STRAIGHT OUTTA DETWAT: FILLET OF POLE. NO…NOT MY VAGINA

ACT I: TO LAUGH WITH, OR TO LAUGH AT? THAT IS THE QUESTION

Let’s face it: there are way more shitty bands out there in the world then there are good. This is pretty much a fact. I think all of us have some guilty pleasures hidden away on our mp3 players. I’ll confess, I totally have both Lindsay Lohan albums. No, I didn’t steal them either. I bought them. With my hard earned money from stripping on the side. I didn’t get this average body just by sitting on the couch all day! Actually, yes I did, but that’s neither here nor there. Totally off topic…

So, shitty music comes in many forms. There’s the regular old “untalented” configuration, which tends to showcase what the artist CAN’T do rather that what he or she CAN do (Shadows Fall, Winds of Plague, etc). Then you have what Elise has correctly dubbed the “comically bad” artists, which invokes nothing but dark and depressive laughter in those with good taste in music (Kittie, Korn, Five Finger Death Punch, everything on Sirius XM Octane 20, etc). Finally, you have what I would like to call the “unintentionally hilarious” category. These bands aren’t necessarily BAD or UNTALENTED; most of them know what they are doing, they just have some obstacles in the way holding them back from their true potential. Every member in one of these bands might actually be pretty good, but the group may not mesh well together. Many of the times one of these bands finds itself in the spotlight, they are often scoffed upon due to that one missing link that can only be attributed to their music, their image, or the artists choice of song subject matter. So…almost everything. Just roll with it. Some of these things just can’t be helped! Why? Well, there are a few reasons I could list off, but since I want to start seriously making fun of stuff, I’m going to get down to business. One major factor in many unintentionally hilarious acts is cultural difference.

What-ever do I mean by cultural difference? Let me tell you a few things about my people, the Polacks, in order for you to better understand the hilarity that is my motherland, and how this whole idea works.

INTERMISSION: LAND OF THE RELIGIOUSLY OPPRESSED, HOME OF THE PIROGI

At this point in time, I think most of you have realized that I come off as kind of, well, an idiot. I may actually be an idiot, I honestly don’t know though, because I’m not sure there is a test for something like that. Anyway, although I am not straight off the boat, I have embraced all that my culture has to offer (besides Catholicism). My people are a happy group! We eat a shit ton, we drink until our livers fail, and we laugh at just about anything…ever. We don’t take many things seriously. If I could count the number of times my family has gotten blacked out and tried to shoot each other with sawed-off shot guns hidden around the house, I would probably be able to buy a new wardrobe. I doubt there are many other families out there, for instance, that considers entering adult hood to be the first time you piss your pants when blackout drunk. (Yes, I am definitely an adult, if you were wondering. POLSKA!) Of COURSE we find pissing ourselves funny, but not in the way you all do. To you, its pathetically hilarious, to us, its SIGNIFICANTLY hilarious. Just like this record album we found in my Aunt and Uncle’s attic on Christmas Day, which really laid the icing on our booze-soaked cakes:

With songs like “Mary, Cook The Dumplings”, “Drink Vodka”, and “Let Him Buy You”, I hope you are now beginning to understand the cultural barrier some groups may face. This record, to me, is 100% amazing, as all of these things sound fun, delicious, or true. Drinking vodka is fun, demanding a woman to cook through song is fun AND delicious, and letting a man buy you is really the only option when you’re in as much debt as I am. See? Although these songs are translated correctly, this is not always the case, and may become a problem for some groups transitioning from their homeland to those countries which primarily speak English. For instance, I once knew a Russian that ran an auto-body shop in Philadelphia. He would randomly add “or fuck” into his sentences. So he might say something like, “Eh, this part is like, $300 or fuck”. Pretty much it sounded like he was saying, you can either pay $300, or we can just have hard sex. Needless to say, he quickly went out of business and had no idea why. ENGLISH FAIL. Things that may be a common comfort word of phrase in Polish or Swedish, might translate to something boring, stupid or borderline illegal in another language. Some things that are viewed as “epic” or “mysterious” to Germans, may just be UNINTENTIONALLY HILARIOUS to us. Which is why I will now present to you a band from my native land…the one, the only:

