We’ve all been in this situation: the luxurious cruise ship on which you were traveling for some well-earned relaxation time in Mallorca crashed into a bunch of rocks because the captain was distracted by sexy manatees, sunk, and now you’re stuck on a lifeboat with five other passengers from all walks of life.
You’re all starving. You’re dying of thirst. The sun is a beating hammer on the shoddy aluminum of your brain, and even worse, your fellow survivors have all turned into giant talking hams!
But have no fear! In this exact situation, all you need is some creative, mouthwatering ham recipes, and you’ll be partying on the beaches of Porto Cristo in no time! Just drink some saltwater and get your appetite ready for some delicious talking hams that keep looking at you weird!
Ham & Gruyere Sliders: Everyone loves a ham sandwich! But you can always kick up your old-fashioned, dumb-as-ditchwater, lifeboat-ready recipe by introducing a fun cheese like a cave-aged gruyere! Your fellow survivors might be giving you side-eye, but who are they to say anything? They’re fucking hams. Mouthwatering, succulent hams.
Jamon Iberico-Wrapped Persimmons: Javier, the dancing instructor who made the first few days of the cruise an ordeal because he could not grasp that you can never and will never be able to cha-cha, is exactly the kind of dry-aged Spanish ham who not only says “no, stay back, caníbal!” with a Castilian accent but will be delectable wrapped around a ripe Hachiya persimmon. Ola, Javier!
Ham Noodle Casserole: Remember, you don’t need to be fancy to enjoy the ham that is the other survivors whose blank eyes are staring at the sun! A can of cream of mushroom soup, some boiled egg noodles, and some cheddar cheese are all that’s necessary for a nourishing casserole that can feed your whole family! The family is the seagulls who perch on the side of the lifeboat that you have taken for your own, and no one will take it from you.
A Guy’s Head, But It’s Ham: Clarity is a nightmare, and the most fragile grasp you have on life depends on picturing Timothy, the program director, as ham. He’s just ham!
Mustard-Serrano Glazed Spiral Ham: Spicy! Nothing goes well with toothsome smoked pork shoulder as a sizzling-hot mostarda. That said, you have to deal with a ham when it talks back, and you need to use an oar to beat away the others. They know nothing of delicious recipes, but what can you expect?
They’re just hams.
Nothing wrong with a long, droney interlude on your album, but this one gets pushed just a little too far. The middle section could be mistaken for a slightly-less-dense version of a Sunn O))) record. Closing track “Piss Clowns are Trebled” (did we mention these guys have a gift for song/album titles?) is killer, but it feels like it takes all day to get there, and this is on one of their shortest albums.
Darker and more ominous than most GY!BE records (and that’s saying something), the dirge-like tracks on here are apparently meant to support the entirely reasonable list of political demands included in the album’s packaging, notably “an end to foreign invasion, an end to borders, the total dismantling of the prison–industrial complex.” It’s an admirable attempt, but the people with the power to bring those things to an end are more likely listening to bro country than to intricately-composed instrumental avant-garde post-rock by a bunch of anarchist weirdos.
This EP has two tracks, one of which is perfect entry-level GY!BE, a nice little 10-minute piece that is pretty much the distilled essence of the band’s style. The other is primarily a field recording of some malcontent (who probably stormed the capitol 22 years later) bragging about how he mouthed off to a judge while paying a parking ticket and then reciting an “original” poem that is mostly plagiarized Iron Maiden lyrics. You can listen to it as a nifty piece of performance art, but remember, you really don’t have to.
The band was already selling merch with this album title almost a decade before its release, so it must have been a slow-developing concept. We’re also not sure why a band this transgressive and decidedly non-mainstream felt the need to censor the title, but that’s surely all part of some grand aesthetic plan. A solid album front-to-back, with less emphasis on drone, a return to field recordings as a central (but not overused) element, and some riffs that, played a little faster through the right guitar pedal, would practically be death metal.
