RIP Jeff Hanneman

Death has always been one of the most predominant themes in heavy metal music, taking a backseat maybe only to Satanism. Death, disease, murder and chaos have accompanied heavy riffs since Sabbath first began playing them back in '68. This dark subject matter is part of what has always made metal controversial -- revolting to some, but appealing to those musicians interested in facing the things we all fear. But there's often a strange irony that comes into play when we have to realize that these musicians are also human beings, capable of falling victim to the very horrors they seem to embrace.

Disclaimer: In no way do I intend to make light of these deaths. Many of these musicians were heroes of mine and died far too early. Also, one that might seem like an obvious choice, Dimebag Darrell's death, will not be included here. Getting shot and killed for no reason is a hip-hop way to die, not a metal one.

See also: How to Determine if Something Is Metal as Fuck

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Jackie's 5th Amendment

The weather is warming up nicely and it's time to stop drinking at home and get to the bar. But lately, many doorways of our favorite watering holes have been blocked. Not by passed out winos or vomit but by, of all things, baby strollers.

Bucking the boozy agreement to leave young-ins at home, many Park Slope families have decided it's okay for little Timmy to tag along to the neighborhood bar while mom and dad get their swerve on. The Slope baby boom and ensuing barroom infestation has reached a point that many establishments now post signs to inform patrons they no longer allow crib lizards after certain hours.

And remember, parents: Chuck E. Cheese serves alcohol. A list like this doesn't need to exist. But because it does...

See also: What Makes NYC Metal?

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Every couple weeks, the Voice takes a hard listen to the music in which millions of Americans soak.

The Band Perry, "Done"
Current Billboard Country Chart Position: 15

Yes, "cauc-pop." What else to call the Nashville radio hits that, since Dolly went disco, have drawn so fully on the deepest tradition of all: gathering any and all popular musics into one big ol' slightly neutered American sound and then selling it to white folks as theirs. It's much too late in the history of appropriation to worry about this now, of course. Instead, it's much more fruitful -- and amusing -- to savor the best of today's country radio as the trad-yet-radical mix-up that it is.

Tune in for an hour, and you'll hear echoes of every type of music white America has ever loved: "Margaritaville" and "Sweet Home Alabama," pre-Dre breakbeats and rapping, hair-metal guitar solos and the corroded chords of alt-rock, honky tonk piano and chiming Beatle-style arpeggios, stiff Christian rock and the toked-up shuffle of the Doobie Brothers, power ballads that with the pedal-steel mixed out might have been on the Top Gun soundtrack and with a house thump mixed in could achieve clubland immortality. There's even, sometimes, a song your grandpa would identify as sounding like country.

The Band Perry stands as the current exemplars of this cauc-pop.

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Better Than: DJ Paul's barbecue sauce (just kidding).

These days, it seems that Juicy J's renaissance is having a renaissance. With his group Three 6 Mafia stagnating, the man born Jordan Michael Houston took a single rap line--"You say no to drugs, Juicy J can't"--and turned it into a mantra, a veritable cottage industry. Juicy J took that well-earned Oscar and transformed into half unhinged hip-hop id, half apostle of turning up, tuning in, and dropping out. These days, he's got a Top 40 hit in "Bands a Make Her Dance," is signed to Wiz Khalifa's Taylor Gang, just landed on the cover of The FADER, and is pretty much going for broke with this whole "We Trippy Mane" thing, playing the role of mainstream rap's drunk uncle that we all love, but are secretly worried isn't going to make it to retirement age. What I'm trying to say, I guess, is that Juicy J's merch table was selling souvenir Styrofoam cups, and the bar was selling nutcrackers for $5 a pop.

See also: The Five Best Juicy J Outros of All Time

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Photo by B. Breaux

Lousiana's Thistle! encounters a little van trouble.

The sheriff department's officer was standing on my doorstep, still trembling with excitement. The red and blue lights from the patrol car flashed over his face, which was incredulous at the site of the person who opened the door at three in the morning - me, a middle-aged, gray-haired man in Nick & Nora PJs with horsies on them.

"We had to take your friend to jail because he was banging on someone's door with a bottle of whiskey in one hand and a full-handled axe in the other," he said.

He was trying hard not to let the trace of a smile materialize over his proud face. In this neighborhood, nothing interesting ever happens, so flatfoots in patrol units aren't likely to become gun-pulling guardians of sleeping innocents.

