Beyond Metal: The Residents

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Metal is not the only meal of the day, but rarely there's a band equal with the artistry. As such I decided to humbly present one of the best anti-band of all time. Avantgarde project with thousand faces and endless concepts.

The saga of The Residents is so huge, that I decided to use shorter sentences in order to avoid writing a book:

- "band" started in '60 as an artistic collective.

- after their demo (which was sent to Warner Bros), got "returned back to The Residents", the band decided it would be a good idea for the name

- personal info is clouded in mystery. Nowadays, it's more or less known who was who, and which person was the mastermind. However, it's not really important, because...

- ...the idea behind anonimity came from the "theory of obscurity", which meant that the music should be judged by its own merit, and be separated from the artist.

- nonetheless the band was / is performing live, using costumes, like the one in the pic, albeit it varies depending on the tour.

 - each of their album has unique concept and story, albeit majority is based on the deconstruction of the american pop-culture. The greatest example would be the (in)famous cover / remix of Rolling Stones' "I can't get no satisfaction".

- and because their debut album parodied The Beatles debut, there were rumors that The Residents were actually the alter-ego of the fab four.

- to the best works belong ie. "Eskimo" (one of the earliest ambient album dedicated to Eskimo culture), "Commercial Album" (a work comprising of commercial jingles), "Mole Trilogy" (conceptual series telling the stories of the fictional mole race and their adversaries), "Freak Show" (ambitious mixed-media work, which featured a comic book, game, videoclips and of course, soundtrack), or "Demon Dances Alone" (music inspired by 9/11).

- their discography is so bloated that the essential list is actualyl bigger, but as I said earlier, I do not plan on writing an essay.

- the "group" had its own label: Ralph Records (or how we would say it today: "barf" records), when they also released other bizarre artists like Renaldo & The Loaf, or Yello, who became pretty famous later on.

- they were also pioneers of tv videos with plot, rather than live performance.

- and they created a lot of soundtracks to various tv programs, series, or podcasts.

And there are certainly much more things, stories and mythos I forgot to tell, but then again, why spoil the fun? It's worthy to dig the richness of The Residents oneself.

Why should you check them out? Because they are original, unique, creative and foremost, their music, despite its weirdness can actually pretty much fit the Metalhead taste due to it's roughness, as well as lirycal topics touching on such subjects like death, criticism of religion, or various mythologies, or strange tales. Anyway, not knowing such project is basically depriving yourself a lot of fun. So here you go! And till the next time!