Writer & Editor
Regular visitors to As You Were may have noticed a new badge or two on the site — the ones from Alltop.com. I’m happy to say after seeing Alltop recommended as an aggregator of web content, I submitted As You Were to Alltop’s discerning editors in the categories of “heavy metal” and “werewolves.” They got back to me a number of weeks ago to tell me As You Were had been approved in the “heavy metal” category, and it’s now listed under that topic on their site.
Jon Mikl Thor, born in Vancouver, BC, started out as a bodybuilder in the 1970s and moved into the theatrical world of heavy metal. His shows featured feats of strength to the adoration of screaming fans. But as he tells it, taking the God of Thunder as your stage name doesn’t grant you immunity from trouble…
“There are many dangerous parts about being Thor in New York. One time I did a TV show and had the make-up on and long blonde hair. My wife likes Bojangles chicken, right? So I went to a Bojangles in a sort of shady area of New York City and then I was calling her, ‘Hey, I have some Bojangles chicken!’
I first had the opportunity to talk to Jon Mikl Thor back in 2005, while he was in the midst of a gruelling tour and had recently suffered an onstage accident in which he was nearly electrocuted. Despite that, he was very upbeat about his music career and made for a great interview. The only kicker was, I was interviewing him for Lögberg-Heimskringla, an Icelandic ethnic newspaper, and in the course of the interview learned he was not of Icelandic background at all.
They’re too good to be true (or too awful) and sometimes they’re hilarious because they don’t need to inhabit the real world. Imaginary musicians, faux songs or flat-out spoofs, here are my favourite fake metal bands.
One of the virtues of Chuck Klosterman’s take on 1980s heavy metal in Fargo Rock City is that, once you’ve read it, you’ll never look at metal the same way again.
Born and raised in Wyndmere, N.D., Klosterman had already covered music for the Fargo Forum and the Akron Beacon Journal before writing it, and has since gone o to write for GQ, The New York Times Magazine, and The Washington Post, as well as a number of bestselling books.
Downloading KISS’s Destroyer (Resurrected) marks the fourth time in my life I’ve paid full price for this album, but the first time I’m not sure it’s worth it.
Destroyer is the album every other studio effort by the band is measured. Given Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley’s penchant for self-hype, it’s become something of a tradition for them to claim about each new album that it’s their “best one since Destroyer.” (I can’t think of a time when that’s been true, though Love Gun certainly comes close.)