"I almost shot him!," he said with a kind of glee not totally appropriate for such an admission.

The "friend" in question was a member of a visiting traveling band. He'd gotten drunk while messing around with some of the big boy tools in my garage and wandered out into unwitting suburbia. He's a sweet kid who'd never hurt anyone, but, in the dark of night he probably looked like any other crazed axe murderer. The cops found out he was just a goof later when they had to repeatedly ask him to stop breakdancing in the drunk tank.

See also: We Smoked Weed With Total Slacker at the Olive Garden in Times Square

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Last week, I wrote of my intent to win Jim Beam's Mix for Kid Rock contest, which will let one lucky winner follow the miscellaneous-genre legend to three stops on his "Best Night Ever" tour, filling him to the scruffy gills with Jim Beam cocktails each time.

Since I couldn't figure out a way to rig the voting in my favor, I came up with a subtler way to cheat: I'd encourage readers to submit lots of terrible entries in order to make me look like the only sane person in the running.

See also: I Swear, I WILL Become Kid Rock's Personal Bartender

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Biohazard's Evan Seinfeld

Excerpted from the book Louder Than Hell: The Definitive Oral History of Metal, published by It Books and available May 14

New York is a music mecca—the Brill Building, Broadway, street performers, subway buskers, the Metropolitan opera—but it's not known for its abundance of successful metal bands.

Sure, the city has produced some heralded heavy luminaries, including KISS, Anthrax, and Helmet. But for a volatile period from the mid-'80s to the early '90s, a batch of passionate, aggressive, and sometimes violent bands terrorized the Lower East Side, even turning legendary new wave/punk club CBGB into a metal mainstay on weekend afternoons in the '80s. The phenom was all the more surprising because back in the day, if a New York punk fan lined up for a Slayer show, or a headbanger dared enter the moshpit at a GBH gig, fists were likely to fly. Never mind the sonic similarities between the Sex Pistols and Anthrax—the cultural divide between metal and punk was too great for any band to breach at the time. Then a few bands brave enough to merge the two styles finally surfaced. In keeping with the city's gritty rep, they often featured thuggish musicians who were equally adept at swinging a beer bottle as slinging a guitar.

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With last year's head-nodding "Work" A$AP Ferg became the most visible member of A$AP Mob not named Rocky or A$AP Yam's birthmark. Now, the remix is here, and it, as they say, go hard. How hard? Well, at one point "Pakistan" is rhymed with "Columbine." We'll let you guess whose stroke of genius that is. Listen to the track after the jump.

See also: A$AP Ferg Wants Harmony Korine to Direct His Next Video

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Editor's note: Rap pioneer and Geto Boys member Willie D regularly answers reader questions for our sister paper, Houston Press.

Photo courtesy of Peter Beste

Dear Willie D,

I loaned my cousin $500 more than six months ago. She promised to pay me back when she got paid two weeks from the time I gave her the money, but to this day I have yet to see one red cent. The puzzling thing is that we were so close until this incident happened. While growing up we did everything together: sleepovers, birthday parties, gymnastics, dance, you name it. Once we became adults the pattern continued with girls night out, shopping trips and get-togethers. I am also the godmother to her daughter.

It makes me sick to my stomach that I am in this position fighting with someone who I considered to be a best friend and sister. My cousin knows that I'm merely getting by with living expenses and really didn't have the money to give in the first place.

I have asked her several times for my money back. At first she gave me excuses like, "Oh I'll pay you next week. I had to use the money for car repairs." Then she started being evasive by not returning my calls. The other day I went over to her house to confront her and we got into a big altercation.

I still love my cousin but I want my money back. Do you know of a way I can get her to repay me and salvage our friendship?

Sincerely,
Burned by a Relative

See also: Ask Willie D: How Do I Tell My Co-Worker He Has TERRIBLE Breath?

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#Hashtags are probably the bane of your Twitter existence. You no doubt follow people who either use them too much or in the strangest possible ways. Chances are, you regularly do the same. #DGAF. Currently, there are two songs that begin with a #hashtag in the Top 20. it's the most 'sign o' the times' moment of #2013 so far. The concept of a song or album including the little symbol is so new that # is still one of the forbidden characters on Wikipedia, and Will.i.am's #willpower is an example of what Wiki does in the case of an article necessitating the character in its title.

See also: Will.I.Am Kickstarts The Perhaps-Inevitable Trend Of Naming Albums After Hashtags

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