*I started this weekly review last year, but now finishing it. This is one of my favorite punk rock records by the band Blaster the Rocket Man.* 

**This post is technically a day late.**

Today’s installment is over Tracks 13, 14, and 15 of Blaster the Rocket Man’s 1999 release, The Monster Who Ate Jesus.

Go here for initial comments on album and the linear notes.
Go here for comments on Tracks 1, 2, and 3.
Go here for comments on Tracks 4, 5, and 6.
Go here for comments on Tracks 7, 8, and 9.
Go here for comments on Tracks 10, 11, and 12.

Track 13 – Frankenstein’s Monster Wants a Wife

Jazzy-rhythmic guitar chord progression throughout the song. The first minute-and-a-half is an instrumental opener with an infectious double-picking lead guitar that functions as a refrain throughout the song. Musically this is one of my favorite tracks.

Lyrically this song derives its subject matter from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. In that novel, Frankenstein’s monster demands – threatens – that his creator make a wife for him. Frankenstein begins to, but aborts the process. I believe Blaster is allegorically using this scene from Frankenstein to illustrate how sin is a vicious monster that then demands more sin from its creator (man). Thus, Frankenstein’s dilemma: “Just cut this hand off, it’s offending me!” 

She’s much too fresh.
Where did you get her?
Now, don’t confess
for I must wed her
to my abomination
son of man.

“Doc Frankenstein!”
Who said that?
“Won’t you be mine?”
Now, cut that out!
I’ve got cuttin’ to do.
I’m not finished with you.
No chit chat till this is through.

It’s no easy operation
to apprehend the apparition,
to make the phantom corporeal,
substantial stuff for us to feel.
Scalpel, please. Make incision.
Scissors! Oh, these quick decisions!
It takes a steady hand…
Curse my monster’s sick demands!

How does she look?
Do the scars show?
She’s all sewn up
with no place to go,
save on a hellish honeymoon
that ends all too soon
in hell, well…

“Doc Frankenstein!”
Who said that?
“Won’t you be mine?”
Baby, how you been?
Oh my, your hand’s so cold.
But I’ll be bold
and hold it anyhow.

It’s all so thrilling 
When you’re willing
To fudge and fake
To make a killing
Still I want to tear it apart!
Stop the beating of this hideous heart!
Why do I abandon my endeavor to sever
To pick up the needle and sew it back together?
Oh, it’s neverending, can’t you see?
Just cut this hand off, it’s offending me!
Once dead, but now…
It’s alive!
It’s alive!

Track 14 – I Like Lycanthropy

Lycanthropy (or Lycanthrope) = Wolfman/Werewolf. To get this song you have to know something about the reality-mythology of man-to-beast shapeshifting. Werewolves are mythological creatures, humans who shapeshift into wolves. You are probably most familiar with Werewolves from the film Teen Wolf starring Michael J. Fox.

In any case, while shapeshifting is truly mythological, what is not mythological is the truth (reality!) that God does curse sinners by turning them over to their sins and their minds become clouded, and, as a result, they become beast-like. As Paul says in Romans 1:21-25:

Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. 

And because they worshipped the creation (beasts of the field) in place of God, they became like the thing(s) they worshipped (as the saying goes, “You are what you worship.”). In the subsequent verses (vv26-32), Paul denotes that God gave them up to “vile affections” and a “reprobate mind”. When God does this, the human is given over to sin (perhaps even given over to demons), and sometimes this includes becoming beast-like, e.g., Nebuchadnezzar becomes beast-like, he becomes like a Cow/Ox (Daniel 4), and Jesus cast a Legion (many devils/demons) out of a man who had become beast-like (Matthew 8 and Luke 8) — the text says that this man had been bound with chains and in fetters but had broken them, and was wandering naked in the wilderness; also, fornication, homosexuality, and bestiality are sins whereby God gives humans over to their sins and they become beast-like, i.e., in the same way that the animals do not exercise discipline and self-control in sexuality, so too humans who have been given over to “reprobate minds” are beast-like through promiscuous sexuality. All that to say, the Bible depicts that humans becoming beast-like is a symbol of God’s judgment.

