NEWS FROM ALL OVER: HAGGIS AND BONG

I bet the title of this post got your attention, didn’t it? And I bet that if someone does a Google search for “haggis and bong” in the next day or two, we’ll be one of the first returns. Of course, I can’t imagine why anyone would do that — unless you live in South Africa or you stumbled on this news at Blabbermouth:

South African Metal Festival Aims To Set Record For ‘Most People Headbanging Simultaneously’ – Jan. 10, 2010: 21 of South Africa’s top metal bands will perform at the MotherFUDD festival, set to take place March 12-14, 2010 at Malonjeni Guest Resort, South Africa. The event will also host what it claims to be “the first-ever official Guinness World Record for most people headbanging simultaneously” on March 13.

Following the above intro was a list of those 21 bands scheduled to play at the “MotherFUDD” festival, including — you guessed it — Haggis and Bong. (more after the jump . . .)

Now, I happen to like haggis. If you don’t know, it’s an ancient Scottish dish consisting of organ meats minced with oatmeal, onion, spices, salt, and stock and traditionally boiled in a sheep’s stomach. (Yep, that’s a delectable haggis pictured above, split open and ready for eating.) It was immortalized in a poem by Robert Burns, the national bard of Scotland, called Address to a Haggis.

As it so happens, Robert Burns’ birthday is coming up on January 25. He died an untimely death at the age of 37. If he had lived, he would be, uh, 204 years old.

Anyway, I had to check out Haggis and Bong, just had to.  It’s a 3-man show:  Angus “Haggis” Nixon on the Great Highland Bagpipes, Thomas “Bong” Hughes on the kit drum, and Dominic “The Dominator” Skelton on the Great Highland Bagpipes.

The band cites as its influences Lamb of God, Black Dahlia Murder, Celtic Folk Music, Behemoth, Suffocation, The Cherry Popping Daddies, Bagad Kemper, and The Simon Fraser University Pipe Band. Makes sense to me. But I also like haggis.

That brings us to the music of Haggis and Bong: It’s asskickingly sick. In songs such as “Spandex (It’s A Privilege Not A Right)”, the band combines a furious double-bagpipe attack with blast beats and double bass. I’ll admit, you probably have to like the sound of bagpipes (which I do) to appreciate this music. But if you’ve never heard a shredder on the highland pipes, check out the tunes streaming on the band’s MySpace page.

This music is kilt.  Not kvlt.  Kilt.

Now, if I could only find someplace to download it . . . .