Which band will impress Ryan Seacrest Devil?
Will it be Touching The Corpse or Rock Head Dead that loses their souls?
It’s time to d-d-d-duel!
During the last stream, a subscribers requested that we write a battle of the bands story.
Watch a short version of the stream here or scroll down for what we wrote.
To get our inspiration for who the bands would be, we spun the wheel and it landed on Dark Stock Photos, a Twitter account that posts bizarre stock photos.
Chat voted for the ones they liked best, and these were the winners:
Band #1: Touching The Corpse
— Dark Stock Photos (@darkstockphotos) June 14, 2017
Band #2: Rock Head Dead
— Dark Stock Photos (@darkstockphotos) October 2, 2018
Here’s what we wrote:
The battle of the bands in Hell was not quite what either of the competitors thought it would be. The flames, the screams, sure, they were all there, but the devil himself was oddly… basic.
“Okay, let’s get started,” he said, clearing his throat as the two bands stood clueless on the stage. He wore a suit, bowtie, and a bright smile. No horns, no pointy tail, no hooves. If anything, he looked like Ryan Seacrest with a sprayed-on tan.
Both heavy metal bands, Touching The Corpse and Rock Head Dead, had more or less expected to end up in the fiery afterlife eventually, having brutally murdered the lead singer of each other’s group. Just not quite this soon.
“Why are we here?” yelled the guitar player for TTC.
“Wait!” said the drummer for RHD. “Can I talk to my dad? He never did come back with the milk.”
“Sure thing,” Ryan Seacrest Devil said. “You’ll have plenty of time to chat with all of your condemned loved ones if you lose the battle of the bands and I get your souls.”
Flames erupted around the stage, then vaporized away, leaving an audience of cheering devils and horrifically disfigured humans. But not just any humans: former record executives. Their limbs were crusted over in heavy layers of gems and gold, weighing them down, as their two faces constantly bickered back and forth at each other.
“A battle of the bands?” the bass player for Touching The Corpse asked. “But what do we get if we win?”
Ryan Seacrest Devil smiled and two smaller flames erupted on the stage, leaving behind two new disfigured humans: the lead singers who’d been murdered.
“Melissa!” the members of Rock Head Dead said. She glared at them as bulbous tumors ran up and down her skin, as if bugs were crawling underneath her flesh. They were faces, constantly screaming, giving her the screams for attention she’d always creaved.
“Anthrax!” the members of Touching The Corpse said. He looked a little sickly white in the face… and all over the rest of his insides. His entire skin was translucent, letting anyone see everything going on inside of him, right down to the putrid color of his intestines, just like how he’d always wanted everyone to know everything about him.
“You asked what the winner gets,” Ryan Seacrest Devil said, “so here you go. The winning band gets to revive someone of their choice, and can get their lead singer back.”
“Sweet!” the kazooist for Touching The Corpse said, giving a few excited, zippy blows. “We can take you pussies down no problem.”
Ding. The clear, high-pitched sound of the trianglist tapping their metal instrument. “I’d like to see you try. Your band is so square, you thought the triangle had four sides.”
Both bands started screaming at each other atop the stage, until more flames erupted at the front of the audience, leaving behind a new group of humans. All of them sat at a long table made of people whose flesh was strung out and nailed together, constantly moaning.
The two bands stopped arguing immediately as soon as they saw who the new arrivals were. This was a torture too extreme even for Hell.
“And acting as the judges,” Ryan Seacrest Devil said, “will be all of your former flames. Your exes.”
The row of exes was full of people in all sorts of states of torture. Some had limbs growing out of their heads, some had heads growing out of their limbs, and one of them had several mouths covering their face and arms constantly chewing gum and blowing bubbles that popped into spiders.
Except for one angel who sat at the end, her white clothes and halo glowing, darting her eyes around and shrinking in on herself.
“Rosie!” the keyboardist for Rock Head Dead yelled out to her. “I thought you said you were hardcore.”
“Um, yeah, I was,” she said, looking around uncomfortably. “Hardcore Christian.”
“Damn,” the keyboardist said, getting a sympathetic pat on the shoulder from the bassist. “You’re married to a woman for three weeks and you think you really know her.”
For the other exes, despite their constant anguish, all of them glared at the band members on stage as if seeing them cut deeper than any deformity.
“Also!” Ryan Seascrest Devil said, summoning a final round of small flames on the stage that burned all the instruments to ash. “All of your instruments have been taken away. You’ll have to improvise. Impress your exes, or lose your souls forever. Now… begin!”
Rock Head Dead didn’t waste a second. The chubby drummer tore his shirt in half, revealing his tattooed bellydrum, and started wailing away on it, giving a sweet rhythm for the rest to follow.
The trianglist ran out to the audience and snatched one of the gold and gem-encrusted executives. He ripped off a chunk of what the exec had ripped off of his clients, and started clacking it against him, producing the familiar resonant dings of a cash register. Not quite the perfect trianglauted sound he was going for, but he could work with it
He tossed up a few rocks to the guitarist and keyboardist who stood next to Melissa, the singer. Their band name, Rock Head Dead, had been inspired by her taking a cinderblock to the head as a kid, and now was the time to relive that experience!
