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Hours
after the auditions ended, a knock came to the door of Holzfeuer's
hotel room. When it was opened, there stood a man who made up for
his small stature with the brooding demeanor of a giant. He answered
only that his name was Inzo, then began playing his guitar on a
portable amp which he had strapped across his chest. The rest is
history, or a considerable lack there of. None of the ArnoCorps
members know anything about Inzo other than his name. His age, his
background, his full name, sexuality, are all mysteries. Over time, stories surfaced that describe Inzo as a man who used music
to curb his desire for robbing graves. The most commonly accepted
view is that Inzo was forced to retire from an underground pro wrestling
circuit by doctors concerned that the nightly concussions had taken
their toll on Inzo's mental stability, leaving him nothing more
than an angry vegetable.
After two years of helping ArnoCorps build it's reputation as the greatest band of all time, something unexpected happened. On Friday morning March 14, 2003, Holzfeuer went to the storage room behind Pleasant Valley Funeral Parlor inhabited by guitarist Inzo. After knocking several times upon the sheet metal door, Holzfeuer bashed through. "What the hell's going on around here?" he called and waited for an answer, but one never came.
Holzfeuer took note of his guitarist's home. The guitar, the two shirts, the pair of socks. All of Inzo's belongings were gone. Written on the wall was a message from Inzo. Never one for running off at the mouth, Inzo had scrawled only one word: GONE.
Inzo was listed as MIA.
After nearly two years of absence, Inzo returned to ArnoHQ in Berkeley, California.
When asked about why he'd left, where he'd been, Inzo answered only, "Mmmm.
Away."
Bassist Toten Adler recalls the day of Inzo's return, "A couple months ago, we were all
sitting around watching Gellend act out a scene from Ben-Hur using little
bunny shadows on the wall when Der Wölf suddenly got up and began sniffing
around the front door, he musta smelled danger 'cause he was growling like
it was the mailman or something. I got all pissed off 'cause I wanted to see
how the chariot race ended, so I threw a rolled-up newspaper at him, 'Sit
down, muffin ass!' I said, but he wouldn't leave the door. So I went ahead
and opened the front door and said, 'Well, god-dam!' 'cause there stood
Inzo. I grabbed him by the collar and dragged his ass into the kitchen to
wash the dishes he left behind when he disappeared. 'I'm not cleaning up
your shit, you freak,' I told him. Forget about it!"
When asked if he was glad to see his old bandmate safe and healthy, Gellend
Adler smiled, "Fantastic! I'd've been just as happy if he was dead or
something! And you know what, now everything comes full circle, just like I
say, circular like the goddamn Wheel of Pain."
Although he said nothing, the members of ArnoCorps knew something was
different about Inzo. For one, he was speaking his 'Mmmm's with ascending
pitch, not the usual monotone 'Mmmm's of before. Secondly, in his guitar
case he carried the skeletal remains of a barracuda bleached white by the
sun. Rifling through Inzo's belongings in search of dirty pictures, Toten
Adler found photographs of Inzo, bearded and wearing only the tattered
remains of camouflage boxer shorts, standing on what appeared to be a
crater-infested terrain, positioned in Tantric stances, carving
hieroglyphic-like characters into stones and, finally, wrestling a giant
barracuda to the death in a man-made tank. These are the only clues into
Inzo's past two years, all ArnoCorps or anyone else can do is speculate.
One thing is for sure. Emerging from whatever experiences he has had, Inzo
now only answers to the name of Inzo der Barakuda, or simply "Barakuda".
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