KEVIN STEWART-PANKO IS STILL THE BRAVEST MAN IN METAL, NOW DEFENDING CRYPTOPSY’S THE UNSPOKEN KING

Last month we told you about “Justify Your Shitty Taste,” a new weekly column at The Deciblog in which one of Decibel’s writers defends a much-loathed album. Kevin Stewart-Panko wrote the inaugural edition of the column, in which he stood up for the most universally loathed metal album of the 21st century, Metallica’s St. Anger; apparently, Mr. Stewart-Panko thought he was still way too popular amongst internet dweebs, because now he’s written another edition, this time defending Cryptopsy’s The Unspoken King, which, no joke, might be the second most universally loathed metal album of the 21st century.

Stewart-Panko’s defense is typically well-written and intelligent; he asserts that Cryptopsy “didn’t allow themselves to be completely consumed by what was going on around them, but allowed themselves to be influenced just enough by the world outside of death metal,” and basically calls people who were pissed about the clean vocals elitist douche bags:

“The Unspoken King runs for 47 minutes, and if you sit down and time the amount of time the band spend utilizing McGachy’s clean vocals (which I did at the time!), it clocks in somewhere in the neighborhood of six of those 47 minutes. The rest continues the sort of spirited lightspeed splashes of tech-death calisthenics usually associated with the Cryptopsy name.”

I can’t really take a pro or con stance on this one, ’cause I listened to The Unspoken King once back when it came out, decided I didn’t care, and never listened again; it could be a fucking unsung masterpiece for all I know. My memory of it is that it was much deathcore-ier than Stewart-Panko claims, but, like I said, I’m not in any real position to make an argument here.

So go read all of Stewart-Panko’s defense here, and then come back and let us know how we did, if you agree with him, if you’re not going to burn him in effigy, or whatever. If nothing else, you gotta give the guy credit for his elephantiasis-sized balls. No one should be surprised if next month he’s defending Cold Lake or, worse, Three Dollar Bill, Yall$.

-AR