The two of them smacked the rocks against the screaming face-tumors all over Melissa’s body, making them yell out in different pitches and in perfect harmony with her song. Their number one hit: “Killer Killer.”
Smashing in your brains, cutting out your eyes
Woke up a feeling long dead inside
All the copycat murderers, I take them in stride
Imitation is the sincerest form of homicideBut Touching The Corpse was right behind them. Everything they needed was already on stage — inside of Anthrax.
The guitarist and bassist reached in and yanked out a handful of veins and arteries each, then started strumming them like mad, spraying blood all over the stage as they hit those kickass rhythms.
The kazooist snapped a bone right out of Anthrax’s ribcage and blew through it, blasting out all the cartilage into the audience and making it perfectly hollow, hitting high notes never before thought possible. He’d finally show all those who called the kazoo a baby’s play toy once and for all!
Together they played their own number one hit: Doing It Twice.
Grandma’s dead, her corpse on display
Her wake got me out of school today
Touching her face, wrinkles white as lice
Hot damn! The afterlife feels niceThe audience of devils and former executives went wild. They threw pitchforks, golden eyeballs, intestines and more onto the stage. By the time both bands were done, breathing hard and sweating after putting their all into the music, the entire floor of the stage was covered in a thin layer of sticky goo and disembodied mouths still screaming along to the beat.
Melissa was covered in popped heads all over, now hanging off her limbs like deflated flesh balloons. Anthrax was spilling onto the stage, his veins and arteries exhausted from being plucked, sprawled onto the floor like he was leaking dead jellyfish.
“Excellent performances!” Ryan Seacrest Devil said, giving a dainty golf clap. “But the final call comes down to the exes. What say you? It’s judgment time!”
The judges were swift in their decisions. They slammed their hands — either protruding from their shoulders or faces — onto the button of their choice, making the nailed-together humans beneath them vomit out a piece of broken, stained glass with the band they voted for etched onto it.
Every single one of them voted against their ex. Even Rosie the angel.
“Rosie!” the keyboardist for Rock Head Dead yelled. “How could you?”
“Sorry,” she said meekly, slinking in her flesh-seat. “Lying is a sin, and I just really liked their song about grandma. I’ve met her in Heaven and she’s really nice.”
“That’s the end, folks!” Ryan Seacrest Devil said, waving his arms and making all of the audience and judges disappear, screaming in pain, into an inferno of fire and ash. Except for one small beam of light that ascended away. “Touching The Corpse wins! Congratulations to them for being able to revive their singer, and my condolences to Rock Head Dead. Hope you’re comfy because you’re not going anywhere!”
“Um, actually,” the kazooist said, “you said we could revive anyone, right?”
Ryan Seacrest Devil stared at them confused. “I did, but who else would you possibly want to revive?”
“You gonna bring back my dad?” the drummer for Rock Head Dead asked, beating on his bellydrum in excitement.
“Sorry,” Ryan Seacrest Devil said. “Your dad’s not down here. Yet. He’s living it up on Earth with his second family. He left you and your mom’s asses.”
“Nah,” the kazooist said. “We weren’t gonna pick him anyway. We want to revive their lead singer, Melissa.”
Rock Head Dead and Melissa stared at them, gaping mouthed. But most shocked of all was Anthrax.
“What?!” he yelled. “You mother—”
“Listen” the kazooist said. “I feel bad for you, man, but now that we like, know that Hell and Heaven are for real, we’re not taking any chances.”
“Yeah,” the bassist added. “If we bring her back to life, then it’s like we never murdered her.”
“That’s a free ticket to Heaven!” the guitarist said.
“Besides,” the kazooist said. “We’re rebranding now anyway. As a Christian band. Our first song is already set: The Angel Who Loved Grandma.”
Anthrax lunged at his former bandmates, but Ryan Seacrest Devil smiled with his bright teeth, and all of the souls that belonged to him burned away into howling geysers of pain and fire. Only Touching The Corpse and Melissa remained on stage, now with all her screaming tumors gone.
“Hey,” the kazooist said to her. “We need a new lead singer. What do you say?”
Melissa shrugged. “Can’t be worse than what I’ve been through down here.”
Ryan Seacrest Devil surveyed them all. “Whatever. By the time you all release your third Christian rock single, you’ll be begging me to let you back to Hell.”
With a wave of his hand, they all vanished in a puff of rainbow smoke and delicate chimes.
“Anyway,” he said. “Time to work on my tan. Seacrest out!
If you want to join us and help write a story by trolling in chat, or share your own writing for feedback, then we’d love to have you join us on Twitch.
And you missed the stream, you can still watch them on the YouTube channel or watch the full stream reruns.
Hope to see you next time, friend!
Top images: Unsplash