This is a classic punk rock tune. (May their tribe increase!) Distorted guitars. Power chords. Palm mutes. Pick-slides. Opens with vocal refrain overlaying drumming, “I like lycanthropy!” All of this, obviously, is tongue-in-cheek, because the point of the song is that all those given over to sin (those who are beast-like, like the Werewolf in this song) must humble themselves like the Cow-King, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon; sinners must humble themselves and look to Heaven, i.e., as Blaster says, “There’s no way for new life to begin, No! Unless you confess and turn away from your sin You’ve got to die with Jesus to know the Resurrection.”

I like lycanthropy!
I like lycanthropy!
I like lycanthropy!
I like it!

Don’t call it murder when I feed
It’s just the nourishment I need
I cannot curb this appetite
or I’ll disturb my natural plight

So what if’ I’m a wolf on full moon nights
I’m still part man and I’ve got rights
I’m sniffin’ out the blood and I take bites!

If you are walking by
and I transmogrify,
be prepared to run or die!

I like lycanthropy!
I like lycanthropy!
I like lycanthropy!
I like lycanthropy!

The wolfman is back!
Don’t call it a curse.
Sticker on my car
Read it and weep
for the ones you love.
Says, “Equal Rights for Werewolves!”

I’m sniffin’ out the blood and I take bites!
Why do you look at me with a look of fright?
So what if I’m a wolf on full moon nights!

If you are walking by
and I transmogrify
be prepared to run or die!
Run or die!

I like lycanthropy!
I like lycanthropy!
I like lycanthropy!
I like lycanthropy!

The wolfman in me
I like lycanthropy (He likes it! He likes it!)
The wolfman and me
I like lycanthropy (He likes it! He likes it!)
Wolf!
Claw! Bite! Sniff! Bark! Scratch! Tear! Growl!
Howl!

Like king Nebuchandezzar
You gotta’ turn your eyes to Heaven
Like King Nebuchandezzar
You gotta’ turn your eyes Heavenward!

There’s no way for new life to begin, No!
Unless you confess and turn away from your sin
You’ve got to die with Jesus
to know the Resurrection
You’ gotta’ die, die, die with Jesus
to know the Resurrection
You gotta’ die! Die! Die! Die! Die! Die!
with Jesus
to know Life!

I like lycanthropy!
I like it!

(The Mysteriously missing third verse:)

A chorus of Redeemed Ones shouts the truth in 
unison to the werewolf:
“Your throat is an open grave!”
Our Lycanthrope Hero responds in despair:
“I know no other way to behave!”
The Redeemed Ones keep shouting in Love:
“You must repent, you Cursed Wretch!”
The werewolf snarls in defiance:
“I’ll not relent. Your flesh I’ll fetch!”

Despite the Lycanthrope’s unrepentance,
The Crucified One Who is Lifted Up
continues to offer forgiveness to all
monstrosities who will believe on Him.

Track 15 – Tundra Time on Thulcandra

This is another song that is lyrically derived from C. S. Lewis’ Sci-Fi Trilogy, Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength. Ransom is main character throughout the trilogy. In the first book he travels from earth to Mars, in the second he travels to Venus (and fights/defeats the Unman), and in the third he is the Pendragon of Logres (i.e., the Leader of King Arthur’s realm in Britain), and he and his team are instrumental in assisting in the war against the “Macrobes” (fallen angels/demons).

