You should all be familiar with Cattle Decapitation’s logo, because the band is fucking awesome. But on the off chance you’re not, it looks like this:
So imagine that you’re driving down the road in Rover, Missouri, and you see that logo being used on a billboard for Newberry Farms, “Sellers of Purebred Bulls.” It would be pretty surreal, wouldn’t it? Especially given Cattle Decap’s vegan ideology (they’re not advocating the decapitation of cattle any more than Napalm Death are advocating murder by incendiary chemicals), right?
Well, this is precisely what happened to a friend of Cattle Decap frontman Travis Ryan:
So that’s pretty fucking bizarre, no?
It’s not clear right now whether this was an intentional, albeit severely misguided, homage by a fan, or if the designer of the billboard just found the logo online and thought no one would ever notice if they stole it, or what. But when a fan on Facebook asked Ryan if the band would take legal action to have it removed, the vocalist said:
“Our logo is obscured so I’m thinking this wouldn’t be a case since they could be covered since it could fall under parody law. I’m definitely running it by our manager though.”
Speaking as someone who has taken advantage of parody laws many, many, many times, I actually don’t think this would be covered; I mean, I’m just not sure how it’s a “parody,” unless the whole joke is making fun of vegans. But that’s not even clear from the context! The use of the band’s logo is just all-around bullshit.
Guess we’ll see how this shakes out. While we wait, I’m gonna go buy some Rage Against the Machine-themed ads for #stopthesteal.
[via Metal Injection]