Some gender theorists consider all exaggerated performances of sexual identity as drag. What fun, to see everyone from the most gussied, stilettoed hoochie to the most macho, nut-kneading hoss as participants in a global burlesque, playing dress-up to confirm, with cartoonish or even monstrous enthusiasm, a notion of "hot," "raw," "extreme" masculinity or femininity. (Pardon my blog: I can't speak for you Dakotans, but here in Florida, our faux-public spaces-- like say, our malls-- can seem like porn sets.) (Pardon my blog two: As the middle child between a bodybuilder and a beauty queen, I was subject to so many unsettling weekends of oil-n-bikini pageantry that I should have been driven by either allergy or addiction into becoming a monk or a prostitute.) Some of this hetero-drag costumery generates cross-gender-role feedback; consult stout/thuggy gurrls, or remember Arnold's chesty, hairless, braceleted, tiara-maned Conan.
Jon Mikl Thor has spent thirty years as a drag king, the manniest man ever to manhandle outmanned mankind. This horror-film actor, star of his own comic (The Rock Warrior) and former Mr. Canada and Mr. USA (as well as former merchant of baking pans) has re-released the latest of his dozen-or-so albums with remastered sound, a few redone songs, five new songs, and two videos. The rating above represents the average score of the 0.0 that Triumphant earns for whatever Pitchfork attempts to assess (originality, artistry, musicianship, credigree?) and the 10.0 that Triumphant earns as a novelty-metal classic putting its genre's satirists to shame. (Why did Spinal Tap and Satanicide bother, when this stuff's already self-consciously a caricature to the point of being spoofproof?)
What a crack-up the packaging is. The band logo is metallic, "held on" by Phillips-head screws. The front and back cover art feature an axe-, sword-, and shield-wielding whitey in a skull-belt and bat-helmet chopping up dark-skinned, apelike savages in order to protect his pale women, intimidatingly proportioned cowerers "in" ill-advised (transparent) thongs. Unfortunately, Nordic lore has long served as a "white power" myth, if more subtly than the Scottish rites usurped by the KKK.
The Medieval Times-caliber accents in the skits are hilarious. The first two songs borrow from rap's brand-building tactic of saying the rapper's name over and over; Thor skillfully celebrates his Thorness ("I Am Thor" is self-explanatory, while "March to Glory" chants, "Thor is war, and war is Thor," though "glory" and "whore" might be in there somewhere). Thor's three favorite words are "steel," "thunder," and "tundra," though he's always searching for priapic "sceptres" and "hammers." He says that "anger is my middle name" on "Anger III", which is confusing, since we know his middle name to be Mikl, unless we are to accept him as his one-word stage-name. Meanwhile, "Thunderhawk", seriously about being a thunderhawk, is fall-down funny.
The majority of the music is standard-issue mega-drum deathcore, but that doesn't mean that the guitars don't charmingly grind like Panzer treads, or that the solos don't impressively veer from operatic to Tasmanian. Thor's electronically enhanced vocal range can be disorienting, as he approximates metal bandleaders from various decades, squealing then grunting then crooning and so forth and so on and stuff. "Viking's Funeral" constitutes an amazing mix-CD kickoff: with its Europe-ish keyboards, Iron Maiden-ish vox, campy skit, and Elfman-ish knells, this mother is ready for Broadway. The boogie organ of "GraveYard (From the Film GraveYard)" is another mean surprise.
The album's major misstep is the bar-band quality "Back for Blood", which trots out a stinkbug of a riff, and begins, "Well, you're so stupid, you're so dumb/ You're so foolish, you're a dirty rotten scum." I could swear the next line was going to be about how The Fat Boys were back and could never be wack. But all the harm is rectified by the album's stupefying musical and lyrical peak: "Throwing Cars at People on Coke with Thor". Such a blitz, such a swarm, hasn't been heard by these ears since way before the Ipecac revivalists, around Suicidal Tendencies' first tape, and this is as terrifying a drug song as any Butthole Surfers binge-ditty.
A resolute elitist in the room with me kept saying, "This is the work of trailer-park anarchists," and, "I bet their studio's in a strip mall," and, "This sounds like a sport utility vehicle," but I don't mind Thor. The guy's latex tongue is shooting lightning bolts into his cheek, a la Gwar, making his comic-book mythos the white-warlock antidote to Danzig's snuff-Porsche oeuvre. Certain valorbrains might fall for the Bruckheimer "war is great" shit, but anyone who's seen Saving Private Ryan knows that Belle & Sebastian's "Get Me Away from Here, I'm Dying" is a more accurate combat anthem. Bless the hearts of these weightlifters who transform their bodies into veiny packages. St. Anger wears a dress. At John Waters' signal, unleash hell.
