Mike Scaccia, 1965-2012

Like Randy Rhoads before him, lead guitarist Mike Scaccia was an expert musician who seemed destined to outlast his infamous, hard-living co-conspirator. But in an affirmation of life's unfairness and unpredictability, Ministry's lead guitarist died onstage this week of a heart attack.

Scaccia first found success Rigor Mortis, a pioneering thrash metal act that almost single-handedly represented the genre in Texas in the early '80s. Their song "Foaming at the Mouth" appeared on the Decline of the Western Civilization Part II soundtrack, where Rigor Mortis' speed and ferocity distanced them from songs like Faster Pussycat's "Bathroom Wall" or the Lizzy Borden version of "Born to Be Wild."



When Scaccia joined Ministry in 1989, he accelerated the band's jump into metal, a move move that divides Ministry fans to this day. Whatever your take is, Scaccia's riffage helped kick off Ministry's most popular and influential era, including their only gold album Psalm 69: The Way to Succeed and the Way to Suck Eggs. College-radio hits like "Just One Fix" and "N.W.O." turned synth-poppers, new wavers, and shoegazers onto metal, and humanized industrial music with guitars that sounded live instead of programmed. That influence can be heard in White Zombie, Nine Inch Nails, Fear Factory, Marilyn Manson and Chinese Democracy.

"Jesus Built My Hotrod," featuring Scaccia's primal riffage and guest star Gibby Haynes' "Surfin' Bird"-on-a-spit scatting, is one of rock music's greatest achievements. How many industrial guitar solos can you think of? How many of them are good?



A moment of cacophony for Mike Scaccia.

Song of the Day: Motörhead, "Iron Fist"

Man With the Iron Fists was everything that I hoped a RZA-helmed kung fu adventure would be. That being said, I assumed that hearing Motörhead's "Iron Fist" in the score would be too much to ask for. 



Kung fu metal is an untapped niche. There are more than enough horror-themed metal bands (White Zombie, GWAR, the Misfits), and some terrible sci-fi ones (anything that sounds like Fear Factory), but no metal band has incorporated martial arts into their music the way that the members of the Wu-Tang Clan have. Most likely, kung fu metal would end up sounding like the System of a Down and Tom Morello collabs with the Wu-Tang on the Loud Rocks comp. But hopefully, it would sound more like Motörhead.

Nothing conjures up action like Motörhead's music--one of the sharpest reviews I ever read compared Lemmy's tones to the sound that Snoopy's plane makes when he's fighting the Red Baron. The lyrics, like a kung fu movie screenplay, are just there to sound cool in the fray. "You know me, evil eye/You know me, prepare to die/You know me, you can't resist/Devil's grip, the Iron Fist" could be dubbed into Shogun Assassin. If Man With the Iron Fists gets a sequel, and it definitely deserves one, I'm hoping that RZA includes "Iron Fist."