Your socks have officially been rocked off.
Since the beginning of time, 'twas written in the stones that a band would come.
Well, now that band has come, and now they're here to come again, in your earpussies.
They are but men. ROCK!
Tenacious D, also known as "The D" and modestly referred to as "The Greatest Band In the World", are an American duo formed of lead vocalist/guitarist/actor/
Large Ham Jack Black and lead guitarist/backing vocalist/
Straight Man Kyle Gass, that have been active since 1994. They are known for their use of acoustic guitars, wacky sense of humour revolving heavily around
audacity,
vulgarity and lampooning clichés associated with
Heavy Metal and
Rock & Roll. While being a really awesome heavy metal band, just
because they can.
Initially performing as an "acoustic metal" duo, Black and Gass got attention thanks to their short-lived TV series
Tenacious D, which ran on
HBO in 1997. Despite being only six episodes long, the series helped bring attention to The D, and they quickly secured spots opening for
Beck,
Pearl Jam, the
Foo Fighters and
Tool.
By the time the band signed to a label in 2000, they had a pretty high profile thanks to Black's acting work. Backed by a
Dream Team of musicians that included
Dave Grohl on drums and guitars,
Oingo Boingo guitarist Warren Fitzgerald, bassist Steve MacDonald and
Phish keyboardist Page McConnell,
Tenacious D showed the band maturing into an outright metal band while still retaining the acoustic guitars and perfecting their outrageous humour and parodies. Split between full band-reworkings of songs from the TV series, a few new songs and comedic skits, the debut blew the minds, kicked the asses (with karate!) and rocked the socks of everyone who ever heard it, and provided the band with its
Signature Song: "Tribute", a tribute to "the best song in the world" that the band played to defeat Satan but promptly forgot afterwards.
It's a Long Story.
In 2001, Tenacious D gained notoriety for releasing the extremely bawdy
animated short music video by
Ren and Stimpy creator
John Kricfalusi for the song "F— Her Gently" which was featured (alongside
Happy Tree Friends) in that year's annual Festival of Sick and Twisted Animation. (
NSFW
, naturally enough.)
For their next project, The D decided to blow minds in the movie world as well and began working on a movie,
Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny. A soundtrack was also recorded, named simply
The Pick of Destiny and featuring contributions from Grohl,
Meat Loaf and
Ronnie James Dio. The film came out in 2006 and failed at the box office, probably due to Satan's intervention, while the soundtrack got a mixed but positive reception.
They've been laying low for a while but are ready to blow everybody's minds once again when their new album,
Rise of the Fenix drops later on in 2012. We can't wait.
Discography:
Tropes:
- Affectionate Parody: Of heavy metal.
- Bowdlerise: They record clean versions of all of their songs. An example would be from "Beelzeboss" "Goddamnit Kage He's gonna make you his sex slave" becomes "Golldurnit Kage he's gonna make you his best slave"
- iTunes, along with several other sites, have opted to apply Pixellation to the very phallic phoenix on the cover of Rize of the Fenix. The cover of the physical release remains uncensored though.
- Cluster F-Bomb: Fuck you! You fucking dick! Always naysaying...everything I create. You piece of shit, You create something like inward singing! You fucking shit! You fucking sit in your tower! Fucking nap... What's funny?! YOU FUCKING BITCH! Fucking...fucker! Fucking... cock ass!
- Epic Rocking: "City Hall".
- Hot Blooded
- I Know Karate
- Intercourse with You: "Kielbasa" parodies/homages the innuendo-based Sex, Drugs, & Rock and Roll song by by taking the concept to it's extreme; Juice? In your Caboose?
- Large Ham: Jack, who else?
- The Movie: Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny
- Obsession Song: "Lee", a song dedicated to their obsessive fan Lee. Yeah, you got that right, they wrote an obsession song for a fan to freak him out so he would stop obsessing over them.
- The Power of Rock
- Rated M for Manly
- Refuge in Audacity
- Refuge in Vulgarity: The 'Blowjob' short may the height of this.
- Self-Titled Album
- Sex, Drugs, & Rock and Roll: Cock pushups? "I've been getting ready".
- Signature Song: "Tribute".
- Silent Bob: Kyle, to some extent.
- Stage Names: JB and KG or Jables and Kage, whichever is more metal.
- Standard Snippet: "Classico" and "Rock Your Socks" quote Bach's Bourrée in E minor.
- The Starscream: Jables and Kage in "City Hall".
- Straight Man: Kyle.
- Stylistic Suck: The "leaked" video to "Rize of the Fenix"
- Surprisingly Gentle Song: Parodied with the "song for the ladies", "Fuck Her Gently".
- Ted Baxter: Jack Black's persona parodies bragging Heavy Metal bands by being this. He's not nearly as smart, wise, or sexy as he thinks he is.
- Testosterone Poisoning: Intentionally evoked.
- Training Montage: "To Be The Best"
- Vitriolic Best Buds
- Word Salad Lyrics: "Exploding brains from Alzon to Zanzibar... to the shores of ye olde rustic Chinook!"
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