Edwin
Borsheim is the embodiment of all Tipper Gore’s worst fears, even her most
outlandish. He is notorious to a select few as the front man of the extreme
metal band Kettle Cadaver. For one unlikely moment, it looked like he band was
building some momentum, but then reality set in. Since their implosion,
Borsheim has existed in a highly unstable state of self-imposed exile. Filmmaker
Jai Love ventured into Borsheim macabre lair, documenting his profoundly
anti-social attitudes and behavior in Dead
Hands Dig Deep,
which
screens during the 2016 Slamdance Film Festival.
This
film is not for those who are weak of stomach or easily offended. Borsheim’s
fame, such as it is, rests on his graphic stage excesses involving unsimulated
self-mutilation. Apparently, Kettle Cadaver sold enough of their two shock
videos to be in regular inventory at Tower Records. Be warned, there is a lot
of blood in DHDD and it looks real
enough. However, Borsheim willingly did it to himself, so there you have it.
Frankly, Borsheim makes Insane Clown Posse look like the New Seekers and DHDD makes Last Days Here look like Mariah Carey’s A Christmas Melody.
Not
surprisingly, Borsheim had trouble making his relationship with the love of his
life work, so he crafted a wooden mannequin to take her place. When not
passively aggressively threatening suicide, he manically fantasizes about
shooting sprees and mass murder. At one point, he signed on for a planned
campaign of hate crimes against Christian charities, but the conversation of an
accomplice threw a spanner in the works. By the time someone pulls a copy of Mein Kompf off his shelf late in the
film, it hardly registers anymore. The truth is DHDD would be deeply unsettling if it were a horror film. As a
documentary, it is terrifying.
Yet,
there is a point to DHDD beyond mere gawking.
You do not need five minutes of psychiatric training to diagnose Borsheim’s clinical
depression. He might have scared the snot out of Love and his Australian crew,
but their camera became the closest thing in his world to a psychiatrist’s
couch.