An Evening of Riff with Dublin's Flashpoint.

Heavy metal is the drunkest music possible. It is the music of bottle bankers and willy-proud vagrants. If pride and shame fucked in a bin and gave birth to a muscular longhair in a speed metal belly top – that would be the genesis of all metal that is true and righteous.

But metal is a simple kind of creature. Like the honey bee, it collects and it creates. But that doesn’t mean that the genre hasn’t stuck its fingers in many different pies, often claiming those pies as their own. Some of the best new metal bands are a hideous cocktail of their own antithetical influences or cultural quirks. Sigh and Abigail branded their black metal with distinctively Japanese themes and structures, while the entire nation of Finland is essentially one extended flute solo over blast beats.

Metal might stumble drunkenly, but it does not stumble down narrow alleys.

Putting your own brand on a well-established music is a dangerous thing to do in a community akin to leather-clad Trekkies – but Ireland’s own Flashpoint did it. And it works.

Originating from the street-dwelling Dublin Hardcore Scene, Flashpoint’s hardcore-inspired heavy metal (or New Wave of Irish Heavy Metal) is the result of man discovering fire, keeping himself warm for a while, before ultimately realising it can be used to immolate his fellow man. They’ve repurposed both hardcore and traditional metal, and it’s a lil’ sumthin’ sumthin’.

But above it all, at the very pinnacle of this mountain of crushed cans and sun-bleached skulls – is the almighty riff.

As connoisseurs of the riff, Dublin’s Flashpoint are here to share with us some of the riffs that never fail to make their heads bang and their balls go septic. They will also, quite naturally, pair off these riffs with their choice of accompanying beverage.  So sit your laptop on your coffee table, crack open a can (bottles are false) and be ready to push open the gates of heft.

Matthew

Matthew pairs off this mighty riff with ritually deconsecrated red wine buried underground for 50 years.

Ciaran

Ciaran begins most nights with this track and a scauldy bottle of Buckfast, as he says "no better way to start a night of madness."

Karl 

Karl, a minimalist like myself, pairs off his old school doom with a pint of Guinness in praise of the dark lord.

Kinch

.Kinch takes his Mercyful Fate with a double baileys, no ice - a drink The King himself couldn't refuse. 

Jake

A warm tin of Dutch Gold. No further comment.

You can listen to Flashpoint's skull-fucking debut 'Swing At The King' right here, you fucking cowards.

27 Things That Are Electric Wizard

1. Disregarding the law.

2. Wearing denim when denim is not weather appropriate.

3. Accepting The Divil™ 

4. Being Mike Logan from Cannibal Ferox.

5. Saying things like "groovy" or "bitchin".

6. Constantly referring to The Master™. That which is The Divil™.

7.  Riding a motorcycle into the void as the clock strikes midnight.

8. Using your magical powers for the purpose of great evil.

9. Standing atop a mountain, naked as birth, calling forth The Unknown™.

10. Just doing bad shit all the time.

11. Disregarding the audio spectrum.

12. Living forever.

13. Being Christopher Lee.

14. Being too stoned to act out evil compulsions.

15. Reading the works of Aleister Crowley backwards in a candle-lit dungeon.

16. Telling The Divil™ how happy you are that it is your master every day.

17. Shunning your community.

18. Having a deep knowledge of the fathomless.

19. Asking things like "You got the cheese?"

20. Knowing that 'Alucarda' is ' A Dracula' spelled backwards. Ooooo!

21. Not kneeling when you're supposed to kneel at mass.

22. Your entire social circle is comprised of people who look like the bullies.

23. Being in a cult that isn't one of those lovey-dovey cults.

24. Being the leader of a non-lovey-dovey cult.

25. Having a second hatred gland where your love gland should be.

26. Skeletons tell each other scary stories about your lungs.

27. The Divil™ is in your WhatsApp group.

BONUS

Miami Vice/X-Files/Harry and the Hendersons Crossover Episode Pitch

(Harry's lifeless corpse lays on a hotel bed, a syringe hanging from his furry arm. He is surrounded by a forensic team who are snapping photographs of the scene. Sonny Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs enter.)

Crockett

Okay, so who's the dead carpet and why did we get the call?

Tubbs

Mexican Brown. The kind being shipped by the Moreno family.

