#50: I just need some words to growl

Electric Machine Gun Tits; Goatmilker; VR Sex; Sadurn; Wiccan Babysitter

Goatmilker

When it comes to soft names for heavy bands, I thought Goat Sanctuary—featured in BNB #15—couldn’t be topped. Yes, yes, the goat’s head is a whole thing in the occult and satanism, but c’mon. A place where goats roam freely sounds like a field-trip destination, not the sulfurous pits of exquisite damnation. But you know what you’d need at a goat sanctuary? Someone to milk the animals. Meet Goatmilker.

Burning church? Check. Priest in peril? Check. Anti-Christian title? Check. Illegible band name? Check. Goat head? Obviously.

And yet… “Goatmilker.”

Even before I knew this one-man band hailed from Holland, “goatmilker” conjured an image in my brain that was more Swiss Miss than Baphomet. I pictured an adolescent girl with blonde pigtails and rosy cheeks, finishing her morning chores before breakfast. A jaunty song, not death metal, accompanied this scene in my head. You know, not something called “Watchtowerwhore Abbatoir.”

That’s among the 11 tracks of Exterminate the Holy, along with “Familia Sodomiticum” (a sequel to “Family of Sodomy” from 2017’s Swamp of Desecration?), “Church Rapaciousness,” “Upon the Cross,” “Hang the Priest,” and “Unanswered Prayers,” which is surprisingly not a Garth Brooks cover.

It’s all very death-metal de rigueur, but sole member Joey Verbeek comes across as sweet and self-deprecating in a long Facebook video thanking everyone who helped make Exterminate the Holy possible and a clearly unedited interview with something called AsHoras.

A13:Can the evil one also be an illusion?
Goatmilker: If the evil one is me than yes. ofcourse i would never burn a church, hang a priest or put a jehovah’s witness in my cellar. I don’t like them but i’m the most happy and lucky man in the world. But like i said before, i just need some words to growl.

Nothing says “most happy and lucky man in the world” like a goatman putting a priest in a noose, but I understand, Joey.

VR Sex

From the charming blasphemy of Goatmilker we go to this bullshit:

Technology was meant to be humanity’s tool to combat famine, disease, confusion, and to facilitate life, culture, and innovation. Instead, we’re mired in a digital labyrinth that few care to navigate or even solve. Perhaps it’s not a ruse and the matrices coded by keyboard maestros are a path to liberation, but without querying the constructs we cannot ruminate on their affectations on humanity.

When a band bio opens with that, you know you’re in for some seriously pretentious nonsense, and VR Sex overdelivers the highfalutin horseshit. It continues by saying the LA trio are “audio/visual provocateurs who transpose the identifiers” of various genres “into an audit on technology and its imprint on our collective psyche.”

Their first album, Human Traffic Jam, is a “debut tome” focusing on things like “loss of autonomy through social media, the decline of human interaction, and celebrity favoritism.” Whoa, only deep thinkers could possibly take on such non-obvious targets!

Then there’s the title of their latest, Rough Dimension, which “refers to the warped, wicked underworld the songs both chronicle and condemn.” I defy you to read this without rolling your eyes: “It’s a bristling mix of the melodic and the macabre, absurdist observations of fast living and desperate measures, the clock of youth ticking towards midnight as dreams unravel in Babylon.”

Considering songs titles like “Victim or Vixen,” “Epiphany Gridlock,” “Sacred Limousine,” and “Maiden China,” I’m unconvinced VR Sex isn’t an elaborate parody.

For instance, frontman Andrew Clinco (of darkwave outfit Drab Majesty) here goes by the stage name Noel Skum, “an acerbic anagram of Elon Musk.” That line made me guffaw so loudly my wife asked what was going on from another room.

Inverting a few letters is barely an anagram. There are plenty of websites that could’ve helped Clinco. Someone named Inge has an anagram generator that instantly produces qualified candidates such as:

• Elmo Sunk (So much potential commentary!)

• Keno Slum (Genius: You end up in a slum after losing all your money playing keno.)

• Leno Musk (Jay Leno meets Elon Musk. The world’s greatest supervillain!)

• Omen Sulk (Talk about darkwave!)

• Melons UK (OK, not a good option, but I like the sound of it.)

I should probably clear my weekend just so I can really sit with VR Sex’s music and ideas, because I suspect more gold awaits if I keep digging. I mean, take this band photo. Looks like we have a three-way tie for first place in the Depeche Mode “Personal Jesus” Video Lookalike Contest!

Sadurn

This is just the palate cleanser we need. I presume the name is a “how has this not been done before” take on everyone’s favorite ringed gas giant, but maybe it’s compound word of Sad Urn? There’s nothing happy about cremains, y’all.

Wiccan Babysitter

There’s a lot to like about Wiccan Babysitter. The catchy, ’90s-indebted indie rock. The samples from O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Young Frankenstein on their 2016 self-titled album. Their cover of Kirsty MacColl’s “They Don’t Know” (popularized by Tracey Ullman, which maybe explains the Simpsons cover art?). That it’s the solo project of Ben Gallaty of folk punks Andrew Jackson Jihad, a.k.a. AJJ.

And naturally, the mental image of a Wiccan babysitter. As a parent who employed babysitters regularly before the world ended, I just like to imagine a witchy, Stevie Nicks type rolling up to my door.

From what I can tell, Gallaty has written under the Wiccan Babysitter name since about 2012, predating the 2015 indie film Babysitter. According to an interview with writer-star Morgan Krantz in Rogue Magazine, the film “drew from his own childhood, the story of a thirteen year old boy who, caught in the middle of his parents’ custody battle, finds a kindred spirit in the new Wiccan babysitter.”

Turns out these Wiccan babysitters are inspiring people all over the place.

Electric Machine Gun Tits

Listen, we’ll probably never top the Year in Band Names all-star Here Comes Old Vodka Tits, but Electric Machine Gun Tits makes an able attempt. Virtually no record of Vodka Tits’ existence remains, while Electric Machine Gun Tits is very much active and recently released a video for a song called “Fart Jam.” Advantage EMGT?

They’re also (presumably) the first band to dare to ask the question, “Where the Hell is Hello Kitty’s Mouth?!” Asked and answered:

Where the hell Where the hell Where is Hello Kitty’s mouth?
How she eats ? How she kisses? Hello Kitty’s mouth
Pee pee Poo poo mother fucking Hello Kitty’s mouth
no need to mouth to talk you bitch non your business

POST-SCRIPTS

• You can hear me use my mouth to talk band names (and the old days of The A.V. Club) on the new episode of the Jon of All Trades podcast. It was super fun and is worth a listen.

• Here’s a reminder that Band Name Bureau has a Spotify playlist! I update it with every issue, so you can rest assured “Where the Hell is Hello Kitty’s Mouth?!” is available to stream.

• Don’t confuse Goatmilker with Milking the Goatmachine. That’s a whole other band.

• Noel Skum. LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL