romps flood my mind, like that one time while watching Peoria’s July 4th fireworks in the back of the Buick Riviera in ‘08. Then suddenly, I’m sitting there with a smile on my face completely unable to focus on this nerd shit. I just can’t do it.

Look, the band is dope. They have chewy riffs, tasty guitar solos, and catchy choruses. But I think that’s as far as I can take it. I’m not going to pretend to be someone I’m not: a virgin. I have had sex, and I don’t care who knows.

So yeah, I might go to another Coheed & Cambria concert. And I’ll have a good time. But don’t you dare attempt to talk to me about some spaceship in a comic book. I’m too busy sometimes having sex.

Book Banning Is Wrong Unless It Gets Me Out of Helping My Kid With His Homework

Posted on by Tony Morse

Book banning has always raised my hackles. Ayn Rand is a literary genius so when some hippie mom whose kid went to the same school as mine tried to get her work pulled from the school’s reading list, I told the principal she was selling pills. Whatever happened to free speech in this country?

Suffice it to say I was furious when I found out my kid’s school was cutting some very important reading from the curriculum. I try to be open-minded so I went to a PTA meeting, which is when I learned just how many books my kid was going to have to read. And since I’m a very proactive parent, that meant I’d be right there in the trenches with him to help analyze these books and study for his tests. Upon further review, they should be banning way more books because I’ll be damned if I’m gonna spend my limited free time helping out with all this work.

Parenting is hard work and, not to sound selfish, but I need my “me” time. Sure, I’ll help him out to a reasonable degree but does he really need to read a new book every unit? Whatever happened to the classics? Catcher in the Rye. To Kill a Mockingbird. The one with all the racial slurs. All banned! These were books I had already read and it’s gonna be a hell of a lot harder to help my kid with his homework if I have to learn something new.

Two of Three References on Punk’s Job Application Are Dead

Posted on by Dave McNamara

BOSTON – Local business owner Shawn O’Connell was surprised to discover that a majority of the personal references provided by a recent job applicant turned out to be deceased, confirmed sources at the Registry of Vital Records and Statistics.

“You always find crazy on an application when a dude comes in with bad tattoos and a dumb haircut,” said O’Connell, co-owner of 2-Shawn’s Moving & Junk Removal. “Long gaps of unemployment, usually for prison time or going on tour. Sometimes they rebrand drug dealing as ‘freelance sales work.’ But this was the first time I saw two people that I know for a fact are dead listed as someone’s references. They both owned other moving companies, and it’s a small network, you know. What makes it worse is one of them OD’d like 12 years ago! Like, you don’t have anyone else you can use?”

Applicant Bobby “Pox” Herrera defended his decision to list his dead employers on his resume.

“There are only so many jobs you can get when you have a criminal record. It’s pretty much moving companies or kitchen work, and most restaurants won’t hire someone with my skin condition,” said Herrera, draining a large boil on his forehead. “And it’s not my fault those guys died! They were idiots that paid shitty and didn’t even have insurance for their businesses. Super sketchy too. One of them once strapped me to a marble statue they were lowering out of a fourth-story window so I could keep it from hitting the side of the building. The least I could get out of them was a couple of references for a better job.”

Riva Patel, the head of recruitment at Fidelity Investments, says the most important phase of the hiring process is the first impression.

“How we present ourselves on our initial hiring documents is of the utmost importance. Recruiters are looking for any irregularities or mistakes to help pare down the often enormous pool of applicants,” said Patel. “Having dead references is perhaps one of the worst faux pas one could commit, aside from say smearing feces over your cover letter.”

With other options few and far between for a man with Herrera’s credentials, he says he might have to resort to his old job of scrubbing cigarette receptacles at the mall, or worse yet, get a job at Subway.

The Top 5 Scratch-Off Tickets That Are Gonna Get Me Out of This Hole, Come on Baby!

Posted on by Dan Rice

Between the pandemic, rising fuel prices and some real fucking bad luck at the dog track, more and more Americans are taking on side hustles to make ends meet. Those Americans are suckers and chumps.

I am hanging by a fucking thread but that’s all about to change right here, right in this gas station, right in front of this lady asking me to move out of her way that I’m ignoring. You can pay for your milk and bread after I’m done getting rich bitch, they ain’t never gonna break Daddy’s legs! Here we go!

5. Pharaohs Tomb: $20
I know what you’re thinking — “Twenty bones on one scratchy?! I can buy a whole pack of smokes for that much!” Well, as the saying goes, you gotta spend money to make money baby! This bad boy costs the most because it pays out the most, so when you think about it this is the smartest scratch off ticket to buy!

Here we go, let’s see, pyramid, good yes okay, another pyramid, fuck yeah fuck yeah so close aaaaaaannnnd… onyx. Okay. not what I was hoping for but uh let’s see that’s worth… nothing. Well, fuck. That’s okay we got 4 more!

4. Cashword: $8
I love this ticket because you get like 10 letters to play with and there’s a bunch of possible words so it feels almost impossible to not win something! Rent money here I come!

