bITS 'N CHUNKS
Gang, it's time for concert season once again!
... Except I've already been to all the shows I'm tryna go to this year with the exception of a potential new year's eve bash. My Shows About Town feature is pretty consistent, but for the latter half of this year I've (to be blunt) had my shit rocked repeatedly by the ups and downs of life and depression. So I haven't felt like it! So, rather than a thorough concert review, here's a speed run of the two biggest shows I hit up in good ol' Music City.
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Shipmates, At this point it's been about a week since the spookiest, best time of our lives. But while Halloween may only exist in our hearts and minds, my content does NOT! That's right, with support and networking I was able to expand my (spider)web out this year and do some awesome projects with cool people I love. Sometimes, y'all, building community is worth more than every Huffington Post or BuzzFeed viral clip on the face of the Earth. So where else was I? Well... Halloween is always lit over at Global Comment. Here are the three (dark) entries I did this year. Sabrina & Satanic Feminism Y'all like horror remakes? MANDY IS AWESOME! Oh, did you miss my collab with the lovely Lovely? Well, here it is right here on this very site: Metalhead films! And last but not least, my dear SoBros Network gave me the keys to their kingdom for a little bit to do my annual-when-I-actually-make-it-out 12 Hours of Terror write up! Thanks to you all for making this Halloween equally as sexy and fun as last year's and not nearly as depressing as the year before. And now, we steadily march towards Turkeyland and Santa Time!
You know, gang, I like metal and I like movies. That much should be evident if you read any of my writing, follow my social media, know me as a person, and so on.
I’m always pondering ways to reach out to my fellow metalheads and commiserate, but most importantly combine our interests in productive ways. As it turns out, one of the prerequisites to metal fandom is… an enjoyment of film. Shocker! Specifically, we tend to lean towards scary film. So for Halloween, I thought I wanted to do a list of metal horror films for your headbangin’ souls. Then, the project got… big. Metal infects everything in my life (like goth, only less so) and I thought, why do I have to stick to horror movies? Why can’t it just be evergreen? Then… the project got monstrous. I realized I couldn’t do it alone. So I reached out to my genderfluid dreamboat -- I mean definitely one of my favorite power metallers and big time inspiration, Lovely! Together, we have compiled a master list of films that any self-respecting metalhead should enjoy, or if you’re stuck in that phase of explaining things to mom and dad, maybe some of these will help. (I’m totally fucking with you, these won’t help at all). So, check out the massive list below, and don’t forget to check out Lovely’s podcast, Lovely Talks Metal! And follow their Twitter and Instagram. That being said:
Twelve years (no shit!) after their formation and the metal community is still out on Ghost.
Are they more gimmick than music? Is T___as F___e running game on all of us? Are they actually metal? These are mere philosophical questions in the end; me, personally, I've outed myself as a metal purist a couple of times so to classify Ghost as, say, "doom metal" is a bit painful to me. But death 'n doom is what the band pays stock in (in addition to hilarious dark mockery of Catholic institutions) and I'm not going to tell them what to identify as. There are times when I honestly just don't care because the music is good. Ghost especially caters to the part of me that loves camp and kayfabe. I just wrote two fucking heartfelt wrestling entries in a row, I obviously don't take everything super serious. That being said, I'm going to my 2nd Ghost concert in just a few days here. My first encounter with the nameless ghouls and their Papa was a couple of years ago at good ol' Marathon Music Works. Then, they were leaning heavily into their psychedelic period even as the 3rd incarnation of Emeritus (Papa III) brought in a new era of sleazy late 70s/early 80s inspired cock rock. The floor was hazy, the lights swirled, and everyone smelled like incense. I don't think I needed to bathe for a few weeks. The stage show was fantastic and already gearing towards something a little more theatrical, so for Rats on the Road I'm not terribly surprised they're hitting the theater circuit. I've held off on video and indulging in a lot of fan lore to be able to enjoy the show as it is: a show. Anything that you have to read three volumes of back story, for example, to "understand" is playing games. But in preparation, I'm taking time out to mistily and fondly remember Ghost's first official album, Opus Eponymous. This record cemented me as a fan for life, is still my preferred period, and the peak moment where gimmick and musicality collided into the perfect mesh of doom, trad metal, and unironic Satan worship. Finally, the music your parents ASSUMED you were always listening to, now made flesh! All band lore and singer controversy aside, Opus Eponymous still wins me over with its blend of melody, chugging early-Sabbath tendencies, and Gothic horror. Songs about the fallen archangel himself are augmented with odes to Countess Bathory and the Beatles. And... ABBA, because they are Swedish and who doesn't love a good folk melody? Anyway, it seemed like from this point on Ghost could do no wrong and by the time "Year Zero" rolled out they were well on their way to actual annunciation. Popestar and parts of Meliora were steps back, showing off Papa's pipes but not furthering too much else. But even while he new regime under Cardinal Copia (who is NOT using his boom box enough) is giving me Spinal Tap vibes, but I'm hoping Prequelle can turn us around. I'm just hoping by this time next year they will have gone full Queen-meets-Alice-Cooper, utilizing some kind of gilded guillotine as part of the act, no? Dare I say black-black metal.
Well, ship mates, I intended to do this post a LOT earlier in the month, but like quite a bit in my life this cruel quarter of the year it fell by the wayside. BUT I refuse to be late at least in my own time zone, so I wanted to present you all with my favorite subject to digest during February: black people in places we don't usually belong! As you might realize from my tags and music posts, I'm a big metal fan. Specifically, speed/thrash, groove, some of the early nu-metal when it was still cool and not at all derivative, industrial (and regular Industrial), prog... I could go on. I am and always will be some sort of metal trash. But in the year of our lord T'Challa 2018, I don't need to tell you that POC representation in the metal scene is... lacking. Ironically, not really in the audience itself, but still on stage. I and many (many) others whether as hobbyists or professionals do these lists of black people in metal every so often and each year it's a struggle. At one point it was so bad that every black-specific list had to be expanded out to include everyone black and brown for coverage. I feel like for every ten years there is one or two more new bands that crop up. A lot of the problem is exposure but a bigger part of the problem that's KIND of getting solved is simply location. For example, a few years ago we learned that many African countries have quite large metal scenes. Do Americans see this? Probably not. Do people in Canada know about goregrind in China or Trinidad & Tobago? I'm willing to bet "no" unless they're on the look out for it. So, there's that. What do these lists do? Bring attention to the issue and, hopefully, encourage you to go find more for yourself. Finding lists like this and trailing down the bunny hole definitely helped me find my way as a young'un and made the world seem less lonely, so I wish to pass that on to others. For more, I suggest BandCamp and the extremely arbitrary but useful Metal Archives. For reading I suggest Laina Dawes' What Are You Doing Here? memoir. Now, before you hit the Read More you might be wondering, why black people specifically? There are groupings of all POC in music scenes out there, this seems a little specific. And the true answer to that is, representation and visibility matter E V E R Y W H E R E, I like to see people like me enjoying the things I enjoy, and lastly, why the hell not. So here we go, a short list of black-black metal artists that inspired my young life. Oh, and song recs. |
Ia! If you've come this far, you're either looking for weird or you know you've found it... TRESPASSING
September 2018
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