This one sort of had to be in the middle of the pack, and there’s a simple litmus test for whether you’ll be into it: Do you like GY!BE’s whole deal? Then you’ll like this, but it probably won’t be your favorite. Do you not like GY!BE’s whole deal? Then you won’t like this, and probably won’t feel inclined to compare it to the rest of their discography. This is just the band doing what they do, but very little really stands out. We’re giving it a break though, because it was the follow-up to “Lift Your Skinny Fists” (see below), which is a stone cold banger.
We’re at that magical point in the ranking where you could shuffle them up in any order and it would be perfectly respectable. This record was such an anomaly in the 1996 music world: In the context of an era of easy-listening pop treacle and post-grunge crapola, this sounds like it might as well be a transmission from Mars. The music is painstakingly weird, and that iconic opening spoken-word piece—”The car is on fire, and no driver at the wheel, and the sewers are all muddied with a thousand lonely suicides.”—not only sets the tone for GY!BE’s entire discography, but also sounds like something from a particularly bleak Cormac McCarthy novel, and ain’t nothing wrong with that.
It’s a masterpiece, and most people’s gateway not only to this band, but to experimental turn-of-the-millenium instrumental music in general. It’s a straight line from this to Explosions in the Sky and This Will Destroy You, but it’s also more ambitious and audacious than anything either of those bands, excellent as they are, have ever done. Unlike on “Slow Riot,” the spoken word and field recording bits mesh so well with the music that you can’t imagine them not being there, especially the moody street preacher on “Static.” But even some guy waxing nostalgic about Coney Island or a looped recording of a grocery store PA announcement add depth and nuance to the album. And musically, “Static” is a master-class in the slow-burn payoff. It’s not just that it spends 15 minutes (!!!) building upon a simple muted guitar riff with more and more layers and intensity—that sort of compositional trick is a dime a dozen in this genre—it’s that the tempo picks up right alongside it, and by the time the crescendo hits, the song is cruising at practically 200 BPM and you feel like you just got pummeled by the experimental music equivalent of a crowbar-wielding mob enforcer. But, like, in a good way.
The band’s first album after a 10-year hiatus, and unequivocally their greatest. “Lift Your Skinny Fists” is incredible, but this record is an absolute triumph. The two longer tracks steal the show, with opener “Mladic” culminating in a weird, loopy drone that will make you think the record is skipping for a few seconds before the payoff comes in a beautifully-composed crescendo. “We Drift Like Worried Fire” is built around a simple but gorgeous riff and is, at least by GY!BE standards, practically a ballad in its gentle simplicity. The shorter tracks are less memorable, and it’s almost like the band wants you to see them that way (the vinyl version has them on a separate 7-inch while the longer tracks are on each side of the LP), but you should take the time to alternate the discs accordingly, because experiencing this album as a complete work is deeply rewarding. Five stars, two thumbs up, 10/10, perfect album.
Scruffy the Janitor, long-time fixer of toilets and boilers, boilers and toilets, the one boiling toilet, and lifelong pornography enthusiast would despise Peterson for his abhorrently sexist views and recognize that the “12 Rules for Life” are pretty much basic common sense that can be learned anywhere. Mhm.
Let’s discuss the factors. The Amazon Women: Matriarchal giantesses who execute men by pelvis-crushing snoo-snoo. (Nice). Jordan Peterson: A frail, fragile psychiatrist who once melted his brain with bennies, and who believes that women are the embodiment of chaos. Not only are the Amazonians fundamentally opposed to Peterson’s philosophy, but they also have good critical thinking skills and can see through the fundamental flaws in his philosophy, ardently opposing this wee man.
Intelligent, beautiful and self-possessed, LaBarbara thinks Peterson’s philosophy is nonsense. She wasn’t too concerned when Hermes came home talking about buying a copy of “Maps of Meaning,” but when he started talking about the “crisis of masculinity,” she put the book in a pot of her famous curried goat.
Leela started reading “12 Rules For Life” mainly because there was a section on cleaning your room, and she needed an excuse to clean her apartment. She got two paragraphs in before karate chopping the book against the wall and now dreams about putting a combat boot up Peterson’s ass.
