John Dyer Baizley - Album Cover of Meir, by Kvelertak (2013)

Tonight Norwegian power rock band Kvelertak play Webster Hall along with Georgia stoner hardcore metallers Black Tusk. (Canadian punks Cancer Bats open, as well.)

Besides loudness and shouted vocals (in very different languages), what do Kvelertak and Black Tusk have in common? That would be the artist who created their album artwork: John Dyer Baizley, better known as the guitarist of sludge metal band Baroness, also from Georgia.

See also: What Makes NYC Metal?

Baizley's art is easily recognizable for its primal beauty, and he's been commissioned to create covers for quite a few bands--not all of them metal, and, as in the case of Kvelertak, not all of them from the Savannah, GA, sludge scene.

We're not visual art critics, so we're not going to rank the covers. And we're not going to rank these bands, either. Just think of this as a greatest hits list of the best music with Baizley artwork.

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Credit: Timothy Norris

Broadly speaking, if you're an electronic music fan over 40, you probably dig Danny Tenaglia more than Skrillex. And chances are, if you're a Skrillex fan under the age of 30, you're like, "Who the hell is Danny Tenaglia?"

Coachella 2013 exemplified the generation gap in the world of dance music. On one side of the field, the modern-EDM-focused Sahara tent was a thrill ride tricked out with lasers, lights and LEDs designed to blow kids' minds, with acts like Knife Party, Dog Blood and Wolfgang Gartner playing hyper-aggressive sets full of drops. Your parents would hate it.

See also: Diplo-Approved Flume Hates the Roided-Out Bros and Orange Chicks of EDM Culture

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Photo by Kevin Hodapp.

Megadeth and Slayer.

If you've got a lot of time on your hands and a heart full of darkness, you'd be wise to check out Louder Than Hell: The Definitive Oral History of Metal, out Tuesday on Harper Collins/It Books. The key word in that title is "Definitive." This is quite a weighty tome, over 600 pages across every twist, turn, peak and valley of the genre. Gary Cherone is even quoted in this fucking thing. So is Fred Durst. Because everyone who ever tuned their guitar to drop-D, snorted a line of ants or sacrificed a goat is quoted in it. The book covers every metal base, and then sets that base on fire. DEFINITIVE!

We ran an excerpt about NYC's unique Metal and Hardcore Crossover scene on our cover yesterday. It's very stabby. These guys were maniacs. And they weren't the only ones. Contained in the book are many a metal photo from back in the day. Let's look at some of them, shall we?

See also: The Oral History of NYC's Metal/Hardcore Crossover

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Whether or not Lil B is trolling the Internet, doing some sort of satirical performance art, or just having fun rapping about looking like Jesus Christ and Paris Hilton, there's no question that his knack for picking producers borders on mastery. That's mostly because he's managed to find beatsmiths who can deliver sounds that accentuate his eccentricities while still keeping his songs on track. It's not like hip-hop production was saved or even in need of saving before the coming of the so-called "Based God," but having an artist like New Jersey's Clams Casino (real name Mike Volpe) around has helped music exponentially over the past few years.

See also: The Complete Guide to Understanding Lil B

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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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