...and it's a good one. Sounds like a more languid version of some of the stuff on Nicole Theriault's Acoustic Version, one of my favorite Thai pop albums ever. Those of you who haven't been keeping up with Tata Young: long story, but she started her career as a teen phenom, sidelined into modeling where she had huge success, made an album in English a year or two back about which LPTJ was positively despondent, and seems now to have done a 180. We hardly know why we're bothering to post this, since the main effect of it will be a coupla dudes on our forums sayin' how she's got nice legs. (In fairness to the sorta dudes who're just itching to do this, Tata Young is looking completely awesome these days, though you might wanna reserve some of your e-lust for her hairdresser, and for the inventor of the soft lens.) Still, if the rest of the new album is this distinctly back-to-basics - as this trailer seems to halfway suggest, even as its English-language chorus remains firm in its conviction that there's no point trying to get the horse back into the barn - well, anyway, I'm excited about it.

Sure, purists have been saying it's all over since, what, '96? Earlier? Still: it really is all over. LOL black metal! 10-year-old Immortal press photos are always funny, rite guys? Got any recent-vintage Bob Dole jokes while you're at it?

Screw these guys. There are plenty of funny things to say about black metal, but it helps if you'd heard of the genre sometime before last Thursday and also aren't the worst kind of bottomfeeding scumbag corporation soiling landscapes around the world. (Warning: video contains graphic and disturbing imagery.)

I really like the new Dead Child album. It reminds me a little of Cirith Ungol, and that makes me really happy, because we're probably never going to see the likes of Cirith Ungol again. (Anybody who says it doesn't also recall QOTSA a little is kidding themselves, but that's OK.)

I predict that there will be a lot of nonsense talked about this album, though when I ran a search using the Hype Machine I was surprised to find some nonsense running exactly counter to what I'd expected. (It's not my style to call anybody out by name, but a word to the wise: what Dead Child plays isn't thrash metal by even the loosest definition of the term.) Be that as it may, though, what I'm expecting when the album does its blog rounds is that people will want to talk about Dead Child's pedigree - how they're dudes from Louisville, and how Pajo especially is indie aristocracy, and how therefore there's something necessarily meta about such dudes making straight-ahead metal. The word "hipster" will probably be used a lot, because people feel intelligent when they use the word "hipster."

What I want to say to anybody who wants to evaluate the rather excellent Dead Child album on anything other than its considerable riffy merits is this: stop posing. Seriously, stop it. Demanding authenticity from artists is a fool's errand to begin with, but newjacks demanding authenticity from their metal bands because it makes them feel more clued-in is just shameful. Nobody cares that you know who Pajo is. He is making kick-ass metal now. If you don't think so, you need to check your credentials.

I could be wrong about the reception awaiting Dead Child, in which case I am just an old man sitting on the couch yelling at a TV that isn't even turned on yet, but I'll take my chances here. Dead Child, you wrongheaded imaginary interlocutors. Dead Child! I thank you for your attention.