Black metal — super serious, right? In fact, the genre that most extreme metalheads have no sense of humor about is comprised of dudes in facepaint and renfaire armor who secretly dig on some ABBA at Christmas with their families. As the kings of not-serious metal, Steel Panther understand this concept, which is probably why the band have now released a black metal version of the video for their 2019 track “Let’s Get High Tonight.”
Ever the masters of metal theatricality, Steel Panther hit every move needed to prove they are totally black metal. There’s the double-claws scream, the look-at-my-guitar evil smile, the sullen through-the-hair scowl, and of course, the patented Immortal squat-and-strum. Obviously, they also understand that black metal dudes are lightweights, as evidenced by frontman Michael Starr smoking weed out of an animal’s skull and then being so stoned that he has to stand perfectly still in the background. It’s basically the black metal video you didn’t know you desperately wanted, and is sure to do the most kvlt thing imaginable: piss off a bunch of people who claim to be nihilists.
Rip that Beelzebong and get icy with Steel Panther’s new “Let’s Get High Tonight” video:
Hail.
For the record, to understand just how deep Steel Panther’s transformation was in this video, here’s the original music video for “Let’s Get High Tonight,” before the band realized that glam metal was bullshit poser noise and the only way to be truly metal was to give your life over to monochromatic darkness:
Who taught Steel Panther to give up glam and go full kvlt? Weirdly enough, Prince. The king of cravat rock made a bad impression on Panther drummer Stix Zadinia, leading him to forsake glam for good.
“I was in a band a long, long time ago,” Stix recently recalled. “We were doing disco covers many years ago up in San Francisco. And Prince played at the ‘Shark Tank,’ which is the San Jose hockey arena. After his shows, he would find a club in a nearby city and he would go in. And his deal was, ‘Hey, I’m Prince. I’m gonna come play your club after hours. I’m gonna charge at the door and keep the door. You keep the bar.’ And the club goes, ‘Okay. Cool.’
“So word gets out. We were the house band — just kind of a no-name house band at the time. And Prince borrows our gear. Because he doesn’t wanna bring gear, and I understand it. So he goes on an hour late. We get kicked out of our own dressing room. Prince goes in there. You’re not allowed to look at Prince. But he plays the guitar, and then at the end, he holds the guitar up over his head and he drops it behind him onto the ground. And my guitar player is, like, ‘What the fuck?’ Then he switches and he plays bass. And after the song, he takes the bass and he sets it diagonally on the floor and the drum riser, so it’s just at an angle. And he takes his little tiny Prince foot and he [breaks] the neck.
“At the end of the show, we came up to his manager and his entourage, and we go, ‘Dude, what is the deal?’ And the manager flips our guitar player. He goes, ‘Here’s a hundred bucks.’ And he gives our bass player another hundred bucks. He goes, ‘Here you go. Go get it fixed, guys.’ And they left. And we were just standing there… It was some serious assholery going on.”
