After an extensive interview period, AFITFOG is back to current Vice issue-themed posts. As it is the last week of the Film Issue, I thought it would be swell to highlight one of metal’s finest moments in cinema, Powermad’s performance of “Slaughterhouse” in David Lynch’s 1990 masterpiece, Wild At Heart.

Powermad are a thrash/speed outfit from Minneapolis, who formed in 1984 and released a couple of EPs and one long-player between 1987 and 1989 (”The Madness Begins…” EP and Absolute Power LP are available for free download via their MySpace here). Quite how they got picked up by David Lynch is anyone’s guess. I can remember the first time I saw this movie, I was literally blown away by it, but the inclusion of Powermad sweetened it all the more, because the song is kind of a recurring theme in the movie. They actually make a cameo playing at a “metal club” until some dickhead tries it on with Sailor’s girlfriend Lula (the film’s main characters, if you haven’t seen it, played by Nicolas Cage and a very smoking Laura Dern, respectively) and the show stops till the guy apologises to her. Cage then goes on stage to tell Powermad they have “a lot of the same power E [Mr. Presley] had”, and they go into Elvis’s classic “Love Me” with Cage on vocals. Which owns.

Did you know Cage is a massive Elvis aficionado? So much so, he married MJ’s ex and Elvis’s daughter, Lisa Marie, albeit for 108 days. His role in Wild at Heart is based on Mr. Presley.

A little later in the movie, “Slaughterhouse” comes on again on the car radio amidst a sea of news reports of rape, murder, etc. and they do some high-kicking and roundhouse kicking to the sounds on the side of the motorway. Which also owns.

For me, this is Lynch’s finest moment. From the performances of the two leads, to an amazing appearance from Willem Dafoe as the lizard-tongued thief Bobby Peru, to the maniacal phonecalls of Lula’s mum (played by Diane Ladd), to cinema’s second hottest scene (sorry, first place goes to Salma Hayek for her “snakedance” in From Dusk Till Dawn) – Sherilyn Fenn’s death-by-car-crash scene.

Okay, I know that may sound a bit odd, but have you seen the movie? It’s too much and does little to dampen the fire that is my Sherilyn Fenn obsession. It is quite simply the greatest love story ever made, and if you haven’t seen it, get up from your desk or wherever you are reading this, go to your local store, go home and get REAL.

Listen: Powermad, “Slaughterhouse”

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†ROCKWELL†