Any Decibel readers out there been feeling a strange, niggling affinity for the Son of Man this week? Do you suddenly empathize with that robed, bearded dirty hippie antagonist of early Slayer records? Is holy water no longer singeing your skin? Are you finally able to consume garlic?
Fear not, friends, these are not signs of early onset paranoid schizophrenia. You’ve likely been touched by the great supernatural accomplice of EveryMetalhead, a ministry created by the earnest cutie pie proprietor of the blog Look Toward the Skies, who (when not ranking neo-metal dude hotttness or rocking out to August Burns Red, at least) feels “called to love and be a light to the metal world.” This apparently mostly entails issuing a monthly list of metal bands to pray for — January’s muezzin call includes Behemoth, Melechesh, Dying Fetus and (shocker!) Rotting Christ, FYI — and dropping stark, lecture-y web videos:
I don’t presume to believe I could improve in any way upon Christopher Hitchens’ recent essay detailing the paradoxes and problems believers face when praying for committed infidels. Suffice to say a “saving” by one religion would be a “damning” in the eyes of most others. Nevertheless (and although I am a proponent of the too oft-ignored maxim “correlation is not causation”) I am forced to admit there is some evidence the effort has reaped at least one soul: Just last week Seth Putnam of Anal Cunt told The Gauntlet (seriously NSFW image at link!), “[God] has me here for a reason and hasn’t taken me yet. He must want me to keep doing the same shit I have been doing.” Which is writing songs like “I Snuck a Retard into a Sperm Bank,” “Women: Nature’s Punching Bag,” and “I Became a Counselor So I Could Tell Rape Victims They Asked for It,” natch.
Congratulations on the catch and good luck with the rest of us!
Aw, I only jest! To her credit young lady is not overbearing, loves her some (alas, questionable) metal, appears to have only warm-n-fuzzy intentions, and doesn’t believe Behemoth should be jailed for blasphemy. (Take what we can get, right?) Still, heathen that I am, I can’t help sharing a few of choice cuts from the blog (so…forgive me!):
* “I have come to the conclusion that God is infinitely more metal than Satan. Source: The Holy Bible. (Had a blast during devotions today; listening to metal while reading 2 Kings.)”
* “I have a new job! I work at a Japanese/Chinese/Thai food restaurant. It’s really quite remarkable how God gave me this job.”
* “God shouldn’t have to fight for my time and attention, but I so often make Him. Whether we’ve struggled for the attention and affection of parents, friends, significant others, the opposite sex in general, bosses, teachers, whomever— we’ve all been there, and wedon’t like it. God doesn’t like it either. He becomes jealous— righteously jealous— for my attention and affection. Sometimes, I am so unfaithful to Him that He has to go to what we here on earth like to call ‘drastic measures’ to get me back. It’s worth it.”
Lord, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: people reverently accept behavior from a Father in Heaven that they’d have any friend, foe, or family member arrested for here on earth. The job sounds pretty sweet, but we’ve got stalking laws and restraining orders to prevent overbearing men from employing “drastic measures” to get women back. Oh well. Live and let live. (Or, alternately, “Do what thou wilt”?)
I would be remiss if I did not leave you a few parting thoughts from the late, great Bill Hicks on the Prankster God:
