Chicago Pale Hoes series preview

The World Champion Kansas City Royals have been let down lately by the thing that their success has largely been built upon, squandering a handful of leads down the stretch as they watched their playoff odds dwindle. With just 23 games remaining, the Royals’ margin for error is virtually nonexistent.

With any hopes of a berth to the postseason dematerializing into the ether, the Royals head to the South Side of Chicago to face their intradivisional foes the Pale Hoes.

*All stats courtesy of FanGraphs and Baseball-Reference

Game One: Friday, 7:10 PM CDT

Well before serving as the inspiration for much of the darker elements in Steig Larsson’s Millenium Trilogy, the depravity of Swedish Sex Dungeon touched nearly all who encountered them.

Rising from the ashes of the psycho-billy/troll metal fusion act A Femur for Your Bindle and the avant-slowcore strings and percussion ensemble i sing of Olaf rad and big, Swedish Sex Dungeon set the Ghent scene ablaze for a storied 18 months, alternating between transcendence and epic meltdowns fueled by HEAVY drug and alcohol use and an arguably adolescent infatuation with the occult. With frontman Tor Mentor and multi-instrumentalist Mork D under investigation for allegations of PCP trafficking, vampirism, and piracy, Swedish Sex Dungeon skedaddled to New Zealand in the dark of night. With their departure, mainland European music lost the greatest visionaries they had seen since Kraftwerk.

Game Two: Saturday, 6:10 PM CDT

With PCP impossible to come by on the other side of the world, Tor, Mork, Fletch F. Letch, Mate Gourd, Terrorbithia, Ballgag, and Steve honed their craft on the notoriously fickle Auckland-Christchurch-Wellington-Tauranga circuit, playing to hostile or indifferent crowds. With no other choice than to shred through it, Swedish Sex Dungeon rocked so hard that there were three separate incidents in which Taurangan teens on bath salts actually had their faces melted by SSD performances, serving as the origin of that expression. With success eventually turning into complete and utter dominance and musical destruction in New Zealand, it became clear that Swedish Sex Dungeon was on a trajectory that was going to take them to bigger and better places.

Game Three: Sunday, 1:10 PM CDT

Just as they were outgrowing New Zealand, the heart and soul of the band, Ballgag, died in a bedroom incident that fans and family didn’t want to believe was true but had no choice to accept when ninja sex trafficking assassins were ruled out as a possible cause of death. Belt in use, in flagrante delicto all by his lonesome, Ballgag went the way of many good men before him.

With a death in the band souring Swedish Sex Dungeon on New Zealand on the whole, they had no choice but to move again.

The Batsmen

*Stats through Wednesday, September 7

The ghost of Ballgag left amongst the Kiwis, the remaining members relocated to the mean streets of Detroit. While Wellingtonians complained of a sexually inappropriate phantasm harassing and taunting them while walking down the street, Swedish Sex Dungeon were finding comfort as Michigan immigrants. The primal influence of protopunk keystones The Stooges, MC5, and Death began to worm its way into their sound while deep cuts and B-sides began to incorporate melodies inspired by Motown and Rodriguez. Swedish Sex Dungeon refused to be tied down, at least musically.

Unfortunately, Detroit’s proximity to the temptations of Windsor would prove to get the band into further trouble.

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