Down in the handramit [this is the canals on Malacandra where breathable air can be found]
I wanna’ be on the harandra [the suface of Mars]
An alien on this planet
On my way back to Thulcandra [Planet Earth]

Malacandra [Planet Mars] on my mind 
Perelandra [Planet Venus] all the time
Nevermind, it’s tundra time

Get cozy in the cockpit
Snuggle in the turret
Grunts gotta’ make the best of it

Warmth from the blast of the laser cannon
Keeps me goin’
When it won’t quit snowin’

Man the console
Console the man

Malacandra on my mind
Perelandra all the time
Nevermind, it’s tundra time

South wind blows
We know summer is coming soon
Lightning flashes
We know the Son is coming again

And what will the silent planet, Tellus [Latin for Earth]
tell us when they pull Deep Heaven
down on their heads?
I guess this is life during wartime

when Thulcandra is the battlefield.[Earth is the battlefield of incredible spiritual warfare in That Hideous Strength.]

Next week will be the last installment for Tracks 16, 17, and 18!

“Christian brotherhood is not an ideal which we must realize; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, 30).

Yellowstone Valley Christians for Life sponsors the local 40 Days for Life here in Billings. Last night was the Kickoff Rally, hosted at St. Bernard Catholic Church. I provided the opening prayer (see below), and Father John, Orthodox Priest at St. Nicholas, and Mike Rapkoch, member of YVCfL, provided a couple wonderful talks, and Dr. Bill Phillips, President Emeritus at Yellowstone Christian College, provided the closing prayer.

###

7 PM
Tuesday, September 24, 2013
40 Days for Life Kickoff Rally
St. Bernard Catholic Church
Billings, MT

2 Chronicles 7:14  “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”

Our Father in Heaven: You are the Master and Blessed Creator of the Universe and Jesus Christ, your only Begotten Son, is the Savior and Redeemer of man. We are your covenant people, called by your name because You, the Father and the Son, have sent us your Holy Spirit, to fill and empower and communicate to us the righteousness and victory that Jesus Christ secured for us through his life, death, burial, and resurrection.

O Lord, because we have your Holy Spirit we have an unction and understanding, because now your Law has been written in our hearts, so that we might do all that Christ commands. And since we know that which Christ commands, we come before you this evening as faithful Christians; as brothers and sisters in the household of faith; as citizens in the Kingdom of God. We come before you this evening at this Kickoff Rally, O Triune Lord, as a members of the Culture-of-Life, and as a Witness against our Nation’s and the World’s Culture-of-Death.

In your Perfect Law you condemn murder: to Moses you said , “Thou shalt not kill.”

Our society, O Lord, has scoffed at your Law. Truly, our Nation is a country of sinners and scoffers. And because of this, we, your people – those who are called by your name – we come now before you in humility and prayer, interceding on the behalf of our nation.

Lord, we confess and acknowledge that we live in a society that has built prosperity and a culture, economies and our cities upon the blood of the Aborted. Blood flows from the operation tables in the abortion facilities, out doors, over sidewalks, and into the streets. This blood is mixed with the mortar that is our Nation’s progress and growth, and thus, Lord, we come before you and confess that we live in a Nation of bloody-city-builders.

Lord, we thank you that we can be witnesses against the culture of death and against the vain raging of a Nation that builds cities with the blood of the unborn: their voices have been silenced, but we will not be silenced by the power of your Spirit. So, O Lord, we ask that you would do a mighty work through the 40 Days for Life in our Valley. Protect the many who in the days to come will offer up the sacrifice of prayer to you on the behalf of the unborn; and we rejoice knowing that you have promised through your Word, which never returns void, that “The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.“

We ask that the hearts of fathers and mothers would be turned to their children through our witness. We ask that you would save babies here in Billings! We ask that you would prevent mother’s from committing the sin of aborting their children here in Billings! We ask that you would close the Abortion Facility that is here in Billings — in our midst, in our city, just up the road — and we ask that you would do all this in order that you might be Glorified!  We pray these things in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

“But it [Book of Proverbs] is not a portrait-album or a book of manners: it offers a key to life. The samples of behaviour which it holds up to view are all assessed by one criterion, which could be summed up in the question, ‘Is this wisdom or folly?’ This is a unifying approach to life, because it suits the most commonplace realms as fully as the most exalted. Wisdom leaves its signature on anything well made or well judged, from an apt remark to the universe itself, from a shrewd policy (which springs from practical insight) to a noble action (which presupposes moral and spiritual discernment). In other words, it is equally at home in the realms of nature and art, of ethics and politics, to mention no others, and forms a single basis of judgment for them all” (Derek Kidner, The Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries: The Proverbs, 13).

