Shirt Stains: Death Comes Lolbuttzing
Death waits for some.
Blood and guts, ruthless aggression, and unspeakable violence. Welcome to women’s roller derby. Also, death metal. True, there may be not much of connection between the two, but I can only assume Suffocation’s Frank Mullen is a master on skates. While roller derby t-shirts usually adhere to the uniform/sports team aesthetic, death metal..umm… well, take a look for yourself.
Cannibal Corpse – Bleh
It wouldn’t be a death metal Shirt Stains without Cannibal Corpse. I’m not sure the exact moment the band went from “Evil blood-thirsty monsters” to “Yeeeeah, we’re just fucking around.” Maybe it was always like that for some fans. After all, the members do have family lives. Maybe it’s when George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher espoused his “fucking passion” for World of Warcraft. Maybe it was when they decided to have their shirts designed by the weird kid that only takes 3 classes and has to be accompanied by a court-appointed guardian at all times.
A lot of Cannibal Corpse merch has zombies on it. That’s cool. I like zombies (obviously). Their zombies always look kind of strange though, like they’re hopped-up on prosac. You can really see it on this shirt with the frozen smile/grimace. That’s the look of someone sitting through a really bad piece of poetry at a coffee place while they wait for their friend to show up. That’s the look you give when you have Thanksgiving dinner with your significant other’s family and they ask when you’re getting married/having kids. Perhaps these zombies are just really excited to perform surgery. Or they just haven’t noticed that they don’t have any feet. I guess the artist was too distracted putting all the blood splatters on the shirt to, y’know, finish drawing the rest of the picture.
Malignancy – Oh baby, baby
This is one of those band shirts that people only wear to other shows. This shirt is currently buried in the bottom of many drawers across the country in the hopes that loved ones never find it. You’re probably not busting this shirt out to wear to Great Aunt Gilda’s 90th birthday party because there’s no way she’s making it to 91 after seeing it. I’m no doctor, but I don’t think this design is 100% medically accurate. The delicate brushstrokes and calming colors are a nice touch, though. It’s like a lakeside picnic on a warm spring day… if that lake were next to a nuclear waste-infused mass grave.
While the design is, um, unique, the real gripe is with the back. It’s just the same design as the front, band name and all, with the song’s lyrics printed on top. Not just one or two clever lines, but the entire song. It’s quite the toe-tapper of a song, so I can see why they wouldn’t want anyone to miss out on the lyrical intricacies. I guess we should be happy that they didn’t make a shirt for the next song on the same album. Just reading those lyrics makes your insurance rates go up. They’re a gory death metal band and their lyrics reflect it. I get it, but they should probably be a little more succinct since it’s beginning to become a problem.
Misery Index – Pope is dope
“What the fuck is up, bitcheeeessssssssssssssss?!?” That was the first thought that came to mind when I saw this shirt. Pope Corpsey II is here it party. He is the voice of the Party God on Earth, and Andrew WK is his apostle. Instead of a waifer, he gives you some ketamine and glow sticks. Instead of wine, he gives you jungle juice and Monster mixed in his bathtub. Sure, he appears to have extra arms, but that just means more places to high-five, brah!
I could probably make an entire Pope-based Shirt Stains post. There is no shortage of metal band shirts with the Pope on them. The Pope is an easy target for metal. Rage against religion, rage against authority, etc. Most of those shirts show the Pope as some sort of corpse. Misery Index goes the extra mile by turning his body into a writhing pile of snakes. Or spaghetti; it’s kind of hard to tell. Maybe it’s to distract from the wordy phrase beneath the band name. “Fear Ritualized to Control Illuminaughts illumination”. Uh, sure why not? Maybe the back of the shirt has an explanation to what that means. Hopefully it doesn’t look like the back of that Malignancy shirt. We’ve got things to see and buttz to lol.
Whitechapel – Bllllllaaaaarrrggghhhhh
I know some people will bristle at the fact that Whitechapel is included on a list of death metal bands, but this shirt would appear on this list regardless of what band was on it. It’s like someone drank a bunch of blue Powerade and ipecac and the other thing to catch the geyser of vomit on this shirt. It’s like they purposely designed this shirt to be as ugly as humanly possible. The gross face-thing with uncooked pasta coming out of its mouth, the random skulls, the random feathers, the even more random symbols at the bottom. None of it makes sense. Amazingly, this isn’t the first time Whitechapel has put out a shirt containing a bizarre face with some highly-detailed bullshit to go around it. What a strange idea to repeat.
This shirt wasn’t designed, it was still-birthed. This shirt canceled Silent Hills. This shirt is all about swatting people. This shirt thinks Ted Cruz is handsome. This shirt looks up to James Franco. This shirt thinks the Earth is flat. This shirt thinks Papa John’s pizza is good. This shirt just wants people to leave Phil Anselmo alone. This shirt is the newest writer for BroBible. This shirt walks out of stores when they don’t accept Bitcoins. This shirt posts columns about tech death bands on Tuesdays.
Defeated Sanity – They’re creepy and they’re kooky…
Defeated Sanity are a German tech death band that have been around for over 20 years. Wow! It’s a little less impressive when you see that they’ve only released 4 full-length albums in that time, but hey, it’s better than putting out just one album in over a decade with a cast of members that would rival a Broadway play.
Like just about every death metal band, Defeated Sanity have the brutal and difficult-to-read logo. That’s perfectly fine. It’s the picture underneath the logo. That’s Uncle Fester from the Adams Family. The look on his face isn’t quite pain or pleasure, so it’s not Butterball the Cenobite. He just kind of looks like he’s saying “I looooooooooooooooooooove Death By Chocolate cake! Oh my god, you can actually taste the buttteerrrrrrr! It’s going straight to my thiiiiggghhhhsss! Am I fat? Please tell me if I’m fat. I mean, don’t tell me if I am just tell me what I want to hear. You can see my organs, can’t you? Oh, god I’m gross! Nyyyaaahhhhh!”
The back of the shirt says “True to Sickness”. Good. Great. I’m glad you guys stay true to Sickness. In this day and age, people are so false to Sickness. I blame social media and the bully culture. If they really wanted to prove how true they were, Defeated Sanity would give Sickness a promise ring. Show some commitment, guys!
