If you've read any of my record reviews, maybe you noticed
that I make a lot of film references.
Whenever I hear a fantastic song, I start imagining cinematic visuals to
accompany it. And, likewise, when I see
a great movie, I can't help thinking about the perfect musical accompaniment
that might've made it even better. It’s
how my brain is wired.
The song “Beelzebub” by Cancer Bats recently filled a void
in my life that I didn't even know my life had.
In fact, it’s so demolishingly dark, loud, angry, and cathartic that I
think it's a candidate to score one of the most fantasized-about yet presently
non-existent movie moments in our culture.
Despite never having been onscreen, this is a scene that's
been detailed in comics and novels, filibustered by Patton Oswalt, and
discussed with desperate anticipation by millions of sci-fi movie buffs (mostly
male) for decades. And we'll continue to
create indescribably impossible expectations for it, no matter how many other
media forms poke around its edges, because none of those counts till we
actually see it in a movie.
What generationally momentous though wholly hypothetical
film scene am I talking about?
Boba Fett, severely injured but alive, wrenching himself
free of the Sarlacc Pit, pissed off and looking for payback.
Like many fans, I knew my life would be incomplete in a
small but significant way until a film containing this scene was brought into
existence. However, I didn’t realize
that my private fanboy world was also missing the perfect song to play behind
it, until I heard “Beelzebub.”
I recently read a book that put quantifiable numbers to what
we of the Kevin Smith and Quentin Tarantino generation already qualitatively
understood without the need for research to confirm it: Star Wars permeates the hell out of modern
culture. And one of the most reviled
events in all of Star Wars (and, therefore, all of cinema) was Boba Fett
getting bumped off in the ignominious way that he did. It was hollow and unsatisfying when I was a
kid, and the years since haven't made it any easier to accept.
Fortunately, it’s a death that was never confirmed. Yes, you can pronounce someone dead without a
body, you can even hold their funeral, but there will always be that lingering
question... especially if the departed spends the next thirty years becoming
one of the most popular characters in the most beloved space-fantasy saga of
all time.
I read about Cancer Bats in Magnet Magazine, dog-earing the page and eventually sitting down
with headphones to immerse myself in their latest record, Searching for Zero. When I’m
listening to a new band for the first time, I tend to put their stuff on while
I’m doing something else, just to see if it’s remarkable enough to capture my
attention in a positive way. By the end
of the four-minute opening track, I couldn’t focus on my work. And by the time I heard the line, “I’ll always
be… the jerk that you need,” my brain was reconfiguring my taste parameters to
accommodate this meaningful new addition.
This is a band cut from the Every Time I Die cloth, laying
down a ripping blend of high-octane rock, throat-scouring hardcore and
half-speed stoner metal. A few days
after acquiring the album, while listening to its fourth song, I had my
epiphany.
Let me quickly set the stage:
You're the baddest bounty hunter in the universe. You’ve finally brought in your prize mark,
and are enjoying Jabba the Hutt's hospitality while basking in the satisfaction
of a job well done—which, for you, equates to standing around looking menacing
while everyone else cavorts (because you don't get to be the baddest bounty
hunter out there by letting your guard down).
Next thing you know, lightsabers are humming, blasters are
firing, wookies are roaring, and, one lucky shot later, jet packs and grappling
guns suddenly feel like the most pointless gadgets you could possibly have
armed yourself with, because what you really need is a two-foot syringe of
imperial-strength, midi-chlorian-enhanced ipecac.
You with me?
Now, music is (of course) subjective, as is every Star Wars
fan’s right to assemble his own mental reel of Fett dragging his splintered
armor and battered body out the entrance-only mouth of a
killed-to-shit-from-the-inside Sarlacc.
That said, I think we can all agree that it needs to
happen. And what I didn’t realize until
recently was that what my soul wanted, as much as it wanted the grievous wrong
of Boba Fett’s apparent death put right, was a killer heavy rock song blasting
along as the soundtrack to this cinematic correcting of universal events. I’m talking about a song so perfectly articulated
in its power and energy as to forever be linked to the scene, the way
“Misirlou” will forever remain inextricable from Pulp Fiction’s opening salvo.
With that in mind, indulge me and hit play on Cancer Bats’
“Beelzebub.” As you listen, let your internal
celluloid start to unspool. Together,
we’ll visualize Boba Fett channeling every escape artist, fixer and jury-rigger
from Mr. Miracle to MacGuyver as he fights, squirms, and detonates his way out
of the most heinous flesh-trap in the system, wrenching himself back from a
bottomless well of slow-boiling stomach juices, cracking past thousands of
concentric, downward-angled teeth, and negotiation of a few tons of
generator-choking Tatooine sand in the process.
If “Beelzebub” doesn’t seem like the right music for this moment, turn
the volume up and start over. And if you
can’t almost feel the acidic stab of ten thousand years of remorseless, alien
digestion on your skin when Bats singer Liam Cormier roars, “I'm just as scared
of this too, as terrified as you,” maybe you don’t care as much about Boba Fett
as we both thought.
The revelation of Boba Fett being alive would be a deeply
personal thing for many of us. And so,
if I’m being honest, I’ve got to admit that it’s way too ego-centric to suggest
that, just because it works for me, there’s no better piece of music than
"Beelzebub" to score the hypothetical scene in which this
pseudo-resurrection comes to pass. I
accept that.
If a few people are exposed to Cancer Bats and their killer
new album through my highlighting one of their songs this way, I'm happy. This is a great band who, via a simmering
mini-epic of mortal fear and struggle against the darkness, has confirmed for
me that a lot more punk-tinged metal bands should slow it down once a while, because
they absolutely crush when they do.
And if, for some of you, “Beelzebub” happens to evoke an
Industrial Light & Magic-perfect vision of a Mandalorian-gauntleted hand
reaching back from the mouth of nigh inescapable doom,
all the better.
- MeteorJadd
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