Bad Company

Leave aside for a moment that the band Bad Company was a supergroup consisting of members of Mott the Hoople and King Crimson, the fact is that like a lot of acts from the pre-video age, they didn't look as "bad" as they sounded.

bad_company.jpg
They don't look like bad company, they seem like nice fellows.

Nowadays the opposite is true. Bands, particularly metal bands, have become comic book characters. They look a lot more "bad" than they sound, and both their looks and their sound would only be considered "bad" by eleven year olds. To Whit: Five Finger Death Punch:

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Eeek.
The name of this band, their look and sound, all point to a kind of videogameization of metal that's been happening for years. But what is wild and fantastical is that the Mortal Kombat generation is actually fighting wars now on our behalf. The worlds of videogames, metal, comic books, and swords-and-sorcery weapons-worship have collided in a crazy way, with kids actually shooting Afghanis instead of zombies. Five Finger Death Punch's cover of Bad Company is mind-blowing, and not just because the lyrics have been changed from a kind of poor-man's "Behind Blue Eyes" to a very literal clarion call for gore. This video combines metal, unreflective patriotism, sentimental brotherhood imagery, and straight up "Kill 'em all" violence into a goulash it's hard to parse. Soldiers have to get psyched up to put their lives on the line, but this version of getting pumped can only be creating a generation of mirthless thrill-killers. You're bad company? Yeah, I bet you are. You've got full auto machine guns and laser-guide bombs. Afghanis and Iraqis and whoever else we end up fighting shouldn't be engaged like videogame targets, unless we really do believe that the purpose of war is to wipe them from the face of the Earth. These worlds of metal music and actual mayhem are only going to collide more as the future dawns. It's freaky to think about the Army of the near future, and if you have a son who likes video games bear it in mind. It's not an all-volunteer Army we're headed for, it's an all-gamer Army.

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