The Ten Best Metal Songs for Tax Day
If you live in the United States, tomorrow, April 15, is very likely one of your least favorite days of the year: tax day! Even though John Oliver did a brilliant job of explaining this week why you shouldn’t hate the IRS, let’s be real: we’re all going to continue to hate the IRS. (Don’t worry: we already hate the politicians who make the laws the IRS enforces, so they’re covered.)
And so, while you watch Uncle Sam drain your bank account like a vampire tomorrow, we hope this playlist of metal songs that are either about taxes or seem as though they could be about taxes brings you some level of comfort. Also, remember the best part about today — now you don’t hafta worry about this crap for another year!
1. Municipal Waste, “Death Tax”
Even if this song isn’t about the actual “death tax” (estate tax), its inclusion on this list seems both obvious and necessary. Because, really, if Municipal Waste can’t cheer you up, chances are that nothing can.
2. S.O.D., “Anti-Procrastination Song”
For those of you who wait until the very last second to file… the very last second is here!
https://youtu.be/BmEw-71OBzY
3. Napalm Death, “From Enslavement to Obliteration”
This list simply would not be complete without the inclusion of one of extreme music’s most notably liberal bands, who have been fighting The Man since their debut, Scum. The title track from the band’s sophomore effort, released in 1988, paints a bleak portrait of class warfare and posits that self-defeating consumerism keeps the enslaved in their lower position. So that seems appropriate.
https://youtu.be/uSs5wopXahY
4. Iced Earth, “The Devil to Pay”
Iced Earth’s The Glorious Burden is a concept album about the American Revolution, which started, at least in part, as the result of taxation without representation; this song has the word “pay” in it. You do the math.
5. Megadeth, “Foreclosure of a Dream”
This is another one of those “C’mon, it has to be on the list” songs. Bonus: Dave Mustaine is bascially a Tea Partyer now, so he presumably hates taxes more than ever.
6. Converge, “Hell to Pay”
As is often the case with Jacob Bannon’s lyrics, I have no idea what he’s talking about. But I assume he’s pissed about his form 1040-ES.
https://youtu.be/Vzbc4mxm430
7. Death, “Nothing is Everything”
Nothing in life is certain besides Death and taxes.
8. All Shall Perish, “Wage Slaves”
Thematically, this makes a nice companion piece to Napalm Death’s “From Obliteration…”. As a bonus, it has the best use of cowbell in a death metal song I’ve ever heard. And, one could argue, that cowbell symbolizes how we’re all just a herd of dumb beheyme, waiting to be turned into hamburgers by the monied class. I mean, it probably doesn’t, but you could argue that.
9. Misery Index, “Ruling Class Cancelled”
Every year when I do my taxes, I joke to friends that I’m read to start voting Republican. Thing is, that wouldn’t actually help me — I’m in the middle class, and the middle class is gonna get squeezed pretty much no matter what, at least until the ruling class decides to start lifting more of society’s weight. So… canceling the ruling class? Backed.
10. Warrant, “Dirty Rotten Filthy Stinking Rich”
For anyone from the 1% who happens to be reading this. Mazel tov, you motherfuckers.
https://youtu.be/b1Ir-APFUi8
