By Lloyd Kaufman and Adam Jahnke

MAY 31, 2000
Early this morning, Troma L.A. employee John Santos (or, as Napster knows him, "posthole") decided, instead of his usual method of kick-starting the day with our bottle of Troma Team Whiskey, to log on to the ole Napster to rock out with his cock out to some jazzy tunes. What he got instead was this message:

posthole banned: Banned by Metallica: See http://infringe.napster.com/metallica.html

What prompted this litigious action from Metallica? How did we get to be one of the 317,377 fans that Lars Ulrich fucked over in his pointless asshole search for so-called "copyright infringers"? A quick look at Troma L.A.'s Napster playlist revealed that four long months ago, perhaps before Metallica had even heard of Napster, John did in fact download part of a Metallica song: "Fade To Black". That's right, we have been completely blacklisted from Napster thanks to a two-and-a-half minute song snippet. Not even the whole shittin' ass song. A song that at least one person in the office had already paid good money for years ago (back in the good old days when Metallica was still making music worth paying money for) when he bought the "Ride The Lightning" album. Just because we were too damn lazy and stupid to bring the album into the office, we are now branded as thieves and forced to wander the World Wide Web, searching for MP3's hither and yon.

Voices of Resistance: troma.com webmaster, Steve D, and Flavor Flav

Troma urges music fans everywhere to fight this outrageous action taken by Metallica. Instead of hiding behind cowardly anonymous lawsuits, we challenge Lars Ulrich, James Hetfield, Kirk Hammett and Buddy Ebsen (or whatever the fuck the bass player's name is) to a round of ultimate kickboxing against Sgt. Kabukiman, Toxie, Dolphin Man, and Killer Condom in front of the Troma Building at high noon. We'll even give them a fighting chance and let them try to bring back the undead body of Cliff Burton (though we're pretty sure he'd be on our side).

Kiss My Tromass Metallica!

In the meantime, we would like to demonstrate to Metallica how to take the high ground and share intellectual property. Some time ago, on their VH1 Behind-The-Mucus program, the band used the Toxic Avenger to describe James Hetfield's on-stage immolation. We could take them to court for copyright infringement. We could ban them from Tromaville and request that they refrain from using Toxie, or any Troma characters, to attract viewers. But we won't. Troma respects all our fans, even the filthy rich ones who feel the need to squeeze every last dime out of each and every note of music they have ever recorded. Metallica could learn a thing or two from Troma. We only anally violate our fans with giant monster cocks when they ask us to (and believe me, they do ask).

As for John Santos, he hopes to someday be sued by the band so he can meet them in court, get his Master Of Puppets album signed and ask the one question on everyone's minds, "What the fuck happened to you guys?" Until then, Metallica can kiss our banned posthole.

What follows is the mix of legal mumbo-jumbo bullshit and veiled threats that popped up when we followed the link sent to us by Napster. If you don't want to read this crap (and who can blame you if you don't), jump to our final paragraph where we have a gift for our fans.

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