Tenacious D vs. Satan: Jack Black’s Band Returns with New CD and a Movie

Jack Black, star of feature films like Nacho Libre, Envy, High Fidelity and many others, finally returns to the band that was partly responsible for his movie career. Before Black was a household name and one of the highest priced comedians in the business, he fronted the folk metal group Tenacious D, which also had a short-lived stint as an HBO series.

Tenacious D is kind of hard to explain. Both Black and partner in crime Kyle Gass are serious musicians, in so much as they actually play their instruments, write and sing their own songs and are, all things considered, fairly talented dudes. Most people disregard Tenacious D. They think they’re a joke band or a novelty act or something. However, if that is true, show me the Weird Al record that can hold a candle to Tenacious D’s production value and musicianship.

I loathe the term novelty act. In my opinion you can only do two things in music, original or parody. Weird Al, and a few retarded others, do parody, as in they parody other people’s songs, taking existing music and adding new, “funny” lyrics. This is not what Tenacious D does, in fact it’s not even close. I don’t care what you think about Jack Black’s original lyrics and the compositions, that doesn’t matter. I’m sure most of you (Joe Public) don’t care about my thoughts on Coldplay (they suck). But whatever you do, and it’s the only fair thing, please don’t write Tenacious off as a silly novelty act- no matter how much lyrics like “I’m shooting my juice / right in your caboose” say to the contrary.

I for one am totally psyched. I just saw the trailer for the new Tenacious D movie, “Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny”, check it out… www.tenaciousdmovie.com (There are some great promo clips there as well.)

The movie has taken a long time to make, but hopefully it will be worth the wait. Liam Lynch was the director and if you don’t know who Liam Lynch is then…let me tell you. Liam Lynch was 50% responsible for the greatest MTV show of all time, The Sifl and Olly Show. This was a brief blip on the MTV map, a sock puppet show about two, er, sock puppets that had their own show and sang silly songs. Just relax, I realize your mind was just blown by my awesome description of that show. If the assholes at MTV would release the first two seasons on DVD then I would be able to sleep at night, but like so many others I can only sit and cry in the fetal position. But enough about me.

Hopefully, “Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny” will bring The D a whole new audience. The premise involves a guitar pick that was created by Satan, or something to that effect, and Tenacious D have to find it, the movie also involves sasquatch. I’m happy because these are two of my all time favorite things coming together: the devil and folk metal.

The movie comes out on November 17th.