Crockett

And?

Tubbs

This 'dead carpet' was our man on the inside.

(Crockett inspects the body)

Crockett

Looks like he went in a little over his head.

Tubbs

Understatement of the century. Morphine content in his bloodstream was 6.50 milligrams per litre. 

Crockett

Enough junk to bury the Morenos four times over.

Tubbs

You said it, partner.

(Mulder and Scully enter the hotel room, flashing their FBI IDs to Castillo and other members of Vice, before inspecting Harry's body themselves.)

Tubbs

Looks like the G-force have arrived.

Crockett

And I ain't waiting to find out why they're over here making noise.

(Crockett approaches Mulder and looks him up and down)

Crockett

I'm guessing you didn't get the memo. This is our guy and this is our line. You run out of paperwork?

Scully

And I'm going to assume you aren't familiar with law enforcement hierarchy.

Crockett

This is our jurisdiction, sister.

Scully

And it's our business now.

(Mulder turns his attention away from Harry's corpse.)

Mulder

Scully, can I speak to you in private?

(Scully and Mulder walk outside of the apartment and stand in the hall)

Mulder

Scully, how much do you know about the sasquatch?

Scully

Please, Mulder. Please don't tell me this is why you insisted on us coming here.

Mulder

The sasquatch has been sighted most frequently along the Southeastern United States since the 60s.

Scully

And?

Mulder

We're in Miami, Scully. What if this Harry guy is the sasquatch?

Scully

Or, if you would humour me for just a minute - this is a case of hypertrichosis. A rare affliction, admittedly, but something far more credible to include in our report back to Skinner.

Mulder

Scully. There is an nine-foot tall bipedal creature with ape-like features and enough heroin in its system to kill seven men. Do you really think this is all comes down to a hairy back?

(Tubbs and Crockett enter the hall and confront Mulder and Scully)

Crockett

Now, I don't know what you guys plan on doing here or why you think you can just walk in here and run the show, but let me tell you something...

(Harry suddenly appears from the hotel room door, fully lucid. The room is stunned and silent)

Harry

Aroooghh!!

*Upbeat electronic music plays and opening credits roll*

Toilet Broccoli and Other Things you can Cook in Prison.

Food science in Riki-Oh (1991)

Prison life can be a hard pill to swallow, but that doesn't mean it has to taste bad. Even cop-killers have to eat.

Nothing nurtures self-reliance and resourcefulness like being locked in 6x8 cell with a twitching Aryan Brotherhood initiate. If prison is a university for criminals, then culinary arts is most certainly on the curriculum. The other modules might include burning razor blades into ballpoint pens and getting the shit stains off your wall.

To preface, I've never been to prison. I am a white male form a middle class family and am naturally invisible to gardai. But that doesn't mean I can't catalogue some cell-made meals in case I do happen to get caught with a few trays of Spanish willy medicine.

But if you are a young man whose all-encompassing mental illnesses grew inside you after years of deprivation and cruelty - here's some delicacies you can easily whip up from the comfort of your horrific living conditions.

Toilet Broccoli 

What you'll need:
Boiling water.
A bin bag.
Broccoli.
A toilet bowl.

Pour your boiling water into the bin bag, quickly adding in your broccoli. Burn tiny holes into the bottom of the bag and hold the bag over your toilet bowl. Boil for about 10 minutes and then allow the water to slowly drain from the bag into the toilet and voilá - you got some top quality toilet broccoli to power your next prison yard workout.

Toilet Chi Chi

What you'll need:
Boiling water.
A bin bag.
Whatever you can steal from your kitchen shift.
A toilet bowl.

Pour your boiling water in the bin bag and quickly add whatever ingredients you could stuff into your underwear while nobody was looking. This can include rice, sausages (diced), eggs, and preferably some kind of sauce to add a little gooey broth to the dish. Boil for about 15-20 minutes before draining the water into your toilet.

Prison Latte

What you'll need:
Milk (stolen from the chow hall).
Boiling Water.
Instant coffee (stolen from kitchen or traded for cigarettes)
Maple syrup (stolen from chow hall)

Run the boiling water over the milk carton until it becomes nice and frothy. Add in your instant coffee and stir. A teaspoon of maple syrup should give the concoction that thrifty Sex in the City bite.

