‘Fart n Weiner Jokes’ is the latest album from (literal) giant of comedy Brian Posehn. But before we go any further, two things need to be mentioned outright here:
1) You do actually know who Brian Posehn is
2) Comedy and Metal are strange, yet comfortable, bedfellows (Slayer!*)
(* That’ll make sense when you’ve listened to the album)
So, who is Brian Posehn? He’s a 6’6” comedy actor, who you WILL have seen on TV – he had an episode in ‘Friends’ (he was a postman who gave Joey a script) and a regular part in ‘Just shoot me!’.
Don’t even start with the “But I didn’t watch either of those” – YES YOU DID. You can lie to me all you want, but you DID watch ‘Friends’ – you can probably even work out the episode from that description. No – shut the fuck up, YOU CAN. Stop whining and accept it. I’ll level with you on ‘Just shoot me!’ – no-one watched that piece of crap.
He’s also in Rob Zombie’s ‘The Devils Rejects’ and ‘The Haunted World of El Superbeasto’ and Sarah Silverman’s ‘Jesus is Magic’.
Just accept it – you DO know who this is:
And on to Metal and Comedy. It’s an odd relationship – while it’s true that both tend to prosper under rightwing governments*; both can be inane or insightful; and, most importantly, both share the exact same crowd/entertainer dynamic.
(*Americans please note – you’ve never had anything BUT a rightwing government. It’s not really relevant, but it’s just something I’ve always wanted to say.)
However the relationship IS a bit strained: even though (the late, great and sorely missed) Bill Hicks posthumously appeared on Tool’s ‘Ænima’, he wasn’t exactly kind about Judas Priest fans. That said, there is considerable crossover, with Henry Rollins’ current spoken word direction, and a number of comedians, such as Andrew O’Neill who are metal fans that happen to be funny. Brian Posehn is one of those fans.
This is his second album on Relapse – the first, ‘Nerd Rage’ was a stand-up set closed with ‘Metal By Numbers’ – a metal collaboration with Anthrax. ‘Farts n Weiner Jokes’ follows a similar pattern – comedy set and a pair of metallic closers.
The set itself goes through a journey encompassing iTunes, metal, Dennis Rodman, Slayer, the obligatory cats and the ’08 elections. It’s all good, and Posehn has an awesome delivery. Bits of the set will end up with you making ‘the lemon face’ and thinking ‘eew’…..
Any way – he’s also got a few valid points on metal and metalheads, and claims to speak as ‘one of us’. Since we can smell our own, and spot a fake at over five hundred paces, this is something of a gamble. As we haven’t collectively agreed on any sort of ‘secret handshake’ yet, we’ll have to use the old fashioned ‘trial by trivia’ to pick the metaller from the phoney. Closing track ‘Metal By Numbers’ is the sort of thing we need as proof. The line ‘I’m like Slayer, Venom, Mayhem, & you’re like Lion Blowin’ Jovi’ is all the evidence you’ll ever need.
Speaking of which, of the two songs added at the end, ‘More Metal Than You’ is the stronger, since it’s basically a list of awesome stuff to say to posers with neck tattoos.. That’s not to say ‘The Gambler’ isn’t bad either though, it’s a decent story, bolted to some handy life rules, and a killer riff.
If there’s any criticism to be made, it’s in the edit – some of the tracks seem to jump, so it’s a bit like listening to it set to ‘random’. But hey – if it works for Eddie Izzard,…..
While it’s not gonna spark an intelligent argument, it’s not really supposed to. Just go with it and have a giggle. He IS pretty good.
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