There’s actually not a lot of jokes you can even make about this one. Peterson and Gore are pretty much on opposite ends of the political spectrum and Peterson is a prolific climate denier. Which honestly, at this point, one has to wonder… how many of these right-wing nut jobs actually don’t believe in climate change and how much of it is just toeing the party line? Al Gore doesn’t know. He just doesn’t know.
There’s something about the phrase “an antidote to chaos” that rubs Robot Santa Claus the wrong way. He loves chaos. It’s his whole thing. Oh sure, he loves the idea of an author who sits in constant judgement of his fellow man and calls them weak little weasels, but wishes that instead of writing boring books about it, Peterson would go out and decapitate them.
Or perhaps the remains of a spaceship that crashed into God. Either way, one of the most notable quotes from God’s episode is: “When you’ve done it right, people won’t be sure you’ve done anything at all.” This runs antithetical to Jordan Peterson, who never met a talk show he wouldn’t go on, a college student he wouldn’t try and debate, a trans person he wouldn’t misgender, or a hill he wouldn’t die on. All in the least subtle way possible.
And Grand Lunch Lady, Grand Priestess, Funeral Director, etc. This grand woman clearly has a lot of life experience, skills and education, allowing her to see through much of Peterson’s smoke and mirrors. When she attended a lecture on Peterson’s approach to parenting, she stormed out and even clocked ole’ Kermit with her cane, finding his rules simplistic, staunch, and stanky.
Fiercely independent and at times promiscuous while planning to have a family on her own time, Amy Wong is the type of woman who Jordan Peterson despises. Amy was once enrolled in a course taught by the head of Professor Peterson, and she quickly dropped the course to boogie board in the time she would have spent at the lecture.
Son of Hubert Farnsworth and Mom, Igner would fear the weird Kermit man and his mean comments about women, since he is a momma’s boy at heart and would interpret Peterson’s misogyny as an attack on dear old mom.
Fry would have discovered Jordan Peterson while on a break from his relationship with Leela, he is admittedly exactly the right sort of person to be suckered in by Peterson’s… charm? Specifically, a prospectless, messy, unsuccessful man in his mid-twenties, with a tendency toward not thinking for himself. But thankfully, Leela was there to pull him back from the edge before he was too far gone.
Fry’s old Boss and noted reader of Big Whoop magazine, Mr. Pannuchi exercised notoriously lax quality control over the ingredients at the Pizzeria, even letting Seymour (yes that Seymour) rummage around in the Pizza Sauce makes for an unclean room, and life. Plus the Pannuchi slouch is in direct opposition to the first rule for life, “Head Up Shoulders Back.”
At first this Peterson guy seemed to be nice and proper, but he made the ultimate mistake, by mis-clamping the clamps. A crime punishable by CLAMP CLAMP KEBAMP! Ironic since Clamps is the closest thing to a crustacean Robot in the Futurama Universe, what with the clamps and everything.
Kif is also the type of fella to get suckered in with Peterson’s rhetoric. He’s lowly, depressed and quite literally spineless. But you all forget one thing: Kif is actually a nice guy. Not a “nice guy.” A nice guy. And through that genuine niceness, he was able to pull Amy Wong – a straight-up baddie. I think there’s a lesson in that somewhere.
Jordan Peterson once gave a lecture on the Ball Planet. He began with bouncing, followed by rolling, followed by bouncing of the 69th kind, a societal faux pas on the ball planet. An embarrassed, slightly drunken Peterson proceeded to “bounce” from the ball planet, before any more chaos broke out, and oh boy imagine the chaos if Jordan brought a lobster to these inflatable intellectuals.
Ndnd is very familiar with the works of Dr. Peterson, mainly because she always has to read them to her husband. Lrrr can’t read. Ndnd doesn’t take Jordan seriously, mainly because she’s convinced he’s not a trained psychologist and college professor, but rather a provoking – but ultimately harmless – meta comedian. Like Andy Kaufman when he used to joke about wrestling women.
