What did the crazy lady just do? She just bought the same Cattle Decapitation songs off iTunes twice apiece, as a sin tax of sorts on not being strictly vegan and listening to the band anyway. Here's some extra money, guys, for that goat cheese yesterday. Still, despite how batty that is I feel the purer for it. I do feel somewhat absolved.




I feel like a towering poser for not getting Celtic Frost until *2006*, and in *2006* only getting them after I saw a video - for a *new* song - on Headbanger's Ball. Egregious! But I'd just never had a Click! moment with them: those moments, you know, when a band you've heard here & there for years but mostly shrugged about suddenly reproduces in your blood, sometimes with the stroke of a single droning hook. As with Celtic Frost here, Celtic Frost and me. The song is "A Dying God Coming Into Human Flesh". Lord, is it ever a choking cloud of shimmering charcoal dust (I want to say this dust is composed of the charred bodies of faeries, but *could* I, really . . . )! It makes me drop my head in motionless supplication. The feelings it evokes are distinctly worshipful for me, in a woodcut-feeling way, medieval. The weight of it on your shoulders, it's a crucifix of heavy. Ho-ly-shit. And the video! Has any Swiss person ever before GONE FOR IT like Warrior in this video? In a snow-white, what, JEDI robe, basically, it's a kimono right on the Jedi line, is what he's got on. As he stands, this human god, laying down this feet-wide-apart slo-mo-icepick-murder of a riff, doooooomy as hell, with - are you ready - modern dancers writhing on the floor, encased in white nylon tubes, all around him. HAIL THIS TRIUMPH OF ART METAL. I regret the misspent years of not listening to Celtic Frost. How many of their songs do I need to duplicate-buy to be absolved of *that*?