It’s not hard to come up with theories as to why Slash has gotten so lame over the years — aging, sobriety, marriage, fatherhood, pacemaker, Fergie, etc. — but has anyone ever considered that Slash just might not be real? I mean, I know a truly silly number of people who have been Slash for Halloween over the years (both Vince and myself have done, in case you’re curious), and the reason is, he’s both recognizable and incredibly easy to imitate. Get a dark, curly wig, a top hat, and a cigarette, wobble around drunkenly, and, every now and then, remove a piece of paper that says “MY LEGACY” on it, place it on the ground, drop trou, and poo. Presto, you’re Slash.

But has anyone ever considered that the reason Slash has gotten so lame, and is so easy to impersonate, is because he’s not real? Y’know, like Santa. Like, maybe Slash seemed a million times cooler when I was a kid because my mom was Slash and my mom did an awesome job because she wanted her little gift from God to be happy, but now every time I see Slash it’s just some out of work record executive trying to bring back the good old days, or, worse still, Dj Ashba?

This is the theory that South Park posited on Wednesday night (about Slash not being real, not Slash being Dj Ashba in a disguise), with rather amusing results. (Two words: “Vunter Slaush.”) I can’t for the life of me figure out what spurned on Trey Parker and Matt Stone to include this storyline, although, yes, it does seem like Slash is always in too many places at once. I also feel like these guys lampooned Slash once before — I distinctly remember him being in some All-Star Charity Concert on a past episode — although I can’t seem to find that episode now, so maybe I’m imagining it.

ANYWAY, here are the clips from the episode relevant to Slash, courtesy reader Hetal Bhatt… you can watch the full thing here. In case you need some context for these clips, basically, the boys are trying to get Slash to play the half-time show for their new sports league, the Crack Baby Athletic Association. Yep yep.

-AR

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If you’re not familiar with Continuum’s 33 1/3 book series, you should be. Each entry is written by a different music critic and/or journalist, and each one is devoted to the study of a single, seminal album. There’s a wide range of types of music covered by the series – everything from the Beastie Boys to The Velvet Underground – but metal hass, up ’til now, been criminally unrepresented. There are entries for albums by Guns N’ Roses and Nine Inch Nails, but those aren’t metal bands in the strictest sense and, obviously, both groups have been wholly accepted by the mainstream; there was a book covering Sabbath’s Master of Reality recently, but, weird though it may be, at this point Sabbath are pretty much as accepted and unrebellious a metal band as we’re likely to get.

So D.X. Ferris’ recently release tome on Slayer’s Reign in Blood is the series’ first honest to God (or honest to Satan?) book covering a metal album. And it’s an AWESOME read – fascinating, intelligent, informative and insightful, you’re likely to blow through it record time, and then feel depressed as you realize you’ve reached the last page. Ferris not only takes a critical look at the album, making astute observations and pointing out little musical nooks and crannies you might have never noticed even after your gazillionth spin of the classic record, but he also managed to interview everyone and anyone who was involved with the album – from the band members themselves to producer Rick Rubin to engineer Andy Wallace to cover artist Larry Carroll and a few hundred other people I’m forgetting about – as well as loads and loads of musicians and artists who are fans of the album (Henry Rollins, Tori Amos, Gary Holt, and Paul Romano among them).

After I wrote this blog about Slayer and their continuing relevance in the metal world back in June, Ferris actually e-mailed me basically just to say “thanks” for the shout-out to his book. I asked him if I could shoot him some interview questions, and luckily for us, he agreed. After the jump, read what Ferris had to say about the process of putting the book together, things he learned about both Slayer and Reign in Blood while working on the book, and the state of Slayer today.

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