This is another of my "Darrell Loves Heavy Metal" posts, so if you're looking for insight, intelligence, and relevant content, your search is not over.

Anyway, have I mentioned that I love, love, LOVE heavy metal lately?

Today's post is mostly a collection of random metal ramblings, so don't expect coherence, intelligence or cohesion. Like the best metal itself, today's post will be a big, loud, long, haphazard mess.

Umlauts Rock!

Back in the day, the way you let the world know that your band kicked butt was with superfluous umlauts. Umlauts, of course, are the pronunciation symbol that appears over vowels in certain words; two little dots over a vowel here or there. I'm not sure who decided that umlauts were the official grammatical symbol of heaviness, but I think it was a good system. A number of bands employed it with remarkable success:

• When your biggest hit is Don't Fear The Reaper, a song about as heavy as a soggy Kleenex, it is in a band's best interest to reinforce their metal cred with an umlaut. Blue Oyster Cult placed an umlaut in their name as a kind of nudge-nudge, wink-wink to the fans so we'd know that they were a metal band at heart, even if their best known song sounded more like Renaissance Fair material than basic headbanging fundamentals. Songs like Burning For You and Go Go Godzilla were pretty rocking, so that was nice… but if it weren't for the umlaut, BOC's trustworthiness would always have been in question.



• I was never sure if it was an in your face kind of thing or simply a matter of insecurity, but Motley Crue had the audacity to throw not one but two umlauts into their name. Some of us thought it was overkill… like adding Tabasco Sauce to five-alarm chili. My stance was that if the Crue were going to claim two umlauts for themselves, they better be able to back it up. On their first two albums, I think they earned their dots. Not only were the songs good old fashioned stupid one-chord rockers, but the lyrics were beyond stupid. These were lyrics stupid enough to be comforting to even the densest of headbangers. Take, for instance, the lyrics to the song "Merry Go Ground,", wherein Vince Neil lyrically insisted that
  

  Merry go round and round.
  Merry go round and round.
  Merry go round and round.
  Merry go round and round. And round.

  
  So, yeah, on the first two albums, the Crue was dot solid. With the third album and the success of the power ballad "Home Sweet Home," I always thought that the honorable thing to do would to have been to turn back in at least one of their umlauts. Sort of a demotion for having a wuss-rock hit. It never happened, though. Rumors abound on the internet that, far from considering removing an umlaut, the Crue are actually considering adding a macron to the e in Crue. I don't think there's any reasoning with them at this point.



• Queensryche always walked the line between the assorted sub-genres of metal. They were't really "hair metal" because they didn't suck, but they were too leather-clad and pretty to be a "thrash band." It might have been safe to call them "prog metal," given their propensity for concept albums and lyrics about heavy topics such as the government, drug abuse, religion, the government, and the government. This was sometimes problematic for headbangers, many of whom had grown accustomed to lyrics like the Crue sample listed above. Nonetheless, whenever the band broached a topic that confounded fans, we always had that umlaut to come back to: "What's this song about?" "Who cares? Queensryche rocks!"
  
  
• This band just confused us. They weren't really considered metal, though it was safe to say that they did rock and often actually rocked pretty hard. I was always confused by the umlauts… in fact, I was confused about everything about this band. Husker Du was considered, technically, an alternative rock band, even though they weren't crybabies. Up until Husker Du showed up on the scene, alternative rock was best exemplified by bands like Violent Femmes, Throwing Muses and REM. They were easy to identify because they sucked. Then, Husker Du came along and they were followed by a wave of other metal bands (Helmet, Jane's Addiction, Dinosaur Jr.) who were boastfully alternative and yet didn't suck. In fact, they rocked pretty hard. Somewhere along the way the line between metal and alternative was blurred. We weren't sure what to call the music we liked. Thankfully, Mike Judge gave us a new and simple system for understanding our music. We liked music that was cool. We didn't like music that sucked.
  
  
• Motorhead went all out to prove their heaviness. Their use of the metal umlaut was almost superfluous. Not only did they play music that was heavy enough to melt dirt, they were also fronted by Lemmy Kilmister, the ugliest human being to ever walk the face of the earth. Loud, heavy, and butt ugly, Motorhead's place in Metal Valhalla has never been in question.

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Mascots And Markings

Ten geek metal points will be awarded to any metal geek who can identify the band associated with each mascot and/or emblem in the grid below. The first person to identify all nine bands correctly will be awarded an additional fifty metal geek bonus points and be declared Supreme SouthCon Metal Geek of the Week. I'm trusting you to use the honor system, here. Don't glean the comments looking for tips… just post your guesses on your own. Here they are:

A special 10 more bonus points will be awarded to the first metal geek who can correctly identify the significance of the title of today's post. Disclaimer: Anyone who explains it by relating it to a song by the band Offspring will be disqualified.

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Tawdry Tales of Tawny

Today, it's Jessica Alba. In the 90's, I suppose it was Nicole Kidman. Tawny Kitaen owned the 1980's. Her success was due, in part, to films like Witchboard and Bachelor Party. Mostly, though, she was known as the hot chick who writhed around on BMWs in Whitesnake's music videos. Whitesnake, of course, was one of the approximately 7,639,244 bands who made a big pile of money by ripping off Led Zeppelin.

Every guy between the ages of 13 and 95 drooled over Tawny Kitaen whenever a Whitesnake video was on MTV. Then the 80's ended and she disappeared.

In the 90's, a mugshot of Tawny turned up on the internet. Apparently, she'd been arrested for beating up her husband, professional athlete Chuck Finley. This is not the best possible way to come back into the limelight.

This year I saw her a couple of times on VH1's washed-up celeb reality show The Surreal Life. I didn't want to wach the show, but I was flipping channels and caught sight of this zombie who reminded me a bit of Tawny Kitaen and I couldn't help but watch a few minutes of it. Apparently, plastic (as in plastic surgery) doesn't hold up well, because Tawny now looks like a George Romero creation. That's bad enough, but the way she behaved on the program was also ultra-mega-insane. Poor Tawny.

Let us all remember: The road of excess leads to embarrassing appearances on VH1.