Prison Toast

What you'll need:
Bread.
Toilet paper.
A radiator.

Wrap your bread in the toilet paper and leave it on the radiator for 5-6 minutes

Heroin

What you'll need:
Heroin.
Hypodermic needle.
A bottle cap.
Cotton balls.
A lighter.
A tie-off (A shoe lace)

Boil your powdered heroin on a bottle cap using your lighter until the solution begins to coagulate. Pinch a piece of cotton ball and place it into the cap and use your needle to press down on it until you feel the solution has been absorbed thoroughly by the cotton bud. Load up your needle, tie yourself off with your shoe lace, spend an hour trying to find a productive vein and voilá - heroin ala carte.

******

Did you find these recipes of any use? If so, for more information on how to cook in The Big House, just visit your local restaurant and wave a fully-loaded gun around until you're tackled to the ground amongst a maelstrom of violence and distress.

And Now I Must Go Off To The Shops.

I avoid high-conflict people when I'm like this. It's either a result of cowardice or a deep and excessive longing for calm. Whichever the case, I have chosen to use the self-service checkout at The Shops. There was a tension between the only free checkout assistant and I. This was a tension you could feel on your face and in your arms. Partly sexual, mostly active aggressive. I have come to expect this at The Shops.

The Machine poses its own kind of conflict, a more subtle kind that makes you look at yourself in the finger-smudged screen and confront your own inadequacy. 'Jesus Christ, why didn't I just go to the checkout assistant? Why do I sabotage myself like this again?'

I'll tell you why, you vomitous pig. It's because every single thing in your basket is either ramen noodles or some other kind of cheap and debased clone of an East-Asian delicacy. At least The Machine doesn't care how you live. The Machine is just a mirror, it calls it like it sees it. It won't make eye-contact with you as it scans the ten packets of miso ramen you spent close to five minutes staring at in a lonely aisle.

But let's not pretend this is all about the checkout assistant. She doesn't get to define you. She has her own problems at work and at home. She's been working here for four years to support an artist boyfriend who hasn't gone down on her since he started the Alex Jones podcasts. He just sits there now, plugged into his laptop, tongue thoroughly glazed with whatever shite the blogs are feeding him today.

BEEP! BEEP!

Let's cut off the grizzle and get to the lean meat of your problem.

You've been sleeping since November 13th, 2015. Just laying there on a loathsome bed, sweating out and soaking up all the vivid nastiness of an endless fever dream. Your almost Libertine consumption of ramen noodles is merely a manifestation of your true problem. The problem that does skitter in the shadows of your mind.

You're a shite hawk. It's that simple.

BEEP! BEEP!

Do I scan each packet separately or do I scan one of them ten times? Is anyone looking at me?

BEEP! BEEP!

You're a shite hawk, and that's what ails you. You've let the noise of the world in and it's too loud for you now. When was the last time you did something for yourself that didn't involve excessive and violent regurgitation later that evening? That kind of repetition nurtures a subconscious deadlock. Rise above it, you fucking hack.

PLEASE SCAN YOUR FIRST ITEM!

Incredible and crushing truth. BEEP! Deep longing. BEEP! Ten ramen noodle packets of the exact same unfamiliar flavour. BEEP!

I scan each packet of noodles separately. That's why they all have their own barcode.

UNEXPECTED ITEM IN BAGGING AREA!

It's there. You love being busy. You were just deprived of a decent Protestant upbringing and the work ethic embedded in it. You should've been a Protestant, but here are noodles instead.

Self-love is the key to an ego that flies. Ego is something to be scorned in a self-flagellating world, but fuck them all arseways. Ego good. Ego saviour. Ego more real than god.

PLEASE TAKE YOUR CHANGE!

I've only gone and forgotten to bring a fucking bag with me again. And so it was time to reach down deep inside the charred corridors of my soul and find the rage and courage necessary to ask the checkout assistant for one of those expensive plastic bags. Or do I just carry the noodles in my arms? No, fuck off with that.

'Hey, can I get one of those bags?'

'Yeah, no bothers, that'll be 70 cent.'

'Ah, grand. Here you go.'

'And here's your change.'

'Cheers.'

And then I went off home with a bag of noodles. Stopping only once to tie my shoelaces when I was sure nobody was looking.