Death Metal MusicMusic and Culture on the Edge

FIRST PERSON | It's hard to believe that "The King" has been gone for 34 years. Most of us who are old enough remember what we were doing when the news of his death was broadcast over television and radio.

“How much acid do you guys do?” asks a commenter on the YouTube page for the first episode of Sunset Television . It’s an appropriate question. Sunset is some old school psychedelic satire, making heavy use of rapid channel surfing editing, dark absurdist humor, and pass-the-bong image and sound effects (dropped pitch seems to really make these guys giggle) to lampoon the cheesiest of boob tube cheese as well as some unidentified flying miscellaneous weirdness. Created by Drew Blatman ,

Firas glanced at the cover of the Iron Maiden album in his hand and chuckled darkly. This is what life looks like here, he said, holding the CD out to the camera, Death on the Road, dude. The image was typical of the graphical restraint and delicacy we have come to associate with heavy-metal music: an old-fashioned hearse pulled by two red-eyed horses, driven by a gaunt figure of death and ...

Firas glanced at the cover of the Iron Maiden album in his hand and chuckled darkly. This is what life looks like here, he said, holding the CD out to the camera, Death on the Road, dude. The image was typical of the graphical restraint and delicacy we have come to associate with heavy-metal music: an old-fashioned hearse pulled by two red-eyed horses, driven by a gaunt figure of death and ...

When television or movies takes on a particularly underground art form and tells a story about it, there’s one hell of a risk of getting everything wrong, or just plain looking stupid. That’s even worse when the art is as obsessed with authenticity as underground metal music. Metal has always in desperate fear of “poseurs,” and of the idea that anything with a hint of mainstream acceptance is the mark of “falsehood.” So it would seem that Detroit Metal City is a risky undertaking for its creato