The Robot Devil used to be big into Peterson, taking a number of notes from “12 Rules For Life.” Ultimately, he was pretty convinced that Jordan was a robot himself and was champing at the bit to one day have his soul in Robot Hell. He was disappointed when he found out the truth and has since gone on to regret giving Jordan the idea to tell his patients to write angry letters to his critics.
I LOVE THOSE MAGNIFICENT 1X ROBOTS! A pinnacle of efficiency and flawless space-age engineering, Robot 1X considers Jordan a ranting, raving dark age lunatic, babbling about sorcery and myths. Even more cretinous is the concept of only having twelve rules for life. The 1X Robots have at least 7,000 and are among the most well-organized and high-functioning beings in the whole “Futurama” canon.
Due in large part to his unwavering belief in superheroes, it would be safe to say that Mayor Poopenmeyer is also a disciple of Joseph Campbell and the “Hero With a Thousand Faces.” Or he would be, if he actually took the time to read Campbell. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) like most American politicians, the mayor of New New York City hasn’t picked up a book in several years and thinks that every picture of Jordan is just from a remake of “Tales From the Crypt.”
Joey Mousepad is, without doubt, the least problematic of the Robot Mafia’s upper echelon. He’s tall, well-built, easy going and ultimately secure in his intelligence and frame. People like Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, Andrew Tate, and Dave Rubin have nothing to offer him. Unfortunately, Joey Mousepad has also listened to every single episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience,” so he has absorbed some bad takes through pure osmosis.
The ultimate middle child in Mom’s evil empire, Larry is neither as conniving as his older brother Walt nor as brashly unintelligent as his younger brother Igner. Larry is the sort of resentful man who might easily go down a red-pill rabbit hole. Fortunately, the one time he tried standing up to Mom and told her that “women belong in the kitchen, Mommy,” she had him spend a weekend in the tiger pit.
Dwight is a shining example of why smoking weed is actually one of the best things a teenager can do. Dwight first encountered a snippet from “Maps of Meaning” in an English class and – like many young men – thought Peterson had some pretty great ideas. Fortunately, LaBarbara discovered this and accidentally left some of Hermes’ stash out in the open for Dwight to find. After a couple tokes, he forgot all about it.
Through cleaning his room/data storage, the Donbot was able to find his mercy file for the first time in years. With this renewed sense of kindness, the Donbot fronted Peterson a large amount of Clonazeham from the Robot Mafia, and the good doctor went on his way, never to pay back the Donbot for this generous gift, who proceeded to put out an open hit on Mr. Peterson and delete the mercy file.
An antidote to chaos would inevitably lead to the end of “All My Circuits,” since chaos is a prerequisite for drama, soap opera drama especially, and good ol’ Television storytelling, no matter how basic. This would lead Calculon to lump thinly veiled criticism against Jordan Peterson during interviews, inevitably leading the two onto a talk show together, and being the spotlight hog he is, Calculon would double down on these conversations to boost his own career at the expense of the very show he is a star of.
B’GAAAAK! Hyper Chicken is no one’s favorite person, a famously incompetent attorney with a tendency to fly off the handle at anyone he thinks is actually corn. And yet, there’s something about him that doesn’t scream: “I like to read books by public intellectuals.” He’s in touch enough with his rural roots to know that “public intellectual” isn’t a job people should be allowed to have.
Forbidden indeed, and it starts out with what could have been an amazing duet with riff lord (Tony Iommi) and rhyme lord (Ice-T) going to battle, but these sonic shitwinds were a warning of the shitstorm to come. Unfocused riffing, terrible album art (even worse than “Born Again,” I WILL FIGHT YOU), and exhausted execution. So bad that people will pay you to take it from them on vinyl. This left Tony Iommi, and fans hungry for better days, leading to the original lineup reunion blessing us with the aptly titled live album “Reunion.” Not worth any more words from us.
