In these metal ways, in these metal days [We get mail]

Dear Riddled, I am VERY CONCERNED about the growing trend for groups of loud shouty people to feed their cats with hairy spiders and use the inevitable spider-leg-related regurgitation as their band logos. Do you know which species of spiders they are using for this purpose? I hope it is not endangered.

Yours, Anonymous

PS Please excuse Throgmorton from work this week as he has strained a vocal chord shouting in his band "Epstein Borreliosis AIDS".

Dear Grannie van Holsterin,
Your concerns are fortunately misguided. It happens that the semiotics and aesthetics of Death Metal logos have been the subject of recent academic debate (Myers 2015). The recurring themes of illegibility and Cthulhu-like fractal tentacularity are indeed a striking example of convergent evolution at work. However, no spiders are involved, not even squashed between folded pages in the manner of a Rorschach test, despite their palindromic degree of symmetry.

Discreet inquiries at the Valhalla Viking Bar and music venue revealed that the same convergent evolution is occurring independently in the Southern Hemisphere.*

It has been hypothesised by certain members of the Riddled Institute of Advanced Study and Paper-Dart design (who shall remain nameless) that the symmetry evolved by serving as a signal of fitness thereby increasing reproductive success. The consensus view, however, ascribes it to the oeuvre of Scott Kim, creating a stable attractor in the morphogenic field through the workings of morphic resonance.
This theory gains credence from the splattery appearance of Druillet graphics and horror-movie typography,** clearly influenced by the stable attractor propagating backwards along the temporal axis (as is so often the case).




* Discovery of the fine ales on tap at Valhalla led to a progressive reduction in the discretion of subsequent inquiries.

** As any fule kno, the climactic scene in Evil Aliens is accompanied on the soundtrack by "Combine Harvester", hit single from the Wurzels, leading exponents of the musical genre of Scrumpy-&-Western. This is RELEVANT TO OUR INTERESTS because Alestorm -- leading exponents of the musical genre of Pirate Metal -- have been known to cover Wurzels tracks; also, Alestorm have played at Valhalla, and THUS THE CIRCLE DOTH CLOSE.

Until last Wednesday I had never heard of Scrumpy-&- Western, nor Pirate Metal, but "filling our heads with useless knowledge and our bloodstreams with cheap beer" is the price we are willing to pay to keep our readers informed.