For a side splitting laugh, go read Arminian-powerhouse Roger E. Olson’s musings on New Calvinism.

We’ve heard of “Mission Creep” — when a project expands beyond its original goals. Roger E. Olson is struggling with “Calvinistic Creep” — “What am I going to do with all these Calvinists (that are showing up in the unlikeliest of places, i.e., in Wesleyan, Pentecostal, Holiness, and Anabaptist Churches)!!!”

My thoughts: John 3:8 “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.”

*I started this weekly review last year — this is one of my favorite punk rock records by the band Blaster the Rocket Man — and circling back now to finish the review for the latter half of the album.* 

Today’s installment is over Tracks 10, 11, and 12 of Blaster the Rocket Man’s 1999 release, The Monster Who Ate Jesus.

Go here for initial comments on album and the linear notes.
Go here for comments on Tracks 1, 2, and 3.
Go here for comments on Tracks 4, 5, and 6.
Go here for comments on Tracks 7, 8, and 9.


Track 10 – Lovebot’s Revenge

I don’t know if jungle-polka-punk-rock is an established music genre . . . However, if it is, this would be the poster-child song. The song opens with jungle-sounding drumming, then the songs kicks through a verse with guitar phrasing that accentuates the jungle-sounding drumming. And with the chorus the polka-ish rhythm begins. And throughout the song reverberated and layered vocals peppered with labial stops. Most excellent.

“homicide, lust hard by hate”
– Milton, “Paradise Lost”

I’m a bogie in the heart of the jungle
In a hidden lab under the vines of the tangle
I’ve got my sights on the lights of the city
I want a chemical reaction to something pretty

I’m programmed to fall for ya’, pretty baby
You’re programmed to fall for me, pretty baby
Aww…fall into my arms!

Harmful heat in my hugs hide
My lips are laced with cyanide
Never mind my medicine breath
Come hither for a kiss of Death, now
Hold me, hold me, hold me
Huggin’ and a lovin’

Who put the…in the…
Who was that man?
I’d like to 
cut his hands off!

Meanwhile, I’m in the jungle she calls a heart
Boilin’ and a burnin’ in a cauldron
Mauled by the tiger who eats my flesh
Then the monkeys swing down and devour the rest

Couldn’t he tell it was a bad relationship?
Didn’t he know we couldn’t get a grip
on each other or anything other than ourselves
which we lost in the process as well

I’m programmed to fall for ya’, pretty baby
You’re programmed to fall fro me, little honey
And great was our Fall, pretty baby
We all have fallen short of the glory of God!

Oh, I’m a romantic thriller
A real lady killer!

Where there once were feely fingers
No protrude poisonous stingers
Feel I’m left with no recourse
But to kill her with no remorse, now
Hold me…huggin’ and a kissin’

Who put the…in the…
Who was that man?
I’d like to cut his hands off!
(‘Cause he made my baby fall in love with me!)

Aw, have mercy
Somebody kill me!

Note: Let no one suppose for one moment that
Blaster promotes violence or murder in this physical,
temporal realm. This song is a satirical
thriller about the very real consequences to par-
taking in what this world celebrates as “love.”

So how do we recognize true love in a world
full of destructive counterfeits? “This is how we
know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down His life
for us.” (1 John 3:16)

The violence and mortification that Blaster
does promote, in other songs on this album, is
spiritual and part of a very real war that is, at
this moment, being waged. “Beloved, I beg you, as
aliens and strangers in this world, to abstain
from fleshly lusts, which war against your soul.”

