Whatever has happened to Metal?

Once upon a time, many years ago, I used to watch “Headbanger’s Ball” on MTV in earnest.  I listened to Metallica before Metallica was cool.  Megadeth was pretty awesome.  Queensrÿche, Helloween, The Crüe so Mötley, Anthrax, other bands with cööl umlauts in their names.  All fit into the genre of “Heavy Metal”.  All of which included actual singing in their music.  Some might call them “melodies” or “songs”.  I have discovered that the way to tell that you’ve gotten old is when things you used to enjoy have devolved to the point where you can no longer tolerate them.

Now there are so many sub-genres of Metal and it is mostly so hardcore, it offends mine old and tender ears.  Death-Metal, Black-Metal, even Viking-Metal?

Metal bands now almost universally employ frontmen who “sing” entirely in guttural grunts.  Personally, I think they have a heavy influence from Sesame Street: “C is for cookie”, indeed.

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Fabian Cancellara: Bike Doper! Case Closed.

The HBS file has obtained top-secret proof that Swiss world time trial champion (and superhuman) Fabian Cancellara has been performing on a “doped bike”.  First came accusations last May that he rode a bike with an electrical assist motor hidden in the seat tube.  Closer inspection of his handlebar revealed instead a nitrous oxide system arming switch:

Just flip and zoom.

He has now been accused of using “advanced bearing technology” to cheat, gaining a ridiculous 2.5s/kilometer because of some magical frictionless bearing system utilizing antigravity and a lubricant synthesized from an ethereal combination of Leprechaun tears and Charlie Sheen.  When asked about this new bottom bracket, he replied mysteriously in English, “Duh.  Winning!”.

He has successfully refuted all of these claims until now, where a picture of Cancellara has been uncovered, showing the champion jauntily posing with a model of the atomic structure of Uranium-235:

Fission is our friend

Herein lies the truth, the horrifying truth:  Fabian Cancellara tricked Jens Voigt into rowing him deep into the ocean.  As they passed quietly in the night, a deep-sea fisherman overheard Cancellara tell Voigt to clap his hands together “as hard as he could”, causing an enormous earthquake and subsequent tsunami.  The pair were last seen skulking around the Fukushima Dai-Ichi Nuclear Plant, Voigt shouldering as many spent fuel rods as he could carry (all of them).  Sources reveal that Cancellara is having Voigt chew the fuel rods into perfect spheres for use in his frictionless bearing crankset and subsequently powering a new nuclear seat-tube assist motor, enabling him to reach time trial speeds of 155mph.  It is unsure just what is in it for Jens Voigt, although one source said that he was simply “double-dog dared” by Cancellara.

Not on my watch, mister.  Plan foiled.