Tonight @ First Uni­tar­i­an Church, 7:30 p.m. Pre­view here (via Youtube.)

No sur­prise, right? Wrong. Even after Blessed Black Wings marked met­al’s resur­gence into the main­stream along with Mastodon and Isis, it seems that they’ve joined the flot­sam and jet­sam.

For me, Blessed Black Wings remains an album for these times: the oily gui­tars revive Sab­bath’s Satan­ic moral clar­i­ty, lib­er­tar­i­an lean­ings and des­per­ate mes­sage, all of which are cru­cial anti­dotes to the xeno­pho­bic theoc­ra­cies con­sol­i­dat­ing pow­er around the globe.

Rest assured that the post-scripts are wel­come nonethe­less.

Pre­pare your­self for a sweaty, stoned night! Let’s revis­it the argument:

High on Fire — “Broth­er in the Wind”

Thrones — “Epi­cus Doomi­cus Bumpitus”

When I next real­ized that the Philip­pines had dropped into our laps I con­fess I did not know what to do with them… And one night late it came to me this way…1) That we could not give them back to Spain — that would be cow­ard­ly and dis­hon­or­able; 2) that we could not turn them over to France and Ger­many — our com­mer­cial rivals in the Ori­ent — that would be bad busi­ness and dis­cred­itable; 3) that we not leave them to them­selves — they are unfit for self-gov­ern­ment — and they would soon have anar­chy and mis­rule over there worse than Spain’s wars; and 4) that there was noth­ing left for us to do but to take them all, and to edu­cate the Fil­ipinos, and uplift and civ­i­lize and Chris­tian­ize them, and by God’s grace do the very best we could by them, as our fel­low-men for whom Christ also died…

- Pres­i­dent William McKin­ley, The Chris­t­ian Advo­cate 22 Jan­u­ary 1903 (pub­lished posthumously)

A hope­ful soci­ety has insti­tu­tions of sci­ence and med­i­cine that do not cut eth­i­cal cor­ners, and that rec­og­nize the match­less val­ue of every life. Tonight I ask you to pass leg­is­la­tion to pro­hib­it the most egre­gious abus­es of med­ical research: human cloning in all its forms, cre­at­ing or implant­i­ng embryos for exper­i­ments, cre­at­ing human-ani­mal hybrids, and buy­ing, sell­ing, or patent­ing human embryos. Human life is a gift from our Cre­ator — and that gift should nev­er be dis­card­ed, deval­ued or put up for sale. (Applause.)

- Pres­i­dent George W. Bush, State of the Union address, Jan­u­ary 31, 2006

Jesu — “Your Path to Divinity”

Occu­pa­tion: Dream­land, dir. Gar­rett Scott and Ian Olds @ Int’l House, 7 p.m.

A few days lat­er, when every­one is more relaxed, the inevitable necrophilic humor of impe­r­i­al war-mak­ing comes out: “How much mon­ey would it take for you to have sex with a male corpse at the fifty-yard line dur­ing the Super Bowl half­time show? What? Five million?

Chris­t­ian Par­en­ti — The Free­dom: Shad­ows and Hal­lu­ci­na­tions in Occu­pied Iraq

Vad­er — “This is the War”

Juelz San­tana, fea­tur­ing Cam’ron — “Kill ‘Em”

When Mike Pat­ton played Sus­pend­ed Ani­ma­tion for an April Fool’s joke last year, not every­one got it. The com­bi­na­tion of jump cuts, cal­cu­lat­ed mis­cues and caf­feinat­ed exper­i­men­ta­tion was too heavy for the avant garde (with excep­tions) and too car­toon­ish for any­thing but the art met­al scene, leav­ing it orphaned for ADHD weirdos and nos­tal­gia freaks (seem­ing­ly just two…)

Strange­ly, despite John Zorn’s imprint being all over Sus­pend­ed Ani­ma­tion, as well as the cura­tion of Warn­er Bros. enig­mat­ic and dizzy­ing Carl Stalling Projects Vols. 1 & 2, there was nary a men­tion of the man behind the Mer­rie Melodies orches­tra. Pat­ton’s rit­u­al­is­tic Ani­ma­tion relies on Stalling’s ellip­ti­cal sen­si­bil­i­ty, moody and play­ful com­po­si­tions evok­ing the vio­lent one moment and the bucol­ic the next. Pat­ton’s record­ings are per­haps more tweaked and in some instances more child­ish, but that’s owed more to his brood­ing com­po­si­tion­al men­tal­i­ty than any­thing else; Stalling drew on com­po­si­tion­al schiz­o­phre­nia to match wits with Mer­rie Melodies. Stalling’s self-con­scious zani­ness lends itself well to the sort of post-mod­ern meta-nar­ra­tive of ther­a­peu­tic lan­guage that’s part and par­cel of every­day speech — it’s a com­pli­cat­ed metaphor for every­day life: is this real­ly hap­pen­ing? After all, Bugs once assured us that he’d been adju­di­cat­ed non com­pos men­tis, and I think we can take his word for it.

Fantômas — “04/01/05”

The Carl Stalling Project, Vol. 1 — “Var­i­ous Cues from Bugs Bun­ny Films”

Fantômas — “04/19/05”

The Carl Stalling Project, Vol. 1 — “Stalling Self-Par­o­dy: Music from Porky’s Preview”

Carl Stalling — “What’s Opera, Doc?”

Pearls and Brass, with Pho­ton Band and Jack Rose @ The Khy­ber. 9 p.m.

Let’s not bela­bor the point: Pearls and Brass are unabashed­ly the prod­uct of past gen­er­a­tions of Delta and South Side blues­men, Nuggets era Anglo-Amer­i­can psych rock­ers, and the pan­theon of clas­sic rock icons. There’s noth­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly weird or pecu­liar about them and there’s no self-con­scious gim­mick either. This isn’t to sug­gest that Huth’s head should appear on the heavy met­al totem pole with Iom­mi, Page and Clap­ton, but when it comes to clas­sic rock­’s minor his­to­ries, the dev­il is in the details, and there’s some­thing worth­while in that lin­eage. You could always ask Boo­gie Witch, or you might just see for yourself.

Taste — “What’s Going On”

Pearls and Brass — “No Stone”