Recorded with some tracks written with another singer (Dave Walker) during one of Ozzy’s benders, “Never Say Die” is as disjointed as it sounds, with inconsistent songwriting, low energy due to drug-fueled burnout. Fused (not Iommi’s decent solo album) with strange, quasi-sci-fi dystopian cover art that would be imitated MORE successfully by future bands, a real low for a band who many have tried to imitate unsuccessfully.
We assume the band was just trying to spell tired, but didn’t have the energy or wherewithal to care, and that apathy leaks all over this middling, truly mid-Black Sabbath album, producing endless tears. It’s a true blessing that this album is not available on Spotify, with symphonic mish-mash garbage and inconsistent (but not bad) riffing creating a cringey attempt at staying relevant. Only indulge if you are into having the most annoying YouTube ads relieve you from its cornball crappery, and it’s less digestible than corn too.
Arguably not a Sabbath album, as it was originally supposed to be released as a Tony Iommi solo release, but since Sabbath owed another album to their record label, the album was rebranded as a fuck off to their corporate overlords. The first album without Geezer Butler, or any of the original members, but thankfully Glen Hughes gives a great performance and the songs are pretty kickass, even if they don’t sound like a true Sabbath record.
Presumably written to try and cheer the band up with its upbeat, surprisingly bright production for a Sabbath record, this was the first real misstep of a record for the Lords of Doom and Gloom. Black Sabbath were becoming less distinct as a band by this point, and if there weren’t some changes made, the band would surely become extinct. Unfortunately, it took them another misstep to seize that opportunity. Still great for what it is, but a step down overall.
The ’80s were a weird time, man. Good time rock’n’roll was in, same with heavy metal and gloom and doom global politics. And during one fateful evening at the pub after six hundred and sixty six pints too many, Ian Gillian and three of the original members of Black Sabbath decided to join forces for what could have been the collaboration of the decade. Unfortunately the elements could not be combined in the right portions, leading to some good results, and some bad, but what could have been still makes us think late at night.
Because “TYR” was so terrible, and probably because Geezer and Dio needed a stable paycheck, the “Heaven and Hell” Era Sabbath reunited to reach former glory. “Dehumanizer” sounds like every era of Sabbath ran through a computer, decades before AI art had been invented, and it’s better than every piece of AI art ever created. So let it be known, computers may be able to mimic notes on a scale, but they can’t replace the human soul, no matter how corrupt said soul is.
The first of several runs with who some refer to as dimestore Dio (Tony Martin), the late ’80s saw Tony Iommi take the band in a more symphonic direction to sometimes mixed results, but “The Eternal Idol” has just enough of that sweet Sabbath Magic, and riffs to compete with both the Dio and Ozzy years, and SURPRISINGLY good lyrics from Tony Martin, Sabbath were sounding like Sabbath Again after “Born Again” and “Seventh Star” failed to recapture that black magic.
The only Sabbath studio album of the ’90s to feature the return of longtime Bassist Geezer Butler alongside Iommi’s all-stars, and he even takes the lead on “Virtual Death”. Although all the parts of this album are good, very few are great since very little sticks out in particular about this record. Not that it’s bad, just forgettable, which for a band who defined a genre and era. But even on a bad day, Sabbath are still better than most bands on a good day.
Synergizing with the early ’80s thrash and hard rock movements, enshrining true mob rule by number. This is also the first Sabbath album to feature the criminally underrated Vinny Appice on Drums, the energy and vibe on this album is that of some old dogs still learning new tricks. And when old dogs band together, there is less of a chance to “Die Young,” and you can look no further than the title track for such evolution.
The first of two cross-themed albums, some may call it a cheap ripoff of Heaven and Hell, but Black Sabbath perfected their sound with Tony Martin on this disk, and that’s not to mention the rest of the band giving performances that would gain a standing ovation in the netherworld (RIP Cozy Powell). Not just once, but twice had Tony Iommi assembled a team of musicians capable of summoning the antichrist, and if it weren’t for the painfully mediocre “TYR” ending the Martin Era hot streak, we may very well have seen an apocalypse.
Black Sabbath’s partial reunion album saw Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, and Ozzy collaborating for the first time in almost thirty years, bringing the band full circle in the cycle of evil they started almost FORTY years earlier, minus Bill Ward, who had since become a geezer himself. As the prophecy had foretold, the prodigal sons of Birmingham had reunited to finish what they started, ending their illustrious career on an absolute high, with all the doom, gloom, and boom that is the Sabbath sound, a crowning achievement fit for the factory workers of the industrial town to unite to.
Recorded off the floor over two days shortly after the band had changed their name from Earth to Black Sabbath, as per the instruction courtesy of the ghost on the album cover, who appeared to Geezer Butler in a hash-fueled dream apparently. Infamously commencing with the triply self-titled Black Sabbath (Band, Album and Song) inventing the Heavy Metal Riff Via the Tritone (devil’s interval for you nerds), killing off that dirty hippie bullshit of the ’60s and replacing it with something just as thoughtful, but much darker.
By the time this album rolled around, the band had all developed SERIOUS drug issues, and as with all in active addiction, existed in the chaos that surrounded them. While there are still classics on this album’s first half (“Symptom of The Universe” was pivotal in the invention of thrash metal), the back half of the album is filled with all the messy, supposedly “Cool” ideas you think of when you’re coked out, short of a 5-year plan to open a business, which if we’re being honest, would pay good money to hear from the original lineup.
Deciding there was simply too much partying going on and with none of the members ready to look in, the band fired the admittedly pretty wild Ozzy Osbourne and replaced him with the inventor of the Metal Horns/lovable yank Ronnie James Dio. A reinvention over a rebirth, “Heaven and Hell” featured a more technical, symphonic sound compared to the doom and gloom of peak Sabbath, it helped to have a singer who could also carry a melody and the unsung contributions of longtime keyboardist Geoff Nichols (RIP) serving as the icing on the cake, proving to the world that the metal is eternal.
After a bad case of writer’s block, Tony Iommi retreated to a haunted English castle to steal some riffs presumably from the ghosts of its former inhabitants in a forward-thinking, anti-colonial form of protest (unlike many guitarists of his generation, who stole from the colonized), and this forward-thinking drove the rest of the album. Generally regarded as the last of the classic Sabbath era, you can hear the band starting to get a little too high on their own colossal supply, with some synth-laden tracks dragging instead of crushing, like a good Sabbath should.
Usually mistakenly referred to as their regular coke order by the kilo at the time, “Snowblind” was the first big-budget Black Sabbath record. Even though half of the budget was spent on the second most popular South American stimulant, the band still made ample use of the rest of the budget to put down some of their best work, with the only misstep on the album being “Changes,” which was made even worse decades later thanks to its inclusion as the theme song for “Big Mouth.”
Though let’s be honest, this could have easily been first if it wasn’t due to personal bias (no such thing as true, unbiased journalism anyways). “Paranoid” toned down the Blues influences of the first album and injected a dose of dark, stark realism. Just listen to ‘War Pigs” mocking the nascent Military Industrial Complex with lyrics that would have been just as refreshing if they were written during the Rock Against Bush era, and the instrumental prowess of each member so good that it makes you want to pick up an instrument and play. It was official, though there had been rumblings of heavy metal before, scientists, musicologists, and sociologists could all agree that this was the moment Heavy Metal was born. The legitimate article, Accept no substitute.
Beginning with Tony Iommi smoking and coughing on what has to be some of the strongest weed ever grown (in the archaic ’70s nonetheless), this album perfected Black Sabbath’s blend of psychedelia, evil, and political consciousness, not to mention the revolutionary down-tuned sound of the guitar influencing EVERY guitarist since. This was everything the nascent band had been working towards, hazy, dark and most of all, METAL as fuck. And that’s not to mention the use of double tracking on the guitars for extra heaviness, pre-dating Judas Priest for that immersive wall of sound guitar and bass. With “Master of Reality,” Black Sabbath arrived as a musical force.