Count Jabula loves Dale Earnhardt.

The lead vocalist for Iowa City-born band Human Aftertaste harbors an absolute devotion to the late stock-car driver not in a romantic or fatherly way, but in the most grand, spiritual sense.

“At first I felt like I was kind of cheatin’ on Jesus, right after 2/18/01 when Dale [crashed] into the wall,” Jabula said. “It’s probably more important than 9/11 or any of that stuff. I mean, for real.”

Human Aftertaste will play with Shores of the Tundra and Catastrophic Solutions at the Picador, 330 E. Washington St., on at 9 p.m. Friday.

While Jabula spends much of his time singing and advertising for Human Aftertaste, a rock band as well as a distributor of questionable canned meat, he said he finds his true passion and inspiration in Earnhardt. But to Jabula’s discontent, most of the band’s creative control lies in the hands of Human Aftertaste CEO and President Big Lar (pronounced like “Larry”).

“I try to get my words in there, but they try to clobber it all up with these fancy lyrics and stuff,” Jabula said. “And I really think we should just probably start singing more praises to Dale.”

In 2004, Big Lar chose Jabula to “relate to the common man” when Human Aftertaste was having a hard time selling its canned meat. Jabula has been spreading the word of meat and Dale Earnhardt ever since.

Jabula described Human Aftertaste’s music as a medley of different influences. These include the “Gothicness” of Dio, plus Johnny Cash, Kenny Rogers, madness, destruction, and the “Hellements” – lightning, wind, fire, wolves, NASCAR. The vocalist called his band a vehicle to get Earnhardt’s “gospels” out to listeners.

“Life is like a race track you just keep on turning left and no matter what you do, you’ll end up in the same spot,” he said. “That’s pretty deep stuff. I’m always headed for the checkered flag, though. That’s the promised land, right there.”

And according to Jabula, the grand unification and realization of the Gospels of Dale are inevitably approaching.

“This is the Grand Designment of Dale Earnhardt Sr.,” he said. “His plan is, we will remake the world into one beautiful NASCAR track so we can all go left together. And I think that through this silly stuff, meat and whatnot, we can come together to ride that track together and to keep turning left.”

Jabula isn’t all about NASCAR and meat, though. He said that until 2004, he was an avid streetfighter, employing his kung-fu skills at every opportunity. His self-developed martial art is one of the things that keeps performances enjoyable for him, he said.

“It’s kind of a mixture of things I’ve learned over the years,” Jabula said. “You watch enough Segal, you watch enough Norris, you start feeling it. You feel it, and you mix and match. And the Van Damme I’ll mix him in, too. Sometimes, it’ll be the Van Damme right and the Chuck Norris left you never know what’ll come.”

So let the Picador stage be warned: kung fu, NASCAR gospels, and canned meat will be just a few of the features Human Aftertaste incorporates into its show.