Okay lucky nickel in hand and let’s do this! We got D, R, Z, Q, G, L, hmmm, no vowels so far, that’s okay head down keep scratching, C, P, T aaaaaaaannnnddd… J. Son of a bitch.

3. Win For Life: $3
This is the one I can feel it. This is the one that’s gonna turn it all around. Top prize on this on is 20 grand a month for the rest of my life! I can’t wait to see the look on my wifes “Stop wasting all of our goddamn money on scratch tickets” face when I tell her… nothing. Nope, this ones a dud. Okay, starting to sweat a little.

2. Three Of a Kind: $2
Come on baby, pappa needs a new pair of shoes! For kis kid! And, some medicine…

Ace… ace.. Jack! God dammit! God fucking dammit I’m such a fucking loser fuck fuck fuck!

1. Hail Mary: $1
Success! I just one 20 big ones! With this windfall I can buy another Pharaoh’s Tomb Scratchy! The last one didn’t hit so my odds are double now!

Opinion: It’s Not About Guns, It’s About Mental Health Which We Will Also Do Nothing About

Posted on by Bobby Korec

As a prominent member of the Republican party who receives a sizable check from the NRA biweekly just for doing their bidding without question, I’m here to tell you that guns are not the problem in America. The issue is mental health.

Now that we’ve identified the root cause, we can take actionable steps to avoid doing anything about it.

As we all know, mentally unhealthy people can be considered extremely armed and dangerous just by simply existing. But the second amendment clearly protects armed and dangerous US citizens. Our hands are kind of tied there.

The Founding Fathers never brought up mental health in the Constitution. Not to mention mass shootings either. How are we supposed to fix an issue if they didn’t tell us how to in the official United States How-To Guide 200 years ago? You just can’t make up new rules to enforce.

People really don’t comprehend this either. Just the other day I was arguing with a liberal online about all the gun violence. Or should I say mental health violence. This lib actually wanted to ban all guns. That’s completely ridiculous. If anything, we should eliminate all mental health. Once we do away with that, we can finally go back to enjoying our huge military-grade arsenal in peace.

On the other hand, banning mental health sounds a lot like big government overreach to me. After all, we’re the party of freedom. Besides banning abortions and ridding citizens of body autonomy, telling educators what they can’t teach in schools, forcing people to use the restroom that we choose for them, suppressing voting rights, and making drugs illegal except for the pharmaceutical ones that make our rich friends even richer, and our secret plan to gradually convert this country into an authoritarian police state, we’re all about small government.

So yeah, enough with the “guns murder people” rhetoric. Literally, no one has ever died because of a firearm. If anything, we need to regulate particular mental states of being. Are you anxious? Maybe you belong in jail. Feeling depressed? Well, maybe that should be illegal and punishable by death.

But again, I cannot stress enough that we will not do anything about this issue. It’s best to just hope it all goes away on its own.

Senate Candidate John Fetterman Supports Medicare for All the Motherfuckers in the Back

Posted on by Patrick Coyne

GLENSIDE, Pa. — Pennsylvania senate candidate John Fetterman vows to support universal healthcare for scene veterans, old heads, and all the real motherfuckers in the back, confirmed supporters.

“How the fuck we feeling tonight?” said Fetterman to a packed suburban Philadelphia Knights of Columbus hall. “Here’s the deal. Right now we’ve got the people who built this scene hitting their 30s and 40s, but they’ve all got the knees and lung capacities of normies twice their ages. And unfortunately, Republicans that supposedly ‘support veterans’ never extend that compassion to scene veterans. I promise to fight for Pennsylvania. All I ask is that the punks in the crowd tonight who are over 18 and/or not felons vote for me this November.”

Harrisburg resident Chad “Shopping Cart” Doyle was impressed after attending a Fetterman rally, held in his friend’s basement.

“I knew we were in for some real shit when Fetterman wrapped the mic cord around his wrist and started pacing around the stage like a caged tiger,” said Doyle. “Like most of the old dudes at the show, I have severe tinnitus, so the majority of Fetterman’s speech just sounded like high pitched ringing to me. But from what I heard, I’m really impressed that he’s got our backs. He even vowed to take care of anyone suffering from crowd-kill-related CTE, and those who were given one too many nard punches while crowd surfing. He’s definitely got my vote, assuming I wake up early enough to get to the voting site before 8 p.m.”

Dr. Mehmet Oz, reality TV star and Fetterman’s opponent, expressed his conversative views on Medicare, and tried his best to shake his reputation as a “poser.”

“I actually have a ton of punk cred. I once had Avril Lavigne on my TV show to talk about lyme disease,” said Oz. “But you know what I think is really punk rock? Dismantling the social safety net. Healthcare is a privilege and not a right. And did you know that those so-called ‘mother fuckers in the back’ barely even contribute to the local economy? When was the last time you’ve seen an old punk buying a t-shirt from the merch table?”

At press time, Fetterman is campaigning and crashing on couches across the state.