ACT II: “THY DISEASE” IS SPREADING DOWN MY LEGS

Thy Disease. No, the name itself isn’t really funny nor is it terribly entertaining. A standard “meh” of a band name. It is once we explore just what the band had to offer that we begin to realize just how magnificent they really are. I want to point out that I found out about these guys through the always amazing Pandora, and legitimately liked the song it had suggested enough to go look them up on MySpace. Okay, maybe I was just being a little bias. Maybe I just wanted to support my people. Maybe I was just a little drunk and smoked some pot. Fuck you, don’t judge me. Upon first glance, the MySpace design on the bands page was pretty normal. Nothing out of the ordinary, until I began reading the details on the page.

I’m having a REALLY hard time taking them seriously when their influences are listed as: music soundtracks, modern death metal, world music, and electronica. What the hell is a “music soundtrack”? Do they mean like, the soundtrack to a movie? Are they influenced by James Horner and Hannah Montana?

What about the names of the band members? No, no, they didn’t use their birth names, they decided to take the alias route.

Psyco, Yanuary, Cube, Cloud, Brovar

They honestly sound like the rejected heroes from Captain Planet. It seems as if they were attempting to take the lead from their brethren in Behemoth, but failed due to mass alcohol consumption, or just genetic stupidity.  Because there is no logical explanation why anyone in their right mind would name themselves Cloud unless they were joining a clan of hippies in the middle of the deep woods. Kinda like these guys:

Hippies Wail for Dead Trees - Watch more Funny Videos

Upon further research, it turns out the current members have NORMAL nicknames. The former members…well…put down your coffee for these little diddies:

• Marcotic (Marek Kowalski) - bass
• Pinoccio - drums
• Alizee 666 (Maciej Kowalski) - drums
• Pepek - guitar
• Hiv – bass guitar

THE FORMER BASSIST IS NAMED H.I.V. I’m not sure whether we should shake his hand or kick him in the sack, because that is priceless. You’ve also got a Disney character, a malt liquor consumed by blax, and something that sounds like an OTC antacid. I’ll let you figure out which one is which. Either way you look at it, this band has some SERIOUS boundaries to overcome. How does friendship work over in Poland? Because in America, your friends would tell you if your alias sounded either gay or retarded. Then again, there is also the question of…

FINAL ACT: YOU KIND OF REMIND ME OF WHEN MY GRANDMA FARTS; ITS REALLY FUNNY, BUT SOMETHINGS JUST NOT RIGHT ABOUT IT

Are they joking with us? Does the Polish translation sound totally EVIL? Because right now I’m utterly perplexed. What’s even more puzzling is their music. Its really not THAT bad. Everything ELSE about them is ridiculous, though. There is definitely something that doesn’t fit in well, and I can’t really figure out what (maybe its the random Steel Panther like vocals?), but nonetheless, the style isn’t as bad as one would assume. If you’re a fan of this type of industrial metal, then maybe you’ll agree with me.

Seriously, they are pretty good. Just UNINTENTIONALLY HILARIOUS. I can even hear the Polka influence in the beginning guitar riffs. So what can these guys change that would make us take them seriously, besides like, their musical influence, nicknames, poor English translation and lack of visual originality (srsly, all those)? What bands do YOU find fit into the same category, and what other reasons besides cultural barriers have you found for categorizing said bands? Do any of you actually care? If AIDS was a flavor of ice cream by Ben & Jerry’s, would you eat it? Do you think I’m getting less and less funny by the minute? Who let the dogs out? POST YOUR COMMENTS BELOW. And remember…DRINK VODKA.

-A.Gossowski