Marathon: Names Have Been Changed To Protect The Meth Mites (8 of 13)

Marathon's Names Have Been Changed… is a 40odd second song about two friends who's lives stopped intersecting with each other once one of them went to war. There's a line and I think it's the thesis: "Sometimes our beliefs get the glory, while our friends get the neglect."

So, of course, I think of Brooklyn's finest mosh band, Most Precious Blood. I used to love their 2003 record Our Lady Of Annihilation in high school, but once I went to college, they went inactive and I started listening to bands that didn't have that heavy, walloping sound, because, of course, I heard mosh bands weren't cool. (In my defense, I found most of the mosh bands I heard to be trite.)

Most Precious Blood got the neglect.

In early 2011, they released Do Not Resuscitate, their long-awaited followup to 2005's Merciless, and I listened to it once or twice, found what I found in college there and left it sitting on my iPod. Last week, I found it, again, in the blistering cold, going to the bar, to clear my head. The end of 2011's been rough and I've slept in places I wouldn't stand. I've done things this year that I'm ashamed of exponentially more than I've ever done before. Thus, I went to a bar and listened to some new songs from 2012 records, while people I only kind of know talked around me about punk rock. It wasn't a complete rejuvenation, but I needed to get out of my own head.

I left it on, returning from the bar, and settled on track three, Meth Mites. Listening to the rumbling, colossal, Meth Mites reminded me why I liked the genre in the first place. It reminded me there were big battles to fight and that, yes, you are equal to them. You just have to be willing to be bloodied.

The final two lines are delivered with the venom of a superhero who finally got to the lair of the villain, wants to dispense with the charade and fucking fight:

Open wide/and out with your tongue.

In those two lines, I found what I treasured in high school. I need now what I looked for then: That sometimes there's nothing left but to steel yourself, look into a 9 foot mouth filled with rows of keen, uncountable teeth and charge. Bring on 2012.




Yes, this one is super short, to reflect the length of the song itself. Here's Meth Mites, which is even more disgusting and grisly than its name implies.