Week 22 wrap-up: Slayer, Van Halen, Beavis & Butt-Head, and more

Ready for a bit of a real-life legal farce? Sit tight...

First problem: Slayer, although having disbanded, are still down $133,000 for a show they played at Icelandic festival Secret Solstice in 2018. The following year, Slayer's managing firm, K2 Agency Limited, filed a lawsuit against Solstice Productions, the production team behind the festival.

Second problem: Somewhere along the trial, Solstice Productions went bankrupt, its remains getting sold off to three different companies. In 2019, Víkingur Heiðar Arnórsson, managing director of one of these companies, named Live Events, reported that all the debts would be paid.

Third problem: The Icelandic national court has since overturned the decision that Live Events would settle the debt. The court's decision read the following:

"With regard to K2's claims for damages... there was a final judgment that Friðrik Ólafsson should pay the financial claim. K2 had received legal storage in an apartment owned by Friðrik to secure the claim and demanded the forced sale of the apartment to enforce the claim. Therefore, the court did not consider that the financial claim of the agency company could be paid by Friðrik. It would not be timely to demand that... the three companies make the payments. Therefore, [they are] acquitted according to K2's requirements at this time".

So, in a nutshell, since Slayer's managing agency had forced the sale of that Friðrik guy's apartment – whoever he is – in order to secure the claim, none of the three remaining companies were liable for paying Slayer anything further.

Well, gotta hope they at least got something out of selling that guy's apartment. And, if nothing else, they might be making a bit of dough from having just released an action figure depicting that goat character from the cover of their 1983 debut "Show No Mercy". (Metal Injection calls it a "minotaur"; I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be a goat. Because, y'know, Satan.)

"Fuck @ReelzChannel, fuck everyone that works on this show, and fuck you if you watch it. Fucking disgusting trying to glamorize someone's death from cancer. Pathetic and heartless."

Those are the exact words in a recent tweet from Eddie Van Halen's son Wolfgang Van Halen, addressing a new Reelz documentary about his father's death in their series "Autopsy: The Last Hours Of..."

Eddie Trunk, Sirius XM host and former host of VH1's "That Metal Show", chimed in supporting Wolfgang: "I am very glad I passed on having anything to do with this show. I told the production company I thought it was an awful idea. Clearly they didn't listen unfortunately".

I'll gladly rally behind team Van Halen here. As rightly proclaimed by Loudwire recently, there was nothing scandalous or controversial about Eddie Van Halen's tragic passing. He lost the battle to cancer, and that's it. The documentary concept itself sounds pretty tacky, but that shit's just in poor taste no matter how you look at it.

Some media choose to embed the sneak peek video from Reelz for the episode; I'm not gonna do that.

After 25 years, a new Beavis & Butt-Head feature film is finally on the way. In their silver screen debut, "Beavis & Butt-Head Do America", the dynamic metalhead duo was hurled across the U.S., unintentionally leaving a trail of even parts danger, scandal, and idiocy in their wake. This time, they're going into space!

The official movie synopsis reads as follows:

"In perhaps the dumbest space movie ever made, Beavis and Butt-head are sentenced to Space Camp by a "creative" judge in 1998, leading to a trip on the Space Shuttle, with predictably disastrous results. After going through a black hole, they reemerge in our time, where they look for love, misuse iPhones, and are hunted by the Deep State. Spoiler: They don't score."

Here's the trailer:

Granted: Up front it does seem to rely a bit much upon sex jokes rather than the plot which was such a bearing element in the first movie. But being an old fan, I'm there, dude.

Seriously, if I hadn't grown up on Beavis & Butt-Head, I might not have turned out a metalhead, so you probably wouldn't be reading this.

Legendary fantasy and album cover artist Ken Kelly has died at 76. This might be sad news for fans of KISS and especially Manowar since Kelly painted the iconic covers for KISS' "Destroyer" ('76) and "Love Gun" ('77), and virtually everything released by Manowar since "Fighting the World" ('87).

Kelly also did cover art for several other hard rock and metal bands, including Sabaton, Steel Prophet, Thyrfing, Majesty, Alabama Thunderpussy, Legion of the Damned, and also this one little 1976 record called "Rising" by this one little band called Rainbow.

Studying under his uncle Frank Frazetta, who also later did several covers for hard rock and metal bands, Kelly started his career in the late '60s by regularly depicting the likes of Tarzan and Conan the Barbarian for Warren Publishing and Skywald Magazine. He was also the regular artist for Karl Edward Wagner's Nightshade books and Robert Adams' Horseclans series.

There are metalheads all over the world who have Ken Kelly's art tattooed on their bodies. Some of the albums he worked on are timeless classics, so his legacy remains among us. He's irreplaceable.

Rock in peace.

Sources:

https://metalinjection.net/news/slayer-still-owed-133000-for-2018-show-in-iceland
https://loudwire.com/eddie-van-halen-autopsy-final-hours-doc-wolf-response/
https://loudwire.com/beavis-and-butt-head-do-universe-first-trailer/
https://blabbermouth.net/news/legendary-kiss-and-manowar-artist-ken-kelly-reportedly-dies-at-76
https://www.metal-archives.com/artists/Ken_Kelly/18866
https://ultimateclassicrock.com/ken-kelly-kiss-artist-dead/
https://www.kenkellyart.com