(1 Peter 2:11)

Track 11 – Disasteroid

Punk rock. Tremolo picking and vocal growls accentuate this Apocalyptic-minded song. The earth is a “Disasteroid” that will burn up and be transformed into a New Heaven and New Earth.

Disasteroid!
(It’s winding down! It’s winding down!
It’s winding down!)
Your “mechanism” can’t organize life at the start
And the universe is ripping apart!
Disateroid!
(It’s winding down! It’s winding down!
It’s winding down!)
Completely catastrophic
Entirely entropic
Nothing or none can stop it!

This world -womb will give birth
to a New Heaven and New Earth

Disasteroid!
(It’s burning down! It’s burning down!
It’s burning down!)
Open system or closed system
Either way you’ve missed Him who created you
Disasteroid!
(It’s burning up! It’s burning up! It’s burning up!)
In Christ all things consist
By His light you exist another day

You can’t change the course of the curse
The transformation will occur
World !
Womb!
In the twinkling of an eye
Mortality will be swallowed up by Life

when the Earth is destroyed!

Track 12 – [Untitled]

This track is a spoken word intro to the following track, “Frankenstein’s Monster Wants a Wife.”

Frankenstein, Frankenstein, 
Where, where have you been?
In your laboratory
making something ghastly, gory
In the church yard 
digging hard
midst the tombstones
alone with bones
Did you steal the cadaver?
That your son may have her
And thus the monster
will curse his father
Frankenstein, Frankenstein

What have you seen?

Ignatius was the Bishop of Antioch in Syria. He was arrested and led to Rome to be executed around 110 A.D. During his travels from Syria to Rome he wrote several letters to Christian churches. The following excerpt is from his letter to the Roman churches.

His captors were brutal; Ignatius says they “only get worse the better you treat them.” Ignatius knows they will feed him to lions/beasts when he arrives in Rome.

Reflecting on this, Ignatius says, “Now is the moment I am beginning to be a disciple. May nothing seen or unseen begrudge me making my way to Jesus Christ. Come fire, cross, battling with wild beasts, wrenching of bones, mangling of limbs, crushing of my whole body, cruel tortures of the devil — only let me get to Jesus Christ!” (Quotations from Early Christian Fathers, edited and translated by Cyril C. Richardson (Volume I: The Library of Christian Classics), pages 104-105, in William C. Placher’s Readings in the History of Christian Theology, Volume 1, 18.)

Discussing the tenet “Christianity is true and anything opposing it is false,” K. Scott Oliphint says, “God’s revelation describes the way things really and truly are in the world. That is, we are saying that what God says about the world is the way the world really is” (Covenantal Apologetics: Principles and Practice in Defense of Our Faith, 51).

“The Bible is authoritative not because we accept it as such, but because it is the word of the risen Lord. It has a claim on all people. Its truth is the truth for every person in every place. Why, then, would we be reluctant to communicate that truth in our apologetics? Perhaps because we have not reckoned with the actual lordship of Christ. Perhaps we haven’t really set him apart as Lord in our hearts” (K. Scott Oliphint, Covenantal Apologetics: Principles and Practice in Defense of Our Faith, 37).

From John Calvin’s Institutes: Our righteousness is in Christ, and it is “imputed to us as if it were our own.”

You see that our righteousness is not in ourselves, but in Christ; that the only way in which we become possessed of it is by being made partakers with Christ, since with him we possess all riches. There is nothing repugnant to this in what he elsewhere says: “God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin condemned sin in the flesh: that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us,” (Rom. 8:3, 4). Here the only fulfillment to which he refers is that which we obtain by imputation. Our Lord Jesus Christ communicates his righteousness to us, and so by some wondrous ways in so far as pertains to the justice of Gods transfuses its power into us. That this was the Apostle’s view is abundantly clear from another sentiment which he had expressed a little before: “As by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous,” (Rom. 5:19). To declare that we are deemed righteous, solely because the obedience of Christ is imputed to us as if it were our own, is just to place our righteousness in the obedience of Christ.