DOG BALLS (THE CURE TO LONELINESS)

Here at NCS, we cater to all kinds of literary tastes. For example, if you visited us yesterday, you could have read Andy Synn‘s sophisticated, eloquently written, detailed analysis of an entire discography of music created by a great band (Iskald), including a review of the band’s new album. On the other hand, now that I’ve got my claws back on the tiller, the good ship NCS is running aground on the sandbar of this post about . . . dog balls.

Usually, you’d have to threaten rectal impalement to get me to watch a video about a metal band’s recording sessions. You know what I mean — those kinds of videos are usually pretty awful. For me, what counts is the music that comes out at the end of the process, not the process itself or the commentary that usually accompanies the process. I’m just not rabid enough in my fandom to watch every fucking thing that band members say and do just because they’re in a band whose music kicks ass.

But, there are exceptions to every rule, and one of my exceptions is Bury Your Dead. That’s because what happened to that band a couple years ago was the trigger event that caused us to launch this site. For fuck’s sake, the replacement of vocalist Mat Bruso with Myke Terry is what caused us to name this site NO CLEAN SINGING. And if you have no idea what I’m babbling about, read this.

So, you better believe that we’re going to cover the saga of Mat rejoining BYD and the recording of BYD’s next album in excruciating detail — including recording-session videos that begin with images of big hairy dog balls. And that may not even be the worst thing you’ll see in this video (which you can watch after the jump, unless your personal standards have already sent you off to another web site).

Yes, earlier this week, BYD released the first webisode of “behind the scene” footage from the recording sessions of the band’s next album, Mosh & Roll (which is projected for release this summer on Mediaskare Records). And because it’s BYD, I ignored my usual rule and watched it. At first, I thought those big hairy balls at the beginning of the video were attached to one of the guys in the band. Imagine my relief when . . . after what seemed like a lifetime . . . the camera panned back and it turned out to be a dog.

But, as relieved as I was, I thought starting this video log with dog balls wasn’t a good sign. And I was pretty much right. Lots more shit at about the same level followed. I did learn a few things, e.g., that someone of adult size still wears pajamas with feet in them and that it’s possible to record drum tracks despite visual distraction — and that this new album is probably going to sound a helluva lot more like the hardcore BYD I used to know and love than what I had to endure over the last two albums.

Only the last piece of learning counts for anything — but in my book, it counts for a lot.

So, yeah, this video is pretty stupid, but I’m putting it up here anyway, just to keep the faith with what brung us to this point in the life of NCS — and I’m going to post every fucking webisode these dudes come up with between now and the album release. That’s just the way it is.

There’s one more reason I’m putting up this particular post: We’ve had kind of an off week in our comment sections. A lot of our usual commenters seem to be otherwise occupied, or perhaps uninspired by what we’ve been posting. It makes me feel lonely.

So, to reinvigorate our comments, I’m inviting you to join in a serious, thoughtful discussion of these questions: Do you watch recording-session videos when they come out, and if you do, why? And would you watch them more often if they included close-up shots of dog balls?

HAIRY BALLS UPDATE: In related news, the JournalGazette reports that a public building in Fort Wayne, Indiana needs to be named, and a government request for suggestions from the public has resulted in an outpouring of support for the building to be named after former mayor Harry W. Baals (which was pronounced “balls” by the then-mayor). He died in office in May 1954. At the latest tally, his name has garnered 18,000 votes. “Thunder Dome” is a distant second with 1,354. The Harry Baals Government Center has a nice ring to it, don’t you think? (Thank you TYWKIWDBI for this fitting news item.)