I wanted to listen to Manowar’s classic Kings of Metal album on my linux box so I did what any sensible person would do: select the 10 music files and run “Open with VLC”. Little did I know that it would open them and start playing them ALL AT THE SAME TIME.
Now, I’m sure that for most albums, this would result in an earsplitting cacophony of unlistenable cacophony. I would flail my arms in terror, involuntarily ejecting my expensive headphones from my head into the air, where they would accelerate rapidly away until the cord was fully uncoiled, at which time they would abruptly change direction and crash to the unyielding university office floor like a dalmation walking a 6-year-old.
But the Manowar album doesn’t care about any of that crap. Manowar–I’m now convinced–writes their songs intentially to be played on top of each other, intensifying the metal and revealing additional nuances of wrecking-your-neck-ness for anyone who can take it. What’s more, as far as I can tell the relationship is linear, meaning I experienced *9x* the normal amount of Manowar destruction contained in a single song (song #9, The Warrior’s Prayer is not really a song). It was far, far too awesome for me. Only a level 14 metal-warrior-mage or above could withstand such an attack for sustained intervals.
I lasted about 60 mouth-agaping seconds before having to close VLC and make a cup of soothing tea.