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H/T: Soviet Panda

In what might go down as the Oedipus Rex of franco-filter-metal tragedies, it looks like EdBanger finally figured out what song they've been trying to remake and butchering over and over again, their entire stable practically: Rage Against the Machine's "Killing In The Name." Imagine being at this party in Melbourne, these clowns playing several hours of truly vile shit, which you yourself identify real-time as truly vile shit but can't figure out why, and then said clowns close with a futzed-with version of "Killing" and proceed to go nuts like they made the track "work" or something, completely oblivious to the fact that their entire careers are futzed-with versions of "Killing," while the crowd goes nuts too, an entire generation of people who have never stayed up past their bedtimes just so they can call Y100 and vote for "Bulls On Parade" in the 9PM Cage Match.

The other option is they do know they've been ripping "Killing," like the song's their wizard behind the curtain, and they couldn't keep the secret anymore and they just had to tell everybody and everybody's like, you know what, "this party would be a lot better if those guys left and just let the wizard do his thing. I did not buy this 600 dollar pajama print sweatshirt for nothing," etc.

Thing is Erol Alkan had closed a good number of Trash sets with the original "Killing" for what has to be three years now, and Dave Pianka, the Erol Alkan of PhillyNYC, though maybe it's just a Leibniz/Newton thing, has been doing the same for at least two. Yes it's the most incredible feeling ever when, after hours upon hours of electro and disco and 80s music, this bombtrack drops, and all your choreographed dance-fight moves from grade school come back to you, and all you want to do is just beat the shit out of something, anything, because suddenly you remember you've been taking way too much shit since the last time you heard this song, and all the girls you're trying to hit on have fled for their fucking lives to the bar, and in just like five seconds you smell like a 12-year-old who doesn't know he's supposed to shower every night. Deployed well it's this huge, honest release, not that you don't like dancing and pointing out how many old disco twelves you recognize from all the Soul Jazz comps you downloaded, but you get zapped by the fact that nothing you'll ever hear for the rest of your life will affect you as much as the cassingle of "Killing In The Name" that you stole from The Wall because you couldn't afford the s/t.

I was totally surprised to find out, from my musically educated friends in college, that actually Rage Against The Machine were a cheesy band with cheesy lyrics. That never had occurred to me.

All's to say I've found the root of my psychosis with this EdBanger stuff, the reason I believe it to be destroying everything I care about musically, and that is because track after track they are ruining a really fucking good thing, i.e. "Killing In The Name." It's guilty-in-retrospect contamination if such a thing exists, which it does, eg look what happened to "Kashmir" after Diddy sampled it for whatever that song was again, eg look what happened to "Lust For Life" after Jet made the iPod song. On the bright side, at least we still have "Snake Charmer," and that song from the Godzilla soundtrack.

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Labels: dance